Late antiquity was an era of massive political and religious transformation. It marked the origins or ascendance of the three major monotheistic religions:Christianity,rabbinic Judaism, andIslam. It also marked the ends of both theWestern Roman Empire and theSasanian Empire, the last Persian empire of antiquity, and the beginning of theArab conquests. Meanwhile, theByzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire became a militarized and Christianized society. This was also an era of significant cultural innovation and transformation, such as with the emergence ofLate antique literature and art.[3]
When the period precisely began and ended remains a matter of debate, but usually, the beginning of late antiquity is placed in the second or third centuries, and its end somewhere in the sixth to eighth centuries, though the exact timing may vary by region.[4][5][3]
The termSpätantike, literally 'late antiquity', has been used by German-speaking historians since its popularization byAlois Riegl in the early 20th century.[6] It was given currency in English partly by the writings ofPeter Brown, whose surveyThe World of Late Antiquity (1971) revised theGibbon view of a stale and ossified Classical culture, in favour of a vibrant time of renewals and beginnings, and whoseThe Making of Late Antiquity offered a new paradigm of understanding the changes in Western culture of the time in order to confront SirRichard Southern'sThe Making of the Middle Ages.[7]
The continuities between thelater Roman Empire,[8] as it was reorganized byDiocletian (r. 284–305), and theEarly Middle Ages are stressed by writers[who?] who wish to emphasize that the seeds of medieval culture were already developing in theChristianized empire, and that they continued to do so in the Eastern Roman orByzantine Empire at least until thecoming of Islam. Concurrently, some migratingGermanic tribes such as theOstrogoths andVisigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the "Roman" tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities ofclassical antiquity endured throughoutEurope into theMiddle Ages, the usage of "Early Middle Ages" or "Early Byzantine" emphasizes a break with the classical past, and the term "Migration Period" tends to de-emphasize the disruptions in the former Western Roman Empire caused by the creation of Germanic kingdoms within its borders beginning with thefoedus with theGoths in Aquitania in 418.[9]
The general decline of population, technological knowledge and standards of living in Europe during this period became the archetypal example ofsocietal collapse for writers from theRenaissance. As a result of this decline, and the relative scarcity of historical records from Europe in particular, the period from roughly the early fifth century until theCarolingian Renaissance (or later still) was referred to as the "Dark Ages". This term has mostly been abandoned as a name for a historiographical epoch, being replaced by "Late Antiquity" in the periodization of the late Western Roman Empire, the early Byzantine Empire and the Early Middle Ages.[10] The term is seldom applied to Britain; the collapse of Roman rule in the island in the early fifth century is seen as a unique aspect of European history in the period.[11]
Constantine I was a key figure in many important events inChristian history, as he convened and attended the first ecumenical council of bishops atNicaea in 325, subsidized the building of churches and sanctuaries such as theChurch of the Holy Sepulchre inJerusalem, and involved himself in questions such as the timing ofChrist's resurrection and its relation to thePassover.[18]
The birth ofChristian monasticism the 3rd century was a major step in the development of Christian spirituality.[19] While it initially operated outside the episcopal authority of the Church, it would become hugely successful and by the 8th century it became one of the key Christian practices.Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in late antiquity, although it had perhaps the greatest influence and it achieved unprecedented geographical spread.[20] It influenced many aspects of Christian religious life and led to a proliferation of various ascetic or semi-ascetic practices.Holy Fools andStylites counted among the more extreme forms but through such personalities likeJohn Chrysostom,Jerome,Augustine orGregory the Great monastic attitudes penetrated other areas of Christian life.[21]
Late antiquity marks the decline ofRoman state religion, circumscribed in degrees by edicts likely inspired by Christian advisors such as Eusebius to 4th-century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with manysyncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such asGnosticism orNeoplatonism and theChaldaean oracles, some novel, such asHermeticism. Culminating in the reforms advocated byApollonius of Tyana being adopted byAurelian and formulated byFlavius Claudius Julianus to create an organized but short-lived pagan state religion that ensured its underground survival into the Byzantine age and beyond.[22]
Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of theparchmentcodex (bound book) over thepapyrusvolumen (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synopticexegesis,papyrology. Notable in this regard is the topic of theFifty Bibles of Constantine.[citation needed]
Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be more distinctly seen between thelaity and an increasinglycelibate male leadership.[24] These men presented themselves as removed from the traditional Roman motivations ofpublic andprivate life marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and differing from the married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures onpriestly celibacy, celibacy in late antique Christianity sometimes took the form ofabstinence from sexual relations after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urbanclergy. Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige to urban notables, thepotentes ordynatoi.[25]
On the rise of Islam, two main theses prevail. On the one hand, there is the traditional view, as espoused by most historians prior to the second half of the twentieth century (and after) and by Muslim scholars. This view, the so-called "out of Arabia"-thesis, holds that Islam as a phenomenon was a new, alien element in the late antique world. Related to this is thePirenne Thesis, according to which theArab invasions marked—through conquest and the disruption of Mediterranean trade routes—the cataclysmic end of late antiquity and the beginning of theMiddle Ages.[27]
On the other hand, there is a more recent thesis, associated with scholars in the tradition of Peter Brown, in which Islam is seen to be a product of the late antique world, not foreign to it. This school suggests that its origin within the shared cultural horizon of the late antique world explains the character of Islam and its development. Such historians point to similarities with other late antique religions and philosophies—especially Christianity—in the prominent role and manifestations of piety in Islam, in Islamic asceticism and the role of "holy persons", in the pattern of universalist, homogeneous monotheism tied to worldly and military power, in early Islamic engagement with Greek schools of thought, in the apocalypticism ofIslamic theology and in the way theQuran seems to react to contemporary religious and cultural issues shared by the late antique world at large. Further indication that Arabia (and thus the environment in which Islam first developed) was a part of the late antique world is found in the close economic and military relations between Arabia, theByzantine Empire and the Sassanian Empire.[28] In recent years, the period of late antiquity has become a major focus in the fields ofQuranic studies and Islamic origins.[29]
The Favourites of theEmperor Honorius, 1883:John William Waterhouse expresses the sense of moral decadence that coloured the 19th-century historical view of the 5th century.
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 traditionalcursus honorum, had found under theAntonines that security could be obtained only by combining their established roles in the local town with new ones as servants and representatives of a distant emperor and his traveling court. After Constantine centralized the government in his new capital ofConstantinople (dedicated in 330), the late antique upper classes were divided among those who had access to the far-away centralized administration (in concert with thegreat landowners), and those who did not; although they were well-born and thoroughly educated, a classical education and the election by the Senate to magistracies was no longer the path to success. Room at the top of late antique society was more bureaucratic and involved increasingly intricate channels of access to the emperor; the plain toga that had identified all members of theRepublican senatorial class was replaced with the silk court vestments and jewelry associated with Byzantine imperial iconography.[30] Also indicative of the times is the fact that the imperial cabinet of advisors came to be known as theconsistorium, or those who would stand in courtly attendance upon their seated emperor, as distinct from the informal set of friends and advisors surrounding theAugustus.[citation needed]
The ruins of theTaq Kasra inCtesiphon, capital of the Sasanian Empire, photographed in 1864
The later Roman Empire was in a sense a network of cities. Archaeology now supplements literary sources to document the transformation followed by collapse of cities in theMediterranean basin. Two diagnostic symptoms of decline—or as many historians prefer, 'transformation'—are subdivision, particularly of expansive formal spaces in both thedomus and the publicbasilica, and encroachment, in which artisans' shops invade the public thoroughfare, a transformation that was to result in thesouk (marketplace).[31] Burials within the urban precincts mark another stage in dissolution of traditional urbanistic discipline, overpowered by the attraction of saintly shrines and relics. InRoman Britain, the typical 4th- and 5th-century layer ofdark earth within cities seems to be a result of increased gardening in formerly urban spaces.[32]
The city of Rome went from a population of 800,000 in the beginning of the period to a population of 30,000 by the end of the period, the most precipitous drop coming with the breaking of theaqueducts during theGothic War. A similar though less marked decline in urban population occurred later inConstantinople, which was gaining population until the outbreak of thePlague of Justinian in 541. In Europe there was also a general decline in urban populations. As a whole, the period of late antiquity was accompanied by an overall population decline in almost all Europe, and a reversion to more of a subsistence economy. Long-distance markets disappeared, and there was a reversion to a greater degree of local production and consumption, rather than webs of commerce and specialized production.[33]
View west along the Harbour Street towards theLibrary of Celsus inEphesus, present-dayTurkey. The pillars on the left side of the street were part of thecolonnaded walkway apparent in cities of late antiqueAsia Minor.
