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Introduction Introduction Since you, when on the staff of the Praefect, have the Roman empire, where local elites largely governed, learned the principles of statesmanship, we are and ornamented, cities. sure that you will agree with us that cities are the Cities at the time of Athalaric no longer looked much chief ornament of human society. Let the wild like they did in their imperial heyday. But how had they beasts live in fields and woods: men ought to draw changed from their earlier forms? Cassiodorus’ letter together into cities. […] Let the cities then return intimates that cities began to lose their grandeur (with to their old splendour. […] To stroll through the the bombastic hortatory: “Let the cities then return to Forum, […] to go to the baths with one’s acquain- their old splendour”) as the possessores and curiales fled. tances, to indulge in the friendly emulation of the Yet, not too long before, in the 4th c., literary sources pres- banquet—these are the proper employments of a ent a far more positive picture: Ammianus Marcellinus Roman noble.1 remarks on how Rome still retained much of her earlier glory, while Ausonius praises the wonders of the great This exhortation, from a letter written by Cassiodorus cities of the empire, and Libanius admires the public in the 520s on behalf of Athalaric, the King of the amenities of Antioch.4 Altogether, these accounts sug- Ostrogoths, concisely encapsulates the view of this gest that the period between the 4th and 6th c. was one post-Roman king on cities. His views of the city as a of substantial change for both the fabric and leadership perpetuator of culture and society—a connection that of cities. However, such sources are often restricted in still endures in the etymological links between civitas, their utility to inform about the physical changes of late citizen, and civilisation—reverberate with a conception antique cities, due to their inherent authorial perspec- of city life that had prevailed in antiquity from at least tive and the common use of literary topoi, in addition to Aristotle’s identification of man as a ‘political’ (from the more explicit biases and exaggerations.5 We are much Greek πόλις, city) animal.2 Under the Roman empire, better served in this task by turning to other forms of urbanism developed and reached innovative levels of evidence, particularly archaeological data, to under- sophistication and splendour. Cities like Rome grew to stand these transitions. Therefore, this study sets out unheard of sizes, with up to a million people thronged to discover what happened to urban public buildings, around a magnificent collection of public and private those proper adornments of late antique cities, by com- buildings, only to shrink precipitously after the fall of the piling the material evidence for their continued use, empire. Critically, this letter shows that, for Cassiodorus, maintenance and repair, along with the evidence for and doubtless for the leadership of the Ostrogothic state their ultimate disuse and reuse. on whose behalf he writes, the city remained a defining These questions are, of themselves, not entirely feature of culture, of the Romanitas of the past. novel, but I hope my approach and presentation of them Yet, the fact that Cassiodorus had to assert this view is. The city has been a key element in the scholarship to the possessors (owners) and curiales (members of on the late antique world since at least Pirenne in the town councils) to whom this letter was addressed, sug- early 20th c.6 Yet archaeology, particularly the more rig- gests that such an opinion was no longer ubiquitous orously scientific methodologies developed around that or widely felt; the centrality of the city in late antique same time, was rarely employed to look at post-classical Mediterranean society was beginning to slip away by settlements until the 1970s and 80s.7 The first attempts at this time. Moreover, later in the same letter, a law is laid telling the story of the late antique city through its physi- out intended to force these civic leaders in southern Italy cal form, like Ward-Perkins’ From Classical Antiquity to to return to their cities and to “furnish to [them] their the Middle Ages, also necessarily included a good deal proper adornment of citizens (ornatus civium)”,3 that is, of historical evidence to round out the lesser quantity monuments like baths and spectacle buildings that had of archaeological data available at the time.8 Increasing once been so common. The mere fact that such a com- understanding of the remains of the late antique city led mand was necessary in 6th c. Italy hints at the strains, to substantial advances in the 1990s and early 2000s, with by this period, on social structure, and the breakdown of the apparatus of city governance that had existed under 4 Amm. Marc. 16; Auson. Ordo nob. urb. passim; Lib. Or. 11. 