In her important work, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Deborah Deliyannis provides a detailed synthesis of the available material on Ravenna from the Roman period through until AD 850. As she briefly mentions at the end of her review of earlier scholarship, “There has as yet been no sustained scholarly treatment of Ravenna, in English, and this book is intended to address that void” (13). Deliyannis does exactly this, combining textual, archaeological, and artistic evidence in a clear and sophisticated way for readers who were perhaps put off by the extensive German text of F. W. Deichmann’s earlier synthesis (F. W. Deichmann, Ravenna: Geschichte und Monumente, Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1969). As she indicates early on, this work is not just another study of Ravenna’s art and architecture, although her discussions of the monuments are excellent, but rather a history in which “the monuments are presented as tangible sources of information about the city in which they were created, whose history they both reflect and helped to shape” (20).

Deliyannis divides up the history of Ravenna into five chronological phases, and presents a useful reference for each period, the monuments constructed and restored, and the changing ways in which scholars have engaged with this material.

The book’s introductory chapter lays the groundwork for Deliyannis’s later discussions. She indicates what she considers to be the major themes in Ravenna’s history, to which she returns throughout the work: Ravenna’s rivalry with Rome; the geographical ties to the East; the rise of the bishop and Archbishop; and problems with the city’s descriptions in ancient texts, many of which were composed at a much later date, but upon which scholars are reliant. A section on the history of scholarship on Ravenna follows, beginning with the important work of Agnellus from the ninth century and continuing up to the present day. This detailed history is incredibly useful for an audience previously unfamiliar with this material, especially because Deliyannis also explains the historical contexts and inherent biases of each text that together have clouded the understanding of Ravenna in prior studies. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the importance and limitations of the archaeological evidence as well as a discussion of the historiography of late antique art and architecture from Ravenna, providing useful definitions for art-historical terms such as formalism and iconography. This elucidation of key terms, which she does again later in the book, and which so many other scholarly works would expect the reader to understand, opens up this work to a much larger audience, beyond art historians or students of Ravenna.

The first chronological discussion of Ravenna focuses upon the Roman period. The evidence for Roman and pre-Roman Ravenna is mostly archaeological, but the constraints imposed by the high water table and subsequent difficulties in excavation make detailed reconstructions difficult. There is evidence of Etruscan and Greek pottery from the site as early as the fifth century BCE, although the earliest architectural evidence is in the form of traces of third-century BCE city walls. Using textual and archaeological evidence Deliyannis provides as clear a picture of the development of the Roman city as one is able. She discusses the development of the harbor at Classe, which was so important to Ravenna’s prosperity, in part because of the presence of the Roman fleet, which suffered during the third and fourth centuries AD as the importance of the navy in general decreased. The city witnessed a revival in the late fourth century, which was to continue into the eighth century, making Ravenna an unusually prosperous late antique city when other cities were in serious decline.

Deliyannis begins her third chapter with a detailed discussion of the history of Ravenna in the fifth century. She commences all of her chapters with such discussions, which are clear, well organized, and supported by extensive references to ancient and modern sources. This contextualizes for the reader the accompanying monument descriptions. After the Emperor Honorius moved his capital there from Milan in AD 402, Ravenna witnessed a building boom. One of the most important fifth-century figures was Galla Placidia, sister to Emperor Honorius, who, together with the emperors of the fifth century, was a significant patron of the architectural embellishment of the city. Deliyannis provides detailed descriptions for a number of monuments, placing Ravenna’s artistic and architectural choices within a framework of trends seen in Constantinople and Milan. These monument descriptions all follow a template, which runs as follows: a brief introduction to the building; its purpose; the architectural additions and restorations up to the present day; a detailed description of the building’s original layout, including, where possible, dimensions; and a discussion of the decoration of the building and how it has been interpreted by previous scholars. These discussions are well illustrated and referenced, and such descriptions help to make Ravenna more accessible to English-speaking students whose language skills are not developed enough to understand earlier German and Italian scholarly work. In addition to surviving buildings, Deliyannis includes buildings that are mentioned in surviving literary sources, but of which no material trace remains.

In the following two chapters, Deliyannis discusses Ravenna during the Ostrogothic period. The first of these details the history of the victory of Odacer, who deposed the last emperor and declared himself King of Italy, his death in AD 493 at the hands of the Ostrogothic leader Theodoric, and Theodoric’s contributions to the urban landscape of the city. The first thirty years of Theodoric’s reign mark a period of prosperity for Italy, since he focused on solving economic problems and created a period of peace for the country. He was attentive to the architecture of Rome and Ravenna, repairing numerous buildings and adding to both cities’ architectural stock. The monuments Deliyannis describes are the secular buildings restored and constructed up to AD 540, including additions to the palace, a basilica Herculis referenced in the literary sources, and the impressive Mausoleum of Theodoric.

This period is also of significant importance to the history of Christianity, since the Goths followed the Arian doctrine, which had been condemned at the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople. Deliyannis begins her fifth chapter, which focuses on the religion and religious buildings of the Goths, with a general introduction to Empire-wide religious controversies in this period, once again making the material accessible to readers from many different backgrounds. Among other buildings discussed, Deliyannis spends twenty-five pages presenting the layout and decoration of Theodoric’s Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, detailing the various mosaic scenes and their significance to the Arian discussion, as well as scholarly analysis of the building’s original and later images and their importance to art history.

After Theodoric’s death and the defeat of the Ostrogoths, the Orthodox Church began to gain ground again in Ravenna. The book’s final two chapters detail the prosperity of Ravenna into the seventh and eighth centuries, the establishment of a Byzantine administration, the importance of the archbishop to the city’s fortunes, and the continued ideological and political rivalry of Ravenna with Rome, particularly during the period of Autocephaly in the mid-seventh century. After his promotion from Bishop to Archbishop in AD 553, Maximian helped to shape the continued and growing importance of Ravenna’s church for prosperity, producing, among other things, a history of the Episcopal see of his city. He and his successors, together with financial support from a banker named Julian, about whom little is known, sponsored the creation of many new churches—enriched with imported materials and employing Eastern architectural innovations—including San Vitale (discussed in great detail over the course of twenty-seven pages) and Sant’ Apollinare in Classe.

By the late seventh and eight centuries, the process of decline which most other cities in Italy had experienced much earlier finally caught up to Ravenna. Renewed prosperity in the ninth century, during which time the historian Agnellus was writing, was the beginning of a series of scholarship that overestimated the earlier prestige of the city and until recently affected scholarship on the city.

Deliyannis concludes her work with seven tables in an Appendix, six detailing the various classes of rulers from the fourth century on, and the seventh providing basic dimensions for surviving basilica churches with naves, aisles, and apses. The endnotes and bibliography are extensive for those who would like to study further the material presented in this book.

Deliyannis has created a compelling reference for the late antique history of Ravenna, one that will be useful not only for scholars but also for undergraduate and graduate students looking to learn about this fascinating city. She effortlessly combines material and literary evidence, never making one rely upon the other, and when necessary highlighting the limitations of extant knowledge. Ravenna in Late Antiquity is an example of an interdisciplinary presentation at its very best and is a crucial addition to the extensive bibliography on Ravenna, opening up its treasures to an extensive new group of English-language readers.