El mundo de la Antigüedad tardía. De Marco Aurelio a Mahoma

by Peter Brown, Juan Antonio Piñero (Translator)

Con este extraordinario libro, Peter Brown acuñó para la posteridad el concepto de Antigüedad tardía, indispensable para entender la historia europea, al arrojar una mirada nueva sobre los cambios culturales, religiosos y sociales entre el 200 y el 700 d. C. Su visión, rica, colorida y alejada de la tan reiterada idea del declive y caída del imperio, muestra hasta qué punto este periodo crucial marcó profundamente la evolución divergente de Occidente y Oriente Próximo. Todavía vivimos los resultados de este profundo contraste.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Classics, Medieval, European History, Medieval History

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Peter Robert Lamont Brown FBA is an Irish historian. He is the Rollins Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. Brown is credited with having brought coherence to the field of Late Antiquity, and is often regarded as the inventor of said field. His work has concerned, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe, and the relation between religion and society.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Peter Brown's book proved hugely influential in creating the idea of late antiquity as a distinct period and asserting its importance as the beginning of Christian Europe. While generally the focus has almost invariably been on the fall of the Rome Empire and what was lost, Brown's focus was more on what survived, a Roman world that endured in parts of North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean until the rise of Islam.

A strength of this book is its accessible format, a comfortable sized font and wealth of illustrations. It's not a definitive book on the end of the Roman Empire, but an addition to the discussion which may well endure for longer than the empire than spawned it. Latin authors like Livy and Tacitus, give the impression that Rome was in decline virtually as soon as it was founded. Brown however sees this period as the birth of something new - Mediterranean Christian culture - one could see it simply as the inverse of Gibbons view. Seeing as accounts of the later Roman empire are generally fixated on the idea of decline and the need to explain the eventual fall of the west, it is still refreshing to be confronted with a vision of the era as one of new birth.

For a very different view focusing on the collapse in the West and the decline of the Mediterranean world try Ward-Perkins The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was highly informative and enlightening. The period following the fall of Rome to the advent of the Carolingian Empire is a confusing one, but Peter Brown does an excellent job of describing the forces in movement and the significance of historical events during this period in their context. Highly recommended.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the beginning of my junior semester at college I took a class called "The World of Late Antiquity." Originally, my goal was to become a historian of the classical world and I thought I would take this class to learn more about the period after the period I was interested in. The class and particularly the writings of Peter Brown made such an impact on my life that I decided to focus on post-classical studies.
The thing about this book is the intimacy gained through the imagery. The work is replete with images and these drawings make the era and the people of the era come alive. The art is somewhat surreal instead of abstract and at times it seems that you are staring in the face of someone from the ancient world. This is not to suggest that there is no abstract art from this period but rather that the images selected by Brown serve the purpose of endearing the people of this time to the reader.
In terms of content it is obvious that Brown made a groundbreaking claim that Rome never actually fell but was rather transformed into something else. Instead of using the words "decline and fall" he chooses "continuity and transformation" to describe the period. Brown argues the following;

1. The Roman capitol was moved to the east and thus Rome continued to exist long after 476.
2.People of this era still saw themselves as Romans instead of seeing Rome as part of the past. Yet in the midst of this continuity there are changes taking place and new ideas being promoted.
3. The Barbarian invasions were difficult but not as horrific as they have been portrayed. He argues that the Barbarians assimulated Roman culture not the other way around.
4. This was not an era of intellectual difficulty but rather an exciting time where new ideas were growing rapidly.
5. That it was not until the 800's that we see the disappearance of Roman culture and this was due to various pressures such as the rise of Islam which threatened the west and the eastern part of the empire.

Of course, there were some problems that Brown faced which he needed to adress and which he did in his 2003 "Rise of Western christendom." Personally, I feel that his ideas are excellent but the other side of this argument has valid arguments as well. Bryan Ward-Perkins and Phillip Freeman would argue that this was a time of horrific economic issues in the west which Brown seems to de-emphasize at times. This widespread economic decline is partly true and partly untrue. Hard economic times do not truly make a dark age and I think that in fact, that Brown's goal was perhaps to remove the "dark age" stigma placed on the ancient people of this era. This was a time of excitement that is unique and beautiful in it's own rite. I found that emperors of this time are more interesting and the people are fascinating. I could not recommend this book enough as I have came back to it almost every semester since as a great reference source.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first read Peter Brown's "The World of Late Antiquity" forty years ago as an undergraduate it disappointed me greatly. It had been presented to me as outstanding rebuttal of Gibbon's great thesis that the Roman Empire Declined and toppled over. In fact, the "World of Late Antiquity" addresses none of Gibbon's arguments. What it does do is explain how the Mediterranean world transformed from a classical (pagan) to a medieval (Christian civilization) during the period from 150 AD to 750 AD.
When I first read Brown's book I found the tone smug and that the proof was lacking for most of the things he said. Brown's masterful " Augustine of Hippo: A Biography" in which he demonstrated an extraordinary understanding of the early Christian church and its theologians changed everything for me. It convinced me that Brown truly knew his stuff and it also provided the proof more many of the points made in the later book.
In "The World of Late of Antiquity" Brown argues that the Christianisation of the Mediterranean world was a very gradual process. The religion was first practised by small minorities in the large cities. It would enter the countryside much later where it would progress much more slowly. Classical or pagan philosophy would dominate education until the end of the sixth century. The royal dynasties would move in fits and starts towards Christian culture. Their bureaucrats and functionaries would not have a completely Christian ethos until the beginning of the seventh century.
In Brown's review Europe became medieval at the point when it was monolithically Christian from the peasantry to the palace which he places at 750 AD. At this time a monolithically, Islamic civilization would be established in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa creating a cultural divide in the civilized world which exists to this day.
One many instinctively agree with Brown based on how much one has read or how much art one has seen from the period. Brown's thesis however is too high level to be either demonstrable or refutable. One reads this book for the fun. The best thing about it is the way the publisher has juxtaposed the many pictures of art objects with Brown's text. My recommendation would be to not bother and read his biography of St. Augustine instead.

