ORIENTALIA LOVANIENSIA

ANALECTA
---193---

AESTHETIC MAINTENANCE
OF CIVIC SPACE
The 'Classical' City
from the 4th to the 7th c. AD

by

LJACOBS

UITGEVERIJ PEETERS en DEPARTEMENT OOSTERSE STUDIES

LEUVEN - PARIS - WALPOLE, MA
2013

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

2013, Peeters Publishers & Department of Oriental Studies

Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven/Louvain (Belgium)

All rights reserved, including the rights to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
ISBN 978-90-429-2302-7
Dj2013/0602/31

CONTENTS

["'TRODUCTION.

CHAPTER

DESCRIPTION

OF THE SUBJECT

19

FORTIFICATIONS

1.1. Introduction
1.2. General appearance and building technique
1.3. Gates
1.4. Fortifications and the city
1.5. Summary .
CHAPTER

2.1.
2.2.
2.3.
2.4.
2.5.
2.6.
2.7.

19
34
60
92
106
111

AND SQUARES

111
126
140
159
184
195
200

MONUMENTS

205

Introduction. Types of decorative monuments

Positioning of decorative monuments within the city
New construction, conversions and maintenance.
Decoration.
Negative changes
Summary .

205
219
237
250
264
268

CHAPTER

4.1.
4.2.
4.3.
4.4.

STREETS

Introduction
Street width and course
Pavement .
Colonnades
Additional decoration
The later history of streets.
Summary .

CHAPTER

3.1.
3.2.
3.3.
3.4.
3.5.
3.6.

DECORATIVE

RELIGIOUS

ARCIDTECTURE

Introduction
Temples
Positioning churches in the landscape
Church entrances

272
272
285
307
326

CONTENTS

4.5. Church characteristics

4.6. The later history of churches
4.7. Summary .
5

CHAPTER

5.1.
5.2.
5.3.
5.4.
5.5.

STATUARY.

395

Introduction
Honorific statuary in Late Antiquity
Pagan and mythological statuary.
Christian public statuary
Summary .

CHAPTER

LATE

ANTIQUE

AND EARLY BYZANTINE

CHANGES.

CHAPTER

INITIATORS

AND CONSTRUCTORS

7.1. The protagonists in the construction process

7.2. Initiators and constructors in separate projects
7.3. Rebuilding and repairs .
7.4. Construction in progress
7.5. Motives.
7.6. Initiators and constructors in Late Antiquity
CHAPTER

USING

395
406
427
442
444
ARCHITECTURAL

446

6.1. Changes in colonnades .

6.2. Changes in walls and pavements.
6.3. Visibility .

8.1.
8.2.
8.3.
8.4.
8.5.

342
383
390

URBAN SPACE

Everyday maintenance.
Dumping waste .
Graffiti, acclamations and paintings.
Encroachment.
Summary .

446
460
472
479
480
502
533
545
563
584
588
588
598
612
622
641

CONTENTS
J.

Xl

Co CLUSION.AESTHETICMAlNTENANCE
OF THE CIVICLANDSCAPE 644

.1. Evolutions
in the urban landscape between the 4th and
the 7th c. AD .
._. Constants and changes in the aesthetic maintenance
of
the urban landscape .
9.3. Influence of the status of the settlement on its appearance
9'-+. Decline or change of the ancient city in Asia Minor?

655
671
675

.-\PPE DIX 1. SHORTDESCRIPTIONOF CORESITES

679

.-\PPENDIX2. OVERVIEWOF MONUMENTSDISCUSSED

702

BIBLIOGRAPHY .

763

LIST OF FIGURES

832

l'\DEX
Themes and subjects
Place names .

841
850

644

INTRODUCTION

DESCRIPTION

OF THE SUBJECT

DECLINE OR CHANGE?

During the last three decades, the period spanning the 4th to the 7th c. AD
has gradually conquered its own position in archaeological research'.
Our data and knowledge of these centuries have expanded enormously.
General overviews have made way for a more detailed and more regionalised view, based both on a re-examination of older information and the
increased amount of attention for late antique and Early Byzantine
remains in ongoing excavations-, Attention, originally focused on classical monumental architecture, inscriptions and art-objects, has extended
to other material categories. Evidence on craft production, faunal and
botanical remains has also proven to be useful for the contextual reconstruction of human occupation, rebuilding and abandonment',
Furthermore, the quality and quantity of research on the late antique and Early
Byzantine countryside has vigorously progressed".
Nevertheless, despite this progress, we are still a long way from a generally accepted (regional) model of what a late antique or Early Byzantine
city looked like and how urbanism between the 4th and the 7th c. AD
evolved. In particular, there is still an extensive debate on whether the role
and relevance of the city in this period 'declined' and eventually disappeared, or was only 'transformed'. The discussion is partially one of terminology. Changes in late antique and Early Byzantine times have been
I Bibliography relevant to the late antique and Early Byzantine period has been
collected and made comprehensible in the thematic volumes of the series Late Antique
Archaeology 1-7 (Lavan and Bowden 2003; Bowden, Lavan and Machado 2004; Bowden,
Gutteridge and Machado 2006; Lavan, Ozgenel and Sarantis 2007; Lavan, Zanini and
Sarantis 2007; Lavan, Swift and Putzeys 2008; Gwynn and Bangert 2010; Lavan and
Mulryan 2011) and their predecessor Lavan, L. (ed.) 2001b Recent Research in Late
Antique Urbanism.
2 See for example Walmsley 1996; Brandes 1999; Brandes and Haldon 2000; Banaji
2001; Poulter 2004; Waelkens et al. 2006, Poulter (ed) 2007.
3 For instance for Sagalassos, see Putzeys 2007.
4 Recent examples include Niewohner 2007: 71-82 for Aizanoi and Vanhaverbeke,
Martens and Waelkens 2007 for Sagalassos. A recent overview of literature on the countryside is provided in Chavarria and Lewit 2004.

