Politics and Tradition Between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople

The Variae of Cassiodorus have long been valued as an epistolary collection offering a window into political and cultural life in a so-called barbarian successor state in sixth-century Italy. However, this study is the first to treat them as more than an assemblage of individual case studies and to analyse the collection's wider historical context. M. Shane Bjornlie highlights the insights the Variae provide into early medieval political, ecclesiastical, fiscal and legal affairs and the influence of the political and military turbulence of Justinian's reconquest of Italy and of political and cultural exchanges between Italy and Constantinople. The book also explores how Cassiodorus revised, updated and assembled the Variae for publication and what this reveals about his motives for publishing an epistolary record and for his own political life at a crucial period of transformation for the Roman world.

Author: M. Shane Bjornlie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/01/2015
Pages: 386
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.13lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781107529311

About the Author
Bjornlie, M. Shane: - M. Shane Bjornlie is Assistant Professor of Roman and Late Antique History at Claremont McKenna College. His research interests include ethnography, late-antique letter collections, ancient political culture and the 'decline and fall' of the Roman Empire.