Review: Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian, by Peter Heather

Abstract

Peter Heather, Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiii + 393 pp. ISBN 9780199362745. $29.95. Written with the characteristic pugilistic vim that has become the hallmark of his recent publications, Peter Heather's latest book is a political and military history of the reign of Justinian. The central aim of the book is to interrogate previous assumptions that instability caused by Justinian's storied military campaigns, and the strain that these campaigns placed on eastern imperial resources, eventually caused both the reversal of his military successes and, ultimately, the downfall of the eastern provinces in the face of Muslim conquest (pp. 7–9). Thus, the book attempts to provide a balance sheet for the successes and failures of Justinian's reign, primarily by focusing on the effectiveness and overall impact of his military policies. On the whole, Heather portrays Justinian as a political actor behaving in patterns that were well established for Roman emperors and, following a dominant theme from his previous work on the end of the western Roman Empire, he attributes the later contraction of the eastern Empire in the seventh century not to the long-term consequences of Justinian's policies, but to instabilities caused by “foreigners” (esp. pp. 3–6). Although the style and manner of citation indicate that the book was written primarily for a popular, non-academic audience, Heather's stance against a “revisionist discourse” (pp. 3–4) in academic interpretations of Justinian's reign suggests an academic audience was intended as well. Whether or not the book succeeds in its suitability for either a popular or academic audience is a subject to which this review will return in its conclusion. The book is organized into twelve chapters, including an introduction which attends to the preliminary business of framing Justinian's legacy in the wider context of modern studies of the sixth century, outlining some themes related to the exhaustion of western imperial power and explaining Heather's methodology for reading of …