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102-460: A laterculus was, in late antiquity or the early medieval period, an inscribed tile, stone or terracotta tablet used for publishing certain kinds of information in list or calendar form. The term thus came to be used for the content represented by such an inscription, most often a list, register, or table, regardless of the medium in which it was published. A list of soldiers in a Roman military unit, such as of those recruited or discharged in

204-572: A Dualist faith, arose in Mesopotamia and spread both East and West, for a time contending with Christianity in the Roman Empire. Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the parchment codex (bound book) over the papyrus volumen (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic exegesis , papyrology . Notable in this regard

306-580: A 12th-century (re)foundation for this city is given in contemporary sources; Lugo id est Luceo in the Asturias , referred to by Isidore of Seville , and Ologicus (perhaps Ologitis ), founded using Basque labour in 621 by Suinthila as a fortification against the Basques, modern Olite . All of these cities were founded for military purposes and at least Reccopolis, Victoriacum, and Ologicus in celebration of victory. A possible fifth Visigothic foundation

408-488: A citadel. Former imperial capitals such as Cologne and Trier lived on in diminished form as administrative centres of the Franks . In Britain most towns and cities had been in decline, apart from a brief period of recovery during the fourth century, well before the withdrawal of Roman governors and garrisons but the process might well have stretched well into the fifth century. Historians emphasizing urban continuities with

510-554: A classical education and the election by the Senate to magistracies was no longer the path to success. Room at the top of late antique society was more bureaucratic and involved increasingly intricate channels of access to the emperor; the plain toga that had identified all members of the Republican senatorial class was replaced with the silk court vestments and jewelry associated with Byzantine imperial iconography. Also indicative of

612-468: A defensible acropolis , or were abandoned in favour of such positions elsewhere." In the western Mediterranean, the only new cities known to be founded in Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries were the four or five Visigothic "victory cities". Reccopolis in the province of Guadalajara is one: the others were Victoriacum , founded by Leovigild , which may survive as the city of Vitoria , though

714-426: A given year, may be called a laterculus , an example of which is found in an inscription from Vindonissa . The equivalent Greek term is plinthos (πλίνθος; see plinth for the architectural use). A common type of laterculus was the computus , a table that calculates the date of Easter , and so laterculus will often be equivalent to fasti . Isidore of Seville said that a calendar cycle should be called

816-493: A laterculus "because it has the years put in order by rows," that is, in a table. Notable laterculi include: Late antiquity 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 given currency in English partly by the writings of Peter Brown , whose survey The World of Late Antiquity (1971) revised

918-527: A leader, speaking in unison under his command. Only Lactantius , a contemporary of Diocletian and a deep ideological opponent of the Diocletianic state, referred to the tetrarchs as a simple multiplicity of rulers. Much modern scholarship was written without the term. Although Edward Gibbon pioneered the description of the Diocletianic government as a "New Empire", he never used the term "tetrarchy"; neither did Theodor Mommsen . It did not appear in

1020-469: A partial revival of classicism). Nearly all of these more abstracted conventions could be observed in the glittering mosaics of the era, which during this period moved from being decoration derivative from painting used on floors (and walls likely to become wet) to a major vehicle of religious art in churches. The glazed surfaces of the tesserae sparkled in the light and illuminated the basilica churches. Unlike their fresco predecessors, much more emphasis

1122-602: A port on the Adriatic coast, and Eboracum (modern York , in northern England near the Celtic tribes of modern Scotland and Ireland), were also significant centres for Maximian and Constantius respectively. In terms of regional jurisdiction there was no precise division among the four tetrarchs, and this period did not see the Roman state actually split up into four distinct sub-empires. Each emperor had his zone of influence within

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1224-620: A praetorian prefecture), see Roman province . In the West, the augustus Maximian controlled the provinces west of the Adriatic Sea and the Syrtis , and within that region his caesar , Constantius, controlled Gaul and Britain. In the East, the arrangements between the augustus Diocletian and his caesar , Galerius, were much more flexible. Although power was shared in the tetrarchic system,

1326-413: A quarter of a kingdom as they saw fit; the Diocletianic tetrarchy was a college led by a single supreme leader. When later authors described the period, this is what they emphasized: Ammianus had Constantius II admonish Gallus for disobedience by appealing to the example in submission set by Diocletian's lesser colleagues; his successor Julian compared the Diocletianic tetrarchs to a chorus surrounding

