The World of Late Antiquity

Peter Brown

How can a society draw on a great past without smothering change, and how did the Roman world answer that?

At a glance

You will learn why the western empire fell while the east endured, as the West's farming economy could not bear a century of heavy taxation
You will see how people can reject an old civilisation in words while still thinking in its forms, as Christian bishops did with the classics
You will question the idea that battles saved Europe from the Arab advance, since the author credits the foundation of Baghdad