New Rome: The Empire in the East

Paul Stephenson, New Rome: The Empire in the East (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2022). 9780674659629.

Reviewed by Andrew J. Pottenger, Nazarene Bible College/Kansas Christian College, ajpott@hotmail.com.

This latest offering by Paul Stephenson (noted for his earlier biography of Constantine) focuses on the end of Greco-Roman civic life in the Eastern Roman Empire by examining a wide range of evidence beyond merely literary and archaeological sources.¹ His particular interest is to apply recent trends in environmental science—such as those in seismology, volcanology, climatology, and disease pathology—to exploring human responses to and impact on their natural surroundings.² To create a narrative covering the years A.D. 395–700, Stephenson draws from analysis of various types of conflict, technological and architectural developments, growing apocalyptic movements, and changes in portrayals of the emperor’s public image. 

It is an ambitious task to bind all these threads together into a coherent account, as Stephenson readily acknowledges (3). However, New Rome successfully tells a story of decline in how imperial subjects in the East experienced and participated in city life along with how the empire changed during this period as a result.³ The polis remained a thriving centre of human activity by the end of the fourth century, but (according to Stephenson) within three hundred years that picture had changed drastically. 

The book is divided into three main parts: Parts 1 and 3 (see Table of Contents below) function as wider context for the political and military narrative covered in Part 2. The five early chapters comprising Part 1 describe city life, culture, family, and religion at the end of the fourth century. The final chapters in Part 3 discuss the effects of Islam’s rise, apocalypticism, and imperial propaganda on these areas. Part 2, then, chronicles the rivalries, rebellions, advances, and retreats of leading Roman political and military figures throughout the period under survey. Structurally, this arrangement has the effect of placing the “elitist” narrative within a context “from below” rather than the other way around. 

Chapter 1 discusses the so-called Lead Age, which describes the Roman reliance on this particular heavy metal for construction, water systems, coinage, sarcophagi, and multiple other ordinary uses (12–13). Special focus is on the environmental conditions of life during a lengthy period of declining sunlight roughly coinciding with the late-fourth to early eighth centuries, along with human responses by Roman subjects to such circumstances. The book’s only glaring error of fact (there is also a misprinted chapter heading on p. 29) appears in this chapter’s first paragraph: The book of Malachi appears at the end of the Christian Old Testament (and concludes the list of prophetic writings in the Hebrew Bible)— it is not “the last book of the Christian New Testament” (7), which is Revelation. 

Stephenson shows effectively that life at this time was challenging for the wealthy and powerful as well as the poor.⁴ He proceeds in Chapter 2 to describe the persistence of family life and religious faith despite the adverse factors considered in the previous chapter. Legislation strengthened the family and household as the foundational unit of Roman society, and slavery continued as an institution. However, Stephenson argues for an evident weakening in economic dependence on slaves in favour of tenant farmers and laborers who toiled on the land for wages (33–34). Christian monasticism presented a unique challenge to the traditional Roman family, yet introduced alternative forms of community and kinship that could be administered through ecclesiastical ceremony under civil law (48–50). 

Chapter 3 broadens the focus to consider city life under the Roman Empire in these later centuries, particularly those in the more populated East such as Alexandria and Antioch. Stephenson reminds readers that Antioch was a more religiously diverse city at this time than the usual emphasis on its Christian population would seem to indicate (56–57). He also contends that in Alexandria, the murder of Hypatia suggested conflict between this city’s rich and poor at least as much as it had anything to do with religious controversy between pagans and Christians (62–63). Politically, the cities were subordinate to the central imperial government; yet “Roman civilization…advanced not by destruction, but by the appropriation of the culture of those poleis, its translation into something meaningfully Roman, its diffusion far and wide” (63–64).

Cities were connected to one another and to the central administration by means of communication and commerce, which is the subject dealt with in Chapter 4.⁵ The ubiquity of words could be found in a city’s inscriptions, street graffiti, Christian sermons, and speeches by local urban representatives aside from public documents (75–78). The prevalence of written communication, in particular, presupposed access to at least basic literary education among the military, merchants, and even some slaves. Following a good portrayal of ancient travel, Stephenson discusses commerce with regard to the dispersal of material culture throughout the Mediterranean world as revealed by archaeology. 

