After the end of World War II, the decisive driving force behind research into Late Antiquity was supplied by English and French scholars. Henri-Irenee Marrou (1904-77) published his Retractatio in 1949, which exerted considerable influence. In it, he ‘‘retracted” (echoing Augustine himself) the central claim of his book Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, published a decade earlier (Riche 2003). Previously, Marrou had described the culture of Late Antiquity as decadent, ailing, and weak and had made Augustine into a lettr'e de la decadence. Now he openly declared that his former position had been wrong, and he acknowledged the cultural achievements of the epoch as innovative and trendsetting. He put aside the idea of a distinct break-up of - or an abrupt end to - the ancient world: instead, he preferred to speak of ‘‘internal changes that were in fact signs of that civilization’s vigour and vitality” (1949: 690). As a result, the way was made clear for a new evaluation of the cultural achievements and literary style of Late Antiquity, an evaluation echoed later in the work of Pierre Courcelle and Jacques Fontaine (Vessey 1998).
In England, a new era of research into Late Antiquity began in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is closely linked with the names of A. H. M. Jones (1904-70), Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-87), and Peter Brown (b. 1935). In 1964, having studied the period for many years, Jones published his three-volume work The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey, which still provides the most reliable general account of the epoch (Gwynn, forthcoming). Jones had an excellent command of previous research and possessed an extensive knowledge of the sources; he painted a very diverse picture, distanced himself from monocausal attempts at explanation, examined a number of interacting factors that had, in his opinion, caused the decline of the Roman Empire, and helped to overcome the popular notion that the late empire was governed by coercion and despotism (Meier 2003). He took into account the crisis of the economy and the tax burden, the decrease in population and the shortage of workers, the orientation of Christian teaching toward the afterlife and the bureaucratization of the administration, the barbarization of the army and the invasions by the Germanic tribes. Chiefly, however, it was ‘‘the increasing pressure of the barbarians, concentrated on the weaker western half of the empire, which caused the collapse’’ (Jones 1966: 370). Jones, like Marrou, also supported prosopographical research into Late Antiquity, an approach inspired to an important degree by Sir Ronald Syme’s studies of the early and high principate. Syme (1903-89) achieved for Roman history what Lewis Namier (1888-1960) had achieved in his studies of eighteenth-century Britain.
Equally momentous was a series of lectures held at the Warburg Institute in London in late 1958 and early 1959, on the initiative of Arnaldo Momigliano. In 1963, these lectures were published under the title Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century In his programmatic opening essay, Momigliano (1963a) discussed the controversial relationship between Christianity and paganism, demonstrated what a fertile field the period of Late Antiquity could be, questioned the traditional notion of the decline of the Roman Empire, and argued against the conventional dichotomy between secular and ecclesiastical history.
In 1971, building upon the accomplishments of more recent English and French works, and taking into account both anthropological research (such as that of Edward Evans-Pritchard and Mary Douglas) and the historiography of the Annales school (exemplified not least by Evelyne Patlagean), Peter Brown, who had previously become well known for his biography of Augustine (1967a), published his small but exceptionally popular book, The World of Late Antiquity (1971b). This work dramatically affected how a whole generation on both sides of the Atlantic perceived Late Antiquity (Symbolae Osloenses 1997: 5-90). Brown’s Late Antiquity extended from the third into the seventh century and embraced both the western provinces of the Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran. The periodization, ‘‘from Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad,’’ called to mind the subtitle of Roger Remondon’s Crise de l’empire romain (1964) but deliberately covered a longer period and dispensed with much of the crise. Brown did not talk about decline, and his Roman Empire did not collapse with the deposition of the last emperor in ad 476. Instead, he offered the impression of an intellectually, artistically, and religiously productive epoch, characterized by change, diversity, and creativity. The influence of the postwar Marrou is evident. Brown’s article ‘‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’’ (1971a), published in the same year, strengthened an already existing scholarly interest in the cults of saints and martyrs (deeply rooted in the Bollandist tradition represented by Hippolyte Delehaye, 1859-1941) and in the ascetic practice and religious experience of Late Antiquity (Elm 1998: 343-4; see Rousseau 1978, MacCormack 1981, and Stancliffe 1983).
