A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  Is Peter really buried in area P at the red wall beneath the altar of St. Peter’s? A careful study of the construction technique used to build the red wall, as well as an analysis of construction marks stamped onto the clay bricks, has allowed archaeologists to date the shrine. At the earliest, it was erected in the late second century CE. There is no physical evidence that takes us back any further in time to connect Peter’s supposed death in 64 CE with this late second‐century tomb.

  8.3 The Archaeology of Constantinople

  After 330 CE, Rome was not the only capital of its empire. At the end of a bent tip of a promontory that reaches out from Europe towards the continent of Asia, Constantine would build a second. Unlike the cities of the Tetrarchs, like Galerius’ Thessaloniki or Diocletian’s Nicomedia, Constantinople would have its own Senate, a second advisory body to the Roman emperor, drawn from wealthy local citizens of the eastern Mediterranean. It was a bold vision but perhaps an appropriate one for a man who had defeated Licinius in 324 CE and had emerged as sole ruler of the Mediterranean.

  It was also an extraordinary distinction for this one city in the east although the reality behind its rising stature was far less hyperbolic than people today might characterize the emperor’s decision. By investing heavily in Constantinople, Constantine did not move the capital of the empire from Rome. In the simplest terms, the fourth‐century Roman Empire now had two capitals. What can the archaeology and history of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) tell us about daily life in the empire’s second center of power?

  A new city but with a forgotten history

  To begin, Constantine’s city was not the first on the site. Greeks had settled a colony here in the seventh century BCE. They called their settlement Byzantion. It stood at the intersection of a tri‐water area – the Bosporus Strait, the Sea of Marmara, and the Golden Horn – and was a vital way station for Greeks sailing from Athens and the Peloponessus to the Black Sea. Byzantion played an important part in the history of Greece’s military encounters with Persia.

  The Persians were eventually driven back, but the city of Byzantion continued to grow. During the expanding imperial world of the late second century CE, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus had taken credit for refounding the city, investing in its infrastructure and amenities to give it the appearance of an important center of Roman power. So it was that, by 324 CE, when Constantine first began planning to rename it, the city had many of the elements that Romans had come to expect from cosmopolitan urban centers (Figure 8.5). It had a series of walls which Septimius Severus had constructed. It had several roads which facilitated travel across its European peninsula. It had a Roman basilica, a temple to the goddess Cybele, and one dedicated to the goddess Fortuna, called by her Greek name, Tyche (the Goddess of Chance or Good Luck). If textual sources can be trusted, the city also boasted a Temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the trio of gods worshipped on Rome’s famous Capitoline Hill. Unfortunately, much of modern Istanbul still hides the physical appearance of Septimius Severus’ and even Constantine’s Roman city, and scholars are dependent on textual descriptions to reconstruct the feel of the fourth‐century city.

  Figure 8.5 The city of Constantinople in the late fourth century and early fifth century CE. Often claimed to be the site where Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire, Constantinople was, in reality, a second capital. The site itself had first been settled by Greeks, then expanded by Romans in the second and third centuries CE. All throughout this long history, it had been known as Byzantium. In 330 CE Constantine celebrated the momentous change in the life of the city; in line with popular displays of imperial power, he chose to re‐found it and rename it after himself. With a new forum, a new palace, a race track, and – most importantly – its own Senate, citizens of the empire began to imagine Constantine’s city as a “Second Rome.” Only when the Roman world fractured, in 476 CE, did Constantine’s city emerge as the empire’s sole capital. Plan by Wiley’s illustrators.

  Some sites are known archaeologically. The hippodrome, or race track, is one of the most visible. Located on the far eastern end of the peninsula, the track was a functioning part of Septimius Severus’ Roman city but may not have been a fully polished building until the age of Constantine. The race track itself adjoined the imperial palace, following the urban model of Rome, where the emperor’s residence overlooked the Circus Maximus. A public bath, the Baths of Zeuxippos, was also a popular venue in this region of the city. It contained the traditional set of hot and cold rooms, a soothing respite for Romans all throughout the empire, and also included an exercise ground, a gymnasium – a part of the landscape of Hellenistic cities since the time of Alexander the Great. The Baths of Zeuxippos were another pre‐existing Roman construction that was completed by Constantine.

