INTRODUCTIONregarded as having reached its apogee under the Antonines in the second
century AD. Rostovzeff applied to Rome the lessons he had taken from the
Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and saw the later Roman empire as a repres-
sive and uncouth system which had emerged through the destruction of the
‘bourgeoisie’ by the peasants and the army, an example of state control at its
worst.^10
In English scholarship the period covered in this book has been dominated
by A.H.M. Jones’s massive work, The Later Roman Empire 284–602. A Social,
Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), also issued in shortened
form as The Decline of the Ancient World (London, 1966). Jones was much influ-
enced by the emphasis given by Rostovtzeff to social and economic factors,
and his great work consists in the main of thematic chapters on individual
aspects of late Roman society rather than political narrative. Jones had trav-
elled extensively over the Roman empire, and taken part in archaeological
work, but he wrote before the explosion of interest and activity in late Roman
archaeology and made little use of archaeological evidence himself; instead, he
demonstrates a incomparable mastery of the written material, and this means
that his book remains a fundamental guide. Jones defined the period chrono-
logically as reaching from the accession of Diocletian (AD 284) to the death
of Maurice (AD 602), a choice of coverage which the first edition of this book
essentially followed but which I believe now needs to be extended in order to
take account of the trends in current scholarship.^11
Jones’s approach was pragmatic and concrete; he was not very interested
in the questions of religious history which many now regard as primary and
exciting factors in the study of late antiquity. For him, studying the develop-
ment and influence of the Christian church in this period meant following
its institutional and economic growth rather than the inner feelings of Chris-
tians themselves. He looked to Christian writing principally for social and
economic data, and most famously, he included Christian monks, ascetics and
clergy in the category of ‘idle mouths’ who now had to be supported by the
dwindling class of agricultural producers, and who in Jones’s view contributed
to the difficulties to be faced by the late Roman government, and to its even-
tual decline. J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz’s book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman
City (2001), is a modern treatment which returns to the theme of Christianity
as a negative factor in the history of the Roman empire.
Jones’s work opened up the period to a new generation of English-speak-
ing students. They were soon to be stimulated by the very different approach
of Peter Brown, vividly expressed in his brief survey The World of Late Antiquity
(1971), published only a few years after Jones’s Later Roman Empire. Brown is
altogether more enthusiastic, not to say emotive, in emphasis. Instead of dry
administrative history, ‘late antiquity’ now became an exotic territory, popu-
lated by wild monks and excitable virgins and dominated by the clash of reli-
gions, mentalities and lifestyles. In this scenario, Sasanian Persia in the east
and the Germanic peoples in the north and west bounded a vast area within
which several new battlelines were being drawn, not least between family