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).

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