5 E.g., on these limitations for Jerome and Rome,, see Grig (2012). 1 Cassiod. Var. 8.31 (transl. Hodgkin (1886) 378–79). 6 Pirenne (1956). 2 Arist. Pol. 1. 1253a. 7 See the example of Brescia, outlined below. 3 Cassiod. Var. 8.31 (transl. Hodgkin (1886) 378–79). 8 Ward-Perkins (1984). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:��.��63/9789004390539_00� 2 Introduction a number of important edited volumes being published, respectively.14 It is worth noting, however, that not all including Rich’s pioneering The City in Late Antiquity, of the regions of the western empire have been equally followed by Christie and Loseby’s Towns in Transition studied. In Spain in the 1980s, for example, municipal and Lavan’s Late Antique Urbanism.9 This line of scholar- projects, like the Taller Escolar d’Arquelogia (TED’A) at ship put more emphasis on the city as a built space, with Tarragona, were well-funded and highly productive.15 a specific location and buildings. A strong narrative was Yet, support for state archaeological projects dropped also established that pushed back against the idea of the significantly in the 1990s, leading to a serious decline in decline of the late antique city (which in some sense had the quality and quantity of new discoveries in Spain in derived from a chapter on cities in Jones’ foundational that decade. The situation has since begun to improve, work10), instead framing the argument in terms of slow although the evidence for late antique Hispania still shifts from one form or model of urbanism to another. lags behind that of Italy and Gaul. Similarly, the picture While the idea of seeing something other than for southern Italy in Late Antiquity is considerably less decline in Late Antiquity began with Brown in the 1970s, clear than that of northern Italy, and the islands of the this only filtered down to urban studies in the mid 1980s western Mediterranean have been largely overlooked.16 or later.11 Thus, the two major paradigms, which still Nevertheless, the quality of sxuch regional and supra- dominate discussions of the late antique city, were estab- regional works, along with an ever-increasing number lished: decline/fall versus continuity/transition.12 The of excavations and studies focused on late antique ‘decline and fall’ view sees more evidence of discontinu- evolutions, have, in the past five or so years, allowed ities between the Roman and Medieval periods with the archaeologically-led syntheses looking at the whole of years ca.500–700 being the nadir for many indicators of the late antique West to be written. Particularly notable urban life. The continuity view sees more elements that in this category are Christie’s The Fall of the Western persisted between the two periods, generally eschewing Roman Empire and Esmonde Cleary’s The Roman West, any idea of a major decline in the nature of cities. There AD 200–500.17 Altogether, this ever-increasing body of has though, very recently, been a shift away from such evidence now allows for specialist studies on aspects of frameworks towards a more nuanced view of urban the Late Roman city over a wide geographic range. evolution in Late Antiquity, recognising that the Roman Public buildings in the eastern half of the empire have empire was a wide region and that there were both cata- been the subject of two studies in the last decade.18 Yet, strophies and continuities for cities.13 The present study despite improvements in the supporting data, there has aims to further that development by showing, through been no overview (i.e., across several regions) of pub- the use of a relatively narrow dataset (public buildings), lic buildings in the late antique West, though there are that even with a single city there were many moving some works that partially cover the topic. The regional parts, and that overarching terminology like ‘decline’ or studies noted above nearly all include a section or chap- ‘continuity’ does not tell the whole story. ter on public buildings, but present a limited overall In the 2000s, scholars began to be able to synthesise view, without any scope for comparison with neighbour- regional overviews, on the strength of the excavations of ing regions. Rambaldi has collected evidence for public the previous 20 years, which has led to an increasingly buildings in the West and East, but only for the period clear picture of cities at the end of the Roman empire. AD 235–84. Jouffroy has written about a wide range of Leone, Sears, Christie, Diarte Blasco, and Heijmans and public structures in Italy and North Africa through to the Guyon, for instance, have established useful surveys for 5th c., but largely uses epigraphic evidence.19 But overall, the development of the late antique city in North Africa for the late antique West, there has been, up till now, no (excluding Mauretania Tingitania), Italy, Spain and Gaul 9 Rich (1992); Christie and Loseby (1996); Lavan (2001).
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