[Carlos Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

彼得‧布朗 (Peter R.L. Brown)是研究羅馬史的學生無法忽視的名字，他所開創的「晚期古代」(Late Antiquity) 概念早已為學界接受，而且是顯學，在其之後有許多學者都接受了這個觀點。例如，第二版的《劍橋古代史》就採用了此說。

布朗的這個觀點是針對過去學界對歐洲文明史分期的粗暴斷代而生，他撰寫了本書：《古代晚期世界》，拋開了過去著重政治、經濟層面，把焦點放在社會、文化與宗教，詳述古典文明並非「終結」在三世紀與基督教興起，而是「轉型」。簡言之，那些基督教父們對待古典文明的態度，絕非刻板印象中那種「所有異教都是糟糠，一律捨棄與禁絕」，恰相反，這些教父們其實本身大多也都受了古典教育，對荷馬、奧德賽等希臘史詩與柏拉圖、亞里士多德等哲學家並不陌生。他們更多的是，將之吸收、包容進基督教的神學之中，或者是當作一種文學。在西歐，文明的中斷與倒退更多是因為政治上的動盪造成的損害；在東歐，君士坦丁堡保存的大量文獻是日後文藝復興的火種。這種視角在今日也早已被普遍接受，即便是大多數的科普讀物，也都會向讀者轉述。

基督教跟伊斯蘭教這兩大一神教的興起是地中海文明的轉折點，前者從根本上「轉型」了這個文化圈，不單只是精神、思想與宗教層面上，在社會結構上更是如此。教會完全復刻了帝國的政治體系，甚至可以說是「吸收」與「融合」，宮廷貴族把加入教會視為獲得權力與財富的階梯，而教會也承擔起過去政府跟人民之間的連結，變成統治機構的一環。布朗指出，在西半部，社會日益兩極分化，教會與教士成為過往貴族們的專屬，他們獨佔了所有財富、知識與權力，同時也負擔起了「領頭羊」的社會責任，救濟貧民、保護與反映民意等，都是教會應有的美德；與之相對，東部由於帝國中央權力在握，所以教會只是整個結構其中的一部分，神學也更加的「親民」，在君士坦丁堡，即便是一位攤販也可以跟你爭論「基督是神還是人」。這種狀況也是政治現實一體兩面的呈現：一個帝國消解後的半邊與架構基本完整的另半邊。而布朗指出一個更讓我深思的點，他說，如果「古代」也存在所謂的身分認同，那麼，「公民」與「文明/野蠻」是人們區分我者與他者的標準；在四世紀以後，就逐漸開始是以宗教來區分。這就是踏入所謂中世紀的初步，也才是古典時代真正終結點。


《古代晚期世界》的篇幅不長，我當初下血本買了英文本，銅版紙黑白印刷，很厚重，但可惜一直沒看。簡體版面世之後，雖然是採一般紙質，但在設計跟翻譯上都相當有水準，精裝會讓人有想收藏的衝動。中國在彼得‧布朗的作品引進上走的頗遠，從他最早期的《奧古斯丁傳》到《穿過針眼》、《古代晚期的權力與勸誡》都出版多時，有興趣的朋友可以推薦一讀。

PS：《古代晚期的權力與勸誡》這本我看過，是講座文稿，內容主要是補充本書的一部分，可讀性更高。

[Mónica Cordero Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha gustado mucho este libro, porque para mi aclara muchas cuestiones de esa época entre períodos históricos como es la Edad Antigua y la Edad Media (y más si tenemos en cuenta que la Edad Media se inicia con la Alta Edad Media, una etapa mal conocida).
El libro está explicado de una manera muy sencilla y asequible.
Ideal para los estudiosos y amantes de esta época.

[AskHistorians]

A classic book that literally redefined the era away from earlier assumptions about a purely barbaric and unenlightened dark age. Focuses on the cultural evolution of the west via Christianity, and the Persian-Greek synthesis that lead to Rome's eastern inheritors, the Arab Caliphate.

[José Luís Fernandes · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I must say I love this book. Why? Because of the way how it challenged old Gibbonian Orthodoxy in 1971 and revealed the myth of the "Dark Ages". This is the way how it should be viewed today: a founding stone of the scholarship of the latest 40 years on Late Antiquity (a term made popular by this work).

The challenge referred above is also the cause of what looks to be an extreme disregard for any kind of decline, yet I think many people attacking Brown's work fail to have this into account: he mainly seeked to challenge the old decadentist theories, namely regarding cultural and religious History (his specialties), and give an alternative vision of the period between 150-750 AD. That's the reason of any exaggeration: he was challenging Orthodoxy, not imposing it. However, despite this, I think his work could have been benefited if he worked also with economical History and his approach ends up being limited when it could go a bit further (besides admitting some degree of material/economic decline, in order to turn away most of his critics).

With this said, this work is wonderful. It is read very easily and there are lots of illustrations helping Brown to make his points, yet the ideas he communicates are very deep. The late antique spiritual anxieties and tensions, the art of the period and the politico-social evolution of the Dominate, for instance, are themes very well explored by him (in the context of the time the author wrote this book), yet I think he also made a few oversweeping generalizations or conceptual mistakes in his interpretations. For instance, the rise of the Abbasid caliphate seems to me to be the a further reshaping of a new world made on the basis of the Roman and Persian empires rather than a final victory of Persia over Rome, even in a cultural sense, while the ideas over Roman identities at this time needed some improvements, namely for the Eastern provinces, but again that's mostly a result of the age of this book.

Concluding, this is a historical masterpiece any one minimally interested in this period should read. It's just a pity there's no new edition. Perhaps Brown could write a kind of "sequel" called "Revisiting the World of Late Antiquity" or something like this?

[Jeni Enjaian · Rating 3 out of 5]

(copied from my annotated bibliography)
With this book, Brown hopes that by studying the social and cultural change of the Late Antique period, he could inform the reader as to how and why the Late Antique world came to differ from that of the Classical. He also hopes to show how these changes determined the evolution of society of that time period and what life was like for the average Late Antique Roman citizen. Brown first sketches the public changes that occurred between 200 and 400 AD before analyzing the less public changes in religious attitudes and how they affected social and economic conditions. In the second half of the book Brown discusses the decline of the West, Byzantium before briefly mentioning new participants in the area such as the Arab Muslims.
The text exhibits clear focus on what life was like for an average citizen of the time and how it changed. Brown does this by contrasting life of the Late Antique to the Classical and thus fulfills most of his stated thesis. Brown does not, however, provide much evidence of how the changes of the Late Antique period affected the evolution of society into Medieval Europe. Additionally, the highly embellished word choice and syntax prevent a clear and definite point from emerging. The internal structure of each chapter is difficult to determine because the key point for a paragraph often hides within the middle. Also, he states an intention to direct more attention to the Eastern Empire but devotes only one chapter to it. The book does include extensive endnotes and an index but I would not use the book again due to the abstruseness of the text.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent interpretation of the ancient world throughout this period. Peter Brown interprets the period, helping you look at Western Europe, Byzantium and the Arabic worlds differently, appreciating the major changes.