  Constantine’s Forum

  In finishing many of Septimius Severus’ projects, a task which could mean little more than adding a splash of expensive marble, Constantine equipped the empire’s second capital with the kinds of spaces an urbane citizen would have expected to have down the street from their homes. Like other Roman rulers before him, the emperor used these projects to advertise his political legitimacy and increase public support for his rule. One important project in this regard was Constantine’s Forum.

  For centuries, emperors had built new forum spaces to promote the messages of their political campaigns. In this way, from Julius Caesar to Vespasian and Trajan, the downtown district of Rome grew as the emperors added new spaces for law, diplomacy, and business. Trajan’s Forum, built in the second century CE, was one of the busiest places in the capital and included a multilevel shopping mall. For politicians, it also remained one of the most important venues in Late Antique Rome (Political Issues 8.1: Justinian’s Nea Church and the Architectural Audacity of Roman Emperors). Constantine’s own decision to build a forum in Constantinople was consistent with the broader set of cultural expectations that emperors provide new civic spaces for their citizens; and that they use these spaces to increase their standing among the city’s residents.

  Political Issues 8.1 Justinian’s Nea Church and the Architectural Audacity of Roman Emperors

  In the Roman Empire, audacious building projects could make or break a politician’s career. When Nero (r. 54–68 CE) decided to create a man‐made lake in the center of Rome, as part of his scheme for a large private palace, judgment against him was swift. “There was nothing,” Nero’s biographer Suetonius wrote, “in which the emperor was more ruinously prodigal than in his building” (Life of Nero 31.1, LCL trans. by J. C. Rolfe [1914]). Nero’s reputation has suffered, but his creative vision – experimenting with concrete, pushing the limits of engineering – set a high bar for innovation. It also may have dared his successors to continue to think big.

  Emperor Trajan, overwhelmingly praised throughout Late Antiquity as the model of a respected ruler (r. 98–117 CE), also tested the limits of engineering in a way that won him fame. To create his Forum, he ordered his builders to cart away a significant part of the city’s Quirinal Hill. The feat was so impressive, the Senate erected a sign to boast about the accomplishment. This inscription explains, in Latin, that Trajan’s column was erected “to demonstrate how high the mountain was and the extent of the site which had to be cleared away” to bring such a great work to completion. In the fifth century CE, business was still transacted in the shadow of Trajan’s towering legacy.

  Dreams of daring feats of architecture inspired leaders of the eastern Roman Empire even after emperors gave up control of Rome. Many of Justinian’s buildings (r. 527–565 CE) set new, high bars for what was possible. In Jerusalem, one project was the New Church of Mary, the Bearer of God (Theotokos).

  Unfortunately, only the most frustrating archaeological foundations remain of Justinian’s church. But Procopius provides details about its grandeur and about the challenges which the emperor’s team faced while designing it. Battling the natural topography of Jerusalem was a major obstacle. “This c
ity is for the most part set upon hills. However, these hills have no soil upon them but stand with rough and very steep sides, causing the streets to run straight up and down like ladders,” Procopius explains in his treatise On the Emperor’s Buildings.

  The site where Justinian envisioned building the New Church also caused headaches for the design team. “The Emperor Justinian gave orders that it be built on the highest of the hills … [But as a result of the emperor’s vision], a fourth part of the church, facing the south and the east, was left unsupported” (On the Emperor’s Buildings 5.6.2–5, LCL trans. by H. Dewing [1940]). What did the engineers do?

  Procopius explains how the engineers solved this architectural problem.