1428-525: A shade exotic," observes H. R. Loyn , "owing their reason for being more to the military and administrative needs of Rome than to any economic virtue". The other institutional power centre, the Roman villa , did not survive in Britain either. Gildas lamented the destruction of the twenty-eight cities of Britain; though not all in his list can be identified with known Roman sites, Loyn finds no reason to doubt

1530-515: A vehicle for the last group of powerful pagans to resist Christianity, as in the late 4th century Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych . Extravagant hoards of silver plate are especially common from the 4th century, including the Mildenhall Treasure , Esquiline Treasure , Hoxne Hoard , and the imperial Missorium of Theodosius I . In the field of literature, late antiquity is known for the declining use of classical Greek and Latin , and

1632-527: A wholesale transformation of the political and social basis of life in and around the Roman Empire . The Roman citizen elite in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, under the pressure of taxation and the ruinous cost of presenting spectacular public entertainments in the traditional cursus honorum , had found under the Antonines that security could be obtained only by combining their established roles in

1734-582: Is Baiyara (perhaps modern Montoro ), mentioned as founded by Reccared in the 15th-century geographical account, Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar . The arrival of a highly urbanized Islamic culture in the decade following 711 ensured the survival of cities in the Hispaniae into the Middle Ages. Beyond the Mediterranean world, the cities of Gaul withdrew within a constricted line of defense around

1836-480: Is divided among four individuals. Although the term "tetrarch" was current in antiquity, it was never used in the imperial college (as it's often called) under Diocletian. Instead, the term was used to describe independent portions of a kingdom that were ruled under separate leaders. The tetrarchy of Judaea , established after the death of Herod the Great , is the most famous example of the antique tetrarchy. The term

1938-520: Is the end of the polis model. While there was a decline of urban life in late antiquity (especially in the West) the epoch brought with it new forms of political participation in the urban spaces as well. Especially the role of crowds and masses in cities has increased, leading to new levels of tension. In the cities the strained economies of Roman over-expansion arrested growth. Almost all new public building in late antiquity came directly or indirectly from

2040-476: Is the topic of the Fifty Bibles of Constantine . Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be more distinctly seen between the laity and an increasingly celibate male leadership. These men presented themselves as removed from the traditional Roman motivations of public and private life marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and differing from

2142-581: The foedus with the Goths in Aquitania in 418. The general decline of population, technological knowledge and standards of living in Europe during this period became the archetypal example of societal collapse for writers from the Renaissance . As a result of this decline, and the relative scarcity of historical records from Europe in particular, the period from roughly the early fifth century until

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2244-578: The Anglo-Saxon period depend largely on the post-Roman survival of Roman toponymy . Aside from a mere handful of its continuously inhabited sites, like York and London and possibly Canterbury , however, the rapidity and thoroughness with which its urban life collapsed with the dissolution of centralized bureaucracy calls into question the extent to which Roman Britain had ever become authentically urbanized: "in Roman Britain towns appeared

2346-654: The Byzantine military manuals achieving great renown and influence: the most famous of which is the Strategikon attributed to Emperor Maurice , written in the 6th century. One genre of literature among Christian writers in this period was the Hexaemeron , dedicated to the composition of commentaries, homilies, and treatises concerned with the exegesis of the Genesis creation narrative . The first example of this

2448-549: The Carolingian Renaissance (or later still) was referred 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 Western Roman Empire, the early Byzantine Empire and the Early Middle Ages. The Roman Empire underwent considerable social, cultural and organizational changes starting with

2550-719: The Chaldaean oracles , some novel, such as hermeticism . Culminating in the reforms advocated by Apollonius of Tyana being adopted by Aurelian and formulated by Flavius Claudius Julianus to create an organized but short-lived pagan state religion that ensured its underground survival into the Byzantine age and beyond. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India and along the Silk Road in Central Asia , while Manichaeism ,

2652-471: The De arithmetica , De musica , and De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius —both later key works in medieval education). The 4th and 5th centuries also saw an explosion of Christian literature , of which Greek writers such as Eusebius of Caesarea , Basil of Caesarea , Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom and Latin writers such as Ambrose of Milan , Jerome and Augustine of Hippo are only among