[William Bies · Rating 5 out of 5]

For this reviewer, the period known to historians as late antiquity has always been engaging, as it marks a pregnant transition between two great civilizations, the ancient and the medieval. The characterization with which one will have been familiar since schoolboy days – originating with Gibbon – as the ‘decline and fall of the Roman empire’ is sooner misleading. For one thing, the empire kept on going strong in the eastern Mediterranean and shaded imperceptibly into the Byzantine. But even in the west, the conventional terminal date of 476 was a non-event. By that time, the intermingling of Latin and Germanic peoples that goes under the heading of the ‘Völkerwanderung’ in German-speaking historiography was already a long-accomplished fact; the northern border along the Rhine and Danube rivers was rather porous all along and after the troubles of the third century, Roman civilians had long since become accustomed to the dominant presence of Germanic barbarians in the military and even as their imperial rulers. Thus, when the Ostrogothic king Odoacer deposed the last Latin emperor Romulus and declined to reappoint another Augustus in the west (sending the imperial insignia to Zeno at Constantinople instead), nobody at the time saw it as registering an epochal threshold. After all, the Germanic tribes had been settled in Gaul, Spain and Pannonia for two generations or more, where, of course, the Latin-speaking population remained numerically preponderant; the Roman senate continued to exist etc. As one will gather from the interesting writings of the French historian Pierre Riché [Education and Culture in the Barbarian West from the Sixth to the Eighth Century], the traditional Latin curriculum and cultural consciousness lasted well into the Merovingian period, at least among a small circle of aristocratic elites. Nevertheless, the late-antique era did witness startling changes, such as the gradual supplanting of paganism by Christianity and, with the sudden eruption of Islam, the loss of the north African and near Eastern provinces to conquest by the Arabs.

The eminent British historian Peter Brown, by far the most distinguished authority in the field, tells the story of all these historical occurrences very adeptly in the present little work, The World of Late Antiquity, which dates from early in his career and which he has followed up with a host of further eloquent, more focused studies. This reviewer enjoyed the good fortune to enroll as a junior in college in a course on late antiquity taught by the professor himself, when he was as the height of his scholarly trajectory. If one delves into the work now under review, one will perceive at once what sets Brown apart. He deploys his vast erudition effortlessly to paint a compelling portrait of late-antique society, always with a good eye for illustrative detail and apt comparisons. Chronological narrative (which anyone could supply) is kept to a minimum; what occupies Brown more strenuously is the character of a civilization as a whole and how this evolves under the impact of social, political and religious currents. He pays particular attention to the differences and connections among western and eastern Europe and the near East, with the goal of reconstructing the process whereby the comparatively unified world of the second century, which forms for us the very definition of classical antiquity at the summit of its flourishing, became progressively more and more fragmented and issued ultimately in the early medieval standoff among the Latin west, the Greek Byzantine east and the Islamic caliphate under the Abbasids, which oriented itself away from the Mediterranean and towards Persia and central Asia.

The late antique period was an era of both dislocation and impressive continuity. Brown begins his narrative by highlighting the vital importance of classical education to the upper-class’ self-definition in a time of uncertainty. People felt that the way to restore order and stability was to model themselves on their ancient heroes. Yet, the aristocracy was open to new blood; the surprising degree of social mobility during the fourth-century restoration raises the question of how valuable a hereditary aristocracy really can be, when closed to replenishment by recruitment from the lower orders.

Unlike what one will find in the Oxford companion to the classical world (q.v., the immediately preceding review by this reviewer), Brown enters into a full treatment of the role of religion in the second half of part one (pp. 49-114). To be sure, throughout his emphasis is rather sociological than dogmatic; cf. p. 144, his characterization of the pivotal council of Chalcedon in 451 in which the theological points at issue are skated over lightly in favor of political analysis. Brown highlights as a departure from earlier pagan cult the religious importance ascribed to interiority, conversion, revelation and the role of demons. The unstoppable rise of Christianity figures in Brown’s narrative beginning pp. 62ff, with a pause to look at the complexion of contemporary pagan Hellenism on pp. 70-74. All during the fourth century, the religious imagination began to turn to the figure of the holy man, a man of power who could intercede with the demonic forces and obtain protection for the community—an important station along the way to the early medieval cult of the saints, to which Brown has devoted another well-received book. The new attitude contrasts with the more objective stance of paganism during its heyday in early antiquity, when what Brown calls a ‘religion of things’ prevailed: temples, sacred groves, mountain heights and a liturgical cult of community over the individual. The upcoming monkish piety of the fourth century supplanted a more inward-looking devotion of previous centuries, when the early Christians were limited to small groups below the radar screen of public life. Brown’s illuminating comparison of the ascetic movements in the west versus the east (pp. 107-112) rings true and helps one to understand how divisions crept into the originally united Church, leading over the course of the succeeding half millennium to the schism of 1054.

What Brown is so good at supplying by way of copious observations throughout his text is perspective, a sense for the meaning of historical trends above the level of pointillistic detail. For instance, he sees the significance of barbarian invasions of the early fifth century in the circumstance that ‘the barbarian tribes entered a society that was not strong enough to hold them at bay, but not flexible enough to “lead their conquerers captive” by absorbing them into Roman life….These invasions were not perpetual, destructive raids; still less were they organized campaigns of conquest. Rather, they were a “gold rush” of immigrants from the underdeveloped countries of the north into the rich lands of the Mediterranean’ (p. 122). Justinian’s caesaropapism served as inspiration to Charlemagne and gave rise to the idea that the Holy Roman Empire should exist to protect the interests of the papacy and to secure the libertas of Roman church (pp. 134-135). Hence, the hierarchical clerical complexion of the whole Latin middle ages. The long-term significance of Justinian’s reconquests of the sixth century (p. 158) is that they brought the Spanish and north African provinces into the orbit of the eastern empire and split the Mediterranean diagonally, a process only brought to its completion when they fell to the Arabs a century later. In so far, Brown seems to concur with Pirenne’s celebrated thesis, but see more below. Meanwhile, Brown attributes the reason why classical culture vanished in the west (pp. 174-176) to the disappearance of the secular elite and its replacement by Christian bishops who, though not by any means constitutionally opposed to it, were just too busy with everyday administration to have the leisure in which it could be cultivated. In the territories of the eastern empire at the same time, the arrival of the Arab armies cut off tenuous links to a secular pagan public culture and promoted the rise of a totally religious culture, in which a man’s identity was defined by the religious group to which he belonged, and thus, paradoxically, completed the Christianization of the near East (pp. 186-187).

