Classical Antiquity - Late Antiquity (4th To 6th Centuries AD)

Late Antiquity (4th To 6th Centuries AD)

Late Antiquity saw the rise of Christianity under Constantine I, finally ousting the Roman imperial cult with the Theodosian decrees of 393. Successive invasions of Germanic tribes finalized the decline of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, while the Eastern Roman Empire persisted throughout the Middle Ages as the Byzantine Empire. Hellenistic philosophy was succeeded by continued developments in Platonism and Epicureanism, with Neoplatonism in due course influencing the theology of the Church Fathers.

Many individuals have attempted to put a specific date on the symbolic "end" of antiquity with the most prominent dates being the deposing of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476, the closing of the last Platonic Academy by Justinian I in 529, or the invasion of Italy in 535 by the forces of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. This last act, ironically, resulted in damage or destruction to Rome and much of the Italian countryside, inorexorably and permanently altering the socioeconomic structure of classical Rome.

In spite of this fact, the original Roman Senate continued to express decrees into the late 6th century and so some historians even place the symbolic end of antiquity at the death of Justinian I in 565, because Justinian was the last emperor to speak Latin and the last to use wholly Roman (as opposed to Greek) customs and rules for his court and government. Furthermore, the ascendency of Heraclius in 610, in Constantinople, who truly emphasized the Laventine, and Greek nature of what remained of the Roman Empire, may have contributed to turning the Eastern Roman Empire into the medieval Byzantine Empire.

Ultimately, though, it was a slow, complex, and graduated change in the socioeconomic structure in European history that led to the changeover between Classical Antiquity and Medieval society and no specific date can truly exemplify that.