Douglas Boin's A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity is intended as a textbook which makes accessible the latest scholarly thinking on Late Antiquity to undergraduate audiences. The book comprises fourteen chapters, giving an overview of the third to seventh centuries a.d., mainly (though not exclusively) concentrating on the Greco-Roman world. B. has carefully considered its usefulness as a teaching aid, subdividing chapters into numbered sections, augmented with inset boxes which engage with sources, methodological issues, historiography and ‘political issues’. Chapters are appended with study questions and select bibliography, with plentiful illustrations throughout. As a result, it offers a useable and helpful resource for teaching a basic undergraduate or perhaps even an advanced secondary school audience.
After introductory chapters outlining period, periodisation and source criticism, B. blends chronological and thematic approaches. A chapter on power thus draws mostly from the mid-third century, one on urban life from across the fourth, and so on, though almost all employ examples from outside the stated ranges. The aim is to avoid artificially separating narrative and thematic history, and when this works it effectively combines diachronic and synchronic perspectives. However, it does mean that material chronologically relevant to one section may either be delayed or introduced out of temporal context, which may make it harder to set single chapters as course reading. (Students may therefore also need a more conventional narrative history.)
Though wary of the inherent dangers of conventional scholarly categorisations, the book nonetheless defaults to treating Late Antiquity as the third- to seventh-century a.d. Greco-Roman world, with few examples drawn from the post-imperial West (with the arguable exception of Italy). That said, welcome attention is paid to links with Arabia, Iran, India and even China, and there is some decent discussion of the history of the former two regions in their own right. The text embraces late antique history in the round, devoting substantial space to political topics, despite its socio-cultural focus. B.'s presentation and use of late antique sources is particularly able: he cites and explains evidence ranging from narrative and normative literary excerpts to items of prestigious and popular material culture, to site- and city-plans and everything in between. Those chapters more closely engaged with social history, such as those covering household, community and urban life, are full of interesting detail and offer a good introduction to such material. However, more substantial discussions of changes (or not) in experiences of poverty, of sexuality, of ethnic identity, or of climate might have been made possible by a closer focus on socio-cultural subjects at the expense of the political. Although religion does not receive a chapter of its own, religious issues suffuse the book, consistent with B.'s scepticism about the concept's usefulness as a category in its own right (following B. Nongbri, Before Religion (2013)). This is a good example of B.'s support for and clear explanation of the most up-to-date historiographical approaches to Late Antiquity, representing a determined attempt to displace other paradigms. Ironically, and partly because of this focus on de-centring Christian narratives, the book ends up discussing Christians and Christian material at substantial length. This comes at the expense of traditional Greco-Roman religious perspectives after the third century, with the limited exception of Neoplatonic figures. Thus Libanius is mentioned only once, without reference to his religious views; Julian ‘the Apostate’ likewise receives a passing mention; while Ammianus and Symmachus do not appear at all. Jewish communities and sources, however, receive some interesting and well-integrated analysis.
In keeping with the target audience and the conventions of the textbook format, many historiographical debates are simplified or explained in rather basic terms, and on other issues B. offers his own interpretation stridently. The prose is clear and engaging, and B.'s style is lively and forceful, inviting his readers to compare late antique and modern practices, and how it might feel to be involved in contemporary events. B. can, however, be overly didactic in characterising issues; he sometimes simplifies issues of complex debate for the sake of narrative clarity, when it might be better to acknowledge the viability of a number of different academic perspectives. B. can also be rather patronising to his ancient subjects. For instance, Cosmas Indicopleustes, arguing for a flat earth, is said to have been ‘stuck in an unimaginatively literalist Christian worldview, one which keeps its readers bound to Scripture’ (237). In fact, this particular example of exegesis (Christian Topography 3.51) is based on an allegorical rather than a literalist reading of Exodus, with Cosmas inferring that the earth is flat because it reflects the shape of the Tabernacle.
Although individual academic readers will thus find judgements and arguments for which they would like more proof or with which they simply disagree, clear errors of fact are rare, the most substantial being the claim that Nestorius left for Persia to proselytise after the First Council of Ephesus (165). The book is well produced and edited with few typographical errors, though Greek nouns are inconsistently given with or without accents or in the original alphabet (e.g. 23, 102, 159). Nonetheless, the book overall offers a useful and well-conceived introduction for entry-level students to Late Antiquity, and a basic aid for academics teaching the subject.
