The Oxford History of Byzantium

by Cyril Mango

  The north–south street (cardo) of Apamea in Syria was built in the course of the second century AD and was nearly 2 km long. Behind the colonnades were shops, some of which still exhibit painted inscriptions specifying prices of wine and other commodities.

  Apamea in Syria was a very different kind of city, dominated more by a rich aristocracy than by public life. This city had a more regular plan than most, with streets crossing each other at right angles to form regular blocks or insulae. A grand colonnaded street, two kilometres long and 20 metres wide, formed the axis of the city. Paved with limestone and decorated with mosaics in the colonnades, it provided access to the major public buildings: the agora, baths, a monumental fountain, a large latrine, and, via another broad intersecting boulevard, the theatre. Shops lined the two boulevards whose intersection was marked by a vast rotunda. With its rich decoration of cut marble, it appears to have been the shrine where Apamea’s most sacred relic, a piece of the True Cross, was kept. Opposite was a large church, while nearby on the intersecting boulevard stood the cathedral, approached by a monumental staircase and a colonnaded courtyard. This massive domed tetraconch was the centre of a complex with numerous rooms, courts, and a bath, which appears to have been the bishop’s palace. All three of these churches manifested novel plans and a rich sixth-century décor.

  Facing: Hunt mosaic which covered the floor of one of the three reception rooms of a large mansion at Apamea believed to have been the palace of the provincial governor. AD 539.

  The remains that give Apamea its distinctive character are the enormous aristocratic mansions that fill much of its centre. Typically, they occupied entire blocks of some 55 by 110 metres. These were inward-looking structures, focused on internal courtyards; they presented blank walls to the streets, and their entrances gave little hint of what was inside. Apsidal reception and banquet rooms flanked the main colonnaded courtyards, reflecting the entertainment that was a central part of an aristocratic lifestyle. Smaller rooms on the ground floor were perhaps used for service and storage, but functional rooms like kitchens, baths, and toilets seem completely absent. The bedrooms were apparently on an upper floor. One large house, which has three apsidal halls and numerous smaller rooms, stood near the cathedral and may have been the palace of the governor.

  Rare texts and abundant remains enable urban life to be visualized, and in one case inscriptions reveal the variegated life of the people. The necropolis of Corycus in southern Asia Minor contains nearly 400 epitaphs that name the occupations of the deceased. They reveal a vast range of occupations ranging from public and ecclesiastical officials to sausage-sellers, barbers, and dancers. Prominent among them are merchants and artisans (often overlapping categories). Manufactures included clothes, linen, leather, shoes, pottery, hardware, glass, and purple dye. People worked gold, stone, and marble and produced and sold many food products: fruit, vegetables, nuts, fish, bread, wine, oil, cakes, pastries, and drinks. Bankers, carpenters, architects, lawyers, tailors, cleaners, and keepers of shops, taverns, restaurants, and inns added to the complement of activities. All these need to be imagined in the context of such buildings and streets and harbours as those of Ephesus.

  The cities were not static, but each followed its own and regional developments. Those of Asia Minor flourished throughout Late Antiquity, but in Syria, the great cities of Antioch and Apamea suffered severe disasters in the sixth century, while many places in Greece were devastated in the third and succumbed to further invasions in the late sixth. In most places, the heights of prosperity were reached in the late fifth and early sixth centuries; the work of Justinian was especially evident in many. Almost all, however, succumbed to the invasions and economic changes of the early seventh century to yield, in Greece and Asia Minor, to fortresses, and in Syria to the new centres of Islam.

  Among Justinian’s many building projects was the new city of Justiniana Prima erected in c. 530 at his birthplace (modern Caričin Grad in Serbia). Although built on a small scale, it had traditional urban features including a forum, porticoed streets, shops, baths, an aqueduct as well as a cathedral, and a military principia.

  Agriculture was the main occupation of the Roman empire, and villages, market towns, and scattered small settlements contained the vast majority of the population. Life in such places was very different from that of the cities, with few if any of the public works and services that characterized urban life; yet an active community life still flourished in highly varied settings. Texts and remains present a detailed image of this life, but focus on only a few regions. The most important texts are the Lives of two saints from sixth-century Asia Minor, Theodore of Sykeon and Nicholas of Myra. Remains illustrate the environment of St Nicholas, as well as that of several marginal areas in Syria and Palestine. In these cases, remarkably well-preserved villages and towns reveal a high standard of living and an unexpected degree of wealth, even in remote areas. Nevertheless, they also show that rural life was far poorer than urban, both materially and culturally.

