An accessible and authoritative overview capturing the vitality and diversity of scholarship that exists on the transformative time period known as late antiquity. * Provides an essential overview of current scholarship on late antiquity -- from between the accession of Diocletian in AD 284 and the end of Roman rule in the Mediterranean * Comprises 39 essays from some of the world's foremost scholars of the era * Presents this once-neglected period as an age of powerful transformation that shaped the modern world * Emphasizes the central importance of religion and its connection with economic, social, and political life* Winner of the 2009 Single Volume Reference/Humanities & Social Sciences PROSE award granted by the Association of American Publishers