This chapter argues that in the Late Antique notion of “the people,” a normative aspect is present: the people is not just a social designation, but also acquires a constitutional sense if a group of individuals puts itself in a relationship of justice with the emperor (or, for that matter, a bishop). Indeed, the notion of emperor and people are coconstitutive: the one cannot exist without the other. This helps us to understand the political role the people played in Late Antique society, in the absence of institutions such as voting assemblies through which it could express itself. Seen through this lens, riots are occasions when it was questioned if the ruler truly was just. If the relationship could not be mended, the people could favor someone else as ruler. Thus, although there were numerous riots in Late Antiquity, they never questioned the social system but only sought to establish a personal interaction that could ensure justice.

This chapter explores Byzantine military architecture between 400 and 600, concentrating on the design, function and strategic significance of fortifications. It examines various defensive structures, including urban walls, military forts, civilian refuges and large-scale linear barriers. The chapter argues that fortifications were not merely passive defensive measures but played an active role in military strategy. It challenges the idea that increased fortification indicated imperial weakness, instead asserting that these defensive networks provided greater operational flexibility. Fortifications allowed armies to delay enemy advances, launch counterattacks and protect key urban centres. Additionally, the chapter highlights the evolution of fortification techniques, such as outward-projecting towers, deep ditches, reinforced gate structures and expanded urban wall circuits, demonstrating how these innovations responded to changing military threats. Ultimately, the chapter concludes that Byzantine military architecture was as much about psychological warfare as it was about physical defence. Well-designed fortifications not only deterred invasions but also reinforced imperial authority and boosted the morale of defenders, serving as both strategic and symbolic bulwarks of the empire.

This chapter considers the impact of Justinian’s codification on our understanding of Classical Roman law. After reading the introductory constitutions in order to understand how Justinian used the Corpus Iuris to represent himself, I discuss the tendency of constitutions contained within the Codex Justinianus to avoid explicit disagreement. Justinian is the one emperor who regularly criticizes his predecessors in the Codex, which suggests that other conflict was redacted out in the compilation process. I then use a passage of Pomponius, discussing a strange hypothetical involving a cross-dressing senator, to argue that jurists were more engaged with other literary genres (like paradoxography) than is obvious from fragments which survive in the Digest, and that the redactive tendency to treat juristic treatises as sources of law has greater distorting effects than is immediately apparent.

This book shows that the development of Greek chronicle writing from the fourth to the seventh century was not linear. Whilst the impact of the chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea was great, subsequent writers corrected his errors and incorporated the third-century chronographies by Hippolytus and Julius Africanus into the framework shaped by Eusebius. As a consequence, chronographies and not chronicles dominate in Greek literature. One innovation of the fourth century was to link computus (the calculation of the Easter date) and chronography, first visible in the work of Andreas, brother of Magnus (352), and later in that of Annianus (412). The direct impact of Annianus has been overestimated: unique in some of its core ideas, his work resurfaced only in the 560s, in the context of Justinian’s attempt to impose the Christmas date of 25 December on the church of Jerusalem. This controversy caused a flurry of works of chronography and computus to be written in the early seventh century. Besides this tradition, the book also uncovers a tradition of chronicles with a local focus, which shaped the chronicle of John Malalas. We argue that the source indications of Malalas deserve more credit than they are usually granted.

The chronography of Annianus, composed in 412, stands out by closely mapping the chronology of the world onto the Alexandrian 532-year Easter cycle, of which he may be the originator. He also defended that Christ was born in AM 5500, which had its roots in Christian exegesis. This generated a set of chronological anomalies, especially the fact that he situated birth and death of Christ about 10 years later than usual in Christian chronography. As a consequence, there is hardly any trace of Annianus before the second half of the sixth century, when Justinian’s attempt to impose the Christmas date of 25 December on the church of Jerusalem sparked a controversy. Annianus’ chronology, which supported the date of 25 December, was put forward by the defenders of that date (especially Heron), whilst those defending 6 January drew on Andreas. Due to this controversy, Annianus’ chronography travelled from Alexandria to Constantinople and was transmitted to Syriac and hence into Arabic.

Andreas composed an Easter table and 200-year list of Easter dates that started in 352. It was based on the work of Anatolius of Laodicea and Hippolytus. To this a chronography was added, which is attested in Syriac but mostly in Armenian. Indeed, at the end of the sixth century, the work of Andreas travelled to Armenia, where it became the basis for the Armenian calendar. Andreas is the first known author to combine computus and chronography. He is also the earliest author to defend 6 January as the date for Christmas, and he is unique in proposing AM 5600 as the start of the Christian era.

The chronography of Heron dates from the sixth century (before AD 555) and defended an adapted version of the chronology and computus of Annianus. In the debate about Christmas of the 560s, it supported Justinian’s position in favour of 25 December. Armenian sources offer most information on this work, although their information is very unreliable. Heron may have been responsible for recirculating Annianus and thus for the latter’s enduring popularity.

