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It is twenty-five years since Peter Brown's seminal book The World of Late Antiquity first appeared. Symbolae Osloenses has asked Professor Brown to revisit that world and give us a report, describing both the circumstances in which the book was written and in what respects, through his own subsequent research and that of others, his picture of Late Antiquity has changed since then. We have also asked ten scholars from various disciplines to comment on his report, and Professor Brown to reply to their comments. A common bibliographical list concludes the debate section. Further contributions on the present state of research on Late Antiquity are invited.
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The field of Late Antique studies has involved self-reflexion and criticism since its emergence in the late nineteenth century, but in recent years there has been a widespread desire to retrace our steps more systematically and to inquire into the millennial history of previous interpretations, historicization and uses of the end of the Greco-Roman world. This volume contributes to that enterprise. It emphasizes an aspect of Late Antiquity reception that ensues from its subordination to the Classical tradition, namely its tendency to slip in and out of western consciousness. Narratives and artifacts associated with this period have gained attention, often in times of crisis and change, and exercised influence only to disappear again. When later readers have turned to the same period and identified with what they perceive, they have tended to ascribe the feeling of relatedness to similar values and circumstances rather than to the formation of an unbroken tradition of appropriation.
Antiquity and Its Reception - Modern Expressions of the Past, 2020
Late Antiquity as a period has a complex history with moments when the issues pertaining to it seem to intensify. One of these was without a doubt the aftermath of World War I and reached its apex in 1923 during the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Brussels. The tragic events that had shaken Europe had a deep impact on historiography. In the aftermath of World War II, this trend was reversed on account of a progressive change of perspective and sensibility. In the last decades the favored epithets applied to Late Antiquity were "transformation", "change", "transition" and "evolution". The idea of a "long" Late Antiquity has eventually superseded the previous discourse on when and why the Roman Empire declined. Instead of a caesura, the historical continuum, the longue durée, is stressed. The continuities between Christian Rome, Sasanian Iran, and Islam are being explored. Late Antiquity has become a popular subject of a historical research that is characterized by a wide variety of methods and a paradigm shift.
R. Lizzi Testa (ed.), Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate. XXIIème Congrès du Comité International des Sciences Historiques, Université de Jinan (province du Shandong, Chine), 23-29 août 2015, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publiisning, 2017, 2017
Journal of Roman Studies, 2001
Revista Dialogos Mediterranicos 21, 2021
This article explores the 'making' of Peter Brown's highly influential book 'The World of Late Antiquity' through an examination of the publisher's files relating to the book, which were made available to the author by the publishing house, Thames & Hudson, and through some interviews with people involved at the time. In the files (which open with the commissioning of the book in 1968) there is correspondence between Peter Brown and the managing director of Thames & Hudson, the editor of the series that The World of Late Antiquity came out in, and the picture researcher for the project. As well as charting how these relationships helped form the book, the article also examines the role of Thames & Hudson's overall publishing philosophy, founded by refugees from Nazi rule, and the particular aims of the series 'The World of Late Antiquity' was written for, T&H's 'Library of European Civilization'.
Dedicated to the memory of Voula Kotzia I first thought to write this essay while pondering how Late Antiquity could be studied in new and innovative ways, at universities. More specifically, the inspiration for this essay came to me when I was developing a proposal for a new course in the history of philosophy in the Late Antique period (roughly, from Philo to Philoponus). By the end of this essay it will hopefully be clearer what I mean by the title; I begin by explaining my concern in some preliminary way. Now, I know that my readers might not all exactly be enthusiasts for Late Antiquity, who already feel that the value of studying the post-classical periods all the way up until the Arab conquest is self-evident. But I hope here to convince even the uninitiated or unconverted that the project of studying Late Antiquity truly has weight and urgency, and thereby perhaps to increase the sense of the importance this particular historical period actually has. It would be odd if some of you in the room did not think that it is a better use of one's time to read Thucydides rather than Procopius, or Plato rather than Proclus. Not so long ago, I very much thought the same thing because I was the product of a common academic culture. When I was a graduate student in the 80s, I was one of a handful of budding scholars who took the risk of doing their doctoral research on the marginal fringes of ancient philosophy. The hot topic of the day was Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism and skepticism in particular), closely followed by Plato and Aristotle. Cicero was of interest only insofar as he informed us about the Stoics or middle Platonists; even Lucretius was already an outlier, and beyond that, people had very little to say. You would not want to be caught with an open volume of Plotinus on your desk, much less one of the so-called fathers of
In this volume thirty new studies have been specially commissioned from scholars in seven countries to treat key texts and cultural phenomena from the Homeric age to the medieval period. A wide variety of critical approaches are employed to challenge orthodoxies and to present fresh perspectives on the literature, art and history of classical antiquity, late antiquity and the middle ages. Attractive features of the volume include the treatment of newly emerging areas of inquiry in addition to canonical texts and the representation of views of established international scholars at the forefront of the discipline. A recurrent motif of the volume emerges in the interpretive benefits of combining philological acumen with theoretical and intertextual considerations. This accessible and provocative book will be of interest to classicists, historians, art historians, students of comparative literature, and anyone concerned with the immense cultural legacy of classical Mediterranean civilisation. Greek and Latin quotations are accompanied by translations throughout.