LJACOBS

characterised by many scholars as a 'decline's. This 'decline' is foremost

blamed to the slow disappearance of cultural and political traditions that
had sustained the classical city, as well as to the growing predominance
of the Christian religion over urban life. In many cities this may have
corresponded to a shrinking urban population and collapsing economic
structures''. The notion of 'decline' has, however, been opposed by many
other researchers, who prefer to characterise the developments as a 'transformation' or 'accommodation',
whereby they emphasize the continuity
with previous periods 7. In this view, the urban elites of the Roman and
Late Roman city were replaced between the 5th and the 7th c. AD by a
new elite group consisting of the local bishop, clergy and a group of landowners from the same social background. They would have continued
traditional city life, though in a Christian guise". Alternatively,
both
stances can be reconciled, whereby transformation/accommodation
is then
used to characterise the 4th and 5th and in some regions also the 6th c. AD,
and 'decline' is applicable to the 6th and 7th and in other regions already
to the 5th c. AD9.
The chronology of change is indeed the subject of a second discussion.
Changes occurred in different regions at different moments in time!". For
the Eastern Roman provinces, the debate recently has focussed on the
second half of the 6th c. AD. Here again, opinions are divergent, ranging
from continuing prosperity expressed in major building activities, especially in the Semitic provinces of the Near East (Syria, Palestine, Arabia),
but to some extent in Asia Minor as well!', to a steady 'decline' after the
first occurrence ofthe bubonic plague in AD 541/212. On the whole, it is
5 Jones 1964; 1966; Ward-Perkins
1984; 1996; 1999; 2005; Liebeschuetz 1992;
2001; Robinson 200l.
6 Liebeschuetz 200!.
7 'Accomodation': Bowersock 1990; Cameron 1993; 'transformation':
Whittow 1990;
1996; further also in Durliat 1994: 594; Brown 1998; Haldon 2000; Swain 2004. See also
Cameron 2003 for an overview of opinions and approaches in the studies on the late
antique and Early Byzantine period.
8 Whittow 1996.
9 Lavan 2003a-b.
IO For the West, W. Liebeschuetz (2001) dates the 'markers of decline' before the 5th
c. AD. Likewise, according to B. Ward-Perkins (1996, 2005) decline here occurred around
AD 400, and in the East around AD 600. L. Lavan (2003c) believes that economy and
settlement in the East and Central Mediterranean continued into the 6th c. Cl. Foss (1975;
1976; 1977a; 1979; also Whittow 1996) has argued for a substantive transformation of
urban life in Asia Minor only after 600.
II Whittow 1990: 13-15.
12 Liebeschuetz 2001: 408-410,415.
Brandes (1999: 32-33) and Brandes and Haldon
(2000: 141-150) occupy an intermediate stance. In their opinion the plague may have

INTRODUCTION

a cepted that the 'classical' city had disappeared by the 7th c. AD. The
reasons for the disappearance of the 'classical' city are likewise still
under debate. There were four large causes that may have influenced this
hange, those being: political instability and military invasions; natural
disasters; fundamental structural changes; and, finally, the decay and
eventual disappearance of municipal government'",
The research presented in this book on the aesthetic maintenance of
the urban landscape between the 4th and the 7th c. AD cannot provide
definite answers to any of these three aspects. Through the provision of
a new and detailed data-set and through an objective reconstruction
and description of evolutions in the appearance of the city, based on
tratified and well-dated evidence where possible, it in the first place
intends to present a 'fresh' view on the concept ofthe 'classical' city in
late antique and Early Byzantine times. Indeed, since the urban fabric is
the product of changes in society, 'its internal socio-political organisation, its ideological priorities and aspects of daily life' 14, I believe that
a reconstruction of the physical appearance of the city, the combination
of architecture, streets and squares, statuary and smaller-scale additions
in all their detail is essential to understand past ways of urban life and
their evolution thrcugh time". In this way, and by integrating this new
view of the physical evidence of urban sites, this book can offer a contribution to the debate of 'transformation'
or 'decline' of the ancient
city.

