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Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity

Online ISBN:
9780199933006
Print ISBN:
9780199739400
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity

Lucy Grig (ed.),
Lucy Grig
(ed.)

Lecturer in Classics

University of Edinburgh
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Gavin Kelly (ed.)
Gavin Kelly
(ed.)

Lecturer in Classics

University of Edinburgh
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Published online:
24 May 2012
Published in print:
3 April 2012
Online ISBN:
9780199933006
Print ISBN:
9780199739400
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Constantinople was named New Rome or Second Rome very soon after its foundation on the site of Byzantium in AD 324; over the next two hundred years it replaced the original Rome as the greatest city of the Mediterranean. This integrated collection of essays by leading international scholars examines the changing roles and perceptions of Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity from a range of scholarly perspectives and disciplines. The seventeen chapters cover both the comparative development and the shifting status of the two cities. Developments in politics and urbanism are considered, along with the cities’ changing relationships with imperial power, the church, and each other, and their evolving representations in both texts and images. These studies present important revisionist arguments and new interpretations of significant texts and events. The comparative perspective allows the neglected subject of the relationship between the two Romes to come into clear focus and avoids the teleological distortions common in much past scholarship. An introductory section sets the cities, and their comparative development, in context. Section Two looks at topography, and includes the first English translation of the Notitia of Constantinople. The following section deals with politics proper, considering the role of emperors in the two Romes and how rulers interacted with their cities. Section Four considers the cities through the prism of literature, in particular through the distinctively late antique genre of panegyric. Section Five considers Christianization and the two cities’ role as Christian capitals. Finally a provocative epilogue looks at the enduring Roman identity of the post-Heraclian Byzantine state.

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