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the end of the civic era 585
and country in antiquity: one way of understanding the raison d’être of many
of the cities which acquired substantial public buildings in the second and
third century is to see them as the monumental civic centres for groups of
villages. Equally, the owners of the country estates are likely to be the same
people as the rich residents of the city houses – and also, perhaps, the senators
of the Constantinople senate.
Such landowners had always been concerned to defend their property,
and it has been mentioned above that local security seems to have been an
increasing problem; an inscription recently found in Paphlagonia, together
with laws in the imperial codes, shows that the imperial government was
very concerned to control the development of private militias by landowners.
26 In such circumstances, imperial office could be used to provide legitimacy
for the status quo. The new power structure may be illustrated by the
career of Marthanes, a Cilician landowner who was appointed by Justinian
with imperial authority to keep the peace in his own province of Cilicia –
an appointment which broke all the earlier regulations preventing the
appointment of local citizens to such office, and enabled Marthanes to
exercise tyrannical power. Similarly, but less dramatically, a governor of the
late fifth or early sixth century at Aphrodisias, Vitianus, was honoured there
as being a local citizen. It seems likely that the ruling class of the provinces
were now in a position to use imperial office to reinforce their control, and
had less and less need of the old civic political system.
vi. the end of the civic era
Recent research has shown, at site after site, that buildings fell out of use,
and settlements contracted, in the late sixth or early seventh century.
Considerable energy and acrimony have gone into discussions of the
exact date and the causes of this change. It may be that this question, like
others discussed here, cannot yet admit of solution – or of the same solution
for every site. The most striking phenomenon is the building of new
fortification walls at many sites, protecting a far smaller part of the town
than before (see above); unfortunately, such fortifications are often peculiarly
hard to date closely. At Sagalassos, the centre for the manufacture
of pottery which had flourished for several centuries came to an end in
the early sixth century, and no material later than the early sixth century
has been found on the site. For whatever reason, it was apparently at
about this time that the inhabitants moved to the neighbouring site of
Aglasun, where a small settlement developed, preserving the name of the
older city. At Paphos, the ‘House of Theseus’ was probably abandoned in
26 Feissel (1985); Just. Ed. 8, Nov. 29, 30.
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