RULING THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE P (Google eBook)

Christopher KELLY, Christopher Kelly

Harvard University Press, Jun 30, 2009 - History - 341 pages

In this highly original work, Christopher Kelly paints a remarkable picture of running a superstate. He portrays a complex system of government openly regulated by networks of personal influence and the payment of money. Focusing on the Roman Empire after Constantine's conversion to Christianity, Kelly illuminates a period of increasingly centralized rule through an ever more extensive and intrusive bureaucracy.

The book opens with a view of its times through the eyes of a high-ranking official in sixth-century Constantinople, John Lydus. His On the Magistracies of the Roman State, the only memoir of its kind to come down to us, gives an impassioned and revealing account of his career and the system in which he worked. Kelly draws a wealth of insight from this singular memoir and goes on to trace the operation of power and influence, exposing how these might be successfully deployed or skillfully diverted by those wishing either to avoid government regulation or to subvert it for their own ends. Ruling the Later Roman Empire presents a fascinating procession of officials, emperors, and local power brokers, winners and losers, mapping their experiences, their conflicting loyalties, their successes, and their failures.

This important book elegantly recaptures the experience of both rulers and ruled under a sophisticated and highly successful system of government.

Contents

• First Thoughts: 1
• The Bureaucrats Tale: 9
• John Lydus A Man and His Book: 11
• All the Prefects Men: 18
• The Competition for Spoils: 64
• Rulers and Ruled: 105
• Passages from the Principate to Late Antiquity: 107
• Standing in Line: 114
• Purchasing Power: 138
• Autocracy and Bureaucracy: 186
• Last Judgments: 232
• Notes: 247
• Bibliography: 301
• Index: 327

Popular passages

Page 324 - Explication des inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Grèce et en Asie Mineure, deuxième partie.‎

About the author

Christopher Kelly is Reader in Ancient History and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His publications include Ruling the Later Roman Empire (2004), The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction (2006), The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome (2009).

Bibliographic information

• Title: RULING THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE P; Volume 15 of Revealing Antiquity, ISSN 1052-0422
• Authors: Christopher KELLY, Christopher Kelly
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2009
• ISBN: 0674039459, 9780674039452
• Length: 341 pages
• Subjects: History / Ancient / Rome