Project

The Worldly Apocalypse: The Fall of Rome in History and Culture

Program

ACLS Fellowship Program

Department

History

Abstract

This project uses methods drawn from literary criticism and intellectual history to examine historical works written as the Roman empire first became Christian, then disintegrated into its medieval successor states. It studies late antique historians from Eusebius to the sixth century, as readers, scholars, and literary creators, with the aim of answering a single, novel question: How did contemporaries narrate the events we moderns look back on as the “Fall of Rome”?