The last major section of this work is devoted to the revolution of Islam and its world-historical significance. Nearly a century of ferocious warfare back-and-forth between the Romans and the refounded Persian empire left both sides weakened and established the conditions preparing the way for the rapid Arab conquests (pp. 169-171). In keeping with Brown’s tendencies, the first half of the third section of part two is devoted to a sociological explanation of the rise of Islam, starting from the context of the pagan tribes in Arabia, who, as long as defensive fortifications on the frontier to the south were strong, had been contained by a network of alliances. The collapse of military strength of both the great powers (Byzantine and Persian) emboldened Arab adventurers to conduct raids to the north, which became attractive to them as a result of an economic boom fostered by the caravan trade with Arabia. The second half describes the fate of the ancient near East under Islam – a regrettably brief but excellent account. After the expulsion of the Byzantines from everywhere but Anatolia and the fall of Sassanid Persia, the Arabs reigned supreme. Yet, in what may come as a surprise given the persistence of the Arabic language in the Muslim world, the Umayyads’ hold over the culture of the near East was to prove fragile. Brown explains why: ‘The califs of Damascus staked their authority on this confrontation with the Byzantine empire – the Rūm. But Constantinople held firm: the great naval expeditions of 677 and 717 were beaten back from under the walls of the city. There is no doubt that, at that time, Byzantium saved Europe: but, in beating back the Muslims of Syria, the Byzantine emperors unwittingly lost the Near East forever’ (p. 200), for the failure to take Constantinople ultimately led to the replacement of the Umayyad dynasty as a result of the Abbasid revolt in Iran. A new civilizational configuration emerged, as Persian influences (now comfortably converted to Islam) reasserted themselves over Arabian and consolidated themselves into stable rule over an empire that was ever more proof against Byzantine encroachment. ‘The eastward pull of the vast mass of Persia in the Islamic empire was the salvation of Europe. It was not the Greek fire of the Byzantine navy outside Constantinople in 717, nor the Frankish cavalry of Charles Martel at Tours in 732, that brought the Arab war-machine to a halt. It was the foundation of Baghdad [in 762]’ (p. 202).

Brown nicely sets forth what is for him the poignant lesson to be drawn from the study of late antiquity in this concluding paragraph (implicitly qualifying Pirenne’s thesis by delaying by a century the date of the rift between civilizations), ‘The division between East and West, which had been blurred throughout the Late Antique period by the confrontation of Byzantium and Persia along the Fertile Crescent, came to rest along the shores of the Mediterranean itself. The Muslim world turned its back on its poor Christian neighbors across the sea. The cultivated man drew his language from the [Arabian] desert, and the style of his culture from eastern Mesopotamia. In the more stable world created by this vast shift of the balance of culture, western Europe could create an identity of its own. But the student of Late Antiquity, who realizes how much European culture owes to the fruitful interchange between the populations of the Fertile Crescent, open at one end to an empire based on the sea [Rome] and, at the other, to the Iranian plateau, can estimate the cost of the chasm that yawned across the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages’ (p. 203).

After winding one’s way through such a commanding scholarly performance, it seems almost ungrateful to mention any limitations, but there are some which one ought to keep in mind in order to appreciate what one does get here. Brown is neither an intellectual historian nor a theologian, but despite this one will find it very instructive to review the history through his primarily sociological lens. In this vein, then, it ought to be pointed out that Brown views religious phenomena from the highly polished, faux sympathetic but basically uncomprehending standpoint of the educated modern secular humanist. Brown’s noted biography of Augustine designedly eschews any treatment of high doctrine and trinitarian speculation, for instance; one is led to ponder how one could pretend to understand a man while blithely passing over what is of most vital importance to him and his self-understanding. Has one really done justice to the Confessions without internalizing the sheer wonder, the sublime awe and the tender love of the God whom Augustine discovers? For, the pressing question of truth in religious matters is quite irrelevant to anyone sharing Brown’s mindset, disposed to scan the closing verses of John’s gospel (in the original Greek, no less), ‘There were many other signs that Jesus worked in the sight of the disciples. These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name’ (John 20:30-31), and to respond with an indifferent shrug. Likewise, philosophy too is shortchanged in the present work; there is a pericope on Plotinus, little else (more concerned with his spiritual outlook than with his metaphysics proper). Needless to say, science is ignored altogether. Yet all these are mere quibbles; if determined and enterprising, one can very well track down elsewhere sufficient scholarly treatments of the aspects of religious and intellectual history that Brown neglects, but nowhere else indeed will one come across as masterful a depiction of late-antique society as we are favored to receive from Brown’s pen here.

[Linniegayl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short but readable book covering the period from 150-750 CE and the world of "Late Antiquity." I liked that the emphasis in the early sections is on themes rather than events (such as religious thought, Christianity, paganism, philosophy, etc.). Thus rather than moving from war to war and emperor to emperor, the author covers broad periods of time looking at how some of these themes changed over time.

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book which deliberately downplays the common focus on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in favour of broader trends such as public demonstrations of wealth, Christianity, paganism and military control of government, capped off by the rise of Islam.

While intended as a broad overview of the era, I suspect there are a few historiographical debates buried within.

Plenty of pictures, which are useful for this kind of book.

[John Damon Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal work bringing great depth and color to the so-called "dark ages". Through his engaging style and liberal use of pictures, Brown weaves the fascinating story of later days of the Persian and Roman empires in all of their splendor, paradox, nuance and continuity.

[Alex Geldzahler · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But the student of Late Antiquity, who realizes how much European culture owes to the fruitful interchange between the populations of the Fertile Crescent, open at one end to an empire based on the sea, and at the other, to the Iranian Plateau, can estimate the cost of the chasm that yawned across the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages”

Very good, very dense.

