War and Community in Late Antiquity

Examines the responses of discrete late Roman communities to the material, social, and emotional stresses of warfare.

Late Antiquity was a world at war: barbarian migrations, civil wars, and porous frontiers affected millions of its inhabitants. How did the empire's culturally and religiously diverse communities respond? This volume presents cross-disciplinary essays on the consequences of warfare on civilians, fighting forces, and the built environment.Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barbarian migrations, civil wars, raids, and increasingly porous frontiers affected millions of its inhabitants. While military and political historians have long grappled with this history, scholars of late antique society and culture rarely interrogate the consequences of near constant warfare on civilian populations, fighting forces, and the built environment. War and Community in Late Antiquity responds to this oversight by assembling archeologists, art historians, social historians, and scholars of religion to examine the impact of war on communities (households, cities, religious groups, elites and non-elites) and their reactions to ongoing stressors. Topics include the violence of everyday life as backdrop to that of war; the rhetoric of warfare and its significance for Christian authors; the effects of captivity and billeting on households; communal agency and the fortification of civilian spaces; and the challenges of articulating Christian imperial power in wartime.