"A conversation with Ed Watts about his recent book, The Romans: A 2,000 Year History, which covers two millennia of Roman history, down to 1204 AD. We talk about questions of scale in writing history, of continuity and discontinuity in the Roman experience, and what enabled this polity to last for so long."
"What insights does studying its second millennium (at Constantinople) cast on its first (at Rome), and vice versa? Top Image: Map by Tataryn / Wikimedia Commons Ed Watts is a professor at University of California, San Diego. The Romans: A 2,000 Year History is published by Basic Books."
Coverage spans two millennia of Roman history, ending in 1204 AD. The narrative examines scale in historical writing and considers how broad temporal perspective reshapes interpretation. Patterns of continuity and discontinuity emerge across political, administrative, and cultural institutions from Rome to Constantinople. Longevity of the polity is linked to administrative structures, institutional adaptability, and cultural flexibility that allowed reinvention and survival. Comparative analysis of the first and second millennia reveals reciprocal illumination: later Byzantine developments clarify earlier Roman practices, while early Roman institutions set foundations for Byzantine resilience and transformation.
Read at Medievalists.net
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