The Economic History of Byzantium From

10% of landowners, held properties of 100 arouras (30 ha). Their estates were managed in a comparatively sophisticated manner by subleasees, who often leased them to local agents; these in turn had the land worked by day laborers or sharecroppers.75

There may also have been small landowners who lived in town and worked their allotments themselves.76 Egypt provides a clearer example of the relations between landholdings, contradicting the traditional dichotomy between wealthy landowners living in town and small peasants. Even in other regions, there must have existed town dwellers who held small properties, such as the 53% of Hermopolites or the 40% of Antinoites who owned properties smaller than 10 arouras (approximately 3 ha),77 which they either cultivated themselves or had farmed by others.

Current research postulates the existence of a smallor mid-sized independent peasantry, such as existed in northern Syria78 and in the Argolid.79 The same holds true at Nessana, in which, on the evidence of several recovered papyri, peasant landholdings (small or mid-sized, but in any event often composed of several lots) seem to have predominated.80 It is equally certain that there were agricultural workers and tenant farmers.81 The role of slavery in agricultural labor, while attested to by texts, seems nonetheless to have been overstated.

Does all this suggest the development of a small independent peasantry, as Paul Lemerle, Alexander Kazhdan, and Michel Kaplan believe, or rather the drifting of the estate system into a “seigneurie ille´gitime,” as Evelyne Patlagean has suggested? Archaeology does not shed light on the system of exploitation. We know that there coexisted a wide variety of landowners, but we cannot establish the relative proportions in the absence of written sources. Similarly, the proportion of those who owned nothing and leased their labor remains unknown. On the whole, however, the houses of the limestone massif, Cilicia, and the Negev give a vague impression of wealth, even if

75Bagnall, Egypt, 150. One aroura 2.756 m2.

76Ibid. At the beginning of the 7th century, a good number of inhabitants of Thessalonike would make their way to the fields at harvest time; these may, however—in part at least—have been peasants who had sought refuge within the walls of the city. P. Lemerle, ed., Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de Saint De´me´trius et la pe´ne´tration slave dans les Balkans, 2 vols. (Paris, 1979), 1: miracle 2, § 199, p. 185.

77Bagnall, Egypt, 150.

78Tate, Campagnes, 257–332. Cf. the peasant “owners and cultivators” mentioned by Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Histoires des moines de Syrie, 2:3–4, p. 39.

79Jameson, Runnels, and Van Andel, Southern Argolid. This hypothesis nonetheless is premised on a dense level of habitation. The proliferation of small landholdings in late antique Greece has been studied by Kosso, “Public Policy and Agricultural Practice.”

80P. Mayerson, “The Agricultural Regime,” in Excavations at Nessana, ed. H. D. Colt (London, 1962), 1:211–69, esp. 225–27 (no mention of colonists or emphyteutai), reprinted in part in idem, Monks, Martyrs, Soldiers and Saracens: Papers on the Near East in Late Antiquity, 1962–1993 (Jerusalem, 1994), 21–39.

81The position of J.-M. Carrie´ on the colonate seems the most plausible: see “‘Le colonat du Bas-Empire’: Un mythe historiographique?” Opus 1 (1982.2): 351–70; “Un roman des origines: Les ge´ne´alogies du ‘colonat du Bas-Empire,’” Opus 2 (1983.1): 205–51; idem, “Colonato del BassoImpero: La resistenza del mito,” in Terre, proprietari e contadini dell’impero romano dall’affitto agrario al colonato tardoantico, ed. E. Lo Cascio (Rome, 1997), 75–150.

184 MORRISSON AND SODINI

the fragility of the returns on agriculture is well evidenced by the sources.82 Finally, the voluntary westward migration of eastern peoples (from Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt), and their key role in large-scale trade, constituted an important element of the dynamics of exchanges.83

Cities and Their Role

The Development of the Early Byzantine City and Its Construction to the Mid-Sixth Century

Construction in the cities during the fifth and sixth centuries represented a significant economic undertaking. Earthquakes and wars entailed frequent rebuilding, and thus put into action an often significant level of manpower that required payment.