2754-659: 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 do so in the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire at least until the coming of Islam . Concurrently, some migrating Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating

2856-536: The Gibbon view of a stale and ossified Classical culture, in favour of a vibrant time of renewals and beginnings, and whose The Making of Late Antiquity offered a new paradigm of understanding the changes in Western culture of the time in order to confront Sir Richard Southern 's The Making of the Middle Ages . The continuities between the later Roman Empire , as it was reorganized by Diocletian (r. 284–305), and

2958-639: The Gothic War . A similar though less marked decline in urban population occurred later in Constantinople, which was gaining population until the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian in 541. In Europe there was also a general decline in urban populations. As a whole, the period of late antiquity was accompanied by an overall population decline in almost all Europe, and a reversion to more of a subsistence economy. Long-distance markets disappeared, and there

3060-549: The Mediterranean Basin . Two diagnostic symptoms of decline—or as many historians prefer, 'transformation'—are subdivision, particularly of expansive formal spaces in both the domus and the public basilica , and encroachment, in which artisans' shops invade the public thoroughfare, a transformation that was to result in the souk (marketplace). Burials within the urban precincts mark another stage in dissolution of traditional urbanistic discipline, overpowered by

3162-540: The Middle Ages . On the other hand, there is a more recent thesis, associated with scholars in the tradition of Peter Brown, in which Islam is seen to be a product of the late antique world, not foreign to it. This school suggests that its origin within the shared cultural horizon of the late antique world explains the character of Islam and its development. Such historians point to similarities with other late antique religions and philosophies—especially Christianity—in

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3264-487: The middle Byzantine period , and together with the establishment of the later 7th century Umayyad Caliphate , generally marks the end of late antiquity. One of the most important transformations in late antiquity was the formation and evolution of the Abrahamic religions : Christianity , Rabbinic Judaism and, eventually, Islam . A milestone in the spread of Christianity was the conversion of Emperor Constantine

3366-411: The "Good Shepherd", resembling the traditional iconography of Hermes. He was increasingly given Roman elite status, and shrouded in purple robes like the emperors with orb and scepter in hand — this new type of depiction is variously thought to be derived from either the iconography of Jupiter or of classical philosophers. As for luxury arts, manuscript illumination on vellum and parchment emerged from

3468-464: 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 usage 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 creation of Germanic kingdoms within her borders beginning with

3570-578: The 5th century, with a few manuscripts of Roman literary classics like the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus , but increasingly Christian texts, of which Quedlinburg Itala fragment (420–430) is the oldest survivor. Carved ivory diptychs were used for secular subjects, as in the imperial and consular diptychs presented to friends, as well as religious ones, both Christian and pagan – they seem to have been especially

3672-704: The Balkans and Persian destructions in Anatolia in the 620s. City life continued in Syria, Jordan and Palestine into the 8th. In the later 6th century street construction was still undertaken in Caesarea Maritima in Palestine, and Edessa was able to deflect Chosroes I with massive payments in gold in 540 and 544, before it was overrun in 609. The stylistic changes characteristic of late antique art mark

3774-475: The East were still lively stages for political participation and remained important for background for religious and political disputes. The degree and extent of discontinuity in the smaller cities of the Greek East is a moot subject among historians. The urban continuity of Constantinople is the outstanding example of the Mediterranean world; of the two great cities of lesser rank, Antioch was devastated by

3876-577: The Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire of Persia , destroying the latter. After conquering all of North Africa and Visigothic Spain , the Islamic invasion was halted by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in modern France . On the rise of Islam, two main theses prevail. On the one hand, there is the traditional view, as espoused by most historians prior to the second half of

3978-399: The Great (r. 306–337) in 312, as claimed by his Christian panegyrist Eusebius of Caesarea , although the sincerity of his conversion is debated . Constantine confirmed the legalization of the religion through the so-called Edict of Milan in 313, jointly issued with his rival in the East, Licinius (r. 308–324). By the late 4th century, Emperor Theodosius the Great had made Christianity

4080-419: The Great monastic attitudes penetrated other areas of Christian life. Late antiquity marks the decline of Roman state religion , circumscribed in degrees by edicts likely inspired by Christian advisors such as Eusebius to 4th-century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism and

