This research volume reassesses one of the most fundamental transformations in Late Antiquity, centered on a pivotal region: the transition from 'Empire' to 'Kingdom' in Italy c. 250-500. During the first quarter of the first millennium, Italy was still the heart of the Roman Empire; the only political superstructure ever managing to encompass the entire Mediterranean world and its European hinterland. Yet during the second quarter of this millennium, Italy underwent dramatic evolutions from demotion to a provincialized region (c. 285-395), to a new imperial hub kept afloat by cannibalizing other provinces' resources (c. 395-476), to an autonomous regnum governed by non-Roman rulers as part of an Eastern Roman 'Commonwealth' (c. 475-535).
