Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

934 31. building and architecture
At Rome, the secretarium senatus was rebuilt in 412/14 following a fire, and
the senate house (curia) was restored under the Ostrogoths, though, as we
have seen earlier, it was abandoned and turned into a church in the early
seventh century. At Constantinople, however, the senate endured until the
twelfth century. One of the two senate houses there, that which stood on
the Augustaion, was rebuilt after 404, burned during the Nika riot in 532
and subsequently reconstructed by Justinian as a basilica with apse (Fig. 43).
Its porch was composed of six enormous white marble columns, four to
the front and two behind. As described by Procopius, ‘The stoa [thus
formed] carries a vaulted roof, and the whole upper portion of the colonnade
is adorned with [beautiful] marbles . . . and the roof is wonderfully set
off by a great number of statues which stand upon it.’ 22
The law courts of Constantinople were situated in the Basilica, a legal
and cultural centre near the Augustaion (Fig. 43). Architecturally this was a
large court (c. 150 metres long) enclosed by four porticoes erected in c. 410.
The buildings attached to the Basilica included the Public Library (of
unknown plan) which in the fifth century was said to contain 120,000
books, and the Octagon, the seat of a university where law courses were
given and cases tried; book vendors occupied parts of the porticoes. The
Basilica burned down in 476, was rebuilt in 478 and burned again in 532.In
the subsequent reconstruction, a vast underground cistern (the Cisterna
Basilica) was built beneath the court, and in 542 the prefect Longinus
rebuilt the Basilica’s porticoes and repaved its court. Justin II set up there
a horologion (perhaps a sundial). 23
2. Amenities: baths and places of entertainment
(a) Baths
Baths were in the forefront of the development of Roman architecture.
Concentric architecture conserved heat, and glass mosaics rendered walls
and vaults impermeable. Innovations in the use of concrete facilitated the
construction of vaults and domes. Thus the Roman bath chamber, domed
or vaulted and decorated in mosaic, is the architectural predecessor, not just
of the late antique bath chamber, but of the Byzantine church as well. 24
In late antiquity, baths were the most popular area of what remained of
secular public buildings, except for defensive walls and palaces. By the end
of the fourth century, there were eleven thermae (each a vast complex laid
out symmetrically on an axis leading to the caldarium) in Rome and eight in
Constantinople. And the balneum or balaneion, a smaller, asymmetrical bath,
usually privately owned, proliferated: there were 856 at Rome and 153 at
22 Rome: Ward-Perkins, Public Building 220–1; Krautheimer (1980) 72; Constantinople: Mango (1959)
56–60; Procop. Buildings i.10.6–9. 23 Mango (1959) 48–51.
24 Ward-Perkins (1981) 105–7, 210, 418–21, 430; Sear (1977) 29–30.
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