Emperors And Usurpers In The Later Roman Empire

Civil war and usurpation were endemic to the later Roman Empire, with no fewer than 37 men claiming imperial power between 284 and 395 AD. This volume constructs the first comprehensive history of civil war in this period through the ways in which successive dynasties manipulated history to legitimate themselves and to discredit their predecessors.

With The Emperor and the Army in the Later Roman Empire, AD 235–395 Mark Hebblewhite offers the first study solely dedicated to examining the nature of the relationship between the emperor and his army in the politically and militarily volatile later Roman Empire. Bringing together a wide range of available literary, epigraphic and numismatic evidence he demonstrates that emperors of the period considered the army to be the key institution they had to mollify in order to retain power and consequently employed a range of strategies to keep the troops loyal to their cause. Key to these efforts were imperial attempts to project the emperor as a worthy general (imperator) and a generous provider of military pay and benefits. Also important were the honorific and symbolic gestures each emperor made to the army in order to convince them that they and the empire could only prosper under his rule.

Imagining Emperors in the Later Roman Empire offers new critical analysis of the textual depictions of a series of emperors in the fourth century within overlapping historical, religious and literary contexts.

'Emperors and Usurpers' is a history of the Roman period from the accession of Valentinian in 364 to the death of Marcian in 457, a period of turbulence and radical change, by the end of which the empire had fragmented.

'Emperors and Usurpers' is a history of the Roman period from the accession of Valentinian in 364 to the death of Marcian in 457, a period of turbulence and radical change, by the end of which the empire had fragmented.

This historical commentary examines books 79(78)-80(80) of Cassius Dio's Roman History, which cover the period from the death of Caracalla in A. D. 217. to the reign of Severus Alexander and Cassius Dio's retirement from political life in 229. Cassius Dio, a Roman Senator, provides a valuable eyewitness account of this turbulent period, which was marked by the assassination of Caracalla, the rise of Macrinus, Rome's first equestrian emperor, and his subsequent overthrow, the tempestuous, and by all accounts peculiar, reign of Elagabalus, and the continuation of the Severan dynasty under the young Severus Alexander. In addition to elucidating important passages from these books, this study assesses Cassius Dio's political life and its relationship to his literary career; his call to history and time of composition; his historical method; and his attitude toward and subsequent presentation of the later Severan dynasty. In its investigation of books 79(78)-80(80), the work assesses an important stretch of Dio's actual text, which for other parts has been preserved largely in epitome and excerpts. Finally, the work aims to fill a gap in scholarship, as no commentary on these books of Cassius Dio's history has been produced since the nineteenth century, and its publication coincides with a renewed interest in the history and historiography of the Severan period.

Contested Monarchy reappraises the wide-ranging and lasting transformation of the Roman monarchy between the Principate and Late Antiquity. The book takes as its focus the century from Diocletian to Theodosius I (284-395), a period during which the stability of monarchical rule depended heavily on the emperor's mobility, on collegial or dynastic rule, and on the military resolution of internal political crises. At the same time, profound religious changes modified the premises of political interaction and symbolic communication between the emperor and his subjects, and administrative and military readjustments changed the institutional foundations of the Roman monarchy. This volume concentrates on the measures taken by emperors of this period to cope with the changing framework of their rule. The collection examines monarchy along three distinct yet intertwined fields: Administering the Empire, Performing the Monarchy, and Balancing Religious Change. Each field possesses its own historiography and methodology, and accordingly has usually been treated separately. This volume's multifaceted approach builds on recent scholarship and trends to examine imperial rule in a more integrated fashion. With new work from a wide range of international scholars, Contested Monarchy offers a fresh survey of the role of the Roman monarchy in a period of significant and enduring change.

An unabridged and unaltered republication of the first edition.