The Protection of Cities Even in limiting our discussion to the sixth century, the program of public works undertaken by Anastasios and Justinian was considerable. It centered, in the first instance, around the various limes. Weak in Italy, it was more developed on the Danube and the Euphrates and in Africa.

In the Balkans, frontier fortifications were constructed to bar attacks from a specific direction: the Long Wall of Thrace, which protected Constantinople and its hinterland, that of the Dardanelles, which sought to forestall barbarian incursions from Europe into Asia, the Long Wall of Dyrrachium, which protected the Via Egnatia as well as the city itself, the fortification of Thermopylae, and the reinforcement of the wall on the isthmus of Corinth by Victorinus, who had assumed, as one of his inscriptions clearly states, “the responsibility for the fortifications for the entirety of the Balkan provinces.” Most cities were walled, and these walls were often consolidated during the first half of the sixth century. Victorinus refortified Byllis, while reducing its surface area. At Nicopolis ad Istrum a wall was erected outside the city, reserved for the troops of the garrison; it served as a place of refuge for the neighboring population, whose habitat was not circumscribed. Anastasios rebuilt the walls at Histria, Tomis, and Ratiaria, Justinian refortified Serdica, Naissus, Pautalia, Trajanopolis, Augusta Trajana, Bononia, Oescus, Novae, and Durostorum. Tiberios I (578–582) repaired Serdica’s walls.

82Cf. Theodore of Sykeon’s interventions to rescue peasants from their state of misery and anecdotes of peasants on the brink of financial ruin: H. J. Magoulias, “The Lives of the Saints as Sources for Byzantine Agrarian Life in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries,” GOTR 35 (1990): 59–64. Regarding the effects of agricultural crises, see E. Patlagean, Pauvrete´´economique et pauvrete´ sociale `a Byzance, 4e–7e sie`cles (Paris, 1977), 74–92, and P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risks and Crisis (Cambridge, 1988), which opens with the description of the famine at Edessa in the year 500 contained in the Chronicle of ps. Joshua the Stylite (W. Wright, The Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, Composed in Syriac A. D. 507 [Cambridge, 1882], 32–45, pp. 23–35). See also Tate, Campagnes, 335–50.

83A. Avramea, “Mort loin de la patrie: L’apport des inscriptions pale´ochre´tiennes,” in Epigrafia medievale greca e latina: Ideologia e funzione, ed. G. Cavallo and C. Mango (Spoleto, 1995), 1–65; see D. Feissel, “Bulletin ´epigraphique,” REG 108 (1995): no. 702.

The fortifications of Tomis were rebuilt in the sixth century by well-off citizens—one portion by the makellarioi, probably an association of merchants. The wall at Gortyna was rebuilt in 539 under the consulship of Flavius Appion.84

In Africa, Salomon the patrikios undertook the fortification of the reconquered area. The Theodosian wall at Carthage seems to have been reconstructed, and in the rest of the territory, citadels were built in the center of cities and advance posts erected at the nerve centers.85

The most costly defense works were those that Anastasios and Justinian secured in northern Syria and on the Euphrates to protect the region against the Persians, who systematically made their attacks by way of the river. The walls of these cities—Ru- safa,86 Halabiye,87 Dara,88 Chalcis,89 and Antioch—are sheer masterpieces of military architecture. The architecture of the region (Rusafa, Dara, Qasr ibn Wardan,90 Sura) includes Byzantine masonry techniques (vaults and alternating stone and brickwork), adapted to local conditions by architects dispatched from Constantinople (John and Isidore the Younger).91 The number of construction workers used in these vast work sites, which were begun more or less simultaneously, was considerable and must have further enriched a region that was still wealthy despite the first Persian attacks. At Dara, for example, workers received 4 keratia per day, 8 if they had a donkey at their disposal.92

84T. E. Gregory, “Fortification and Urban Design in Early Byzantine Greece,” in City, Town, and Countryside in the Early Byzantine Era, ed. R. L. Hohlfelder (New York, 1982), 43–64; F. E. Wozniak, “The Justinianic Fortification in the Interior Illyricum,” in ibid., 199–209; D. Feissel, “L’architecte Viktoˆrinos et les fortifications de Justinien dans les provinces balkaniques,” BAntFr (1988): 136–46.

