Product Description

This is a comprehensive guide the world of late antiquity. In 11 essays and over 500 encyclopedia entries, an international cast of experts provides essential information and fresh perspectives on the history and culture of an era by the rise of two world religions, unprecedented political upheavals that remade the map of the known world, and the creation of art of enduring glory. By extending the commonly accepted chronological and territorial boundaries of the period - the encompass Roman, Byzantine, Sassanian, and early Islamic cultures, from the middle of the third century to the end of the eighth - this guide makes new connections and permits revealing comparisons. Consult the article on "Angels" and discover their meaning in Islamic as well as classical and Judeo-Christian traditions. Refer to "children," "concubinage," and "divorce" for an interweaving information on the family. read the essay on "Barbarians and ethnicity" and see how a topic as current as the construction of identity played out in earlier times, from the Greeks and Romans to the Turks, Huns, and Saxons. Turn to "Empire Building" to learn how the empire of Constantine was supported buy architecture and ceremony. Or follow your own path through the broad range of entries on politics, manufacturing and commerce, the art, philosophy, religion, geography, ethnicity and domestic life. Each entry introduces readers to another facet of the postclassical world: historic figures and places, institutions, burial customs, food, money, public life, amusements. This work should be of interest to scholars and general readers alike.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #454777 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 802 pages

Customer Reviews

A very good reference book.
This is really two books in one. Firstly a series of excellent essays by leading scholars & secondly a dictionary of the period. Late antiquity is a growing area of interest as more & more we realise that it is in this period that lie the roots of our civilisation. As the chapters in the book show the shift from classical to medieval was a transformation that is fully understandable & does not need the consideration of a "Dark Ages".

A useful historical guide
The book 'Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World', edited by G.W. Bowerstock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, is a wonderful collection of essays and encyclopedic articles on the period on a fascinating period of transition and change in the history of the West. This is a period often overlooked and neglected, for it is a period of confusion and uneasy description; the Roman Empire has fallen, but the medieval world has yet to rise. Literature from this historical period is rare, both in terms of history and literary output; the medieval world looms large over late antiquity due to the rise of literature that is more easily accessible to those in the modern world.

The first section of the book consists of interesting essays, as listed below:

Remaking the Past, by Averil Cameron
Sacred Landscapes, by Beatrice Caseau
Philosophical Tradition and the Self, by Henry Chadwick
Religious Communities, by Garth Fowden
Barbarians and Ethnicity, by Patrick J. Geary
War and Violence, by Brent D. Shaw
Empire Building, by Christopher Kelly
Christian Triumph and Controversy, by Richard Lim
Islam, by Hugh Kennedy
The Good Life, by Henry Maguire
Habitat, by Yizhar Hirschfield

To give but one example, in the article 'Sacred Landscapes', Caseau traces the development away from public sacred spaces such as temples to the god to a resacralisation of Christian spaces, which had originally grown up in house-church environments with communal meals short on exclusively sacred spaces, particularly in light of early Christian apologists who saw distinct paganism in the sacralisation of space.

The remaining two-thirds of the book consists of an encyclopedia of late antiquity, including articles on places, events, people, and ideas. This is a wonderful reference, and, sitting next to my Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, a much-valued collection and much-used book.

Sometimes called 'The Dark Ages', in fact the historical period between the classical Roman Imperial times and the Medieval period was a period of transition and disarray, but was far from the uncultured, unlettered and uninspiring period it sometimes seems. This volume will help historians and others reclaim a little more of their own past.

A very welcome and beautifully produced survey
This book provides an excellent overview of recent scholarship on Late Antiquity. It is particularly welcome for its coverage of political and religious change in the East including the coming of Islam as this is not often covered in general surveys. The essays are scholarly, well-written and up-to-date and the combination of introductory essays with shorter entries on the main subjects works well.This is a fascinating,important, but still relatively unknown period of history and this book will serve as a fine introduction to it. Charles Freeman.