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97-496: Dnieper or Dnipro is a major river, rising in Russia and flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Dnieper may also refer to: Dnieper The Dnieper ( /( d ə ) ˈ n iː p ər / (də)- NEE -pər ), also called Dnepr or Dnipro ( / d ə ˈ n iː p r oʊ / də- NEE -proh ), is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe , rising in

194-560: A Dualist faith, arose in Mesopotamia and spread both East and West, for a time contending with Christianity in the Roman Empire. Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the parchment codex (bound book) over the papyrus volumen (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic exegesis , papyrology . Notable in this regard

291-570: A 12th-century (re)foundation for this city is given in contemporary sources; Lugo id est Luceo in the Asturias , referred to by Isidore of Seville , and Ologicus (perhaps Ologitis ), founded using Basque labour in 621 by Suinthila as a fortification against the Basques, modern Olite . All of these cities were founded for military purposes and at least Reccopolis, Victoriacum, and Ologicus in celebration of victory. A possible fifth Visigothic foundation

388-594: A Viking voyage to eastern Europe. The River Dnieper has been a subject for artists, great and minor, over the centuries. Major artists with works based on the Dnieper are Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ivan Aivazovsky . The River Dnieper makes an appearance in the 1964 Hungarian drama film The Sons of the Stone-Hearted Man (based on the novel of the same name by Mór Jókai ), where it appears when two characters are leaving Saint Petersburg but get attacked by wolves. In 1983,

485-484: A citadel. Former imperial capitals such as Cologne and Trier lived on in diminished form as administrative centres of the Franks . In Britain most towns and cities had been in decline, apart from a brief period of recovery during the fourth century, well before the withdrawal of Roman governors and garrisons but the process might well have stretched well into the fifth century. Historians emphasizing urban continuities with

582-544: A classical education and the election by the Senate to magistracies was no longer the path to success. Room at the top of late antique society was more bureaucratic and involved increasingly intricate channels of access to the emperor; the plain toga that had identified all members of the Republican senatorial class was replaced with the silk court vestments and jewelry associated with Byzantine imperial iconography. Also indicative of

679-464: A defensible acropolis , or were abandoned in favour of such positions elsewhere." In the western Mediterranean, the only new cities known to be founded in Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries were the four or five Visigothic "victory cities". Reccopolis in the province of Guadalajara is one: the others were Victoriacum , founded by Leovigild , which may survive as the city of Vitoria , though

776-740: A new phase of the Roman–Persian Wars, the Roman–Sasanian Wars . The divisions between the Greek East and Latin West became more pronounced. The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians in the early 4th century was ended by Galerius and under Constantine the Great , Christianity was made legal in the Empire. The 4th century Christianization of the Roman Empire was extended by the conversions of Tiridates

873-469: A partial revival of classicism). Nearly all of these more abstracted conventions could be observed in the glittering mosaics of the era, which during this period moved from being decoration derivative from painting used on floors (and walls likely to become wet) to a major vehicle of religious art in churches. The glazed surfaces of the tesserae sparkled in the light and illuminated the basilica churches. Unlike their fresco predecessors, much more emphasis

970-516: A shade exotic," observes H. R. Loyn , "owing their reason for being more to the military and administrative needs of Rome than to any economic virtue". The other institutional power centre, the Roman villa , did not survive in Britain either. Gildas lamented the destruction of the twenty-eight cities of Britain; though not all in his list can be identified with known Roman sites, Loyn finds no reason to doubt

1067-506: A vehicle for the last group of powerful pagans to resist Christianity, as in the late 4th century Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych . Extravagant hoards of silver plate are especially common from the 4th century, including the Mildenhall Treasure , Esquiline Treasure , Hoxne Hoard , and the imperial Missorium of Theodosius I . In the field of literature, late antiquity is known for the declining use of classical Greek and Latin , and

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1164-594: A vibrant time of renewals and beginnings, and whose The Making of Late Antiquity offered a new paradigm of understanding the changes in Western culture of the time in order to confront Sir Richard Southern 's The Making of the Middle Ages . The continuities between the later Roman Empire , as it was reorganized by Diocletian (r. 284–305), and the Early Middle Ages are stressed by writers who wish to emphasize that