reduced urban population and there may have been a ruralisation of sites as early as the
mid-6th c. AD, but they maintain that some cities in Asia Minor continued to flourish until
at least the 620's. Conversely, the appearance of the cities had, according to them, already
declined from the late 5th c. onwards (Haldon 1999: 4; Brandes 1999: 37).
13 The invasions of both Persians and Arabs, in combination with the usurpation of
Phokas in AD 602, may have been decisive according to Foss 1975; 1976; 1977a-b; 1979;
Howard-Johnston 1995; 1999; Whittow 1996. On the role of natural disasters, see Haldon
1990: 111. Also the Plague may have been an important factor, see recently Little (ed)
2007 for an overview of the evidence. See also Stathakopoulos 2004 for an overview of
epidemics, among which the Plague, in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine period and
the consequences for social life. For fundamental structural changes, see Haldon 1990:
9-40 and 92-99; Cameron 1993: 152-175. The importance of the decay of municipal
government was stressed by W. Liebeschuetz (1996: 163,169-170; 2001: 237,401 and
4(6), but contradicted by M. Whittow (1990: 18,28-30) and W. Brandes and J. Haldon
(2000: 147-150, 156-157).
14 Zanker 2000: 25.
15 See also Liebeschuetz 2001: 400; Fauvinet-Ranson 2006: 34.

LJACOBS

AIMS

The general intention of this research is thus to investigate the attention

paid to the appearance and maintenance of the city in the late antique and
Early Byzantine period. In other words, to examine how architecture,
layout and decoration were built, renovated, repaired or maintained, who
was taking initiative and why it was considered worthwhile. The appearance of the urban framework is thus not treated as a stand-alone phenomenon, but as something which is imbedded in daily life, connected to
other aspects of society such as its political organisation, its ideological
(including religious) and aesthetical preferences and priorities, and other
features of daily existence.
From a chronological point of view, the period under consideration
starts with the ascension of Diocletian (AD 284-305). The end lies in the
late 6th or 7th c., when some cities were damaged by natural phenomena
and Syria, Arabia, Palestina and Asia Minor were invaded by the Persians
and a few decades later by the Arabs. The terms used in literature to
indicate this period are various and inconsistent. In this text, when the
terms of 'late antique' or 'Late Roman' are used, they refer to the period
between the late 3rd and the early 6th c., whereas the period from the
reign of Justinian (AD 527-565) onwards is defined as Early Byzantine.
The main geographical focus is Asia Minor. Although evidence for
repairs and renovations from this region is ample, new building was
mainly limited to fortifications and churches. Therefore, this archaeological evidence has been supplemented and compared to data from some
of the better known and published sites outside Asia Minor, mainly of
the Semitic provinces of the Near East, and, more exceptionally, from
Greece and North-Africa. Some of the better documented sites will return
in the discussion of each element of urban space. Others have been chosen because they contributed to the knowledge of one specific urban
element. Within these chronological and spatial boundaries, the aims of
this research are threefold:
1. Reconstructing the appearance of the late antique city
First of all I wish to reconstruct the appearance of the late antique city in
detail, in order to give an idea of what a contemporary visitor to a town
or city would have experienced. This overview will comprise both older
elements and new additions to public space. Private architecture is largely
passed over, although it will appear from time to time in comparisons.

INTRODUCTION

After this overview, the major points of attention and investment

within a city can be identified, positing the question: what buildings/
infrastructure were still considered important and until when did this
anitude remain predominant? Besides this inquiry, a comparison between
investments in diverse elements of urban architecture and infrastructure
will be employed to identify the periods of widespread construction
activities as well as the periods of stagnation within the larger period of
Late Antiquity. Because of the long time span under consideration, it is
possible to examine the perseverance of ancient ideas of city planning
- for instance earlier concepts of Roman urbanism -, manners of construction such as solid ashlars walls, and/or the disappearance of some of
these traditional building methods and/or the rise of innovative ones. It
is also possible to review the continuation of the adornment of the civic
landscape and eventually the fading of the concern for the positioning
and decoration of buildings in relation to their urban environment.

2. Protagonists in aesthetic maintenance

Besides an evaluation of the evolution and appearance of separate elements of the urban landscape, an assessment of how all of this came into
being is required. The physical form of the city was determined by the
thoughts, beliefs and expectations of the city dwellers, particularly the
leading elite who possessed, and ideally also provided, the funds for public construction projects'", The research attempts to trace who the initiators of separate building projects were, how these projects were funded
and how and why decisions for new construction or renovation were
made. In other words, I look into the identity of late antique initiators of
construction works - the imperial court and central administration, governors and high officials, civic elite, bishops, etc. - and attempt to
retrieve what their motivations were - self-representation, religious or
economical motives or maintenance out of pure necessity - for the several projects in the course of the centuries, and especially review how
long aesthetic concerns were of importance for these discrete categories
of initiators. In the period between the 4th and the 7th c. AD considerable
changes took place in the internal organisation and social priorities of
civic societies, including the disappearance of the municipal system of
self-government and the adoption of Christianity as a universal religion.
16 Lomas 1997: 24-25; Sodini 2003: 27, 40. This idea also underlies the article of
Bowden (2007) on the urban change at Nikopolis.

