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The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750 (Library of World Civilization)

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The world of Late Antiquity is an historical period often overlooked. The more prominent periods such as the Greek Empire, Roman Empire, Early Christendom, Rise of Islam, East/West Split, etc. take the majority of space in historical texts; often the world of Late Antiquity is an epilogue or a prologue to anothe period.

Peter Brown, renowned for his authoritative biography on Augustine of Hippo, has produced a good introductory text to the period between the beginnings of the downfall of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of medieval times in western Europe. This period does not have strict boundaries -- there were no crucial or pivotal events defining the beginning or the end of the period, which is perhaps why it is often overlooked.

The text is divided into two primary sections -- the Late Roman Revolution, and Divergent Legacies. In the Late Roman Revolution, Brown explores the aspects of culture and religion that change slowly but ultimately dramatically from classical Roman to Christian-medieval. As Christianity rises and the power from the centre fades, including the power of the intelligensia, the post-Roman world takes on a new character.

In Divergent Legacies, Brown first looks at the development of the West after the fall of Rome. The barbarian invasions are recast, the assimilation of the Senate into the aristocratic and higher clerical ranks of the ruling Church shown to be a way in which the Roman hierarchy in fact survived the collapse of Rome, and the fragmentation of the empire ensured the dominance of Latin for the next many centuries.

This was a very different character from the survival of the Late Antique world in the East. Here the walls of Byzantium were never breached, despite the fact that most of the empire was lost not once but multiple times. The final chapter in Late Antiquity in the East was the first chapter in Muslim history, with the rise of the Muslim-dominated empires, which at first had cordial and profitable relationships with the West.

This book is part of a series, the Library of World Civilisation, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough of Brandeis University. Each volume is approximately 200 pages, richly illustrated (this particular text has 130 illustrations in these 200 pages), and accessible in writing style.

Peter Brown, professor of History at Princeton University, takes his readers on an epic trip across space and time, exploring the dynamic and often-neglected world of the Late Antique Mediterranian. Beginning with the era of Marcus Aurelius, he chronicals the crisis of the the 3rd Century, and the new "hard emperors" who arose to effectively re-unite the near-shattered empire. He surveys the wide variations in Christianity, from the Coptic Christianity in Egypt, to the rugged and ubiquitous holy men of Syria. He describes the Christian empires under Constantine and later Justinian and comments on the administrative collapse that caused the implosion of the Western Roman Empire. He concludes his books with a brief discussion of the Muslim conquests, and the interaction between the Muslims and the conquered Christian populations of the East.
The book is graced with ample illustrations featuring a variety of Late Antique art. While the period after 300 BC is not thought of as a time of high culture, the illustrations demonstrate that in reality Late Antique culture was as rich, varied, and sumptuous as Mediterrainian culture had even been. This book functions as an outstanding introduction to Late Antique scholarship (a field pioneered by Professor Brown), and is an excellent suppliment to those courses on Roman History that tend unsatisfyingly to end around 313 BC.

I have used this book as a text for a course titled the Decline of Rome. It proved to be the mose aesthetic piece of literature I've read at the University of California. Brown uses charming little metaphors, which I paraphrase: "A garden protected by spears" and "As the storm of Arab conquest swept across he sky, people sat back to enjoy the sunshine." The book read like an essay, but gives the reader enough introductory information as encouragement to read more about a particular subject. Brown makes Byzantium seem like utopia on the surface, but is careful to underline its precaious state. And the birth of Islam seems like am eastern Renaissance in Brown's hands. For a person who admires Classical Aniquity, one will see the Post-Classical world as a rival.

Late Antiquity is not one of my areas of expertise, so I am approaching this book as a literate generalist. That said, I found this to be a wonderful introduction to the subject. Brown is a marvelous prose writer, as well as a gifted scholar brewing with interesting insights. The only reason I do not give this book a 10 is that the book is sometimes short on explanation and detail, but then he does admit early on that the book is an essay rather than a systematic introduction. A testament to how much I enjoyed this is that I immediately began reading Augustine's CONFESSIONS and Brown's acclaimed biography of Augustine.

