Roman Cities

Introduction
The Roman Empire was an empire of cities. The city was the primary organizational building block of the empire; almost the whole empire was divided into city territories. Despite this, there are problems when defining a Roman city. In this article the “Roman city” is understood as an urban space within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Even on these terms, given that this definition encompasses over a thousand years of history and a space that stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia, the “Roman” city is a much-varied entity. Furthermore, many of these cities predated the Roman conquest, complicating analysis of what is “Roman” about them; it is perhaps better to think of them as cities that existed under Roman rule. It is also important to note that the Roman legal definition of the city did not just comprise the urban area but also the rural hinterland with its villages and small towns that were dependent on it. In any definition of the Roman city, there is also a question of whether we should include the vici (small towns) of these territories. Although not institutionally independent, some demonstrate aspects of urban life, for instance the erection of public buildings, while others contain more-industrial installations than many cities. If these settlements developed enough, they might petition for their freedom and become a city in their own right; Orcistus in Asia Minor famously managed to free itself from Nacolia by appealing to Constantine I (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum III 352 = 7000). The city itself, as a special category of study, has come under attack on numerous fronts. Horden and Purcell 2000 (The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, cited in the City and Economic Models), for instance, argues that the city was not ontologically different from other settlement types (although others have pointed to the importance of the density of specialists making such places qualitatively different), while the concentration on the “Roman” city at the expense of rural sites has sometimes been viewed as an expression of cultural colonialism. Because of the nature of the evolution of urban space, the examination of the Roman city has been inherently bound up in the study of Romanization and has benefited and suffered as a result. Examinations of the Roman city encompass a variety of approaches, from assessments of institutions and legal charters to demography, urban religion and Christianization, monumentalization, public writing, and the city as lived experience.
General Overviews
Given the diversity discussed in the Introduction, it is unsurprising that no one book provides a comprehensive overview of all cities in the Roman world. Laurence, et al. 2011 uses different elements of the city to examine how provincial cities, west of the Adriatic, fit within processes of cultural change, especially given the fluidity of the concept of Romanness. The chapters in Erdkamp 2013 present an overview of Rome itself, but the aspects of urban life that are examined will, for the most part, be relevant to those working on Roman cities more generally. Anderson 2002 also focuses on Rome and Italy for the most part, and some of the elements that appear in Erdkamp 2013, such as the logistics of building work, are also considered; assessments of provincial cities are perhaps less convincing than that of Rome. Goodman 2007 examines the nature of settlement on the urban periphery. The nature of Roman “cities” that encompassed suburban and rural areas within the polity makes Penelope Goodman’s analysis of the periphery as important as the far-more-numerous works that focus on the urban core. One problem of some approaches to the Roman city is that they divorce it from the wider historical perspective. Any number of histories of the city that embrace Rome within a wider context might be included here. Nicolet, et al. 2000 contains several important chapters on Roman-period cities but also many important chapters on Mediterranean cities across history; Hall 1998 is an examination of the city and civilization across time that briefly considers Rome (and Athens); it has been criticized for being Western-centric (most case studies focus on the 19th and 20th centuries).
Anderson, James C., Jr. 2002. Roman architecture and society. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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Examines builders, buildings and building materials (in Part 1), and different elements of the city: planning, public buildings, and housing and space (in Part 2). Focuses particularly on Rome and Italy and on the “society” element rather than on the evolution of building types. First published in 1997.
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Erdkamp, Paul, ed. 2013. The Cambridge companion to ancient Rome. Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Focuses on the city of Rome rather than on Roman cities, although the chapters, which include examinations of urban life, logistics, ruler and ruled, the sacred, demography, and economics, will be helpful to the student of Roman urbanism in general.
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Goodman, Penelope J. 2007. The Roman city and its periphery: From Rome to Gaul. New York: Routledge.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203446256Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Points to the importance of the relationship between cities and their hinterlands. Settlement was a continuum from monumental urban centers through many gradations to rural settlements. Argues for little evidence of exclusion of economic activity from urban cores.
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Hall, Peter. 1998. Cities in civilization: Culture, innovation, and urban order. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
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Examines Rome in the context of how societies maintain order and provide amenities in large urban centers.
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Laurence, Ray, Simon Esmonde Cleary, and Gareth Sears. 2011. The city in the Roman West, c. 250 BC to AD 250. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511975882Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that one of the essential functions of the Roman city was to produce Romans and that differences can be attributed to differing priorities among elites and differential rhythms of development. A good starting point for those new to the study of the Roman city.
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Nicolet, Claude, Robert Ilbert, and Jean-Charles Depaule, eds. 2000. Mégapoles méditerranéennes: Géographie urbaine rétrospective; Actes du colloque organisé par l’École française de Rome et la Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme, Rome, 8–11 mai 1996. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 261. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose.
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Several chapters relate directly to the Roman world, including by Nicolet, Martine Boiteux, and Gramsci Sartre on Antioch; Filippo Coarelli on Rome; and Pierre Gros on Roman Carthage and on the Greek and Roman periods. Other chapters present approaches to the city in other eras.
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Reference Works
There are a huge number of reference works that take in the Roman city, its development, and its culture but that vary in scope and focus. There are several multivolume reference works on the Roman world that remain an important source of chapters on urban networks, municipal organization, and the development of specific cities. Cancik, et al. 2002–2013 contains mainly short articles on all aspects of ancient society, literature, and culture and, as such, does not focus particularly on the city per se, although individual cities do feature in individual articles. Walbank, et al. 1989–2005; Temporini and Haase 1972–1996; and Momigliano and Schiavone 1988–1993encompass more-substantial chapters on Roman cities and urbanization, although the actual coverage of individual cities tends to be less comprehensive. Such volumes have sometimes been criticized for being fact-heavy encyclopedias rather than being cutting-edge assessments of their subjects, but some chapters remain fundamental analyses; some volumes and chapters are becoming dated. Zahariade 1992– and Stillwell, et al. 1976 contain short descriptions of many, but far from all, Roman-period cities. Talbert 2000 provides detailed maps of all regions of the Roman Empire including known settlements; the majority of maps are at 1:1,000,000 or 1:500,000 scale—the latter for the core areas of the Greek and Roman worlds, Italy, the Aegean, the Levant, and Egypt. Digital resources for the study of the ancient world are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and many include material for the study of the Roman city: see Ancient World Mapping Center andPleiades. Steinby 1993–2000 provides as up to date a picture of the state of knowledge of locations within Rome as is possible.
Ancient World Mapping Center.
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The Ancient World Mapping Center continues the work of Talbert 2000 (The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World project). Its website contains various resources useful for the study of urbanism and urban networks in the Roman world.
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Cancik, Hubert, Helmuth Schneider, and Christine F. Salazar, eds. 2002–2013. Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the ancient world. 16 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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Early-21st-century version of the “Pauly-Wissowa” Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Includes short entries on ancient cities, building types, and important relevant concepts. See in particular Greg Woolf’s article on Romanization. Articles include short bibliographies. The original version is in German (Der Neue Pauly), edited by Cancik and Schneider (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996–2012).
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Momigliano, Arnaldo, and Aldo Schiavone, eds. 1988–1993. Storia di Roma. 4 vols. Turin, Italy: Giulio Einaudi.
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Volumes contain numerous substantial chapters on the Roman world, in Italian; some, particularly the contributions of Pierre Gros, Filippo Coarelli, and Carmine Ampolo, and many chapters in Vol. 3.2, consider urbanism, urban development, and city life.
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Pleiades.
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The Pleiades web resource is an open-access site that seeks to provide a location for the sharing of knowledge about the geography of the ancient world—including knowledge of individual sites and urban networks.
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Steinby, Eva Margareta, ed. 1993–2000. Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae. 6 vols. Rome: Quasar.
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Multilanguage set of volumes. Encyclopedia entries on the known monuments, streets, and houses of the capital. Includes bibliographies and a considerable number of plans and pictures. Replaces Samuel Platner and Thomas Ashby’s A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1929).
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Stillwell, Richard, William L. MacDonald, and Marian H. McAllister, eds. 1976. The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Short histories of the sites, with description of the excavated remains; entries include very short bibliographies. Useful for those wanting an overview of known monuments at a site. Does not include many plans of the sites. Available online.
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Talbert, Richard J. A., ed. 2000. Barrington atlas of the Greek and Roman world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Essential reference work for the study of the extent and development of urban networks in the Roman world. Maps illustrate the state of our knowledge of the location of known cities, and the change in settlement patterns over time.
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Temporini, Hildegard, and Wolfgang Haase, eds. 1972–1996. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Vols. II.3–11. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
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The development of specific cities or cities on a regional basis is tackled throughout Vols. II.3–11. Some chapters remain important studies of particular cities. For a general overview of the city, see “La città romana nei primi secoli: Tendenzi dell’urbanistica,” by G. A. Mansuelli, in Vol. II.12.1. Articles are in several European languages.
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Walbank, F. W., A. E. Astin, M. W. Frederiksen, et al., eds. 1989–2005. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vols. 7.2–14. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Vols. 7.2 through 14 have a total of fifteen editors. As with Temporini and Haase 1972–1996(Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt; ANRW), Roman urbanism and city population appear under various guises, particularly under regional assessments. Each volume includes a considerable bibliography. Chapters are a good starting point for students who already have some knowledge of the subjects covered.
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Zahariade, Mihail, ed. 1992–. Lexicon of the Greek and Roman cities and place names in Antiquity: Ca. 1500 B.C.–ca. A.D. 500. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.
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Short articles on ancient cities; publication is alphabetical and in fascicules. By early 2014, thirteen fascicules had been published, with the latest on Boviamum to Byzantium.
