New Rome: The Empire in the East
Paul Stephenson
Aug 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Peter Noble
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18 hr 31 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
As modern empires rise and fall, ancient Rome becomes ever more significant. We yearn for Rome's power but fear Rome's ruin-will we turn out like the Romans, we wonder, or can we escape their fate? That question has obsessed centuries of historians and leaders, who have explored diverse political, religious, and economic forces to explain Roman decline. In New Rome, Paul Stephenson looks beyond traditional texts and well-known artifacts to offer a novel, scientifically minded interpretation of antiquity's end. It turns out that the descent of Rome is inscribed not only in parchments but also in ice cores and DNA. During its final five centuries, the empire in the east survived devastation by natural disasters, the degradation of the human environment, and pathogens previously unknown to the empire's densely populated, unsanitary cities. However, Greco-Roman civilization, a world of interconnected cities that had shared a common material culture for a millennium, did not. Politics, war, and religious strife drove the transformation of Eastern Rome, but they do not tell the whole story. Braiding the political history of the empire together with its urban, material, environmental, and epidemiological history, New Rome offers the most comprehensive explanation to date of the Eastern Empire's transformation into Byzantium.
About the author
Paul Stephenson is a historian of late antiquity and the author of Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor.
Peter Noble is an Audie Award-winning narrator who has recorded hundreds of audiobooks and audio dramas, including the 2021 Booker Prize winner, as well as Audible and New York Times bestsellers.
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