From the Editor

Once again we have a very international volume with, in addition to a few contributors from the U.S., contributions from Belgium, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, and Norway. This issue should have something for just about everyone. It covers aspects of material culture (late antique fountains, Byzantine coinage), Christianity and patristics (Gregory of Nyssa’s views on slavery, Gregory of Tours’ miracle stories, Christianity in the Indian Ocean), late antique women (Melania the Elder, the empress Irene), and the late antique aristocracy (consular lists and empresses).

The Society for Late Antiquity also is very pleased to announce that a bilingual tenth manifestation of the biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity (AKA “Fluctuation des frontières dans l’Antiquité tardive”) conference, on the topic of “The Transformation of Literary and Material Genres in Late Antiquity,” will assemble at the University of Ottawa, 21–24 March 2013. The deadline for the receipt of abstracts is 15 November 2012. Full information at http://www.scapat.ca/frontieres/.

And finally, as always I encourage our readers to continue not only to submit their scholarship for publication and to encourage colleagues and libraries to subscribe to JLA (http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/). And at the same time I also extend a special thanks to the selfless referees for our submissions. In many ways, refereeing is a thankless task, at least on one’s own campus. It is our referees who make JLA work, and who help our contributors to reach an even higher standard of excellence. Macte virtute!