[Bill Kvebak · Rating 2 out of 5]

The period of time between the Roman Empire and the eventual Renaissance of Italy in European History has been characterized by many historians as “The Dark Ages.” The prevailing idea is the collapse of the Roman Empire, somewhere around 450 - 550 C.E., left a vacuum of the rule of law leading to a period of time where very little learning or new ideas were being created throughout what the world that was formerly known as the Roman Empire. In The World of Late Antiquity, a book by Peter Brown, he provides the reader with ample evidence to show how first: the Roman Empire did not collapse and second: how this period was far from lacking education or new ideas.
Peter Brown may be the foremost historian of the period of Late Antiquity, in fact, he is often credited with inventing the field of “Late Antiquity.” Prior to publishing The World of Late Antiquity, Edward Gibbons’ book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written in 1779, was the most celebrated book in the field chronicling the period of time from 476 - 1453. C. E. Brown has authored several books including a biography of Augustine of Hippo and another book titled The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity. Brown has worked at two colleges in the United States the University of California Berkeley from 1978-1986 and Princeton from 1986-2011.
In The World of Late Antiquity, Brown has divided his book into two parts. The first is titled, “The Late Roman Revolution” and deals with the beginning of Christianity and its relationship with the people and religions of Rome. Many historical textbooks will cite the rise of the Christian religion as a potential cause for the eventual collapse and downfall of the Western Roman Empire. The title alone suggests another concept entirely for the role of Christianity in Rome. Instead of Christianity being the downfall of the Roman Empire, it is going to be a part of the culture that continues to grow both geographically and intellectually. Brown does spend some time on classic rulers who have a large impact on the eventual acceptance and dominance of Christianity including Constantine, but he spends equal time with other influential figures like Augustine of Hippo. Central to the studies of Brown is also the significance of who is Christian. The growth of the religion expands from being a religion of the poor people to one of the middle to upper classes. Another theme from the book on Late Antiquity, is the relationship of Greek studies to Christianity. The ancient followers of pagan religions were fluent in Greek studies and were even viewed as caretakers of classic literature like Plato or the Roman Cicero. Christian leaders often found value in the study of all that was Greek. Brown emphasises the importance of Greek studies in the beginning of Christianity, and it is hardly an either or situation. Brown does spend time talking about the importance of the countryside to the formation of Christianity. It is hardly a religion only of the poor townspeople or the middle classes. Some of the early leaders of Christianity are trying to get away from the cities and lead what will be viewed as a monastic lifestyle away from the hubbub of society; their ideas will also aid in the expansion of Christianity throughout the world.
The second part of the the book on Late Antiquity divides the Roman world into three different parts: The West, Byzantium, and Islam. It is in this section of the book Brown tends to reach a little too much for some historians. In the section on the West, which is clearly dealing with the area commonly referred to as the Western Roman Empire. Brown attempts to show that the light of education does not go out and that the collapse of the Roman Empire is not as complete as maybe Gibbons suggests. Instead he wants to reveal how Christianity is going to be the focus of the new education in these areas and instead of the end of Roman culture a rise of Latin culture is going to predominate. However, we know that much of classic Greek literature and ideas are lost to the West during this time, and while they are clearly important in the Byzantine empire the Western Roman Empire does lose much of what was intellectually Roman. Brown’s treatment of the Byzantine Empire and the Rise of Islam offer some of Brown’s more interesting work in his book. His discussion on both of these areas offer the casual reader with plenty of new and thoughtful insights. The Byzantine Empire has an impact on both the former Western Roman Empire as well as the newly forming Islamic empires.
Brown’s book does provide the reader some challenges mostly the amount of names and religious concepts discussed in the book. Brown is clearly very comfortable with his time period, and this book is not meant for the casual reader. One should have a working knowledge of the time period to be studied. This book would be an excellent addition for a college level course which also seeks to teach students some of the basics about late Roman history. The book would also work well in any graduate course on Late Antiquity.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm preparing for a semester of directed reading on Justinian's reconquering of Rome, and read this to have a good base of knowledge on the general period. Brown looks at the rise of Christianity in the West, the blurring of boundaries between the eastern and western empires, the East, and then the rise of Islam. It's a fantastic piece of scholarship to prepare for further reading afterwards, albeit one that focuses heavily upon religion (and less so upon, say, war or politics).

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brown is a really great writer for an academic. Some fascinating stuff in here. Enjoyed the sections on the Sassanids most of all.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many ways, this book is the inverse of another book I have read about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and deliberately so, in that both books seek to attack the central thesis of the other book on their weakest ground and this book, at least, largely ignores its own weakest ground [1]. At its best, this book echoes the concerns of the late Roman and early Byzantine world with constant warfare and the need for adroit diplomacy [2] as well as the fragility of civic culture in the face of crisis [3], the subject material of much better books. All too often, though, this book seeks to make a case for the vitality of late Roman society and tends to downplay the very real troubles that happened to ordinary people in the course of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and its replacement by a set of much harsher successor states, whether one looks at the barbarian kingdoms of the West, the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia, or the Islamic Caliphate that took over the Near East. If you want a book that celebrates underrated neoplatonic philosophers and the art of Late Antiquity, this is a good book. If you want a book that provides us with a way to cope with the similarity between our age and the fall of Rome in terms of the crisis of culture and the declining legitimacy of civic responsibility, this is not a worthwhile book unless one aspires to be part of the surviving elite.

In terms of its contents, this is a short book, about 200 pages in length, many of them filled with pretty pictures of mosaics and bas-reliefs and coins and the like, divided into a few large chapters with several subsections within them. Part One of the book, which takes a bit more than half of its pages, discusses the late Roman Revolution. The first chapter talks about society, looking at the boundaries of the classical world, the new rulers in the third and fourth century who came from a largely military background, and the apparent restoration of the Roman empire after Constantine and his successors. Then the book discusses the contentious issue of religion, looking at the new mood of religious thought found in early Hellenistic Christianity, gnosticism, elite paganism, and various oriental cults, before looking at the crisis of the towns, the last pagan Hellenes, the conversion of Christianity into a midbrow Hellenistic faith, and the rise of monasticism. The second part looks at divergent legacies in the late Roman world and is split into three parts. The first part looks at the apparent Western revival between 350 and 450 and the price of survival in subjugation to barbarian kingdoms after that thanks to the collapse of civic participation among the senatorial and religious elite in Western Europe. The second part looks at Byzantium, examining the early history of the Eastern Empire, Justinian and his successors and the collapse of power due to plague and having too many enemies, the relationship between the Eastern Empire and Persia, and the death of the classical world. The final, and shortest section of the second part of the book looks at new participants, namely the Arabic world under Islam and the post-Islamic Abassic Caliphate.