  They threw the foundations out as far as the limit of the even ground, and then erected a man‐made substructure which rose as high as the rock. When they had leveled this substructure with the natural rock, they set vaults upon the supporting walls and joined it to the other foundation of the church. Thus the church is partly based upon living rock and partly carried in the air by a great extension artificially added to the hill by the Emperor’s power.

  (On the Emperor’s Buildings 5.6.6–8, trans. by H. Dewing [1940], slightly modified)

  This ingenious solution for erecting a church would likely have impressed Emperors Trajan and Nero alike.

  Constantine’s Forum in Constantinople did both these things. Designed as a circular plaza, it was located at an important transition point in one of the city’s major east–west roads, the Mese, which connected the palace to the far western reaches of the peninsula. Its appearance was also filled with potent messaging. As a homage to the widely adored Trajan, Constantine included a large victory column at the center of his Forum (Figure 8.6). It was quarried from purple Egyptian porphyry, one of the most expensive building materials available known anywhere in the Roman world. A statue of the triumphant emperor, wearing a crown with the rays of the sun, stood on top of the column. This imagery was borrowed from Hellenistic rulers, like Alexander and his successors, who used the sun to play up the cosmic dimensions of their political authority. The use of that Hellenistic imagery here helped Constantine tell a powerful story about his own rule; it was rooted in the past and drew upon both Hellenistic and Roman precedents.

  Figure 8.6 Like other Roman emperors before him, Constantine (ruled jointly 312–324 CE; 324–337 as sole Augustus) used his money and stature to put his unique stamp on city life. One way he did so, at Constantinople, was to create his own forum. An expensive porphyry column stood at its center. Little remains of this Forum of Constantine, which is now part of the Çemberlitaş neighborhood of Istanbul, except portions of this damaged column. This digital reconstruction, based on textual reports of what it looked like, shows the Emperor Constantine making reference to the sun god Helios, or Apollo. The sun god had been a figure popularly embraced by Hellenistic rulers, centuries earlier, in the age of Alexander the Great. These rulers had used it to allude to their own divinity. Roman rulers, including Constantine and his successors, would embrace that same tradition.

  Reconstruction © Byzantium 1200.

  Emperors living in Constantinople, both before and after the vanishing of Rome from the Roman Empire, would undertake similar projects. New Forum spaces would be built in the late fourth century CE for Emperor Theodosius; and later, in the fifth century CE, for Arcadius and Marcian. Even Justinian, in the sixth century CE, would erect an equestrian statue of himself in Constantinople’s city center. In doing so, Justinian was following a precedent going back centuries to rulers like Augustus. A statue of the “first citizen” of Rome, riding a chariot, pulled by four horses, stood at the center of Augustus’ Forum in Rome.

  Urban infrastructure and neighborhood residences

  Constantinople was more than a flat billboard for an emperor’s message, however. Bordered on its western peninsula by a strip of city walls – completed by Constantine, then pushed further out by the Emperor Theodosius (r. 379–392 CE, emperor of the eastern Mediterranean; 392–395 CE, sole ruler of the Roman world) – the second capital of the empire was also a working city and a place many people who did not have palace jobs simply called their home. As such, its citizens had basic needs which Constantine and his successors also met. One necessity was fresh water. The people of Constantinople received theirs from an aqueduct which brought water into the peninsula from a source 100 kilometers away in the mountains of Thrace. This aqueduct fed the Baths of Zeuxippos, and its overflow was channeled into large reservoirs under the city, called cisterns, for later use.

  Constantinople was also a city of shippers, sailors, bakers, and trades. On the peninsula’s southern side, two harbors were constructed during the middle to late fourth century CE to accommodate grain shipments from Roman Egypt. Unlike Rome’s supply, which was stored at Portus and Ostia, Constantinople’s food supply was offloaded, managed, and stored directly on the peninsula itself. The shipping industry’s presence in the city must have given the neighborhoods there a commercial feel.

