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In those days the idea of the fall of the Roman Empire was one of violent invasion and decline, folllowed by centuries of artistic and intellectual poverty called the Dark Ages.
Brown opposed these ideas and showed that there were still strong links with the Classical World, well into the Dark Ages, and even following the Islamic Conquest.
Although Brown's main point of interest is social and cultural change, he also discuss the art of the period, and many wonderful examples of this art, from portaits to jewellery, are displayed throughout.
This book is certainly an excellent read, as Brown is an erudite writer. Yet some of his claims are incorrect and I cannot agree with his thesis in its entirety. In recent years, his ideas about late antiquity have come under attack by scholars such as Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins. Heather and Ward-Perkins stress the idea of the Empire's violent fall, and they pour scorn on Brown's ideas about the peaceful integration of Germanic tribes. I would have to agree with them on some of these ideas, but I still find Brown's work persuasive.
The World of Late Antiquity is a landmark in Classical and Medieval studies. Anyone who has an interest in those periods must read this book. But readers should be willing to seek out Brown's recent work, as well as the books by Heather and Ward-Perkins and others that oppose his ideas. A great read, and highly recommended!
Peter Brown, renowned for his authoritative biography on Augustine of Hippo, has produced a good introductory text to the period between the beginnings of the downfall of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of medieval times in western Europe. This period does not have strict boundaries -- there were no crucial or pivotal events defining the beginning or the end of the period, which is perhaps why it is often overlooked.
The text is divided into two primary sections -- the Late Roman Revolution, and Divergent Legacies. In the Late Roman Revolution, Brown explores the aspects of culture and religion that change slowly but ultimately dramatically from classical Roman to Christian-medieval. As Christianity rises and the power from the centre fades, including the power of the intelligensia, the post-Roman world takes on a new character.
In Divergent Legacies, Brown first looks at the development of the West after the fall of Rome. The barbarian invasions are recast, the assimilation of the Senate into the aristocratic and higher clerical ranks of the ruling Church shown to be a way in which the Roman hierarchy in fact survived the collapse of Rome, and the fragmentation of the empire ensured the dominance of Latin for the next many centuries.
This was a very different character from the survival of the Late Antique world in the East. Here the walls of Byzantium were never breached, despite the fact that most of the empire was lost not once but multiple times. The final chapter in Late Antiquity in the East was the first chapter in Muslim history, with the rise of the Muslim-dominated empires, which at first had cordial and profitable relationships with the West.
This book is part of a series, the Library of World Civilisation, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough of Brandeis University. Each volume is approximately 200 pages, richly illustrated (this particular text has 130 illustrations in these 200 pages), and accessible in writing style.
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