Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

578 21a. asia minor and cyprus
fortified under Zeno – again, probably in response to the Isaurian threat.
It was apparently only at the end of the period, in the early seventh century,
that fortifications were limited to the most defensible part of the city – as
in the case of the Acropolis at Aphrodisias and Phaselis, or the later walls
at Side, and the small circuit at Magnesia. Work on this subject is continuing,
and the identification of phases of construction is likely to become
more precise. 14 It may be that at some places – for example, Aphrodisias –
where we do not know of any substantial threat, the new fortifications were
intended as much to add to the prestige of the city as to provide for its
defence; but it is also worth considering that such fortifications might be
intended to meet not a serious ‘political’ threat, worthy of record in the historical
narrative, but an overall increase in small-scale brigandage and
robbery. The new walls may reflect a gradual shift in the relationship
between the ‘city’ and the ‘country’ (see further below). 15
The fortification or refortification of many of the cities of Asia Minor,
and also the extensive re-use of materials in late Roman building, tended
to lead earlier scholars to see an overall decline of the cities from the end
of the third century. Recently, however, the subject has received closer
attention as a result of the work of Clive Foss. As well as publishing studies
of the later Roman period at three important cities – Ancyra, Ephesus and
Sardis – he drew attention to the flourishing condition of many other cities
during the fifth and sixth century. In his view, this period of prosperity
came to a sudden end with the Persian invasions of Asia Minor and Cyprus
in the second and third decades of the seventh century, leading to the
virtual extinction of the cities, or their reduction to fortified castra. While
this explanation has been disputed (see further below), a result of his work
has been to draw the attention of historians and archaeologists to the late
antique period at a wide range of sites. 16
Some sites clearly fell out of use in late antiquity – most obviously, those
such as the oracle at Claros, or the shrine of Leto at Xanthos, where the
whole focus of the place was on pagan religious activity. These developments
were, however, paralleled by the growth of new Christian pilgrimage
sites, which became the recipients of substantial patronage. Thus the
emperor Zeno provided a substantial new church for his local cult of St
Thecla near Seleuceia on the Calycadnus; the life and miracles of Thecla
were presented in a new Greek text of the same period. Justinian visited
the shrine of St Michael at Germia, whose church also probably dated
14 Important progress in the understanding and dating of such structures is being made by David
Winfield and Clive Foss; see Winfield and Foss (1987).
15 On the problems of peacekeeping in the Roman and later Roman period in Asia Minor see
Hopwood (1983) and (1989), with bibliography.
16 Foss’s general arguments were set out in two overview articles, Foss (1975) and (1977a), as well as
in studies of Ankara, Ephesus and Sardis. These and other articles are usefully reprinted in Foss (1990).
For an update on the debate see Russell (1986), Whittow (1990) and Foss (1994).
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