Professor Bryan Ward-Perkins: List of publications

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On March 4th 1965, a brilliant review of A.H.M. Jones? Later Roman Empire was published in The Oxford Magazine. Indeed, the Later Roman Empire seems to be a typically English book. Continental scholars, although acclaiming Jones? outstanding mastery of the primary sources, were struck by his obvious neglect of secondary literature. Although very few modern scholars are mentioned, and although there is little explicit discussion of their work, the author argues that Jones conducted an intrinsic dialogue not only with his English predecessors Gibbon, Bury and Baynes, but also with the major continental reconstructions of the later Roman empire, especially with Mommsen, Seeck, Rostovtzeff, and Stein. Jones, was a fluent reader of French, German and Italian, and had read much more of continental scholarship. This chapter concludes with a brief survey of the prehistory of the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire that also proves Jones? indebtedness to continental scholarship.

Was the fall of Rome a great catastrophe that cast the West into darkness for centuries to come? Or, as scholars argue today, was there no crisis at all, but simply a peaceful blending of barbarians into Roman culture, an essentially positive transformation? In The Fall of Rome, eminent historian Bryan Ward-Perkins argues that the "peaceful" theory of Rome's "transformation" is badly in error. Indeed, he sees the fall of Rome as a time of horror and dislocation that destroyed a great civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Attacking contemporary theories with relish and making use of modern archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans, who were caught in a world of marauding barbarians, and economic collapse. The book recaptures the drama and violence of the last days of the Roman world, and reminds us of the very real terrors of barbarian occupation. Equally important, Ward-Perkins contends that a key problem with the new way of looking at the end of the ancient world is that all difficulty and awkwardness is smoothed out into a steady and positive transformation of society. Nothing ever goes badly wrong in this vision of the past. The evidence shows otherwise. Up-to-date and brilliantly written, combining a lively narrative with the latest research and thirty illustrations, this superb volume reclaims the drama, the violence, and the tragedy of the fall of Rome.

This collection of nineteen papers on sedes regiae , or royal seats, studies the urban areas and cities that became royal residences after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Acting as symbols of power as well as administrative and religious centres, this study is much more than an urban history. Contributors present new lines of investigation as well as revisions of traditional ideas about cities such as Constantinople, Ravenna, Carthage, Toulouse, Geneva, Lyon, Barcelona, Toledo, Merida and Rome and their fate at the hands of the barbarians. Papers in Spanish, Italian, French and English; English introduction.

This volume examines the changing perceptions and ideals of town life, from the classical civitas/polis (the lynch-pin of ancient civilisation) to the medieval city (still playing many central roles, but with less of the ideological charge characteristic of Antiquity). One central theme is the persistent 'shadow' of the ancient city - in crumbling ancient buildings, and the survival of Roman styles of urban lay-out; and in the way that cities were depicted both visually (in persistence of often outmoded classical terms and descriptions), and verbally (in the persistence of often outmoded classical terms and descriptions). Yet the ideal of the city was also changing and developing, especially around the idea of a new, specifically Christian city, protected by its saints and by its churches.

Negli ultimi quindici anni si è sviluppato un vivace dibattito sulla natura delle città nell'Italia settentrionale post-Romana. Tale discussione ha avuto luogo poichè resti di questo periodo rinvenuti in recenti scavi urbani si sono rivelati sistematicamente poco appariscenti. In questo articolo l'autore discute i principali articoli e libri — elencati e brevemente descritti in bibliografia — che hanno contribuito al dibattito. In particolare viene evidenziato che, sebbene gli studiosi tendono a giungere a conclusioni molto diverse su quanto ‘urbanizzate’ le città post-romane fossero, di fatto hanno molto in comune per quanto riguarda i dati specifici in discussione. L'autore ipotizza che la differenza nelle conclusioni raggiunte dagli studiosi è dovuta in gran parte alle diverse aspettative su cosa una ‘città’ dovrebbe essere. Tale divergenza è stata incoraggiata dalla natura molto diversa dell'evidenza materiale e dei testi scritti e dalle differenze in aspettativa tra romanisti e medievisti, tra autori italiani e britannici e tra storici ed archeologi. Le città dell'Italia post-romana si sono rivelate un vivace campo di battaglia nel più ampio dibattito sulla natura della ‘Dark Age’.