Companion to Late Antiquity

An accessible and authoritative overview capturing the vitality and
diversity of scholarship that exists on the transformative time
period known as late antiquity.

• Provides an essential overview of current scholarship on late
  antiquity - from between the accession of Diocletian in AD
  284 and the end of Roman rule in the Mediterranean

• Comprises 39 essays from some of the world's foremost scholars
  of the era

• Presents this once-neglected period as an age of powerful
  transformation that shaped the modern world

• Emphasizes the central importance of religion and its
  connection with economic, social, and political life

• Winner of the 2009 Single Volume Reference/Humanities &
  Social Sciences PROSE award granted by the Association of American
  Publishers

Auteur
Philip Rousseau is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Early Christian Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Early Christianity at the Catholic University of America. He is the author of The Early Christian Centuries (2002), Basil of Caesarea (1994), Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (1985), and Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome (1978). He is the joint editor (with Tomas Hägg) of Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity (2000).

Résumé
An accessible and authoritative overview capturing the vitality and diversity of scholarship that exists on the transformative time period known as late antiquity.

• Provides an essential overview of current scholarship on late antiquity from between the accession of Diocletian in AD 284 and the end of Roman rule in the Mediterranean
• Comprises 39 essays from some of the world's foremost scholars of the era
• Presents this once-neglected period as an age of powerful transformation that shaped the modern world
• Emphasizes the central importance of religion and its connection with economic, social, and political life
• Winner of the 2009 Single Volume Reference/Humanities & Social Sciences PROSE award granted by the Association of American Publishers

Contenu

List of Figures ix

List of Maps x

Notes on Contributors xi

Preface and Acknowledgments xviii

List of Abbreviations xxiii

**1 Approaching Late Antiquity 1
Wendy Mayer

Part I The View from the Future 15

**2 The Byzantine Late Antiquity 17
Stratis Papaioannou

**3 Late Antiquity in the Medieval West 29
Conrad Leyser

**4 Cities of the Mind: Renaissance Views of Early Christian Culture and the End of Antiquity 43
Mark Vessey

**5 Narrating Decline and Fall 59
Clifford Ando

**6 Late Antiquity in Modern Eyes 77
Stefan Rebenich

Part II Land and People 93

**7 The Shapes and Shaping of the Late Antique World: Global and Local Perspectives 97
Mark Humphries

**8 Mobility and the Traces of Empire 110
Blake Leyerle

**9 Information and Political Power 125
Claire Sotinel

**10 Mediterranean Cities 139
S. T. Loseby

**11 The Archaeological Record: Problems of Interpretation 156
Olof Brandt

**12 Inscribing Identity: The Latin Epigraphic Habit in Late Antiquity 170
Dennis E. Trout

**13 Gender and the Fall of Rome 187
Kate Cooper

**14 Marriage and Family Relationships in the Late Roman West 201
Judith Evans-Grubbs

**15 The Church, the Living, and the Dead 220
Éric Rebillard

Part III Image and Word 231

**16 The Value of a Good Education: Libanius and Public Authority 233
Raffaella Cribiore

**17 Textual Communities in Late Antique Christianity 246
Kim Haines-Eitzen

**18 Exegesis without End: Forms, Methods, and Functions of Biblical Commentaries 258
Karla Pollmann

**19 Tradition, Innovation, and Epistolary Mores 270
Jennifer Ebbeler

**20 Visual and Verbal Representation: Image, Text, Person, and Power 285
James A. Francis

**21 Christianity and the Transformation of Classical Art 306
Felicity Harley

**22 The Discourse of Later Latin 327
Philip Burton

**23 Language and Culture in Late Antique Egypt 342
Malcolm Choat

**24 Late Antique Historiography: A Brief History of Time 357
David Woods

Part IV Empire, Kingdom, and Beyond 373

**25 Law in Practice 377
Caroline Humfress

**26 The Mirror of Jordanes: Concepts of the Barbarian, Then and Now 392
Andrew Gillett

**27 Beyond the Northern Frontiers 409
Guy Halsall

**28 From Empire to Kingdoms in the Late Antique West 426
John Vanderspoel

**29 Rome and the Sasanid Empire: Confrontation and Coexistence 441
Jan Willem Drijvers

**30 Syria, Syriac, Syrian: Negotiating East and West 455
Christine Shepardson

**31 Syria and the Arabs 467
David Cook

**32 The Early Caliphate and the Inheritance of Late Antiquity (c. AD 610c. AD 750) 479
Andrew Marsham

Part V The Sacred 493 **33 Ch...