The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity

ANDREW WALLACE-HADRILL is Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge and an Emeritus Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He is a Roman cultural historian and his books include Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars (1983), Augustan Rome (1993), Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994), Rome's Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2008) and Herculaneum: Past and Future (2011). Former Director of the British School at Rome, he has directed archaeological projects at Pompeii and Herculaneum. This book is the result of his project on the Impact of the Ancient City, which received funding from the European Research Council.

'With exciting literary arguments that challenge the assumption of urban 'decline and fall' in the post-Roman West, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill illuminates the continuous bustle of activity in centres like Seville, Marseille and Ravenna. No seventh century collapse here, but a lively, highly readable story of proud city dwellers adapting to a new medieval world, in what is also an admirable and compelling homage to his father.' Judith Herrin, King's College London

• 1. The end of the ancient city? 2. In praise of the city; 3. The city in question; 4. The city revived? Cassiodorus and Ostrogothic Italy; 5. The city embattled: Procopius and Justinian's Byzantine world; 6. The city and it's records: the Ravenna papyri; 7. The city of bishops: Gregory of Tours and Merovingian Gaul; 8. The grammar of the city: Isidore and Visigothic Spain; 9. The fabric of the city: the idea embodied; 10. Conclusion: decline and resilience.