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By: Professor Roger Scott
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Sixth-century Byzantium (and especially the reign of Justinian, 527-65) has been described as the last flowering of Antiquity.

Writers still used classical models and inhabitants still expected the amenities of the classical city (for instance bathing and chariot races). It was also a time when classics could be ignored or were under attack (the closing of Plato's academy in 529; increasing importance of icons; pillar saints).

It was both a period of confidence and huge achievement (codification of Roman law; building of Hagia Sophia; reconquest of Vandal Africa and Gothic Italy, invention of AD dating), but also of fear and pessimism (Procopius' Secret History, major riots, plague, invasions, predictions of the end of the world).

In looking at the successes and failures of the period, I will ask if we can find an explanation for the end of Antiquity and the beginnings of Medievalism.

Biography

Roger Scott, a graduate of Melbourne and Cambridge universities, taught Classics at Melbourne University for 38 years before retiring at the end of 2003 as Associate Professor and Reader. He is currently Principal Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at Melbourne University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities where he is chairman of the Classics section.

He has been an invited Visiting Professor or Fellow at various universities in UK, USA, France, Sweden, Israel and Brazil and also been an invited speaker in various other countries including Greece, Germany, Turkey, Norway and Denmark.

His most recent book is Byzantine Chronicles and the Sixth Century (2012). Other books (edited or jointly authored) include

• Byzantium and the Classical Tradition (1981),
• The Chronicle of John Malalas. A Translation (1986)
• Studies in John Malalas (1990)
• The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813 (1997).
• Byzantine Macedonia: Identity, Image and History (2000).
• Byzantine Macedonia: Art, Architecture, Music and Hagiography (2001).
• Byzantine Narrative (2006).

He was one of the founders of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies in 1978 and was its President 1987-1992.