Mark Humphries, Ph.D. (1997), University of St Andrews, is Professor of Ancient History at Swansea University. He publishes widely on the political, religious, and cultural history of late antiquity, and is a general editor of Translated Texts for Historians (Liverpool University Press).

This study examines how cities have become an area of significant historical debate about late antiquity, challenging accepted notions that it is a period of dynamic change and reasserting views of the era as one of decline and fall.