A Companion to Late Antiquity

Philip Rousseau

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781118255315, 9781405119801
• eBook ISBN: 9781118293478
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

An accessible and authoritative overview capturing the vitality and diversity of scholarship that exists on the transformative time period known as late antiquity.

• Provides an essential overview of current scholarship on late antiquity – from between the accession of Diocletian in AD 284 and the end of Roman rule in the Mediterranean
• Comprises 39 essays from some of the world's foremost scholars of the era
• Presents this once-neglected period as an age of powerful transformation that shaped the modern world
• Emphasizes the central importance of religion and its connection with economic, social, and political life
• Winner of the 2009 Single Volume Reference/Humanities & Social Sciences PROSE award granted by the Association of American Publishers

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Figures
• Maps
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• CHAPTER ONE: Approaching Late Antiquity
• PART I: The View from the Future
• CHAPTER TWO: The Byzantine Late Antiquity1
• CHAPTER THREE: Late Antiquity in the Medieval West1
• CHAPTER FOUR: Cities of the Mind: Renaissance Views of Early Christian Culture and the End of Antiquity
• CHAPTER FIVE: Narrating Decline and Fall
• CHAPTER SIX: Late Antiquity in Modern Eyes
• PART II: Land and People
• CHAPTER SEVEN: The Shapes and Shaping of the Late Antique World: Global and Local Perspectives
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Mobility and the Traces of Empire
• CHAPTER NINE: Information and Political Power
• CHAPTER TEN: Mediterranean Cities
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Archaeological Record: Problems of Interpretation
• CHAPTER TWELVE: Inscribing Identity: The Latin Epigraphic Habit in Late Antiquity
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Gender and the Fall of Rome
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Marriage and Family Relationships in the Late Roman West
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Church, the Living, and the Dead
• PART III: Image and Word
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Value of a Good Education: Libanius and Public Authority
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Textual Communities in Late Antique Christianity
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Exegesis without End: Forms, Methods, and Functions of Biblical Commentaries
• CHAPTER NINETEEN: Tradition, Innovation, and Epistolary Mores
• CHAPTER TWENTY: Visual and Verbal Representation: Image, Text, Person, and Power
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Christianity and the Transformation of Classical Art
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Discourse of Later Latin
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Language and Culture in Late Antique Egypt
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Late Antique Historiography: A Brief History of Time
• PART IV: Empire, Kingdom, and Beyond
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Law in Practice
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: The Mirror of Jordanes: Concepts of the Barbarian, Then and Now
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Beyond the Northern Frontiers
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: From Empire to Kingdoms in the Late Antique West
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Rome and the Sasanid Empire: Confrontation and Coexistence
• CHAPTER THIRTY: Syria, Syriac, Syrian: Negotiating East and West
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Syria and the Arabs
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: The Early Caliphate and the Inheritance of Late Antiquity (c. ad 610–c. ad 750)
• PART V: The Sacred
• CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Christianization, Secularization, and the Transformation of Public Life
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: The Political Church: Religion and the State
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: The Late Antique Bishop: Image and Reality
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: The Conduct of Theology and the “Fathers” of the Church
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Defining Sacred Boundaries: Jewish–Christian Relations
• CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Pagans in a Christian Empire
• CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: “Not of This World”: The Invention of Monasticism
• Bibliography
• Index