  Theodore of Sykeon passed most of his life in the villages of Galatia in central Asia Minor, where the accounts of his miracles allow considerable insight into conditions of the time. They reveal the prevalence of religion and superstition, the problems that afflicted country life, the organization of a communal existence and its relations with the sometimes distant but always powerful government. The country contained a dense network of prosperous villages, with wheatfields and vineyards, cattle, mules, and oxen. Each had one or more churches or chapels and a population attentive to the teachings of a local holy man. The people, overwhelmingly farmers, also included smiths, lime-burners and builders as well as teachers, sorcerers, fortunetellers, and real or quack doctors. Protection from disease and other afflictions was a constant need, for the countryside suffered from drought, floods, hail, locusts, worms, and beetles, while the people had a variety of ills of which the most feared was the plague. There were frequent cases of chronic or temporary madness, whose cause was believed to be demonic possession. Demons dwelt everywhere, notably in the ancient pagan ruins that abounded. They could only be driven out by the potent exorcism of a holy man, in a public ritual that stirred local emotions.

  These villagers were free and evidently in possession of their land (little is heard of the tenants of the large estates that predominated in other areas). They had a local administration run by the landowners and elders, who assumed various titles. Normally they ran their own affairs, but the strong and usually brutal hand of the government would intervene to quell any serious disturbance or investigate violation of the laws, which included digging for buried treasure. News would reach the central authorities via the highways that intersected this countryside and formed a separate environment. The highways were part of the state. Armies, high officials, messengers passed along them, changing horse at the posting stations, sleeping in the inns and consorting with the prostitutes who often worked there. Like the great estates of the aristocracy that dotted the countryside, especially in the vicinity of the cities, they were more closely tied to the cities than to the countryside.

  The Life of St Nicholas presents a similar situation in a different setting, the mountains instead of the plains. In addition to grain and wine, products include timber, so that wood and stone cutting are important local activities. Here, too, each village has its own church, and the villagers rely on the holy man to cure their ills and drive out evil spirits. In this more remote region, pagan practices survived longer, as they did in other mountainous parts of the country. Nevertheless, the Life makes it clear that the villages were closely connected with the city, and that trade was an essential element of their existence, allowing a high level of prosperity to be maintained. The prosperity is evident in the remains of numerous villages in the hills above Myra, where compact groups of fieldstone houses, many built on terraces, surrounded the local stone church, itself often elegantly built and decorated. Among them was the monastery of Holy Zion founded by St Nicholas himself. Its str
ucture has survived, along with its spectacular treasure of silver plate that attests the surprising wealth of a remote church. The shrine evidently attracted pilgrims and rich patrons from the prosperous coastal cities, for Lycia included a shoreline full of small towns and villages that continued eastwards into Cilicia.

  This maritime region formed another environment, prospering not so much from agriculture—many of its sites occupy rocky promontories or off shore islands that could never have been self-sufficient—but from the trade that flourished in the entire eastern Mediterranean, especially districts on the coastal routes between Constantinople and the Near East. These coastlands contain extensive remains of stone houses and churches. They prospered while interior districts, particularly mountainous ones without fertile land or far from trade routes, were seriously afflicted by banditry or revolts that became especially acute in the sixth century. Rapacious governors and tax collectors were one affliction for the peasant; large landowners, who even kept private armies, and the military, who often succumbed to the temptation to loot, were another.

  Plan of Dar Qita, a village in the limestone hills of Syria.

  Two-storey houses at Serjilla in the limestone hills of Syria. The façade is enlivened by niches and well-carved mouldings surrounding the doors and windows. Sixth century.

  Syria contains the best preserved remains of villages in the eastern empire. A network of some 700 villages forms a spectacular landscape in the limestone hills above the Orontes river. Each usually contains between twenty and fifty stone houses and one or more churches. The houses, irregularly laid out along alleys or enclosures rather than streets, present blank walls to the outside and are often roughly clustered around the perimeter of the village to keep out marauders or wild animals. They are normally two-storey structures with open verandas overlooking inner courtyards, with the rooms (most commonly two to four, but with great variation) on the upper floor. The elegance of their stonework misled early investigators into thinking that they were the dwellings of a rural aristocracy, but there is nothing aristocratic or urban about these houses, for the people lived upstairs and the animals on the ground floor, while the courtyards were used for animals and domestic activities, not receptions or ceremonies. The houses rarely have latrines or separate rooms for kitchens, and no baths or running water. Among the 700 villages, there are only five public baths, and virtually no public buildings. The amenities of the city were alien to the countryside whose inhabitants had to travel far to enjoy them.

  Two public buildings at Serjilla. On the left is the bath built in 473 by Julianus and his wife Domna for the use of the village, as stated in a pavement inscription. The porticoed building to the right may be an inn.

  These villagers lived from growing olives, a major cash crop which they turned into oil in presses located, like other industrial activities, on the periphery of the villages. This was overwhelmingly the most important activity, supplemented by orchards and livestock. These products were sold to the neighbouring cities, but evidence for local trade is scarce: the villages contain no buildings that can be identified as shops or bazaars. Temporary stalls or local fairs were presumably the mechanisms of local exchange. In any case, oil, wheat, and wool provided the surplus which enabled the locals to build their stone houses—and frequently to add rooms to them—and to contribute to the churches, whose elegant, even grandiose buildings also contained treasures or gold coin or silver plate that evidently represented the accumulated capital of the countryside. They show that the demanding late antique government did not, as sometimes maintained, drain the wealth of the country for the benefit of itself or the cities, but allowed such regions as this to grow and prosper.

