The later Roman World of the 4th to 5th centuries has been traditionally perceived as an era of decline in its political and cultural vitality; particularly, the 5th century, which saw the final demise of the Western Roman Empire, as it was slowly subsumed by barbarian kingdoms.
Of course, more recent scholarship has sought to rectify this negative conception of the late Roman world, attempting to see more complex forces at work in the transition of the empire into the medieval world - rather than pursuing the traditional model of an empire in collapse, overwhelmed by barbarian hordes.
Moreover, most scholarship has been framed as political histories, or generic overviews of the period - most notably Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity , or Averil Cameron's The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity . But 428 AD, published in 2009 by a French scholar, Giusto Traina, re-informs this traditional linear notion of history, with a surprising new methodological approach to the study of the late Roman landscape.
An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire
Traina's creativity emerges in his focus on a single, insignificant year in the history of late Rome - 428 AD. He deliberate eschews more famous and loaded dates - such as 410, the first sack of Rome, 439, the Vandal conquest of Carthage, or 476, the last official year of the last official Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus.
Instead, he leads the reader into the world of 428 AD, a year of no special international note, but of interest to Traina at first, being an ancient historian of Armenia - for the kingdom of Armenia was finally subsumed by the Sassanid Persians in 428.
It is from such a beginning in the Caucasus that Traina brings his audience on a tour of the late Roman world, having as his intention not the examination of a well-worn military or political event, but rather an overview of the workings and rhythms of one year in the storied four hundred year history of imperial Rome.
The Worlds of Late Rome
The journey Traina bring his reader along in the two hundred odd pages of 428 AD is unique, being unusually both concise and broad in its scope. The cleverness of its fluency lies in Traina's interlocking of the many worlds of late Rome - often in themselves the worthy subjects of many specialised monographs - through the lives and careers of its inhabitants, both famous and obscure.
Over eleven chapters, one is guided through the Roman world, from the east, travelling anti-clockwise to the western provinces, south through Africa, along Egypt, and finally ending with an essay on Rome's great eastern rival, the Sassanid Persians.
Thus, one is introduced at first to Flavius Dionysius, a proconsular diplomat on a mission to Armenia in light of that kingdom's fall. Later on he would be part of the military escort for Nestorius, the newly-elected bishop of Constantinople, which provides a fine springboard into the world of late Antique Anatolia, its roads and cities, and events at Constantinople - the imperial court, with the emperor (Theodosius II), his family, and imperial religious policy. Nestorius, of course, played a significant role in shaping Christian doctrine, earning him not a few enemies, and heretical status, a few years later.
Traina that probes further west, using the newly acquired familial link of Theodosius II with Valentinian III, the western emperor (who married his daughter), to bring the reader into the world of old Rome, and the surrounding western provinces.
His discussion of Italy, Gaul, and its key personages - the general Flavius Aetius, or lesser known ecclesiastical figures such as Pope Celestine or John Cassian, along with immortal characters like St Augustine serves to present a vastly different western world, fragmenting under the pressure of invading barbarians, but nonetheless existing at the same time as part of the Roman world of the ear 428 AD.
He also conjures up the mystical world of Coptic Christianity, and its leading lights, such as the abbot Shenoute, in Egypt, and the monastic landscape which dominated Palestine and Jerusalem's environs. Finally, in the final chapter, Traina explores the reign of Bahram V, the Sassanid emperor, and the rest of the world in the far east along the 'Silk Road' into Central Asia at the same time in the fifth century.
Cleverly, Traina reconnects with the rise of eastern Christianity in the wake of the Nestorian controversy, which beginnings one witnessed in the journey of Nestorius to Constantinople to undertake his episcopate, accompanied by Dionysius the diplomat.
Emerging, first and foremost, from Traina's radical new narrative approach to late Antique history, is an impression of the multi-textured, and deeply complex fabric that was the late Roman world. 428 AD is not a lengthy work, indeed a rather leisurely read, and offering much to the general and specialist alike.
While it is neither totally revolutionary in not propounding some radical new thesis it is radical in its narrative approach to modern historiography on the ancient world - scholars have often thought top-down, macrocosmically, rather than bottom-up, microcosmically, as Traina seeks to do.
For this it is at once a narrative history, but a greatly refreshing one. What Traina affirms above all, as he concludes in his epilogue, is the centrality of 'Rome', of some lingering concept of the Roman empire, even as there were signs of east-west division, or political fragmentation in the west. Most of all, his new presentation of the late Antique world would assure the reader of its complexity, irreducible to single, encompassing theories. It is as close as a historian would come to admitting the intrinsic, perplexing humanity of his matter.
Marcus Chin - I write about various things, and in the main out of that simple human emotion - interest and, correspondingly, passion. Knowledge stems ...
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