4182-648: The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem , and involved himself in questions such as the timing of Christ's resurrection and its relation to the Passover . The birth of Christian monasticism the 3rd century was a major step in the development of Christian spirituality. While it initially operated outside the episcopal authority of the Church, it would become hugely successful and by the 8th century it became one of

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4284-617: The Persian sack of 540, followed by the plague of Justinian (542 onwards) and completed by earthquake, while Alexandria survived its Islamic transformation, to suffer incremental decline in favour of Cairo in the medieval period. Justinian rebuilt his birthplace in Illyricum , as Justiniana Prima , more in a gesture of imperium than out of an urbanistic necessity; another "city", was reputed to have been founded, according to Procopius ' panegyric on Justinian's buildings, precisely at

4386-462: The Roman Empire, but little more, mainly high command in a 'war theater'. Each tetrarch was himself often in the field, while delegating most of the administration to the hierarchic bureaucracy headed by his respective praetorian prefect , each supervising several vicarii , the governors-general in charge of another, lasting new administrative level, the civil diocese . For a listing of the provinces, now known as eparchy , within each quarter (known as

4488-628: The State religion, thereby transforming the Classical Roman world, which Peter Brown characterized as "rustling with the presence of many divine spirits ." Constantine I was a key figure in many important events in Christian history , as he convened and attended the first ecumenical council of bishops at Nicaea in 325, subsidized the building of churches and sanctuaries such as the Church of

4590-542: The Tetrarchy a number of important military victories were secured. Both the dyarchic and the tetrarchic system ensured that an emperor was near to every crisis area to personally direct and remain in control of campaigns simultaneously on more than just one front. After suffering a defeat by the Persians in 296, Galerius crushed Narseh in 298—reversing a series of Roman defeats throughout the century—capturing members of

4692-630: The Third Century the military, political and economic demands made by the Empire made the service in local government to be an onerous duty, often imposed as punishment. Harassed urban dwellers fled to the walled estates of the wealthy to avoid taxes, military service, famine and disease. In the Western Roman Empire especially, many cities destroyed by invasion or civil war in the 3rd century could not be rebuilt. Plague and famine hit

4794-975: The West and Licinius in the East. The tetrarchic system was at an end, although it took until 324 for Constantine to finally defeat Licinius, reunite the two halves of the Roman Empire and declare himself sole augustus . ( Whole, then East ) Galerius ( caesar , 1 March 293) Constantius I ( caesar , 1 March 293) ( West ) 28 October 306 – 11 November 308 (2 years and 14 days) Galerius ( caesar , 21 March 293) Constantius I ( caesar , 1 March 293) Maxentius (co- augustus , 306–308) Constantine I (rival augustus , 25 July 306; co- augustus , 307) ( East ) Maximian ( augustus , 21 March 293–1 May 305) Constantius I ( caesar , 1 March 293; co- augustus , 1 May 305–25 July 306) Severus II ( caesar , 1 May 305; co- augustus , August 306–April 307) Maxentius ( caesar , 28 October 306; junior co- augustus , April 307–May 311) Licinius (designated augustus for

4896-418: The attraction of saintly shrines and relics. In Roman Britain , the typical 4th- and 5th-century layer of dark earth within cities seems to be a result of increased gardening in formerly urban spaces. The city of Rome went from a population of 800,000 in the beginning of the period to a population of 30,000 by the end of the period, the most precipitous drop coming with the breaking of the aqueducts during

4998-450: The beauty and movement of the body, but rather, hints at the spiritual reality behind its subjects . Additionally, mirroring the rise of Christianity and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, painting and freestanding sculpture gradually fell from favor in the artistic community. Replacing them were greater interests in mosaics, architecture, and relief sculpture. As the soldier emperors such as Maximinus Thrax (r. 235–238) emerged from

5100-561: The building is not architecturally a basilica. In the former Western Roman Empire almost no great buildings were constructed from the 5th century. A most outstanding example is the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna constructed c.  530 at a cost of 26,000 gold solidi or 360 Roman pounds of gold. City life in the East, though negatively affected by the plague in the 6th–7th centuries, finally collapsed due to Slavic invasions in

5202-726: 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

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5304-593: The chair in the apse reserved in secular structures for the magistrate—or the Emperor himself—as the representative here and now of Christ Pantocrator , the Ruler of All, his characteristic late antique icon . These ecclesiastical basilicas (e.g., St. John Lateran and St. Peter's in Rome) were themselves outdone by Justinian's Hagia Sophia , a staggering display of later Roman/Byzantine power and architectural taste, though

