The idea of discussing the literature of late antiquity as décadence might seem at a first glance against the flow of recent scholarship. In fact, the latest contributions to late antique literature have been building up on the perspective strenuously brought out by among the most influential historians of “late antiquity”, as we today perhaps too automatically call the age roughly between the 3rd and the 8th centuries. This historiography of a very high level radically changed the perception of late antiquity as ‘decline and fall’by convincingly showing how this epoch has been through the centuries misinterpreted as the decadence par excellence while the study of its reality depicts a very different picture: late antiquity was an age of radical change, full of dynamic energies and intellectual engagement. In the words of Henri-Irénée Marou,“another antiquity”. The irrationalism and anxiety ascribed to a decadent late antiquity are now rather seen as a projection of the neurosis of the modernity which a careful historical reconstruction cannot. This volume does not intend to change what seems to be now certain and has been confirmed time and again from all different angles. To be sure, it does want neither to instill the doubt that late antiquity might have possibly been a decadent age nor that men and women of that age were perceiving themselves as an epigonal society and culture. As the Introduction will discuss more in detail, this volume takes its origins from a simple statement, namely that in the past, differently than today, late antiquity was perceived precisely as decadence, and that as such it was profoundly influential within important strands of Western culture, literature and the arts. Building upon this fact, which is just as true as the fact that late antiquity was not itself decadent, we suggest a self-conscious use of reception so as to make productive the prejudice of past centuries. The contributions to this volume respond to this input in two different but intertwined ways: on the one hand they look at the past reception of late antiquity as décadence (the French word is intended to refer to European fin de siècle literature), on the other they re-read and go back to some late antique texts by applying the theoretically sophisticated hermeneutical tool provided by their history of reception. How can we read today, after a long phase of rehabilitation, late antiquity as ‘decadence’or décadence? Which effects might this have on our reading of late antique texts? How can we make productive what has been proved to be a long lasting prejudice (in the true sense of the word) over the centuries? These are among others the questions asked in this volume and the contributions represent a large set of responses to them. The collection as a whole intends to explore not so much how late antique texts and authors have been received in the following ages (though this is also a focus), but more relevantly to assume a different per-