1261-516: A wholesale transformation of the political and social basis of life in and around the Roman Empire . The Roman citizen elite in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, under the pressure of taxation and the ruinous cost of presenting spectacular public entertainments in the traditional cursus honorum , had found under the Antonines that security could be obtained only by combining their established roles in

1358-728: Is Özü or Özi . The total length of the river is variously given as 2,145 kilometres (1,333 mi) or 2,201 km (1,368 mi), of which 485 km (301 mi) are within Russia, 700 km (430 mi) are within Belarus , and 1,095 km (680 mi) are within Ukraine . Its basin covers 504,000 square kilometres (195,000 sq mi), of which 289,000 km (112,000 sq mi) are within Ukraine, 118,360 km (45,700 sq mi) are within Belarus. The source of

1455-505: Is / d ə ˈ n iː p r oʊ / . The Ukrainian name has a rare form Дніпр , Dnipr and rare dialectal Дніпер , Dniper . The Middle Ukrainian form attested in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries was Днѣпръ , Dnǐpr . The city of Dnipro is named for the river. The name varies slightly in the local Slavic languages of the three countries through which it flows: These names are all cognate, deriving from Old East Slavic Дънѣпръ ( Dŭněprŭ ). The origin of this name

1552-510: Is Baiyara (perhaps modern Montoro ), mentioned as founded by Reccared in the 15th-century geographical account, Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar . The arrival of a highly urbanized Islamic culture in the decade following 711 ensured the survival of cities in the Hispaniae into the Middle Ages. Beyond the Mediterranean world, the cities of Gaul withdrew within a constricted line of defense around

1649-573: Is also close to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station ( Chernobyl Exclusion Zone ) which is located next to the mouth of the Pripyat River . Almost 2,000 km (1,200 mi) of the river is navigable (to the city of Dorogobuzh ). The Dnieper is important for transportation in the economy of Ukraine . Its reservoirs have large ship locks, allowing vessels of up to 270 by 18 metres (886 ft × 59 ft) access as far as

1746-602: Is disputed but generally derived from either Sarmatian * Dānu Apara ("Farther River") in parallel with the Dniester ("Nearer River") or from Scythian * Dānu Apr ("Deep River") in reference to its lack of fords , from which was also derived the Late Antique name of the river, Δάναπρις Danapris , as found in the Ravenna Cosmography . The earlier Graeco-Roman name of the river, as attested by Herodotus ,

1843-616: Is due to the influence of the Old East Slavic epic The Tale of Igor's Campaign and its modern adaptations on Ukrainian literature. This usage also lent its name to the city of Slavutych , founded in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 to house displaced workers, and to the Slavutych station of the Kyiv Metro . In Crimean Tatar , the river is known as Özü . In Turkish it

1940-516: Is the end of the polis model. While there was a decline of urban life in late antiquity (especially in the West) the epoch brought with it new forms of political participation in the urban spaces as well. Especially the role of crowds and masses in cities has increased, leading to new levels of tension. In the cities the strained economies of Roman over-expansion arrested growth. Almost all new public building in late antiquity came directly or indirectly from

2037-470: Is the topic of the Fifty Bibles of Constantine . Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be more distinctly seen between the laity and an increasingly celibate male leadership. These men presented themselves as removed from the traditional Roman motivations of public and private life marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and differing from

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2134-565: The Anglo-Saxon period depend largely on the post-Roman survival of Roman toponymy . Aside from a mere handful of its continuously inhabited sites, like York and London and possibly Canterbury , however, the rapidity and thoroughness with which its urban life collapsed with the dissolution of centralized bureaucracy calls into question the extent to which Roman Britain had ever become authentically urbanized: "in Roman Britain towns appeared

2231-632: The Byzantine military manuals achieving great renown and influence: the most famous of which is the Strategikon attributed to Emperor Maurice , written in the 6th century. One genre of literature among Christian writers in this period was the Hexaemeron , dedicated to the composition of commentaries, homilies, and treatises concerned with the exegesis of the Genesis creation narrative . The first example of this

2328-694: The Chaldaean oracles , some novel, such as hermeticism . Culminating in the reforms advocated by Apollonius of Tyana being adopted by Aurelian and formulated by Flavius Claudius Julianus to create an organized but short-lived pagan state religion that ensured its underground survival into the Byzantine age and beyond. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India and along the Silk Road in Central Asia , while Manichaeism ,