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Textbooks
The current tendency to create companions and handbooks on all aspects of academic study has not yet led to such a companion or handbook to the Roman city, but as a central element of the Roman world it appears in many other handbooks and companions on all aspects of Roman life. Likewise, the city appears as an important element either explicitly or implicitly in textbooks on the Roman world generally. For instance, Goodman 2012 does deal with the city under “society,” but urbanization is also addressed in the chapters that look at the regions. Greene 1986, a textbook on the Roman economy, has many examples centered on the city. All the chapters in Lepelley 1998have the city, and urbanization, as a key category in the regions studied. Laurence 2012 explores key issues within Roman archaeology and has the city as a key arena in which society can be examined; this examination of different approaches to the Roman world and “Romanization” is an excellent starting point for the student of the Roman city. Textbooks on the concept of the city throughout time tend to have at least one chapter on the Greco-Roman city as a prelude to later developments. Gros and Torelli 2010 has seen multiple incarnations demonstrating the popularity of its approach and the value of its discussions and structure. The form and architecture of the Roman city, on the other hand, has been a popular element of discussions of the city, so Ward-Perkins 1994, Stambaugh 1988 (to some degree), and Anderson 2002 (the latter cited in General Overviews) all detail the evolution of the urban form. Dobbins and Foss 2007 provides an overview of the current state of research on Pompeii. In these, building types or chronological evolution tend to be the organizing principle. This section includes some early-21st-century and not-so-recent textbooks on Roman cities (both collective and individual) and some of the relevant chapters or sections in handbooks.
Dobbins, John J., and Pedar W. Foss, eds. 2007. The world of Pompeii. Routledge Worlds. London: Routledge.
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Comprehensive, student-friendly overview of Pompeii; perhaps focuses disproportionately on domestic architecture compared, for instance, to religion at Pompeii. Chapters provide insights into the latest research on Pompeii.
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Goodman, Martin. 2012. The Roman world, 44 BC–AD 180. 2d ed. Routledge History of the Ancient World. New York: Routledge.
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Clearly organized textbook on the early Roman Empire that deals with political, social, regional, and religious history. The city appears as an important element of sections on the empire’s society and in chapters on the empire’s regions.
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Greene, Kevin. 1986. The archaeology of the Roman economy. London: B. T. Batsford.
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Although not focused specifically on the city, this textbook remains a clear and comprehensive examination of the Roman economy.
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Gros, Pierre, and Mario Torelli. 2010. Storia dell’urbanistica: Il mondo romano. Rev. ed. Grandi Opere. Bari, Italy: Editori Laterza.
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Has gone through multiple editions; first published in 1988. Examines pre-Roman and Republican Italy followed by imperial Rome, Italy, and western and eastern cities. Includes a substantial bibliography.
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Laurence, Ray. 2012. Roman archaeology for historians. Approaching the Ancient World. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
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Deals clearly and concisely with many issues tackled in this article; includes towns, Romanization, topography, demography, and the impact of the army.
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Lepelley, Claude, ed. 1998. Rome et l’intégration de l’Empire: 44 av. J.-C.–260 ap. J.-C. Vol. 2,Approches régionales du Haut-Empire romain. Nouvelle Clio. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
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Series of chapters on the regions of the Roman world, by leading scholars. All engage with urbanism and Rome’s impact on the city.
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Stambaugh, John E. 1988. The ancient Roman city. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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Focuses on Rome. Clear introduction to many aspects of city life, although the short final section on provincial cities fits somewhat uncomfortably with the discussion of Rome and Roman life. Does not particularly engage with the debates over demography or statistical examinations of space.
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Ward-Perkins, John B. 1994. Roman imperial architecture. Pelican History of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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Examines early imperial Rome and Italy, the early imperial provinces, and the late empire. Emphasizes the importance of local building traditions but also the spread of techniques associated with marble in the 2nd century CE. First published in 1980 (New York: Penguin).
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Anthologies
There are very many volumes that deal with the Roman city generally, and many more that deal with elements of city life. This section presents some on the city generally; others that tackle specific issues/regions are generally dealt with in specific sections of this article. The volumes here represent the types of anthology that cover the Roman city. Bowman and Wilson 2011 deals with many of the issues of urban networks and demography that are covered in this article. Both Bowman and Wilson 2011 and Berrendonner, et al. 2008 also point to current approaches to elements of urban life and social organization within the city. Fentress 2000 highlights important debates on economic models, cultural exchange, urban change, and urban ideologies. Blagg and Millett 1990 and Mattingly 1997deal with the concept of Romanization and the city, with the chapters in David Mattingly’s volume engaging with different models of cultural interaction other than the Romanization paradigm. The use of literary material to understand the city is considered more in Edwards and Woolf 2003 than in some of the more archaeologically focused volumes in this section. The two École Française deRome volumes, École Française de Rome 1987 and École Française de Rome 1994, provide a conspectus of thought across elements of the urban world on Rome or Italy, respectively.
Berrendonner, Clara, Mireille Cébeillac-Gervasoni, and Laurent Lamoine, eds. 2008. Le quotidien municipal dans l’Occident romain: Actes du colloque international tenu à la Maison des sciences de l’homme, Clermont-Ferrand et à l’IUFM d’Auvergne, Chamalières, 19–21 octobre 2007. Collection Histoires Croisées. Clermont-Ferrand, France: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal.
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Anthology on the city primarily focused on Italy, Africa, Gaul, and Spain; sections on regional and municipal studies, institutional practice, city authorities and “others,” and municipal honors and space.
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Blagg, Thomas F. C., and Martin Millett, eds. 1990. The early Roman Empire in the West. Oxford: Oxbow.
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Volume from the beginning of the resurgent interest in Romanization. Section on Romanization shows the state of the debate. The volume includes several papers on urbanism in Hispania.
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Bowman, Alan K., and Andrew I. Wilson, eds. 2011. Settlement, urbanization, and population. Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602353.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Volume on survey and the city. Chapters on urban systems, economic development, population density, and city size all are relevant to this article and provide a good sense of the state of the academic debates in the second decade of the 21st century.
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Cornell, Timothy J., and Kathryn Lomas, eds. 1995. Urban society in Roman Italy. London: UCL Press.
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Contains work on some of the most important fields of study on the Italian city: urban theory, urbanization, Romanization, urban space, and the modern reception of the ancient city.
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École Française de Rome, ed. 1987. L’Urbs: Espace urbain et histoire (Ier siècle av. J.-C.–IIIe siècle ap. J.-C.); Actes du colloque international de Rome (8–12 mai 1985). Collection de l’École Française de Rome 98. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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Although now twenty-five years old, this anthology on the city of Rome and its urban development, religion, public writing, and public spectacle is still worth consulting.
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École Française de Rome, ed. 1994. L’Italie d’Auguste à Dioclétien: Actes du colloque international (Rome, 25–28 mars 1992). Collection de l’École Française de Rome 198.Rome: École Française de Rome.
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In many ways a companion to École Française de Rome 1987. Includes papers on municipal politics and local elites, the economy, and building types.
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Edwards, Catharine, and Greg Woolf, eds. 2003. Rome the cosmopolis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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The volume includes a range of different approaches to the city: demography, cultural change, the appearance of Rome, and Carthage as a reflector and influence on Rome.
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Fentress, Elizabeth, ed. 2000. Romanization and the city: Creation, transformations, and failures; Proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy in Rome to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the excavations at Cosa, 14–16 May 1998. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 38. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Chapters examine cities from Britain to Syria and different elements of the life cycle of cities. Not just urbanization but also the idea of the city and “Romanization” as a concept is considered.
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Mattingly, David J., ed. 1997. Dialogues in Roman imperialism: Power, discourse, and discrepant experience in the Roman Empire. Papers presented at a session of the First Roman Archaeology Conference, University of Reading, held 31 March to 2 April 1995. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 23. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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A series of studies on the debates over post-Romanization models of interaction between “Roman” and “native” cultures.
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Journals
The Roman city, rather than specific cities such as Pompeii or Herculaneum, is not the subject of a specific journal. Journals such as the Journal of Roman Archaeology or BABESCH Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology, which examine Roman archaeology across the empire, encompass the city. In English, the Journal of Roman Archaeology would be the journal that focuses most consistently on Roman cities, through its publication of archaeological reports from urban excavations and specific and general cutting-edge analyses of Roman urban change, urbanization, the Roman economy, and the debate over Romanization. The Journal of Roman Studies andL’Antiquité Tardive consider Roman society from a range of perspectives, but archaeology and life in the city remain an important focus of published work. For Late Antique cities, L’Antiquité Tardive is the preeminent journal in the field that focuses solely on that period, although the other journals listed here do publish on the period as well as on the Roman world more generally. The journals of the various archaeological institutes/schools, such as, for Italy, Papers of the British School atRome, Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire / Melanges de l’École Française de Rome, andRömische Mitteilungen, publish the results of institute-sponsored urban excavations as well as wider analyses of the city, monuments, and urban change. The other institutes around the Mediterranean also publish on Roman-era sites in their specialist regions, but the Italian schools contain a higher proportion of work on the Roman city. L’Année Epigraphique is a key review for the study of Roman society throughout the empire, through its note on inscriptions worked on in a given year.
BABESCH Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 1926–.
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Papers on all aspects of Mediterranean archaeology, but Roman archaeology and fieldwork on the city features regularly.
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Journal of Roman Archaeology. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1988–.
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Covers all elements of Roman archaeology; the city and the built environment features heavily. Includes preliminary excavation reports and a substantial book review section. Volumes from the supplementary series feature throughout this article.
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Journal of Roman Studies. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1910–.
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Focus is less archaeological than the Journal of Roman Archaeology, but articles are devoted to individual monuments and particular sites as well as urban economies, demography, and urbanism. Has included irregular review articles of work on particular regions.
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L’Année Epigraphique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1888–.
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Brief notes in French on inscriptions published, commented on, or reedited in any given year. Many inscriptions are reproduced, sometimes with translation in French. The issues from 1889 to 1961 were published as a section, and those from 1962 to 1964 as a supplement, of Revue Archéologique. As of 2014, working three years behind the year under consideration.
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L’Antiquité Tardive. Turnhout, Belgium: L’Association pour L’Antiquité Tardive, 1993–.
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Leading journal of the late Roman/Late Antique period. Publishes articles on any aspect of the period, but volume content is partially themed. No volumes have been dedicated exclusively to the city, but the topic appears in many.
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Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire / Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité.Rome: École Française de Rome, 1881–.
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Articles, mostly in French, on the Roman West but particularly Italy, Africa, and Gaul; includes reports of excavations undertaken under the auspices of the school. Pre-2000 volumes and monographs of the École are free online. Previews of more-recent monographs are available here.
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Römische Mitteilungen. Regensburg, Germany: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1886–.
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Articles are predominantly in German, although French, Italian, and English are also common. Covers more than just ancient history and archaeology and ranges across the Mediterranean.
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Papers of the British School at Rome. Rome: British School at Rome, 1902–.
