August 21, 2006
So That's Why My Tax Dollars Pay for Luxury Boxes
After reading the Oxford Press dialogue with two authors of books on the fall of Rome, I'd intended to have a bit of fun. Both authors explain how unfashionable it is to describe the end of the Empire as a undesirable thing, and are a bit defensive about their negative view of the barbarian invasions. I'd planned to do a tongue-in-cheek rant about "cultural relativists" and political correctness overriding common sense in Ancient History. Sounds more fun than the "War on Christmas," right?
Unfortunately for my attempt at satire, it turns out that Heather and Ward-Perkins aren't being paranoid at all. The first volume of the 2005 Cambridge Medieval History addresses the late Roman Empire in its early essays, spending page after page on "continuity theory." Sure, urban centers may have collapsed, but the ruling classes were moving out to the countryside in Constantine's day. The bronze coinage used by the majority of the population fluctuated wildly before disappearing, but the gold solidus retained its value. You can't describe as a decline, really, since conditions had been getting steadily worse since the third century.
The easiest rebuttal I can offer is this story from Norbert Schoenauer's 6000 Years of Housing, describing a post-apocalyptic landscape rivalling anything out of Hollywood (pp. 219-220):
In those parts of Europe that were not occupied by the Moors or Saracens, frequent barbarian incursions diminished and disrupted city life. Large cities lay in ruins, and their few surviving citizens sometimes became mere squatters in a single Roman building. Arles, in southern France, for instance, served as the prefecture of the Gauls and was known as Arelate during the Roman Empire. Although pillaged in 270, it was restored and embellished once again by the Romans to its former beauty. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the city was occupied by the Visigoths and in 730 plundered and destroyed by the Saracens. The few surviving inhabitants took refuge within the protective walls of their amphitheater. The confines of this large Roman edifice — seating capacity was 25,000 — became the setting of an emerging medieval fortress town. With the exception of two gateways, the lower two stories, consisting of sixty arcades, were walled in and adapted to dwellings. The third-floor arcade was demolished, and the building materials so gained were used to complete the fortification installations and to build on the level site of the arena a church, chapels, and additional houses. This compact fortress settlement with its four defense towers survived the vicissitudes of many subsequent centuries and was still in existence as an identifiable city precinct at hte beginning of the nineteenth century, when it was demolished to free the Roman ruins from their medieval appendices.This adaptation of amphitheater to a medieval fortress city was not unique. In similar circumstances the inhabitants of Nîmes, another city of southern France, transformed their amphitheater into a small medieval city of 2,000 inhabitants served by two churches. The arcades of the theater were filled in with masonry walls and served as the ramparts of the town.
Posted by Ben Brumfield at August 21, 2006 06:52 PM