  A late fourth‐century CE government document, a terse list known as the Notitia of Constantinople, records the number and kinds of buildings found in each region of the city. It reveals that most laborers did live around the city’s harbors although it doesn’t elaborate why. Perhaps they liked the location, offering a convenient walk to work. Or maybe the day‐in, day‐out noise of crates and jugs made rents cheap. Whatever the reason, wealthier citizens, by contrast, had their abodes – richly furnished estates, called in Latin singular and plural domus – in the far western regions of the city and closer to the palace. The Notitia also does not, unfortunately, give us any details of domestic life that might let us into the homes of those Romans who lived in the fourth‐century capital (Working With Sources 8.1: Tableware and Kitchenware: From Artifact to Museum Exhibits and Private Collections; Figure 8.7), although it does leave us with at least some hint – or whiff – of life on the city streets at the turn of the fifth century CE.

  Figure 8.7 This example of African Red Slip Ware shows a criminal tied up for torture and death in the jaws of the beasts of the amphitheater. Found in Sicily, it has been dated to the second half of the fourth century CE. This peculiarly grizzly punishment, known as “damnatio ad bestias,” often appears in stories about Christian “martyrs,” those followers of Jesus who – either during periods of documented legal discrimination or in other circumstances – found themselves facing public execution. This dish would likely have been passed around the room at an expensive or at least moderately wealthy dinner party. Now in the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany (inventory number 68/28).

  Working With Sources 8.1 Tableware and Kitchenware: From Artifact to Museum Exhibits and Private Collections

  “‘Food, when it’s taken, usually makes people quiet; wine makes them talkative.’” So pronounces the wealthy dinner host in an early fifth‐century CE Latin text, the Saturnalia. Describing a ritzy gathering celebrated during Rome’s raucous winter “Festival of Saturn,” the Saturnalia was written by a man intimately familiar with the world of elite Roman mores: Macrobius, a senator and one‐time praetorian prefect of Italy and Africa (lived c.400 CE).

  Parties like those described by Macrobius and their humbler counterparts – peasant meals in an upstairs apartment or a dinner of snacks at the local tavern – were times for talking and conversing. And subjects could vary wildly based on the people gathered around the table or bar. In the Saturnalia, which explicitly evokes Plato’s symposium, the host laments that no one is really saying anything substantial at all: “We’re silent even while we’re drinking! As though a dinner party like this should abstain from treating serious or even philosophical topics” (Macrobius, Saturnalia 6.1, LCL trans. by R. Kaster [2011], slightly modified). Not everything was always serious, of course. Even Macrobius’ soiree is filled with attendees cracking jokes.

  Eavesdropping on a dinner party outside these highly styled, literary vignettes is a bit more challengi
ng, but archaeological evidence can help. Dining rooms, mosaics, and paintings can help set the scene. The implements used to display a hot platter or hold the wine set the table.

  Today, most students of the ancient world encounter ceramics in a museum, displayed behind the glass of an exhibit; a few luckier ones will be able to hold a “sherd” (or pottery fragment) for themselves, wash it, and catalogue it. Sherds may not be the most newsworthy artifacts, and the value of ceramics at large may seem slight. (Some whole ceramics do show up on the art market and come without any provenance; ethically minded scholars are wary of writing about them.) Still, ceramics tell a story or two.

  One type widely found at Late Antique contexts is “African Red Slip Ware.” Varying in color from burnt orange to brick red, with a matte finish, African Red Slip Ware enjoyed a wide popularity on Roman tables and in kitchens from the third through seventh centuries CE. Molded out of local North African clay, it was regularly in demand as far away as the Black Sea. Its surfaces could be plain and austere or stamped with decorative, floral designs; some were covered with figures and animals.

  One African Red Slip Ware bowl, now in Germany, shows a much grizzlier conversation topic than we may deem appropriate for a dinner party: It shows a bear ready to maul a criminal, stripped and tied to a post for execution. Based on materials which archaeologists found near this artifact, we know this piece of tableware was being passed around in the mid‐fourth or early fifth century CE.