Late Antiquity : Crisis and Transformation (The Great Courses, 3480, DVD)

Chantilly, Virginia: Teaching Compnay, 2008. DVD. Thirty-six 30-minute lectures on six Fine DVDs in the original case along with a Very Good 172-page paperback Course Guidebook. Disks show only slight signs of prior use; no scratches. Slight shelfwear to case. Guidebook has two pages of vocabulary written in the "notes" pages at the end, otherwise Fine. Not from a library.

This course of 36 lectures explores the five momentous centuries that link the classical and modern worlds and shows you how the fall of the Roman Empire gave rise to three great civilizations: Medieval Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Caliphate. It explores many features of the period between A.D. 253 and A.D. 750, including the development of these unique civilizations, their memorable political and religious leaders, and the fascinating experience of daily life in the late antique world.

Contents: lecture 1. The world of late antiquity ; lecture 2. The crisis of the 3rd century ; lecture 3. The new empire of Diocletian ; lecture 4. Constantine's Roman revolution ; lecture 5. The house of Constantine, 337-363 ; lecture 6. The end of a unified empire ; lecture 7. Ruling the Roman Empire, the imperial center ; lecture 8. Ruling the Roman Empire, the provinces ; lecture 9. The barbarians, ethnicity and identity ; lecture 10. Rome and the barbarians ; lecture 11. Barbarian kingdoms, Gaul ; lecture 12. Barbarian kingdoms, Spain and North Africa ; lecture 13. Barbarian kingdoms, Italy ; lecture 14. The Eastern Empire in the 5th century ; lecture 15. The end of the Western Empire ; lecture 16. The age of Justinian, 527-565 ; lecture 17. The Christianization of the Roman world ; lecture 18. Christianity and the Roman state ; lecture 19. The rise of the Roman Church ; lecture 20. The call of the desert, monasticism ; lecture 21. Monasticism, solitaries and communities ; lecture 22. The church fathers, talking about God ; lecture 23. Patristic portraits ; lecture 24. "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" ; lecture 25. Graven images, Christianity's visual arts ; lecture 26. The universal in the local, cities ; lecture 27. Rome and Constantinople ; lecture 28. Visigothic Spain and Merovingian Gaul ; lecture 29. Celt and Saxon in the British Isles ; lecture 30. The birth of Byzantium ; lecture 31. Byzantium, crisis and recovery ; lecture 32. Muhammad and the rise of Islam ; lecture 33. The rise of Caliphate ; lecture 34. Material life in late antiquity ; lecture 35. The social world of late antiquity ; lecture 36. What happened, and why does it matter?