Michael Whitby is pro-vice-chancellor and head of the College of Arts and Law at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has also taught at the University of St. Andrews and the University of Warwick. He has written extensively on the history and historiography of the East Roman empire in the fifth to seventh centuries AD. Most recently, he has co-authored How to Win on the Battlefield: The 25 Key Tactics of All Time (2010) and co-edited The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (2007).

Harry Sidebottom is a lecturer in ancient history at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, UK, and previously held a fellowship at St. Benet's Hall, University of Oxford. Since 2003 he has been a regular reviewer of fiction, especially historical novels, in the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction (2004) as well as Iron and Rust (2014), The Amber Road (2013), and five other novels in the Warrior of Rome series, which is set in the Roman empire during the so-called Great Crisis of the third century AD.