I. JACOBS

The research further attempts to see from what moment onwards and in
which manners these elements influenced the ideas of the elite concerning
the city and eventually also its appearance.
Once the decision to intervene in public space was taken, intentions
needed to be materialised. The nature of initiators also influenced the
amounts and identity of the constructors involved in the separate projects
and thus the quality of the undertaking. We can therefore also judge the
professionalism of the constructors involved in separate projects.
Finally, after a certain component of public space had been finished,
it would be viewed and used often for centuries in a row. Thus a final
aim is the reconstruction of later reactions of the population at large, also
comprising the original initiators and constructors, to the surroundings
created around them. Regarding the long presence of monuments and
statues in the urban landscape, it can be expected that they enticed diverse
reactions throughout time.'? These reactions sometimes could become
quite violent, as is seen in the examples of religiously inspired demolition
of temples. This could have been common practice, but such actions
could also have been rather local 'incidents', outnumbered by positive
adjustments to the provided framework. At times, individuals can be
expected to have reused monumental infrastructure or architecture for
their own private needs. Likewise, the engendered behaviour towards
statuary in all likelihood varied, ranging from continuous veneration over
passive preservation, reuse in walls, and burning in limekilns, to intentional destruction, mutilation, insertion of crosses, ritual disposal and
burial.

3. 'Transformation' or 'decline' of the ancient city

Taken together, these aims should make it possible to give a detailed
view of the aesthetic appearance of the city between the 4th and the
7th c. AD and its importance for contemporaries. Starting from this point
of view, this research intends to contribute to the above-mentioned debate
on the 'transformation'
or 'decline' of the city in late antique and Early
Byzantine times. At first sight, this objective may seem beyond reach.
There are indeed many ways in which one can define a city besides its
aesthetic appearance, and the various characterisations of the period summarised above have certainly not always taken this into account. Nevertheless, the city's appearance seems to have been vital for its perception
17

Elsner 1995: 1-2.

INTRODUCTION

y its inhabitants and visitors, considering this is what they viewed and
experienced on an everyday basis'". Examining how long and to which
extent the populace held on to the perception of what a 'classical' city
should look like can therefore be a very useful input.

:\1ETHODOLOGY

1. Assessment of the aesthetic appearance and maintenance of the

urban landscape
Aesthetic maintenance
What does aesthetic maintenance comprise? Maintenance by itself is
rather simple: it refers to upholding an existing building, monument,
ystem, and ultimately, the urban environment, both by preserving its
existing components and by adding new ones, and also by removing others. At the same time, maintenance in itself can very well be aimed at
ensuring a building's further functioning without any consideration for
its outward appearance. One can, for instance, add pillars to support the
walls of a structure, thus ensuring that they continued to carry the roof,
without taking the visual effects of this addition into account'". Subdiviions and the encroachment
of shops and workshops on streets and
quares may have continued economical activities, but were not necessarily beneficial for the aesthetic appearance of a town.
In contrast, aesthetic maintenance goes beyond purely functional concerns. It is illuminating to take a look at the definition of aesthetic given
in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: '(1) received by the senses;
2) pertaining to the appreciation or criticism of the beautiful; (3) having
or showing refined taste: in accordance with good taste.' This means that
in order to be aesthetic, an object or monument, urban space or the city
in its totality had to be beautiful or at least pleasing in character. Aesthetic maintenance of urban space then implies that interventions were
not only functional, but that they also ensured that the city was appreciated for its appearance. A similar distinction between decor and utilitas
18 Bauer 1996: 'Einleitung ', likewise remarked that when one would have asked inhabitants what they regarded as typical for their city, they would have answered with elements
of architecture and statuary, the things they would have come into contact with on a daily
basis.
19 See Porphyrios 1991: 41 for a similar distinction and interrelation between building
and architecture.

