The Festschrift and ‘companion’ here considered, both edited by Philip Rousseau (and Manolis Papoutsakis in the case of the Festschrift), offer complementary views of late antique studies now, and are required acquisitions for any serious library.
The field has deep roots in patristics – the honorand wrote a famous book on Augustine, and the editor is a Professor of Early Christian Studies. A choice of contributors had to be made, and the Festschrift displays a not unsurprising inclination towards the study of Christian literary sources. Polytheistic religion and philosophy also impinge, naturally enough, for the editor identifies a major theme in his collection: ‘that Christian concern and novelty always drew upon the wealth of the classical tradition that it claimed to transcend or purify’ (p. 160). One cannot claim, though, that this volume teaches us much about institutions, politics, diplomacy, military matters or the economy. This reflects Peter Brown's own emphases – Augustine and Gregory the Great rather than Ammianus Marcellinus or the law codes.
On the other hand, Brown has displayed a marked openness toward Iran, early Islam, anthropology and material evidence. A number of articles here deploy artistic, archaeological and epigraphic materials – G. Bowersock, J. Matthews (an elegant essay) and C. Roueché stand out. But in the other directions of Brown's research, this particular volume shows little interest. The Muslim world is touched upon only through studies of Christian literary materials by S. Brock and S. H. Griffith, and directly only in a brief passage by P. Horden on lunatic asylums. The editors' preface goes so far as to define late antiquity as ending in the early seventh century.
With this the Blackwell Companion (Rousseau here fielding his junior team – no emeriti this time) largely concurs, briefly nodding to the Caliphate (only down to 750) in just two out of a total of thirty-nine chapters. Its contributors, we are told, were left to write about whatever they liked; but who chose the contributors? The editor informs us, with mock innocence, that ‘it is striking … no one saw fit to offer a chapter on the structure of the empire or on the way its government and administration functioned’ (p. xix). But Rousseau's suggestion that this reflects the way late antique studies are moving is invalidated by his plea that the new Cambridge Ancient History already provides what the Companion omits.
W. Mayer devises a superb appetiser, raising a sequence of profound problems. She is aware that historical studies generally are in need of a new periodisation, and that ‘late antiquity’ may not survive long (p. 13). There are indeed already signs that the first millennium is emerging as a new major periodisation to reflect our own world in which the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths interact so intensely (and destructively) that the educated public requires some historical understanding of their classical crystallisations (rabbinics, patristics, kalām etc.), and of the contribution made to each by the late Greek philosophical synthesis.
The next five chapters provide – an unusual and welcome feature – glimpses of emerging awareness of late antiquity, from Byzantium via the Carolingians, the Renaissance and Gibbon to the present day. M. Vessey sees Erasmus as the first early modern man to distance himself somewhat from Christian fantasies and take a more literary and even somewhat dispassionate approach to late antiquity. Certainly it was students of the Fathers who first studied this period – at least one important aspect of it – on its own terms. But as S. Rebenich points out, it was with the Viennese art historians, especially A. Riegl (conventionally enough, he omits J. Strzygowski, though see pp. 314–15), that late antiquity came to be seen as more generally autonomous, especially on the basis of material evidence. So it was in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German-speaking lands, not in 1960s Bloomsbury and Oxford, that late antiquity emerged – a point of which several contributors to this volume seem to be unaware, for example C. Ando: ‘Late Antiquity is largely the product of Anglo-American scholarship, and it is perhaps two generations old’ (p. 57). Rousseau himself dissents from this at p. xx. (Incidentally, the same point holds for the critical study of early Islam: see now C. Robinson, Past and Present cciii [2009], 210–11).
One can only select, somewhat at random, a few other suggestive arguments – or questionable choices – to be found in this rich, wide-ranging but uneven volume. M. Humphries points to the declining power of ‘Mediterraneanism’ in analysing the ancient world. O. Brandt locates the end of antiquity at Rome at about 700, on the basis of archaeological analysis of pottery provenances, henceforth local rather than north African. Part iii examines ‘Image and word’, very unequally in favour of the latter, which is a distinct failing compared to the Festschrift contributors. Only two articles in the whole volume are thought to require illustrations, a far cry from the otherwise much-invoked World of late antiquity.
Interestingly enough, it is only in these same two articles, by J. A. Francis and F. Harley, that much space is given to philosophy. Despite the fascination with the word, and the provision of a chapter on biblical exegesis, there is absolutely nothing on philosophical exegesis either in Greek or in Syriac, let alone Arabic. Given the importance of the harmonisation of Plato and Aristotle from Porphyry onward for many fields of discourse both Christian and Muslim, there is no justification for omitting late antiquity's major achievement alongside the patristic synthesis and the codification of Roman law. I. Hadot, P. Hadot and R. Sorabji are all absent from the ninety-nine-page bibliography.
Despite this, part v, ‘The sacred’, does seek to qualify the notion that late antiquity is coterminous with Christian antiquity. Rather, it was a society in course of Christianisation; and often there was little consensus about how sacred public spectacles were, or statues. These could be saved by being classified as ‘secular’, argues R. Lim in a subtle contribution. ‘Christian’, ‘Jew’ and ‘pagan’ were all rhetorical categories, corresponding to a reality that was often much more fluid (N. Koltun-Fromm, N. McLynn).
This is a feast of a volume, but it ‘consolidates an academic field in its own right’ (p. 12) rather than opening new horizons. That was Peter Brown's achievement.
