Factors Transforming the city
Bookmark this page

• Growing isolation of the elite – 3^rd century meant fewer of them, still happy to display wealth via townhouses, less willing to give it other citizens etc.  Why?  Diocletianic reforms elaborate central administration, smaller provinces, bureaucratic taxation, payment and spending in kind – administrative burden for decursions.
• 4^th century estates and sources of income for cities taken over by governor and expenditure had to go through him – even funding for walls.  Walls had become essential for the city ad reflect more utilitarian role of cities in late Antiquity.
• Confiscation of 2/3 of cities income in property and local taxes lessened ability to finance new projects or maintain old ones.  Decursions finding nee ways to get of duties: new opportunities in Imperial service or at intermediate Diocesan level
• Christianity – Bishop a way out, did not work for “good life” but viewed as vain glory
• Commonest response was building of alls around a reduced perimeter – leaving derelict structures outside.
• Empire wide decline in public buildings, competitions and festivals – Britain, Gaul, Balkans no exaggeration that monumental and aesthetic ideal dried up.  Italy and New Mediterranean gradual decline remained most strongly in provincial capitals.
• Some cities gained from the dividing of provinces – Apamea flourishes 5ht century, other capital doesn’t Caesarea for example.
• Civic territories split up so villages became centres of administration, political pressure to share advantages maybe why civic territories split up.
• Best known last cities affected least by changes – East, Ephesus, Sardis, Ancyra and Antioch removed from ravages of 3^rd century received new buildings – Trier and Carthage in West.
• If centres of imperial and military administration than decline curial wealth compensated by increase in imperial taxation.  Cities in North Africa also less troubled, maybe because of lucrative olive oil market, indeed some councils survive here
• Shrinkage of the inhabited core, is it population that has shrunk?  Or that even I Earl Empire extensive urban sites had never housed many but only large dwellings of rich, or late Roman city had large population living outside the circuit of walls.  Answer to be found separately of each city.
• Changes in importance and location of trade and manufacture –some Western province becoming self sufficient, even remote northern Britain.  Shrinkage of imports and trade may be a reason why some cities declined in size.
• Diocletian reforms where taxes in kind and towns became distribution centre –difficult to prove but if suppliers no longing dealing in goods, and purely distributed by the landowners then the loss of traders would have a huge effect on the character of a city.
• 4^th decline of civic institutions in the 4^th century – neither Emperor nor councillors defend it – councillors want imperial, beneficial roles, while Emperor wants decent administrators.   Councils became even more oligarchic and a small group of principales.  Demoralised and lacked prestige as after 4^th century councils greatly depleted and purely administrative machinery.  Depletion caused problems for they Empire – even at prosperous cities like Antioch.
• Valens and Valentinian tried to find alternatives to decurions collecting taxes – honorati member of provincial offices – unavoidable by 4^th century.  Numerous laws to keep decursions and their property in councils not without effect – survived into Code of Justinian
• City councils losing capacity to represent city, bishops growing into role.  Christianisation in 4^th century – a city friendly development.  Election by laymen and bishops seen as natural leaders e.g.. in emergency.  Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais under siege by nomads – gathered strength with increased Christianisation and decline imperial power due to Barbarian settlement.  Many cities owed survival to bishops.
• British Christianity a problem – Christian but very few monuments or churches.  Roman way of life seems to have collapsed after 400 – well before Barbarian invasion, but walls meant would they have ceased occupation all together?  Weakness of British cities linked to weakness of British Christianity which had to start from scratch with Augustine

Other Notes in this Category

1. Factors Transforming the city
2. Post-Roman unity, disintegration and renewal
3. Regional survey of urban change ad survivals
4. The 5^th century and after: the East
5. The ancient city: a centre of administration and a way of life
6. The Fifth Century and After: the West
7. The third-century crisis and the inscriptions of Aphrodisias
8. The transformation of classical cities and the Pirenne debate
9. Types of Post-Roman City
10. Urban Survival and the role of the middleman
11. Why and when did the ancient cities end?

Didn't find this useful?

• Visit Coursework.Info for over 14,000 GCSE, A-Level and University Essays