2425-468: The De arithmetica , De musica , and De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius —both later key works in medieval education). The 4th and 5th centuries also saw an explosion of Christian literature , of which Greek writers such as Eusebius of Caesarea , Basil of Caesarea , Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom and Latin writers such as Ambrose of Milan , Jerome and Augustine of Hippo are only among

2522-622: The Gothic War . A similar though less marked decline in urban population occurred later in Constantinople, which was gaining population until the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian in 541. In Europe there was also a general decline in urban populations. As a whole, the period of late antiquity was accompanied by an overall population decline in almost all Europe, and a reversion to more of a subsistence economy. Long-distance markets disappeared, and there

2619-534: The Great Meadow . The first constructed was the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station (or DniproHES) near Zaporizhzhia , built between 1927 and 1932 with an output of 558 MW. It was destroyed during World War II , but was rebuilt in 1948 with an output of 750 MW. Major cities, over 100,000 in population, are in bold script. Cities and towns located on the Dnieper are listed in order from

2716-752: The Kingdom of the Lombards , the Roman Exarchate of Ravenna endured, ensuring the so-called Byzantine Papacy . Justinian constructed the Hagia Sophia , a great example of Byzantine architecture , and the first outbreak of the centuries-long first plague pandemic took place. At Ctesiphon , the Sasanians completed the Taq Kasra , the colossal iwan of which is the largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in

2813-576: The Late Roman Empire and the Mediterranean Basin . The longest Roman aqueduct system, the 250 km (160 mi)-long Aqueduct of Valens was constructed to supply it with water, and the tallest Roman triumphal columns were erected there. Migrations of Germanic , Hunnic , and Slavic tribes disrupted Roman rule from the late 4th century onwards, culminating first in the Sack of Rome by

2910-479: The Mediterranean Basin . Two diagnostic symptoms of decline—or as many historians prefer, 'transformation'—are subdivision, particularly of expansive formal spaces in both the domus and the public basilica , and encroachment, in which artisans' shops invade the public thoroughfare, a transformation that was to result in the souk (marketplace). Burials within the urban precincts mark another stage in dissolution of traditional urbanistic discipline, overpowered by

3007-628: The Middle Ages , the usage of "Early Middle Ages" or "Early Byzantine" emphasizes a break with the classical past, and the term " Migration Period " tends to de-emphasize the disruptions in the former Western Roman Empire caused by the creation of Germanic kingdoms within her borders beginning with the foedus with the Goths in Aquitania in 418. The general decline of population, technological knowledge and standards of living in Europe during this period became

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3104-481: The Middle Ages . On the other hand, there is a more recent thesis, associated with scholars in the tradition of Peter Brown, in which Islam is seen to be a product of the late antique world, not foreign to it. This school suggests that its origin within the shared cultural horizon of the late antique world explains the character of Islam and its development. Such historians point to similarities with other late antique religions and philosophies—especially Christianity—in

3201-594: The Pripyat River to the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station , there are six sets of dams and hydroelectric stations , which produce 10% of Ukraine's electricity. The Kakhovka dam was destroyed on 6 June 2023 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine , with the subsequent drying up of the Kakhovka Reservoir revealing the original course of the river in the area and disconnecting four canal networks known as

3298-458: The Pripyat River , a tributary of the Dnieper, just upstream from its confluence with the Dnieper. The Dnieper is an important navigable waterway for the economy of Ukraine and is connected by the Dnieper–Bug Canal to other waterways in Europe. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine , certain segments of the river were made part of the defensive lines between territory controlled by

3395-559: The Valdai Hills near Smolensk , Russia , before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea . Approximately 2,200 km (1,400 mi) long, with a drainage basin of 504,000 square kilometres (195,000 sq mi), it is the longest river of Ukraine and Belarus and the fourth- longest river in Europe , after the Volga , Danube , and Ural rivers. In antiquity, the river

3492-584: The Visigoths in 410 and subsequent Sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455, part of the eventual collapse of the Empire in the West itself by 476. The Western Empire was replaced by the so-called barbarian kingdoms , with the Arian Christian Ostrogothic Kingdom ruling Rome from Ravenna . The resultant cultural fusion of Greco-Roman , Germanic, and Christian traditions formed the foundations of

