Scholars generally assume that Procopius, the noted sixth century classicizing historian, was a misogynist who in his notorious Secret History belittled the impact Theodora and Antonina had on the Empire’s fortunes. In that work and his Wars, Procopius highlights the plight of women in the warfare of the reign of Justinian. How, then, are we to reconcile the seeming hatred of, for example, Antonina in the Secret History with the apparent empathy of the suffering inhabitants of Italy in the Wars? In this chapter the author explores the role of women in the military of the age of Justinian at both the top (amongst the officer class – Antonina) and the bottom (amongst the civilians and the rank-and-file) ends, through the gaze of Procopius, and in the process establish the female component of what is generally assumed to have been a wholly male space. Comparative evidence is abundant and includes such materials as the Code of Justinian; other sixth century texts such as those of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, Agathias, and Corippus; the papyri of Nessana (which detail the relationship between soldiers and civilians in late sixth century Israel/Palestine); and the material remains of Roman fortresses such as el-Lejjun.

Machiavellis attack on the civic humanism of Leonardo Bruni reveals Bruni to be a substantial opponent.

The two great Victorian Platonists – George Grote and Benjamin Jowett – are often perceived as championing diametrically opposed perspectives on Plato: utilitarian vs. idealist. This chapter argues that no less important is what they had in common: an ‘atomist’ hermeneutics, in fierce reaction against attempts to make a system out of the dialogues; and a combination of scrupulous attention to the texts as historical documents with insistence that giving Plato his place in the history of philosophy and ‘in the scale of human improvement’ was no less the historian’s obligation. Finally, both men were active in the public sphere, looking for similar ‘modern applications’ of what was best in Plato’s political thought, particularly in the sphere of education.

This chapter is an abstract of a paper that argued that historians of Greek civic culture in the Roman Empire should draw on the novels for details of Greek city life, of the behaviour of its elites, and of the relation between city and country – something Fergus Millar did, quite independently, and very effectively, in his UCL inaugural lecture ‘The world of the Golden Ass’ in March 1981.

Chapter 12 ties together the book’s central themes and highlights its main contributions. It argues that the Revolutionary Guards have endeavored to write the history of the Iran-Iraq War because of the way the Guards view the importance and meaning of the conflict in Iran today, the way they understand the nature and dynamism of history, and their commitment to what they view as the historical imperative of keeping the war alive.

This chapter offers a rationale for the book and an introduction to Flodoard’s career and works. It summarises key political developments in the tenth-century West Frankish kingdom and provides an outline of the dominant historiographical interpretations of the period. In theory, Flodoard should be a star witness in debates about the nature of political and social change in the kingdoms and polities that succeeded the Carolingian empire, but his works have tended to be overlooked in favour of charters and other ‘documentary’ evidence. When Flodoard has been invoked by scholars, this usage has tended to be uncritical, primarily because he appears to be a straightforward, impartial writer. From what Flodoard himself tells us about his career, however, this apparent neutrality is clearly an illusion, and therefore an authorial strategy that requires interrogation. Finally, this chapter provides a historiographical survey of the major political and literary approaches to medieval historiography and medieval authors that underpin the methodology of this book.