Jeroen Wijnendaele skilfully pulls together seventeen chapters by separate authors, as well as an introduction and epilogue, on the topic of late Roman Italy into one nearly 500-page work that is a must-read for anyone interested in Italy in the late empire. It is divided into five sections, on political developments, institutions, society, economy and the environment, religion, and culture, each of which is comprised of three to four chapters. As the title suggests, this collection takes a regional approach, focusing on Italy in the later empire, from approximately 250–500 ce. As such, it seeks to make interventions in late Roman and late antique history, using the Roman Empire as the primary framework of reference. As Wijnendaele points out in the introduction, although many other important western regions have received significant scholarly reassessment recently, this is the first volume to revise our understanding of Italy in this period. Each chapter reviews the scholarship on the topic before making its own intervention in topics ranging from macro- to micro-developments, and also addresses previously neglected topics, such as gendered violence. Given the scope and scale of this project, it is impressive that Wijnendaele skillfully weaves each intervention together into a coherent whole, with authors often referencing each other’s work in the volume.

Part i, ‘Political Developments’, consists of four chapters on the political history of Italy in this period, generally in chronological order. In the first two chapters, Umberto Roberto and Noel Lenski discuss the major administrative changes to Italy due to the third-century crisis and the subsequent tetrarchic reorganisation. Roberto argues that the role of Italy in the empire shifted significantly, as Italy went from being a ‘political and cultural anomaly’, exempt from taxes or a provincial governor and the sole seat of the emperor prior to the third-century crisis, to a regular province with Diocletian’s reforms. Additionally, in the third century Italy and its inhabitants started to be depicted as peaceful and prosperous, while others in the empire, and especially Illyrians, were portrayed as warlike in their stead. Lenski’s chapter builds upon Roberto’s by analysing the social and economic effects of the bipartite division of the province of Italy under Constantine into two administrative units, the Regio annonaria in the north and the Regio suburbicaria. Mark Humphries’s and Wijnendaele’s contributions in this section cover the late fourth and fifth centuries, with Humphries focusing on the period from the reign of Gratian (r. 367–83) to Valentinian iii (r. 425–55). Humphries argues that although Gratian initially sought to continue the policies of his predecessors in visiting frontier provinces, due probably to the activities of the Goths, he and subsequent emperors focused their activities on northern Italy, in the first stage concentrating on Milan and Aquileia and in the second on Rome and Ravenna, largely abandoning Gaul. He concludes that due to Gothic activity, and with the Vandal conquest of Italy, which made the Mediterranean a frontier zone for the first time in centuries, Italy became central to imperial priorities. Wijnendaele focuses on the imperial army during the reigns of the last Roman emperors and Odoacer, arguing that although western Roman emperors struggled to assert their control over the government, the ambitions of the senior commanders of the Italian field army not only blocked them, but also was the major cause for the breakdown of western imperial government entirely.

The second part, on institutions, consists of three essays, focusing on the geography and the appearance of provincial governors in Italy, local government and the armed forces. Danielle Slootjes discusses the division of Italy into provinces due to Diocletian and Constantine’s administrative changes and the effects this had on local communities and their interactions in the fourth century, while arguing for a more systematic analysis of sources for the fifth century to understand how and to what extent imperial governmental structures continued in the fifth. In the following chapter, Stuart McCunn traces the trajectory of curiales through the end of the Roman Empire and into early medieval Italy, as well as the development of local rival groups, concluding that although curiales were replaced in much of the empire, in Italy they remained largely due to administrative inertia until Justinian’s reconquest. Lastly, Philip Rance discusses the army, demonstrating that even in the fourth and fifth centuries it was an ‘integral and essential component of imperial government, supported by the demographic, economic, and fiscal foundations of the society they defended and policed’ (p. 153).