5406-488: The claimants to the imperial office died or were killed in various civil wars. Constantine forced Maximian's suicide in 310. Galerius died naturally in 311. Maxentius was defeated by Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 and subsequently killed. Maximinus committed suicide at Tarsus in 313 after being defeated in battle by Licinius. By 313, therefore, there remained only two rulers: Constantine in

5508-632: The coins indicate which one of the four emperors is being shown. The Byzantine sculpture Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs shows the tetrarchs again with identical features and wearing the same military costume. One of the greatest problems facing emperors in the Third Century Crisis was that they were only ever able to personally command troops on one front at any one time. While Aurelian and Probus were prepared to accompany their armies thousands of miles between war regions, this

5610-481: 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

5712-621: The eastern ones. The role of the augustus was likened to Jupiter , while his caesar was akin to Jupiter's son Hercules . Galerius and Constantius were appointed caesares in March 293. Diocletian and Maximian retired on 1 May 305, raising Galerius and Constantius to the rank of augustus . Their places as caesares were in turn taken by Valerius Severus and Maximinus Daza . The orderly system of two senior and two junior rulers endured until Constantius died in July 306, and his son Constantine

5814-536: The eastern regions of the empire while Maximian similarly took charge of the western regions. In 293, Diocletian thought that more focus was needed on both civic and military problems, so with Maximian's consent, he expanded the imperial college by appointing two caesares (one responsible to each augustus )— Galerius and Constantius I . In 305, the senior emperors jointly abdicated and retired, allowing Constantius and Galerius to be elevated in rank to augustus . They in turn appointed two new caesares — Severus II in

5916-522: The eastern steppes) at the Rhine and Danube . These centres are known as the tetrarchic capitals. Although Rome ceased to be an operational capital, Rome continued to be nominal capital of the entire Roman Empire, not reduced to the status of a province but under its own, unique Prefect of the city ( praefectus urbi , later copied in Constantinople). The four tetrarchic capitals were: Aquileia ,

6018-410: The emperors or imperial officials. Attempts were made to maintain what was already there. The supply of free grain and oil to 20% of the population of Rome remained intact the last decades of the 5th century. It was once thought that the elite and rich had withdrawn to the private luxuries of their numerous villas and town houses. Scholarly opinion has revised this. They monopolized the higher offices in

6120-425: The end of classical Roman art and the beginnings of medieval art . As a complicated period bridging between Roman art and later medieval styles (such as that of the Byzantines ), the late antique period saw a transition from the classical idealized realism tradition largely influenced by ancient Greek art to the more iconic, stylized art of the Middle Ages. Unlike classical art, late antique art does not emphasize

6222-399: The essential truth of his statement. Classical antiquity can generally be defined as an age of cities; the Greek polis and Roman municipium were locally organised, self-governing bodies of citizens governed by written constitutions. When Rome came to dominate the known world, local initiative and control were gradually subsumed by the ever-growing Imperial bureaucracy; by the Crisis of

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6324-408: The expense of amphitheaters, temples, libraries, porticoes, gymnasia, concert and lecture halls, theaters and other amenities of public life. In any case, as Christianity took over, many of these buildings which were associated with pagan cults were neglected in favor of building churches and donating to the poor. The Christian basilica was copied from the civic structure with variations. The bishop took

6426-442: The fortified heights of Acrocorinth are typical of Byzantine urban sites in Greece. In Italy, populations that had clustered within reach of Roman roads began to withdraw from them, as potential avenues of intrusion, and to rebuild in typically constricted fashion round an isolated fortified promontory, or rocca ; Cameron notes similar movement of populations in the Balkans, 'where inhabited centres contracted and regrouped around

6528-413: The foundations of the subsequent culture of Europe . In the 6th century, Roman imperial rule 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

6630-436: The imperial administration, but they were removed from military command by the late 3rd century. Their focus turned to preserving their vast wealth rather than fighting for it. The basilica , which had functioned as a law court or for imperial reception of foreign dignitaries, became the primary public building in the 4th century. Due to the stress on civic finances, cities spent money on walls, maintaining baths and markets at

