28 - The Transition to Late Antiquity

Summary

introduction

A few years ago, the last chapter of an economic history of the ancient world would undoubtedly have had a different title, such as, “The Crisis of the Roman Empire,” “The End of the Ancient World,” or “The Transition (or The Passage) from Antiquity to Feudalism.” One might say that it used to be easier for scholars dealing with these questions: in discussing the causes of the fall of the empire, they shared a basic framework that devoted considerable space to economic processes. According to this conventional template, the crisis of the Roman world had started in the third century ad, triggering a decline that was to lead to the end of the Roman empire in the west, and to the protracted decline of the Byzantine empire in the east.

Matters are far more complicated today. Some scholars argue that the concept of crisis does not capture the processes of transformation of the Roman world from the third century ad onward. There is a widespread tendency to refuse to consider certain characteristics of fourth- and fifth-century society as proto-feudal. Terms such as “decline” or “decadence” are frequently judged to be inappropriate. The vision of a direct passage from antiquity to the Middle Ages has thus been replaced by a more complex perspective, which leaves room for an autonomous intermediate period, so-called “Late Antiquity.” This is the historiographic climate which creates the problem of a “Transition to Late Antiquity.” This formulation divides the closing centuries of Roman history, and presupposes the existence of a double transition: the first leading to late antiquity, and the second from late antiquity to the Middle Ages.