ABSTRACT
Romans were never indifferent to history. They trusted in precedent, not progress, and self-consciously defined themselves against their past. Throughout the fifteen centuries separating the first Roman emperor from the last, antiquity provided models of correct behavior and conveyed moral and political legitimacy, especially in times of uncertainty and upheaval. This book shows how one late-antique scholar, John Lydus, understood his ties to the past during the reign of the emperor Justinian I, a period of political flux and cultural redefinition of great importance in the development of the Roman state.