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Publishes work on Italy from Antiquity to the present, although a substantial number of papers consider the archaeology and history of the Roman period. Volumes contain preliminary reports from school-sponsored fieldwork.
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The Ideology of the City
The city was regarded by the Romans as a mark of a civilized society. The urban societies of Romeand classical Greece were opposed to un-urbanized societies in Roman thought. As noted in theIntroduction, the city was conceived of as the basic building block of administration and taxation and was therefore at the heart of Roman order and polite culture. Zanker 2000 considers the relationship between ideologies of urbanism and the structures. Lomas 1997 charts changes in elite ideologies and therefore the appearance of the city in the late Republican and Augustan periods (compareGabba 1972, cited in Italy, and Patterson 1991, cited in Regional Studies). Ramage 1973 examines the connotations and constructions of urbanitas and, in doing so, the connection to urban life. Roman attitudes toward the city struggled with it both as the heart of urbaneness and corruption:Braund 1989 analyzes the danger of taking satire at face value to catalogue the dangers of living in cities. Ideologies of urbanism can be connected to the use and manipulation of space (see Urban Space, Society, and Housing). See also J. S. Richardson’s chapter (“Neque elegantem, ut arbitrator, neques urbanum: Relections on Iberian Urbanism”) in Cunliffe and Keay 1995, cited in Hispaniawhich brings together and analyzes Roman attitudes toward urbanitas and urbanism. The examination of the city in Rykwert 1976 could be included with the analyses of space, but it also examines the symbolism of towns and the ideologies and worldviews connected with their foundation. Carl, et al. 2000 engages with such cosmological readings and also practical analyses of city foundation and form. The chapters in Brogiolo and Ward-Perkins 1999 examine changes to understandings of what an urban settlement should look like, the idea of urban crisis, the impact of Christianity, and the efforts of the authorities to maintain elements of the early imperial urban image. For other examinations of urban ideology, see Laurence, et al. 2011 and Goodman 2007 (cited inGeneral Overviews), pp. 40–79 of Revell 2009 (cited in Regional Studies), papers in Trillmich and Zanker 1990 (cited in Hispania), Zanker 1995 (cited in Italy), and MacDonald 1982–1986 (cited inUrban Space, Society, and Housing). For an approach to the fringes of the city and for an examination of Roman thought on “suburban” occupation, see Goodman 2007 or Robert Witcher’s chapter, “(Sub)urban Surroundings,” in Erdkamp 2013 (both cited in General Overviews).
Braund, Susan H. 1989. City and country in Roman satire. In Satire and society in ancientRome. Edited by Susan H. Braund, 137–154. Exeter Studies in History 23. Exeter, UK: Univ. of Exeter Press.
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Examines the difficulty of using satire, particularly Juvenal III, to understand writers’ ideologies of the city and the dangers of using it to document urban life. The satires show attitudes toward the city but not necessarily realities.
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Brogiolo, Gian P., and Bryan Ward-Perkins, eds. 1999. The idea and ideal of the town between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Transformation of the Roman World 4. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
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See particularly chapters by Brogiolo, Carlo Bertelli, Gisella Cantino Wataghin, Alba Maria Orselli, and Nancy Gauthier on changing conceptions of the town in Late Antiquity.
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Carl, Peter, Barry Kemp, Ray Laurence, Robin Coningham, Charles Higham, and George L. Cowgill. 2000. Were cities built as images? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10.2: 327–365.
DOI: 10.1017/S0959774300000135Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Range of approaches to the cosmological, symbolic, or abstract in city foundation and their relationship to built realities. Sections are on a range of cultures, including Roman, Egyptian, and South Asian.
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Lomas, Kathryn. 1997. The idea of a city: Élite ideology and the evolution of urban form in Italy, 200 BC–AD 100. In Roman urbanism beyond the consumer city. Edited by Helen M. Parkins, 21–41. London: Routledge.
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Complex changes in elite ideology, culture, and the appearance of cities took place in the 1st centuries BCE and CE, triggered by a range of causes, including social and political developments. Argues for differences in ideology between elites in different parts of Italy.
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Ramage, Edwin S. 1973. Urbanitas: Ancient sophistication and refinement. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press.
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Examination of urbanity; relationship of urban living to urbanitas forms part of the argument.Urbanitas is a Roman elite attribute; epilogue argues that later Romans could not claim it because of the “barbarizing” of society and Christian hostility.
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Rykwert, Joseph. 1976. The idea of a town: The anthropology of urban form in Rome, Italy and the ancient world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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An interesting approach to the symbolic in Roman city foundation. Not all elements, including the appeal to a primitive Roman religious outlook underlying the rituals of town foundation, are wholeheartedly accepted, and the use of some comparanda has been criticized.
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Zanker, Paul. 2000. The city as symbol: Rome and the creation of an urban image. InRomanization and the city: Creation, transformations, and failures; Proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy in Rome to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the excavations at Cosa, 14–16 May 1998. Edited by Elizabeth Fentress, 25–41. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 38. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Examination of the Roman city and its use by individuals and communities; addresses the relationship between structures and ideologies.
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The City and Archaeological Methodologies
Understanding the structure, character, and extent of ancient cities poses its own problems, particularly for those cities that have been continuously occupied since Antiquity. The works in this section explore problems and archaeological approaches to Roman cities or archaeology more generally, focusing on material since the late 1980s. Bintliff and Snodgrass 1988 is often cited as problematizing the use of field survey on urban sites, and it defends the testing of literary sources against the archaeological material. Johnson and Millett 2013 includes a series of chapters that deal with agendas, practice, and results in survey, including field, geophysical, and aerial surveys, while several researchers take Bintliff and Snodgrass 1988 as a starting point. Keay, et al. 2000 andGoodman, et al. 2004 (both of which formed part of the British school at Rome’s Tiber Valley Project) as well as White, et al. 2013 and Doneus, et al. 2013 demonstrate the use of different and complementary technologies on a range of sites and, in some cases, integrate survey with excavation. See also the papers in Hurst 1999 (cited in the Northwestern Provinces) for a range of archaeological problems associated with urban sites and approaches to the British coloniae. There have been criticisms that some use of geophysical survey techniques has been focused more on the technology rather than on a research agenda that engages with wider concerns within academia (see Paul Johnson’s chapter in Johnson and Millett 2013), while there have also been arguments that the increasingly fragmented nature of academia has not helped the development of Roman archaeology (see Woolf 2004 and Laurence 2012, the latter cited in Textbooks). For a textbook that deals with archaeology in urban contexts, see Greene 1986 (cited in Textbooks), although its date means that many more-recent innovations are not included.
Bintliff, John L., and Anthony M. Snodgrass. 1988. Mediterranean survey and the city.Antiquity 62.234: 57–71.
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Presents some of the problems of using field survey in an urban context, by using Bintliff and Snodgrass’s experience in the Cambridge-Bradford Boeotian Expedition. Not focused on the Roman period but gives an overview of three sites from the prehistoric to Ottoman periods.
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Doneus, Michael, Christian Gugl, and Nives Doneus. 2013. Die Canabae von Carnuntum: Eine Modellstudie der Erforschung römischer Lagervorstädte; Von der Luftbildprospektion zur siedlungsarchäologischen Synthese. Römische Limes in Österreich 47. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
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Publication of a plan and model of Carnuntum, integrating aerial archaeology with the results of excavation. Available online.
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Goodman, Dean, Salvatore Piro, Yasushi Nishimura, Helen Patterson, and Vince Gaffney. 2004. Discovery of a 1st century AD Roman amphitheatre and other structures at Forum Novum by GPR. Journal of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics 9.1: 35–41.
DOI: 10.4133/JEEG9.1.35Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Assessment of the use of ground-penetrating radar at an abandoned townscape in Italy. Presents the discovery of an amphitheater.
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Johnson, Paul, and Martin Millett, eds. 2013. Archaeological survey and the city. University of Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology Monograph 2. Oxford: Oxbow.
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Presents a range of approaches to the archaeological survey and the city. Opening chapter by Johnson and Millett includes a conspectus of early-21st-century work on cities from across the ancient world.
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Keay, Simon, Martin Millett, Sarah Poppy, Julia Robinson, Jeremy Taylor, and Nicola Terrenato. 2000. Falerii Novi: A new survey of the walled area. Papers of the British School atRome 68:1–93.
DOI: 10.1017/S0068246200003871Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents and examines the results of topographical, magnetometry, and field-walking surveys at the city.
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Vermeulen, Frank, Gert-Jan Burgers, Simon Keay, and Cristina Corsi, eds. 2012. Urban landscape survey in Italy and the Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxbow.
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An assemblage of approaches to surveying the Roman city. Together the chapters examine the application of most surveying methodologies and technologies to Roman-period cities. The majority of chapters deal with Italian settlements.
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White, Roger H., Christopher Gaffney, and Vincent L. Gaffney. 2013. Wroxeter, the Cornovii and the urban process: Final report on the Wroxeter Hinterland Project, 1994–1997. Vol. 2,Characterizing the city. Oxford: Archaeopress.
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Examination of the city of Wroxeter. The first chapter examines the application of various survey methodologies. Other chapters examine specific excavations and provide a chronological overview of the town.
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Woolf, Greg. 2004. The present state and future scope of Roman archaeology: A comment.American Journal of Archaeology 108.3: 417–428.
DOI: 10.3764/aja.108.3.417Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Interesting comment piece on the state of Roman archaeology in 2004.
