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.
Author(s): Peter Van Nuffelen (ed.)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: X+218
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: From Imperial to Post-Imperial Space in Late Ancient Historiography / Peter Van Nuffelen 1
1. Constantinople.s Belated Hegemony / Anthony Kaldellis 14
2. Beside the Rim of the Ocean: The Edges of the World in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Historiography / Peter Van Nuffelen 36
3. Armenian Space in Late Antiquity / Tim Greenwood 57
4. Narrative and Space in Christian Chronography: John of Biclaro on East, West and Orthodoxy / Mark Humphries 86
5. The Roman Empire in John of Ephesus's 'Church History': Being Roman, Writing Syriac / Hartmut Leppin 113
6. Changing Geographies: West Syrian Ecclesiastical Historiography, AD 700–850 / Philip Wood 136
7. Where Is Syriac Pilgrimage Literature in Late Antiquity? Exploring the Absence of a Genre / Scott Johnson 164
Bibliography 181
Index 213