3589-482: The middle Byzantine period , and together with the establishment of the later 7th century Umayyad Caliphate , generally marks the end of late antiquity. One of the most important transformations in late antiquity was the formation and evolution of the Abrahamic religions : Christianity , Rabbinic Judaism and, eventually, Islam . A milestone in the spread of Christianity was the conversion of Emperor Constantine

3686-411: The "Good Shepherd", resembling the traditional iconography of Hermes. He was increasingly given Roman elite status, and shrouded in purple robes like the emperors with orb and scepter in hand — this new type of depiction is variously thought to be derived from either the iconography of Jupiter or of classical philosophers. As for luxury arts, manuscript illumination on vellum and parchment emerged from

3783-561: The 5th century, with a few manuscripts of Roman literary classics like the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus , but increasingly Christian texts, of which Quedlinburg Itala fragment (420–430) is the oldest survivor. Carved ivory diptychs were used for secular subjects, as in the imperial and consular diptychs presented to friends, as well as religious ones, both Christian and pagan – they seem to have been especially

3880-677: The Balkans and Persian destructions in Anatolia in the 620s. City life continued in Syria, Jordan and Palestine into the 8th. In the later 6th century street construction was still undertaken in Caesarea Maritima in Palestine, and Edessa was able to deflect Chosroes I with massive payments in gold in 540 and 544, before it was overrun in 609. The stylistic changes characteristic of late antique art mark

3977-705: The Dnieper is the sedge bogs (Akseninsky Mokh) of the Valdai Hills in central Russia, at an elevation of 220 m (720 ft). For 115 km (71 mi) of its length, it serves as the border between Belarus and Ukraine. Its estuary, or liman , used to be defended by the strong fortress of Ochakiv . The southernmost point in Belarus is on the Dnieper to the south of Kamaryn in Brahin Raion . The Dnieper has many tributaries (up to 32,000) with 89 being rivers of 100+ km. The main ones are, from its source to its mouth , with left (L) or right (R) bank indicated: Many small direct tributaries also exist, such as, in

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4074-549: The Dnieper" to the words of Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky . Late Antiquity The term Spätantike , literally "late antiquity", has been used by German-speaking historians since its popularization by Alois Riegl in the early 20th century. It was given currency in English partly by the writings of Peter Brown , whose survey The World of Late Antiquity (1971) revised the Gibbon view of a stale and ossified Classical culture, in favour of

4171-516: The East were still lively stages for political participation and remained important for background for religious and political disputes. The degree and extent of discontinuity in the smaller cities of the Greek East is a moot subject among historians. The urban continuity of Constantinople is the outstanding example of the Mediterranean world; of the two great cities of lesser rank, Antioch was devastated by

4268-623: The Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire of Persia , destroying the latter. After conquering all of North Africa and Visigothic Spain , the Islamic invasion was halted by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in modern France . On the rise of Islam, two main theses prevail. On the one hand, there is the traditional view, as espoused by most historians prior to the second half of

4365-399: The Great (r. 306–337) in 312, as claimed by his Christian panegyrist Eusebius of Caesarea , although the sincerity of his conversion is debated . Constantine confirmed the legalization of the religion through the so-called Edict of Milan in 313, jointly issued with his rival in the East, Licinius (r. 308–324). By the late 4th century, Emperor Theodosius the Great had made Christianity

4462-419: The Great monastic attitudes penetrated other areas of Christian life. Late antiquity marks the decline of Roman state religion , circumscribed in degrees by edicts likely inspired by Christian advisors such as Eusebius to 4th-century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism and

4559-400: The Great of Armenia , Mirian III of Iberia , and Ezana of Axum , who later invaded and ended the Kingdom of Kush . During the late 4th century reign of Theodosius I , Nicene Christianity was proclaimed the state church of the Roman Empire . The city of Constantinople became the permanent imperial residence in the East by the 5th century and superseded Rome as the largest city in

4656-627: The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem , and involved himself in questions such as the timing of Christ's resurrection and its relation to the Passover . The birth of Christian monasticism the 3rd century was a major step in the development of Christian spirituality. While it initially operated outside the episcopal authority of the Church, it would become hugely successful and by the 8th century it became one of

4753-421: The Kyiv area, the Syrets (right bank) in the north of the city, the historically significant Lybid (right bank) passing west of the centre, and the Borshahivka (right bank) to the south. The water resources of the Dnieper basin compose around 80% of the total for all Ukraine. The Dnieper Rapids were part of the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks , first mentioned in the Kyiv Chronicle. The route

