When Does Antiquity End?

[Aurelianus]

for an expanded version of what Gaius said you can look here and here

Edited October 4, 2006 by Aurelianus

[Virgil61]

Understanding that there are several different and valid measurements of what the end of late antiquity might be I still think that 476 AD is as good a measurement--not perfect perhaps but chock full of symbolism--as any out there.

[Pertinax]

Would anyone suggest that an industrial society (with mass urbanisation and factory production) is now "ancient" ? I mean this in the context of , a divorce of life as now experienced , from the life of a prole in early Victorian society.The time frame is short but the actuallity of life is utterly foreign and remote in terms of drudgery and social abasement.

 

So is the nature of the "common experience" (outside of time, ie: the history of ideas, the evolution of justice ) more relevant than mere time elapsed? By this I mean common experience between those living and those who are dead but have written and expressed themselves in writing, surely many of us are struck by the apparent immediacy and lucidity of "ancient" authors ?

[DecimusCaesar]

This begs the question are we still living in an industrial society like that of the 19th century Victorians or are we living in a digital age?

 

Personally I can connect better with ancient authors and the ancient world than I can with the Victorians, perhaps it is because Rome was a multinational, multicultural Empire and in that way it was very similar to our world compared to traditional Victorian society.

 

Then again my opinion has been coloured by the fact that I have more of an intrest in Ancient Rome than in the Victorian world and I could be just picking out stuff that made us similar to the Romans and ignoring those things that make us disimilar (the religion, technology etc). Perhaps if my knowledge of the 19th century was better I would be saying that we have stronger connection with the Victorians than with a distant era like Rome.

[Pertinax]

I agree DC , if you read George Orwell's "How the Poor Die" , from only seventy years ago, its like peering into some ghastly, arctic , vision of misery unknown today. The portrayal of Rome in popular media , and the role and subjugation of slaves does not look so harsh in the light of the work I mention or , say , Gustav Dore's drawings of 19th C Manchester and London.

 

[Ludovicus]

These could be markers for the end of Roman antiquity in the West:

The loss of traditional schooling, rhetoric, the study of classical authors

Burial within the walls of the cities.

The end of the Senate in Rome.

The conversion of civic buildings into churches.

The change from a money economy to one based on barter.

[Favonius Cornelius]

What do you folks think of say 500-700 AD? Any specific event in between these years which could be used as a major landmark? The classic 476 AD fall of the western empire as the end never really quite satisfied me, because the century after times were basically the same.

[M. Porcius Cato]

It's hard to say when the classical era ended unless you first establish some standard about when it began. If you take the beginning to be 5th century Athens--with its philosophy, mathematics, theatre, literature, urbanization, democracy, international trade, and abundance of material comforts--then it seems like the hallmarks of the classical era had been sliding for some time prior to 476, but--at different times and places--they really took a nose-dive after 476.

[Tobias]

It is very difficult to say when antiquity ends. Perhaps it can be placed with the changing of ideas around the time of Constantine. Towards the late Roman Empire, we have the rising dominance of Christianity, and the neglect of the religions of antiquity; we have the diminishing effectiveness of infantry on the battlefield, the rising prominence of cavalry and thus an elite cadre of people, with the abandonment of the legions and strategies of antiquity. There is of course, the changing of the navel of the world to Constantinople, which could, despite the theory of the ideal of Rome merely being geographically shifted, possibly have caused the Empire to take on a different form from that of antiquity.

 

There is the diminishing of the idea of an all-pervasive culture uniting people, beginning perhaps with the split of the Roman Empire into East and West. We also have the drift of peoples and new ideas into Europe, and the constant beleaguering of the Empire by barbarians. Perhaps their simply weren't enough of the peoples of antiquity left to keep antiquity alive?

 

What do you folks think of say 500-700 AD?

 

I would say that it should be earlier. The new form of Rome, and the world before 500 A.D. seems to me to be the beginning of the end of antiquity.