85D. Pringle, The Defence of Byzantine Africa from Justinian to the Arab Conquest: An Account of the Military History and Archaeology of the African Provinces in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries (Oxford, 1991); J. Durliat, Les de´dicaces d’ouvrages de de´fense dans l’Afrique byzantine (Rome, 1981); report of N. Duval, “L’e´tat actuel des recherches sur les fortifications de Justinien en Afrique,” CorsiRav 30 (1983): 149–204; see also P. Trousset, “Les ‘fines antiquae’ et la reconqueˆte byzantine en Afrique,” BAC 19B (1985): 361–76.

86W. Karnapp, Die Stadtmauer von Resafa in Syrien (Berlin, 1976).

87J. Lauffray, Halabiyya-Zenobia, Place forte du limos oriental et la Haute-Mesopotamie au VIe sie`cle, vol. 1 (Paris, 1983); vol. 2 (Paris, 1991), 15–26.

88B. Croek and J. Crow, “Procopius and Dara,” JRS 73 (1983): 143–59; L. M. Whitby, “Procopius’s Description of Dara (Buildings 2.1–3),” in The Defence of the Roman and Byzantine East, ed. P. Freeman and D. Kennedy (Oxford, 1986), 737–83; E. Zanini, “La cinta muraria di Dara: Materiali per un’analisi stratigrafica,” Milion 2 (Rome, 1990): 229–64.

89D. Feissel and J.-P. Fourdrin, “Une porte urbaine construite `a Chalcis de Syrie,” TM 13 (1996): 299–307.

90F. de Maffei, “Il palazzo di Qasr ibn-Wardan dopo gli scavi e restauri,” in Arte profana e arte sacra a Bisanzio Milion 3 (1995): 105–87.

91F. W. Deichmann, “Westliche Bautechnik im ro¨mischen und rhoma¨ischen Osten,” in Rom, Ravenna, Konstantinopel, Naher Osten: Gesammelte Studien zur spa¨tantiken Architektur, Kunst und Geschichte, ed. F. W. Deichmann (Wiesbaden, 1982), 712–66 (earlier version published in RM 86 [1979]: 473–527); T. Ulbert, “Villes et fortifications de l’Euphrate `a l’e´poque pale´ochre´tienne,” in Arche´ologie et histoire de la Syrie, ed. J.-M. Dentzer and W. Orthmann (Saarbru¨cken, 1989), 2:283–96.

92Zacharias of Mytilene, Historia Ecclesiastica Zachariae rhetori vulgo adscripta, ed. E. W. Brooks (Paris, 1924), 7.6, p. 25.

186 MORRISSON AND SODINI

The Persistence of Civil Construction and Urbanism through the Mid-Sixth Century Justinian financed and had built, by his own engineers, large infrastructures, both inside and outside cities, for example, the bridge on the Sangarios River and terraces at Antioch to overcome the depredations of torrents. Communications networks in Asia Minor and in Macedonia were the object of constant efforts from the fourth until the sixth century. The De aedificiis makes mention of road repair and construction near Rhegium, Bithynia, Phrygia, and in Cilicia. Mileposts have been discovered in Caria. The restoration of the Via Sebaste of Pamphylia at Sebaste, and of the roads that linked Tarsos to Podandus, and Antioch to Beroea and Chalcis,93 all date to the sixth or even the seventh century. In the East, the empire maintained a network of roads that was of great utility in shortand medium-distance trade.94

