Late antiquity
Topic: The Roman Empire · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 2 "An Empire Across Three Continents"
Meaning
Late antiquity is the name historians give to the fourth to seventh centuries CE. This was the last stage of the Roman world, when the empire changed and then broke up. It saw the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, the gold solidus coin, and Christianity slowly becoming the main faith. The west split into Germanic kingdoms while the east stayed united and rich. The period ends with the Arab conquests. Historians see it as a time of change, not simply "decline and fall".
Example
In the fifth and sixth centuries, parts of the Near Eastern countryside had more people and more development than they did in the twentieth century. Over the same years the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 and Germanic groups divided up the west.
Don't confuse with
- "Late empire": the late empire is simply the Roman Empire after the third-century crisis. Late antiquity is a wider idea about a whole age of change. It runs to the seventh century and includes the rise of Islam.
Related concepts
- Diocletian
- Constantine
- Edict of Milan 313
- Christianisation of the Roman Empire
- Constantinople
- Post-Roman kingdoms
- Byzantine empire
- Justinian
- Prophet Muhammad
- Hijra