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Romanization
The evolution of the Roman city is bound up in the concept of “Romanization” and debates over the nature of cultural contact between Romans and native peoples. Mommsen 1854–1885, on the Roman city outside Italy, emphasizes the imposition of Roman culture on local populations; cultural change was a product of imperialism. Haverfield 1913 develops the concept of Romanization, and, despite some challenges, for instance the early championing of fusion in Collingwood 1932, this remained the dominant paradigm until the early 1990s, despite postcolonial approaches that emphasized resistance to Rome, such as that in Bénabou 1976 (cited under Africa). Millett 1990produces a model that suggests that Romanization was driven by local elites’ self-Romanizing and not by the Roman center pushing Roman culture. Mattingly 2007, Webster 2001, Hingley 2005, and other studies have since debated the usefulness of “Romanization” as a way of framing cultural exchange (see also Mattingly 1997, cited in Anthologies, and Sweetman 2011, cited in Urban Institutions/Organization). Mattingly 2007 and Webster 2001 examine the nature of “identity.” Jane Webster’s use of the concept of creolization, drawn from the study of North American cultural interaction and using archaeological material, has proved a stimulus to fruitful debate. Much work in this area uses Anthony Giddens’s “structuration theory” and the idea of the “discourse” between structures/institutions and the individual. The author of Revell 2009 (cited in Regional Studies), using Giddens’s theories, has reminded us of the importance of the local; urban Roman identities might differ from region to region on the basis of geopolitical or urban history, geography, environment, ethnicity, and, etc., but also within cities in terms of social class or gender. Both Hingley 2005 andMattingly 2007 engage with the benign Romanization that, despite all the nuanced argument on identity, still stands in the subconscious of many analyses of the “Roman” city, conquest, and society. European scholarship has tended to have less of a problem with the concept of Romanization than Anglophone work; Corsi and Vermeulen 2010 includes many chapters that use the term “Romanization” with little angst.
Collingwood, Robin G. 1932. Roman Britain. Oxford: Clarendon.
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A reaction against the top-down view of Romanization in Haverfield 1913 and Mommsen 1854–1885. Roman culture in Britain is neither Roman nor Celtic, but Romano-British. Romano-British is a fusion of cultures, not the imposition of culture by the Romans. New revised edition published in 1994 (New York: Barnes & Noble).
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Corsi, Cristina, and Frank Vermeulen, eds. 2010. Changing landscapes: The impact of Roman towns in the western Mediterranean; Proceedings of the international colloquium, Castelo de Vide, Marvão, 15th–17th May 2008. Ricerche 1. Bologna, Italy: Ante Quem.
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Chapters engage with Romanization and urban development in the Roman West.
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Haverfield, Francis. 1913. Ancient town-planning. Oxford: Clarendon.
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The city is part of the human progression from uncivilized to civilized. Natives adopted Roman ways and styles in urban layout and buildings as part of this process. Along with Mommsen 1854–1885, often forms the starting point for discussions of Romanization and the city. Republished as recently as 2011 (Hamburg, Germany: Tredition Classics).
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Hingley, Richard. 2005. Globalizing Roman culture: Unity, diversity and empire. London: Routledge.
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Examines concepts of Romanization and identity in the provinces and, in doing so, includes useful assessments of much work since the late 20th century on the subject. Argues against the idea that one coherent argument could explain all processes of acculturation across the empire.
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Mattingly, David J. 2007. An imperial possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC–AD 409. Penguin History of Britain 1. London: Penguin.
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Uses “identity” to understand cultural change. Towns were not an imposition on the Britons, but Mattingly emphasizes their practical role for Roman imperialism, particularly in early phases; urban development was generally slow and “declined” early.
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Millett, Martin. 1990. The Romanization of Britain: An essay in archaeological interpretation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Influential study of Britain and the mechanics of Romanization (conceived as a two-way process of acculturation). Romanization was driven by local elites emulating elements of Roman culture in order to bolster their social position; the wider population imitated these elites.
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Mommsen, Theodor. 1854–1885. Römische Geschichte. Vols. 1–3, 5. Berlin: Weidmann.
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See especially Vol. 5 (Die Provinzen von Caesar bis Diocletian), on the provinces. Used “Romanization” in the assessment of the relationship of provincial developments to Roman institutions; clearly a major influence on later conceptions of Romanization. (Note that no Vol. 4 was published by Mommsen.)
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Webster, Jane. 2001. Creolizing the Roman provinces. American Journal of Archaeology105.2: 209–225.
DOI: 10.2307/507271Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Applies approaches to the archaeology of cultural interaction in North America to the Roman world. Points to the process of “negotiation” between cultures. Negotiation creates “creole” cultures rather than a normative, Romanized, culture.
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The City and Economic Models
Debates regarding the economic model to be applied as an ideal type to ancient cities frame many discussions of the Roman city as a phenomenon, but also examinations of individual cities. Despite this, there has been criticism not only of individual models but also of the use of models more generally (see Horden and Purcell 2000; also see Neville Morley’s chapter, “Cities and Economic Development in the Roman Empire,” in Bowman and Wilson 2011, cited in Anthologies). Weber 1958 sets up a distinction between different types of city (consumer, producer, and merchant cities) in preindustrial societies (see also L. Capogrossi Colognesi’s chapter, “The Limits of the Ancient City and the Evolution of the Medieval City in the Thought of Max Weber,” in Cornell and Lomas 1995, cited in Anthologies). The then-modern model in Rostovtzeff 1957 is rather different; for Michael Rostovtzeff, the Roman economy was similar to that of early-20th-century Western economies.Finley 1973 builds on the model of the consumer city (where the city consumed the wealth supplied by the surplus of the rural hinterland), and that has remained the starting point for many discussions (see Jongman 1988, cited in Italy, against Engels 1990). Criticisms have focused on the tendency to deal with the individual city and its territory in isolation from empire-wide trade networks and its failure to tackle urban manufacture of goods, an element that comes through in Horden and Purcell 2000 in particular (see also Morley 1996; Alston 2002, cited in Egypt; and Whittaker 1995). Horden and Purcell 2000, a paradigm-shifting book, challenges the “specialness” of the ancient city within the economic model of the Mediterranean and its domination of historiography of the ancient world. Other models of the city have been produced, including Donald Engels’s “service city” as expressed for Corinth (Engels 1990), where finance was mainly produced by taxation of the diolkos (the paved route across the Isthmus of Corinth), and Keith Hopkins’s “processor city” (Hopkins 1980), where cities made money from connections between rural producers and long-distance traders such as the army. Whittaker 1995 and the introduction in Morley 1996 provide comprehensible entry points into the debates.
Engels, Donald W. 1990. Roman Corinth: An alternative model for the classical city. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Proposes the model of the “service city” and argues against large cities being “agro-towns”; peasants had substantial surpluses to exchange for goods/services in the city. Criticized in Whittaker 1995 (“Do theories of the ancient city matter?”) for assumptions about the size of population that a city might support.
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Finley, Moses I. 1973. The ancient economy. Sather Classical Lectures. London: Chatto & Windus.
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Building on Weber 1958, Finley argued that the ancient city consumed the wealth produced by its rural hinterland. The city did not produce goods specifically for trade with external markets, but instead for conspicuous consumption by city elites.
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Hopkins, Keith. 1980. Taxes and trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C.–A.D. 400). Journal of Roman Studies 70:101–125.
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The empire had a positive effect on the economy by stimulating trade among cities, the army, and farmers, so that the latter could meet the tax demands of the state.
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Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. 2000. The corrupting sea: A study of Mediterranean history. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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Against views of the economy that hold towns as a special “historical category.” The city was not a distinctive part of the way that Mediterranean economies work per se; they were part of wider economic structures and flows of goods. Difficult for new students.
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Morley, Neville. 1996. Metropolis and hinterland: The city of Rome and the Italian economy, 200 B.C.–A.D 200. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511518584Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Rome can be seen as the archetypal consumer city, but Morley generally agrees with Hopkins on the possibility of the stimulating effect of Rome on its hinterland; it did not have a stagnating effect on the local economy.
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Rostovtzeff, Michael I. 1957. The social and economic history of the Roman Empire. 2 vols. 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon.
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The city was a capitalistic producer, and Rostovtzeff linked this to an expanding bourgeoisie; decline was due in part to antagonism between classes and economic stagnation. The provinces had a “natural tendency” to urbanize. Republished as recently as 2005 (New York: ACLS History E-book Project).
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Weber, Max. 1958. The city. Edited and translated by Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth. New York: Heinemann.
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Defines economic ideal cities (not descriptions of all cities in a period): consumer, producer, and merchant cities. Certain types are more diagnostic of particular eras than others, the consumer city being the most common type in the ancient world.
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Whittaker, C. Richard. 1995. Do theories of the ancient city matter?” In Urban society in Roman Italy. Edited by Tim J. Cornell and Kathryn Lomas, 9–26. London: UCL Press.
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Critique of different economic models. Points to the impossibility of dividing city and territory and therefore the problem of how their economic relationship worked; an examination of only the urban core only allows us to understand one facet of the ancient city’s power relations. See also Whittaker’s chapter in École Française de Rome 1994, cited in Anthologies.
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Urban Institutions/Organization
Not all cities were the same. This is true in terms of scale but also in terms of municipal organization.Coloniae, municipia, and civitas capitals all had their own institutions (see Crawford 1996 andGonzález 1986 for documents connected to the municipal statutes of cities). Over time, more cities became coloniae and municipia and had their constitutions modeled on Rome to a greater or lesser extent, respectively, despite Hadrian’s well-known surprise that established cities wanted to give up their own laws for those of Rome (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 16.13.1–9). Both Humbert 1978and Bispham 2007 examine the municipium as an entity and whether it changed over time (against in Humbert 1978, for in Bispham 2007). Gascou 1972, an examination of the evolution of municipal status, is one exhaustive treatment of the promotion of cities over time. Work has also focused on a range of issues associated with the organization of the city. The chapters in Sweetman 2011 explore identity within colonies and the discrepant development of colonies early in their history. The album of decurions from Thamugadi, so fully examined in Chastagnol 1978, provides one of the few relatively complete pictures of governing councils in the towns of the empire (for the associations of the Roman world, the collegia, see John Patterson’s chapter, “The Collegia and the Transformation of the Towns of Italy,” in École Française de Rome 1994, cited in Anthologies), although particular town charters, recorded on stone and bronze, have been examined both in Crawford 1996 (as part of a wider examination of Roman statute) and González 1986; Spain is disproportionately represented by this type of document (see also Michael Crawford’s chapter in Cunliffe and Keay 1995, cited in Hispania). Spain and epigraphic evidence again appears in Mackie 1983, a study of the cities of Spain and their internal structure, ambitions, and relationship with Roman power (see also Duncan-Jones 1982 cited under Monumentalization and Euergetism). See MacMullen 1982 andCorbier 2006, both cited in Monumentalization and Euergetism, for the practice and culture of the erection of inscriptions. There has been a considerable amount of work on municipal autonomy under the empire, and when it began to be eroded. Cities of all types appear to have become more liable to oversight from the imperial administration over time; the extent to which the role of curatorintruded on city autonomy has been debated (see Eck 1979; Chastagnol 1978; Michel Tarpin’s chapter in Lepelley 1998, cited in Textbooks; Elio Lo Cascio’s chapter in Momigliano and Schiavone 1988–1993, Vol. 2.2 [I principi e il mondo], cited in Reference Works; and C. Richard Whittaker’s chapter in École Française de Rome 1994, cited in Anthologies).
