From the Later Roman Empire to Late Antiquity and Beyond
Averil Cameron is one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. This collection (Cameron’s third in the Variorum series) discusses the changing approach among historians of the later Roman empire from the 1960s to the present and the articles reproduced have been chosen to reflect both these wider changes in treatments of the subject as well as Cameron’s own development as a historian over many decades. It provides a revealing and important survey of some profound historiographical changes.
Her volume contains fundamental papers and reviews that tell a story in which she has played a leading part. They move from her early days as an ancient historian to her important contribution in the establishment of the field of late antiquity and point to her later work as a Byzantinist, a trajectory rivalled by few other scholars.
The book will be important for scholars and students of the later Roman empire and late antiquity, and for anyone interested in the inheritance of Edward Gibbon, the perennial questions about the end of the Roman empire and its supposed decline, or the emergence of Islam in the early seventh century and its relation to the late antique world. (CS 1113).
Averil Cameron is the author of two previous Variorum volumes and many books and articles about late antiquity and Byzantium. In her long career she has been professor of Byzantine studies at King’s College London and of Byzantine history at the University of Oxford, where she was also Warden of Keble College from 1994 to 2010. Her most recent books include Byzantine Matters (2014), Dialoguing in Late Antiquity (2014), Arguing It Out (2016) and Byzantine Christianity (2017).