Books by Michael Kulikowski

The Triumph of Empire takes readers into the political heart of imperial Rome and recounts the extraordinary challenges overcome by a flourishing empire. Michael Kulikowski’s history begins with the reign of Hadrian, who visited the farthest reaches of his domain and created stable frontiers, to the decades after Constantine the Great, who overhauled the government, introduced a new state religion, and founded a second Rome.

Factionalism and intrigue sapped the empire from within, even at its apex. Roman politics could resemble a blood sport: rivals resorted to assassination; emperors rose and fell with bewildering speed, their reigns measured in weeks, not years; and imperial succession was never entirely assured. Canny emperors―including Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, and Diocletian―constantly cultivated the aristocracy’s favor to maintain a grip on power. Despite such volatility, the Roman Empire protected its borders, defeating successive attacks from Goths and Germans, Persians and Parthians. Yet external threats persisted and the imperial government sagged under its own administrative weight. Religion, too, was in flux with the rise of Christianity and other forms of monotheism. In the fourth century CE, Constantine and his heirs reformed imperial institutions by separating civilian and military hierarchies, restructuring the government of both provinces and cities, and ensuring the prominence of Christianity.

The Triumph of Empire is a fresh, authoritative narrative of Rome at its height and of its evolution―from being the central power of the Mediterranean world to becoming one of several great Eurasian civilizations.

What is a chronicle? Who wrote them? Did they develop in the sixth century in the margins of Easter tables or are they an integral part of a tradition that reaches back to the Assyrians and Babylonians? Now for the first time R. W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski present a diachronic study of chronicles, annals, and consularia from the twenty-fifth century BC to the twelfth century AD, from ancient Egypt to medieval Europe. They examine what chronicles were, who wrote them, why they wrote them, and how the genre changed and developed over the space of three millennia.

The multi-volume series Mosaics of Time offers for the first time an in-depth analysis of the Roman Latin chronicle traditions from their beginnings in the first century BC to their end in the sixth century AD. For each chronicle it presents a comprehensive introduction, edition, translation, and historical and historiographical commentary. Chronicles seem to be everywhere in ancient and medieval history. Now for the first time, R. W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski present a diachronic study of chronicles, annals, and consularia from the twenty-fifth century BC to the twelfth century AD, demonstrating the origins and interlinked traditions of the oldest and longest continuing genre of historical writing in the Western world. This introductory volume of Mosaics of Time provides both the detailed context for the study of the Latin chronicle traditions that occupies the remaining three volumes of this series as well as a general study of chronicles across three millennia from the ancient Egyptian Palermo Stone to the medieval European chronicle of Sigebert of Gembloux and beyond. The work is an essential companion to ancient and medieval history, historiography, and literary studies.

The history of Spain in late antiquity offers important insights into the dissolution of the western Roman empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. Nonetheless, scholarship on Spain in this period has lagged behind that on other Roman provinces. Michael Kulikowski draws on the most recent archeological and literary evidence to integrate late antique Spain into the broader history of the Roman empire, providing a definitive narrative and analytical account of the Iberian peninsula from A.D. 300 to 600.

Kulikowski begins with a concise introduction to the early history of Roman Spain, and then turns to the Diocletianic reforms of 293 and their long-term implications for Roman administration and the political ambitions of post-Roman contenders. He goes on to examine the settlement of barbarian peoples in Spain, the end of Roman rule, and the imposition of Gothic power in the fifth and sixth centuries. In parallel to this narrative account, Kulikowski offers a wide-ranging thematic history, focusing on political power, Christianity, and urbanism.

Kulikowski's portrait of late Roman Spain offers some surprising conclusions. With new archeological evidence and a fresh interpretation of well-known literary sources, Kulikowski contradicts earlier assertions of a catastrophic decline of urbanism, finding that the physical and social world of the Roman city continued well into the sixth century despite the decline of Roman power. This groundbreaking study will prompt further reassessments of the other Roman provinces and of medieval Spanish history.

Late in August 410, Rome was starving, its residents were turning on one another, and, to make matters worse, the Gothic army camped at Rome's gates was restless. The Gothic commander was Alaric, a Roman general and barbarian chieftain. Leading an army that was short of food and potentially mutinous, sacking Rome was his only way forward. The old heart of Rome's empire fell to a conqueror's sword for the first time in eight hundred years. For three days, Alaric's Goths sacked the eternal city. In the words of a contemporary, the mother of the world had been murdered. Alaric's story is the culmination of a long historical journey by which the Goths came to be a part of the Roman world. Whether as friends or foes of the Roman empire, the Goths and their history are entwined with the larger history of Rome in the third and fourth centuries. Rome's Gothic Wars explains how the Goths came into existence on the margins of the Roman world, how different Gothic groups dealt with the enormous power of Rome just beyond their lands, and how, in two traumatic years, thousands of Goths entered the imperial provinces and destroyed the army that was sent to suppress them, leaving the emperor of the eternal city dead on the field of battle. Unlike other histories of the barbarians, Rome's Gothic Wars shows exactly how and why modern historians understand the Goths the way they do - and why our understanding is so controversial. Michael Kulikowski is associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. A recipient of the Solmsen Fellowship at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he is the author of Late Roman Spain and Its Cities, which was awarded an Honorable Mention in Classics and Archaeology from the Association of American University Presses. His scholarly articles have appeared in Early Medieval Europe, Britannia, Phoenix, and Byzantium, and he has appeared on the History Channel's Barbarians series.

This collection of essays on late Roman Hispania describes the relationships between the peninsula and the rest of the late antique world. Its contributors archaeologists, historians, and historians of art address both the historical evidence and the complex historiography of late antique Hispania.