A Companion to Late Antiquity [Paperback]

• 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 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
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