This valuable volume completes the new Edinburgh History of Ancient Rome by providing an overview of the period from the death of the emperor Julian to that of Justinian. While the preceding two volumes in the series, by Clifford Ando and Jill Harries, dealt respectively with ninety-one and seventy-nine years of Roman history, Doug Lee covers two centuries in a book of similar length. This relatively large chronological span means that individual figures, with the possible exception of Justinian, do not receive the same detailed coverage given, for example, to Constantine and Julian by Harries. In working with a larger canvas, however, this volume is successful in illuminating broader trends for the reader, not only by examining the most famous themes of the end of Roman rule in the West and the development of a Christian empire, but also by tracing continuities in other areas, such as the mechanisms of court intrigue and imperial succession, and the workings of the Empire's great urban centres.

After a brief first chapter that sets the scene by outlining the state of the Empire at the death of Julian, chs 2 and 3 establish the book's general working principle of looking at each sub-division of the period from the perspectives of political events, foreign policy and religious issues, examining each in turn. Part I is concerned with the three decades from Jovian to Theodosius I, with the first half of ch. 2 providing a political narrative, while the second half looks successively at the Persian frontier, the Rhine and middle Danube, and finally the lower Danube, giving, as one would expect, significant attention to the Battle of Adrianople and surrounding events. Ch. 3 covers the religious history of these decades, exploring relationships between Christians and pagans, as well as internal divisions within Christianity. This account proceeds through the key moments that often appear in narratives of this period, such as the Altar of Victory controversy, Justina's confrontation with Ambrose and the destruction of the Serapeum, although this is far from a traditional story of conflict and triumph, with the work of Alan Cameron and Neil McLynn informing this account. This is followed by a chapter on the cities of Rome and Constantinople, exploring their physical, administrative and social changes, including discussing the contentious issue of the ‘paganism’ of Roman senators.

Part II, on ‘The long fifth century’, opens with three chapters that are split on the same thematic lines as in Part I. Ch. 5 looks at political events in the West up to a.d. 455, followed by the East in the same decades before repeating this geographical division for the rest of the century. The next chapter looks at the ‘barbarians’ across the same period, including assessing the argument between Walter Goffart and Guy Halsall over the mechanisms of barbarian settlement. This pair of chapters does suffer a little from the book's thematic division, since readers completely unfamiliar with the period may have difficulty understanding the political narrative until they have read the subsequent discussion of interactions between barbarians and Romans. In contrast, ch. 8, on Anastasius, provides an integrated account of all aspects of his reign within a clear chronological framework. The last chapter of this part of the book is a thematically-organized exploration of the western successor states, largely stressing continuity but also highlighting variations between the different kingdoms. Britain is, however, a notable absence here, as it also is from the regional survey that appears in the (otherwise excellent) subsequent chapter on cities across Late Antiquity. Ch. 11 on the economy also provides a very clear and useful introduction to this topic, with salutary advice on approaches and methodology to accompany the presentation and analysis of material, which incorporates recent re-evaluations of issues such as coloni and agri deserti. The final part of the book, on Justinian, returns to the thematic structure, although ch. 12 covers ‘secular’ policies up to the capture of Ravenna in a.d. 540, while ch. 13 deals with religious matters across his reign. This sets the stage for a final chapter that deals with the last twenty-five years of Justinian's life, emphasizing his military problems, but giving a relatively positive assessment of his reign as a whole. This chapter also deals with the idea of the end of antiquity, not only by providing a brief account of events leading up to the Arab conquests, but also by reflecting on the new eastern, Greek-speaking, Christian conception of Roman identity that had developed.

Although its focus is mostly on political, military and religious history, this volume provides the reader with some insight into other aspects of late antique culture, as well as a survey of economic matters across this period. More importantly, it gives significant attention to the fifth-century East. Narrative histories often pay less attention to eastern affairs after the death of Theodosius I, seeing the collapse of the West as the more important story, with eastern emperors reduced to minor rôles in this drama, at least until the appearance of Justinian. In contrast, L., despite being seriously concerned with many aspects of ‘traditional’ narrative history, does not tell a simple story of ‘decline and fall’, but instead provides an account of the whole Roman world during this period. This book, like the rest of the series in which it appears, can be regarded as striving to occupy a space between brief introductions to Roman history and more detailed, multi-volume works, such as the Cambridge Ancient History. L. has certainly been successful in this endeavour, producing a very useful book that will undoubtedly find a prominent place on many university reading lists.