Rome and Constantinople: Rewriting History During Late Antiquity (review)

In exploring the significance of Old and New Rome within the context of Late Antiquity, Ray Van Dam has produced a highly readable and thought-provoking book that will profit both colleagues and the uninitiated. Questioning time-honored metaphors and similes, Van Dam provides a lively, but learned, discussion of Rome and Constantinople that renders both cities more accessible to the general public even while drawing upon material that may well be new to scholars. This book achieves its goals through a juxta-position that is in many ways comparable to the well-known ivory diptych portraying personified Roma and Constantinopolis that is today housed within the Kunsthistoriches Museum of Vienna (Volbach 3d 1976: 43–44). Using comparison to highlight similarities and differences, Van Dam explores both the ideological construction of these two imperial capitals and the consequences of their evolving significance for the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. The result is a memorably scintillating mosaic of voices and ideas describing these emblematic cities.

This book, based upon a set of lectures, is essentially an extended essay organized as two parts dealing with the cities of Rome (5–45) and Constantinople (47–80), complemented by a brief introduction, three maps, an up-to-date bibliography, and a reliable index. Chapter subdivisions accompanied by titles forestall the monotony of a lengthy text and facilitate readers’ comprehension of the book’s theses. Even if there is an overall progression forward in time, Van Dam eschews chronology and traditional narrative in favor of a topical arrangement and analytical discussion. Though focused upon the world of Late Antiquity, the book moves back and forth in time from the remotest origins of Rome to the French Revolution as Van Dam provides historical analysis of the semantics of Rome and Constantinople. Van Dam develops his arguments in crisp, elegant prose that is a pleasure to read. Moreover, he reveals an eye for the telling citation and an ability to deploy a vast array of statistics and numbers to good effect. Although identifying himself as partial towards the “primitivist” interpretation of Roman economic history (16), he deftly treats that and other problems without succumbing to the temptation to engage in lengthy polemic. Rather, he adopts a consciously provocative, minimalist style in the exposition of ideas.

Argumentation of the thesis that Rome and Constantinople, as megalopoleis, were to a significant degree ideological constructions is convincing and opens the way for new and intriguing avenues of research. Economists and historians will henceforth have to reckon with both Rome imaginaire and Constantinople imaginaire when discussing the social and economic realities of Late Antiquity. Mentalités are pungently captured by images such as the citation from certain “Christian heretics” who once compared heaven to an apartment building in imperial Rome (6) or the notice that the cisterns of Constantinople were reused as graveyards subsequent to the Avar siege of the city in 626 CE (77). This use of historical examples will surely stimulate further thought about many of the topics touched in passing. For example, Van Dam’s summary dismissal of Rome as a significant intellectual center (7) provokes consideration of Epictetus and Plotinus, and the cessation of Greek as the language for liturgy at Rome in the time of Pope Damasus (366–384) assumes another aspect when situated against the rise of Constantinople. There is, of course, the occasional reservation, and one area to which Van Dam might profitably have devoted more time is that of material culture. The swelter of statistics and references to monuments such as the Baths of Caracalla and the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) are welcome, but a critical spark seems lacking. For instance, the sand so evocatively described as the ballast for ships returning from Rome or the marble of Proconnesus coming out of Constantinople were not a valueless return for the goods and services coming into the capitals, for they literally served to construct the empire in...