The sixth century, however, was no longer a period of booming urbanization, as distinct from the fourth and fifth centuries. Justinian ordered the construction of Justiniana Prima, which has been identified with the site of Caricˇin Grad, but the initiative came to a halt. Of the city there remain but three surrounding walls, one reserved for the episcopal quarter, the second for an upper city with a simple crossing of cardo and decumanus, distinguished by a circular area that calls to mind the Forum of Constantine at Constantinople; the third wall, an addition, enclosed the lower city. The axes and the plaza were bordered with brick pillars imitative of portico columns. Outside the walls, baths added an element of urban luxury.

Justinian’s other urban undertakings were mere reconstructions necessitated by wars or natural catastrophes. In rebuilding Antioch, which had been destroyed by the earthquakes of 526 and 528 and leveled by the Persians, Justinian took care to restore the luster of the metropolis of antiquity that had been placed under the protection of God (Theoupolis). He enlarged Rusafa and Zenobia and endowed the cities with agoras, porticoed streets, and public baths. Elsewhere, the sixth-century emperors or governors embellished regional metropoleis that had been endowed earlier by their predecessors. In the large cities, earthquakes necessitated reconstruction, which was financed by the emperor, the governor, or the bishop. Such was the case at Apameia, Antioch, Pella, Gerasa, and probably Beirut, which recovered with some difficulty from an earthquake and a subsequent tidal wave in 551.95

Often these initiatives consisted of more basic structures, such as the cistern constructed under the basilica at Constantinople during the reign of Justinian, or those at Rusafa that date to the same emperor.96 Aqueducts, such as that from Kythrea to Salamis in Cyprus, and fountains, such as those at Gortyna, although exceptional, were constructed as late as under Herakleios. Porticoed streets were constructed or repaired at Sardis, Ephesos (where a tetrastyle was added in the 6th century), Halabiye, Bostra

93D. French, “A Road Problem: Roman or Byzantine?” IstMitt 43 (1993): 445–55.

94Cf. Avramea, “Land and Sea Communications,” 56ff.

95A. Walmsley, “Byzantine Palestine and Arabia: Urban Prosperity in Late Antiquity,” in Christie and Loseby, Towns in Transition (as above, note 10), 126–58.

96W. Brinker, “Zur Wasserversorgung von Resafa-Sergiupolis,” Damaszener Mitteilungen 5 (1991): 119–68.

(516), Jerusalem, Caesarea Maritima, Beisan-Scythopolis, Hermopolis, and Ptolemais (a tetrastyle). In Aphrodisias the porticoes of the agora were reconstructed in the sixth century.97 At Beisan, dedicatory inscriptions testify to a lively patronage that endured in the sixth century, made manifest in the construction, or the embellishment, of streets with porticoes.98 Within these porticoes and macella, like those at Durre¨s (built by Anastasios) and Gerasa (partly rebuilt in the 6th century), essential trade and artisanal activity were concentrated. As in Sardis and Beirut, shops crowded the two sides of these streets, which were often lit at night.

In North Africa, as noted above, towns such as Timgad, Djemila, and Bulla Regia extended their borders beyond those of the classical period, but with an apparent partial abandonment of their ancient surrounding walls. In a number of cities, decorative monuments continued to be constructed: a triumphal arch was erected at Haidra following the Byzantine reconquest.99 Until the middle of the sixth century, and particularly in Asia Minor, Syro-Palestine, Transjordan, and Egypt, cities were maintained, and the presence of even lines of shops testify to trade living in harmony with a population that had often reached its apogee. The world that Libanios had celebrated in the

Antiochikos lived on.

