The Plurality of Cultures

The Greek philosophic tradition, which had been diffused in the Latin West in the 1st c. B.C., continued to survive and change during the late-antique period in Athens (until the closing of the School of Athens in 529), Rome, and Alexandria. The division of the imperial heritage into two Empires, the Eastern and the Western (395), and the following political events broke up the cultural unity of the Mediterranean, where, in the first centuries of the Christian era, not only the two classical languages (Greek and Latin), but also oriental religions and ancient philosophical schools, had lived together and been interwoven. This was the same context in which the Christian religion spread and eventually prevailed, slowly and opposed at first, but with ever increasing strength starting with the edict of Constantine (313). Along with the Latin-barbaric and Greek-Byzantine worlds, which at the beginning of the 6th c. were already clearly diversified, in the following century Islam became a part of the Mediterranean cultural context as a totally new religious, linguistic, political and military force, born from the preaching of Mahomet. The philosophical heritage was continued and developed in different ways in the three broad linguistic-political areas, but in all of them a sustained dialogue with revelation was central.