Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

950 31. building and architecture
been found at Ptolemais and Apollonia in Cyrenaica, and at Caesarea in
Palestine. 53
Relatively little is known of episcopal palaces. At Bostra, capital of
Arabia, two standing buildings have been identified as episcopal palaces.
At least one of the two is a square two-storey building with a central court
surrounded by vaulted rooms; the other may also have followed this
design. The main reception room, situated on the upper floor, is a tetraconch.
A cruciform building near the cathedral of Justiniana Prima has
been identified as its episcopal palace (Fig. 41). At Ravenna, the orthodox
episcopal palace, first built in c. 450, had a banqueting hall, a mosaiced
chapel (which still survives) and a bath, which was rebuilt on a grander
scale by the archbishop Victor (537–44). The bishop of Naples added a
dining-hall to his palace in the mid fifth century. Only offices decorated
with wall mosaics survive from the patriarchal palace in Constantinople
(Fig. 43). 54
Houses at Athens and Aphrodisias – cities noted for philosophical
schools during late antiquity – may have provided both living accommodation
and teaching facilities for sophists, the latter in the form of a large apse
surrounded by colonnades. Apses in these houses had a series of niches to
hold sculpture; in those at Aphrodisias were excavated a series of tondo
portraits, ascribed to the fifth century, which commemorate Pindar,
Alexander and various philosophers. The most elaborate town houses of
this period were probably in Constantinople: the remains of two of these
have been excavated, situated side by side, to the north of the Hippodrome
(Fig. 52). One, if correctly identified as the palace of Lausus, praepositus sacri
cubiculi in 420, housed a famous collection of statues; the other was
identified by inscription as the palace of Antiochus, another praepositus sacri
cubiculi in c. 421. Both buildings had a monumental semi-circular entrance
portico. In the Lausus house, this led into a large circular hall, over 20
metres wide, with eight niches in its walls. Beyond this and a double-apsed
bay lay an apsed hall 52.5 metres long, covered by a series of cross-vaults;
in the sixth century six projecting niches were added to the lateral walls. The
sculpture may have been displayed in this long hall. 55
Less elaborate rich private houses are known from excavation in many
cities of the empire, such as the peristyle houses with triclinia uncovered at
Argos in Greece, at Carthage, at Apollonia in Cyrenaica, at Salamis in
53 Official residences including Apamea (house ‘au triclinos’): Duval (1984) and fig. 2b on p. 475;
Constantinople: Mango, Studies on Constantinople. Appendix, 1–2; Antioch: Mango, M. M. (1984)
Gazetteer, i.a.1 526; Athens: Frantz (1988) 95–116; Ephesus: Foss (1979) 50–1; Ptolemais: Kraeling
(1962) 140–60; Apollonia: Goodchild (1976); Caesarea: Holum (1988) 169–71.
54 Bostra: Butler (1919) 255–60, 286–8; Ravenna and Naples: Ward-Perkins, Public Building 177;
Constantinople: Mango (1959) 52–6.
55 Athens: Frantz (1988) 37–48; Aphrodisias: Smith (1991); Constantinople: Müller-Wiener (1977)
125, 238; Mango, Vickers and Francis (1992); Bardill (1997).
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