The Decline of the Ancient World.

Longman Group, London/NewYork, 1975. VIII,414p. Paperback. Series: A General History of Europe. Nice copy. ?As the author states in his preface, ?The decline of the ancient world? is a shortened and simplified version of ?The later Roman Empire?. The text has been reduced to about a third (?), and space has been saved by general rewriting (without changing points of view), by compression and rearrangement, and by eliminating detailed discussion of controversial subjects and the quotation of primary sources. (?) The appendices themselves have changed character and become simpler. (?) The author implies (p.VII) that the new version is addressed to a new audience. It is apparently intended to fit the needs of students seeking a clear and sophisticated introduction to late antiquity (?). The author has been eminently successful in producing such a book; it will be as indispensable for students as the original version is already for scholars. (?) Following an introductory chapter on sources, the contents of this book, as in the earlier one, fall naturally into two parts. One third of the text is devoted to a narrative of the political background, to administrative social, and economic developments during the principate and later empire, with the emphasis on the years A.D. 284-602. The remainder analyses developments in those three fields during the latter period and concludes with a summary chapter on the reasons for the collapse of Roman government in the West. (?) If there is any single leitmotiv in this book, it would appear to be the frequent stress on the top-heaviness of imperial social structure that proved to be fatal, at least to Roman government in the West. A legally privileged and economically unproductive minority (?) enjoyed a disproportionate share of the material benefits accruing to imperial civilisation. (?) Late imperial class structure and its economic consequences thus appear as the ultimate product of conditions built into classical antiquity since the Hellenistic age, conditions that Roman rule had not changed but simply spread throughout the Mediterranean basin.? (WILLIAM G. SINNIGEN in The Classical Journal, 1967, pp.31-34).