The City in Late Antiquity (Leicester-Nottingham Studies in Ancient Society)

215 Pages·1996·0.8 MB·English

by  John Rich

Leicester-Nottingham Studies in Ancient Society
Volume 3
THE CITY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

THE CITY
IN LATE ANTIQUITY
Edited by
JOHN RICH
London and New York
First published 1992
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
© 1992 John Rich and individual contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
The city in late antiquity. – (Leicester–Nottingham studies in ancient society; 3)
I. Rich, John II. Series
307.7640937
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
The City in late antiquity/edited by John Rich.
p. cm. — (Leicester–Nottingham studies in ancient society: v. 3)
Includes bibliographic references and index.
1. Cities and towns. Ancient—Rome. I. Rich, John. II. Series.
HT114.C525 1992
307.76´0937´6—dc20 91–36367
ISBN 0-415-14431-0 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-13016-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-18535-8 (Glassbook Format)
Contents
Notes on contributors vi
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
1 The end of the ancient city
WOLFGANG LIEBESCHUETZ 1
2 The survival and fall of the classical city in Late
Roman Africa
CLAUDE LEPELLEY 50
3 Christianity and the city in Late Roman Gaul
JILL HARRIES 77
4 The use and abuse of urbanism in the Danubian
provinces during the Later Roman Empire
ANDREW POULTER 99
5 The end of the city in Roman Britain
RICHARD REECE 136
6 ‘The cities are not populated as once they were’
PHILIP DIXON 145
7 Public buildings and urban change in northern Italy
in the early mediaeval period
CRISTINA LA ROCCA 161
8 Antioch: from Byzantium to Islam and back again
HUGH KENNEDY 181
Index 199
Contributors
Philip Dixon is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Nottingham.
Jill Harries is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of St Andrews.
Hugh Kennedy is Reader in Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews.
Cristina La Rocca has a research post at the University of Padua.
Claude Lepelley is Professor of Roman History at the University of Paris X.
Wolfgang Liebeschuetz is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the
University of Nottingham and a Fellow of the British Academy.
Andrew Poulter is Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Nottingham.
Richard Reece is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at University College London.
John Rich is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Nottingham.
Preface
Between 1986 and 1988 a series of seminars and two conferences on the theme
of ‘The Ancient City’ were jointly organized by the Classics Departments of the
Universities of Leicester and Nottingham. This is the second of two volumes
based on papers given at those meetings (the first, City and Country in the
Ancient World, edited by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and myself, was published in
1991 as volume 2 in the Leicester–Nottingham Studies in Ancient Society series).
The ‘Ancient City’ series concluded in April 1988 with a conference at
Nottingham on ‘The End of the Ancient City?’. Six of the seven papers delivered
at that conference appear, in substantially revised form, in this volume, along
with two further papers (by Liebeschuetz and Dixon).
Liebeschuetz’s paper is a synoptic study of the ancient city under the Later
Roman Empire and during the Empire’s disintegration, whereas the remaining
papers deal with particular aspects of the subject and particular regions. The
papers bring out the rich range of evidence – literary, documentary and
archaeological – which is available, and the different perspectives which may be
brought to bear on it by archaeologists and by historians. They also bring out the
great diversity of the ancient city. In some regions, the classical city and its
traditions survived only weakly, if at all, by the fourth century. In Britain this
was because it had never put down more than shallow roots, as Reece and Dixon
show. In the Danubian provinces, discussed by Poulter, cities had flourished in
the Early Empire, but never really recovered from the third-century crisis. By
contrast, in Africa the cities’ institutions and culture retained exceptional vitality
in the fourth century, as Lepelley shows. Yet here too they eventually succumbed,
crushed by the Vandal and Arab invasions. However, if in many parts of the
empire the cities went under, elsewhere they showed more staying-power. One
factor making for continuity was Christianity, which was, as Liebeschuetz notes,
on the whole ‘city-friendly’; Harries explores this phenomenon in the context of
viii Preface
Gaul. The last two papers, by La Rocca and Kennedy, show how in regions as
diverse as northern Italy and Syria much of the physical fabric of the late antique
cities and even something of their distinctive ideology could survive into mediaeval
times.
The maps of northern Africa and the Danubian provinces (see pp. 53, 102)
were drawn by David Taylor, of the Archaeology Department of Nottingham
University, and are intended simply to identify towns and provinces mentioned
in the text. I am very grateful to the many who assisted both in the organization
of the seminar series and in the production of this volume, and in particular to
the following: the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies for a generous
grant towards the costs of the seminar series; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, co-organizer
of the series; Ross Balzaretti, Wolf Liebeschuetz and Robert Markus for their
advice; Bryan Ward-Perkins for assistance with the jacket illustration; and Adrienne
Edwards and Pella Beaven for secretarial help.
Nottingham J.W.R.
September 1991
Abbreviations
AE L’Année Épigraphique
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt,
ed. H. Temporini (Berlin and New York,
1972– )
Arch. Ért. Archaeologiai Értesitö (Budapest)
BA Bibliothèque Augustinienne – Oeuvres de saint
Augustin
BAR British Archaeological Reports
C. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. iii
CCL Corpus Christianorum, series latina
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
CJ Codex Justinianus
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CTh Codex Theodosianus
IDR Inscriptiile antice din Dacia si Scythia Minor,
ed. D.M. Pippidi and I.I. Russu (Bucharest)
IG Bulg Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria repertae, ed.
G. Mihailov (Sofia, 1958–70)
IGL Inscriptiile Grecesti si Latine din secolele IV–
XIII descoperite în Romania (Bucharest, 1976)
ILCV Inscriptiones Christianae Latinae Veteres, ed. E.
Diehl, 2nd edn (Berlin, 1961)
IL Jug A. Šašel and J. Šašel, Inscriptiones latinae quae
in Yugoslavia inter annos MCMXL et MCMLX
repertae et editae sunt (Ljubljana, 1963)
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau
(Berlin, 1892–1916)
IMS Inscriptions de la Mésie Supérieure, i: Singidu-
num et le nord-ouest de la province, ed. M.
Mirkovich and S. Dušanich (Belgrade, 1976)
INMV Izvestiya na Narodniya Muzei Varna
MAMA Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua