Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

926 31. building and architecture
There still clearly existed an urban ideal expressed both by Cassiodorus,
who sets out measures taken by Theoderic to preserve and improve the
ancient buildings of Rome, Ravenna and other Italian cities, and by
Procopius, who describes new cities (poleis) founded or refounded in this
period. Despite their small size, Martyropolis (420), Dara (508), Justiniana
Prima (c. 530) and Zenobia (550) were seen to embody this ideal. Dara
(Anastasiopolis), ‘a bulwark of the Roman empire’, was given every urban
amenity – porticoes, baths, inns, palaces, water works – in addition to the
defensive works, barracks and storehouses appropriate for a military
stronghold. At Zenobia on the Euphrates, another stronghold and a city,
Justinian was said to have built circuit walls, barracks and churches but also
baths and porticoes; a survey of the site revealed a public bath and a forum
flanked by two churches. Justiniana Prima (Fig. 41), founded to commemorate
Justinian’s birthplace in the Balkans, was built as ‘a very notable
city with aqueduct . . . churches . . . lodgings for magistrates, great stoas,
fine market-places, fountains, streets, baths, shops’. 12 In these cities there is
a shift away from the pattern of earlier centuries (when, for instance, a
theatre would have been a prominent feature of the townscape), but the
shift certainly does not represent the abandonment of traditional classical
urbanism.
1. Civic and administrative architecture
Texts cite fora, porticoed streets or stoas, and fountains or nymphaea as
among the main types of architectural embellishments of the Roman city.
The prestigious architecture of administrative buildings (the council
chamber, law courts, etc.) also contributed to the monumental aspects of
the city.
(a) Fora, porticoed streets, nymphaea
The ‘show area’ of Rome, which occupied about half the city, was little
embellished after Constantine, but much of it was maintained (Fig. 39). In
the mid fifth century the portico of the theatre of Pompey was restored,
and the senate buildings repaired in the fifth and sixth century. In 608 an
honorific column set up in the Forum by Diocletian was inscribed with a
dedication to the emperor Phocas. Only in the sixth century did the republican
Roman Forum begin to undergo a Christian conversion, starting with
two public rooms turned into the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian and
a vestibule of the imperial palace converted into Sta Maria Antiqua.
Elsewhere in the city, two fora were restored in the mid fifth century. 13 Only
12 Cass. Variae i.25; iii.30–1, 44; iv.51; xi.39.2; Procop. Buildings ii.1.4–3.26; 8.11–25; iv.1.19.
13 Ward Perkins, Public Building 45 n. 33, 46–8; Krautheimer (1980) 75–6.
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