Types of Post-Roman City
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• Cassiodorus – 3 types of city; old fashioned, city of a public competitive lifestlye, luxurious amenities, liberal education, gentry honour from local government; semi-rural city; radical new city monastic offering religion, morality and medicine to peasantry.
• Keay and Panella – Spain and North Africa, towns detached from territoria, dominated by ruralised nobility, 5^th century compelled to import and declined 6^th century
• Wickham East – one giant city-state based on Constantinople – local tax ceased via curiales managed by civil servants and roots in capital, cities to nuclei of residence for secular and Episcopal administration.
• Reece – late Roman cities of Gaul and Britain as “administrative villages”.  Justinian’s attitude to curiae disastrous as war taxation and plague.
• Sicilian agro-towns – lacking urban plans, monuments, institution etc.
• Religious historians different view Western cities 5^th to 7^th century – town invades, dominates countryside, imposing on it network of monasteries, priests, parishes, new beliefs, morality – calling in peasant and squire to basilica or shrine
• Religious pilgrimage and trade go together in towns.  Saints as city border, late antique huddle behind mosaics and illustrations.  At least nobility semi-rural but which was winner?  Cities long remained principal towns – theatres of religious and political events, undefended, under used and decaying.
• Result in a variety of physical developments: Island City- antique wall encircle derelict or agricultural land and a few admin, ecclesiastically, defensive nuclei.  Rome and Constantinople to some extent – presence secular church officials not enough for continuity.
• Dual Pole – suburban church and area showing vital urban change – city reorders outside the walls.  Third revert to Roman hill fort towns – public spaces to Christian usage, stone facades maybe replaced by wood, secular public monuments and civic pride declined but never vanished.
• Syrian towns – lost monumental character and urban identity – not population.  Privatise and orientalised.
• Compare to reconstruction building – some Britain demolished completely, others kept frameworks whilst being remodelled.  New constructions around nuclei like monasteries – Dijon for example. H and W interest in emporia for trade directed by elites across natural frontiers no landed gentry bear little resemblance in classical sense.

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?

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