Recommendations from our site
“What I like about this book is that it is focused on cultural, religious and philosophical changes, particularly in the Greek-speaking world where they were strongest.” Read more...
The best books on Religious and Social History in the Ancient World
Robin Lane Fox, Classicist
“This is an extraordinary book. It was commissioned by an art history publisher, Thames and Hudson, and was to be an illustrated history of the area that Peter Brown was exploring in the 60s and 70s. Really, Late Antiquity wasn’t much of a concept before that book came out. In very few words he managed to sketch out a whole new geography which taught us that you can’t think about the rise of Christianity without looking at the fate of the old established religions like Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Manicheanism; and that the rule of the Roman Empire had to be brought into the context of Persia, the Barbarian north and followers of Islam. That there was a much wider canvas on which to study the period of the third to the sixth centuries A.D. He really put the late Roman period into perspective in a completely new way.” Read more...
Judith Herrin, Historian
