Marion Kruse

I am a Roman historian interested in the full span of Roman history, including Rome's second millennium, the period which has traditionally (and misleadingly) been labeled Byzantine.

My early work and first book (The Politics of Roman Memory: from the Fall of the Western Empire to the Age of Justinian) focused on the reign of the emperor Justinian (r. 527–565 AD) and the preeminent historian of his reign, Prokopios of Kaisareia. I have since published on topics ranging from Xiphilinos' epitome of Cassius Dio to the organization of the east Roman field armies in late antiquity (The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630 with Anthony Kaldellis) and the quality of east Roman roads. I am currently preparing a translation of mirrors of pirnces by Synesios of Kyrene, Theophylaktos of Ohrid, and Thomas Magistros for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library.

My full CV is available here.

Ph.D.: The Ohio State University 2015 (Classics)

B.A.: University of Richmond 2008 (History)

2015 -2016 Lecturer in Classics, The Ohio State University,

2016 - Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Cincinnati,

Peer Reviewed Publications

“The Speech of the Armenians in Procopius: Justinian’s Foreign Policy and the Transition between the Books of the Wars,” Classical Quarterly, 63 (2013) 866-881.

“Archery in the Preface to Procopius’ Wars: A Figured Image of Agonistic Authorship,” Studies in Late Antiquity, 1.4 (2017) 381–406.

“The Epitomator Ioannes Xiphilinos and the Eleventh-Century Xiphilinoi,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 69 (2019) 257–274.

“The Agency of Xiphilinos in the Epitome of Cassius Dio,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 62.2 (2021) 193–223.

Book Chapter

“A Justinianic Debate Across Genres on the State of the Roman Republic,” in Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity, ed. G. Greatrex, H. Elton, and L. McMahon (Ashgate, 2015) 233-245.

“Justinian’s Laws and Procopius’ Wars,” in Procopius of Caesarea: Literary and Historical Interpretations, ed. E. Turqois and C. Lillington–Martin (Routledge, 2017) 186–200.

“Economic Thought and Ideology in Procopius,” in Le monde de Procope, ed. G. Greatrex and S. Janniard (De Boccard, 2018) 39–54.

“Xiphilinus’ Epitome of Cassius Dio,” in Studies in Byzantine Epitomes and the Greek Epitomizing Tradition, ed. C. Mallan (Leiden: Brill 2025) 195-220.

Book

The Politics of Roman Memory: From the Fall of the Western Empire to the Age of Justinian (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630 AD. Co-authored with Anthony Kaldellis. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2023).