In his Introduction Wienand eloquently explains how imperial power is transformed into legitimate rule in a sociological sense since power can only be exercised on the basis of societal consensus. No emperor rules alone: his power and legitimacy are constructed and negotiated in discourse with those over which he governs. Apart from the Introduction and Epilogue by the editor, the volume contains eighteen articles by, for the most part, renowned European and American historians of late antiquity. the fourth century, instead of studying individual reigns. This volume also aims at analyzing late Roman imperial rule over a longer period, i.e. The volume seeks to transcend the boundaries between these fields, which, as the editor not quite correctly states, have mostly been treated separately. The book is divided into three parts or fields: 1. The volume is aimed as a reappraisal of the transformation of the monarchic regime of Roman emperors in the period between Diocletian and Theodosius I and intends to examine the emperors’ efforts “for political and cultural integration within a communicative framework characterized by the interplay of the imperial administration, the performance of monarchic leadership, and religious policy” (p. This collection of articles on emperorship in the fourth century goes back to a conference at the University of Konstanz in 2009.
This volume reflects the renewed attention for the institutional history and imperial rule in the late Roman period. It is a good thing that in recent years there is more scholarly interest in late Roman imperial rule. Although there are excellent studies on the reigns of individual late antique emperors, an overall study on the emperor in the late Roman empire is still lacking. Late antique emperorship was, for example, not included in the research programme “Transformation of the Roman World” funded in the 1990s by the European Science Foundation. This applies in particular to late Roman imperial rule, which is in general taken for granted and never really problematized. Since the 1970s the focus in late antique studies has been primarily on social, cultural or religious history the political, administrative and institutional history of the later Roman empire has received considerably less attention.
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