Bispham, Edward. 2007. From Asculum to Actium: The municipalization of Italy from the Social War to Augustus. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231843.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examination of the integration of the Italic communities into the Roman state in the 1st century BCEand municipal development. The constitution and functioning of these communities is a key element.
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Chastagnol, André. 1978. L’album municipal de Timgad. Antiquitas 3. Bonn, Germany: Rudolf Habelt Verlag.
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Chastagnol’s presentation of the text of the Album of Timgad is crucial for the study of city councils. The album lists the council of the Numidian city in 362–363 and demonstrates the structure and personnel of the curia.
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Crawford, Michael H., ed. 1996. Roman statutes. 2 vols. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 64. London: Univ. of London, Institute of Classical Studies.
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Provides texts, translations, and commentary of extant Roman laws. In terms of cities, Crawford and the other authors examine the surviving town charters of Urso, Tarentum, and others.
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Eck, Werner. 1979. Die staatliche Organisation Italiens in der hohen Kaiserzeit. Vestigia 28. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck.
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On city organization and relationships with imperial power; in particular on the special commissioners and curators. (See also Eck’s chapter in Walbank, et al. 1989–2005, Vol. 11, cited inReference Works).
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Gascou, Jacques. 1972. La politique municipale de l’empire romain en Afrique proconsulaire de Trajan à Septime-Sévère. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 8. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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Examination of Roman municipal development (see also Gascou’s chapter in Temporini and Haase 1972–1996, Vol. II.10.2, cited in Reference Works). Argues that there was no coherent plan, that there was a close link between each emperor’s military and municipal policy, and that general economic development was important.
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González, Julián. 1986. The Lex Irnitana: A new copy of the Flavian municipal law. Journal of Roman Studies 76:147–243.
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Publication, including an English translation by Michael Crawford, of the bronze tablets that formed Irni’s copy of the Flavian municipal law.
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Humbert, Michel. 1978. “Municipium” et “civitas sine suffragio”: L’organisation de la conquête jusqu’à la guerre sociale. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 36. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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Citizenship without suffrage was part of the architecture of a policy of Romanization (conceived of as a natural evolution). It created an empire-wide citizenship, albeit of inferior status, but safeguarded municipal autonomy. It was a stepping stone to full assimilation.
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Mackie, Nicola. 1983. Local administration in Roman Spain, A.D. 14–212. British Archaeological Reports International Series 172. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
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Examines cities’ inner workings and their relationships with external power. Suggests that there is little evidence for competition over city status in Spain after cities were promoted to being municipiaunder Vespasian. Argues that Rome rarely intervened in the cities except in matters of finance.
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Sweetman, Rebecca J., ed. 2011. Roman colonies in the first century of their foundation. Oxford: Oxbow.
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Chapters on Roman colonies, their development, and the ways in which their populations changed and responded to external powers and cultural innovations.
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Urban Space, Society, and Housing
Since the 1970s, investigations of city development have increasingly included the study of urban space and the way that it ordered society and was itself ordered by society. In doing so, the study of the organization and experience of the urban population has moved beyond the focus on orthogonal grids and their development (as in Haverfield 1913, cited in Romanization) as a facet of urban planning and “Romanization,” to a more sophisticated examination of the dynamism of urban space. As part of this development, movement through the city has become increasingly important as a field of study. Quantitative analysis of urban space on the level of the house, the district, and the city has also become progressively more important, with inspiration for many of these developments coming from other fields. Lefebvre 1991, a philosophical/sociological examination of space and what the author calls the “social relations of production,” has been important in diverse fields, including examinations of Roman space and its construction. Lynch 1960, an examination of the conceptual and actual organization of modern American cities and the constituent parts of their systems, proved an inspiration for many later studies. MacDonald 1982–1986, an analysis of Roman paths and the articulation of monuments, was clearly influenced by Lynch 1960 (on movement and experience of the city in Augustan Rome, see Paul Zanker’s chapter in École Française de Rome 1987, cited inAnthologies). Diane Favro has produced much interesting work that examines the experience of the city and the relationship between architecture and movement (especially Favro and Johanson 2010), and she has engaged with the ideas of Kevin Lynch. Written by two sociologists, Hillier and Hanson 1984, a space syntax/access analysis that allows for quantitative examinations of space in the city—including the permeability of spaces and the difficulty of travel across a town or building—has influenced many archaeologists. The author of Grahame 2000, for instance, applied Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson’s ideas in using a statistical methodology to examine the houses of Pompeii and whether there actually was a standard house type. Also dealing with Pompeii, Laurence 2007compares the distribution of doorways along streets, bars, brothels, and fountains in order to analyze spatial, and therefore societal, organization. Allison 2004 examines spatial distribution of artifacts within Pompeian houses. These last three are frequently cited applications of statistical methodologies to an ancient site. Compare the slightly more observational approach to housing and status in Wallace-Hadrill 1994 and to prostitution in Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s chapter in Cornell and Lomas 1995, cited in Anthologies.
Allison, Penelope M. 2004. Pompeian households: An analysis of the material culture. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Univ. of California, Los Angeles.
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Examination of the Pompeian house by using the distribution of the objects found within them.
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Favro, Diane, and Christopher Johanson. 2010. Death in motion: Funeral processions in the Roman Forum. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 69.1: 12–37.
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Integrates text, archaeology, and 3D reconstruction to examine space and movement in the forum romanum. Includes an introduction to approaches to, and problems in, the analysis of space, movement, and senses in Roman cities and houses.
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Grahame, Mark. 2000. Reading space: Social interaction and identity in the houses of Roman Pompeii; A syntactical approach to the analysis and interpretation of built space. BAR International Series 886. Oxford: Archaeopress.
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Oft-cited application of Hillier and Hanson’s access analysis to the houses of Pompeii (Hillier and Hanson 1984). Argues that Pompeian house plans were not particularly standardized, that the ideals of Vitruvius’ text are not a good fit with Pompeian house plans, and that the houses do display cultural heterogeneity.
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Hillier, Bill, and Julienne Hanson. 1984. The social logic of space. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511597237Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors’ models for computing “depth,” essentially the ease of travel from one point to another across a town, have been widely used by academics working on movement and space in the city.
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Laurence, Ray. 2007. Roman Pompeii: Space and society. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
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Examines Pompeian society through elements such as patterns of daily movement, neighborhoods, production, and “deviant” space. Urbanism is a social product; economic models fail to deal with the complexity of the city and the interaction between individuals and their environment.
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Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Lefebvre’s analysis of the creation of space, its use, and its connection to power and society has influenced theoreticians in many fields, including archaeologists and classicists working on the city and space. Perhaps difficult for students of archaeology or classics to use on its own without guidance.
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Lynch, Kevin. 1960. The image of the city. Publication of the Joint Center for Urban Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Although focused on the modern American city, Lynch’s descriptive analysis of the components of urban space has been influential on examinations of the ordering of cities but also of their inhabitants’ experience of space. Reprinted as recently as 2012.
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MacDonald, William L. 1982–1986. The architecture of the Roman Empire. 2 vols. Yale Publications in the History of Art 17, 35. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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Vol. 1, An Introductory Study; Vol. 2, An Urban Appraisal. The monumental “armatures” of major cities—a series of monuments and major roads—were the principal organizing feature of the Roman city. This conception of space and Roman building has antecedents in Lynch’s work and influenced Ray Laurence and colleagues in Laurence, et al. 2011 (cited in General Overviews).
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Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. 1994. Houses and society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Approach to housing differs to that of Grahame, for instance. Examines the articulation of the house and explores the concept of public/private and elite/service spaces, tackling Amedeo Maiuri’s arguments about social change. Has a critical approach to the literature and uses decoration to define space. Worth reading before Grahame 2000.
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Demography and the City
The problems we have in reconstructing urban populations from our archaeological, literary, and epigraphic material have led to productive debate in a number of areas, although the number of Romanists working in this area tends to be relatively low. One thread considers urban living conditions and population reproduction. Scobie 1986 and other work emphasize high instances of endemic and epidemic disease and an imbalance between birth and death rates. The implication of these arguments is that large cities struggled to—or could not—naturally reproduce population, so that regular immigration was necessary to maintain or increase the population. Some, for instance Elio Lo Cascio in Storey 2006, have criticized Alex Scobie for failing to deal sufficiently with the problems of the literary material (see also Braund 1989 on approaches to Roman satire, cited in theIdeology of the City). Walter Scheidel has produced several methodologically rigorous approaches to Roman demography. In arguing in favor of Scobie’s general argument, he points out that while we do not have the evidence to really come to a conclusion, infant and some seasonal mortality rates must have been extremely high (see Scheidel 2001a; Scheidel’s chapter in Edwards and Woolf 2003, cited in Anthologies; and Richard Paine and Glenn Storey’s chapter in Storey 2006). Bagnall and Frier 1994, Sallares 2002, and Brent Shaw’s chapters in Storey 2006 and Scheidel 2001b, among other studies, have used epitaphs to examine birth and mortality patterns and the effect of particular diseases such as the Antonine plague or, in the case of Robert Sallares, malaria, although many have criticized the use of epigraphy to model populations because it does not reflect the whole of society. There have also been debates over the size of the population of cities, with Storey and Scheidel (in Scheidel 2001a and Storey 2006) tending to be skeptical about high population estimates, while Lo Cascio (in Scheidel 2001b, Storey 2006, and Lo Cascio 1994) tends to argue for higher population figures (see also Kennedy 2007, cited in the Levant and Mesopotamia, for a sensible discussion of demographic debates applied to the Decapolis). More-recent work, for instance Parkin 1992, has focused on the structure rather than the size of ancient populations.
Bagnall, Roger S., and Bruce W. Frier. 1994. The demography of Roman Egypt. Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy, and Society in Past Time 23. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511584053Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Uses census returns to examine demography, including the impact of the Antonine plague. Argues that the Egyptian population structure was essentially similar to the other regions of the Roman Mediterranean.
