Bibliographic Essay

For a stimulating discussion of a number of major themes important for this subject, set within a broad chronological and geographical context, see Brent Shaw, ‘War and Violence', in Glen Bowersock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1998), pp.

For the evolution of the Roman army across late antiquity, chapter 17 of A. H. M. Jones's magisterial The Later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964) remains invaluable; it can also be traced in the relevant chapters by Brian Campbell, Doug Lee and Michael Whitby in volumes xii, xiii and xiv of the new edition of The Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 1998 and 2000 respectively). Whitby has also written a valuable discussion of the army in the first half of late antiquity: ‘Emperors and Armies, AD 235-395', in S. Swain and M. Edwards (eds.), Approaching Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 156-86. For helpful bibliographical surveys of a range of relevant topics (although not of violence in its own right), see the first volume of Alexander Sarantis and Neil Christie (eds.), War and Warfare in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

The best introduction to the empire's most significant military rival in late antiquity - Sasanian Persia - is James Howard-Johnston, ‘The Two Great Powers of Late Antiquity: A Comparison', in Averil Cameron (ed.), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. iii, States, Resources and Armies (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995), pp. 157-226, while there is further relevant material in the chapters by Scott McDonough and myself in Brian Campbell and Lawrence Tritle (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Peter Heather's influential work on the empire's interactions with northern barbarians is best approached through his The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History (London: Macmillan, 2005), while many of the chapters in Michael Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) provide a range of perspectives on the military impact of the Huns and the empire's responses. Hugh Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe, AD 350-425 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) offers sensible discussion of the military capabilities of the empire and its northern neighbours in the fourth and fifth centuries.

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