Late Antiquity We shall conclude this chapter by looking at the cultural transformation of the Roman world in its final centuries. ‘Late antiquity’ is the term now used to describe the final, fascinating period in the evolution and break-up of the Roman Empire and refers broadly to the fourth to seventh centuries. The fourth century itself was one of considerable ferment, both cultural and economic. At the cultural level, the period saw momentous developments in religious life, with the emperor Constantine deciding to make Christianity the official religion, and with the rise of Islam in the seventh century.
But there were equally important changes in the structure of the state that began with the A N E MPIRE A CROSS T HREE C ONTINENTS Incomes of the Roman Aristocracy, Early Fifth Century ‘Each of the great houses of Rome contained within itself everything which a medium-sized city could hold, a hippodrome, fora, temples, fountains and different kinds of baths… Many of the Roman households received an income of four thousand pounds of gold per year from their properties, not including grain, wine and other produce which, if sold, would have amounted to one-third of the income in gold. The income of the households at Rome of the second class was one thousand or fifteen hundred pounds of gold.’ – Olympiodorus of Thebes. T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY emperor Diocletian ( - ), and it may be best to start with these. Overexpansion had led Diocletian to ‘cut back’ by abandoning territories with little strategic or economic value.
Diocletian also fortified the frontiers, reorganised provincial boundaries, and separated civilian from military functions, granting greater autonomy to the military commanders ( duces ), who now became a more powerful group. Constantine consolidated some of these changes and added others of his own. His chief innovations were in the monetary sphere, where he introduced a new denomination, the solidus , a coin of 4½ gm of pure gold that would in fact outlast the Roman Empire itself. Solidi were minted on a very large scale and their circulation ran into millions.