SEVERAL ORGANIZATIONS HAVE PROVIDED me with financial support, allowing me time away from teaching to dedicate myself entirely to research and writing. I extend my sincerest gratitude to the Loeb Classical Library Foundation at Harvard University, the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University and the Balzan Foundation. Without their generous support, it would have taken me many years longer to finish this book. I further thank Northwestern’s Center for Economic History for the funds to draw the maps and acquire reproduction rights for the images displayed herein.
I also express my gratitude to the University of Ghent for inviting me as a visiting fellow for the spring term of 2016. The beautiful scenery of a medieval “producer city,” the excellent research facilities and, most of all, the intellectual environment of the History Department have been greatly stimulating to my work. In particular Wim Broekaert, Koen Verboven and Arjan Zuiderhoek have been wonderful colleagues and willing sounding boards. I greatly enjoyed our conversations over Trappist beer and frites about Roman economic history, medieval economic history, Belgian politics and much else besides. I am also grateful for the feedback I received from the participants of the “Sinews of Empire” conference at the Norwegian Institute at Athens in December 2015, and thank the organizer, Eivind Seland, for inviting me.
A special word of appreciation should go to Alain Bresson and Dennis Kehoe for discussing the manuscript with me in May 2017. Our day-long conversation has greatly helped me in improving the book, and the end result is much the better for it. I am also profoundly grateful to Arjan Zuiderhoek for his willingness to read a large part of the manuscript and give me extensive feedback. I owe a similar debt of gratitude to Roger Bagnall, Tim Earle and Vincent Gabrielsen, all of whom have read and commented on individual chapters. A word of thanks should also go to Alain Bresson, Christelle Fischer-Bovet, Hannah Friedman, Joe Manning and Andrew Wilson for allowing me access to some of their (at the time still) unpublished work.
My Northwestern Classics Department colleagues have been a constant source of support and encouragement. I am grateful to them all for offering me their thoughts, and thank in particular Bob Wallace and John Wynne. Mira Balberg deserves a mention for discussing late-antique religion with me, giving me advice on Biblical texts and providing me with useful reading suggestions. Further, I most warmly thank Joel Mokyr in the Economics Department for having been an effective and motivating editor. I also thank him for having put me in touch with Rob Tempio at Princeton University Press. It has been a pleasure working with Rob throughout the production process of this book. I also wish to express my gratitude to the three anonymous Princeton UP readers, whose comments have been extremely helpful in improving the manuscript.
On a more personal note, I thank Karel, Sanne and Frits for their support when I much needed it. Finally, I am grateful to my parents for their warmth and love. Once again, this book is for them.