Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity

Peter Van Nuffelen

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781108481281
• eBook ISBN: 9781316997826
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: From Imperial to Post-Imperial Space in Late Ancient Historiography
• Chapter 1 Constantinople’s Belated Hegemony
• Chapter 2 Beside the Rim of the Ocean: The Edges of the World in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Historiography
• Chapter 3 Armenian Space in Late Antiquity
• Chapter 4 Narrative and Space in Christian Chronography: John of Biclaro on East, West and Orthodoxy
• Chapter 5 The Roman Empire in John of Ephesus’s Church History: Being Roman, Writing Syriac
• Chapter 6 Changing Geographies: West Syrian Ecclesiastical Historiography, AD 700–850
• Chapter 7 Where Is Syriac Pilgrimage Literature in Late Antiquity?: Exploring the Absence of a Genre
• Bibliography
• Index