Byzantine Matters by Averil Cameron, and: Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire by Judith Herrin, and: The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome by Anthony Kaldellis, and: Ethnography after Antiquity: Foreign Lands and Peoples in Byzantine Literature by Anthony Kaldellis, and: The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate AD 500–1000 by Timothy Power (review)

One of the great successes of the historical enterprise of the past fifty years has been the flourishing of late antique studies. The chronological focus of that field is the world of the later Roman Empire from the strengthening of Christianity during the third century c.e. to the emergence of barbarian kingdoms in western Europe and North Africa during the fifth and sixth centuries, from the durability of the eastern Roman Empire as the Byzantine Empire to the expansion of Islam during the seventh and eighth centuries, from the rise of popes at Rome to the survival of emperors at Constantinople. With regard to geography, initially late antique studies focused on the Mediterranean world, as a prequel of sorts to Henri Pirenne’s thesis about the transformation of the medieval Mediterranean and Fernand Braudel’s great book about the early modern Mediterranean. Then it expanded to take in related developments in Scandinavia and eastern Europe, the Persian Empire, the Armenian kingdom, the early Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, and the Christian and Jewish kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and in eastern Africa. Even Manichaeism in China seemed to be relevant. Late antique studies are gradually, even if almost unwittingly, becoming world history.

Byzantine studies are now following a similar trajectory of success and expansion. If Byzantine studies is defined as beginning with Emperor Constantine’s dedication of Constantinople in 330 c.e., its early centuries overlap with late antique studies. But it extends to include the entire medieval period, up to the capture of Constantinople and its renaming as Istanbul by the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century. By then the last Byzantine emperors were no longer postclassical, but distinctly premodern. Even as their dwindling empire faced threats from expanding Eurasian states, the emperors looked toward a Europe on the verge of beginning to expand toward western Africa and the New World. The travels and travails of the emperor Manuel II Palaeologus can almost conjure up our contemporary world, in which Balkan states like Greece, Black Sea states like Ukraine, and western Asian states like Turkey are facing economic, political, and religious crises. In 1399 Manuel left on an extended trip to solicit military and financial assistance from France and England; he returned to Constantinople after the Mongols defeated the Turks in 1402; he died as the question of healing the schism between eastern and western Christianity was again being considered. Byzantine history provides one of the best corridors from classical antiquity to the modern world.

There is so much to celebrate in recent Byzantine studies. One obstacle has always been the shortage of reliable editions and translations of ancient texts; now it is hard to keep track of their rapid publication. Translations into English appear often in important series such as Byzantina Australiensia, Translated Texts for Byzantinists, and Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. Specialist studies proliferate. So do the vast dictionaries, handbooks, companions, and histories summarizing recent research.⁷

The five books included in this review are all excellent contributions to the renaissance of Byzantine studies. These books expand the field in time by taking account of...