This is a huge, sweeping journey, one any reader would love to be able to undertake. But if I have one serious complaint about this book, it is its brevity. At a scant 132 pages one flies through the empire like an uncomfortable spirit. There’s a lot packed in, but often you are left longing for more detail. There’s an extensive scholarly apparatus to direct you to more reading, but most casual readers, like myself, are unlikely to go that far – but I’d like to know more – like to read a 400-page version of it. But then again, it is hard to criticize an author who leaves you wanting more.
And Traina does at least finally, if very briefly, follow up the fate of his main characters. Flavius continued as a faithful envoy; Nestorius was disgraced and his followers labeled heretics, consequently fleeing into the Sassanian empire and beyond to Mongolia, China and Indonesia; Theodosius died age 50 after falling from his horse; Pulcheria eventually forced Eudocia into a convent, and after her brothers death legitimized the accession of General Marcian by marrying him (although in a celibate union), and today’s she’s revered as a saint.
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