Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

INTRODUCTORY
these categories is demarcated with unequivocal clarity. There are grey areas
around all of them.
The final period, in the first half of the fifth century, saw the political separation
between the eastern and western parts of the empire, which had been a
temporary expedient in the past, become permanent. From being temporary
invaders or mercenary forces, Germanic peoples from beyond the frontier
became permanent settlers in the empire, and often set up their own governments
in the territories which they occupied. In 410 the Visigoths captured
Rome, an event whose effect upon the imagination of contemporaries it would
be impossible to exaggerate. Visigoths and Burgundians established themselves
permanently in southern Gaul, setting up there what were in effect independent
kingdoms. Parts of the Iberian peninsula were similarly occupied by Visigoths
and Suebi. Towards the middle of the century the Vandals, after sweeping
through Spain, crossed the straits of Gibraltar and by 439 were in control of
the rich and populous province of Africa and its capital city Carthage. Their
power soon extended to Sardinia and Corsica, and by 455 a Vandal force
captured and pillaged Rome itself, causing far greater damage to life and
property than the Visigoths had done. During this period Christianity became
not merely the predominant but virtually the sole religion of the empire. A
synthesis of classical and Christian culture began to be formed in the west,
which was distinct from that of the Greek east. The church and its hierarchy
took over some of the functions and the prestige which had hitherto belonged
to officials of the state, and cultural leadership began to pass to bishops, who
themselves were often the sons or grandsons of pagan men of literary distinction.
The whole social framework within which classical literature had been
written, read and criticized was unmistakably changed. It is symptomatic
that a great landed proprietor and senator who had written panegyrics upon
emperors replete with classical allusions and motives ended his days as a
Christian bishop in a Germanic kingdom.
Certain general features of the life and literature of late antiquity call for
brief discussion at this point as part of the background to the study of particular
writers and their works. They will all find illustration and exemplification
in the pages which follow this general introduction. The first is the loosening
of the cultural unity of the upper classes of the empire, and in particular of
the bonds between the Greek east and the Latin west. They had always been
conscious, and indeed proud, of the differences which separated them. Yet
the Greek sophists of the second century had moved easily between Ephesus
or Pergamum and Rome. Aelius Aristides had given eloquent expression to
his consciousness of belonging to a Roman society which embraced and
transcended the world of Greek culture. Greeks like Appian, Cassius Dio and
Herodian wrote on Roman history. A Roman emperor wrote his diary not
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