FURTHER READING

Original Literary Sources

Almost the whole canon of Graeco-Roman authors is available in the Loeb Classical Library, with facing page English translation. Readers should seek out recent copies of the relevant texts, which have with few exceptions been updated (and generally much improved) over their early twentieth-century originals. The Loeb series is less comprehensive from the late third century onwards, and includes very few Christian authors. Liverpool University Press’s Translated Texts for Historians series fills many of those gaps with excellent annotated translations. Two other series, Fathers of the Church and Ancient Christian Writers, can also be consulted: translations in the latter series are almost uniformly good; those in the former are very variable. Coins are an essential primary source for Roman imperial history, and the basic reference remains the ten volumes of the Roman Imperial Coinage (London, 1923–). Alternatively, the research page of the Classical Numismatic Group’s website (http://www.cngcoins.com) has colour illustrations of all but the very rarest coin types from antiquity.

Reference

There are two basic reference works that anyone really interested in Roman history should have on hand: the third and best edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1996) and The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000), edited by Richard Talbert and breathtaking in its coverage, its detail and the beauty of its maps.

General Histories

Many textbooks cover our period, though their intended classroom audience tends to render them rather lifeless. Much the best of these, aimed at American undergraduates, is Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel Gargola, Noel Lenski and Richard Talbert, The Romans from Village to Empire (2nd ed., New York, 2011). More entertaining are Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (London, 2015), which covers social history more comprehensively than the present book but ends with Caracalla, and Greg Woolf, Rome: An Empire’s Story (Oxford, 2012). The old Fontana history of the ancient world, which the present series replaces, included a number of classic surveys, and Colin Wells, The Roman Empire (2nd ed., London, 1995) remains well worth reading. Giant handbooks, hypertrophied companions and diffuse dictionaries have proliferated in the past decade, as scholarly publishers chase library sales. I have counted more than forty that treat one or another aspect or author of our period (and I’ve missed some, I’m certain), and, while almost all include essays of real value, almost all are variable in quality and patchy in coverage – reader discretion is advised.

David Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395 (London, 2004) has excellent annotation and good coverage of intellectual and cultural history. Much of the really good work on the third-century empire continues to be published in French and German: there is, for example, no English equivalent to Michel Christol’s wonderful L’empire romain du IIIe siècle (Paris, 1997). For the period after Diocletian, the foundational work remains (and always will remain) A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602 (4 vols., Oxford, 1964; 2 vols., Oxford, 1973). Several scholarly generations have been amazed and inspired by Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London, 1971), which remains magically compelling almost half a century on.

Primary and Secondary Reading by Period

From Hadrian to the Death of Commodus

The primary sources for this period are few. The Historia Augusta (available in the Loeb series under the title Scriptores Historiae Augustae) is a collection of imperial biographies from Hadrian to Carus and Carinus, compiled by a single author in the late fourth century, but purporting to be an early fourth-century collection written by six authors. For the legitimate augusti between Hadrian and Caracalla, it reproduces quite faithfully the work of a third-century biographer now lost. But its lives of caesars and usurpers are worthless, as is almost everything in it after Caracalla. The history of Cassius Dio (also in the Loeb series) is essential for this period, even where it is preserved only in fragments. Fourth-century abbreviated histories (the Breviarium of Eutropius, the De Caesaribus of Aurelius Victor, both in the Liverpool series) supply some basic information as well.

The period is rich in other non-historical literature, however (Aulus Gellius in Latin; Arrian, Athenaeus, Galen and others in Greek, many available in Loebs). For introductions to this Antonine cultural world, see: C. P. Jones, The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge, 1978); Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and His Achievement (revised edn., Oxford, 2005); D. A. Russell, ed., Antonine Literature (Oxford, 1990); and David Braund and John Wilkins, eds., Athenaeus and His World (Exeter, 2000). For the Greek rhetorical and philosophical movement known as the Second Sophistic, see: Glen W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969); Graham Anderson, Philostratus (London, 1986) and E. Bowie and Jas Elsner, eds., Philostratus (Cambridge, 2009), for the thinker who coined the phrase; and Graham Anderson, The Second Sophistic (London, 1993) on the whole phenomenon. For imperial Roman art, which can be difficult to write about interestingly, see Jaś Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph (Oxford, 1998), a triumph of exposition and analysis, and very accessible.

On the imperial governance and bureaucracy, Andrew Lintott, Imperium Romanum: Politics and Administration (London, 1993) is the most readable introduction. The role of the emperor is still best treated in Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (Ithaca, 1977), though nowadays scholars see the emperors as somewhat more interventionist and less reactive in their style of rulership than this classic study argues. The ideology of the period’s ruling elite is sensitively probed in J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour (Oxford, 1998), while the senate can be studied in exhaustive detail through Richard J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton, 1984).