  Left: The large church at Qalb Loseh in the limestone hills of Syria preserves part of its stone roofing. The side aisles have been opened up by the use of widely spaced piers supporting broad arches, instead of the traditional colonnade. Fifth century.

  Below: Remains of a large village at Sha’ib Shahr southeast of Edessa in Mesopotamia. The stone masonry of the two-storey houses resembles that of the limestone hills in northern Syria.

  Right: Aerial view of the bath built in c.558 at Androna in the Syrian steppe. Although identified as a village (kome), this large site has two sets of circuit walls, a barracks, a dozen churches, and large water reservoirs.

  Below: Situated close to Androna is Qasr ibn Wardan, a ‘desert estate’ of the type found in the Umayyad period. It had a church, a barracks (561), and, here, a palace with a large triconch reception hall, built in 564.

  Many regions also featured much larger settlements, which did not have the municipal status or bishops that defined cities, but were on a different scale from the villages. These contained a hundred or more houses (sometimes larger, though usually of the village type), numerous churches, open spaces perhaps used as markets, and even an occasional bath. Some of these are on the frontiers, where they also feature fortification walls, towers, barracks, and military headquarters. Most remarkable among them are the large settlements of the Negev in the desert of southern Palestine which could easily be mistaken for small cities, except that they lack the characteristic urban amenities. Among them in the arid countryside are the remains of much smaller scattered settlements, some apparently used by transhumants or nomads.

  The greatest monument of the Syrian countryside is not a village or city but a monastery. The cruciform church of St Symeon was built in the fifth century around the pillar where the saint had dwelt. Its scale and lavish decoration suggest imperial patronage, and its location near a major highway allowed it to attract pilgrims from far and near. They were lodged in hostels in the town below the church and were evidently a major factor in the local economy, especially since their great feasts attracted a wide public who came for business as much as piety. These festivals usually included a regional trade fair that could bring people together from great distances and contributed seriously to the local economy. Such shrines existed throughout the empire, sometimes in cities (most notably Jerusalem, as well as Ephesus and Thessalonica) or not far from them (as the grand complex of St Thecla near Seleucia in Isauria), and rarely in the remote countryside, as Mount Sinai. These sites, usually the most renowned of their region, often included monasteries which formed an important element of both rural and urban environments. Monks performed works of piety and charity, but could also play a role in local manufacture. The monasteries, which ranged from small desert cells to grand urban or suburban complexes, appeared everywhere, but most commonly in or near cities. They employed an essentially domestic architecture for most of their buildings.

  Cities, market towns, villages, and monasteries all formed part of an interdependent system connected by trade and reinforced by the political and ecclesiastical system. However Christianized, they maintained the fundamental structures of the Graeco-Roman world, with its prosperous cities embedded in the vast countryside on which they depended, as much as the villages depended on them. Although amenities and public works sharply differentiated the worlds of city and country, trade and the economy bound them together. When the cities declined or collapsed, a different world was created.

  3

  New Religion, Old Culture

  CYRIL MANGO

  At the time of Constantine’s conversion (312) Christians made up a small minority of the empire’s population, say 10 per cent, although that is only a guess. There were more of them in cities than in the countryside, more in the East than in the West. Originally recruited among the lower classes, they had been steadily climbing the social ladder.

  Setting aside the Jews, who were not very numerous, and certain marginal sects, like the Manichaeans, the bulk of the population consisted of followers of traditional local religions whom we call pagans. Paganism was a welter of more or less compatible cults coexisting under a Graeco-Roman umbrella thanks to a process of mutual identification of deities.

  To the ancient mind (and the same is still true of many parts of the globe today) rel
igio was a body of ritual, a set of inherited prescriptions of great antiquity, which were performed both within the family and publicly so as to avert the anger of the gods and ensure the well-being of the community. As late as c.AD 500 the historian Zosimus, a pagan, could seriously state that the decline of the empire had been caused by Constantine’s failure to celebrate the Secular Games, which fell due in 313 at the latest. Roman religio was civic rather than individual, which meant that it was run by the state. It had no sacred text, no professional priesthood, and no theology. It differed from superstitio, the latter being defined as an excessive or irrational awe of the gods. Religio was proper and gentlemanly. It did not concern itself with the Big Questions, such as the origin of the universe, the meaning of life, or ultimate ends. The few who were interested in such profundities turned to philosophy, which was seen as a different kind of activity. Several varieties of philosophy were on offer, all of Greek origin: Aristotelianism, Platonism (old, middle, and late), Stoicism, Pythagoreanism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, etc. Philosophy was based on human reason, not supernatural revelation, and the choice of a particular sect (haeresis) was not seen as being incompatible with the practice of traditional religion, although Epicureans (who held that the gods had no interest in human affairs) had a bit of a problem in that respect. By and large, the distinction between religion and philosophy held good in the early centuries of our era when philosophies tended to move from rationalism to mysticism, whereas religion developed some theological content.