4850-474: The Military Band of the Headquarters of the Kiev Military District led by A. Kuzmenko, singers Anatoliy Mokrenko , Lyudmila Zykina , Anatoliy Solovianenko , Dmytro Hnatyuk , Mykola Hnatyuk . Filming on the battlefield, streets and squares of Kiev. Scriptwriter – Victor Meerovsky. Directed by Victor Cherkasov. Operator – Alexander Platonov. The 2018 film Volcano was filmed at the river in Beryslav , Kherson Oblast . In 1941, Mark Fradkin wrote "Song of

4947-506: The Persian sack of 540, followed by the plague of Justinian (542 onwards) and completed by earthquake, while Alexandria survived its Islamic transformation, to suffer incremental decline in favour of Cairo in the medieval period. Justinian rebuilt his birthplace in Illyricum , as Justiniana Prima , more in a gesture of imperium than out of an urbanistic necessity; another "city", was reputed to have been founded, according to Procopius ' panegyric on Justinian's buildings, precisely at

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5044-499: The Russians and the Ukrainians. The river is also sometimes called by the Russian name Dnepr . The initial D in Dnieper is generally silent when pronounced in English, although it may be sounded: / ˈ n iː p ər / or / d ə ˈ n iː p ər / . It derives from Russian : Днепр , romanized :  Dnepr , pre-revolutionary spelling Днѣпръ , Dněpr . Dnipro derives from Ukrainian : Дніпро , romanized :  Dnipro . The English pronunciation

5141-403: The State religion, thereby transforming the Classical Roman world, which Peter Brown characterized as "rustling with the presence of many divine spirits ." Constantine I was a key figure in many important events in Christian history , as he convened and attended the first ecumenical council of bishops at Nicaea in 325, subsidized the building of churches and sanctuaries such as the Church of

5238-442: The Third Century the military, political and economic demands made by the Empire made the service in local government to be an onerous duty, often imposed as punishment. Harassed urban dwellers fled to the walled estates of the wealthy to avoid taxes, military service, famine and disease. In the Western Roman Empire especially, many cities destroyed by invasion or civil war in the 3rd century could not be rebuilt. Plague and famine hit

5335-399: The Western European waterways was possible, but a weir without any ship lock near the town of Brest, Belarus , has interrupted this international waterway. Poor political relations between Western Europe and Belarus mean there is little likelihood of reopening this waterway in the near future. River navigation is interrupted each year by freezing and severe winter storms. From the mouth of

5432-439: The archetypal example of societal collapse for writers from the Renaissance . As a result of this decline, and the relative scarcity of historical records from Europe in particular, the period from roughly the early fifth century until the Carolingian Renaissance (or later still) was referred to as the " Dark Ages ". This term has mostly been abandoned as a name for a historiographical epoch, being replaced by "Late Antiquity" in

5529-418: The attraction of saintly shrines and relics. In Roman Britain , the typical 4th- and 5th-century layer of dark earth within cities seems to be a result of increased gardening in formerly urban spaces. The city of Rome went from a population of 800,000 in the beginning of the period to a population of 30,000 by the end of the period, the most precipitous drop coming with the breaking of the aqueducts during

5626-450: The beauty and movement of the body, but rather, hints at the spiritual reality behind its subjects . Additionally, mirroring the rise of Christianity and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, painting and freestanding sculpture gradually fell from favor in the artistic community. Replacing them were greater interests in mosaics, architecture, and relief sculpture. As the soldier emperors such as Maximinus Thrax (r. 235–238) emerged from

5723-451: The building is not architecturally a basilica. In the former Western Roman Empire almost no great buildings were constructed from the 5th century. A most outstanding example is the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna constructed c.  530 at a cost of 26,000 gold solidi or 360 Roman pounds of gold. City life in the East, though negatively affected by the plague in the 6th–7th centuries, finally collapsed due to Slavic invasions in

5820-416: The campaigns of Khosrow II and Heraclius facilitated the emergence of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula during the lifetime of Muhammad . Subsequent Muslim conquest of the Levant and Persia overthrew the Sasanian Empire and permanently wrested two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire's territory from Roman control, forming the Rashidun Caliphate . The Byzantine Empire under the Heraclian dynasty began

