Coda

Summary

I began this book by noting how the term ‘late antiquity’ has a polemical and persuasive force, which has been used by scholars not just to extend the boundaries of what is understood by the antiquity of Greco-Roman culture, temporally, spatially and linguistically, but also to open a debate about how tradition is to be conceptualized – a debate that necessarily invokes notions of self-placement and historical self-understanding for both ancient and modern writers. This book’s partial account of literary form across a long period from Augustus to tenth-century Byzantium has traced – performed – a contribution to this continuing narrative that explores what we understand by antiquity.