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Title: Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Harvard University Press Reference Library) by G.W. Bowersock, Oleg Grabar, G. W. Bowersock ISBN: 0-674-51173-5 Publisher: Belknap Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A useful historical guide
Comment: The book 'Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World', edited by G.W. Bowerstock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, is a wonderful collection of essays and encyclopedic articles on the period on a fascinating period of transition and change in the history of the West. This is a period often overlooked and neglected, for it is a period of confusion and uneasy description; the Roman Empire has fallen, but the medieval world has yet to rise. Literature from this historical period is rare, both in terms of history and literary output; the medieval world looms large over late antiquity due to the rise of literature that is more easily accessible to those in the modern world.
The first section of the book consists of interesting essays, as listed below:
Remaking the Past, by Averil Cameron
Sacred Landscapes, by Beatrice Caseau
Philosophical Tradition and the Self, by Henry Chadwick
Religious Communities, by Garth Fowden
Barbarians and Ethnicity, by Patrick J. Geary
War and Violence, by Brent D. Shaw
Empire Building, by Christopher Kelly
Christian Triumph and Controversy, by Richard Lim
Islam, by Hugh Kennedy
The Good Life, by Henry Maguire
Habitat, by Yizhar Hirschfield
To give but one example, in the article 'Sacred Landscapes', Caseau traces the development away from public sacred spaces such as temples to the god to a resacralisation of Christian spaces, which had originally grown up in house-church environments with communal meals short on exclusively sacred spaces, particularly in light of early Christian apologists who saw distinct paganism in the sacralisation of space.
The remaining two-thirds of the book consists of an encyclopedia of late antiquity, including articles on places, events, people, and ideas. This is a wonderful reference, and, sitting next to my Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, a much-valued collection and much-used book.
Sometimes called 'The Dark Ages', in fact the historical period between the classical Roman Imperial times and the Medieval period was a period of transition and disarray, but was far from the uncultured, unlettered and uninspiring period it sometimes seems. This volume will help historians and others reclaim a little more of their own past.
Rating: 4
Summary: Part Brilliant, Part Dull
Comment: Late Antiquity is a series of eleven essays covering an array of topics related to Europe and the Middle East from 250 to 800 C.E. Like every collection from a variety of authors, it represents a mixed bag. At its best, like Beatrice Caseau's "Sacred Landscapes," it is eye-opening and provocative. (Caseau describes for us how pagan temples became Christianized, or how Christian holy sites were transformed into Muslim sites - a question that likely would never occur to the lay reader, but once asked demands answering.) Not every article is as enticing however. For example, Henry Chadwick misses a great opportunity with "Philosophical Tradition and the Self." Rather than relate to us just how individuals in late antiquity viewed the self, Chadwick chooses to desribe debates between late antiquity writers; only professors hopelessly lost in academia could possibly care about Iamblichus' criticisms of Porphyry.
The final half of the book is taken up with an encyclopedia, whose entries are . . . eclectic. The Emperor Maurice is absent, for example, but Ephrem (a Syrian deacon and hymnist) receives nearly two columns of treatment. Nor is there an entry for Arianism, but the Donatists get an extensive write-up.
There is much to enjoy and learn from in Late Antiquity. The articles by Cameron, Caseau, Geary, Shaw, and Lim alone make a trip to the local library well worthwhile. Whether the book is a must for the lay reader's library is more difficult to say.
Rating: 1
Summary: One reader's experience with the book
Comment: This book contains very little about individuals. For example, Belisarius is not even listed in the index, let alone having an entry. Though that is not my kind of history, I bought the book anyway since late antiquity is one of my favorite periods of history. I hoped the articles would be engagingly written and make up for lack of attention to the interesting personages of the time. But all the articles I tried to read I found rather hard going....
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Title: Interpreting Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World by G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar, Peter Robert Lamont Brown ISBN: 0674005988 Publisher: Belknap Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The World of Late Antiquity Ad 150-750: Ad 150-750 (Library of World Civilization) by Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Peter Brown ISBN: 0393958035 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $20.60 |
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Title: Cult of the Saints (Haskell Lectures on History of Religions) by Peter Brown ISBN: 0226076229 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1982 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Authority and the Sacred : Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Canto original series) by Peter Brown ISBN: 0521595576 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 28 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Body and Society by Peter Brown ISBN: 0231061013 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1988 List Price(USD): $24.50 |
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