(Actual text only 400 pages long - the rest is notes and references.)

This was an interesting survey of the whole "decline and fall of the Roman Empire" period, through the lens of Ravenna, a city of great importance during this period, and not much at all afterwards (which is probably part of what has allowed it to keep as many of its early Christian treasures as it has; yes, it got pillaged for art and building resources, not least by Charlemagne, but there was no need for it to be besieged or bombed later on). It provided a lot of interesting links in the ongoing patchwork of my general historical knowledge (around the fringes of Constantinople history, and of course the foundation of Venice, which replaced Ravenna as the trading port when the Po silted up) and of course highlighted some of the real historical material that inspired Kay's Sarantine duology. It was written in a fairly sprightly fashion, focusing on key historic figures to breathe life into what would otherwise have been quite a dry sifting of history through the scant remaining legal records. I might have preferred more of a thematic approach, one based on the arguments of Ravenna's important (some of which had to wait until the conclusion to really get drawn together) but this is slightly more an academic-leaning book - a survey, as noted - so you get what you get. A solid book on the subject.