The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, 395-700 AD

1.1 The base of the obelisk in the Hippodrome

1.2 Istanbul: Justinian’s church of St Sophia

1.3 A Byzantine empress, late fi fth or sixth century

2.2 Ostrogoth-style buckle, late fifth–early sixth century

2.3 Coin of Theodoric the Ostrogoth (d. 526)

3.1 S. Maria Maggiore, Rome, built in the fifth century

of Symeon the Elder 3.2 The complex at Qalaat Semaan, Syria, with part of the pillar

3.3 The huge site of Palmyra, built in an oasis of the Syrian desert

Younger on his pillar near Antioch, late sixth–seventh century 3.4 Pottery pilgrim token depicting St Symeon Stylites the

5.1 The Barberini ivory

5.2 St Catherine’s monastery, Mt Sinai

5.3 The fortress at Zenobia (Halabiye) on the Euphrates

6.1 One of the classrooms uncovered at Komm el-Dikka, Alexandria

Paphos, Cyprus 6.2 Mosaic of the first bath of Achilles, from the House of Theseus,

of Cosmas Indicopleustes 6.3 The shape of the world as imagined in the Christian Topography

7.1 Serjilla, one of the ‘dead’ cities

7.2 An olive-press astride a former main street, Sbeitla, Tunisia

8.1 The ‘praetorium’ at Resafa

8.2 The city of Scythopolis (Bet Shean)

8.3 The refectory of the monastery of Martyrius in the Judaean desert

on the site of a Christian church and Roman temple 9.1 The Great Mosque at Damascus (early eighth century), built

9.2 Nessana in the early 1990s

0.1 The Diocletianic provinces of the late Roman empire LIST OF MAPS

1.1 Constantinople

2.1 The Mediterranean world, early sixth century

5.1 The ‘reconquest’ of Justinian

8.1 The east in the sixth century

9.1 The east in the early seventh century