Part iii, on society, economy and the environment, contains four chapters, and contains some of the most innovative essays in the collection, which use new theoretical approaches and sources. Notably, Ulriika Vihervalli and Victoria Leonard analyse the political and military events of late Roman Italy through the lens of gender-based violence. They argue that as marriage patterns for imperial women shifted from alliances with localised aristocracy to securing international relationships due to the political circumstances, women were exposed to high levels of gender-based violence, and that virtually all women who were politically successful in this period were also subject to this type of violence. Niels Arends uses economic anthropology to understand the economic agency of small landholders in the late Roman and Ostrogothic periods, who are often overlooked in scholarship despite their prevalence. Next, Edward Schoolman’s work analyses the human landscape and palaeoecology, demonstrating how use of archaeobotanical evidence can challenge assumptions based only on archaeological and historical data, as well as illuminating how people living on the land adapted to political and economic change. Finally, Neil Christie discusses the archaeological evidence for changes in cities and urban life. While this essay by a preeminent archaeologist building on previous work seems a bit out of place in this section, it remains an important contribution on the state of the field and directions for future research.

The fourth section, on religion, consists of three papers, two regarding Christian bishops and one on Jewish city-dwellers. Bronwen Neil surveys the changing role of Roman and Italian bishops across three phases during the formative period of about 250 to 490, highlighting the role of episcopal networks and rivalries centred on Rome as well as pointing the way for future research into such networks among the bishops of northern Italy, and southern Italy, the islands of Corsica, Sardegna and Sicily. Next, Samuel Cohen reassesses violence in episcopal elections in Rome from 300 to 500 ce, arguing convincingly that in all three extant examples it was a purposeful strategy used by competing candidates and their followers, noting as well that the episcopate was generally stable in late antiquity. In the final essay of this section, Jessica van’t Westeinde reassesses the written and material evidence on Jewish city-dwellers and their neighbours in their socio-geographical urban context. She argues that, in the south, boundaries between groups were more permeable than previously acknowledged, while in the north that the greatest factor affecting Jewish life was the animosity of powerful local Christian bishops.

Lastly, section v, on culture, consists of an essay on Christian sarcophagi in late Roman Italy, as well as two on late Roman Italy in Latin panegyric and late antique historiography, respectively. In the first chapter of this section, Miriam Hays focuses on sarcophagi of the fourth century, which have received limited scholarly attention. In addition to providing an important sketch of sarcophagus production in Italy in this period, she argues that they need to be viewed as a whole, because the ‘visual expression of Christian typology was shaped by the surrounding late Roman culture of paideia and pre-Christian ways of viewing’ (p. 446). In both Adrastos Omissi’s essay on panegyric and Peter van Nuffelen’s on historiography, the authors demonstrate that, as van Nuffelen’s title suggests, Italy played a subordinate role to Rome in Latin writing of the period. Omissi argues that the limited references to Italy in panegyrics show its ideological subordination to Rome, with Italy its ‘attendant geographical setting’ (p. 471). Van Nuffelen reinforces this, but also argues that by 500 ce Italy had acquired independence as a geographical term, but its inhabitants in late antiquity did not acquire a strong Italian identity. Indeed, as van Nuffelen notes, after 500, ‘histories project different spatial organizations of the Mediterranean world’ (p. 487), with Priscus, centring Constantinople, calling those in the remaining western Roman Empire Italians. As scholars of early medieval Italy will note, Italian sources continue to use Roman to refer to the Byzantines in Italy at least through the eighth century, which follows Nuffelen’s argument that Romans continued to refer to the empire and its occupants, while Italy as more of a geographic term made Theoderic and Ostrogothic rule of it – like that of an ordinary province – more politically palatable from the eastern imperial perspective. Finally, Giusto Traina’s brief epilogue wraps up the volume, reflecting on the state of the question of late antique Italy, which this volume addresses exclusively for the first time, and suggesting future avenues of research.

Overall, in addition to being essential for anyone working on late antique or early medieval Italy, this volume makes important interventions into many areas that have been understudied in late antique Italy, especially regarding gendered violence, palaeoecology and the economic agency of smallholders, as well as significant reassessments of the political situation in Italy at the end of the Roman empire. As an edited collection that grew out of a conference, the cohesion of this volume is impressive, with authors often referring to each other’s contributions and a coherent overarching organisation.