Concurrently, the continuity of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople meant that the turning point for theGreek East came later, in the 7th century, as the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire centered around theBalkans, North Africa (Egypt andCarthage), andAsia Minor. The cities in the East were still lively stages for political participation and remained important for background for religious and political disputes.[34] The degree and extent of discontinuity in the smaller cities of the Greek East is a moot subject among historians.[35] The urban continuity of Constantinople is the outstanding example of the Mediterranean world; of the two great cities of lesser rank,Antioch was devastated by the Persian sack of 540, followed by theplague of Justinian (542 onwards) and completed by earthquake, whileAlexandria survived its Islamic transformation, to suffer incremental decline in favour ofCairo in the medieval period.[36]
Justinian rebuilt his birthplace inIllyricum, asJustiniana Prima, more in a gesture ofimperium than out of an urbanistic necessity; another "city", was reputed to have been founded, according toProcopius' panegyric on Justinian's buildings,[37] precisely at the spot where the generalBelisarius touched shore in North Africa: the miraculous spring that gushed forth to give them water and the rural population that straightway abandoned their ploughshares for civilised life within the new walls, lend a certain taste of unreality to the project.[citation needed]
In mainland Greece, the inhabitants ofSparta,Argos andCorinth abandoned their cities for fortified sites in nearby high places; the fortified heights ofAcrocorinth are typical of Byzantine urban sites in Greece. In Italy, populations that had clustered within reach ofRoman roads began to withdraw from them, as potential avenues of intrusion, and to rebuild in typically constricted fashion round an isolated fortified promontory, orrocca; Cameron notes similar movement of populations in the Balkans, "where inhabited centres contracted and regrouped around a defensibleacropolis, or were abandoned in favour of such positions elsewhere."[38]
In the western Mediterranean, the only new cities known to be founded in Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries[39] were the four or fiveVisigothic "victory cities".[40]Reccopolis in theprovince of Guadalajara is one: the others wereVictoriacum, founded byLeovigild, which may survive as the city ofVitoria, though a 12th-century (re)foundation for this city is given in contemporary sources;Lugo id est Luceo in theAsturias, referred to byIsidore of Seville, andOlogicus (perhapsOlogitis), founded usingBasque labour in 621 bySuinthila as a fortification against the Basques, modernOlite. All of these cities were founded for military purposes and at least Reccopolis, Victoriacum, and Ologicus in celebration of victory. A possible fifth Visigothic foundation isBaiyara (perhaps modernMontoro), mentioned as founded by Reccared in the 15th-century geographical account,Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar.[41] The arrival of a highly urbanized Islamic culture in the decade following 711 ensured the survival of cities in theHispaniae into the Middle Ages.[citation needed]
Beyond the Mediterranean world, the cities ofGaul withdrew within a constricted line of defense around a citadel. Former imperial capitals such asCologne andTrier lived on in diminished form as administrative centres of theFranks. InBritain most towns and cities had been in decline, apart from a brief period of recovery during the fourth century, well before the withdrawal of Roman governors and garrisons but the process might well have stretched well into the fifth century.[42] Historians emphasizing urban continuities with theAnglo-Saxon period depend largely on the post-Roman survival of Romantoponymy. Aside from a mere handful of its continuously inhabited sites, likeYork andLondon and possiblyCanterbury, however, the rapidity and thoroughness with which its urban life collapsed with the dissolution of centralized bureaucracy calls into question the extent to whichRoman Britain had ever become authentically urbanized: "in Roman Britain towns appeared a shade exotic," observesH. R. Loyn, "owing their reason for being more to the military and administrative needs of Rome than to any economic virtue".[43] The other institutional power centre, theRoman villa, did not survive in Britain either.[44]Gildas lamented the destruction of the twenty-eight cities of Britain; though not all in his list can be identified with known Roman sites, Loyn finds no reason to doubt the essential truth of his statement.[44]
Classical antiquity can generally be defined as an age of cities; the Greekpolis and Romanmunicipium were locally organised, self-governing bodies of citizens governed by written constitutions. When Rome came to dominate the known world, local initiative and control were gradually subsumed by the ever-growing Imperial bureaucracy; by theCrisis of the Third Century the military, political and economic demands made by the Empire made the service in local government to be an onerous duty, often imposed as punishment.[45] Harassed urban dwellers fled to the walled estates of the wealthy to avoid taxes, military service, famine and disease. In the Western Roman Empire especially, many cities destroyed by invasion or civil war in the 3rd century could not be rebuilt. Plague and famine hit the urban class in greater proportion, and thus the people who knew how to keep civic services running. Perhaps the greatest blow came in the wake of theextreme weather events of 535–536 and subsequentPlague of Justinian, when the remaining trade networks ensured the Plague spread to the remaining commercial cities. The impact of this outbreak of plague has recently been disputed.[46][47] The end ofclassical antiquity is the end of the polis model. While there was a decline of urban life in late antiquity (especially in the West) the epoch brought with it new forms of political participation in the urban spaces as well.[48] Especially the role of crowds and masses in cities increased, leading to new levels of tension.[49]