5917-435: The chair in the apse reserved in secular structures for the magistrate—or the Emperor himself—as the representative here and now of Christ Pantocrator , the Ruler of All, his characteristic late antique icon . These ecclesiastical basilicas (e.g., St. John Lateran and St. Peter's in Rome) were themselves outdone by Justinian's Hagia Sophia , a staggering display of later Roman/Byzantine power and architectural taste, though

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6014-450: The concert program "Song of the Dnieper" from the "Victory Salute" series was released, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the city of Kiev from the German fascist invaders. The program includes songs by Soviet composers, Ukrainian folk songs , and dances performed by the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Kiev Military District led by A. Pustovalov, P. Virsky Ukrainian National Folk Dance Ensemble , Kyiv Bandurist Capella ,

6111-410: The emperors or imperial officials. Attempts were made to maintain what was already there. The supply of free grain and oil to 20% of the population of Rome remained intact the last decades of the 5th century. It was once thought that the elite and rich had withdrawn to the private luxuries of their numerous villas and town houses. Scholarly opinion has revised this. They monopolized the higher offices in

6208-425: The end of classical Roman art and the beginnings of medieval art . As a complicated period bridging between Roman art and later medieval styles (such as that of the Byzantines ), the late antique period saw a transition from the classical idealized realism tradition largely influenced by ancient Greek art to the more iconic, stylized art of the Middle Ages. Unlike classical art, late antique art does not emphasize

6305-399: The essential truth of his statement. Classical antiquity can generally be defined as an age of cities; the Greek polis and Roman municipium were locally organised, self-governing bodies of citizens governed by written constitutions. When Rome came to dominate the known world, local initiative and control were gradually subsumed by the ever-growing Imperial bureaucracy; by the Crisis of

6402-408: The expense of amphitheaters, temples, libraries, porticoes, gymnasia, concert and lecture halls, theaters and other amenities of public life. In any case, as Christianity took over, many of these buildings which were associated with pagan cults were neglected in favor of building churches and donating to the poor. The Christian basilica was copied from the civic structure with variations. The bishop took

6499-442: The fortified heights of Acrocorinth are typical of Byzantine urban sites in Greece. In Italy, populations that had clustered within reach of Roman roads began to withdraw from them, as potential avenues of intrusion, and to rebuild in typically constricted fashion round an isolated fortified promontory, or rocca ; Cameron notes similar movement of populations in the Balkans, 'where inhabited centres contracted and regrouped around

6596-436: The imperial administration, but they were removed from military command by the late 3rd century. Their focus turned to preserving their vast wealth rather than fighting for it. The basilica , which had functioned as a law court or for imperial reception of foreign dignitaries, became the primary public building in the 4th century. Due to the stress on civic finances, cities spent money on walls, maintaining baths and markets at

6693-492: The key Christian practices. Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in late antiquity, although it had perhaps the greatest influence and it achieved unprecedented geographical spread. It influenced many aspects of Christian religious life and led to a proliferation of various ascetic or semi-ascetic practices. Holy Fools and Stylites counted among the more extreme forms but through such personalities like John Chrysostom , Jerome , Augustine or Gregory

6790-441: The late antique world at large. Further indication that Arabia (and thus the environment in which Islam first developed) was a part of the late antique world is found in the close economic and military relations between Arabia, the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanian Empire. In recent years, the period of late antiquity has become a major focus in the fields of Quranic studies and Islamic origins. The late antique period also saw

6887-443: The local town with new ones as servants and representatives of a distant emperor and his traveling court. After Constantine centralized the government in his new capital of Constantinople (dedicated in 330), the late antique upper classes were divided among those who had access to the far-away centralized administration (in concert with the great landowners ), and those who did not; although they were well-born and thoroughly educated,

6984-442: The married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on priestly celibacy , celibacy in late antique Christianity sometimes took the form of abstinence from sexual relations after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban clergy . Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige to urban notables, the potentes or dynatoi . Islam appeared in the 7th century, spurring Arab armies to invade

7081-409: The most renowned representatives. On the other hand, authors such as Ammianus Marcellinus (4th century) and Procopius of Caesarea (6th century) were able to keep the tradition of classical Hellenistic historiography alive in the Byzantine empire. Due to several factors of the era, among them the political instability and the constant military threats, treatises on war became a popular genre with

