Ian Hughes is a British historian and author specialising in the military and political history of the later Roman Empire. He studied Ancient and Medieval History before completing a master’s degree in Ancient History and Society, with research focusing on ethnicity among the auxiliary troops of the late Roman army. A former teacher who became a full-time writer, he lives in South Yorkshire. His work concentrates on the fourth to sixth centuries, when civil wars, migration, religious change and the increasing power of military commanders transformed the Roman world.
Hughes’s books include Belisarius: The Last Roman General, Stilicho: The Vandal Who Saved Rome, Aetius: Attila’s Nemesis, Imperial Brothers, Patricians and Emperors, Gaiseric: The Vandal Who Sacked Rome and Attila the Hun. He has also written A Military Life of Constantine the Great, which examines Constantine’s campaigns, civil wars and military reforms rather than concentrating solely on his conversion to Christianity. Hughes combines biography with campaign history, using fragmentary literary sources to reconstruct the careers of emperors, generals and Germanic rulers during the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the survival of Roman power in the East. His books are historical nonfiction rather than novels.