It is rare that I find a history so readable. I read some and I just want to keep on reading. This book actually proved distracting from class work.
Not only is it written like a delicious bowl of soup, it also presents a new (new for when it was written, any way) temporal framework; the old division of Classical, Dark, and Middle Ages is done away with. Brown shows how while elite culture in Europe changed under the influence of Christianity and northern cultures, the period was not so much marked by a loss knowledge as by a resurgence of provincialism. Furthermore, the focus of political (and to a certain degree cultural) change saw a shift eastward to Mesopotamia, that area long fought over by Romans, Arsacids, Sassanids and Byzantines. The rise of the Sassanids in Persia and the east-west cultural exchange across Mesopotamia and the Levant is given good attention.
The inclusion of the rise of Islam in the context of this Late Antiquity framework gives a breath of fresh air into our understanding of later history. The influence of Persian institutions and culture on the nascent Islamic empire, the bonding of Hellenistic philosophy with Christianity and the resurgence of provincial styles across the [former] Roman Empire shows how continuity underlined-- and perhaps typified-- the the profound changes of the period. The old understanding of the "Dark Ages" should be thrown out. Cultures always change. This book helps elucidate that point.

In the beginning of my junior semester at college I took a class called "The World of Late Antiquity." Originally, my goal was to become a historian of the classical world and I thought I would take this class to learn more about the period after the period I was interested in. The class and particularly the writings of Peter Brown made such an impact on my life that I decided to focus on post-classical studies.
The thing about this book is the intimacy gained through the imagery. The work is replete with images and these drawings make the era and the people of the era come alive. The art is somewhat surreal instead of abstract and at times it seems that you are staring in the face of someone from the ancient world. This is not to suggest that there is no abstract art from this period but rather that the images selected by Brown serve the purpose of endearing the people of this time to the reader.
In terms of content it is obvious that Brown made a groundbreaking claim that Rome never actually fell but was rather transformed into something else. Instead of using the words "decline and fall" he chooses "continuity and transformation" to describe the period. Brown argues the following;

1. The Roman capitol was moved to the east and thus Rome continued to exist long after 476.
2.People of this era still saw themselves as Romans instead of seeing Rome as part of the past. Yet in the midst of this continuity there are changes taking place and new ideas being promoted.
3. The Barbarian invasions were difficult but not as horrific as they have been portrayed. He argues that the Barbarians assimulated Roman culture not the other way around.
4. This was not an era of intellectual difficulty but rather an exciting time where new ideas were growing rapidly.
5. That it was not until the 800's that we see the disappearance of Roman culture and this was due to various pressures such as the rise of Islam which threatened the west and the eastern part of the empire.

Of course, there were some problems that Brown faced which he needed to adress and which he did in his 2003 "Rise of Western christendom." Personally, I feel that his ideas are excellent but the other side of this argument has valid arguments as well. Bryan Ward-Perkins and Phillip Freeman would argue that this was a time of horrific economic issues in the west which Brown seems to de-emphasize at times. This widespread economic decline is partly true and partly untrue. Hard economic times do not truly make a dark age and I think that in fact, that Brown's goal was perhaps to remove the "dark age" stigma placed on the ancient people of this era. This was a time of excitement that is unique and beautiful in it's own rite. I found that emperors of this time are more interesting and the people are fascinating. I could not recommend this book enough as I have came back to it almost every semester since as a great reference source.

Peter Brown, professor of History at Princeton University, takes his readers on an epic trip across space and time, exploring the dynamic and often-neglected world of the Late Antique Mediterranian. Beginning with the era of Marcus Aurelius, he chronicals the crisis of the the 3rd Century, and the new "hard emperors" who arose to effectively re-unite the near-shattered empire. He surveys the wide variations in Christianity, from the Coptic Christianity in Egypt, to the rugged and ubiquitous holy men of Syria. He describes the Christian empires under Constantine and later Justinian and comments on the administrative collapse that caused the implosion of the Western Roman Empire. He concludes his books with a brief discussion of the Muslim conquests, and the interaction between the Muslims and the conquered Christian populations of the East.
The book is graced with ample illustrations featuring a variety of Late Antique art. While the period after 300 BC is not thought of as a time of high culture, the illustrations demonstrate that in reality Late Antique culture was as rich, varied, and sumptuous as Mediterrainian culture had even been. This book functions as an outstanding introduction to Late Antique scholarship (a field pioneered by Professor Brown), and is an excellent suppliment to those courses on Roman History that tend unsatisfyingly to end around 313 BC.

This is one of the absolute classics of ancient history but Norton is doing its readers a huge disservice by selling this shoddy print-on-demand edition that looks like a very bad xerox with cheap covers normally used only on promotional ARCs. For $20 no less - A COMPLETE RIP-OFF!!!!

