Review: Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate, edited by Rita Lizzi Testa

Abstract

Rita Lizzi Testa (ed.), Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate . Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. xlix + 229 pp. ISBN 9781443843089. £52.99. The theme of the book is the historiographical debate on Late Antiquity and its periodization. There has definitely been a turn from Gibbon's categories of decline and fall to an emphasis on continuity and transformation in the study of the last centuries of the Roman Empire. The book is built on papers given at the 22nd International Congress of Historical science in Jinan, China in 2011, on the topic of “Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate.” Rita Lizzi Testa, Professor of Roman History at the University of Perugia, and an author of numerous books and articles, is the editor. In her introduction she offers a rich and interesting survey of the research history and the problems of defining Late Antiquity. The book has two general themes. One is the definition of the age through periodizations or by methodological approaches. The other is to test the paradigm of transformation, not only on the history of culture, religion, and society, but also on political and legislative structures and on economic and administrative institutions (p. xxxviii). The contributors write about various topics, but are loyal to the main themes of the book, which are illuminated from different angles. The book has four parts. It starts with “Historiography I.” The theme of the first chapter is “Empire and Aftermath,” where Clifford Ando delves into the literature of decline and fall …