7178-609: The nature in Russian literature. The river was also described in the works of Taras Shevchenko . In the adventure novel The Long Ships (also translated Red Orm ), set during the Viking Age , a Scanian chieftain travels to the Dnieper Rapids to retrieve a treasure hidden there by his brother, encountering many difficulties. The novel was very popular in Sweden and is one of few to depict

7275-449: The new style, shows the contrast especially clearly. In nearly all artistic media, simpler shapes were adopted and once natural designs were abstracted. Additionally hierarchy of scale overtook the preeminence of perspective and other classical models for representing spatial organization. From c.  300 Early Christian art began to create new public forms, which now included sculpture , previously distrusted by Christians as it

7372-539: The periodization of the late Western Roman Empire, the early Byzantine Empire and the Early Middle Ages. The Roman Empire underwent considerable social, cultural and organizational changes starting with the reign of Diocletian , who began the custom of splitting the Empire into Eastern and Western portions ruled by multiple emperors simultaneously . The Sasanian Empire supplanted the Parthian Empire and began

7469-517: The port of Kyiv , and thus are an important transportation corridor. The river is used by passenger vessels as well. Inland cruises on the rivers Danube and Dnieper have had a growing market in recent decades. Upstream from Kyiv, the Dnieper receives the water of the Pripyat River . This navigable river connects to the Dnieper-Bug canal , the link with the Bug River . Historically, a connection with

7566-497: The prominent role and manifestations of piety in Islam, in Islamic asceticism and the role of "holy persons", in the pattern of universalist, homogeneous monotheism tied to worldly and military power, in early Islamic engagement with Greek schools of thought, in the apocalypticism of Islamic theology and in the way the Quran seems to react to contemporary religious and cultural issues shared by

7663-723: The provinces in the 3rd century, they brought with them their own regional influences and artistic tastes. For example, artists jettisoned the classical portrayal of the human body for one that was more rigid and frontal. This is markedly evident in the combined porphyry Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs in Venice . With these stubby figures clutching each other and their swords, all individualism , naturalism , Roman verism , and Greek idealism diminish. The Arch of Constantine in Rome, which re-used earlier classicising reliefs together with ones in

7760-487: The rise of literary cultures in Syriac , Armenian , Georgian , Ethiopic , Arabic , and Coptic . It also marks a shift in literary style, with a preference for encyclopedic works in a dense and allusive style, consisting of summaries of earlier works (anthologies, epitomes) often dressed up in elaborate allegorical garb (e.g., De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae [The Marriage of Mercury and Philology] of Martianus Capella and

7857-639: The river's source (in Russia) to its mouth (in Ukraine): Arheimar , a capital of the Goths , was located on the Dnieper, according to the Hervarar saga . The River Dnieper has been a subject of chapter X of a story by Nikolai Gogol A Terrible Vengeance (1831, published in 1832 as a part of the Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka short stories collection). It is considered as a classical example of description of

7954-545: The river, Var , was derived from Scythian *Varu , meaning "Broad." This name was connected to the Graeco-Roman name of the Volga river, Oarus ( Ancient Greek : Οαρος , romanized :  Oaros ; Latin : Oarus ), which was also derived from Scythian *Varu . In Ukrainian it is also known poetically as Славутич , Slavutych or Славута , Slavuta , from an old name used in Kievan Rus' . This

8051-594: The seeds of medieval culture were already developing in the Christianized empire, and that they continued to do so in the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire at least until the coming of Islam . Concurrently, some migrating Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the "Roman" tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities of classical antiquity endured throughout Europe into

8148-486: The spot where the general Belisarius touched shore in North Africa: the miraculous spring that gushed forth to give them water and the rural population that straightway abandoned their ploughshares for civilised life within the new walls, lend a certain taste of unreality to the project. In mainland Greece, the inhabitants of Sparta , Argos and Corinth abandoned their cities for fortified sites in nearby high places;

8245-525: The subsequent culture of Europe . In the 6th century, Roman imperial rule continued in the East, and the Byzantine-Sasanian wars continued. The campaigns of Justinian the Great led to the fall of the Ostrogothic and Vandal Kingdoms, and their reincorporation into the Empire, when the city of Rome and much of Italy and North Africa returned to imperial control. Though most of Italy was soon part of