6732-471: The imperial household and a substantial amount of booty and gaining a highly favourable peace treaty, which secured peace between the two powers for a generation. Similarly, Constantius defeated the British usurper Allectus , Maximian pacified the Gauls, and Diocletian crushed the revolt of Domitianus in Egypt . When in 305 the 20-year term of Diocletian and Maximian ended, both abdicated. Their caesares , Galerius and Constantius Chlorus, were both raised to

6834-492: The key Christian practices. Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in late antiquity, although it had perhaps the greatest influence and it achieved unprecedented geographical spread. It influenced many aspects of Christian religious life and led to a proliferation of various ascetic or semi-ascetic practices. Holy Fools and Stylites counted among the more extreme forms but through such personalities like John Chrysostom , Jerome , Augustine or Gregory

6936-461: The late 4th century onwards, culminating first in the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 and subsequent Sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455, part of the eventual collapse of the Empire in the West itself by 476. The Western Empire was replaced by the so-called barbarian kingdoms , with the Arian Christian Ostrogothic Kingdom ruling Rome from Ravenna . The resultant cultural fusion of Greco-Roman , Germanic, and Christian traditions formed

7038-441: The late antique world at large. Further indication that Arabia (and thus the environment in which Islam first developed) was a part of the late antique world is found in the close economic and military relations between Arabia, the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanian Empire. In recent years, the period of late antiquity has become a major focus in the fields of Quranic studies and Islamic origins. The late antique period also saw

7140-558: The literature until used in 1887 by schoolmaster Hermann Schiller in a two-volume handbook on the Roman Empire ( Geschichte der Römischen Kaiserzeit ), to wit: " die diokletianische Tetrarchie ". Even so, the term did not catch on in the literature until Otto Seeck used it in 1897. The first phase, sometimes referred to as the diarchy ("rule of two"), involved the designation of the general Maximian as co-emperor—firstly as caesar (heir apparent) in 285, followed by his promotion to augustus in 286. Diocletian took care of matters in

7242-443: The local town with new ones as servants and representatives of a distant emperor and his traveling court. After Constantine centralized the government in his new capital of Constantinople (dedicated in 330), the late antique upper classes were divided among those who had access to the far-away centralized administration (in concert with the great landowners ), and those who did not; although they were well-born and thoroughly educated,

7344-442: The married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on priestly celibacy , celibacy in late antique Christianity sometimes took the form of abstinence from sexual relations after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban clergy . Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige to urban notables, the potentes or dynatoi . Islam appeared in the 7th century, spurring Arab armies to invade

7446-409: The most renowned representatives. On the other hand, authors such as Ammianus Marcellinus (4th century) and Procopius of Caesarea (6th century) were able to keep the tradition of classical Hellenistic historiography alive in the Byzantine empire. Due to several factors of the era, among them the political instability and the constant military threats, treatises on war became a popular genre with

7548-449: The new style, shows the contrast especially clearly. In nearly all artistic media, simpler shapes were adopted and once natural designs were abstracted. Additionally hierarchy of scale overtook the preeminence of perspective and other classical models for representing spatial organization. From c.  300 Early Christian art began to create new public forms, which now included sculpture , previously distrusted by Christians as it

7650-528: The position of caesar to Severus. At the same time, Maxentius , the son of Maximian, resented being left out of the new arrangements, so he rebelled against and defeated Severus before forcing him to abdicate and then arranging his murder in 307. Maxentius and Maximian both then declared themselves augusti . By 308 there were therefore no fewer than four claimants to the rank of augustus (Galerius, Constantine, Maximian and Maxentius), and only one to that of caesar (Maximinus Daza). In 308 Galerius, together with

7752-505: The prominent role and manifestations of piety in Islam, in Islamic asceticism and the role of "holy persons", in the pattern of universalist, homogeneous monotheism tied to worldly and military power, in early Islamic engagement with Greek schools of thought, in the apocalypticism of Islamic theology and in the way the Quran seems to react to contemporary religious and cultural issues shared by

7854-427: The promotion of the augustus Licinius as their superior. After an abortive attempt to placate both Constantine and Maximinus with the meaningless title filius augusti ("son of the augustus ", essentially an alternative title for caesar ), they both had to be recognised as Augusti in 309. However, four full Augusti all at odds with each other did not bode well for the tetrarchic system. Between 309 and 313 most of