At its heart, this author is a wannabe elitist Hellene. With the sort of arrogant disdain that intellectual elites have for accessible middle brow culture today, the author sniffs at the success of Hellenized Christians in appealing to a wider degree of people than were being granted status as civilized people in late classical society. He seems far more comfortable with the neoplatonic philosphers who replaced the koine Greek with a very rigid and recondite attic dialect, and sees much of the educated Christian world as being made up of semi-literate semi-barbarians, pointing out that where the civic culture was least robust, the rise of monasticism and the power of the Church led to division and fracturing within an area, but overall the author is not particularly concerned with the fate of the ordinary peasants or towndwellers, but is more concerned with the sort of elites that served as regional "big men," or that were responsible for the creation and patronage of art. Small wonder, then, that as an art historian with very little concern about the lives of ordinary citizens that he would prefer to think of Late Antiquity, because decline and fall has such a harsh and unpleasant ring about it.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading for exams is grunt work, but Peter Brown’s book made it enjoyable even though I was never interested in the Late Antique period. Yet this period (200 - 800 AD) was no doubt important as it witnessed the birth of two universalist, monotheist religions, permanently transforming the classical empires of the Mediterranean and the Near East.

Brown resists Gibbon’s “decline and fall” paradigm by qualifying it to the decline in political structure of the western half of the empire, and instead gives a “continuity and changes” overview of the social history. In particular he discusses the turn towards the interior life and the emergence of a kind of spiritual individualism, as opposed to the state paganism and public rites of the classical era, that settled upon Mediterranean society at this time. As a result, these societies were particularly receptive for a new kind of spirituality that is at once individualistic and communal. Brown also drew on art and literary history to support his thesis, arguing that Late Antique portraiture became an art form that sought to capture the spark in the eye and the inner self, while autobiographies of the period such as Augustine’s Confessions attempted to do so through words.

This is the first scholarly work I’ve read that traced Christianity’s ascendance from a marginalized sect to the religion of an empire, and it is not all pretty. Some of the episodes involving the militant monks’ destruction of pagan temples and violence perpetrated against pagans once Christianity was adopted by the Roman ruling class reminded me of the Sparrows of the Faith Militant in GoT (it seems a lot of my generals readings remind me of GoT...). I never heard these stories in Sunday school, even though there are always plenty of stories about the early Christian martyrs. This is not to say any religion is inherently violent, but that adherents of all religions are capable of fanaticism and violence, as well as a lot of wonderful deeds.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Brown's survey of culture and society from the time of Diocletian to the rise of the Abbasid dynasty of Persia manages to be highly sophisticated in its judgements while remaining entirely accessible to the lay reader.

A gradualist rather than a catastrophist, Brown's concern is to trace the evolution of the medieval world from its classical predecessor. He does so by focusing on the lines of continuity rather than on the hammer blows of invasion and pestilence, highlighting the way changes in economic conditions, shifts in geo-politics, the introduction of new patterns of thought such as neo-platonism and Christianity, and the development of new ways of thinking about the individual all came together in a process that was as much about innovation and renewal as it was about decay.

As a narrator Brown is erudite but never obscure. The broad sweep of history is interspersed with moments of granularity that illuminate his thesis. Although some of his assessments have lately been challenged by writers like Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins, The World Of Late Antiquity remains an incredibly important resource for anyone interested in this period.

[Donald Yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is THE book to read to understand how Christianity took over the Roman Empire. It explained to me how people could have more admiration for a hermit that lived on top a pillar than the emperor who turned back the barbarian hordes. Like the story of America, it seemed that God was repeatedly on Rome's side, without good cause. By a miracle everything worked out. But if you don't believe in God or the fateful course and predestination of history you are still left with questions. Why did the Christians win the game against all odds? Peter Brown's answer is "because they had a good story to tell the common man: you are just as interesting as Homer, Virgil, Caesar and Cicero! What a friend we have in Jesus. Late Antique man would have loved the idiotic solipsism of Facebook.

[Kathryn Mattern · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've loved everything I've ever read by Peter Brown. His writing is so clear, so cogent, and reveals so much of interest about the worlds of the past about which he writes. At the time I read this book in the early to mid 1980's, I was terribly interested in the history of christianity, in its two-tiered sysem of clergy and laity, in the ascetical movements of martyrdom and monasticism,and its relationship to the pagan world around it, especially the world of classical pagan philosophy. So Peter Brown answered all my questions. I've read several of his books including 'The Cult of the Saints' and his History of Western Spirituality.'

[Dominic Muresan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a textbook in any sense of the word, as the author passes through events mostly for the sake of illustration. Its short, but shortness usually means higher density of information.

It is a wonderful study of the basic mentalities of the Late Antique world. A world marked by a series of legacies - the west and the east.
These two, evolving through different circumstances will shape their worlds in two distinct ways, their distinctiveness being felt to this very day in our churches, traditions and popular mentalities.

It is a must-read book for an in-depth understanding of the evolution of the medieval world.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting essay more than a book. Mr. Brown discusses the development of two empires in what was one Roman Empire, the root causes of Christianity's spread in both and this, of course leads to the success of Islam in much of the region. The book does not totally answer some of my questions but did a good job overall and created some new thoughts for me to research--the major ones dealing with the rise of christianity and the whys of it.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, engaging survey (in essay form) of the Late Antique Period. I read this in conjunction with a graduate seminar on the literature of the time period and I would recommend that people who enjoy Brown's work check out the literature of Ausonius and Ammianus Marcellinus (both of whom Brown mentions frequently) as well as Prudentius' speeches against Symmachus.

[Anatolikon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A crucial piece of the historiography, but it's forty years old now and needs to be read in the context of the pile of work done in late antiquity that this volume spurred on. While the importance of the book cannot be understated, its actual relevance today for understanding late antique history itself is somewhat diminished.

