The Restoration of the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity by G. Kalas

Book Review by Ian Hughes

Recently, there has been a growth of interest in and publication of books about Late Antiquity. This has been stimulated to a large extent by a growth in the publication of many of the difficult primary sources concerning the period, usually with an accompanying commentary.  However, there is one small problem that lies at the core of any study of the period: the sources contain a limited amount of information and what little there is has been analysed and debated for a very long time.

The net result is that there is little new that can be found with which to reassess the events of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E.  It may be possible to augment our knowledge with other evidence, and the most obvious alternative is archaeology. Yet there are problems with this, the most obvious and frustrating being that archaeology can rarely give dates within a small time frame, even less an exact year.  Recent archaeological excavations in the Roman Forum and its surrounds are different...

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