André Piganiol, L’Empire chrétien (325–395), 2nd ed. updated by André Chastagnol (1972), offers an exceptionally rich and informative narrative among modern works. Diana Bowder, The Age of Constantine and Julian (1978), is good on those two reigns. A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey, 2 vol. (1964, reprinted 1986), is extraordinarily clear and detailed on these topics. On a major development, monasticism, Derwas J. Chitty,
The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism Under the Christian Empire (1966, reissued 1977), is highly readable. Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (1988), includes an up-to-date survey of evidence for decline, and also argues a thesis. Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths (1988; originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1980), is a superb study of a crucial player in the 4th to 6th centuries. Walter Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation (1980), carries the account further. Ramsay MacMullen