For Roman money, see David L. Vagi, Coinage and History of the Roman Empire, 2 vols. (Sidney, OH, 1999) – although aimed at the coin collector, not the historian or numismatist, it is probably the simplest and most accessible introduction to this important type of evidence. More scholarly, though still accessible, is Andrew Burnett, Coinage in the Roman World (London, 1987) and the numerous specialist studies listed in the bibliography.

For political history, imperial biography remains an attractive approach though not necessarily a fashionable one. There are several excellent biographies for this period, particularly Anthony R. Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor (London, 1997) and the same author’s Marcus Aurelius (2nd ed., New Haven, 1987). Olivier Hekster, Commodus: An Emperor at the Crossroads (Amsterdam, 2002) is provocative but not always convincing. Thorsten Opper, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict (Cambridge, MA, 2008) is a well-rounded introduction with superbly chosen illustrations.

On social and economic history, Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture (Berkeley, 1987) is showing its age but remains very readable and the best introduction overall. Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris and Richard Saller, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge, 2007) is variable but up to date. For the Antonine plague and its impact, see essays in Elio Lo Cascio, ed., L’impatto della ‘peste antonina’ (Bari, 2012), a few of them in English. For the army before Gallienus, see: Roy Davies, Service in the Roman Army (New York, 1989); Hugh Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (London, 1996); Ian Haynes, Blood of the Provinces: The Roman Auxilia and the Making of Provincial Society from Augustus to the Severans (Oxford, 2013), a superb book with a silly title; and Graham Webster, The Roman Imperial Army (3rd ed., New York, 1985). J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven, 2005) is an allusive and provocative study of ancient psychology and warfare; it bears careful reading, even if not all its conclusions are persuasive.

Provincial and regional studies that can appeal to a non-specialist audience include, on the eastern provinces: Warwick Ball, Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire (London, 2000); Simon Goldhill, ed., Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge, 2001); William Horbury, Jewish War under Trajan and Hadrian (Cambridge, 2014); Benjamin Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East. (revised ed., Oxford, 1992); and Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, MA, 1993). On the western provinces, see the not very readable but important David Cherry, Frontier and Society in Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1998) and Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge, 1998), much the best book ever written in English on the phenomenon of ‘Romanisation’.

From the Death of Commodus to the Death of Maximinus I

The main primary sources for this period are Herodian and Cassius Dio, both available in Loeb translations. On Dio, see Fergus Millar, A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford, 1964). There is an important collection of primary sources in Olivier Hekster, Rome and Its Empire, AD 193–284 (Edinburgh, 2008). There are fewer imperial biographies for this period, but see Anthony R. Birley, Septimius Severus: The African Emperor (2nd ed., New Haven, 1988). The works of economic, military and provincial history noted in section 1 continue to be relevant here. For the literature of the period, see Simon Swain, Stephen Harrison and Jas Elsner, eds., Severan Culture (Cambridge, 2007). For law, see Tony Honoré, Emperors and Lawyers (2nd ed., Oxford, 1994) and Ulpian: Pioneer of Human Rights (2nd ed., Oxford, 2002), although the first editions of both books are sufficiently different to bear consideration in their own right.

On Eurasian developments, the literature is so vast and diverse that the following should be taken as a small sample. Edward A. Alpers, The Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford, 2014) is a good introductory summary. Rachel Mairs, The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology, Language, and Identity in Greek Central Asia (Berkeley, 2014) and Grant Parker, The Making of Roman India (Cambridge, 2008) are more specialised, but fascinating. Steven E. Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route (Berkeley, 2011) is much more accessible than its title suggests. There has been little reliable work in English on the Kushan empire since John M. Rosenfeld, The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans (Berkeley, 1967), but the historical introduction to David Jongeward and Joe Cribb, Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian and Kidarite Coins: A Catalogue of the Coins from the American Numismatic Society (New York, 2015) shows how far the field has progressed, mainly on the basis of new numismatic information. Vidula Jayaswal, ed., Glory of the Kushans: Recent Discoveries and Interpretations (New Delhi, 2012) is up to date but hard going. David Sinor, ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge, 1990) is now rather dated but is the most comprehensive introduction available. The two beautifully illustrated volumes of Christoph Baumer’s History of Central Asia (London, 2012) can serve for orientation but are too eccentric to be relied on; briefer and less lavish, but more reliable is Barry Cunliffe, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia (New York, 2015). Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge, 2002) is far more relevant to our topic than the Chinese orientation would at first suggest.