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Lo Cascio, Elio. 1994. The size of the Roman population: Beloch and the meaning of the Augustan census figures. Journal of Roman Studies 84:23–40.
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Critiques the approach of Beloch’s seminal Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt to the Republican and Augustan census figures. Emphasizes the importance of study of population sizes against the trend to abandon it in favor of examinations of population structure.
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Parkin, Tim G. 1992. Demography and Roman society. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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A skeptical approach to the evidence used to reconstruct population structures; criticizes previous work on the subject for a lack of methodological rigor. Points to the problems of reconstructing population sizes.
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Sallares, Robert. 2002. Malaria and Rome: A history of malaria in ancient Italy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248506.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the impact of malaria on Italian populations. Supports the contention that Rome relied on substantial immigration to maintain its population size. Argues that there was no homogenous age structure across all populations within the empire.
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Scheidel, Walter. 2001a. Progress and problems in Roman demography. In Debating Roman demography. Mnemosyne Supplementum 211. Edited by Walter Scheidel, 1–82. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
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Detailed overview of trends and problems in the study of Roman populations. Argues for a need for greater methodological and theoretical awareness on the part of academics working on the Roman population. A good starting point for pre-2001 work on the subject.
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Scheidel, Walter, ed. 2001b. Debating Roman demography. Mnemosyne Supplementum 211. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
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Includes Scheidel 2001a and other chapters cited in this section of the bibliography: Shaw “The seasonal birthing cycle of Roman women” and Lo Cascio “Recruitment and the size of the Roman population from the third to the first century BCE”.
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Scobie, Alex. 1986. Slums, sanitation, and mortality in the Roman world. Klio 68:399–433.
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Argues that “high density living,” unsanitary conditions, and a lack of understanding of disease led to a low average life expectancy at Rome. The methodological approach to the literary material has been criticized by some for a lack of subtlety.
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Storey, Glenn R., ed. 2006. Urbanism in the preindustrial world: Cross-cultural approaches. Papers presented in an Archaeology Division section for the 95th Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held in Philadelphia in December 1998. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press.
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Chapters by Bagnall, Lo Cascio, Paine and Storey, and Shaw all deal with Roman, and in particular urban, demography, including issues such as seasonal mortality and how “catastrophic” mortality rates were in big cities. Chapters provide a flavor of the state of the debates.
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Monumentalization and Euergetism
Monumentalization of the urban landscape is commonly understood as a marker of a city’s success, although the term is not often clearly examined and defined. Edmund Thomas (Thomas 2007) moves beyond an implicit understanding of the term in his examination of building and elite ideologies. Monumentalization has also formed a key part of the “Romanization” debate (seeRomanization). Some of the clearest examinations of urban building patterns have had a regional focus. So, Frézouls 1984 examines the erection of inscriptions of all types in Gaul and Germany, while Jouffroy 1986 (cited in Regional Studies) fruitfully compares building work over time in Italy and the African provinces. Both demonstrate the varying and shifting priorities of provincial elites. A key source for debates over euergetism is the inscription. For examinations of the culture of inscribing under Rome, Ramsay MacMullen’s work should remain the starting point for research (MacMullen 1982). His “epigraphic habit” helped crystallize the recognition that public writing on durable materials was not a preordained, natural, consequence of urbanism but was culturally determined; the erection of monumental inscriptions does not match patterns of economic behavior or historical periods. Woolf 1996, on the cities of Gaul, also focuses on the use of inscriptions as part of the public construction of individual’s and groups’ identities (see also Woolf 1998, cited in theNorthwestern Provinces). Duncan-Jones 1982 uses inscriptions in Africa and Italy to examine the costs of being a political actor in the cities. Different arguments have been put forward to explain euergetism. In his assessment of political power, Paul Veyne stresses the psychological need of the giver to feel generous (Veyne 1976). The assessment of euergetism in Asia Minor in Zuiderhoek 2009 (cited in Greece and Asia Minor) argues that the phenomenon was caused by the increasing concentration of power and wealth in Roman society and the consequent need to demonstrate generosity to the less fortunate. Mireille Corbier’s seminal work on public writing (Corbier 2006) had a substantial impact on academics working on the interface among inscription, space, movement, and Roman culture (see also Urban Institutions/Organization).
Corbier, Mireille. 2006. Donner à voir, donner à lire: Mémoire et communication dans laRome ancienne. Paris: CNRS Éditions.
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Exploration of written culture within the Roman city. Inscriptions, graffiti, and literary texts that mention public writing all are used to demonstrate the importance of the word in the cities of the Roman Empire. Volume brings together revised versions of earlier papers.
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Duncan-Jones, Richard P. 1982. The economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative studies. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Fundamental, much-quoted work on the price of euergetism, as well as on wider economic questions. Examines costs in Africa and Italy and therefore the cost of municipal politics.
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Frézouls, Edmond. 1984. Evergétisme et construction urbaine dans les Trois Gaules et les Germanies. Revue du Nord 66.260: 27–54.
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Examines the epigraphic evidence for euergetism within the Gallic and German city.
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Gros, Pierre. 1996. L’architecture romaine. Vol. 1, Les monuments publics. Les Manuels d’Art et d’Archéologie Antiques. Paris: Picard Éditeur.
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Examination of the development of public building types, from walls to structures for spectacles; chapters are also organized chronologically.
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MacMullen, Ramsay. 1982. The epigraphic habit in the Roman Empire. American Journal of Philology 103.3: 233–246.
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Argues that growth and decline in the erection of inscriptions cannot be explained by historical or economic patterns but are the consequence of social or cultural motivations. The use of the term “habit” has been criticized, with “culture” or “cultures” sometimes being preferred.
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Thomas, Edmund V. 2007. Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Examines the meaning of structures and their links to civic ideology, literature, and philosophy. Changes in materials and forms meant major modifications in architecture from the 1st century CEonward. Renaissance in building in Asia Minor was inspired by Roman ideas.
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Veyne, Paul. 1976. Le pain et le cirque: Sociologie historique d’un pluralisme politique. Univers Historiques. Paris: Seuil.
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Argues that one of the primary drivers for the phenomenon of euergetism was the psychological need of the elite to be, and to be seen to be, generous.
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Woolf, Greg. 1996. Monumental writing and the expansion of Roman society in the early empire. Journal of Roman Studies 86:22–39.
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Monumental writing was used by provincials to assert their identities and Romanness and to show off their adoption of elements of the political culture. These inscriptions show that there was social mobility in the early empire.
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The Transformation of the City in the Late Antique Period
The Late Antique period saw considerable change in the size and monumentality of the city. A debate over whether the city saw decline or was merely transformed has dominated academic thought since the 1960s. A concept of “decline” gradually gave way to the more nuanced idea that the city “transformed” in Late Antiquity. Whittow 1990, an examination of the urban elites, makes the case for transformation in terms of organization rather than actual urban “decline”. Durliat 1990 also emphasizes continuity of city size into the 6th century, until the state food-transportation system broke down; there is a process of “mutation” (transformation) in the late Roman period rather than decline. For other approaches to transformation, see Christie and Loseby 1996 and Brogiolo, et al. 2000. Liebeschuetz 2001a and Liebeschuetz 2001b, on the city, mark a reaction against the transformation paradigm; the author has reemphasized material decline, an approach supported by some other academics, such as in Ward-Perkins 1984. The impact of Christianity on municipal organization and priorities has also been an important area for debate. Saradi 2006 argues that the focus on churches had a detrimental impact on the urban topography, and John Liebeschuetz has emphasized its deleterious effect on independent civic identities (see also Zuiderhoek 2009, cited inGreece and Asia Minor, and Kulikowski 2004, cited in Hispania). At times, the focus on “Christian archaeology” has been to the detriment of integrated works on the city as a whole. For regional approaches to the Late Antique city, see Potter 1995 and Lepelley 1979–1981, both cited in Africa;Esmonde Cleary 2013 and Duby 1980, both cited in Northwestern Provinces; Kennedy 2007, cited in the Levant and Mesopotamia; and Haas 1997 and Alston 2002, both cited in Egypt. See Saradi 2006for Constantinople. In general, there is a recognition that cities and urban culture changed at different rates, with different consequences in the empire’s various regions; for instance, the cities of Asia Minor and the Levant appear to have been more resilient than areas farther west. The 1990s in particular saw the proliferation of edited volumes on the late Roman city, many of which tackled the issue of decline and transformation (Brogiolo and Ward-Perkins 1999, cited in the Ideology of the City; Brogiolo, et al. 2000; Christie and Loseby 1996). The importance of the late Roman period to examinations of the formation of Europe can be seen in the European Union–funded Transformation of the Roman World project, which led to a series of volumes.
Brogiolo, Gian P., Nancy Gauthier, and Neil Christie, eds. 2000. Towns and their territories between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Transformation of the Roman World 9. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
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The Transformation of the Roman World volumes were produced by the European Science Foundation–funded Transformation of the Roman World project. Given the nature of the project, it was perhaps inevitable that “transformation” should be prioritized.
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Christie, Neil, and Simon T. Loseby, eds. 1996. Towns in transition: Urban evolution in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
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Includes interventions on the concepts of “continuity,” “decline,” and “transformation” and the problems of our evidence for continuity, change, and ruptures in urban life.
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Durliat, Jean. 1990. De la ville antique à la ville Byzantine: Le problème des subsistances. Publications de l’École Française de Rome 136. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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The size of the largest cities was possible because of the state finance of grain distribution; its disappearance caused cities to shrink. Large cities were prosperous into the 6th century; Durliat argues against social change causing decline in the urban network.
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Liebeschuetz, John H. W. G. 2001a. The decline and fall of the Roman city. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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The city declined demographically and in its monumentality from the 3rd century onward in the West, and later in the East. Christianization had a negative effect on civic identity. Governance changed from government by decurions to that by notables. In consequence city patriotism weakened.
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Liebeschuetz, John H. W. G. 2001b. The uses and abuses of the concept of “decline” in later Roman history, or Was Gibbon politically incorrect? In Recent research in Late Antique urbanism. Edited by Luke Lavan, 137–154. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 42. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Chapter includes responses by Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Mark Whittow, and Lavan. Examination of the concept of “decline” in relation to the late Roman city. The debate shows a range of views on the problems associated with use of the term.
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Saradi, Hélène G. 2006. The Byzantine city in the sixth century: Literary images and historical reality. Athens, Greece: Society of Messenian Archaeological Studies.
