Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas, eds., Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xxxvii, 504; black-and-white figures. £105. ISBN: 978-1-1070-9434-5. Table of contents available online at http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/empires-and-exchanges-eurasian-late-antiquity-rome-china-iran-and-steppe-ca-250750.

Abstract

Fifty years ago, in 1971, Peter Brown’s The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad was published by Thames & Hudson. Brown’s vision has shaped much subsequent historiography on the first millennium CE: it is now widely accepted that in the millennium’s middle centuries the success of monotheist religious traditions and the collapse or transformation of imperial structures occurred not only in the Mediterranean and northern Europe but also in Iran and the Middle East; further, these regions were intimately interconnected and so, mutually influential.