Pick Up Ruling The Later Roman Empire Produced By Christopher Kelly In PDF
enjoyable and in depth look into the relationships between bureaucrats and relationships within the government of the Later Roman Empire.
Particularly enjoyed the sections on payments within the government and how they handled it and the section on how the Emperor would interact with the government to maintain his authority over it.
DG.KThis book gives insight into later Roman bureaucracy,
In brief, this book has shown that the later Roman bureaucracy was very complex and systematised in a way that we could not have hope to imagine.
This degree of complex structure and centralisation can be compared to the centralised kingdoms in the early modern Europe or even has surpassed them.
Most of the information comes from an account of a Roman official, John Lydus, who has written an autobiography which describes his everyday life and how he has fared in the bureaucracy.
The author uses his account with variety of sources to visualise what the bureaucracy would have been.
In this sense, he successfully has written a book that could give readers an understanding of the bureaucracy.
That is, after you have finished the book, you will be able to explain how the later Roman empire bureaucracy operated.
Although the book is rather technical, it is not too academic, and it gives just enough information that general readers would be able to follow through the book without having to google up some terms or knowledge every now and then.
Nonetheless, it is not entertaining, especially the latter part which deals with the technical details of the later Roman bureaucracy.
Final thought: perfectly worth for academic reading, but, if you are not an enthusiast in history, I don't recommend this for leisure reading.
Based on historical evidence the author reconstructs how Empire's every day administrative function were carried out.
I was surprised to learn that later Roman Empire had civil service so complex and so regulated that it could match its version in many today's advanced countries.
At first, I really enjoyed the author's excellent writing style and wealth of new information in the first few chapters.
However, later book becomes quite boring with repetitive information,
posted by David
sitelink blogspot. com/ In this highly original work, Christopher Kelly paints a remarkable picture of running a superstate.
He portrays a complex system of government openly regulated by networks of personal influence and the payment of money.
Focusing on the Roman Empire after Constantine's conversion to Christianity, Kelly illuminates a period of increasingly centralized rule through an ever more extensive and intrusive bureaucracy.
The book opens with a view of its times through the eyes of a highranking official in sixthcentury Constantinople, John Lydus.
His On the Magistracies of the Roman State, the only memoir of its kind to come down to us, gives an impassioned and revealing account of his career and the system in which he worked.
Kelly draws a wealth of insight from this singular memoir and goes on to trace the operation of power and influence, exposing how these might be successfully deployed or skillfully diverted by those wishing either to avoid government regulation or to subvert it for their own ends.
Ruling the Later Roman Empire presents a fascinating procession of officials, emperors, and local power brokers, winners and losers, mapping their experiences, their conflicting loyalties, their successes, and their failures.
This important book elegantly recaptures the experience of both rulers and ruled under a sophisticated and highly successful
system of government.
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