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The 6th century saw the end of the “classical” city, with Christianization being the main cause: it changed institutions and ways of life, consequently changing the types of buildings needed.
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Ward-Perkins, Bryan. 1984. From classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban public building in northern and central Italy, AD 300–850. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Uses literary material to analyze the changes in public building. Classical-era monuments were abandoned and Christian buildings became the new dominant buildings in medieval towns.
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Whittow, Mark. 1990. Ruling the late Roman and early Byzantine city: A continuous history.Past & Present 129.1: 3–29.
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Argues that circumstances were less financially favorable for the Late Antique than the early imperial city councils. However, councils’ decline was an administrative change rather than a symptom of urban decline. Cities in the Near East continued to be prosperous throughout the late Roman period (see Whittow’s response to Liebeschuetz in Liebeschuetz 2001b).
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Regional Studies
Each region has its own literature on the Roman city and the particular developments over time. There has been a tendency for scholarship to be compartmentalized so that ideas on urban change have not always flowed swiftly between those studying different parts of the Roman world. Included in this section are a few interesting studies that engage with more than one region to draw out patterns of behavior or change in the city (see also Laurence, et al. 2011, cited in General Overviews, for Western cities), while the sections for each region contain material focused on the specific area. Some regions are grouped together for ease or where general trends seem to allow it.Revell 2009 explores identity and the city, using the ideas of the sociologist Anthony Giddens through a comparison of British and Spanish towns, demonstrating that there is no universal urban Roman identity. Bekker-Nielsen 1989 fruitfully compares urban density in Italy and Gaul by using central place theory (see also Woolf 1997, cited in Greece and Asia Minor). Jouffroy 1986, a comparison of building patterns in Africa and Italy, clearly draws out increases and decreases in building work over time but also demonstrates change in building frequency of particular structures.Patterson 1991, an assessment of “marginal” regions, demonstrates the considerable impact of Roman rule on elites and, consequently, on building patterns.
Bekker-Nielsen, Tønnes. 1989. The geography of power: Studies in the urbanization of Roman north-west Europe. BAR International Series 477. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
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Often-cited use of central place theory. Touches on where agriculturalists might live and, therefore, the occupations of city dwellers (see also Annalisa Marzano’s and J. W. Hanson’s chapters inBowman and Wilson 2011, cited under Anthologies).
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Jouffroy, Hélène. 1986. La construction publique en Italie et dans L’Afrique romaine. Etudes et Travaux 2. Strasbourg, France: AECR.
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Examines urban development through the building work of the cities, as documented archaeologically, epigraphically, and in literature (but the list of material was not entirely comprehensive even in 1986). Complements Duncan-Jones 1982 (cited under Monumentalization and Euergetism) and Lepelley 1979–1981 (cited under Africa).
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Patterson, John R. 1991. Settlement, city and elite in Samnium and Lycia. In City and country in the ancient world. Edited by John Rich and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, 150–172. Leicester-Nottingham Studies in Ancient Society 2. London: Routledge.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203418703Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Roman rule had major effects on cities in underdeveloped areas. Taxation and elite enthusiasm for competitive building led to growing estates and the dispossession of some of the rural poor, who in turn moved into cities.
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Revell, Louise. 2009. Roman imperialism and local identities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Examines Roman identity through urban public architecture in Spain and Britain in the first half of the 2nd century CE. Includes a clear explanation of structuration theory and its application by archaeologists.
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ITALY
Unsurprisingly, much attention has been paid to the Italian city (on the concept of the unity of Italy, see Andrea Giardina’s chapter in École Française de Rome 1994, cited in Anthologies). Many volumes on the Roman city have chapters dedicated to Italy and Rome or are entirely focused on the region, and many examinations of urban space take Rome or Pompeii as a starting point (for example, Temporini and Haase 1972–1996, Vol. II.11.1, on Sicily and Sardinia, cited in Reference Works; Michel Tarpin’s chapter in Lepelley 1998, Gros and Torelli 2010, and Dobbins and Foss 2007, all cited in Textbooks; many chapters in works cited in Anthologies; Erdkamp 2013, cited inGeneral Overviews; and Laurence 2007, cited in Urban Space, Society, and Housing). Gabba 1972remains a crucial examination of Republican urbanism. Sewell 2010, an examination of the impact of the Roman ideological framework and external influences on the structure of the Republican colonies, is a key work on the Republican city. Coarelli and Monti 1998 (on Fregellae) and Fentress 2004 (on Cosa) are included as examples of work on Latin and Roman colonies; both academics have been responsible for much important work on the Italian cities. The nature of municipal organization and change under the Republic is examined in Bispham 2007 and Humbert 1978 (both cited in Urban Institutions/Organization). For more on Republican Rome, see Gros and Torelli 2010(cited in Textbooks), as well as Carmine Ampolo’s chapter in Vol. 1 and Pierre Gros’s chapter in Vol. 2 of Momigliano and Schiavone 1988–1993, cited in Reference Works. Patterson 2006 argues against the traditional narrative of the growth of towns under the Republic and decline from the 2nd century CE onward. Instead the author creates a nuanced picture of change emphasizing other benefactions beyond public buildings—banquets, for instance—and the growth of the involvement ofAugustales (priest of the imperial cult) and collegia (associations). See Jouffroy 1986 (cited inRegional Studies) for patterns of euergetism and Duncan-Jones 1982 (cited underMonumentalization and Euergetism) for costs and politics. The effect of Rome on Italy has been debated, with Hopkins 1980 and Morley 1996 (both cited in the City and Economic Models) supporting the beneficial effect of the capital’s markets on regions close to the city, although others have viewed Rome as drawing away the Italian elites, leading to the impoverishment of the architectural ensembles. For Rome under the empire, see Paolo Sommella and Luisa Migliorati’s chapter in Vol. 2.2 of Momigliano and Schiavone 1988–1993, and for individual locations in Rome, see Steinby 1993–2000 (cited in Reference Works). For urban surveys, see Goodman, et al. 2004on Forum Novum; Keay, et al. 2000 on Falerii Novi; and many chapters in Vermeulen, et al. 2012 (all cited in the City and Archaeological Methodologies).
Coarelli, Filippo, and Pier G. Monti, eds. 1998. Fregellae 1: Le fonti, la storia, il territorio.Rome: Quasar.
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Chapters examine the city of Fregellae, including work on the city after the Roman destruction, on epigraphy, and on the territory.
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Fentress, Elizabeth. 2004. Cosa V: An intermittent town, excavations 1991–1997. Supplements to the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 2. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
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Cosa was primarily excavated by the American Academy in Rome, initially under the direction of Frank Brown. Vol. 5 is the most recent and includes a history of the town in six chapters and specialist papers on a range of artifact types.
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Gabba, Emilio. 1972. Urbanizzazione e rinnovamenti urbanistici nell’Italia centro-meridionale del I sec. a.C. Studi Classichi e Orientali 21:73–112.
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Study of urban development in the 1st century BCE, primarily by using the epigraphy. For Gabba the Social War / Sullan period is crucial in the foundation of later Republican/imperial urbanism.
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Harris, William V., ed. 1999. The transformations of Vrbs Roma in Late Antiquity: The proceedings of a conference held at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and at the American Academy in Rome, February 13–15, 1997. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 33. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Collection of English and Italian papers on late Roman / Late Antique Rome. Important for the range of approaches to time, political power and elites, monuments, and the population of the city.
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Jongman, Willem M. 1988. The economy and society of Pompeii. Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 4. Amsterdam: J. B. Gieben.
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Modifies Finley’s consumer city, by using Pompeii and its archaeological evidence. Despite criticisms, it remains an interesting assessment of the economy of one small town in Italy.
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Patterson, John R. 2006. Landscapes and cities: Rural settlement and civic transformation in early imperial Italy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Some cities and regions did better than others, but Patterson emphasizes “civic transformation,” with a new focus on buildings for social gatherings rather than politics. Social mobility and the benefactions given by the non-elite became important despite the hierarchical society.
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Sewell, Jamie. 2010. The formation of Roman urbanism, 338–200 B.C.: Between contemporary foreign influence and Roman tradition. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 79. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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More than one tradition informed colonies of the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE; both Roman and Greek ideas were present in the Latin colonies. The Romans were pragmatic in the planning of their colonies within their ideological framework.
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Zanker, Paul. 1995. Pompeji: Stadtbild und Wohngeschmack. Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt 61. Mainz am Rhein, Germany: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
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Also published in English as Pompeii: Public and Private Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998). For students, this is an accessible treatment of Pompeii in the pre-Roman and Roman periods. Some suggestions—for instance, the use of the theatrum tectum (covered theater / small theater / odeon) as a meeting place for the Roman colonists—have been debated.
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THE NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES
Studies of the culture of cities within the northwestern provinces, and particularly on Roman Britain, have been the proving ground for debates over Romanization and other models of cultural exchange within the Roman world (see the Romanization section, in particular Mattingly 2007 and Millett 1990; also see Revell 2009, cited in Regional Studies). See Woolf 1998 for an introduction to the Romanization debate in a Gallo-Roman context. The Roman period obviously brought considerable change in terms of settlement location and organization, monumentalization, the “epigraphic habit,” and location of burials, although there are debates about the character of some of the Iron Age settlements (the oppida, see Bedon 1999; Christian Goudineau’s chapter in Duby 1980). Goudineau’s chapter in Duby 1980 makes an interesting attempt to rank the importance of the Gallic cities by using a variety of criteria such as size and provision with monuments. Debates drawing on changing ideas about identity and Romanization have been about the process of change and its meaning for our reading of society. The Romano-British city in Wacher 1995 remained a top-down creation rather than the product of local elites. Carroll 2001 examines different reactions to Roman rule and culture in the two German provinces. Bedon 1999 explores the relationship between the “Roman” urban form and the new cities of Gaul; like Martin Millett’s British elite, the Gallic elites used the city to bolster their status (Millett 1990, cited in Romanization; see also Frézouls 1984 inMonumentalization and Euergetism). Creighton 2006, a study of the first Romano-British towns, explores individual sites to suggest the links between the pre-Roman- and Roman-era topographies and the construction of some cities, in order to emphasize the continuity of the local elite. The use of the dominant cultural vocabulary by the elites and their connectedness with urban development elsewhere comes through in Woolf 1998, in which the elite also use the new opportunities of the Roman Empire for their own ends. For the late Roman period, Esmonde Cleary 2013 also emphasizes that the aristocracies of the region were not peripheral in terms of ideologies or cultural expectations. Other studies chart the development of the “Roman” city in the region, links with urbanism across the Mediterranean world, and regional variations; see Duby 1980; chapters inTemporini and Haase 1972–1996, Vols. II.3–5 (cited in Reference Works); and Marie-Thérèse Raepsaet-Charlier’s chapter in Lepelley 1998 (cited in Textbooks). Bedon, et al. 1988 provides a catalogue of the Gallic cities and their archaeology.
