While this book is sub-titled “The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine”, it offers far more than just a very accessible narrative covering the middle part of the Roman Empire and a period of some two centuries (from AD 117 to AD 337). It would already have been a good overview had it been limited to just that. There are three additional key elements.
One is that in order to explain this central period of “Imperial Triumph”, the book includes a short but crisp and neat introduction that provides a short outline of the Empire’s first century and of the reign of Trajan, Hadrian’s predecessor. It also includes a couple of final chapters dealing with Constantine’s heirs but also with Julian and “the Empire to come.” The point here is that the book’s contents exceed the period advertised by its title, if only because the author’s has deemed this to be necessary for the reader to make sense of the Empire’s evolution.
A second feature is the author’s skill in making this book highly accessible to a wide audience. It is easy to read, well structure into eighteen chapters, none of which exceed twenty pages. It is well supported by some fourteen maps, a list of Roman Emperors and Persian Kings and an extensive bibliography. Interestingly, it also includes an annex and commentary on further readings for anyone wanting to go beyond this overview. The point here is that while this is not a hard-to-read and textbook packed with footnotes and scholarly discussions, it is however more than just a high level narrative. When reading this book, the author’s mastery of his subject appears quite clearly.
When you get started on this book, you will quickly realise that the purpose is not to produce another textbook on the period. There are a number of them already, with David Potter’s “The Roman Empire at Bay AD 180-395” being perhaps one of the best. Rather, Michael Kulikowski’s purpose, and the main thrust of his book, is to show the Empire’s ability to integrate the elites of those it conquered over the centuries by offering positions, commands and status. One way of demonstrating this is to examine the shifting origins of senators, from Roman to Italian, to Gallic, Iberian, Asian, African and Syrian. Another is to present the slow shift away from a relatively small elite based on wealth and birth to a wider pool where rising to the very top from the ranks or at least from relatively humble beginnings became possible. A third valuable contribution – among others - is to show how the Empire reacted to increasing threats by becoming increasingly militarised and authoritarian during the third century and the first half of the fourth.
This is simply a remarkable piece of work which is easily worth five stars. It seems that it will be followed by a second volume on the fourth and fifth centuries which I will certainly buy and that I am eager to read.
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