Hello there. This is Mark Bauerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

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world of American higher education at Wyoming Catholic.edu. Paul Stevenson is with us today. He

is a historian and author of many books, including Constantine, Roman Emperor,

Christian Victor, and The Serpent Column, a cultural biography. His new book is New Rome,

the Empire in the East, our topic today. Welcome, sir. Thank you. Okay, well, first of all,

you focus on the years, let's identify.

395 to 700.

What do those years constitute in big terms in standard histories of the West?

Well, 395 is typically chosen by historians and others who wish to differentiate the Roman world from

what comes afterwards, because that's the year in which formerly the empire was allegedly

separated between an Eastern Empire and a Western Empire. Fundamentally, that's true. Institutionally,

...