Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-1-108-48128-1
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 226 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 487 g

The Roman Empire traditionally presented itself as the centre of the world, a view sustained by ancient education and conveyed in imperial literature. Historiography in particular tended to be written from an empire-centred perspective. In Late Antiquity, however, that attitude was challenged by the fragmentation of the empire. This book explores how a post-imperial representation of space emerges in the historiography of that period. Minds adapted slowly, long ignoring Constantinople as the new capital and still finding counter-worlds at the edges of the world. Even in Christian literature, often thought of as introducing a new conception of space, the empire continued to influence geographies. Political changes and theological ideas, however, helped to imagine a transferral of empire away from Rome and to substitute ecclesiastical for imperial space. By the end of Late Antiquity, Rome was just one of many centres of the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Van Nuffelen, Peter

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: from imperial to post-imperial space in Late Ancient historiography Peter Van Nuffelen; 1. Constantinople's belated hegemony Anthony Kaldellis; 2. Beside the rim of the ocean: the edges of the world in fifth- and sixth- century historiography Peter Van Nuffelen; 3. Armenian space in Late Antiquity Tim Greenwood; 4. Narrative and space in Christian chronography: John of Biclaro on East, West, and orthodoxy Mark Humphries; 5. The Roman Empire in John of Ephesus' Church history: being Roman, writing Syriac Hartmut Leppin; 6. Changing geographies: West Syrian ecclesiastical historiography, AD 700–850 Philip Wood; 7. Where is Syriac Pilgrimage literature in Late Antiquity? Exploring the absence of a genre Scott Johnson; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Van Nuffelen, Peter
Peter Van Nuffelen is Professor of Ancient History at Universiteit Gent, Belgium, where he leads an ERC-funded team on late ancient historiography. His recent publications include Rethinking the Gods: Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period (Cambridge, 2011), Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (2012), and Penser la tolérance durant l'Antiquité tardive (2018).