Giusto Traina

Traina takes the reader on a tour around the Mediterranean basin, starting with Armenia, and ending with a look at the state of the Sassanian Empire. He chose 428 for that was the year that the Sassanians swallowed the long-standing armenian client state while the Romans were involved with trying to re-unify their state. The book does the reader a service by placing some individuals and trends usually studied in isolation, in a more direct chronological relationship to each other. It is a show more refreshing approach, that shows the complexities of the situation of the Mediterranean peoples as they tried to maintain their civilization in the face of myriad pressures. show less

428 AD : An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire is a short but dense book that tries to be a snapshot of the Empire at a time between antiquity and the medieval age. There is still an Empire, although the East and West are separating, Christianity is spreading and is now a dominant religion supported by the ruling families, and Constantinople is now a very powerful city politically and one whose bishop is also very influential in directing the course that the Church will take over show more the next decades. I think Traina was largely successful in this little book but there are a lot of people and events to keep track of and the book is as much about the history of Christianity as it is about the political conflicts of the time.

Recommended for those really interested in Late Antiquity. show less

An excellent survey of 5th Century Rome taking a particular year for which we have records from most of the major provinces. Would have preferred 405-406 but my personal focus is military-political history so the breach of the Rhine frontier and the collapse of Gaul and Germania is of great interest to me.

worth reading- and interesting to see how tactical decisions affecting other theaters can eventually damage the main area of operations