I had large expectations for this, as a major piece of revisionist history (Robin Lane Fox recently listed it beside things like Pierre Hadot's book on Marcus Aurelius). I was, I am afraid, disappointed. I had too much of an impression, in places, that Brown is building his arguments backward from his revisionist conclusions ('no, it wasn't downhill after the Antonines') to the evidence. He is also clearly seduced by the period in a way that I am not. The first section, after mentioning the rise in inequality in the late empire, waxes enthusisatic over villas and mosaics and stuff in a way that comes dangerously close to Conde-Naste money-porn about a hedge-fund manager's nick-nacks. A lot of people just vanish from the discussion here in a rather unattractive way. He does point out, in parallel to this discussion, that access to the top tiers of later Roman society was more open, but so is hedge-fund managment. If you want to construct a rounded view of the quality of life in the third century, you have to look at modal calorie consumption, life expectation and population levels, not just villas and mosaics.*

He also resorts to argument by intimidation in places. For instance he writes 'It would be naive to regard the changes betrayed in these writings as the the decline of a classical enlightenment and the rise of superstition'. Actually, no, it is not obviously naive to think this - it is an argument you can make. Brown is much more affectionate towards the intellectual climate of the time, and people like Ambrose and Jerome, than I am: he sees a glitteringly urbane intellectual and a 'brillant' wit and scholar who later retreated to a dedicated life of translation and spiritual rigour. I see a oily establishment operator who had no problems with hard-ball politics, and a filthy, flat-eyed old ranter with clinically certifiable problems with sexuality. Incidently, he glosses more or less completely over the wildly complex internecine doctrinal politics that accompanied the introduction of Christianity. In fact he does not really properly discuss the enormous poltical dimension to the introduction of Christianity at all. Faith just came.

Part of the problem may be that this is a Thames and Hudson book, which means that there is a strong emphasis on visual material (pictures of the sort of high-end nick-nacks and the like that manage to survive fifteen hundred years) and also that it is a survey monograph, so it is short on detailed argument and long on assertion, but I did not come away convinced that the assertions can be convincingly backed up - the late roman empire is too far away, and the available historical material too ragged a lot of the time to justify the sort of sweeping psychological statements that Brown tends to make.

I should add, after all this, that this is not a bad book (it improves a lot towards the end, and I am as happy as anyone to look at a lot of high-end nick-nacks), it just failed, for me, to live up to its reputation as 'important revisionist essay'. If you don't approach it with that in mind, then you could spend the time with a worse couple of hundred pages.

* Note (added 1.12.2011), and indeed, I now come across an extremely apposite quotation from Why the West Rules (Ian Morris) [a book I must admit to abandoning before this point, maybe I should pick it up again] "The number of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean declines sharply after 200, and pollution in ice cores, lake sediments, and bogs follows after. The downward slopes mirror the upward slopes in the first millennium BCE shown in 250. By then everyone was feeling the pinch. Bones from cattle, pigs, and sheep become smaller and scarcer in settlements after 200, suggesting declining standards of living, and by the 220s wealthy city dwellers were putting up fewer grand buildings and inscriptions."

Brown's argument in The World of Late Antiquity is that the collapse of Roman civilisation in the fifth century is overrated, in particular that it focuses too much on the West and ignores a process of transformation that had begun two hundred years before. The book goes on to tell the story of a late-antique civilisation, poised between the second-century Roman heyday and the Middle Ages proper, and centred around the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and its Persian and Arab rivals.

As Brown has it, the Roman Empire in the west saw wealth and power concentrate in the hands of a few magnates. This led to ossification, the regionalization of power bases, and an estrangement of these magnates from the frontier armies that guaranteed Rome's safety. The same Western elites failed to integrate invading barbarian chieftains in the fourth and fifth century, forcing these to take power in their own name. Meanwhile, paradoxically, Christianity helped Latin and a popularised classical culture to spread at the grassroots, ensuring these would survive in places such as Gaul and Spain.

Roman civilisation, however, was at its most lively in the East, where the Greek language and culture dominated. Brown writes that Eastern civic cultures remained lively, providing the energy and flexibility to face the barbarian invasions. Monasticism, in particular, integrated with urban cultures to create a new flourishing that was the basis for the empire's cohesion into the seventh century. The author goes on to describe the Byzantine flourishing under Justinian, its travails in the latter part of the reign, and its seventh-century struggles. His argument is again that a late antique civilisation endured around the Mediterranean far longer than is generally recognised.

Brown examines two phenomena: socio-political evolution in the two halves of the Roman Empire, and cultural-religious change. These are interconnected but not always logically linked, making for a subtle and complex narrative. Moreover, because this is but a general overview of a long period, not every point is substantiated. Brown takes for granted, for example, Constantine's conversion, the timing and terms of which are actually at dispute. Nevertheless, The World of Late Antiquity does a good job of presenting a challenging argument at the same time as it paints a broad picture of six hundred years of history.