216 pages : 21 cm

This study in social and cultural change explains how and why the Late Antique world, between c. 150 and c. 750 A.D., came to differ from "Classical civilization." These centuries, as the author demonstrates, were the era in which the most deeply rooted of ancient institutions disappeared for all time. By 476 the Roman empire had vanished from western Europe; by 665 the Persian empire had vanished from the Near East, Brown examines these changes and men's reactions to them, but his account shows that the period was also one of outstanding new beginnings and defines the far-reaching impact both of Christianity on Europe and of Islam on the Near East. The result is a lucid answer to a crucial question in world history: how the exceptionally homogeneous Mediterranean world of c. 200 A.D. became divided into the three mutually estranged societies of the Middle Ages: Catholic Western Europe, Byzantium, and Islam

Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-213) and index

pt. 1. The late Roman revolution. I. Society. The boundaries of the classical world : c AD 200 -- The new rulers : 240-350 -- A world restored : Roman society in the fourth century -- II. Religion. The new mood : directions of religious thought, c. 170-300 -- The crisis of the towns : the rise of Christianity, c. 200-300 -- The last Hellenes : philosophy and paganism, c. 260-360 -- The conversion of Christianity, 300-363 -- The new people : monasticism and the expansion of Christianity, 300-400 -- pt. 2. Divergent legacies. I. The West. The western revival, 350-450 -- The price of survival : western society, 450-600 -- II. Byzantium. 'The ruling city' : the eastern empire from Theodosius II to Anastasius, 408-518 -- La gloire : Justinian and his successors, 527-603 -- The empires of the East : Byzantium and Persia, 540-640 -- The death of the classical world : culture and religion in the early Middle Ages -- III. The new participants. Muhammad and the rise of Islam, 610-632 -- 'A garden protected by our spears' : the Late Antique world under Islam, 632-809