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The paper reveals that the social revolution of the third century destroyed the ancient world's economic and intellectual foundations, leading to significant upheavals in societal structures.
The study finds that scholars like A.H.M. Jones and Santo Mazzarino highlighted the resilience of the late Roman society, countering narratives of total decline with evidence of social fluidity and strong elite connections.
Recent studies indicate that religious transformations during Late Antiquity were closely tied to social structures and dynamics, with Christianity adapting in response to local cultures, as seen in various regional practices.
Historians now view Late Antiquity through a lens that integrates diverse geographical and cultural influences, reflecting on socio-political forms beyond traditional Roman structures.
Mary Douglas's work emphasized the interconnectedness of religious statements and social structures, prompting historians to analyze religious phenomena as reflections of societal dynamics during late antique periods.
Global Journal of Human-Social Science, 2014
Peter Brown’s influential book "The World of Late Antiquity" has had a formidable impact on ancient historiography. Before it, historians who studied the period leading to the deposition of Romolus Agustulus—the last Roman emperor—in 476 AD considered themselves ‘classicists’ or ‘ancient historians’, while those who studied the subsequent period called themselves medievalists; therefore before Brown’s book the collapse of the Roman Empire remained the watershed date that brought upon the Middle Ages. It is not the task of this essay to trace the history of this conception, but to examine the assertions, merits, and faults of Peter Brown’s book. Brown magnified, or more precisely, outright invented a new epoch: “[a number of elements] converged to produce that very distinctive period in European civilization—the Late Antique world”.
Journal of Persianate Studies, 2013
For close to four decades now, scholars of the late Roman, early Christian, early medieval, and early Byzantine worlds have gradually formed the diachronic concept of the “Late Antique” period as an extension of classical studies. The chronological boundaries of the field have been put, roughly in the period between 200 and 800. Its genesis has been, in no small measure, due to the long and sustained tradition of in-depth scholarly investigation of GrecoRoman history and culture. One of the primary locomotives of the debate on “Late Antiquity”, furthermore, has been the question of the continuity of the Greco-Roman heritage in the wake of the gradual growth of Christianity in the classical world. (Browne 1971) Beyond these primary concerns, however, other pertinent queries have gradually come to engage the scholars in the field. One of the more pressing of these in recent decades has been whether or not one should or could have a synchronic as well as a spatial view of “Late Antiquity.” Moving beyond the Greco-Roman heritage, the questions asked have become more complex: how far chronologically, and how wide geographically, should scholarship cast the net? Through which prism or prisms, should we study the new social and economic, religious and political trends and institutions of “Late Antiquity,” (Clover and Humphreys 1989; Walker 2002; Morony 2008) trends that ultimately came to construct the heritage of our modern age? In response to these inquiries, the study of the Germanic conquests in the west, the history of the Caucasus, Ethiopia, and Yemen, of Mesopotamian Jewry, Nestorian Christianity and the Slavs, among others, have gradually entered into the debate on “Late Antiquity.” (Ibid.)
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2019
2011
Perhaps it is fully justified to think of Late Antiquity (3rd 7th centuries) as the first Renaissance of the Classical World. This period can be considered a fundamental landmark for the transmission of the Classical Legacy and the transition between the ancient and the medieval individual. During Late Antiquity the Classical Education or enkyklios paideia of Hellenism was linked definitively to the Judeo-Christian and Germanic elements that have modelled the Western World. The present volume combines diverse interests and methodologies with a single purpose unity and diversity, as a Neo-Platonic motto providing an overall picture of the new means of researching Late Antiquity. This collective endeavour, stemming from the 2009 1st International Congress on Late Antiquity in Segovia (Spain), focuses not only on the analysis of new materials and latest findings, but rather puts together different perspectives offering a scientific update and a dialogue between several disciplines. New Perspectives on Late Antiquity contains two main sections 1. Ancient History and Archaeology, and 2. Philosophy and Classical Studies including both overview papers and case studies. Among the contributors to this volume are some of the most relevant scholars in their fields, including P. Brown, J. Alvar, P. Barceló, C. Codoñer, F. Fronterotta, D. Gigli, F. Lisi and R. Sanz.
(Nov. 2013) Book review: New perspectives on Late Antiquity: Proceedings from the I International Congress on Late Antiquity (Segovia, 2009). Edited by David Hernández de la Fuente. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011. Journal of Medieval Archaeology 57: 342-343.
Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 1985
Journal of Late Antiquity, 2019
Plekos 25, 2023
Lieve Van Hoof & Peter Van Nuffelen (eds.), The Fragmentary Latin Histories of Late Antiquity (AD 300–620). Edition, Translation and Commentary (Cambridge, 2020), in Plekos 25 (2023), 145-156.
Peter Brown