One key city in the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople, receives the main attention in Chapter 5.⁶ In this case, the narrative is of the city’s “rise” rather than “decline.” Stephenson argues here that Constantinople’s infrastructure—by which he means its size and appearance, the emperors’ presence and patronage, the central administration, and the centrality of emperors in communication—contributed the most to its growing political dominance even as it remained culturally inferior to cities like Alexandria and Antioch. 

Chapter 6 begins where the previous chapter left off, at the end of the fourth century with the death of Theodosius I in 395. At this time, the Roman Empire was divided between Theodosius’s sons, Honorius and Arcadius, who respectively ruled in the West and East. Stephenson chooses to begin his narrative here as it enables him to focus on the Eastern provinces. This was not the first time the empire experienced some type of jurisdictional division, and the first part of the chapter provides a summary of such prior partitioning. The rivalries, religious controversies, and foreign invasions occurring in the East under Arcadius and Theodosius II receive extended discussion. The chapter concludes with a comparative analysis of unity in propaganda as opposed to reality.

Chapter 7 picks up the narrative around the year 451, continuing through the death of Justin in 527. Here, Stephenson argues for the creation of emperors and exercise of power by “soldiers and civilians,” as the chapter is titled. His account continues earlier emphasis on conflict or competition, and traces changes in power structures involving a move away from classical forms of patronage toward nepotism along with a general passing of imperial power from soldiers to civilians, while at the same time bureaucratic authority remained held by an established elite. 

Beginning with the accession of Justinian in 527, Chapter 8 carries the narrative through the death of Maurice in 602.⁷ This so-called “age of Justinian” is here characterised by an evident shift in the East from classical toward what later would become hallmarks of medieval culture. The successes of Rome’s foreign enemies at this time were attributed to divine punishment for hardening divisions within Christianity which had long since become the established public religion. The first appearance of bubonic plague in Europe, which would devastate so much of the continent and beyond in the mid-fourteenth century, occurred during this period. The political and cultural dominance of Christianity filtered into the military, where soldiers increasingly fought their enemies under Christ’s banner to gain spiritual reward—a militant outlook on religion that would inspire as well as confront the Muslim world. 

With the reign of Maurice ended by conspiracy and usurpation in 602, Chapter 9 begins with the troubled eight-year rule of Phocas as prelude to the Heraclian dynasty that ruled the East until just after the turn of the eighth century. Heraclius’s thirty-year reign saw a definitive Roman victory over the Persian empire at the battle of Nineveh in 627 as well as Islam’s rise and major losses of recently recovered Roman territory to Muslim armies.⁸ Under Heraclius’s successors through the turn of the eighth century, the Muslim advance was checked—mainly by fractiousness within Islam itself, but also by a series of alliances between the Romans and other growing powers in the East along with military improvements. 

Part 3 opens with Chapter 10, in which Stephenson discusses transformations in the ancient models of city life that defined Greco-Roman civilization until the eighth century. Civic laws, institutions, power structures, and population counts changed irrevocably over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries in key regions of the western as well as eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Such developments are explained in part by the growing power of Christian bishops, foreign invasions and the associated pressures that came with rising military costs, devastating plagues, and changing environmental conditions. 

In Chapter 11, Stephenson examines the combined strains on ancient civilization of natural disasters, continuing warfare between Roman and Persian empires, and the growth of Islam. Apocalyptic thinking emerged increasingly as people became convinced that the world was coming to an end.⁹ Stephenson implies that such thinking was right to the extent that the ancient world as it had been known was certainly ending. It was also explicitly a rational response to the pressures, circumstances, and transformations that continued affecting city life in the East (329).

Chapter 12 concludes the work by showing an evident shift from ancient society toward recognizable beginnings of medieval civilization during the fourth through eighth centuries. In this chapter, Stephenson shows a growing tendency toward centralized power surrounding emperors and their closest advisors.¹⁰ But from the age of Justinian, popular unrest grew as a means by which the ruled sought to re-assert power in competition with their semi-divine rulers. Numerous dispiriting defeats of Roman military power under Heraclius’s successors helped shift focus from divinely favoured emperors toward the religious virtues and discipline of those who fought for them. This contributed to the concept of jihad in Islam, though Stephenson does not discuss its influence on the western crusading ideal. In this regard, eastern Christians and Muslims at the end of our period agreed on the sanctity of warfare even as they could not agree on the morality of depicting living things. 