On Sasanian Persia, D. T. Potts, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran (Oxford, 2013) is the best recent overview – the groundbreaking relevant volumes of the Cambridge History of Iran require updating. On Zoroastrianism, there remains a good annotated anthology of texts in Mary Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (Chicago, 1984). For the relationship between the empires, see the anthology of translations in Michael H. Dodgeon and Samuel N. C. Lieu, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars (London, 1991) and the more varied sources and commentary in Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals (Cambridge, 2007). Monographs of importance include Matthew P. Canepa, The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship Between Rome and Sasanian Iran (Berkeley, 2009), M. Rahm Shayegan, Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia (Cambridge, 2011) and Richard E. Payne, A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2015). David Stronach and Ali Mousavi, Ancient Iran from the Air: Photographs by Georg Gerster (Mainz, 2012) is beautifully evocative.

On the lands between the two empires, see: Peter M. Edwell, Between Rome and Persia: The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Palmyra under Roman Control (London, 2008); the magnificently illustrated David Kennedy and Derrick Riley, Rome’s Desert Frontier from the Air (London, 1990); Andrew M. Smith, Roman Palmyra: Identity, Community and State Formation (Oxford, 2013). For Arabia, see: D. T. Potts, The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, Volume II: From Alexander the Great to the Coming of Islam (Oxford, 1990); Greg Fisher, ed., Arabs and Empires Before Islam (Oxford, 2015), which aims for comprehensiveness.

For the world of the Black Sea and the European steppe, see: David Braund, Georgia in Antiquity: A History of Colchis and Transcaucasian Iberia, 550 BC–AD 562 (Oxford, 1994); Roger Batty, Rome and the Nomads: The Pontic-Danubian Realm in Antiquity (Oxford, 2007). Ellis H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus (Cambridge, 1913) is now more than a century old, but no similar survey has ever been attempted.

On the European barbarians, the works of E. A. Thompson, listed in the bibliography, were pathbreaking in their day, but now see John Drinkwater, The Alamanni and Rome, 213–496 (Oxford, 2007), the finest history of Roman–barbarian relations ever published. My own Rome’s Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric (Cambridge, 2007) treats the Danubian and Black Sea barbarians and offers non-specialists an introduction to the methodological questions surrounding Roman–barbarian contact. Malcolm Todd, The Early Germans (Oxford, 1992) is very old-fashioned in its approach, but it is well illustrated and good on archaeology, while I. M. Ferris, Enemies of Rome: Barbarians Through Roman Eyes (Stroud, 2000) is exciting as well as illuminating on the image of the barbarian.

Maximinus I to the Death of Galerius

For the primary sources, see the anthology by Hekster in section 2, above. Our sources are very few, and for the political narrative we rely heavily on the fourth-century breviary histories (see section 1). A major polemical source for the tetrarchy is Lactantius’s De mortibus persecutorum (‘On the deaths of the persecutors’), which is available in the Oxford Early Christian Texts, translated by J. L. Creed (Oxford, 1984). The new fragments of Dexippus, one of the more important historical discoveries of recent decades, are translated and discussed in the works by Martin and Grusková, and by Mallan and Davenport, listed in the bibliography.

Unfortunately, the best single study of the fraught years between 235 and 238 remains a difficult German thesis: Karlheinz Dietz, Senatus contra Principum: Untersuchungen zur senatorischen Opposition gegen Kaiser Maximinus Thrax (Munich, 1980). Most biographies or studies of third-century emperors rely excessively and unacceptably upon the Historia Augusta. An exception in English is Lukas de Blois, The Policy of the Emperor Gallienus (Leiden, 1976), but good recent studies of individual emperors in German appear in the bibliography. Ronald Syme, perhaps the greatest Roman historian of the Anglophone twentieth century, devoted a disproportionate percentage of his huge output to that maddening text: the third-century studies in his Emperors and Biography: Studies in the Historia Augusta (Oxford, 1971) isolate anything even remotely reliable that can be found in its pages.

Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Government’s Response to Crisis (New Haven, 1976) was and remains controversial but essential reading on the period. Hendrik W. Dey, The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome, AD 271–855 (Cambridge, 2011) is usefully comprehensive in coverage and moderate in making big claims. On the tetrarchy, Jones’s Later Roman Empire (introduction, above) got the basics absolutely right. A readable if very traditional biography is Stephen Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery (New York, 1985). On the Carausius and Allectus episode, P. J. Casey’s Carausius and Allectus (New Haven, 1993) remains a good study of the limited evidence. William Leadbetter, Galerius and the Will of Diocletian (London, 2009) makes as strong a case for the emperor as can be made. For the tetrarchic palaces, see J. J. Wilkes, Diocletian’s Palace, Split: Residence of a Retired Roman Emperor (2nd ed., Exeter, 1996).

