Syllabus
Autumn Term 2011
Week 1: Introduction: what is late antiquity?
Political History
Week 2: The Fourth Century from Diocletian to Theodosius: An Empire on the Brink of Collapse.
reading: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, ix. 9–11 (click here to download)
Week 3: Fifth Century: The Fall of Rome
Seminar: Narratives of Decline and Fall: Bowersock vs Ward-Perkins
Week 4: Sixth Century: The Time of Consolidation
Week 5: Seventh Century: The Emergence of a New Force
Sources: Translated Texts for Historians
Reading Week
Religion and Society
Week 7: Constantine’s conversion and Theodosius’ edict: the abolition of pagan religion
Week 8: Charity as Politics: Holy Bishops and their Flocks
Seminar: The Rise of the Christian Hospitals: Between Myth and Reality
Week 9: Christological Controversies and Their Consequence: from Nicaea to Chalcedon
Week 10: The death of Hypatia: Christians and Pagans in Alexandria
Spring Term 2012
Philosophy
Week 1: Jews and Christians on the Createdness of the World and God’s Divine Attributes
Week 2: The School of Athens, its Closure and the Exodus to Alexandria
- Reading: Edward Watts, ‘Where to Live the Philosophical Life in the Sixth Century? Damascius, Simplicius, and the Return from Persia’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 45 (2005) 285–315
- See also Riot in Alexandria and City and school in late antique Athens and Alexandria
Week 3: The Philosophy of the Commentators
Seminar: John Philoponus: A Christian among Pagans
Week 4: A Universe Filled with Magic and the Occult: Iamblichus and the Neo-Pythagorean tradition
Medicine and the Sciences
Week 5: One School of Alexandria or Many? In the Amphitheatres of the Iatrosophists (Aileen Das)
Reading Week
Week 7: The Rise of Alchemy: Zosimus and His Friends (Aileen Das)
Endings and Beginnings
Week 8: The Muslim Conquests and Their Aftermaths (Dr Jamie Wood)
Week 9: From Apocalypse to Acceptance and Accommodation: Religious Responses to the Muslim Conquests (Dr Jamie Wood)
Seminar: Hagarism, Hagiography and History-writing: Early Islam in Cultural Context (Dr Jamie Wood)
Week 10: Holy War in East and West: From the Battle of the Milvian Bridge to the Second Siege of Consantinople (312-717/718) (Dr Jamie Wood)
Summer Term 2012
Week 1: The fall of the Roman Empire on film (Dr Jamie Wood)
Week 2: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’: Gibbon revisited (Dr Jamie Wood)
Week 3: No class - bank holiday
Week 4: revision
