Review: Masculinity, Identity, and Power Politics in the Age of Justinian: A Study of Procopius, by Michael Stewart

Abstract

Book Review| February 01 2023 Review: Masculinity, Identity, and Power Politics in the Age of Justinian: A Study of Procopius, by Michael Stewart Michael Stewart, Masculinity, Identity, and Power Politics in the Age of Justinian: A Study of Procopius. Social Worlds of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 246 pp. Color and black-and-white figures. ISBN: 9789462988231. €99. Robin Whelan Robin Whelan University of Liverpool Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Studies in Late Antiquity (2023) 7 (1): 162–166. https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.162 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robin Whelan; Review: Masculinity, Identity, and Power Politics in the Age of Justinian: A Study of Procopius, by Michael Stewart. Studies in Late Antiquity 1 February 2023; 7 (1): 162–166. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.162 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentStudies in Late Antiquity Search The sixth-century historian Procopius of Caesarea has often been an author of first resort for students of gender in Late Antiquity. His violently misogynistic account of the empress Theodora in Anecdota (Secret History) is a classic recourse for modern historiography (and university survey courses). Yet, as Michael Stewart rightly notes, gendered discourse permeates Procopius’s various experiments in historiography in much more fundamental ways than a focus on “the carnal escapades and political misdeeds of puissant women” suggests (71). In this sense, Stewart’s book is best understood as the product of various central concerns in the wider discipline of gender history: not least, the effects of hegemonic masculinity (always anxious, often in crisis; cf. 25). Chapter 1 is less a standalone introduction than an overture sounding the book’s central theme: the role of gendered discourse in Procopius’s view of sixth-century Mediterranean politics and—in particular—the late fifth-century “loss” of (and... You do not currently have access to this content.