Politics of Roman Memory

"This book examines the process by which the emperors, historians, jurists, antiquarians, and poets of the eastern empire employed history and mythistory in order to come to terms with the political realities of the late fifth and sixth centuries. In particular, it focuses on the creation of new historical narratives, the manner of their deployment, and the debates they inspired in order to understand how eastern Romans came to reimagine themselves not merely as eastern Romans but as the only Romans worthy of the name, a process with profound implications for our understanding of the intellectual and political climate at the end of antiquity and the beginning of Byzantium and the Middle Ages. Thus, this study focuses on a series of central questions concerning Roman identity and politics that were current at the time: What did it mean to be Roman after 476? How could an empire be Roman without the city of Rome? More pointedly, how could an empire be Roman when it was at war with Rome? How did these issues motivate and shape historical constructions of Constantinople as New Rome? How did the idea that a Roman empire could fall influence political rhetoric in Constantinople?"--