Contested Monarchy offers a fresh survey of the role of the Roman monarch in a period of significant and enduring change.

Del Sarto argues that internal disputes over national identity limit the ability of states to participate in regional forums. This is a close look at problems faced in negotiating the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) as a regional security project, with particular attention to case studies of Israel, Egypt and Morocco.

One of the great maxims of history is that it is written by the victors, and nowhere does this find greater support than in the later Roman Empire. Between 284 and 395 AD, no fewer than 37 men claimed imperial power, though today we recognize barely half of these men as 'legitimate' rulers and more than two thirds died at their subjects' hands. Once established in power, a new ruler needed to publicly legitimate himself and to discredit his predecessor: overt criticism of the new regime became high treason, with historians supressing their accounts for fear of reprisals and the very names of defeated emperors chiselled from public inscriptions and deleted from official records. In a period of such chaos, how can we ever hope to record in any fair or objective way the history of the Roman state? Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire is the first history of civil war in the later Roman Empire to be written in English and aims to address this question by focusing on the various ways in which successive imperial dynasties attempted to legitimate themselves and to counter the threat of almost perpetual internal challenge to their rule. Panegyric in particular emerges as a crucial tool for understanding the rapidly changing political world of the third and fourth centuries, providing direct evidence of how, in the wake of civil wars, emperors attempted to publish their legitimacy and to delegitimize their enemies. The ceremony and oratory surrounding imperial courts too was of great significance: used aggressively to dramatize and constantly recall the events of recent civil wars, the narratives produced by the court in this context also went on to have enormous influence on the messages and narratives found within contemporary historical texts. In its exploration of the ways in which successive imperial courts sought to communicate with their subjects, this volume offers a thoroughly original reworking of late Roman domestic politics, and demonstrates not only how history could be erased, rewritten, and repurposed, but also how civil war, and indeed usurpation, became endemic to the later Empire.

In Contested Treasure, Thomas Barton examines how the Jews in the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries negotiated the overlapping jurisdictions and power relations of local lords and the crown. The thirteenth century was a formative period for the growth of royal bureaucracy and the development of the crown’s legal claims regarding the Jews. While many Jews were under direct royal authority, significant numbers of Jews also lived under nonroyal and seigniorial jurisdiction. Barton argues that royal authority over the Jews (as well as Muslims) was far more modest and contingent on local factors than is usually recognized. Diverse case studies reveal that the monarchy’s Jewish policy emerged slowly, faced considerable resistance, and witnessed limited application within numerous localities under nonroyal control, thus allowing for more highly differentiated local modes of Jewish administration and coexistence. Contested Treasure refines and complicates our portrait of interfaith relations and the limits of royal authority in medieval Spain, and it presents a new approach to the study of ethnoreligious relations and administrative history in medieval European society.

Panegyric, the art of publicly praising prominent political figures, occupied an important place in the Roman Empire throughout late antiquity. Orators were skilled political actors who manipulated the conventions of praise giving, taking great license with what they chose to present (or omit). Their ancient speeches are rare windows into the world of panegyrists, emperors, and their audiences. In Emperors and Rhetoricians, Moysés Marcos offers an original, comprehensive look at all panegyrics to and by Julian, who in 355/56 CE promoted himself as a learned caesar by producing his own panegyric on his cousin and Augustan benefactor, Constantius II. During key stages in his public career and throughout the time he held imperial power, Julian experimented with and utilized panegyric as both political communication and political opportunity. Marcos expertly mines this vast body of work to uncover a startlingly new picture of Julian the Apostate, explore anew the arc of his career in imperial office, and model new ways to interpret and understand imperial speeches of praise.

