With Volume 14 The Cambridge Ancient History concludes its story. This latest volume embraces the wide range of approaches and scholarship which have in recent decades transformed our view of Late Antiquity. In particular, traditional political and social history has been enormously enhanced by integrating the rich evidence of Christian writing, and the constantly expanding results of archaeological research. A picture emerges of a period of considerable military and political disruption, but also of vibrant intellectual and cultural activity. The volume begins with a series of narrative chapters. These are followed by sections on government and institutions, economy and society, and religion and culture. A section on the provinces and the non-Roman world marks the rise of new and distinct political and cultural entities. This volume, and the CAH, ends in around AD 600, before the Arab conquests shattered for ever what remained of the unity of the Roman world.

"One can only be immensely impressed on opening this book....An immediately apparent and most attractive feature of the volume under review is its generous supply of maps which are not only excellently produced but put to imaginative use....The volume is generous around the margins of the ancient world....But it is the interpretative discussions that are of most interest....Perhaps this issue can most clearly be seen with reference to women....No one who reads it will fail to be daunted by how much there is to know, nor grateful for the skill and style with which its authors lay so much before us. And the book stands as a superb vindication of the new field of late antiquity: unknown until recently."

Peter Heather, A. D. Lee, Averil Cameron, Michael Whitby, Roger Collins, M. McCormick, Sam Barnish, J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Detlef Liebs, T. M. Charles-Edwards, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Andrea Giardina, Ian N. Wood, Mark Humphries, Charlotte Roueché, Hugh Kennedy, James G. Keenan, Ze’ev Rubin, R. W. Thomson, Lawrence I. Conrad, S. G. Hall, Philip Rousseau, Peter Brown, Pauline Allen, Anne Sheppard, Robert Browning, Robin Cormack, Marlia Mundell Mango