A Companion to Late Antiquity Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World Series

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

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
Eric 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 610-c. AD 750) 479
Andrew Marsham

PART V The Sacred 493

33 Christianization, Secularization, and the Transformation of Public Life 497
Richard Lim

34 The Political Church: Religion and the State 512
Michael Gaddis

35 The Late Antique Bishop: Image and Reality 525
Rita Lizzi Testa

36 The Conduct of Theology and the "Fathers" of the Church 539
Thomas Graumann

37 Defining Sacred Boundaries: Jewish–Christian Relations 556
Naomi Koltun-Fromm

38 Pagans in a Christian Empire 572
Neil McLynn

39 "Not of This World": The Invention of Monasticism 588
Daniel F. Caner

Bibliography 601

Index 700

Students, scholars, and researchers of late antiquity.

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).