1. JACOBS

or related tenus appears in literary sources of the Roman and Late Roman
period-", The difficulty is to trace what was regarded as pleasing in
Antiquity and even more why this was S021. Objective rules did not exist
and interpretation by contemporary city dwellers was a vital factor for
the preservation of an urban element.
In any case, although archaeologists are by the nature of their evidence
forced to limit themselves mainly to visual impressions, aesthetic maintenance also involved the senses of smell, touch and hearing". These
elements could likewise have a strong positive or negative influence on
appreciation of urban space. They will only rarely be touched upon in
these pages, for instance when the positive influence of cooling waters
of nymphaea is reviewed or when the dumping of refuse is discussed.
Finally, things 'received by the senses' also comprises all activities carried out in the late antique and Early Byzantine city, which falls outside
the boundaries of this dissertation":
Aesthetic maintenance
the urban landscape

of the composing

elements of

Every city was composed of diverse quarters, each of them consisting of

separate structures and infrastructure. In order to create a comprehensive
overview of the appearance of the city, one has little choice but to start
at the lowest level of the individual structure or statue. It must be stressed,
however, that these divisions are entirely artificial, and are utili sed only
for convenience".
Each monument is considered part of its environment,
and eventually, of the entire city. In order to stay as close as possible to
the viewpoint of a contemporary visitor to the city, monuments have been
discussed in the sequence in which they would have been met by visitors:
from the late 4th, early 5th c. onwards, these visitors would have been
confronted by massive fortifications, which are the subject of Chapter 1.
After passing though the city gates, they travelled further by means of
the network of streets, considered in Chapter 2. On their way, they passed

See for instance Tacitus, Annales 15.43.5 and Cassiodorus, Variae 7.6.
Smith 1994.
22 Tatarkiewicz 1970: 25; Holgate 1992: 1-4.
23 Activities carried out in urban spaces, such as processions, wedding ceremonies, the
sale of foodstuff and artisanal products, etc., are currently the research topic of L. Lavan,
see for instance Lavan 2003b; 2006; 2008 and forthcoming.
24 Lynch 1960: 46-49,83-85;
Rossi 1982; MacDonald 1986; Kostof 1995: 10; Ball
2000: 247.
20

21

INTRODUCTION

along various monumental buildings with a highly decorative nature or

answering to the religious needs of the community. These monuments
are considered in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 5 then deals with statues of
various natures that could be found all over the city. Of course, a city
also comprised traditional civic buildings with a wide variety of functions. Since the number of examples of building types such as bouleuteria gymnasia, stadiums, and even theatres, for which the late antique and
Early Byzantine history is well-known are not large enough and they are
.::imultaneously too diverse to allow for reasonable comparison, they are
not the subject of a separate chapter. However, these monuments can not
be disregarded completely, since the largest numbers of inscriptions
related to initiators derive from them. They provide valuable information
on initiators that can be transposed to other urban spaces. They will thus
feature in the discussion on initiators, whereas their statuary decoration
has been incorporated in the general discussion of statuary in this
period.
This book eventually aims at reviewing the late antique city as a whole,
which has several advantages and disadvantages. The major disadvantage
is that the material is so wide and various, that detail cannot always be
pursued. The major advantage is that building or armature categories are
not looked at separately, but are integrated into the larger framework of
the city. Similarities or general evolutions are thus more easily retrieved
and will be discussed in Chapter 6.
Urban elements included in this research also comprise, next to new
onstructions, monuments that have been renovated, repaired or only
'passively' preserved. The prosperity of a certain period in time is often
taken to be directly related with the amount of new building initiated.
However, the integration of urban elements that were repaired, renovated
or carefully maintained can substantially alter this image. Such examples
have been neglected all too often. We are all aware that they have survived into our age, but it is seldom realised that their survival is the
consequence of a conscious act, since no building can survive without at
least occasional maintenance.
As with monuments at large, by looking at the statuary preserved in
the archaeological record we can distinguish between: statues that have
been produced in Late Antiquity, although this number is considerably
smaller than those in earlier ages; those that were produced in previous
centuries, but were consciously preserved and of which it can thus be said
that they were still functioning elements in the city; those that were simply preserved without any attested late interventions or role; and statues

10

LJACOBS

that underwent a 'violent' treatment, be it mutilation, burying or other.

A statue can be said to have been actively preserved, for instance, when
it shows traces of repair with iron clamps or re-cutting or later polishing.
Conscious preservation entailed actions such as relocation or re-erection
after renovations to its architectural context had been executed. If a
statue, or at least most of it, was found on the location where it had been
displayed, it can be assumed it was still active in contemporary life,
meaning it was still viewed, observed and maybe contemplated by the
inhabitants of the city until the end of its existence.
Therefore, although the late antique and Early Byzantine city was
characterised by an ever growing number of aspects different from its
Greek and Roman predecessors and cannot be simply compared to them,
it also can not be detached from its past either. I am convinced that references to the classical city were vital for the period under research, especially when related to the cities of Asia Minor. They had already been in
existence for centuries. Inhabitants of an early 4th c. city walked over
streets and dwelled amongst buildings, monuments and statues created
and erected mainly between the 1st and the early 3rd c. AD. Even if the
strength of these monuments as a reference point and the desire for their
imitation or re-creation dwindled throughout the centuries, the appreciation for their remains may have lasted longer.
In addition to newly added and preserved urban components, attention
will be paid also to elements in the civic landscape that did not survive
and were either consciously destroyed or decayed naturally, as well as to
the influence of secondary phenomena on the appearance of intact or
decaying monumental architecture, such as waste-disposal and encroachment.
I would also like to point out the importance of earthquakes on this
research. Although one should always be very careful when using earthquakes to date the destruction or renovation of a monument, their occurrence can be extremely useful in revealing what the authorities regarded
as the most important buildings and institutions of the city at a certain
moment in time. After a city had been damaged by an earthquake, conscious decisions concerning what to renovate and in which sequence, and
conversely, what to leave in ruins, had to be made-".
For each construction or renovation project, the size of investments
and the results of the interventions for the appearance of the building and
25 Tsafrir and Foerster 1997: 112 for Skythopolis and Ladstatter and Piilz 2007: 398
for Ephesos.

