"To paraphrase Huxley, this book is about what generations of men and women experienced and then did in the wake of the great political and military crises that overtook the city of Rome in late antiquity, a period that spans from the late third through the early seventh centuries. Rome was still the largest city in the western Mediterranean and an imperial capital, with a resident aristocracy and prestigious institutions that had enabled Romans to rule an empire since the third century BC"--