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Late Antiquity
Some Key Events and Trends
In a sense, the Roman Empire fell during the 200s, during the so-called Crisis of the Third Century, for the Empire that was re-constituted by Diocletian and Constantine was significantly different from the original. The fifty years covered by these two emperors marks our first watershed, for they created what is called the Late Empire. By the end of Constantine's rule, all of the Augustan foundations of the Empire had changed profoundly. The army was largely Germanic. Imperial authority was now split between military functions and civil functions, the two chains of command uniting only in the person of the Emperor himself. The imperial office itself was now split between an eastern and a western ruler. The capital had moved from Rome to Constantinople. Workers were bound by heredity to their trade or to the land itself. Christianity had replaced paganism as the official religion of the state.
The second turning point comes in the 500s. This is the great century of loss and devastation, in many parts of the Roman world. During this century, Arianism was almost completely conquered by Catholicism in the West, bringing about religious unity. This is the century of Justinian, the devastation of Italy and the ruin of the city of Rome itself (conquered five times during a thirty-year span and losing most of its population). Clovis founded the Kingdom of the Franks in Gaul. The Avars and the Slavs both invaded the eastern Empire. Terrible earthquakes, Persian invasions, and the Black Death ravaged the wealthiest provinces and cities of the East. The Lombards conquered northern Italy. Latin all but died out in the eastern Empire, while Greek faded to a memory in the West.
The third and final turning point I wish to emphasize here is the Islamic conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. When the Arabs conquered Egypt, the Near East, North Africa, and Spain, they completed the transformation of the ancient world to the medieval world. While there were still contacts between East and West, they were sporadic at best. The ancient world was centered on the Mediterranean; the medieval world was centered on Europe.
Throughout this period, and well beyond, there was something called the "Roman Empire". Its capital was in Constantinople, but it regarded itself as Roman. By 800, there was even a Roman Emperor again in the West. In both cases, the political entity and the culture it ruled bore little resemblance to the Roman civilization of Augustus or Trajan, but the point is that no one thought for a moment that the Roman Empire had vanished, since it not only continued to exist but was in fact still the single most powerful state in Europe or the Near East.
At the beginning of the above outline (around 285), the Greco-Roman culture of the Mediterranean world was still dominant. By the end (around 700), that world had changed in so many respects that we are clearly in a new civilization. Thinking in terms of "the fall of the Roman Empire" conceals the fact that these centuries were not about the ending of a civilization, but of its transformation into something new. Don't think in terms of rise and fall, but of re-birth.
That's the broad overview. We turn now to a consideration of particular developments during these centuries.