Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele

Late Roman Italy

Explores the major political, social, economic, religious and cultural changes impacting what was once the most important region of the Roman world The first modern research volume on a core region of Late Antiquity A tight and distinctly chronological focus on the second quarter of the first millennium CE, that allows for a different vision of the many vicissitudes of Late Roman Italy, among other works on Ancient and Late Antique Italy. An emphasis on one of the key features of Late Antiquity: the transformation of the Roman Empire in the West into successor polities. A balanced range of topics, including ones rarely encountered in this type of work (such as gender or environmental history), with a special focus on political transformation and violence. This research volume reassesses one of the most fundamental transformations in Late Antiquity, centered on a pivotal region: the transition from 'Empire' to 'Kingdom' in Italy c. 250-500. During the first quarter of the first millennium, Italy was still the heart of the Roman Empire; the only political superstructure ever managing to encompass the entire Mediterranean world and its European hinterland. Yet during the second quarter of this millennium, Italy underwent dramatic evolutions from demotion to a provincialized region (c. 285-395), to a new imperial hub kept afloat by cannibalizing other provinces' resources (c. 395-476), to an autonomous regnum governed by non-Roman rulers as part of an Eastern Roman 'Commonwealth' (c. 475-535).