Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

722 23. the balkans and greece 420,602
Archaeological field surveys in Greece are increasingly building up a picture
of considerable intensification of settlement and land use in the fourth and
fifth century after more than half a millennium of abatement: in Boeotia
the density of rural settlement was striking, and, though this may be
explained to an extent by a decline of smaller townships and the transfer
of population to rural estates, the results belie Zosimus’ complaint (v.5.7)
about the area’s continuing impoverishment. Surveys in other areas – for
example, the Argolid – have confirmed this resurgence of the Greek countryside;
marginal land was being reoccupied, and it is even possible to talk
of a return to the population density of classical times. Attica shared this
trend. 70
In Athens itself, the long-running investigations of the Agora have
revealed rapid rebuilding after the destruction associated with Alaric’s
Goths in 396 (see Fig. 24); indeed, the recovery appears more substantial
than in the aftermath of the Herul attack in the third century. Two factors
made Athens special – the prosperity of its Neoplatonic philosophy school
and an imperial marriage. The reputation of Athens as a centre for philosophical
education was re-established by Plutarch, who died in the early
430s, and continued by its most famous representative, Proclus, who led
the school for almost half a century until his death in 485. Although
Synesius, writing to his brother, probably in 410, had poked fun at the
Plutarchean sophists who attracted students with Attic honey rather than
the fame of their eloquence (Ep. 136), the Athenian intellectuals made a
significant contribution to the local economy – like a modern university in
a small town such as Lampeter or St Andrews. The teachers themselves
may not have been sufficiently wealthy to own the large houses excavated
on the north slope of the Areopagus, but they were closely connected with
the members of the local élite who lived there, and with the provincial
officials who could finance major building works: thus the restoration of
the Library of Hadrian was organized by the praetorian prefect of
Illyricum, Herculius, whose statue was placed on the façade by the sophist
Plutarch. 71 The educational establishment was relevant to the imperial marriage:
Athenaïs, selected as Theodosius II’s bride in 421 and renamed
Eudocia, was daughter of Leontius, a teacher at Athens. A plausible suggestion
is that the grand Palace of the Giants, which occupied most of the
central portion of the old agora (see Fig. 25), was built to mark the promotion
of this local family to imperial dignity; at any rate, Eudocia’s brother
Gessius was praetorian prefect of Illyricum in the 420s, and a statue of
Eudocia stood in front of the palace. 72 It is possible that the one-third
70 Bintliff and Snodgrass (1985) 147–8; Runnels and van Audel (1987) 319–20; Alcock (1989) 13;
Fowden (1988) 54–5.
71 Frantz (1988) 57–8, 37–49 (modifications in Fowden (1990) 495–6); Cameron and Long (1993)
56–7. 72 Frantz (1988) ch. 5 (by Homer Thompson), with Fowden (1990) 497–9.
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