The ancient walled town of Butrint sits at the crossroads of the Mediterranean. In its heyday it could command sea-routes up the Adriatic Sea to the north, across the Mediterranean to the west, and south through the Ionian islands. It also controlled a land-route into the mountainous Balkan interior. For much of its long history it occupied a hill on a bend in the Vivari Channel, which connects the Straits to the large inland lagoon of Lake Butrint. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992, Butrint covers an area of around 16 ha, but geophysical survey has shown that at times it was almost twice this size. The site itself is made up of two parts: the acropolis and the lower city. The acropolis is a long narrow hill, whose sides are accentuated by a circuit of walls that separate it from the natural and artificial terraces gathered around the flanks of the hill. The lower city occupies the lower-lying contours down to the edge of the Vivari Channel. This book brings to life this extraordinary Byzantine town, with chapters on the historical sources, various aspects of the archaeological excavation and survey, finds of pottery and environmental remains.

Christian Monuments of Cyrenaica publishes archaeological studies undertaken between 1953 and 1971 by the late J. B. Ward-Perkins (d. 1981) and the late R. G. Goodchild (d. 1968). It presents Ward-Perkins accounts (mostly left in advanced draft form) of 44 monuments, 35 of them certainly churches, together with plans of each made by professional architects after survey on the ground, drawings of some details and a considerable number of photographs, together with a draft overview of the buildings techniques used. Colleagues have provided introductory notes on other major features of the buildings and drawn attention to some of the problems that they raise. They have also added a brief account of other Christian buildings reported since Ward-Perkins' last visit to Cyrenaica, both in Cyrenaica itself, the late antique province of Libya Superior, and in that area of the Western Desert which formed the closely-related province of Libya Inferior.The detailed evidence collected here represents a basis for the study of late antique and early Byzantine Cyrenaica of a quality and extent that has never been available before; and is all the more important because time and chance have now damaged some of that evidence. It also gives a quite up-to-date, although very summary account of new evidence awaiting serious study; which, we may hope, will lead to further advances in our understanding of the late antique and early Byzantine periods.

This is a major new commentary on Jerome's Libellus de virginitate servanda , the first in any language to be devoted to this work. Written in Rome in 384, this treatise sets out the manner of life appropriate to a Christian virgin. It takes the form of a letter to a specific person, Eustochium, the teenage daughter of an aristocratic family, encouraging her to persevere in her intention of remaining a virgin. The Libellus , however, is more than just a friendly lecture on morality; it is an extensive academic treatise, forty-one chapters long, covering many aspects of virginity. Although the practice of unacknowledged quotation was common and acceptable throughout antiquity, Neil Adkin's commentary shows how far Jerome went in his borrowings from his Greek and Latin patristic predecessors and contemporaries, and also demonstrates how Jerome's brilliance as a writer enhanced his stolen material.

The results of recent archaeological excavation, systematic rural survey and detailed studies of pottery distributions have revealed the extent and complexities of the economy in the eastern empire. The eight papers in this volume demonstrate this complexity and prosperity, examining several types of product and how the economy evolved over time.

God, Man, and the world have always been, and are still today, the constant unchanging focus of humankind's spiritual concerns, marking the civilization which the people of the globe have inherited with its own particular features. But it has been Christianity, able to rise above those persistent concerns through the ages, that has revealed the true relationship between God, Man and the world, and has clothed it in the Greek language and with Greek ideas. As we view Christianity's progress in the world, two thousand years after the incarnation of God the Word, we can see very clearly that the holy fountain of all Christendom has always been Orthodoxy. Developing impressively in the Eastern regions of the then civilized world, where the strata of humankind were fertile in religious visions, Orthodoxy was to give shape and definition to its spiritual majesty through the thousand years of the Byzantine Empire, in order that it might live out its glory to the present day -a glory steeped in the blood of the Cross.

The first modern account of the conflict between the eastern Roman Empire and the Sasanian kingdom. Greatrex traces the background to the war, investigating relations between Rome and Persia, the state of Roman defences in the East, and the chaotic situation in Persia at the end of the 5th century. He then examines the sources and the war itself, including the development of Roman defences, and the attempts by both powers to secure control of the Transcaucasian kingdoms.

The final report of excavations undertaken by the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. The fort dates from the late fifth to early seventh centuries and was the first such fort to have been fully investigated. It was a small but strategically placed military installation which provided evidence for the late antique military system and the daily life of traders and travellers. The preservation conditions in the dry sand resulted in some remarkable finds and interesting zooarchaeological records.

The fifth century AD has always been a period of intense interest for historians. At the beginning, the Roman Empire looked as impentrable as it had done for centuries, but by 500AD the world had changed beyond recognition. The western emperor had been deposed and the imperial government had lost control of most of Europe. From now on, inhabitants of western Europe lived in a post-Roman world. The writers of Latin histories in the fifth century were not concerned with the minutiae of politcs, or military affairs, they were Christians who saw the development of the world purely as God's plan for humanity. The connection between present and past was best shown through the new type of historical work, the Christian chronicle, the narrative structure of which was based around extensive lists, with minimal written detail. The three chroniclers whose work is discussed here were amongst the earliest to take up this new literary form, and each wrote a continuation of Jerome's chroncile, itself a translation of Eusebius' Christian world chronicle.

The turning of biblical texts into Latin poetry - biblical paraphrase - was a significant literary activity in late antiquity (third to sixth centuries AD). The most important surviving examples of this form are Juvencus and Sedulius (of the Gospels), Arator (of Acts), "Cyprianus Gallus" (Genesis to Judges), Claudius Marius Victorius (Genesis) and Avitus (parts of Genesis and Exodus). Generally described as biblical epics because they are written in hexameters and imitate pagan epic (especially Virgil), they have also been widely recognized to have drawn for their technique of composition on the rhetorical school exercise of paraphrase. Dr. Roberts analyses in convincing detail how the epic genre interacted with the biblical text through the medium of paraphrase to produce a distinctively Christian literature. He begins by offering the first modern study of paraphrase; two chapters describe its theory and practice, taking into account the standard rhetorical handbooks and recently discovered papyrological evidence. From this perspective, he analyses the types of alterations biblical epic writers made to the biblical text, thereby demonstrating the literary effects they were trying to achieve.