[Andres Felipe Contreras Buitrago · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entiendo la importancia del libro, en su época supuso un gran cambio al acuñar el término de antigüedad tardía, dejando de lado esa mirada negativa al mundo mediterráneo como uno oscuro y desolado luego de la caída del imperio romano, el periodo que estudia Brown, era algo que no era muy estudiado en su tiempo, por lo cual se entiende lo que supuso este texto en su tiempo, porqué el mirar la antigüedad tardía en términos de cambios y continuidades es algo que a hoy se sigue usando, en ves de mirar ese periodo como uno de solo crisis; por el contrario, es aquí donde se forja los cimientos del mundo euroasiático con el cristianismo y el Islam.

Dividido en dos partes, que a su ves se divide en cinco capítulos tenemos un primer capítulo sobre la sociedad romana tardía, en la que tenemos un panorama de un imperio romano que en sus ciudades depende mucho de la exportación de granos al norte de África, las ciudades con los años pese a las incursiones bárbaras tendrían una vida tranquila, pero las pequeñas irían pereciendo mientras las principales segurian iguales. En el oriente las ciudades eran más ricas y con mayor control del poder senatorial, en este Oriente romano también las riquezas se distribuían mejor, en occidente estaban concentrado en unos pocos aristócrata que eran muy ricos, también se vive en los últimos siglos de Roma una época de renacimientos y restauraciones que hacen formar una nueva sociedad con mayor libertad y que era más susceptible de convertirse al cristianismo, pero en estos cambios también hay una arraigo hacia lo local.

En el segundo capítulo, religión, vemos la irrupción del cristianismo en el mundo romano, donde las prácticas paganas eran muy comunes ante la estabilidad y paz de Roma, incluso muchos templos dedicados a múltiples dioses eran respetados, aunque las discusiones literarias entre paganos y cristianos iniciaban, el Cristianismo tenía a su favor la promesa de un mundo mejor en el más allá, su visión simple entre ángeles y demonios y la posibilidad de curar males físicos con religión, que sumado a las invaciones barbaras, había todo un terreno preparado para la conversión al cristianismo en el imperio romano, los monjes que andaban en el desierto ayudaron a consolidar el poder del cristianismo, que presentaba a Jesús en un primer momento como un maestro, por ende, el cristianismo en sus primeros años cogía elementos del mundo griego y romano; no obstante, con los años empezaría una gran violencia religiosa entre paganos y romanos.

En la segunda parte, legados divergentes, en el tercer capítulo tenemos una Roma que pese al intento de reformarse cayó ante las incursiones bárbaras, aquí también el cristianismo empezó a coger mucha más fuerza, también los poderes locales occidentales seguían incrementado su poder que veían con malos ojos a las conquistas bizantinas, más que todo por la recolección de impuestos, los bizantinos tampoco veían con buenos ojos a esta élite romana, se llega así a la creación de un imperio cristiano a manos de Justiniano.

El imperio de este último es el tema del siguiente capítulo, ante las incursiones bárbaras en occidente, Constantinopla es amurallada, porqué estos también tienen sus primeros enemigos bárbaros, que sumado con los persas tenían dos frentes de batalla, su estado centralizado y su excelente recolección de impuestos lo hizo un imperio cristiano, que con el espíritu de cruzada llegó a retomar partes de lo que para ellos era parte de su imperio, pero, el fin de la paz con los persas y la peste Justiniana, iniciaron un reflujo el la prosperidad bizantina, los persas también tenían sus propios problemas dentro de sus fronteras, las rivalidades entre ambos llevo al surgimiento de un nuevo actor importante, el Islam.

El último capítulo, es sobre la aparición de Mahoma y al expansión musulmana, los comerciantes de la península arábica, eran muy prósperos gracias a su agricultura y por el control de las rutas comerciales, desde la meca estos se mantuvieron neutrales en los conflictos entre bizantinos y persas, pero ante el debilitamiento de ambos, más su gran control en montar a camello los llevo a expandirse enormemente, con generales que eran conquistadores que daban la opción de defensas y respeto a los pueblos que tomaban, hizo que luego, Bagdad sea una ciudad esplendorosa, donde habría un renacimiento de las cultura persa, centrados en sus asuntos, los musulmanes venían el fin de su gran expansión.

En conclusión, un libro que como dice la colección, es un clásico, pero que es difícil de leer, tiene una prosa algo confusa de entender, a su favor tiene el gran abanico de imágenes para acompañar la lectura y que es muy corto.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Creation of a New Age

As a supporter of the "Decline and Fall" theory, I wanted to hate this book, but I couldn’t. Brown writes with an infectious enthusiasm for his subject, the late Roman Empire and its successors. If at times he does over-egg the achievements of the late Roman Empire, it could be forgiven.

The book is divided into two parts of roughly 100 pages each with lots of pictures. Part One covers the later Roman Empire from Diocletian to Theodosius I (c.280-400AD). Part Two covers the heirs of Rome- the Western Senate and Papacy, Byzantium and the Muslim world. The focus is mainly on politics, religion and the arts. One feels a history focused primarily on economic and social achievements during the period may have emphasised a substantially different trend.

The book to me was at its most interesting towards the middle of Part One where it discusses the reasons for the religious transformation of Rome. After all, the Christianisation of Rome after Constantine is the defining cultural event of the period. The interesting part of Brown’s view is that it was a revolution led by the middle-class. A world of increasing taxation (to fund the army’s incessant wars against the existential threat of Sassanian Persia and the barbarian incursions) led to wealth being concentrated at the top of Roman society in an administrative bureaucracy and money for traditional religious festivals draining away. At the same time, many of the middle class sought learning to gain access to this bureaucracy through training in rhetoric and study (think of St Augustine), and so a cod form of Neo-Platonism began to become commonplace- this fused with the Christian religion’s organisational structure providing a broadly popular movement with a degree of intellectual articulation. As the “new men” rose up through the ranks, the Hellenistic aristocratic high culture was overthrown and replaced by a large and increasingly Christian bureaucracy. For, as Brown is keen to point out, Roman history is not that of the 90% of the rural working classes, but the 10% of the city dwellers, and paganism in the countryside persisted long afterwards even into the early Islamic era.

