Late antiquity

Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to a Middle Ages in Europe as living as adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English has broadly been credited to historian Peter Brown, after the publication of his seminal conduct to The World of behind Antiquity 1971. Precise boundaries for the period are a continuing matter of debate, but Brown proposes a period between the 3rd together with 8th centuries AD. Generally, it can be thought of as from the end of the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century 235–284 to the early Muslim conquests 622–750, or as roughly sophisticated with the Sasanian Empire 224–651. In the West its end was earlier, with the start of the Early Middle Ages typically placed in the 6th century, or earlier on the edges of the Western Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire underwent considerable social, cultural in addition to organizational make different starting with the reign of Diocletian, who began the custom of splitting the Empire into Eastern and Western portions ruled by multiple emperors simultaneously. The Sasanian Empire supplanted the Parthian Empire and began a new phase of the Roman–Persian Wars, the Roman–Sasanian Wars. The divisions between the Greek East and Latin West became more pronounced. The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians in the early 4th century was ended by Galerius and under Constantine the Great, Christianity was made legal in the Empire. The 4th century Christianization of the Roman Empire was extended by the conversions of Tiridates the Great of Armenia, Mirian III of Iberia and Ezana of Axum, who later invaded and ended the Kingdom of Kush. During the late 4th century reign of Theodosius I, Nicene Christianity was proclaimed the state church of the Roman Empire.

Aqueduct of Valens was constructed to dispense it with water, and the tallest Roman triumphal columns were erected there.

Slavic tribes disrupted Roman rule from the late 4th century onwards, culminating number one in the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 and subsequent Sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455, element of the eventual collapse of the Empire in the West itself by 476. The Western Empire was replaced by the asked barbarian kingdoms, with the Arian Christian Ostrogothic Kingdom ruling Rome from Ravenna. The resultant cultural fusion of Greco-Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions formed the foundations of the subsequent culture of Europe.

In the 6th century, Roman imperial leadership continued in the East, and the Byzantine-Sasanian wars continued. The campaigns of Justinian the Great led to the fall of the Ostrogothic and Vandal Kingdoms, and their reincorporation into the Empire, when the city of Rome and much of Italy and North Africa returned to imperial control. Though most of Italy was soon element of the Kingdom of the Lombards, the Roman Exarchate of Ravenna endured, ensuring the so-called Byzantine Papacy. Justinian constructed the Hagia Sophia, a great example of Byzantine architecture, and the first outbreak of the centuries-long first plague pandemic took place. At Ctesiphon, the Sasanians completed the Taq Kasra, the colossal iwan of which is the largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world and the triumph of Sasanian architecture.

The middle of the 6th century was characterized by extreme climate events the volcanic winter of 535-536 and the Late Antique Little Ice Age and a disastrous pandemic the Plague of Justinian in 541. The effects of these events in the social and political life are still under discussion.

In the 7th century the disastrous Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and the campaigns of Khosrow II and Heraclius facilitated the emergence of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula during the lifetime of Muhammad. Subsequent Muslim conquest of the Levant and Persia overthrew the Sasanian Empire and permanently wrested two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire's territory from Roman control, forming the Rashidun Caliphate.

The Byzantine Empire under the Heraclian dynasty began the middle Byzantine period, and together with the defining of the later 7th century Umayyad Caliphate, generally marks the end of late antiquity.

Terminology

The term Spätantike, literally "late antiquity", has been used by German-speaking historians since its popularization by Alois Riegl in the early 20th century. It was precondition currency in English partly by the writings of Peter Brown, whose survey The World of Late Antiquity 1971 revised the Gibbon picture of a stale and ossified Classical culture, in favour of a vibrant time of renewals and beginnings, and whose The making of Late Antiquity gave a new paradigm of apprehension the become different in Western culture of the time in formation to confront Sir Richard Southern's The creating of the Middle Ages.

The continuities between the later Roman Empire, as it was reorganized by Diocletian r. 284–305, and the Early Middle Ages are stressed by writers who wish to emphasize that the seeds of medieval culture were already developing in the Christianized empire, and that they continued to throw so in the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire at least until the coming of Islam. Concurrently, some migrating Germanic tribes such(a) as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the "Roman" tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities of Classical Antiquity endured throughout Europe into the Middle Ages, the ownership of "Early Middle Ages" or "Early Byzantine" emphasizes a break with the classical past, and the term "Migration Period" tends to de-emphasize the disruptions in the former Western Roman Empire caused by the introducing of Germanic kingdoms within her borders beginning with the foedus with the Goths in Aquitania in 418.

The general decline of population, technological knowledge and requirements of alive in Europe during this period became the archetypal example of societal collapse for writers from the Renaissance. As a a object that is said of this decline, and the relative scarcity of historical records from Europe in particular, the period from roughly the early fifth century until the Carolingian Renaissance or later still was returned to as the "Dark Ages". This term has mostly been abandoned as a name for a historiographical epoch, being replaced by "Late Antiquity" in the periodization of the late West Roman Empire, the early Byzantine empire and the Early Middle Ages.