7956-674: The provinces in the 3rd century, they brought with them their own regional influences and artistic tastes. For example, artists jettisoned the classical portrayal of the human body for one that was more rigid and frontal. This is markedly evident in the combined porphyry Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs in Venice . With these stubby figures clutching each other and their swords, all individualism , naturalism , Roman verism , and Greek idealism diminish. The Arch of Constantine in Rome, which re-used earlier classicising reliefs together with ones in

8058-408: The public image of the four members of the imperial college was carefully managed to give the appearance of a united empire ( patrimonium indivisum ). This was especially important after the numerous civil wars of the 3rd century . The tetrarchs appeared identical in all official portraits. Coinage dating from the tetrarchic period depicts every emperor with identical features—only the inscriptions on

8160-455: The rank of augustus , and two new caesares were appointed: Maximinus Daza ( caesar to Galerius) and Valerius Severus ( caesar to Constantius). These four formed the second tetrarchy. However, the system broke down very quickly thereafter. When Constantius died in 306, Constantine , Constantius' son, was proclaimed augustus by his father's troops; however, Galerius instead chose to promote Severus to augustus while granting Constantine

8262-651: 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

8364-700: The retired emperor Diocletian and the supposedly retired Maximian, called an imperial "conference" at Carnuntum on the River Danube. The council agreed that Licinius would become augustus in the West, with Constantine as his caesar . In the East, Galerius remained augustus and Maximinus remained his caesar . Maximian was to retire, and Maxentius was declared a usurper. This agreement proved disastrous: by 308 Maxentius had become de facto ruler of Italy and Africa even without any imperial status, and neither Constantine nor Maximinus—who had both been caesares since 306 and 305 respectively—were prepared to tolerate

8466-491: The rise of literary cultures in Syriac , Armenian , Georgian , Ethiopic , Arabic , and Coptic . It also marks a shift in literary style, with a preference for encyclopedic works in a dense and allusive style, consisting of summaries of earlier works (anthologies, epitomes) often dressed up in elaborate allegorical garb (e.g., De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae [The Marriage of Mercury and Philology] of Martianus Capella and

8568-492: The spot where the general Belisarius touched shore in North Africa: the miraculous spring that gushed forth to give them water and the rural population that straightway abandoned their ploughshares for civilised life within the new walls, lend a certain taste of unreality to the project. In mainland Greece, the inhabitants of Sparta , Argos and Corinth abandoned their cities for fortified sites in nearby high places;

8670-483: The tetrarchic system lasted until c. 324, when mutually destructive civil wars eliminated most of the claimants to power: Licinius resigned as augustus after losing the Battle of Chrysopolis , leaving Constantine in control of the entire empire. The Constantinian dynasty 's emperors retained some aspects of collegiate rule; Constantine appointed his son Constantius II as another caesar in 324, followed by Constans in 333 and his nephew Dalmatius in 335, and

8772-630: The three surviving sons of Constantine in 337 were declared joint augusti together, and the concept of the division of the empire under multiple joint emperors endured until the Fall of the Western Roman Empire . In the Eastern Roman Empire , augusti and caesares continued to be appointed sporadically. The term tetrarchy (from the Greek : τετραρχία , tetrarchia , "leadership of four [people]") describes any form of government where power

8874-489: The times is the fact that the imperial cabinet of advisors came to be known as the consistorium , or those who would stand in courtly attendance upon their seated emperor, as distinct from the informal set of friends and advisors surrounding the Augustus . The later Roman Empire was in a sense a network of cities. Archaeology now supplements literary sources to document the transformation followed by collapse of cities in

8976-517: The twentieth century (and after) and by Muslim scholars. This view, the so-called "out of Arabia"-thesis, holds that Islam as a phenomenon was a new, alien element in the late antique world. Related to this is the Pirenne Thesis , according to which the Arab invasions marked—through conquest and the disruption of Mediterranean trade routes—the cataclysmic end of late antiquity and the beginning of

9078-476: The urban class in greater proportion, and thus the people who knew how to keep civic services running. Perhaps the greatest blow came in the wake of the extreme weather events of 535–536 and subsequent Plague of Justinian , when the remaining trade networks ensured the Plague spread to the remaining commercial cities. The impact of this outbreak of plague has recently been disputed. The end of classical antiquity