The Development of Religious Buildings: Churches, Monasteries, and Pilgrimage Sites Starting around 450, a vast building program associated with the church was launched throughout the empire, calling up a significant level of capital: emperors, princes, and dignitaries (such as Anicia Juliana and many others whose epigrams occasionally retain the names of their dedicator), large landowners, and the faithful (even in the villages that came under the watch of civil leaders and the clergy) contributed lavishly. The church took the place of the antique temple in the collective imagination. As to scale, only Romanesque and Gothic construction programs can vie with this flourishing boom. In Constantinople and in most large centers, such as Ravenna, Ephesos, Antioch, and Thessalonike, religious architecture, which blended into imperial architecture (for it was the emperor who inspired the large churches of the capital) was the more advanced in conception and in the choice and assemblage of materials, attaining the technological limits of the age.

The era of Justinian is particularly revealing of the technological quality and the costs of construction. The names of Anthemios of Tralles and Isidore of Miletos and their theoretical grounding as mechanopoioi are sufficiently well known that we need not dwell on them here. But this conceptual revolution was also accompanied by a high level of care in the choice of materials that recast the convention of building. Hagia Sophia, the churches of St. Polyeuktos, Sts. Sergios and Bakchos, St. John of Ephesos, and Basilica B of Philippi are testimony to this costly revolution, whose effects

97C. Roueche´, Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity: The Late Roman and Byzantine Inscriptions including Texts from the Excavations at Aphrodisias Conducted by Kenan T. Erim (London, 1989), no. 66, pp. 108–9; nos. 82–84, pp. 125–36.

98Tsafrir and Foerster, “From Scythopolis to Baysan,” 95–115.

99F. Baratte and N. Duval, Haı¨dra: Les ruines d’Ammaedara (Tunis, 1974).

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were felt as far as San Vitale in Ravenna and Qasr ibn Wardan in northern Syria. While the number of workers cited in the account of the construction of Hagia Sophia seems exaggerated, it indicates the enormous mobilization of labor that the project required. The choice and importance of the marbles, the unrivaled skill displayed in the fittings of St. Polyeuktos and Hagia Sophia (recalled in the works of Prokopios and Paul Silentiarios), and the precious metals invested in the churches’ decorations and liturgical objects corresponded to an extraordinary financial undertaking. According to Gregory of Tours, all of Anicia Juliana’s gold went into constructing the vaults of St. Polyeuktos.100 The silver-leaf revetment of Hagia Sophia corresponded to 40,000 pounds of silver (166,000 solidi), a total that is confirmed in part by the estimates of the surface area that Marlia Mango has advanced: 35,181 pounds of silver for the altar, the ciborium, the chancel, the ambo, the synthronon, and the doors.101 E. Stein estimates the amount spent on Hagia Sophia at between 1.04 and 1.3 million solidi,102 forty or fifty times the amount that Julianus Argentarius spent on San Vitale, which totaled 26,000 solidi.103 In the course of the year 532, the praetorian prefect Phokas spent 4,000 pounds (288,000 solidi) for Hagia Sophia.

It is curious that Justinian did not include a cupola when building the Nea Ekklesia in Jerusalem or reconstructing the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, nor for the katholikon of the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai. But the luxuriousness of these edifices implies financial outlays that must have been common through the whole of the empire. Justinian’s reign witnessed the construction of numerous other churches, recorded with what seems a certain complacency in the De aedificiis; these were occasionally incorporated into important civil buildings, as in Sabratha or Apollonia. To these may be added the churches of Gerasa, many of which, while they do not invoke his patronage, date to Justinian’s reign, as well as those erected in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, in Africa Proconsularis (Carthage), at Ravenna (San Vitale, Sant’Apollinare in Classe, Sant’Andrea), or even at Porec´ (the basilica of Euphrasius). Many churches were built or reconstructed, such as the episcopal group at Apameia, by the bishop Paul. The centers of pilgrimage, in addition to those of St. John of Ephesos and St. Catherine at Sinai, were in many cases at their height during the first half of the sixth century; such was the case at Rusafa, at Mount Nebo, and at Abu Mina. Aegean marbles were in demand throughout the empire,104 and the shipwrecked cargo of Marzamemi shows the extent to which production was standardized. Luxurious liturgical fittings (patens,

100R. M. Harrison, Excavations at Sarac¸hane, vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J.–Washington, D.C., 1986), 420.