In the cities the strained economies of Roman over-expansion arrested growth. Almost all new public building in late antiquity came directly or indirectly from the emperors or imperial officials. Attempts were made to maintain what was already there. The supply of free grain and oil to 20% of the population of Rome remained intact the last decades of the 5th century. It was once thought that the elite and rich had withdrawn to the private luxuries of their numerousvillas and town houses. Scholarly opinion has revised this. The rich monopolized the higher offices in the imperial administration, but they were removed from military command by the late 3rd century. Their focus turned to preserving their vast wealth rather than fighting for it.[citation needed]
Thebasilica, which had functioned as a law court or for imperial reception of foreign dignitaries, became the primary public building in the 4th century. Due to the stress on civic finances, cities spent money on walls, maintaining baths and markets at the expense of amphitheaters, temples, libraries, porticoes, gymnasia, concert and lecture halls, theaters and other amenities of public life. In any case, as Christianity took over, many of these buildings which were associated with pagan cults were neglected in favor of building churches and donating to the poor. The Christian basilica was copied from the civic structure with variations. 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 ofChrist Pantocrator, the Ruler of All, his characteristic late antiqueicon. These ecclesiastical basilicas (e.g.,St. John Lateran andSt. Peter's in Rome) were themselves outdone by Justinian'sHagia Sophia, a staggering display of later Roman/Byzantine power and architectural taste, though the building is not architecturally a basilica. In the former Western Roman Empire almost no great buildings were constructed from the 5th century. A most outstanding example is theBasilica of San Vitale in Ravenna constructedc. 530 at a cost of 26,000 goldsolidi or 360Roman pounds of gold.[citation needed]
City life in the East, though negatively affected by the plague in the 6th–7th centuries, finally collapsed due to Slavic invasions in the Balkans andPersian destructions in Anatolia in the 620s. City life continued in Syria, Jordan and Palestine into the 8th. In the later 6th century street construction was still undertaken inCaesarea Maritima in Palestine,[50] andEdessa was able to deflectChosroes I with massive payments in gold in 540 and 544, before it was overrun in 609.[51]
The stylistic changes characteristic of late-antique art mark the end of classicalRoman art and the beginnings ofmedieval art. As a complicated period bridging Roman art and later medieval styles (such asthat of the Byzantines), the late-antique period saw a transition from the classical idealizedrealism tradition (largely influenced by ancient Greek art) to the more iconic, stylized art of the Middle Ages.[52] Unlike classical art, late-antique art does not emphasize the beauty and movement of the body, but rather hints at a spiritual reality behind its subjects.[citation needed] Additionally, mirroring the rise of Christianity and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, painting and freestanding sculpture gradually fell from favor in the commissioning/artistic community. Replacing them were greater interests inmosaics, architecture, and relief sculpture.[citation needed]
As the soldier-emperors such asMaximinus Thrax (r. 235–238) emerged from the provinces in the 3rd century, they introduced their own regional influences and artistic tastes. For example, artists jettisoned the classical portrayal of the human body for one that was more rigid and frontal. This is markedly evident in the combinedporphyryPortrait of the Four Tetrarchs (c. 300), now inVenice. With these stubby figures clutching each other and their swords, allindividualism,naturalism, Romanverism, and Greekidealism diminish.[53][54] TheArch of Constantine (constructed between 312 and 315) in Rome, which re-used earlier classicisingreliefs together with ones in the new style, shows the contrast especially clearly.[55] In nearly all artistic media, simpler shapes were adopted and once-natural designs were abstracted. Additionally, hierarchy of scale overtook the preeminence of perspective and other classical models for representing spatial organization.[citation needed]
Nearly all of these more abstracted conventions could be observed in the glittering mosaics of the era, which during this period moved from being decoration—derivative from painting—used on floors (and walls likely to become wet) to become a major vehicle of religious art in churches. The glazed surfaces of thetesserae sparkled in the light and illuminated the basilica churches. Unlike with theirfresco predecessors, much more emphasis was placed on demonstrating a symbolic fact rather than on rendering a realistic scene. As time progressed during the late antique period, art become more concerned with biblical themes and influenced by interactions of Christianity with the Roman state. Within this Christian subcategory of Roman art, dramatic changes were taking place in thedepiction of Jesus. Jesus Christ had been more commonly portrayed as an itinerant philosopher, as a teacher or as the "Good Shepherd", resembling the traditional iconography ofHermes. He was increasingly given Roman élite status, and shrouded in purple robes like the emperors, with orb and scepter in hand — this new type of depiction is variously thought to be derived either from the iconography ofJupiter or from that of classical philosophers.[citation needed]
^For the invasion of the Goths, the Huns, and theRhine invaders of 406 (Alans, Suevi, Vandals) as direct causes of the crippling of the Western Roman Empire, see Peter Heather,The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford University Press, 2005).
