Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity

This volume examines the transformation that took place in a wide range of genres in Late Antiquity. Aspects of sacred and secular literature are discussed, alongside chapters on technical writing, monody, epigraphy, epistolography and visual representation. What emerges is the flexibility of genres in the period: late antique authors were not slavish followers of their classical predecessors, but were capable of engaging with existing models and adapting them to their own purposes.

About the Author

Geoffrey Greatrex is Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada, where he has taught for twelve years. He organised the conference from which this book stems and is a specialist in the history of the eastern Roman empire in the fifth and sixth centuries. He is the co-author of The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late Antiquity (Liverpool, 2011) and a sub-editor for the Encyclopedia of the Roman Army (Oxford, 2014). Hugh Elton is Professor in the Department of Ancient History and Classics at Trent University, Canada, where he has taught for seven years. He was on the programme committee for the conference. He is a specialist in late Roman military history and the archaeology of late Roman Anatolia. He is the author of Warfare in Roman Europe, AD 350-425 (Oxford, 1996) and The Frontiers of the Roman Empire (London, 1996) as well as co-editor of Fifth Century Gaul: A Question of Identity? (Cambridge, 1992) and Regionalism in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor (Bordeaux, 2007).