Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity is a rough periodization (c. 300-600 AD) used by historians and other scholars to describe the interval between high Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean world - between the decline of the western Roman Empire from the 3rd century AD onward, to the Islamic Conquests, and the re-forming of Eastern Europe under the Byzantine Empire. The term Spätantike, literally "late antiquity", has been used by German-lanuage historians since its popularization by Alois Riegl in the late 19th century. It was given currency in English partly by the writings of Peter Brown.

The continuities between imperial Rome as it was reorganized by Diocletian and the Early Middle Ages are stressed by writers who wish to emphasise that the seeds of medieval culture were already developing in the Christianized empire, and indeed continued to do so in the Eastern, or "Byzantine" Empire, while Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the Roman tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities of Classical Antiquity endured throughout Europe into the Middle Ages, the usage "Early Middle Ages" emphasizes a break with the classical past, and the term "Migrations Period" emphasizes the disruptions in the same period of time.

Religion

If there was a singular important transformation in Late Antiquity, it was the formation and evolution of the Abrahamic religions: Christianity, post-diaspora Judaism, and eventually Islam, which marked a decisive end to Late Antiquity wherever it reached.

The rise of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire, starting with the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great in 312, clearly marked an end to the Classical world. By the late 4th century the "Christian revolution" had almost completely reversed over a millennium of pagan culture, transforming the Classical Roman world "rustling with the presence of many divine spirits" (Brown, Authority and the Sacred).

The birth of Christian monasticism in the deserts of Egypt in 4th century, which initially operated outside the authority of the main Church, would become so successful that by the 8th century it penetrated the Church and became the primary Christian rule within. Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in Late Antiquity, others would also serve to test the faith of the most devout Christians including the Grazers, holy men who ate only grass and chained themselves up like barnyard animals; the Holy Fool movement, in which acting like a fool was considered more divine than folly; and the Stylites movement, where one practitioner lived atop a 50-foot pole for 40-years.

Islam appeared in the 7th century and the Islamic conquests fundamentally changed both the Eastern and Western empires in different ways. See also Pirenne Thesis.

Late Antiquity marks the decline of Roman state religion, circumscribed in degrees by edicts inspired by Christian advisers to 4th century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism and the Chaldaean oracles, some novel, such as hermeticism.

Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the parchment codex (bound book) over the papyrus volumen (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic exegesis.

Laity vs clerical

Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be seen between the laity and a celibate male leadership, who were removed from the traditional Roman motivations of public and private life marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and who were wholly unlike the married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on priestly celibacy, celibacy in Late Antique Christianity tended to take the form of abstinence from sexual relations after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban clergy. Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige, to their admirers, to the traditional prestige of urban notables, the potentes (Brown 1987 p 270).

Political transformation

The Late Antique period also saw a wholesale transformation of the political and social basis of life in and around the Roman Empire.

The Roman citizen elite in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, under the pressure of taxation and the ruinous cost of presenting spectacular public entertainments in the traditional cursus honorum, had found under the Antonines that security could only be obtained by combining their established roles in the local town with new worldly ones, as servants and representatives of a geographically distant Emperor. After Constantine centralized affairs in Constantinople in the early 4th century, the Late Antique upper class was divided among those who had access to the far-away centralized administration (in concert with the great landowners), and those who did not—though they were well-born and thoroughly educated, a classical education was no longer the path to success, rather it was one of access, privileged and often corruption in the centralized and bureaucratic state. Room at the top of Late Antique society was smaller and more status competitive, the plain toga that had identified all members of the ruling class indifferently was replaced with silk gowns, court vestments and massive jewelry.

Cities

This period saw the decline of the Western Roman empire into city-states (Rome, Ravenna, Triers, etc) and independent units (Francia, Britannia, Hispania). Concurrently, the continuity of the eastern Roman empire at Constantinople meant that the turning-point for the Greek East, came later, not until Constantinople turned its back on the lost Middle East in the 8th century and looked toward the Balkans.

Public building

In the cities the strained economics of Roman over expansion stopped growth. New public building in Late Antiquity came directly or indirectly from the emperors and their representatives, and the privileged supplies of grain and oil, available only to the citizen class, needy or not, was unbroken until the 5th century. But the elite appeared less often in the forums; they withdrew in the cities to an opulent domus but more frequently to the private luxuries of the villa. The basilica of the great man, from Africa to Britannia, functioned in the 4th century as a substitute for the stoas and public basilicas associated with forums and traditional outdoor public life. In the Christianized basilica, the bishop took the chair in the apse reserved in secular structures for the magistrate—or the Emperor himself— as the representative here and now of Christ Pantocrator, the Ruler of All, his characteristic Late Antique icon.

Sculpture and art

Late Antiquity saw a decisive move away from classical idealized realism to an iconic style that emphasized frontal representation. Unlike classical art, Late Antique art does not emphasize the beauty and movement of the body, but rather, hints at the spiritual reality behind its subjects.

Literature

In the field of literature, Late Antiquity is known for the declining use of classical Greek and Latin, and the rise of literary cultures in Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Coptic, vulgar Latin and, in some cases, Romance dialects. It also marks a shift in literary style, with a preference for encyclopedic works in a dense and allusive style, consisting of summaries of earlier works often dressed up in elaborate allegorical garb (e.g. De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae (The Marriage of Mercury and Philology) of Martianus Capella, and the De Arithmetica, De Musica, and Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius—both later key works in Medieval education).

References

Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity Ad 150-750, 1989, ISBN 0393958035
Peter Brown, 1987. "The World of Late Antiquity Ad 150-750" in A History of Private Life: 1. from Pagan Antiquity to Byzantium, Paul Veyne, editor, ISBN 0393958035
Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred : Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0521595576
Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity 200-1000 AD, Blackwell, 2003, ISBN 0631221387
Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire: Ad 284-430, Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN 0674511948
Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity Ad 395-600 (Routledge History of the Ancient World), 1993, ISBN 0415014212
Averil Cameron et al. (editors), The Cambridge Ancient History, vols. 12-14, Cambridge 1997ff.
Bertrand Lancon, Rome in Late Antiquity : AD 313 - 604, Routledge, 2001

External links

Worlds of Late Antiquity, from the University of Pennsylvania
Mosaic, source documents and key themes in Late Antiquity.
The End of the Classical World, source documents from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook
Overview of Late Antiquity, from ORB ^*
ORB Encyclopedia's section on Late Antiquity in the Mediterranean from ORB ^*