The World of Late Antiquity
Peter Brown
Part 1 – The Late Roman Revolution
Society
The Boundaries of the Classical World: c. AD 200
Geographically the Roman world is at its apogee, but socially it still clings to the shores of the Mediterranean.
The great towns by the sea remain close to each other, but inland a spider’s web of roads linked oases in the shape of towns that gained most of their goods from within a radius of thirty miles. The countryside is a source of food and the imperial towns lie atop it, but not part of it.
The aristocracy are of ‘astonishingly uniform culture, taste, and language’. Tolerant of other races and religions, but the only way to join them is through conformity. This is deeply conservative – a culture defined by a shared classical past living cheek-by-jowl with unabsorbed barbarian world.
However, it is not static. A renaissance in the 2nd century AD led to the building of huge sites such as Baalbek and Ephesus and a heyday for the Greek Sophists. It is also a time when many of the famous encyclopaedias, and handbooks of medicine, astronomy, and natural science are compiled.
There are also changes to the centre of gravity – a ‘shifting and redefinition of the boundaries’. This is not a question of decline and fall. It is a rebalancing towards the east, a rolling back of the northern territories, and increased prominence for Persia and so on.
Cultural changes do happen as well. Statues still portray the aristocrats in togas, but in reality, they have started wearing imports from the barbarians – cloaks, trousers, and so on. Christianity also gains ground.
Moritasgus 