101M. Mundell Mango, “The Uses of Liturgical Silver, 4th–7th Century,” in Church and People in Byzantium, ed. R. Morris (Birmingham, 1990), 245–61.

102Stein, Bas-Empire, 2:459–60.

103S. J. B. Barnish, “The Wealth of Julianus Argentarius: Late Antique Banking and the Mediterranean Economy,” Byzantion 55 (1985): 5–38 (citing Agnellus, Liber pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, MGH, 59, 77).

104J.-P. Sodini, “Le commerce des marbres `a l’e´poque protobyzantine,” in Hommes et richesses (as above, note 15), 1:163–86. See also J.-P. Sodini, “Marble and Stoneworking in Byzantium, Seventh– Fifteenth Centuries,” EHB, 127, 131.

chalices, lamps on stands, chandeliers, and other lighting devices) were found not only in the large urban centers, but also in the monasteries of Lycia (the treasure of Kumlica105), and in the village churches of Syria (the treasures of Kaper Koraon and of Tarroutia).106

The role of construction in the Byzantine economy was thus considerable and necessarily involved all the inhabitants of the empire. It used the abundantly available surplus materials, “petrified” as it were, provided a living for dozens of trade groups, and, with respect to the church at least, represented a considerable source of profit. The wealth that was invested in the treasures of these churches, moreover, constituted a reserve against which emperors and conquerors could draw generously.

The Impoverishment of Cities

The progressive degradation of the cities is clearly perceptible through excavation and is characterized by a break with “urban logic.” Thoroughfares became dominated by shoddy and partitioned structures. The intent of public monuments became subverted: baths and buildings of importance did service as habitations or workshops, their marbles were torn out, and heating stoves were installed nearby. Refuse and spolia blocked certain areas of the sites or served as fill for floors of beaten earth. Sewers and aqueducts were abandoned, and simple trenches took up the functions of the former. Burials began to appear intra muros, and the walls of the city were no longer maintained.107 Houses suffered a similar fate.108 This typology, corresponding to a state of crisis that the city could overcome only by transforming itself, finds confirmation throughout the Mediterranean world;109 it has already been noted with respect to Italy110 and North Africa.111 What remains clear is that this urban withdrawal began in the course of the sixth century, with varying phases that may be tied to geographic areas.

105S. A. Boyd and M. Mundell Mango, Ecclesiastical Silver Plate in Sixth-Century Byzantium (Washington, D.C., 1992); report of C. Morrisson, “Tre´sors d’argenterie des ´eglises byzantines du VIe sie`cle: Production et valeur,” JRA 8 (1995): 539–48.

106M. Mundell Mango, “The Origins of the Syrian Ecclesiastical Silver Treasures of the SixthSeventh Centuries,” in Argenterie romaine et byzantine, ed. F. Baratte (Paris, 1988), 163–84; eadem, Silver from Early Byzantium: The Kaper Koraon and Related Treasures (Baltimore, Md., 1986); A. Effenberger, “Bemerkungen zum ‘Kaper Koraon’ Schatz,” in Tesserae: Festschrift fu¨r Josef Engemann JbAC Erga¨n-

zungsband 18 (1981): 241–77.

107H. Saradi-Mendelovici, “The Demise of the Ancient City and the Emergence of the Medieval City in the Eastern Roman Empire,” Echos du monde classique/Classical Views 32 (1988): 365–

108S. P. Ellis, “The End of the Roman House,” AJA 92 (1988): 565–76.

109See, in particular, the excellent bibliographic essay of S. J. B. Barnish, “The Transformation of Classical Cities and the Pirenne Debate,” JRA 2 (1989): 385–400.

