The few scraps of information which we have about Flavius Cresconius Corippus come almost exclusively from his two poems, the lohannis and the In laudem lustini Augusti minoris. Despite this he was still the last important Latin author of Late Antiquity.
Corippus’s poem on the accession of Justin II is considered a most unusual work. Unlike the lohannis, so far as we know the only other product by the same author, it tells of no epic battles against barbarian peoples. Instead we have a narrative poem, covering in great detail the accession of an emperor, the first week of his reign and (in part, for the poem breaks off before the end) his inauguration as consul.
This is the first book to utilize or interpret this immensely valuable body of evidence as a whole. Cameron has contributed to one of the most urgent tasks of modern scholars of late antiquity and (still more) of the Byzantine period-the provision of a readable text with translation and commentary of this important work which until now was only available in plain and inadequate editions.