^Gilian Clark,Late Antiquity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2011), pp. 1–2.
^Anthony, Sean W. (2020).Muhammad and the empires of faith: the making of the prophet of Islam. Oakland (Calif.): University of California press. p. 1.ISBN978-0-520-97452-4.
^Vanderputten, Steven (2020).Medieval monasticisms: forms and experiences of the monastic life in the Latin West. Oldenbourg Grundriss der Geschichte. Berlin Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.ISBN978-3-11-054378-0.
^Smith, Rowland B.E.Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian
^Woodhead, Linda; Partridge, Christopher; Kawanami, Hiroko, eds. (2016).Religions in the modern world: traditions and transformations (3rd ed.). London & New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.ISBN978-0-415-85880-9.
^For a thesis on the complementary nature of Islam to the absolutist trend of Christian monarchy, see Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Princeton University Press 1993
^Pirenne, Henri; Halsey, Frank Davis; Pirenne, Henri (1980).Medieval cities; their origins and the revival of trade (3. print., renewed 1980 ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press. p. 26.ISBN978-0-691-00760-1.
^Robert Hoyland, 'Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion', in: Scott F. Johnson ed.,The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford 2012) pp. 1053–1077.
^Cf. the compendious list of ranks and liveries of imperial bureaucrats, theNotitia Dignitatum
^'The changing city' in "Urban changes and the end of Antiquity", Averil Cameron,The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, CE 395–600, 1993:159ff, with notes; Hugh Kennedy, "From Polis to Madina: urban change in late Antique and early Islamic Syria",Past and Present106 (1985:3–27).
^According to E. A Thompson, "The Barbarian Kingdoms in Gaul and Spain",Nottingham Mediaeval Studies,7 (1963:4n11).
^José María Lacarra, "Panorama de la historia urbana en la Península Ibérica desde el siglo V al X,"La città nell'alto medioevo,6 (1958:319–358). Reprinted inEstudios de alta edad media española (Valencia: 1975), pp. 25–90.
^Mordechai, Lee; Eisenberg, Merle (2019-08-01). "Rejecting Catastrophe: The Case of the Justinianic Plague".Past & Present (244):3–50.doi:10.1093/pastj/gtz009.ISSN0031-2746.
^Robert L. Vann, "Byzantine street construction at Caesarea Maritima", in R.L. Hohlfelder, ed.City, Town and Countryside in the Early Byzantine Ear 1982:167–70.
^M. Whittow, "Ruling the late Roman and early Byzantine city: a continuous history",Past and Present129 (1990:3–29).
^Stoner, Jo (19 March 2019). "Heirloom Objects in Late Antiquity".The Cultural Lives of Domestic Objects in Late Antiquity. Late Antique Archaeology (Supplementary Series) ISSN 2352-3177, volume 4. Leiden: Brill. p. 16.ISBN9789004391062. Retrieved24 July 2025.[...] engraved gems, found in late antique assemblages or set into late antique jewellery, often represent objects from an earlier period of time. [...] The material worth of older items made them popular in times of uncertainty, especially on the frontiers and border regions of the empire. Furthermore, the skills required to engrave gems declined during the late antique period, meaning that older gems were used in jewellery instead of new carvings being made.
^Rance, Philip (2017). "Introduction".Greek Taktika. Ancient Military Writing and its Heritage. Gdansk: Foundation for the Development of the University of Gdansk. pp. 9–64.ISBN978-83-7531-242-3.
^Rance, Philip (2017). "Maurice's Strategicon and "the Ancients": the Late Antique Reception of Aelian and Arrian".Greek taktika: ancient military writing and its heritage - Proceedings of the International Conference on Greek "taktika" held at the University of Toruń, 7-11 April 2005. Akanthina. Gdànsk: Foundation for the Development of Gdańsk University. pp. 217–255.ISBN978-83-7531-242-3.
Gasper, Giles (2024). "On the Six Days of Creation: The Hexaemeral Tradition". In Goroncy, Jason (ed.).T&T Clark Handbook of the Doctrine of Creation. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 176–190.
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, a collaborative forum of Princeton and Stanford to make the latest scholarship on the field available in advance of final publication.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
