Traces the more important changes which overtook the Roman world from the late third to the seventh centuries AD. The course concentrates on the Roman experience at the court and in the provinces, and considers some of the dramatic upheavals that swept the empire in this period, which include the change of the principate into an autocracy, the intrusion of the government into all aspects of life, the decline of the cities, the politicization of Christianity, and the loss of the western provinces.