Edited October 5, 2006 by Tobias

[L. Quintus Sertorius]

The study of Roman law and writings never really halted in Lombardia. In Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of the Civil Life, 1000-1350, J.K. Hyde devotes the better part of a chapter to an analysis of the status of Italian cities under the Lombardic and Frankish kingdoms (the latter being better known as the Holy Roman Empire, though there was not technically such a body at the time of the Frankish conquest). Under the Gothic kings, Italian cities were encouraged to continue the bureacratic traditions of the Romans. Civic legal codes became slightly differentiated, mainly because of the lack of a codified, readily available source of written law. The introduction of Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis led to a new interest in the study of Roman law. Indeed, by the time of the Lombard conquests in the late 6th century, Italian lawyers and bureacrats were operating under much the same conditions and with similar procedures as their counterparts of 100 or even 200 years before.

 

After the Lombards conquered Northern Italy, they made few attempts to learn the art of government needed to organize such a large kingdom as the one they now controlled. As such, they turned to the native Italians for legal and bureacratic advice. However, Lombard laws were slowly forced upon the cities, and the study of Justinian's Code became the enclave of specially designated advocates, or giudices. The Lombard system was even then sophisticated enough to stun the invading Franks, to whom the Lombards had been described as godless, uncultured barbarians.

 

Roman culture survived the fall of Rome, for the most part intact, in Italy. Indeed, the great Lombard League that threw down Barbarossa swore common ground with the Pope and the S.P.Q.R. (though really now only composed of aristocratic Roman families). Even classical allusions were quite commonplace, as Hyde referenced:

 

In the walls constructed by Leodoino (Modena) there was a chapel dedicated to Christ, St. Mary, and St. John, for which a cleric who knew his Livy and little and his Vergil well composed the most remarkable secular poem to come down to us from dark age Italy. O tu qui servas armis ista moenia is addressed to the watchmen on the walls, and may have been chanted by the chapel clergy in the evening at the time when the watch took up their posts.

 

Oh you who guard these walls with arms

Sleep not, I charge you, but stay wide awake.

While Hector kept watch in lofty Troy

It was not taken by the crafty Greeks.

Only when Troy was sleeping quietly

Did false Synon ope' the traitor's door.

 

The poet goes on to remind the Modenese watchmen of the white geese who saved the Roman capital from attacking Gauls, and only after this does he invoke the protection of Christ and the saints...

[Ludovicus]

It's hard to say when the classical era ended

 

 

The classical era and antiquity are not really the same, in my opinion.

[M. Porcius Cato]

It's hard to say when the classical era ended

The classical era and antiquity are not really the same, in my opinion.

 

OK...what's the difference in your view, and when did the two periods elapse?

[Ludovicus]

Classical Era vs Antiquity

 

 

Here's my problem with using the two as synonymous. The term "classical" is often used to mean the best of Roman and Greek civilization. As in "Classical Latin":

"The period of Classical Latin, when Latin literature is widely considered to have reached its peak, is divided into the Golden Age, which covers approximately the period from the start of the 1st century BC up to the mid-1st century AD, and the Silver Age, which extends into the 2nd century AD. Literature written after the mid-2nd century has often been disparaged and ignored;" from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_literature

 

On the other hand, the term "antiquity" means ancient. I take "classsical era" to mean the best of Roman and Greek antiquity. The first being a subset of the second.

 

I'm not really sure how to mark the end of antiquity but I'm open to listening to what others have to say about the question. I think that it's a difficult one to tackle beccause you have to take into account changes in cultural habits as well as a host of other changes such as language, building styles, learning, etc.

Edited October 5, 2006 by Ludovicus

[Pantagathus]

I suppose I must reply "Dark Ages"-trite , but I am arraigned by my own suggestion of "modernity " as regards Greece and Rome.

And in a lot of regards, I find myself gravitating towards that classification as well. It does make much sense.

[WotWotius]

It seems that people are trying to generalise about something that clearly cannot be generalised.

 

Depending on where you are, and what time frame you are situated inside, ages of antiquity vary immensely; you may disagree, but this what I believe. For instance, the fall of Rome, and with it the emergence of the 'modern' European states, is often considered the end of European antiquity

Edited October 5, 2006 by WotWotius