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JAMES HOWARD-JOHNSTON, THE LAST GREAT WAR OF ANTIQUITY. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xix + 446, plates, illus., maps. isbn 9780198830191. £35.00.
Recent years have seen an ever-growing interest in the seventh-century Roman Empire. At least three doctoral theses focusing on Heraclius have been published within the last year or so, not to mention John Haldon's The Empire that Would Not Die (2016), a survey of how the Roman Empire survived Arab expansion. Yet the Mediterranean world faced major upheavals even before the rise of Islam and the Arabs’ growth to power. The first half of the century witnessed the clash of two great empires, the Roman and the Sasanian, which may well be labelled ‘the last great war of Antiquity’. James Howard-Johnston dedicated himself to the study of this period long before the revival of academic interest. In numerous articles and books on the sources and on Roman–Sasanian warfare, he has contributed substantially (though not in an uncontested manner) to our understanding of the Middle East during the seventh century. The book under review may thus be regarded as the culmination of a scholarly enterprise that has lasted as long as the Roman–Sasanian war (as the author admits ironically). Its aim is to offer a full account of the war. H.-J.'s approach is to disentangle the sometimes difficult chronology of events, to survey closely the geography of the theatre of war and to identify thereby factors which influenced the...