This impressive volume has been assembled as a tribute to John Matthews, Professor of History and Classics at Yale, and even a title as broad as it bears can do scant justice to the range and depth of his contribution to the study of Roman history. Yet the Editors have sought to ensure that this volume offers ‘an integrated collection of essays’, and the result is a set of studies which pay due tribute to the Matthewsian inheritance while remaining both signifi cant and interesting in themselves. A collection of thirteen essays plus introduction, it is divided into three parts which correspond to aspects of that inheritance. Part 1, ‘Politics, Law, and Society’, takes its cue from the close, even Symean studies of western aristocracies and the imperial court for which Matthews may still be best known, here characterised as ‘political life and élite experience in late antiquity’ (p. 7). Part 2, ‘Biography and Panegyrics’, focusses on more unusual or marginal texts, and captures the consistent awareness in Matthews’ work of the importance of local cultural contexts in refi ning or undermining our understanding of classical culture; and Part 3, ‘Faces of Theodosius I’, offers a reminder of the value of looking at a single subject – in this case an emperor very conscious of his image and reputation – from a variety of angles, in order to build up a three-dimensional picture.