This chapter discusses an oft-cited source of the All-Affected Principle in a procedural maxim of Roman private law known by the tag quod omnes tangit (‘what touches all’), a maxim that became a more expansive principle of medieval canon and civil law. By exploring some of the maxim’s original contexts and formulations, the chapter draws out several important lessons for the All-Affected Principle itself: the interplay between procedural and substantive claims; the empowerment of some to advance such claims on behalf of others; and the need for procedural closure. It then explores the possible application of this approach in the context of how climate change touches all and how claims might be made on the basis of the All-Affected Principle accordingly. Identification of moral rights to a fair per capita share of a global carbon budget, and rights against the unjust imposition of harm or the risk of harm, are both considered as potential sources of such claims. A range of possible institutional arrangements to advance and realize such claims, such as trusteeship, are briefly considered in conclusion.

Scholars generally assume that Procopius, the noted sixth century classicizing historian, was a misogynist who in his notorious Secret History belittled the impact Theodora and Antonina had on the Empire’s fortunes. In that work and his Wars, Procopius highlights the plight of women in the warfare of the reign of Justinian. How, then, are we to reconcile the seeming hatred of, for example, Antonina in the Secret History with the apparent empathy of the suffering inhabitants of Italy in the Wars? In this chapter the author explores the role of women in the military of the age of Justinian at both the top (amongst the officer class – Antonina) and the bottom (amongst the civilians and the rank-and-file) ends, through the gaze of Procopius, and in the process establish the female component of what is generally assumed to have been a wholly male space. Comparative evidence is abundant and includes such materials as the Code of Justinian; other sixth century texts such as those of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, Agathias, and Corippus; the papyri of Nessana (which detail the relationship between soldiers and civilians in late sixth century Israel/Palestine); and the material remains of Roman fortresses such as el-Lejjun.

Chapter 3 discusses the process by which Vandal Africa was transformed under Justinian’s reign into a province of the Roman Empire in which the Homoian presence declined and is no longer traceable in the sources. Our understanding of this development depends on two main aspects: the role of religious conflicts before and during the East Roman offensive on Africa and the measures (political, legal, ecclesiastical) taken to change the religious situation in Africa after the defeat of the Vandals.

Chapter 4 deals with Nicene–Homoian conversions in Italy under Ostrogothic rule. First it discusses the religious history of the Goths from the fall of the Hunnic empire to their triumph in the war with Odoacer, allowing us to better understand the nature of Gothic Homoianism in Italy and its relationship with the Nicene church. Then it examines conversions under Amal rule and the role of tolerance in their politics and ideology, and finally conversions between the Nicene and Homoian faith in the period of the Gothic War (535–54) and its aftermath.

A social history of Antioch under Justianian, amidst political turmoil and environmental downturns.

The walls of Antioch are the only visible memento of the ancient city. Continuously repaired and reconfigured, they encompass at least eight different phases. How these defenses document the transformation of the city through the ages is the core issue.

This chapter addresses the subject of sex in Constantinople in the sixth century CE, the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire. It draws on a range of rich evidence. A fundamental starting point is provided by the writings of the contemporary historian Procopius, in particular his comments in Secret History on the life and deeds of the empress Theodora, wife of the emperor Justinian I (527–565), who was an actress before marrying her husband. In addition it draws on the legislation of the emperor Justinian, the chronicle of John Malalas, erotic epigrams of the period, and Christian ascetic literature. From these writings strong ideals of right and wrong sexual behaviour emerge, revealing both traditional Roman values and the increasing Christianisation of society. This can create the impression that sexual activity was very tightly controlled, especially prostitution, extra-marital sex, and same-sex sex. However, it is apparent that life was less clear-cut. Justinian himself recognized that desire was a powerful impulse and that people did ‘sin’. It is also evident that people could enjoy thinking about illicit sex, and engage in it enthusiastically. Ironically, overtly Chistian texts could even incite the desire they sought to neutralize.

This chapter examines the ideological, political, and cultural significance of law in the East Roman empire in the ‘Age of Justinian’. It argues that imperial legislation was at the forefront of the political struggles and debates that characterised the era and suggests that knowledge of the law circulated much more rapidly and widely than has often been supposed, even reaching elements of the peasantry. The evidence for the circulation and dissemination of legal knowledge, it is suggested, raises important issues concerning the possible circulation and dissemination of political and religious ideas amongst non-elite strata of East Roman society at this time, and thus may be important for how we think about the broader reception of religious and doctrinal disputes.

Chapter 1 introduces the Iohannis and sets the book in its intellectual context. It discusses the particular difficulties associated with the epic and the different approaches scholars have adopted to it. It argues that the poem cannot be read as an extended panegyric and suggests that the poet was motivated to address the perceived shortcomings of imperial rule, rather than simply to celebrate recent military victories. The chapter provides a survey of the chapters to follow and closes with a detailed summary of the narrative of the Iohannis itself.

Caroline Humfress explores the distinctive relationship between sacred (Christian) temporality and (Western) ‘hermeneutics of the state’, through a focus upon the founding texts of the Civilian legal tradition: the sixth-century CE Digest, Code and Institutes. Part 1 analyses the Emperor Justinian’s claim that these law-books were to be ‘valid for all eternity’ through a series of close textual readings of the same law-books’ prefatory constitutions. Part 2 contextualises Justinian’s lawyerly invocation of ‘eternity’ within contemporary Eastern Christological disputes, including a set of theological debates, orchestrated by Justinian himself, that took place at the same time (and location) as his law-books were being compiled. Part 3 concludes by arguing that the ‘timeless’, rational, universal, authority of the Civilian Legal tradition – as explored in the chapter by Ryan – was in fact underpinned by a specific Eastern (‘Byzantine’) sacred temporality.