On literature and philosophy, the book is fair, but perhaps over-eggs the achievements. Yes, Neo-Platonism, the last great philosophical movement of the Ancient World, came out of the era in question. One could praise Plotinus for producing a logically coherent strand of mysticism and a creative reinterpretation of Plato. But Neo-Platonism was the last movement because it was a cul-de-sac. Instead of heading towards an exploration of the truth, Neo-Platonism postulated truth could only be approached indirectly, becoming bogged down in cumbersome systems; Plotinus’ successor Iamblichus postulated 36 gods, 72 gods proceeding from them, supported by 42 nature gods for good measure. In literature, St Augustine wrote the greatest autobiography of the Ancient World, and Emperor Julian was no slouch at writing either (his wonderfully titled “Beard Hater” is an engaging satire of himself). But aside from these two giants at the end of the 4th century and Boethius in the 5th, little of interest is to be found in the rest of the period, as the literary and philosophical scene becomes dominated by homilies and endless Byzantine discussions of the nature of Christ- do you prefer one nature, one-essence or one-energy to explain the interaction between the human and divine?

The book is less convincing when it describes how Roman art shifted. It argues that the ending of Hellenic realism represented a conscious shift away from the classical style to emphasise the importance of the heavenly realm. In support it offers evidence classical work could still be produced up until the mid-Byzantine period. And yet these later pieces are few and even pieces commissioned for the imperial court of Heraclius (died 641) are of a less than middling standard compared to their classical forbears. What would be more interesting would be exploring the impact of the Sassanians on Roman art. Persia had previously had a realistic hellenic inspired art under the Seleucids and the Parthians, but Sassanian art from the 3rd century onward rejected foreign Greek-influenced realism and harkened back to that of the Achaemenid Empire. As the centre of the Roman world shifted East to Constantinople and closer to Persia, did this antique art also distort the Roman style? Indeed, one wonders how much the adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperor was also influenced by Sassanian Persia, where the monotheist Zoroastrian faith was aggressively integrated into a militaristic state.

My other complaint is that the work tends to bear the bias of its author. Brown, an Irish Protestant immigrant then teaching at Oxford in the 60’s, is so firmly rooted on the side of the “new men” that he often overlooks the achievements of the Roman aristocracy. He joyously writes of a world in which aristocratic “deadwood” was rooted out by working class soldier kings under Diocletian and Constantine. In Part 2 he sneers at the Italian senators with their verse in a rarefied Latin dialect. Emperor Justinian on the other hand is praised for taking the time to understand theological issues of the common men, and is portrayed as an “autocrat with efficient tax collectors” rather than a man whose prolonged sieges in Italy irreparably damaged the last remnants of Roman towns. The Eastern Church gets an easy ride despite stuffing its pockets with gold throughout. Barbarians are problematic because they were “encapsulated by a wall of dumb hatred” and not assimilated, not because they were even more vicious and self-serving than the soldier emperors before them. The loss of virtually all Western territories is treated with the diffidence a 60’s leftist might take towards the loss of the European colonial empires. One would not be surprised if at the end the 5th century Bishop Haroldus MacMillianus popped up to announce to his flock “you’ve never had it so good”.

Let’s be charitable to Brown. His ideas are not completely crazy and help to put the decline and fall of Rome in perspective. Up until the mid 7th century, Roman civilization’s core had, on occasion, the ability to achieve similar heights to its glory days both literally and figuratively. The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (537AD) stands at 55m, the Colosseum in Rome (80AD) stands at 51m. Emperor Heraclius in 627AD could still field an army of over 20,000 men and beat the Persians comprehensively, much as Trajan had beat the Parthians over five centuries earlier. Earlier the soldier emperors Diocletian (284-305AD) and Constantine (306-337AD) had managed to put more men in the field than Rome at its height (c. 650,000 under Constantine vs. 450,000 under Hadrian) and buy the Western empire another century of existence. This is an age worthy of serious study and non-trivial achievement.

But such a viewpoint needs to be read in conjunction with existing decline and fall works to get the full picture. After the wars of Justinian, the West lay in ruins. Its greatest dark-age ruler, Charlemagne, had to reuse blocks of marble from ancient monuments for Aachen cathedral as there was no one with the skill left to cut them. Rome’s population had collapsed. In the East, Byzantine territories shrank. Religious intolerance towards Jews was even worse than under the pagans. The Athenian Academy was closed, the library of Alexandria lost to the Muslims. The Mediterranean cities that had fueled Hellenic culture shrank. If this was a “rosy afterglow of Roma Eterna”, it was like the embers of the eternal city after its sack by the Goths.

[Eren Kozan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his book World of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown reflects the social and religious conditions, mindset, hopes and fears of citizens of Western and Eastern Roman Empire between 200 AD and 800 AD. We start from the decline of Paganism, high society culture and erosion of the ancient rituals in the Rome, go through the rise of Christianity and collapse of Western Roman Empire, see the glorious days of the Byzantine Empire and finally come to new wave of religion, Islam.
I started the book aiming to increase my knowledge about the politics, religion and social background of the antique world around Mediterranean Sea. Therefore, as a history enthusiast who looks to know more about a period, I was waiting a more chronological and classic history book like flow. However, as I read the book, I see that writer’s target audience is not the people who wants to learn about antiquity but ones that already familiar with it and try to gain new perspectives. Although, the book has chapters with titles implies specific time periods like fall of Hellenism, wake of Christianity, when you go through the chapters you will see that there are back and forth time shifts to analyse some concepts. This time lapses makes harder to follow what was going on around those years, which rulers was in charge, which important political and social drifts had occurred. However, I think this rather my fault to start such a complex era with a book not written to teach late antiquity but to argue it with people who knows about it.
Even though sometimes I felt lost between pages of historical information, I learn many interesting facts and details about Rome and Byzantine. As one of the current inhabitants of Anatolia, it surprises me to see how the soils we live on hosts many different nations such as Latins, Greeks, Syrians, Persians. I believe as Turks and Muslims live on Anatolia often, we see ourselves as the first owners of this lands and we tend to ignore the massive culture inheritance those people left for us.  However, seeing how Pagans, Christians, Manichaeists prevail all those years, spread their beliefs all around the land make me realize how our current social and culture has affected from them.
In the end, although book is hard to follow for a newcomer of the world, World of Late Antiquity does not fall short to give you an overall understanding of the era. Moreover, if you are living in the ruins of that world, it manages to give you a sense which makes you look different to your history.