The coinage, in both its economic and its ideological aspects, looms large as a source for the third century. The most important studies are in French and German and are given in the bibliography, but see Erika Manders, Coining Images of Power: Patterns in the Representation of Roman Emperors on Imperial Coinage, A.D. 193–284 (Leiden, 2012). The panegyric speeches on which we rely for insight into the tetrarchs’ and Constantine’s motives are translated with commentary in C. E. V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini (Berkeley, 1994). For imperial rhetoric and its change over time, three difficult but essential books are: Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley, 1991); Simon Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government, AD 284–324 (2nd ed., Oxford, 2000); and John Dillon, The Justice of Constantine: Law, Communication, and Control (Ann Arbor, 2012). For frontier relations in late antiquity, A. D. Lee, Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1993) remains pathbreaking.

On the spread of Christianity over the centuries there is no clear consensus, but see the essays in William V. Harris, ed., The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation (Leiden, 2005). Vastly differing views, all with real value, are expressed in Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (Harmondsworth, 1986), Keith Hopkins, A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity (Harmondsworth, 1999) and T. D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010). For a comprehensive if old-fashioned survey of church history, see Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society from Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2002). For the role of philosophers in anti-Christian controversy, see Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution (Ithaca, 2012) and for philosophic culture more generally, G. R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of Its Development from the Stoics to Origen (Oxford, 2001). For monotheism among non-Christians, see Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1999). For Manichees, see Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China: A Historical Survey (Manchester, 1985).

From the Second Tetrarchy to Julian

The primary source evidence gets significantly better at the very end of our period, from 353, when the surviving text of Ammianus Marcellinus becomes available. The Loeb translation is neither readable nor particularly reliable, while a good Penguin translation is abridged in unhelpful ways. My colleague Gavin Kelly and I are currently at work on a new and fully annotated translation of the complete text (to be published by Oxford University Press as The Landmark Ammianus Marcellinus). The fourth-century breviary histories (see section 1) are still important for the events of Constantine’s reign, as is Lactantius (section 3). The history of the church written by Eusebius of Caesarea (available in Loeb and Penguin translations) provides some – often tendentious – information. Three documents relevant to Constantine’s Christianity and generally attributed to him are translated by Mark Edwards as Constantine and Christendom (Liverpool, 2003). In the same Liverpool series there are volumes on the Donatist controversy (Donatist Martyr Stories and Optatus of Milevis, Against the Donatists).

The bibliography on Constantine is enormous and grows continuously, in every language, but biographical treatments should generally be avoided; Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (London, 2009) is a notable exception. T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA, 1980) is essential if difficult reading, though his Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire (Maldon, 2011) is more polemical than necessary. Noel Lenski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (Cambridge, 2005) includes a number of significant essays. Dillon’s Justice of Constantine (section 3, above) is also relevant. The deeply tendentious life of the emperor written by Eusebius of Caesarea is expertly annotated in the fine translation of Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall, eds., Eusebius: Life of Constantine (Oxford, 1999), while shifting ancient views of Constantine can be traced in Samuel N. C. Lieu and Dominic Montserrat, eds., From Constantine to Julian: Pagan and Byzantine Views (London, 1998). See Nixon and Rodgers (section 3, above) for the panegyrics to Constantine.

For Constantius (a deeply unprepossessing character) and his adversary Athanasius (even worse), see T. D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius (Cambridge, MA, 1993). Julian’s intellectual world is well captured by Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellenism: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford, 1981) and his life by G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge, MA, 1978). Lendon’s Soldiers and Ghosts (above, section 1) is excellent on Julian. The classic study of John Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989) picks up just at the very end of our period.

For the integration of Christianity into Roman life, the best introduction is Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society (Cambridge, 2004). See also Michele Renee Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy (Cambridge, MA, 2002). Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge, 2011) has revolutionised our understanding of religious thuggery. Economic change is provocatively discussed by Jairus Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity (revised ed., Oxford, 2007); equally important is Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005), which sheds light on our period as well. The essays in Claude Brenot and Xavier Loriot, eds., L’Or monnayé (Paris, 1992) are essential reading. On the late Roman army, there is a dull but worthy introduction in M. J. Nicasie, Twilight of Empire (Amsterdam, 1998), while chapter 17 of Jones’s Later Roman Empire (introduction, above) on the army is still essentially unsurpassed.