INTRODUCTION

11

eventually its surroundings need to be determined. Therefore, this research

examines how elaborate the activities were, which techniques were used,
. .hich luxurious building materials and decoration elements were applied
and whether or not those were reused from elsewhere or newly produced.
Purely stylistic evolutions in art or decoration are not considered. Rather
than trying to explain or analyse these currents in late antique and Early
Byzantine art, it is accepted that changes were present and that regardless
of whatever judgment we may attach to it today, it was the art chosen by
<he late antique citizens to express and to be expressed.
I will, however, pay special attention to the following phenomena, the
combination of which most likely determined the appearance of the general urban landscape: (1) the careful maintenance of the facade of a
monument, even though the internal function had changed. Literary
ources for instance inform us that in the 4th c. AD temple cellae were
reused for other secular functions; (2) a thorough readjustment or complete change of the external form, even though the function remained
more or less the same. A typical example is the much discussed phenomenon of 'encroachment'
on the broad colonnaded streets and agorae,
where the commercial function persisted, but the appearance of the urban
pace was drastically altered; (3) and finally a total change of both shape
and function, such as the dismantling of temple temene or urban squares
and their subsequent encroachment by artisanal or residential structures.
I wish to emphasise that the appearance of a monument or urban space
is prevalent in this research. It is of little importance whether a wall
belonged to an odeion or church, since its impact on the outlook of the
city quarter remained the same. Conversely, the replacement of a colonnade by a solid wall would have altered the look of the surroundings
considerably.
Aesthetic maintenance

of the total urban landscape

Since all urban components were eventually part of the whole of the city,
actions that were disastrous for a structure by itself could have had a
more positive meaning when seen in relation with the rest of the city'".
The composition of a city as indicated on a plan tells us nothing about
the physical reality that its citizens or visitors experienced. They experienced their environment space by space and step by step, gathering new
26 Thomas 1998 on the notion that all ornaments of a city were a whole. Alchermes
1994: 169 on reuse as preservation of urban ornaments.

12

1. JACOBS

impressions along the way27. Therefore, although ground plans will be

used to check matters such as the intervals between columns or to show
the visual impact of a building over a larger distance, as well as to determine the involvement of professional designers in building projects,
elevations and visual connections between neighbouring buildings are
considered to be far more relevant. It was, for instance, less important
whether or not the course of a street was perfectly straight than whether
or not its turns received additional attention.
There are then two manners in which a city could be experienced, or
rather, two different viewpoints that we can try to reconstruct: that of a
local inhabitant and that of a visitor. I believe that the viewpoint of the
latter is the most valid for this research for two reasons: the experience
that visitors had of the urban landscape can be expected to have been less
varied than that of local citizens, who could have come to the city centre
from all directions, passing through diverse alleys and city quarters. In
contrast, travellers unfamiliar with the city followed the roads laid out
for inter-urban traffic: they entered the city at premeditated locations and
were intentionally guided over the major thoroughfares and public
squares, past grand monuments displaying power and cultural values, to
their final destination, the exit of the city. They stuck to these major roads
and were thus largely excluded from the residential or artisanal quarters
of the towrr".
A reconstruction of the experience of in the first place contemporary
visitors implies that I assume that their opinion mattered to the inhabitants of the town, or at least to a certain portion of them. Since no Roman,
Late Roman or Early Byzantine city was self-sufficient, but instead
formed part of the larger unit of its province - a unit with increased
importance in Late Antiquity - and eventually of the Roman Empire,
such relations between cities and between the city and the provincial and
central government were taken into account in the creation of the urban
landscape'". In the recent past the increased importance of such routes in
Late Antiquity has been convincingly demonstrated by F. A. Bauer for
cities such as Constantinople, Rome, Ephesos and Ostia".

