by Baker, Simon
The most up-to-date, accessible and authoritative history of Rome’s decline is:
Heather, Peter, The Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 2005)
Other key works are:
Heather, Peter: Goths and Romans 332–489 (Oxford, 1991)
Heather, Peter, The Goths (Oxford, 1996)
Matthews, John, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364–425 (Oxford, 1975)
Ward-Perkins, Bryan, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005)
Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 13: ‘The Late Empire, AD 337–425’ Cameron, Averil; Garnsey, Peter (eds), (Cambridge, 1997)
ANCIENT SOURCES
For Ammianus Marcellinus’s history see:
Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire: AD 354–378 (London, 1986)
For Zosimus’s New History see:
Zosimus, Historia Nova, The Decline of Rome (San Antonio, 1967)
For the fragments of Olympiodorus’ Histories see:
Blockley, R. C. (ed) The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus, Volume 2 (Liverpool, 1983) which has Greek text, translation and notes.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Creating this book has been a team effort. On the BBC series production team I am grateful to the executive producer, Matthew Barrett, and to the series producer, Mark Hedgecoe, for their advice and for being such a pleasure to work with and learn from; to the series directors Chris Spencer, Nick Green, Nick Murphy, Andrew Grieve, Tim Dunn and Arif Nurmohamed, whose scripts significantly helped to shape the main chapters; to Christabelle Dilks, the series script editor; and to the series researchers Rebecca Snow, Sarah Jobling and Annelise Freisenbruch for their brilliant research which forms an integral part of this book. I would like to thank Annelise too for her kindness in taking the time to read the second half of the manuscript and also for researching the chapter on Augustus. I would also like to express my thanks to Ann Cattini and Anna Mishcon for generously allowing me the time to write this book, and especially Laurence Rees, whose support has been a constant and much appreciated source of encouragement.
At BBC Books my sincere thanks go to Martin Redfern, the commissioning editor, for his trust, patience and guidance during the writing of this book; to Eleanor Maxfield for managing the project so amicably and tirelessly; to Trish Burgess for editing and always improving the text; to Sarah Hopper for her wonderful picture research; and to Martin Hendry for working around the clock on the design.
This book would not have been possible without the generous advice of the academics who acted as consultants on the project. I owe a great deal of thanks to Martin Goodman and Averil Cameron for their responses and corrections to chapters IV and V respectively. I am also grateful to Peter Heather from whose counsel and recent book, The Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter VI benefited considerably. My greatest debt and warmest thanks, however, are owed to Mary Beard who has been so kind in sharing ideas, reading the manuscript, replying to emails in record time and making countless life-saving corrections. She has been an inspiration to work with, and her expertise forms a major part of this book.
On a personal note, my warm thanks go to my teachers Simon Price, Laetitia Edwards, Peta Fowler, James Morwood and Bruce McCrae; to Jonathan Stamp; to my brother, Matthew, for his brilliant company while wandering around the Roman ruins of the Mediterranean; to Harriet and Clayton for the Roman coins; and finally, for their affectionate support during the writing of this book, to my mother, Patsy, to Martyn, Sylvie and Kate, and to my friends, especially Kari Lia, Sam Sim, Paula Trybuchowska, Mark Williams, Helen Rumbelow, Tony Pritchard, Carl Siewertz and Helen Weinstein.
