Examining the role and position of the Byzantine empress between the fourth and the eighth centuries, this work explores the nature of female imperial power and contrasts it with male power. Was there such a thing as the "office of emperor/empress", or did power depend on individual personalities? This text investigates five questions: who the empress is; how she is titled; how she is talked about; what she looks like; and what she does. The period under discussion takes the reader from the empress-mother Helena, the first overtly Christian empress, to the only "female" emperor in Byzantine history, Eirene, and encompasses the time of the transition from the Roman world to the medieval.
- ISBN10 0718500768
- ISBN13 9780718500764
- Publish Date 1 July 2001
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 29 June 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Leicester University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English