Kostof 1995: 9-10; Bek 1997: 61; Bauer 2001a: 94. Cerasi 2004: Chapter 8.
Laurence 1999: 161. See also McDonald 1986: 5 for 'urban armature.' and Lynch
1960: 49-51 on the dominance of particular paths over others.
29 A typical example is the presence of statues of emperors and proconsular governors
on the city's agorae from the 1st c. onwards.
30 Bauer 1996; 2001a-b and 2003a.
27

28

INTRODUCTION

13

All this makes it possible to make a selection of material evidence

ed on its importance for aesthetic maintenance, incorporating only
:ilose elements that were visible for a larger public. A complete inventory
0: all elements within a city would not only be a tedious task, but also a
confusing one, since there is simply too much insignificant material. For
- tance, paintings in underground tombs at Sardis are very interesting,
but irrelevant outside the family circle. For this reason, the exterior of a
monument is also taken to be more important than its interior.
2. Protagonists in aesthetic maintenance
Initiators and constructors

(Chapter 7)

The largest part of our information provides us with insights into the
circles of the imperial, provincial and local upper or governing classes,
whom possessed land, urban and/or suburban villas and goods of every
possible kind, including works of art, and whom could afford the luxury
of construction and renovation. These elites possessed the means to convey an image of themselves, and by extension of their city, to both fellow
city dwellers and visitors. In this way, they determined what the 'good
taste' in the definition cited above meanr". They were also able to translate their political, social, religious and commercial aspirations into material form. The city, its streets and its monuments, and by extension also
the ceremonies taking place within them, were thus shaped according to
the wishes of the elite. Changes in the composition of the elite and/or
their attitudes towards the urban environment were thus likely followed
by changes in the compositional
elements of the city and its general
maintenance. Nevertheless, even though the appearance of the city was
to a very large degree determined by the elite, there is little doubt that
most of their opinions were shared by other city dwellers as well. It is
accepted on the whole that the opinion of all city inhabitants on what a
city should look like was shaped by what they saw around them ". Moreover, interventions by the elite in the public domain were invariably
expected to be appreciated and were, consequently, in turn tuned to the
expectations and standards of other city dwellers.

31

La Rocca 1992: 163; Elsner 1998: 14; Machado 2006: 160. Also Holgate 1992:

32

Bek 1997.

39.

14

I. JACOBS

However, members of the elite were probably not the only initiators
of actions influencing urban space. Smaller-scale interventions could
have been the work of more humble city dwellers. Their actions in urban
space, at least in the city centres, were probably controlled by the government for a large part of the period under review.
There were, no doubt, various motives behind the actions of these
initiators. Although these could have comprised aesthetic aspects, aesthetic concerns in se did not exist in the antique, late antique or Byzantine
world. Aesthetics invariably served another purpose, be it political, commercial, religious, or a combination of several. Appreciation of a monument was likewise invariably interwoven with its significance or contents, or its use in the broadest sense of the word ".
Using the earlier estimate on the construction quality, the skills of the
architects and workmen involved in separate projects will be evaluated,
keeping in mind that faults and corrections were no exception even in
earlier centuries and that what we fmd today need not be what a late antique
inhabitant of the city would have seerr'". This can be a stepping stone for
an assessment on the involvement of mechanikoi or architects from the
capital, regional and local professional and non-professional builders. At
the other end of the spectrum are buildings that are no longer in use but
were left to dilapidate and thereby became available for dismantling. I will
search for examples of organised dismantling of buildings, looking at the
amount of building blocks with the same origin reused together within one
building and, ideally, also at the presence of re-assembly marks.
Viewers and users (Chapter 8)

Eventually, all city dwellers had the ability to influence the appearance
of the city. They were confronted with a created environment and could
respond to this shared environment in diverse manners. Most of these
smaller-scale actions can be expected to have left no traces at all, while
others may have been recorded in literary sources, and still others may
also have left material traces in the archaeological record.

Smith 1994.
Sloppy building work could have been covered by plaster, mortar, etc. so that its
makeshift quality would have been disguised.
33
34

15

INTRODUCTION

Aesthetic maintenance
ancient city

and the 'transformation'

or 'decline'

of the

~e attention given to aesthetic maintenance was thus not determined

solely by personal liberty or the availability of resources. Rather, it was
_ ,001 utilised to promote political, social, religious or even commercial
~:mforms. The persistence of these concerns signifies not only that the city
~" ysically continued to exist, but also that within it a community of citi~51S resided, citizens who were conscious of their own special identity in
respect to other civic communities and the population of the countryside.
The research on the disappearance of such concerns for the urban land-~,
leaving only functional measures, can therefore contribute to the
::iscussion on the transformation or decline of the ancient city.

