Acceso usuarios
Salvatore Cosentino
The theme of John Haldon’s volume concerns the reasons why the Eastern Roman Empire did not fall during the 7th century despite the substantial territorial losses it suffered with the Muslim expansion. In posing this question – why did the Empire survive? – the author revisits the history of the entire 7th century, in substantial continuity with his 1990 monograph,1 but enriching it with new ideas (climatology, palynology, more attention to the Byzantine West) and sometimes proposing different approaches than in the past to some very problematic issues (as in the case of the kommerkiarioi). Overall, this new work is another important contribution by Haldon to our understanding of the “transitional period”, when the Empire changed from a society organized on the cultural, social and economic models of late Antiquity into what was essentially, at the end of the 7th century, a medieval state