The impact of these new approaches on both British and international research were profound (Averil Cameron 2002: 166-7; Liebeschuetz 2004: 260-1). In Britain, an older Oxbridge tradition of classical education was challenged; a tradition the representatives of which had not considered Late Antiquity to be part of classical antiquity and - under the influence of Gibbon - had dismissed the period as decadent.
For a while, in the British university system, the Late Roman Empire had been regarded as part of ‘‘modern’’ history. As early as 1889, J. B. Bury (1861-1927) had written a study of ‘‘the Later Roman Empire’’ from the reign of Arcadius to that of Irene. Shortly afterward, he also began to edit anew Gibbon’s masterpiece. By the time he published (1923) his influential History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, he was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. But the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History, in which Bury had an important hand, ended at ad 324.
In Britain, a complex interweaving of historiographical trends characterized the intervening period since the late 1880s, featuring (for example) Sir Samuel Dill (1844-1924; see Dill 1899,1926), W. P. Ker (1855-1923; see Ker 1904), T. R. Glover (1869-1943; see Glover 1901), and Hector Munro Chadwick (1870-1947; see Chadwick 1912). Almost any attempt at periodization has been challenged or abandoned for one reason or another, especially by those who wanted to retain Late Antiquity as part of classical studies (but see Stevens 1933), as can be deduced not only from lecture timetables at several British universities but also from the second edition of the Cambridge Ancient History, which contains two extensive volumes devoted to Late Antiquity that cover the period ad 337-600.
It is, however, not only in the English-speaking world that Late Antiquity has become a popular subject of a historical research that is characterized by a wide variety of methods and a paradigm shift. French, Italian, Greek, Austrian, Hungarian, and German scholars - for example, Andreas Alfoldi, Andre Chastagnol, Evangelos Chrysos, Lellia Cracco-Ruggini, Alexander Demandt, Jean Gaudemet, Santo Mazzarino, Walter Pohl, Johannes Straub, Karl Friedrich Stroheker, and Herwig Wolfram - have also fostered our understanding of the Later Roman Empire. They have contributed over the past decades to what Andrea Giardina has described as a general ‘‘explosion’’ in late antique studies (Giardina 1999). The research into a ‘‘long’’ Late Antiquity has for the most part superseded the previous discourse on when and why the Roman Empire declined. Transformation, change, transition, and evolution are the favored epithets to apply to the epoch. Instead of a caesura, the historical continuum, the longue duree, is stressed. Cooperation between various disciplines has proven fruitful, with the consequence that sociological, anthropological, and gender-focused methodologies have successfully been applied to Late Antiquity. Marxist concepts, by contrast, have become less popular, following the perceived bankruptcy of some forms of socialism. The religious persuasion of a historian plays an insignificant role in what is now largely secularized research: an emphasis on cultural history considers religion as a cultural factor. Scholars are searching for the construction of‘‘identities’’ and ‘‘ethnicities.’’ Even in a newly unified Europe, regional history is emphasized. In North America, where Brown eventually moved (first to Berkeley and then to Princeton) and where Late Antiquity is a focus of interest for scholars like Alan Cameron, John Matthews, Glen Bowersock, and Timothy Barnes, a multicultural and postcolonial discourse has dominated the study of the late empire. As a result, topics in institutional and administrative history are scarcely pursued, political history is not very popular, and even economic history interests only a few - Peter Garnsey (Garnsey 1998) and Chris Whittaker (Whittaker 1994) being notable exceptions.
The late twentieth century may come to be considered the heyday of late antique studies. Old certainties have been dislodged but, thanks in part to the very vividness of description involved, a path has also been left open to an enduring debate about the relevance of that remote era to an understanding of our modern world.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
At present, a comprehensive, methodically reflective, and current account of the history of research into Late Antiquity is not available. Liebeschuetz 2004 gives a first introduction to the topic in English. The preface in Herzog 1989: 38-44 is stimulating and informative. D’Elia 1967 and Demandt 1984 provide important summaries.
World History
