Synopses & Reviews
Peter Brown presents a masterly history of Roman society in the second, third, and fourth centuries. Brown interprets the changes in social patterns and religious thought, breaking away from conventional modernimages of the period.
Review
'No summary of its contents can do justice to this complex and fascinating book, written with all Peter Brown\'s refreshing panache. We are presented with an age of vitality, where historians used to find a creepingparalysis; the canvas comes alive with the spectacular successes of individuals who belie the conventional wisdom of the stifling oppressiveness of late Roman institutions...In a book devoted to human beings it is the portraits ofindividuals, perceptively located in their social and religious surroundings, which are naturally to the fore.'
Review
The Making of Late Antiquityis most successful, I think, as a study of shifts in the religious imagination... Brown is sensitive to the multifaceted quality of the Late Antiqueview of the soul, and some of his most creative work is in discussions of demons and angels as imaginal faces of the self and its changing relation to the holy. From the private dreams of Aristides to the public withdrawal of Anthony,Brown has sketched a remarkable shift in a culture's vision of itself. His argument is as persuasive as it is eloquent.
Review
[Brown's] interpretations are sensitive, vivid, and strongly persuasive. He offers a fascinating sketch of the distinctive configurations and interactions of religious, cultural, and social factors which graduallycame to define life in the Mediterranean world of the late fourth and early fifth centuries...he has, by judicious use of analytic concepts and graphic vignettes, captured the "feel" of the religious life of the period.
Review
complex and fascinating book, written with all Peter Brown's refreshing panache. We are presented with an age of vitality, where historians used to find a creeping paralysis; the canvas comes alive with thespectacular successes of individuals who belie the conventional wisdom of the stifling oppressiveness of late Roman institutions; and the cautious uncertainty of the "age of anxiety" disappears in a vigorous emphasis on the recognitionand display of power...[Brown] has shifted the emphasis of late roman studies from institutions to individuals, and to the discernment of what made late antique men "tick"--a task which he is without equal.
About the Author
Peter Brownis Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, <>Princeton University. Among his publications isThe Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, 200-1000 A.D.
Table of Contents
1. A Debate on the Holy
2. An Age of Ambition
3. The Rise of the Friends of God
4. From the Heavens to the Desert: Anthony and Pachomius
Notes
Index