Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21092 in Books
• Published on: 1989-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent
Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity was a revolutionary book for its time. Published in 1971 as an eloquently written essay, Brown challenged many of the assumptions about Classical Civilisation that had dominated historiography since the days of Edward Gibbon.
In those days the idea of the fall of the Roman Empire was one of violent invasion and decline, folllowed by centuries of artistic and intellectual poverty called the Dark Ages.

Brown opposed these ideas and showed that there were still strong links with the Classical World, well into the Dark Ages, and even following the Islamic Conquest.
Although Brown's main point of interest is social and cultural change, he also discuss the art of the period, and many wonderful examples of this art, from portaits to jewellery, are displayed throughout.

This book is certainly an excellent read, as Brown is an erudite writer. Yet some of his claims are incorrect and I cannot agree with his thesis in its entirety. In recent years, his ideas about late antiquity have come under attack by scholars such as Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins. Heather and Ward-Perkins stress the idea of the Empire's violent fall, and they pour scorn on Brown's ideas about the peaceful integration of Germanic tribes. I would have to agree with them on some of these ideas, but I still find Brown's work persuasive.

The World of Late Antiquity is a landmark in Classical and Medieval studies. Anyone who has an interest in those periods must read this book. But readers should be willing to seek out Brown's recent work, as well as the books by Heather and Ward-Perkins and others that oppose his ideas. A great read, and highly recommended!

A good introduction...
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.

An essential monograph
Peter Brown, a professor of History at Princeton University, is a legend in the field of Late Antique studies. While many classicists flippantly refer to the Roman world after 312 as merely "medieval," Professor Brown paints a portrait of a vibrant Late Antique world, a world filled with both great accomplishments and dramatic changes. Brown is a genuine humanist; he writes with a clear, graceful style and his book is as pleasant to read as it is enlightening. The book is also well illustrated, presenting a number of brilliant examples of Late Antique art. While a short work, it provides a whirlwind survey of the whole of the classical world, and includes discussions of the Persian Empire, which is often ignored by Rome-centric classicists. It is also a brisk tour of history, covering the period between the reign of Marcus Aurelius and the Arab conquests. Nonetheless, it is an essential introduction to the period between 200 and 700, and a must read for those Roman history buffs who are tired of the Roman saga ending abruptly with the Council of Nicea.