This latest volume in the SPBS series makes a notable contribution to our understanding both of the evidence for travel, and of the realities and perceptions of communications in the Byzantine world. Four aspects of travel in the Byzantine world, from the 6th to the 15th century, are examined: technicalities of travel on land and sea, purposes of travel, foreign visitors' perceptions of Constantinople, and the representation of the travel experience in images and in written accounts. Sources used to illuminate these aspects include descriptions of journeys, pilot books, bilingual word lists, shipwrecks, monastic documents, but as the opening paper shows the range of such sources can be far wider than generally supposed. The contributors highlight road and travel conditions for horses and humans, types of ships and speed of sea journeys, the nature of trade in the Mediterranean, the continuity of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, attitudes toward travel. Patterns of communication in the Mediterranean are revealed through distribution of ceramic finds, letter collections, and the spread of the plague.

This volume includes the thirteen papers which were presented during the workshop The Reign of Heraclius: Crisis and Confrontation, which took place from 19 to 21 April 2001 at the University of Groningen. The long reign of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610-641) saw drastic political changes: the conquest of the eastern provinces of the empire by the Persians (603-620), Heraclius' counter-offensive and recovery of these territories (622-628), and the definitive loss of almost the whole Byzantine east in the 630s and early 640s to the Muslim Arabs. Did these historical events cause significant changes in the administrative, political, military and ecclesiastical structures and institutions of the empire? And if so, how did they affect imperial ideology and propaganda and the range of ideas concerning the empire and the emperor which circulated in the different religious communities? In the contributions presented in this book these and other questions are discussed by outstanding scholars of Byzantine history and culture, Eastern Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

More than any other type of environment, with the possible exception of mountains, the sea has been understood since antiquity as being immovable to a proverbial degree. Yet it was the sea's capacity for movement – both literally and figuratively through such emotions as fear, hope and pity – that formed one of the primary means of conceptualizing its significance in Late Antique societies. This volume advances a new and interdisciplinary understanding of what the sea as an environment and the pursuit of seafaring meant in antiquity, drawing on a range of literary, legal and archaeological evidence to explore the social, economic and cultural factors at play. The contributions are structured into three thematic parts which move from broad conceptual categories to specific questions of networks and mobility. Part one takes a wide view of the Mediterranean as an environment with great metaphorical and symbolic potential. Part two looks at networks of seaborne communication and the role of islands as the characteristic hubs of the Mediterranean. Finally, part three engages with the practicalities of tackling the sea as a challenging environment that needs to be challenged politically, legally and for the means of travel.