8342-484: The times is the fact that the imperial cabinet of advisors came to be known as the consistorium , or those who would stand in courtly attendance upon their seated emperor, as distinct from the informal set of friends and advisors surrounding the Augustus . The later Roman Empire was in a sense a network of cities. Archaeology now supplements literary sources to document the transformation followed by collapse of cities in

8439-506: The twentieth century (and after) and by Muslim scholars. This view, the so-called "out of Arabia"-thesis, holds that Islam as a phenomenon was a new, alien element in the late antique world. Related to this is the Pirenne Thesis , according to which the Arab invasions marked—through conquest and the disruption of Mediterranean trade routes—the cataclysmic end of late antiquity and the beginning of

8536-472: The urban class in greater proportion, and thus the people who knew how to keep civic services running. Perhaps the greatest blow came in the wake of the extreme weather events of 535–536 and subsequent Plague of Justinian , when the remaining trade networks ensured the Plague spread to the remaining commercial cities. The impact of this outbreak of plague has recently been disputed. The end of classical antiquity

8633-457: The whole width of the river, about 30 to 40 smaller rapids, obstructing only part of the river, and about 60 islands and islets. After the Dnieper hydroelectric station was built in 1932, they were inundated by Dnieper Reservoir . There are a number of canals connected to the Dnieper: The river is part of the quagga mussel 's native range. The mussel has been accidentally introduced around

8730-497: The world and the triumph of Sasanian architecture . The middle of the 6th century was characterized by extreme climate events ( the volcanic winter of 535–536 and the Late Antique Little Ice Age ) and a disastrous pandemic (the Plague of Justinian in 541). The effects of these events in the social and political life are still under discussion. In the 7th century the disastrous Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and

8827-726: The world, where it has become an invasive species . The city of Kherson lies on the northern bank, upstream of the Dnieper delta , before the Dnieper meets the Southern Bug river in the Dnieper–Bug estuary . Nowadays the Dnieper River suffers from anthropogenic influence resulting in numerous emissions of pollutants. The Dnieper is close to the Prydniprovsky Chemical Plant radioactive dumps (near Kamianske ) and susceptible to leakage of its radioactive waste. The river

8924-443: Was " Borysthenes " ( Ancient Greek : Βορυσθενης , romanized :  Borusthenēs ; Latin : Borysthenes , Ukrainian : Бористен, Борисфен , romanized :  Borysten, Borysfen ) and later Δάναπρις Danapris . The name Borysthenes was derived from a Scythian name whose form was: Ovid used Borysthenius , an adjective derived from Borysthenes , as the river's poetic Latin name. The Huns ' name for

9021-541: Was a reversion to a greater degree of local production and consumption, rather than webs of commerce and specialized production. Concurrently, the continuity of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople meant that the turning-point for the Greek East came later, in the 7th century, as the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire centered around the Balkans , North Africa ( Egypt and Carthage ), and Asia Minor . The cities in

9118-621: Was part of the Amber Road trade routes. During the Ruin in the later 17th century, the area was contested between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia , dividing what is now Ukraine into areas described by its right and left banks. During the Soviet period , the river became noted for its major hydroelectric dams and large reservoirs. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster occurred on

9215-558: Was placed on demonstrating a symbolic fact rather than on rendering a realistic scene. As time progressed during the late antique period, art become more concerned with biblical themes and influenced by interactions of Christianity with the Roman state. Within this Christian subcategory of Roman art, dramatic changes were also taking place in the Depiction of Jesus . Jesus Christ had been more commonly depicted as an itinerant philosopher, teacher or as

9312-484: Was probably established in the late eighth and early ninth centuries and gained significant importance from the tenth until the first third of the eleventh century. On the Dnieper the Varangians had to portage their ships round seven rapids, where they had to be on guard for Pecheneg nomads. Along this middle flow of the Dnieper, there were 9 major rapids (although some sources cite a smaller number), obstructing almost

9409-556: Was so important in pagan worship. Sarcophagi carved in relief had already become highly elaborate, and Christian versions adopted new styles, showing a series of different tightly packed scenes rather than one overall image (usually derived from Greek history painting ) as was the norm. Soon the scenes were split into two registers, as in the Dogmatic Sarcophagus or the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (the last of these exemplifying

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