Recent studies on the development of early Christianity emphasize the fragmentation of the late ancient world while paying less attention to a distinctive feature of the Christianity of this time which is its inter-connectivity. Both local and trans-regional networks of interaction contributed to the expansion of Christianity in this age of fragmentation. This volume investigates a specific aspect of this inter-connectivity in the area of the Mediterranean by focusing on the formation and operation of episcopal networks. The rise of the bishop as a major figure of authority resulted in an increase in long-distance communication among church elites coming from different geographical areas and belonging to distinct ecclesiastical and theological traditions. Locally, the bishops in their roles as teachers, defenders of faith, patrons etc. were expected to interact with individuals of diverse social background who formed their congregations and with secular authorities. Consequently, this volume explores the nature and quality of various types of episcopal relationships in Late Antiquity attempting to understand how they were established, cultivated and put to use across cultural, linguistic, social and geographical boundaries.

This book brings together a number of case studies to show some of the ways in which, as soon as the Roman Senate gained new political authority under Constantine and his successors, its members crowded the political scene in the West. In these chapters, Rita Lizzi Testa makes much of her work – the fruit of decades of research –available in English for the first time. The focus is on the aristocratics' passion for aruspical science, the political use of exphrastic poems, and even their control of the hagiographic genre in the late sixth century. She demonstrates how Roman senators were chosen as legates to establish proactive relations with Christian emperors, their ministers and military commanders, and Eastern and Western provincial elites. Senators wove a web of relations in the Eastern and Western empires, sewing and stitching the empire's fabric with their diplomatic skills, wealth, and influence, while lively and highly litigious assembly activity still required of them a cultured rhetoric. Through employing astute political strategies, they maintained their privileges, including their own beliefs in ancient cults. Christian Emperors and Roman Elites in Late Antiquity provides a crucial collection for students and scholars of Late Antique history and religion, and of politics in the Late Roman Empire.

In recent years scholars have increasingly challenged and reassessed the once established concept of the 'crisis of the nobility' in early-modern Europe. Offering a range of case studies from countries across Europe this collection further expands our understanding of just how the nobility adapted to the rapidly changing social, political, religious and cultural circumstances around them. By allowing readers to compare and contrast a variety of case studies across a range of national and disciplinary boundaries, a fuller - if more complex - picture emerges of the strategies and actions employed by nobles to retain their influence and wealth. The nobility exploited Renaissance science and education, disruptions caused by war and religious strife, changing political ideas and concepts, the growth of a market economy, and the evolution of centralized states in order to maintain their lineage, reputation, and position. Through an examination of the differing strategies utilized to protect their status, this collection reveals much about the fundamental role of the 'second order' in European history and how they had to redefine the social and cultural 'spaces' in which they found themselves. By using a transnational and comparative approach to the study of the European nobility, the volume offers exciting new perspectives on this important, if often misunderstood, social group.

Cassius Dio described his own age as one of “iron and rust.” This study, which is the first of its kind in English, examines the decline and decay that Cassius Dio diagnosed in this period (180-229 CE) through an analysis of the author’s historiographic method and narrative construction. It shows that the final books were a crucial part of Dio’s work, and it explains how Dio approached a period that he considered unworthy of history in view of his larger historiographic project.

The subject of the emperor in the Byzantine world may seem likely to be a well-studied topic but there is no book devoted to the emperor in general covering the span of the Byzantine empire. Of course there are studies on individual emperors, dynasties and aspects of the imperial office/role, but there remains no equivalent to Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World (from which the proposed volume takes inspiration for its title and scope). The oddity of a lack of a general study of the Byzantine emperor is compounded by the fact that a series of books devoted to Byzantine empresses was published in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Thus it is appropriate to turn the spotlight on the emperor. Themes covered by the contributions include: questions of dynasty and imperial families; the imperial court and the emperor’s men; imperial duties and the emperor as ruler; imperial literature (the emperor as subject and author); and the material emperor, including imperial images and spaces. The volume fills a need in the field and the market, and also brings new and cutting-edge approaches to the study of the Byzantine emperor. Although the volume cannot hope to be a comprehensive treatment of the emperor in the Byzantine world it aims to cover a broad chronological and thematic span and to play a vital part in setting the agenda for future work. The subject of the Byzantine emperor has also an obvious relevance for historians working on rulership in other cultures and periods.