Stephenson’s New Rome is a truly engaging study of urban change in the Eastern Roman Empire during the fourth through eighth centuries. Whether or not one accepts narratives of “decline,” the book shows effectively how classical civilization transitioned into early medieval society by tracing shifts in various aspects of city life. Stephenson’s emphasis on environmental factors helps in part to explain such developments in light of circumstances within and beyond human control, and might therefore contribute useful historical reflection to modern debates regarding the impact of climate change on contemporary societies. 

Table of Contents

Introduction (1-4)
Part 1: Life in the Later Roman World
1. Life at the End of the “Lead Age” (7–29)
2. Family and Faith (30–50)
3. An Empire of Cities (51–74)
4. Culture, Communications and Commerce (75–93)
5. Constantinople, the New Rome (94–125)
Part 2: Power and Politics
6. The Theodosian Age, AD 395–451 (129–62)
7. Soldiers and Civilians, AD 451–527 (163–91)
8. The Age of Justinian, AD 527–602 (192–235)
9. The Heraclians, AD 602–c. 700 (236–73)
Part 3: The End of Antiquity
10. The End of Ancient Civilization (277–302)
11. Apocalypse and the End of Antiquity (303–29)
12. Emperors of New Rome (330–53)

Notes

1.  Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (New York: Overlook Press, 2010).

2.  For specialised studies on environmental issues in Roman civilization, see Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); J. Donald Hughes, Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans: Ecology in the Ancient Mediterranean, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Lukas Thommen, An Environmental History of Ancient Greece and Rome, trans. Philip Hill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Paul Erdkamp, Joseph G. Manning, and Koenraad Verboven, eds., Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East: Diversity in Collapse and Resilience (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

3.  Further works on aspects of city life in the Eastern Roman empire include J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Romann City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); A. H. M. Jones, The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (2nd edn.; Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2004); Hendrik W. Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City: Architecture and Ceremony in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Rubina Raja, Urban Development and Regional Identity in the Eastern Roman Provinces, 50 B.C.-AD. 250: Aphrodisias, Ephesos, Athens, Gerasa (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2012); Noel Lenski, Constantine and the Cities: Imperial Authority and Civic Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

4.  Though it is mainly focused on the Christian churches in the western empire, an excellent study on wealth and the Roman economy is Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, The Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 A.D. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). See also, for example, Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson, eds., Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Problems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Chloë Duckworth and Andrew Wilson, eds., Recycling and Reuse in the Roman Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Dimitri Van Limbergen, Adeline Hoffelinck, and Devi Taelman, eds., Reframing the Roman Economy: New Perspectives on Habitual Economic Practices (Copenhagen: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

5.  See Lukas Lemcke, Imperial Transportation and Communication from the Third to the Late Fourth Century: The Golden Age of the cursus publicus (Brussels: Latomus, 2016); Lukas Lemcke, Bridging Center and Periphery: Administrative Communication from Constantine to Justinian (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020). 

6.  Other works on Constantinople include Nevra Necipoglu, ed., Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography, and Everyday Life (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Cyril Mango, ed., The Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Raymond Van Dam, Rome and Constantinople: Rewriting Roman History during Late Antiquity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010); Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly, eds., Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). A notable popular work is Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (New York: DaCapo Press, 2017).

7.  See J. A. S. Evans, The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power (London: Routledge, 1996); James Allan Evans, The Empress Theodora: Partner of Justinian (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Peter Heather, Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 

8.  On the rise of Islam, see Hugh Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (Chicago: New Amsterdam, 2000); Emmanouela Grypeou, Mark N. Swanson, and David Thomas, eds., The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Olof Heilo, Eastern Rome and the Rise of Islam: History and Prophecy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016); Peter Sarris, Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500–700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 

9.  Further studies on apocalypticism in late antiquity include Hagit Amirav, Emmanouela Grypeou, and Guy G. Strousma, eds., Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity: Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th–8th Centuries (Leuven: Peeters, 2017); Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018); Matthew Gabriele and James T. Palmer, eds., Apocalypse and Reform from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019); Hilary Marlow, Karla Pollmann, and Helen Van Noorden, eds., Eschatology in Antiquity: Forms and Functions (London: Routledge, 2021).

10.  See also Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2004).