OL~CES

For an overview of the urban landscape, archaeological sources are by far

the most important. Literary and iconographic sources related to cities in
Asia Minor - with the exception of the capitalare indeed scanty. As
information on the exact appearance of urban components is required, and
preferably also their evolution through time, this research by necessity
focuses on monuments that have been excavated and for which a chronological and, if possible, a stratigraphical sequence could be reconstructed.
For the collection of material evidence, a double approach was chosen:
c c it is important to obtain an image of the city as a whole, a few core
sites were selected based on the extent of excavation and the quality of
ublication and dating (Fig. 1). A short description and site plan of these
sites is provided in Appendix 1. As much as possible, their archaeological
remains have been integrated. Most of these case-studies obviously belong
-0 Asia Minor. From north to south and from east to west, these are:
Aizanoi, Sardis, Ephesos, Aphrodisias, Hierapolis, Xanthos, Sagalassos,
Perge and Side. Information pertaining to three more cities from the Near
Eastern provinces has been integrated in the various topics, being Apamea-on-the-Orontes, Gerasa and Skythopolis, whereas Resafa, Zenobia
and Abu Mina were selected as examples of new late antique and Early
Byzantine settlements with a prevalent military or ecclesiastical character.
,-\11 incorporated pre-existing cities were either large or medium-sized
[Owns. Although, ideally, they would have been compared to small towns
in all their aspects, information on these smaller settlements remains

16

LJACOBS

difficult to obtain. The status of these settlements and their position within
the wider Roman Empire are sure to have influenced the nature of initiators, constructors and thus the final appearance of their monuments. For
this reason, information pertaining to Constantinople has been added to
the discussion". On one hand, the capital can be expected to have been
exemplary for developments in other cities of the Empire, on the other
hand, its exceptional status should also be obvious in the extent, nature,
number and decoration of its public monuments. Furthermore, due to their
diverse geographical locations, the sites figuring in the following chapters
have different histories. Asia Minor was on the whole a much more
peaceful region than the provinces more to the north or those along the
Persian border.
Although it strongly leans on the evidence from these diverse settlements, this discussion of aesthetic maintenance is primarily conceived
thematically. Therefore, additional evidence pertaining to the diverse
themes from other well published and illustrated sites has been assembled
in order to improve our knowledge of the appearance of urban fabric".
Throughout the chapters, the town of Sagalassos will occupy a prominent position, as my attachment to the Sagalassos Archaeological
Research Project involved my own field work and thus guaranteed
direct access to site notebooks and excavation reports, resulting in a
better knowledge of this site. Field trips to other cities were undertaken
with the intention of supplementing published material and especially
photographs. Since I try to reconstruct urban space as it was seen by
contemporary city dwellers, elevation drawings and photographs of
separate walls and monuments, but also of viewpoints along streets or
overviews of city quarters from major monuments, are indeed vital to
this research.
This archaeological evidence can be supplemented by literary or written sources such as law edicts, travel descriptions, city descriptions,
hagiographic texts and so on. There were quite a few late antique law
edicts intended to regulate city life, ancient authors describing their home

35 Since, with exception of the Theodosian walls, so few monuments or urban

spaces of Constantinople were preserved, the capital has not been included in the core
sites.
36 This was especially the case with fortifications, as every city normally only possessed one such structure. It was deemed necessary to incorporate examples from the
Balkans to verify in how far the presence of a real threat would influence the final appearance of a defence wall. The only other examples within Asia Minor and the Near East
where a threat was ascertained were Resafa and Zenobia.

INTRODUCTION

17

and literary passages on specific building projects - in this period

.!:..~nchurches. All of them provide information on architectural elements
- _-'lost, as well as valuable insights into construction motives and meth- s. Although law texts often pertain to the capital, it can be assumed
- they must also have been applicable to the situation in other cities.
ographic sources exist in many forms, for instance mosaics, reliefs
:arcophagi, depictions on silverware, ivory diptychs, or coins''?
There is often a discrepancy between the representations of cities and
chirecture in literary sources on the one hand and the archaeological
reality on the other. Iconographic sources likewise are seldom realistic
- _ictions but rather summaries of what a real city was supposed to look
.e. These sources are thus opaque, but also extremely useful, because
- y reflect ideas as to what the city should be. Literary sources moreover
_ ain essential for the determination of the motives of the initiators. The
:e ple responsible for maintaining, repairing or even re-erecting public
- _ildings and spaces can be found in contemporary decrees, while indi-~uals are known from epigraphic sources. Moreover, there already
= . sts an extended literature concerning political evolutions from the
man to Byzantine world". Epigraphic sources for late antique and
-::arly Byzantine Asia Minor are mainly limited to Aphrodisias, Ephesos,
- ide and Sardis". Chances that our knowledge on initiators and construewill be extended with the discovery of new inscriptions are almost
- n-existent. Therefore, it was decided to compare epigraphic, literary
nd material evidence in order to trace the identity of initiators and conszructors.
TI.

_-ote for the reader:

For general issues such as date and location of monuments, I refer to
_~ pendix 2, which contains an overview of relevant literature on monuzaents discussed. When remarks and exposes on the appearance of archi- ture or infrastructure are without reference, this indicates that they are
y personal opinion, the result of site observations and of my own
re earch.

:- Both literary and iconographic sources pertaining to the period under research have
extensively reviewed in H. Saradi (2006) The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century.
Luerary Images and Historical Reality.
ss See Chapter 7.1.1.
: Lepelley 1997 and Roueche 1997 on late antique epigraphy and geographic varia- in the epigraphic record.

.:een