428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire

This book deals with a single year in the Later Roman Empire. As you might guess from the title that year is 428. The idea of showing a single typical year in the Empire is a brilliant one. Too often in the broad sweep of history the day to day minutiae of life are lost. It's too easy to see what happens based off of what happens after. History is mainly remembered by famous events which are, by definition, extraordinary. By confining himself to a single year the author shows a fair sample of what occurred. A previous review stated that this type of yearly chronicle doesn't work for ancient civilizations due to the lack of available data, but I feel that by keeping the chapters short he eliminates that problem. The chapters tend to be under ten pages long. This does make for a rather short book. Without the bibliography and notes it only comes out to 132 pages. This isn't a definitive study, merely a new way of looking at the late Roman Empire. The chapters move around the empire in a counter-clockwise direction starting with Armenia and ending with the Persian Empire. Each one is focused on something specific like the Visigoths in Spain or the end of the kingdom of Armenia. After reading it I feel like I have a better understanding of what life was like then. The book is fairly well written, but the translation is somewhat dry. I feel that this book has been rather unfairly criticized. It does not pretend to be an in-depth study. It is designed to break the mold by showing the events of only one year. The worst problem is it's length.

The juxtapositions of events are fascinating and informative in ways not seen in the usual formats. There is much to be said for the old-fashioned annal.

Traina's brilliant panoramic tour of one year, AD 428, a generation or two before the end of the Roman Empire, gives a sweeping vision of what the world was like on the cusp of the Middle Ages, from Europe to the Mediterranean, across the steppes and deserts of Central Asia to China. High recommend this clearly written, erudite, entertaining book brimming with amazing and curious narratives of familiar and exotic historical figures and events from a pivotal point in history, 1,500 years ago.