Late Antiquity (4th to 7th centuries AD)[edit]

The Western and Eastern Roman Empires by 476

Main articles: Late Antiquity and Migration period
Late Antiquity saw the rise of Christianity under Constantine I, finally ousting
the Roman imperial cult with the Theodosian decrees of 393. Successive invasion
s of Germanic tribes finalized the decline of the Western Roman Empire in the 5t
h century, while the Eastern Roman Empire persisted throughout the Middle Ages,
in a state called the Roman Empire by its citizens, and labelled the Byzantine E
mpire by later historians. Hellenistic philosophy was succeeded by continued dev
elopments in Platonism and Epicureanism, with Neoplatonism in due course influen
cing 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 R
oman Emperor in 476,[11][12] the closing of the last Platonic Academy in Athens
by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I in 529,[13] and the conquest of much of
the Mediterranean by the new Muslim faith from 634-718.[14] These Muslim conque
sts, of Syria (637), Egypt (639), Cyprus (654), North Africa (665), Spain (718),
Crete (820), and Sicily (827), (and the sieges of the Eastern Roman capital, Fi
rst Arab Siege of Constantinople (674 78) and Second Arab Siege of Constantinople
(717 18)) severed the economic, cultural, and political links that had traditional
ly united the classical cultures around the Mediterranean, ending antiquity, see
(Pirenne Thesis).[15]
The original Roman Senate continued to express decrees into the late 6th century
, and the last Eastern Roman emperor to use Latin as the language of his court i
n Constantinople was emperor Maurice, who reigned until 602. The overthrow of Ma
urice by his mutinying Danube army under Phocas resulted in the Slavic invasion
of the Balkans and the decline of Balkan and Greek urban culture (leading to the
flight of Balkan Latin speakers to the mountains, see Origin of the Romanians),
and also provoked the Byzantine Sasanian War of 602 628 in which all the great east
ern cities except Constantinople were lost. The resulting turmoil did not end un
til the Muslim conquests of the 7th century finalized the irreversible loss of a
ll the largest Eastern Roman imperial cities besides the capital itself. The emp
eror Heraclius in Constantinople, who emerged during this period, conducted his
court in Greek, not Latin, though Greek had always been an administrative langua
ge of the eastern Roman regions. Eastern-Western links weakened with the ending
of the Byzantine Papacy.
The Eastern Roman empire's capital city of Constantinople was left as the only u
nconquered large urban center of the original Roman empire, as well as being the
largest city in Europe. Over the next millennium the Roman culture of that city
would slowly change, leading modern historians to refer to it by a new name, By
zantine, though many classical books, sculptures, and technologies survived ther
e along with classical Roman cuisine and scholarly traditions, well into the Mid
dle Ages, when much of it was "rediscovered" by visiting Western crusaders. Inde
ed, the inhabitants of Constantinople continued to refer to themselves as Romans
, as did their eventual conquerors in 1453, the Ottomans. (See Rm and Romaioi.) T
he classical scholarship and culture that was still preserved in Constantinople
was brought by refugees fleeing its conquest in 1453 and helped to spark the Ren
aissance, see Greek scholars in the Renaissance.
Ultimately, it was a slow, complex, and graduated change in the socioeconomic st
ructure in European history that led to the changeover between Classical Antiqui
ty and Medieval society and no specific date can truly exemplify that.
Revivalism[edit]
Further information: Carolingian Renaissance, Ottonian Renaissance, Renaissance,
Classical studies, Classicism and Legacy of the Roman Empire

Respect for the ancients of Greece and Rome affected politics, philosophy, sculp
ture, literature, theater, education, architecture, and even sexuality.
Politics[edit]
In politics, the late Roman conception of the Empire as a universal state, heade
d by one supreme divinely-appointed ruler, united with Christianity as a univers
al religion likewise headed by a supreme patriarch, proved very influential, eve
n after the disappearance of imperial authority in the west.
That model continued to exist in Constantinople for the entirety of the Middle A
ges; the Byzantine Emperor was considered the sovereign of the entire Christian
world. The Patriarch of Constantinople was the Empire's highest-ranked cleric, b
ut even he was subordinate to the Emperor, who was "God's Vicegerent on Earth".
The Greek-speaking Byzantines and their descendants continued to call themselves
"Romans" until the creation of a new Greek state in 1832.
After the
m Caesar)
described
into the

fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Russian Tsars (a title derived fro

claimed the Byzantine mantle as the champion of Orthodoxy; Moscow was
as the "Third Rome" and the Tsars ruled as divinely-appointed Emperors
20th century.

Despite the fact that the Western Roman secular authority disappeared entirely i
n Europe, it still left traces. The Papacy and the Catholic Church in particular
maintained Latin language, culture and literacy for centuries; to this day the
popes are called Pontifex Maximus which in the classical period was a title belo
nging to the Emperor, and the ideal of Christendom carried on the legacy of a un
ited European civilisation even after its political unity had disappeared.
The political idea of an Emperor in the West to match the Emperor in the East co
ntinued after the Western Roman Empire's collapse; it was revived by the coronat
ion of Charlemagne in 800; the self-described Holy Roman Empire ruled over centr
al Europe until 1806.
The Renaissance idea that the classical Roman virtues had been lost under mediev
alism was especially powerful in European politics of the 18th and 19th centurie
s. Reverence for Roman republicanism was strong among the Founding Fathers of th
e United States and the Latin American revolutionaries; the Americans described
their new government as a republic (from res publica) and gave it a Senate and a
President (another Latin term), rather than make use of available English terms
like commonwealth or parliament.
Similarly in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, republicanism and Roman martia
l virtues were upheld by the state, as can be seen in the architecture of the Pa
nthon, the Arc de Triomphe, and the paintings of Jacques-Louis David. During the
revolution France itself followed the transition from republic to dictatorship t
o Empire (complete with Imperial Eagles) that Rome had undergone centuries earli
er.
Culture[edit]
Epic poetry in Latin continued to be written and circulated well into the 19th c
entury. John Milton and even Arthur Rimbaud got their first poetic education in
Latin. Genres like epic poetry, pastoral verse, and the endless use of character
s and themes from Greek mythology left a deep mark on literature of the Western
World.
In architecture, there have been several Greek Revivals, which seem more inspire
d in retrospect by Roman architecture than Greek. Washington, DC is filled with
large marble buildings with facades made out to look like Roman temples, with co
lumns constructed in the classical orders of architecture.

In philosophy, the efforts of St Thomas Aquinas were derived largely from the th
ought of Aristotle, despite the intervening change in religion from Hellenic Pol
ytheism to Christianity. Greek and Roman authorities such as Hippocrates and Gal
en formed the foundation of the practice of medicine even longer than Greek thou
ght prevailed in philosophy. In the French theater, tragedians such as Molire and
Racine wrote plays on mythological or classical historical subjects and subject
ed them to the strict rules of the classical unities derived from Aristotle's Po
etics. The desire to dance like a latter-day vision of how the ancient Greeks di
d it moved Isadora Duncan to create her brand of ballet.