Publisher's Synopsis
The essays in this volume explore the dynamics between leaders and their communities in the fourth through seventh centuries. During this period, people negotiated profound religious, intellectual, and cultural change while still deeply enmeshed in the legacy of the Roman Empire. The memory of the classical past was a powerful and compelling social and political force for the denizens of Late Antiquity, even as their physical surroundings came to resemble less and less the ideals of the Greco-Roman city. The papers examine how leaders exercised their authority in their communities, at times exhibiting continuity with ancient patterns of leadership, but in other cases shifting toward new paradigms characteristic of a post-classical world.
