Oxford University Press, USA
The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea
Key Metrics
- Edward J Watts
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Hardcover
- 9780190076719
- -
- -
- History > Ancient - Rome
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The decline of Rome has been a constant source of discussion for more than 2200 years. Everyone from American journalists in the twenty-first century AD to Roman politicians at the turn of the third century BC have used it as a tool to illustrate the negative consequences of changes in their world. Because Roman history is so long, it provides a buffet of ready-made stories of decline that can help develop the context around any snapshot. And Rome did, in fact, decline and, eventually, fall. An empire that once controlled all or part of more than 40 modern European, Asian, and African countries no longer exists. Roman prophets of decline were, ultimately, proven correct-a fact that makes their modern invocations all the more powerful. If it happened then, it could happen now.
The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome tells the stories of the people who built their political and literary careers around promises of Roman renewal as well as those of the victims they blamed for causing Rome's decline. Each chapter offers the historical context necessary to understand a moment or a series of moments in which Romans, aspiring Romans, and non--Romans used ideas of Roman decline and restoration to seize power and remake the world around them. The story begins during the Roman Republic just after 200 BC. It proceeds through the empire of Augustus and his successors, traces the Roman loss of much of western Europe in the fifth century AD, and then follows Roman history as it runs through the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) until its fall in 1453. The final two chapters look at ideas of Roman decline and renewal from the fifteenth century until today. If Rome illustrates the profound danger of the rhetoric of decline, it also demonstrates the rehabilitative potential of a rhetoric that focuses on collaborative restoration, a lesson of great relevance to our world today.
Author Bio
Professor Watts received his PhD in History from Yale University in 2002. His research interests center on the intellectual and religious history of the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire.
His first book, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (University of California Press, 2006), explains how the increasingly Christian upper class of the late antique world used a combination of economic and political pressures to neutralize pagan elements of the traditional educational system.
City and School received the Outstanding Publication Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 2007. His second book, Riot in Alexandria: Historical Debate in Pagan and Christian Communities (University of California Press, 2010), uses Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac sources to reconstruct an Alexandrian riot that erupted in 486 AD. Riot received a 2010 PROSE Award Honorable Mention in Classics and Ancient History.
His third book, The Final Pagan Generation (University of California Press, 2015) offers a generational history of the men born in the 310s that traces the experience of living through the fourth century’s dramatic religious and political changes. It was awarded the 2015 Phi Alpha Theta Best Subsequent Book Prize.
His fourth book, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2017) recounts the life of an important female philosopher whose work redefined philosophy and whose death resonated as a symbol of dramatic religious and social change in the early fifth century. He is also the author of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny (Basic Books, 2018).
In addition to these five books, he has co-edited five other volumes (From the Theodosians to the Tetrarchs [Cambridge, 2010]; Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity [Ashgate, 2012]; Freedom of Speech and Self Censorship in Late Antiquity [a special issue of the Revue Belge published in 2014]; Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide [University of California Press, 2016], and the Blackwell Companion to Late Antique Literature [Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming]. He has also authored more than 40 articles on topics ranging from the Old Academy in the fourth century BC to the relationship between orality and textuality in the early Byzantine period.
He is currently preparing a monograph tracing the Romanization and de-Romanization of the Mediterranean world between 96 and 850 AD (The Rise and Fall of the Roman Nation, [Oxford University Press, forthcoming]) and is co-authoring a volume introducing the historical and classroom uses of Roman imperial coins.
Before coming to UCSD in 2012, Professor Watts taught for ten years at Indiana University. Professor Watts teaches courses on Byzantine History, Roman History, Late Antique Christianity and paganism, Roman numismatics, and the history of the Medieval Mediterranean.
Dr. Watts was the director of the Center for Hellenic Studies from 2014-2016.
Source: UC San Diego
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