The use and abuse of urbanism in the Danubian provinces during the Later Roman Empire

Bibliographic Data

ID20067735
AuthorsAndrew Poulter (corresponding author)
Year2002
Pages109-145
Publication date2002-09-11
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueCity in Late Antiquity (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9780203130162-7
OpenAlexW4237559091
ISBN9780203130162
LanguageEN
Citations received18

Along the length of the Danubian frontier from Noricum to the Black Sea, the public and private monuments of Roman cities reflect increasing prosperity for the majority under the Antonines and, for some, little short of extravagant indulgence under the Severi. In their adoption of Roman forms of civic organization and their display of material wealth, cities in the hinterland of the Danube were remarkable for their rapid development during the second century AD. Three factors, in particular, encouraged urban development. The first was imperial interest. During each successive stage in the consolidation of the Danubian frontier, territory in the hinterland was released from military control and the responsibility for local administration and taxation was handed over to newly created cities. Whatever the higher motivation may have been behind the foundation of cities, there were obvious advantages for Rome: conferring municipal status transferred financial and administrative obligations to civilian communities at no cost to the imperial treasury. It is no coincidence that the periods of rapid urban development in the Claudian, Flavian and then Trajanic periods were also times during which the army advanced towards its permanent second-century bases on the right bank of the Danube. The process was further encouraged by Hadrianic reforms which granted municipal rank to existing settlements and official status to the growing extramural settle ments (canabae), many of whichalso acquired urban rank under the Severi (Mócsy 1974, 218-21; Poulter 1983,78-85). Secondly, once established, the cities, municipia as well as coloniae,attracted veterans from the legionary and auxiliary garrisons, swelling the numberof citizens with money to invest and the status to assume curial office.1 Ifimperial interest and the steady influx of new citizens promoted the rapiddevelopment of the Balkan cities, the new villa estates established within theirterritories must have profited from the proximity of a military market foragricultural and industrial goods, providing landowners with the wealth whichUntil recently, archaeology has contributed little to our understanding ofurbanism in the Later Roman Empire. Our perspective has been determined byancient sources. Drawing upon the literary and particularly legal evidence forLate Roman urbanism, A.H.M. Jones concluded that the classical city survivedin the East as late as the reign of Justinian and, in the West, probably even later(Jones 1964, 759-61). For Jones, the hallmark of the classical city was themaintenance of local autonomy in the form of curial administration and it wasthe very tenacity with which cities clung to their civic institutions whichdemonstrated the essential continuity between the cities of classical Greece andthe poleis of Justinian (Jones 1940, 251-8; 1964, 724; 1971, xii-xiii). Thisconclusion has been supported by recent interpretations of the archaeologicalevidence: although it is universally accepted that the cities of the Balkans suffereddestruction and economic decline during the Gothic invasions of the third century,it has also been held as axiomatic that the Diocletianic reforms of army andadministration revitalized cities throughout the Balkan provinces (Alföldy 1974,198 and 205; Mócsy 1974, 297; Velkov 1977, 77-80). For the sixth century, aJustinianic revival of towns has been claimed, although admittedly, less widelyaccepted.1 However, our literary sources are biased towards the Eastern Empireand, for the fourth century, as Jones admitted, there must have been markeddifferences between those cities where the curial class was able to raise imperialrevenue and cover the cost of local public expenditure without resorting toburdensome levies from decurions in the form of liturgies, and those cities whichcould not (Jones 1964, 737). Where the curial class was subject to excessivetaxation, it may be presumed that the decline of urban government would haverapidly followed

Ancient history · Archaeology · Empire · Geography · Roman Empire · Urbanism · Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · History · Architecture

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