Eras
Classical Antiquity
Also Known As Antiquity
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Classical Antiquity is the period, conventionally dated from around 800 BCE to 476 CE, dominated by the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. It begins with the Archaic period of Greece, when the city state, or polis, emerged as the era's characteristic political form and the Homeric epics were composed, and continues through Greece's Classical and Hellenistic periods, in which philosophy, drama, democracy and monumental art flourished in Athens and were later spread across the eastern Mediterranean and Near East by Alexander the Great's conquests. Rome, beginning as one city state among many in Italy, expanded first into a republic and then an empire that at its height controlled the entire Mediterranean basin, western Europe, and parts of the Near East and North Africa, absorbing and transmitting much of Greek culture in the process. Classical Antiquity is conventionally closed by the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, though the eastern half of the empire, later called Byzantine, continued for another thousand years, and historians differ over how sharp or gradual the transition to the following era really was.
Facts
Disputed
Start YearSome historians prefer 776 BCE, the traditional date of the first Olympic Games, or 750 BCE, roughly when the Greek alphabet and the earliest poleis appear. 800 BCE is a convenient round marker for the start of the Archaic period rather than a precisely dated event. End Year476 CE, the traditional date of the deposition of the last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, is a convenient political marker, but historians increasingly treat the end of antiquity as a gradual transformation rather than a single collapse, and some prefer 330 CE, the founding of Constantinople, or 500 CE as alternative boundaries. Geographic ScopeCentered on the Mediterranean basin, chiefly Greece and Rome, extending into the Near East after Alexander the Great's conquests and across western Europe and North Africa under Roman rule. It does not describe East Asia, South Asia or the Americas, where entirely different periodizations, organized around dynasties such as Han China or the Mauryan and Gupta empires in India, apply to these same centuries. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Includes
Attila died in 453, before this atlas's own Classical Antiquity to Post-Classical boundary at 476 (the fall of the Western Roman Empire); his invasions are among the pressures that led to it.
Why this is disputed. Classical antiquity periodization is usually centered on Greece and Rome, but historians commonly include the Achaemenid Empire as the major contemporary Near Eastern power shaping and shaped by the classical world.
Held Differently
Late Antiquity, Eras Why this is disputed. Late Antiquity offers a rival periodization of the same centuries rather than accepting Classical Antiquity's conventional 476 CE close.
Related To
Sources
1. The Cambridge Ancient History
Cambridge University Press
1. The Cambridge Ancient History
Cambridge University PressVols. IV-VIII, Greece, the Hellenistic World and Rome
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Wikipedia
WikipediaIncludes: The Hellenistic Period, Hellenistic period, in relation to Classical AntiquityQuote, Includes: The Hellenistic Period, Hellenistic period, in relation to Classical Antiquity
the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek, Eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history following Classical Greece.
Wikipedia
WikipediaRelated To: Late Antiquity, Late antiquity, Chronological range, vs Classical AntiquityQuote, Related To: Late Antiquity, Late antiquity, Chronological range, vs Classical Antiquity
the exact geographical and chronological scope of late antiquity remains a matter of debate among contemporary scholars.
Wikipedia
WikipediaIncludes: The Pax Romana, Pax Romana, in relation to Classical AntiquityQuote, Includes: The Pax Romana, Pax Romana, in relation to Classical Antiquity
a roughly 200-year-long period of ancient Rome.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
End Year
Since the mid twentieth century, a body of scholarship on Late Antiquity, most influentially Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity (1971), has argued that 476 CE is a political marker retrofitted onto a much longer, more gradual process of transformation rather than a genuine civilizational break. This field treats Late Antiquity as its own extended period, running from roughly the third century through the seventh or eighth, and emphasizes continuity between the late Roman and early medieval worlds over any single deposition. The atlas records 476 as the boundary because it remains the majority convention in general survey works, while recording this substantial minority position as a formal dissent rather than folding it into the main fact.
A dissenting reading, from Late Antiquity historiography (the "transformation of the Roman world" school)The Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge University Press
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