Belknap Press
The Tragedy of Empire: From Constantine to the Destruction of Roman Italy
Key Metrics
- Michael Kulikowski
- Belknap Press
- Paperback
- 9780674292239
- -
- -
- History > Ancient - Rome
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
As Kulikowski presents it, the end of the Roman Empire in the West was mean and dirty--and thoroughly Roman...In a brilliant tour d'horizon of the West from Ireland to the Black Sea, he measures the effect of the fall of Rome on the world beyond Rome.
--Peter Brown, New York Review of Books
A tour de force history of the inner workings of the late Roman Empire.
--Kyle Harper, author of The Fate of Rome
Kulikowski writes boldly and fluently about imperial politics, incorporating the latest scholarship yet avoiding getting bogged down in academic controversies. Highly recommended.
--Hugh Elton, author of The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity
Weaving together...complex family affairs, rebels, battles, coups, and intrigue into engaging prose, Kulikowski's book is an enjoyable read for anyone who is interested in late Roman history.
--Minerva Magazine
One hundred years before the reign of Julian, the last non-Christian emperor of Rome, Diocletian had come to the conclusion that an empire stretching from the Rhine to the Euphrates could not effectively be governed by one man. He had devised a new system of governance to respond to the vastness of the Roman Empire, its new rivals, and the changing face of its citizenry.
Michael Kulikowski traces two hundred years of Roman history--from the late fourth century to the end of the sixth--during which the Western Empire ceased to exist while the Eastern Empire remained politically strong and culturally vibrant. He captures the changing structure of imperial rule, the rise of new elites, foreign invasions, the erosion of Roman and Greek religions, and the establishment of Christianity as the state religion.
Author Bio
I am a late Roman historian and work on the political and institutional history of the empire between the second and fifth centuries, with a special interest in how one can read historical sources against the background of other evidence.
My first book was a study of Roman and post-Roman Spain that tried to set the small body of written texts against the background of material culture; my second looked at the impact of Roman imperialism on neighboring territories and argued that the history of the barbarians, specifically the Goths, can be understood entirely as a response to Roman imperialism.
I am presently at work on four projects: a history of the Roman empire from Hadrian to the fall of the western empire for the Profile History of the Ancient World; a study of late imperial political culture and the gap between political rhetoric and political practice called The Rhetoric of Being Roman; a history of the Latin chronicle tradition from its beginnings to the fifth century AD, in four volumes and in collaboration with R.W. Burgess; and as editor-in-chief of the forthcoming Landmark Ammianus Marcellinus.
Before coming to Penn State in 2009, I taught for eight years at the University of Tennessee.
Education
- PhD, University of Toronto, 1998
MA, University of Toronto, 1992
BA, Rutgers University, 1991
Source: PennState College of Liberal Arts
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