9180-428: The west in 308 and elevated Maximinus Daza to augustus in 310. Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 left him in control of the western part of the empire, while Licinius was left in control of the east on the death of Maximinus Daza. Constantine and Licinius jointly recognized their sons – Crispus , Constantine II , and Licinius II – as caesares in March 317. Ultimately

9282-416: The west under Constantius, and Maximinus in the east under Galerius—thereby creating the second Tetrarchy. The four tetrarchs based themselves not at Rome but in other cities closer to the frontiers, mainly intended as headquarters for the defence of the empire against bordering rivals (notably Sassanian Persia ) and barbarians (mainly Germanic, and an unending sequence of nomadic or displaced tribes from

9384-508: 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

9486-607: Was proclaimed the state church of the Roman Empire . The city of Constantinople became the permanent imperial residence in the East by the 5th century and superseded Rome as the largest city in the Late Roman Empire and the Mediterranean Basin . The longest Roman aqueduct system, the 250 km (160 mi)-long Aqueduct of Valens was constructed to supply it with water, and the tallest Roman triumphal columns were erected there. Migrations of Germanic , Hunnic , and Slavic tribes disrupted Roman rule from

9588-553: Was a reversion to a greater degree of local production and consumption, rather than webs of commerce and specialized production. Concurrently, the continuity of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople meant that the turning-point for the Greek East came later, in the 7th century, as the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire centered around the Balkans , North Africa ( Egypt and Carthage ), and Asia Minor . The cities in

9690-439: Was not an ideal solution. Furthermore, it was risky for an emperor to delegate power in his absence to a subordinate general, who might win a victory and then be proclaimed as a rival emperor himself by his troops (which often happened). All members of the imperial college, on the other hand, were of essentially equal rank, despite two being senior emperors and two being junior; their functions and authorities were also equal. Under

9792-515: Was placed on demonstrating a symbolic fact rather than on rendering a realistic scene. As time progressed during the late antique period, art become more concerned with biblical themes and influenced by interactions of Christianity with the Roman state. Within this Christian subcategory of Roman art, dramatic changes were also taking place in the Depiction of Jesus . Jesus Christ had been more commonly depicted as an itinerant philosopher, teacher or as

9894-571: Was so important in pagan worship. Sarcophagi carved in relief had already become highly elaborate, and Christian versions adopted new styles, showing a series of different tightly packed scenes rather than one overall image (usually derived from Greek history painting ) as was the norm. Soon the scenes were split into two registers, as in the Dogmatic Sarcophagus or the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (the last of these exemplifying

9996-748: Was soon part 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

10098-722: Was the Hexaemeron of Basil of Caesarea , with the first occurrence in Syriac literature being the Hexaemeron of Jacob of Serugh . Greek poets of the late antique period included Antoninus Liberalis , Quintus Smyrnaeus , Nonnus , Romanus the Melodist and Paul the Silentiary . Latin poets included Ausonius , Paulinus of Nola , Claudian , Rutilius Namatianus , Orientius , Sidonius Apollinaris , Corippus and Arator . Jewish poets included Yannai , Eleazar ben Killir and Yose ben Yose . Tetrarchy The Tetrarchy

10200-420: Was the system instituted by Roman emperor Diocletian in 293 AD to govern the ancient Roman Empire by dividing it between two emperors, the augusti , and their junior colleagues and designated successors, the caesares . Initially Diocletian chose Maximian as his caesar in 285, raising him to co- augustus the following year; Maximian was to govern the western provinces and Diocletian would administer

10302-566: Was understood in the Latin world as well, where Pliny the Elder glossed it as follows: "each is the equivalent of a kingdom, and also part of one" ( regnorum instar singulae et in regna contribuuntur ). As used by the ancients, the term describes not only different governments, but also a different system of government from the Diocletianic arrangements. The Judaean tetrarchy was a set of four independent and distinct states, where each tetrarch ruled

10404-405: Was unilaterally acclaimed augustus and caesar by his father's army. Maximian's son Maxentius contested Severus' title, styled himself princeps invictus , and was appointed caesar by his retired father in 306. Severus surrendered to Maximian and Maxentius in 307. Maxentius and Constantine were both recognized as augusti by Maximian that same year. Galerius appointed Licinius augustus for

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