110Regarding the material impoverishment of Roman culture between the 6th and 7th centuries, see L. Paroli et al., La storia economica di Roma nell’alto medioevo alla luce dei recenti scavi archeologici (Florence, 1993).

111In addition to the articles cited above in note 10, see W. H. C. Frend, “The End of Byzantine North Africa,” BAC 19.2 (1985): 387–97.

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The Balkans and Greece The state of domestic peace that the Balkans and Greece had witnessed was shattered starting in the 540s, as noted above. The Danubian limes was increasingly breached by peoples (Antae, Avars, Slavs) who limited themselves to episodic, albeit destructive, raids. Later, however, toward 570–580, the occupation became more concentrated and more permanent. Slavs settled in Thessaly and others destabilized the Peloponnese, provoking burials of coin hoards as numerous as those noted in Macedonia. The Slavic occupation of central Greece and certain coastal regions at the beginning of the seventh century is well attested by written sources, toponyms, and archaeological evidence. Thessalonike, Athens, Corinth, Isthmia, as well as certain coastal zones, and, naturally, the islands, maintained contact with the empire.

Athens offers a paradoxical account: baths were apparently added to a villa after 530, but a short time later the agora, in which two agricultural mills were erected, assumed a rural aspect, and certain imported ceramics became rare.112 At Delphi, by around 580–590, the abandonment of patrician villas becomes evident; pottery kilns were installed within their walls and functioned until 610–620. By the mid-sixth century, the Roman forum at Corinth had become deserted, surrounded by burial sites; the city’s center had moved elsewhere. Seventh-century tombs containing weapons and belt buckles testify to the presence of a Byzantine garrison composed in part of barbarian soldiers, as was the case at Tigani in the Mani. Was there still a civilian population in the Roman city? Was the Acrocorinth doing duty as a place of refuge?113

Asia Minor The studies of Clive Foss and of Wolfgang Mu¨ller-Wiener have amply demonstrated the decline of many coastal cities, such as Ephesos, and even of cities that were at some remove from the sea, such as Sardis and Ankyra, in which the Persian attacks coincided with the end of the city of antiquity and the transformation of towns into ruralized villages.114 The fate of other cities is comparable: Aphrodisias survived the plague of 541–542, but suffered severe depredations around 619–620, and died away, without having been conquered. While the decline of the town of Sagalassos took place earlier, it provides a somewhat comparable example.115 We can observe a

112J.-P. Sodini, “L’habitat urbain en Illyricum `a la veille des invasions,” in Villes et peuplement dans l’Illyricum protobyzantin (Rome, 1984), 341–97.

113E. A. Ivison, “Burial and Urbanism at Late Antique and Early Byzantine Corinth (c. A.D. 400– 700),” in Christie and Loseby, Towns in Transition (as above, note 10), 99–125; A. Dunn, “The Transition from polis to kastron in the Balkans (III–VII cc.): General and Regional Perspectives,” BMGS 18 (1994): 60–80.

114In addition to Foss’s studies of Ephesos and Sardis, see his “Archaeology and the ‘Twenty Cities’ of Byzantine Asia,” AJA 81 (1977): 469–86 ( History and Archaeology of Byzantine Asia Minor [Aldershot, 1990], art. 2); idem, “Late Antique and Byzantine Ankara,” DOP 31 (1987): 29–87 ( ibid., art. 6); idem, “The Cities of Pamphylia in the Byzantine Age,” in Cities, Fortresses, and Villages of Byzantine Asia Minor (Aldershot, 1996), art. 4. W. Mu¨ller-Wiener has also emphasized the retrenchment and ruralization of towns in Asia Minor: “Von der Polis zum Kastron,” Gymnasium 93 (1986): 435–75.

