John Matthews was Professor of Late Roman History at Oxford University, and is now John M. Schiff Professor of Classics and History at Yale University. He is the author of Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364-425 (1975), The Roman Empire of Ammianus (1989), and Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (2000). His most recent book, The Journey of Theophanes: Travel, business and daily life in the Roman East (2006) was awarded the James Henry Breasted Prize of the American Historical Association. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1990.

• Preface 1. Gibbon and the Later Roman Empire: causes and circumstances 2. The nature of power in the ancient world - a three-cornered dialogue: Thucydides, Thomas Hobbes, Tacitus 3. Ronald Syme, Constantine the Great and the Second Roman Revolution 4. Tacitus, Acta Senatus, and the inauguration of Tiberius 5. Six tales of the Equestrian Order 6. A Last Will and Testament 7. Travel, diplomacy and the diffusion of ideas in the Roman Mediterranean and Near East 8. Reading the mind of a traveller; the cultural landscape of the Bordeaux Itinerary 9. The Letters of Symmachus 10. Four weddings and a funeral: this world and the next in fourth-century Rome 11. Roman law and Roman history 12. Ammianus on Roman law and lawyers 13. Interpreting the Interpretationes of the Breviarium of Alaric 14. Roman law and barbarian identity in the late Roman west 15. Macsen, Maximus, Constantine Bibliography Index