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The last century of Roman power (c. 500 to c. 620): army, church, and countryside
‘The outpost at Thermopylae had from early times been under the care of the farmers of that region, and they used to take turns in guarding the wall there, whenever it was expected that some barbarians or other would make a descent upon Peloponnesus’ (Prokopios of Kaisareia, Secret History 26.31–4). So writes Prokopios of Kaisareia in one of the last chapters of his Secret History, a work written in direct response to Emperor Justinian's legislation and financial reforms initiated by the imperial agents in the provinces. At this point, Prokopios' bête noire is the discussor (logethetes) Alexander, nicknamed ‘Snips’ because of his ability to clip coins. In 540 or 541, Alexander apparently introduced a series of changes concerning the defence of Thermopylae, which, although not appearing in any surviving edict of Justinian, were apparently sufficiently outrageous to incriminate the regime:But when Alexander visited the place on the occasion in question, he, pretending that he was acting in the interests of the Peloponnesians, refused to entrust the outpost there to the farmers. So he stationed troops there to the number of two thousand and ordained that their pay should not be provided from the imperial Treasury, but instead he transferred to the Treasury the entire civic funds and the funds for the spectacles of all the cities of Greece, on the pretext that these soldiers were to be maintained there from, and consequently in all Greece, and not least in Athens itself, no public building was restored nor could any other needful thing be done. Justinian, however, without any hesitation confi rmed these measures of ‘Snips’.
Book Chapter
Collapse or adaptation? The problem of the urban decline in late antique Greece
According to the Synekdemos of Hierokles, by 500 there were about eighty cities in the province of Achaia, apparently one of the most highly urbanised regions of the eastern Mediterranean (Honigman 1939: 7 and 16–19; see also Bon 1951: 21 and 23–4). Most of them had no appropriate defence. Prokopios mentions fortifications being renewed for all cities south of the Thermopylae Pass, and specifically mentions Corinth, the walls of which had been ruined by ‘terrible earthquakes which had visited the city’, Athens, Plataea, and ‘the towns of Boeotia’ (Buildings 4.2). But he also claims that the fortifications of cities in central Greece and Peloponnesos had fallen into ruin long before Justinian's reign. The Emperor's intention was apparently to rebuild the walls of all the cities south of the Thermopylae Pass, but realising that the operation would take too long, he decided ‘to wall the whole Isthmus securely’. The implication is that most, if not all cities south of the Hexamilion remained unfortified. North of the Thermopylae Pass, Prokopios mentions the rebuilding of fortifications at Echinos, Thebes, Pharsalos, Demetrias, Metropolis, Gomphi, and Trika (Trikala), with only Kassandria (Potidaea) mentioned in Macedonia (Buildings 4.2). Conspicuously absent from this list is the great Macedonian metropolis of Thessalonica, the largest city in the Balkans and the second city of the Empire after Constantinople. Indeed, the evidence available so far suggests that although Emperor Justinian certainly contributed to the decoration or endowment of the basilica of St Demetrios in Thessalonica, the repair or extension of the city fortifications is a much earlier work, some of which at least was paid for by private citizens.
Book Chapter
The Visual Landscape
Grave goods represented innately “temporary” components of early medieval burial ritual in that they remained visible to the living only until the conclusion of the funeral. By contrast, external aspects of inhumation such as disposal facilities and epitaphs constituted more lasting monuments to the deceased in early medieval Gaul. Through such spatial features of burial, groups attained or reaffirmed their rights to restricted or limited resources. Arthur Alan Saxe has thus observed the particular appeal for elites of establishing “a permanently specialized, bounded territorial area” reserved for “the exclusive disposal of their dead.”¹ In this sense, topographical features of burial,
Book Chapter