115See the reports of Marc Waelkens and his co-authors in AnatSt 37 (1987): 37–48; 38 (1988): 53–67; 39 (1989): 61–76; 40 (1990): 185–98; 41 (1991): 197–214; 42 (1992): 79–98; 44 (1994): 169–

86.See also Sagalassos I: First General Report on the Survey (1986–1989) and Excavations (1990–1991), ed. M. Waelkens (Leuven, 1993); Sagalassos II: Report on the Third Excavation Campaign of 1992, ed. M.

degradation from the beginning of the sixth century: shops were subdivided and served as habitation, as did the adjacent porticoes. Starting in the early seventh century, possibly because of a lack of water, these houses were destroyed. A short time later, Sagalassos was abandoned by its population, which moved to nearby Aglasun where water was abundant; it was there that Byzantine Sagalassos survived. At Anemourion, the turning point took place around 580, with an earthquake from which the town never recovered.116 At Amorion the intent of current excavations is to show that the city suffered a specific fate. Although the city withdrew inside its ramparts during the sixth century and witnessed stagnation to some degree, it was not abandoned; its destruction took place in 838 when the Arabs captured and burned the city.117

The Aegean Islands, Crete, and Cyprus Unlike the continental regions (and the Balkans in particular), certain islands demonstrated a considerable vitality during the seventh century. The clearest cases are Samos118 and Chios.119 Undoubtedly, the two functioned as places of refuge, as did the little islands of the Saronic Gulf. But like these islands, Samos and Chios also played an important strategic role, as is demonstrated by the fortress of Emporio; military expenditures must have stimulated the regional economy, a conclusion for which there is evidence in the plentiful coinage and coin finds of Constans II. It is nonetheless uncertain whether military activity helped to support urban facilities. Karpathos and Rhodes undoubtedly fared similarly, but excavations do not disclose a clear sequence of events.

Herakleios’ interest in the capital cities of the two islands (which shared strategic positions on Byzantium’s southern front in the eastern Mediterranean) played a decisive role, starting with the Persian invasion and the subsequent Arab conquest. Crete was never occupied by the Slavs. Inscriptions dating to the reign of Herakleios, around 615, have long focused attention on the later stages of the city of Gortyna.120 The city was substantially rebuilt following an earthquake that occurred between 618 and 621. The praetorium was reconstructed with a superb dedication to the emperors; the judi-

Waelkens and J. Poblome (Leuven, 1993); eadem, Sagalassos III: Report on the Fourth Excavation Campaign of 1993 (Leuven, 1995).

116J. Russell, “The Archaeological Context of Magic in the Early Christian Period,” in Byzantine Magic, ed. H. Maguire (Washington, D.C., 1995), 35–50.

117Preliminary reports of R. M. Harrison (up to and including 1993), and subsequently of C. S. Lightfoot, in AnatSt 38 (1988): 175–84; 39 (1989): 167–74; 40 (1990): 205–18; 41 (1991): 215–29; 42 (1992): 207–22; 43 (1993): 147–62; 44 (1994): 105–28; 45 (1995): 105–38; 46 (1996): 91–110; C. S. Lightfoot, “The Survival of Cities in Byzantine Anatolia: The Case of Amorium,” Byzantion 68 (1998): 56–71; C. S. Lightfoot et al., “The Amorium Project: The 1997 Study Season,” DOP 53 (1999): 333–49.

118W. Martini and C. Streckner, Das Gymnasium von Samos: Das fru¨hbyzantinische Klostergut (Bonn, 1993).

119M. Ballance et al., Excavations in Chios: Byzantine Emporio (Oxford, 1989).

120A. Di Vita, “Atti della Scuola, 1986–1987,” ASAtene 64–65, n.s., 48–49 (1986–87): 503–14; idem, “Atti della Scuola, 1988–1989,” ASAtene 66–67, n.s., 50 (1988–89): 469–71; idem, “Atti della Scuola, 1990–1991,” ASAtene 68–69, n.s., 51–52 (1990–91): 433–71, offering a detailed examination of the different sectors studied; A. Di Vita and A. Martin, Gortina II (Padua, 1997).