Bedon, Robert. 1999. Les villes des trois Gaules de César à Néron: Dans leur contexte historique, territorial et politique. Paris: Picard Éditeur.
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The cities of Gaul represent an interpretatio Gallica (Gallic interpretation) of Roman urban forms. The new cities gave the Gallic elites methods of demonstrating loyalty to Rome and ways of expressing their status, helping to “Romanize” Gallic institutions and mentalities.
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Bedon, Robert, Raymond Chevallier, and Pierre Pinon. 1988. Architecture et urbanisme en Gaule romaine. 2 vols. Collection des Hespérides. Paris: Editions Errance.
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Vol. 1, L’architecture et les villes en Gaule romaine; Vol. 2, L’urbanisme en Gaule romaine. Introduces the monuments of Roman Gaul and provides plans and descriptions of the cities. Obviously, the state of archaeological knowledge is gradually leaving the text behind.
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Carroll, Maureen. 2001. Romans, Celts & Germans: The German provinces of Rome. Stroud, UK: Tempus.
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Brief assessment of change and continuity in the Germaniae. Demonstrates different valuations of urbanism on the part of different groups such as the Batavi and Ubii. Includes a case study of Cologne.
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Creighton, John. 2006. Britannia: The creation of a Roman province. London: Routledge.
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Examines the variety of urban origins and expressions of elite power and, in some cases, continuity with the past, through the structure and foci of those towns and “Roman” building types.
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Duby, Georges, ed. 1980. Histoire de la France urbaine. Vol. 1, La ville antique des origines au IXe siècle. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
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Several chapters examine the city from the pre-Roman period in the South and Augustus farther north to the Late Antique and early medieval periods.
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Esmonde Cleary, Simon. 2013. The Roman West, AD 200–500: An archaeological study. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Cities remained a necessary cultural expression of “Romanness” after the 3rd century, but there were considerable regional differences in terms of urban monumentality or occupation across the Roman West. The 200–500 CE period was different, archaeologically, from preceding and later eras.
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Hurst, Henry, ed. 1999. The coloniae of Roman Britain: New studies and a review; Papers of the conference held at Gloucester on 5–6 July, 1997. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 36. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Chapters largely but not exclusively focus on the coloniae at Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, and York and engage with questions of identity, use of space, and the importance of veterans in these communities.
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Wacher, John S. 1995. The towns of Roman Britain. 2d ed. London: Batsford.
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Major work on the cities of Britain, dealing with the different city types. “Romanization” is used to describe urbanization and native reactions to Roman rule. Urbanization is a “top-down” phenomenon. First published in 1974.
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Woolf, Greg. 1998. Becoming Roman: The origins of provincial civilization in Gaul. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511518614Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes the evolution of early imperial Romano-Gallic civilization. The city, a product of the new political reality, was, like other features of “Roman” culture, used by aristocratic groups to strengthen their position within society but was not a veneer.
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HISPANIA
As Lorenzo Abad Casal, Simon Keay, and Sebastián Ramallo Asensio have pointed out, compared with other regions, Hispania and its cities have been rather badly understood outside the peninsula, although that is changing. One area of urbanism in Hispania that has been heavily mined by academics such as Michael Crawford and Julián González is the material from the Spanish municipal and colonial “charters” from cities such as Urso (see Crawford 1996 and González 1986, cited in Urban Institutions/Organization). As in other regions, urbanism in Spain has been seen through the prism of Romanization and resistance. Both Fear 1996 and Keay 1998 challenge or nuance the picture in traditional historiography of a heavily Romanized south and east and less Romanized northwest. The differences in interpretation and use of primary material for the pre-Roman history of Spain, and therefore continuity with the Roman period, can be usefully observed in the chapters by José Luis Escacena and María Belén as well as by Mary Downs (both in Keay 1998). Laurence, et al. 2011 (cited in General Overviews) examines the Republican cities in Hispania in understanding the evolution of Roman thought and practice regarding urbanism and monumentality. Both Revell 2009 (cited in Regional Studies) and Curchin 2004 use the Spanish city to examine questions of identity and the city, with Louise Revell looking at particular sites in comparison with Britain, and Leonard Curchin looking at the so-called Celtiberian region. For general overviews, see Blázquez 1991 and Abascal and Espinosa 1989. There are now numerous important edited volumes on cities in the peninsula. Chapters in Cunliffe and Keay 1995 examine both urbanism in general and particular case studies. The chapters in Trillmich and Zanker 1990 instead focus on the cities in the Augustan period. Regional studies seem to offer the best potential for understanding developments, given the range of trajectories in urban development: see in particularAbad Casal, et al. 2006; Fear 1996; and Keay 1998. The late Roman city has been comparatively ignored. Juan Abascal sees problems developing as early as the late 2nd century CE; Kulikowski 2004 argues for much continuity across the Roman period (see also Temporini and Haase 1972–1996, Vol. II.3, in Reference Works; Lepelley 1998 in Textbooks; Mackie 1983 in Urban Institutions/Organization; the chapter by Mary Downs in Fentress 2000, cited in Anthologies; and the chapters by Annalisa Marzano and by Simon Keay and Graeme Earl in Bowman and Wilson 2011, cited in Anthologies).
Abad Casal, Lorenzo, Simon J. Keay, and Sebastián F. Ramallo Asensio, eds. 2006. Early Roman towns in Hispania Tarraconensis. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 62. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Papers demonstrate both continuity and development in local cultures from the 1st century BCE into the 1st century CE. Urban environments show a mix of broad similarities alongside variation in the adoption of “Roman” ideas.
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Abascal, Juan M., and Urbano Espinosa. 1989. La ciudad hispano-romana: Privlegio y poder. Logroño, Spain: Colegio Oficial de Aparejadores y Arquitectos Técnicos de la Rioja.
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Focuses on early Roman historical development, the juridical basis of the cities, internal politics, and finances. An urban revolution under Rome created a unified, stable Roman system; problems leading to urban decline start in the late 2nd century.
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Blázquez, José María. 1991. Urbanismo y sociedad en Hispania. Colección Fundamentos 114. Madrid: Ediciones Istmo.
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General history of the city in Roman Spain. Contains only a limited assessment of the cities of late Roman Spain.
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Cunliffe, Barry, and Simon Keay, eds. 1995. Social complexity and the development of towns in Iberia from the Copper Age to the second century AD. Proceedings of the British Academy 86. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Important, often-cited, edited volume on urbanism in the peninsula. Roughly a quarter of the chapters are on Roman cities in Iberia (including chapters on Roman urbanism by Keay and J. S. Richardson, and chapters on individual cities, for instance on Tarraco by Xavier Dupré i Raventós). Pre-Roman chapters put the Roman period material into a proper context.
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Curchin, Leonard A. 2004. The Romanization of central Spain: Complexity, diversity and change in a provincial hinterland. London: Routledge.
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Problematizes the debates over “Romanization,” using the term as denoting a process of cultural exchange. Real cities appear from the early empire, although many pre-Roman settlements demonstrate continued occupation. Municipalization started with Augustus.
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Fear, Andrew T. 1996. Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in southern Spain c. 50 BC–AD 150. Oxford: Clarendon.
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Challenges the usual position that Baetica was heavily Romanized by the mid-1st century CE. Points to a mosaic of cultures in Roman Baetica.
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Keay, Simon J., ed. 1998. The archaeology of early Roman Baetica. Papers presented at a session titled “Roman Baetica: A Reappraisal,” held at the Roman Archaeological Conference, University of Reading, Spring 1995. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 29. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Chapters on the pre-Roman background, monumentalization, epigraphy, archaeological projects, and the economy, examining the growing debates over identity and the interaction between history and archaeology.
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Kulikowski, Michael. 2004. Late Roman Spain and its cities. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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Argues for continuity across the Roman period, with municipal government still functioning into the 5th century. Recognizes the changes in the Spanish urban topography, partly in consequence of a Christianity that “dissolved” social behaviors in the 5th century CE.
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Trillmich, Walter, and Paul Zanker, eds. 1990. Stadtbild und Ideologie: Die Monumentalisierung hispanischer Städte zwischen Republik und Kaiserzeit; Kolloquium in Madrid vom 19. bis 23. Oktober 1987. Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
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Includes chapters that assess both general processes on the Iberian Peninsula, and specific cities and monuments at the beginning of the imperial era.
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AFRICA
Approaches to African cities that made ideological links, subconsciously or consciously, between Roman and French/Italian occupation have been superseded by postcolonial theories of resistance and, in the early 21st century, by more-nuanced approaches to identity (see Romanization). Foremost among the postcolonial approaches is Bénabou 1976, a groundbreaking picture of African resistance to Roman rule—while overdone in terms of the binary Roman-native distinction, it helped problematize the issues and end the colonial-era presumptions about Rome civilizing the natives.Leglay 1961–1966, a magisterial examination of the cult of Saturn (the principal African god), deals with the urban and nonurban cult but also the interaction between Roman and non-Roman. Zimmer 1989, an analysis of the distribution of statuary in the forums of Cuicul and Thamugadi in Africa, is a demonstration of how relationships within provincial elites and displays of loyalty to the empire can be drawn out from the material remains. Mattingly 1995 is still the best examination of cultural change in one area. Sears 2011 examines the city across the Roman period and points to the variety of responses to the range of choices offered by empire on the part of the cities. Jouffroy 1986 (cited in Regional Studies), a comparison of building practice in Italy and Africa, remains an important assessment and compendium of material. The late Romano-African city has been a profitable area for research, and Chastagnol 1978 (cited in Urban Institutions/Organization), a monograph on the Album of Thamugadi, is a key assessment of one urban elite at a discrete point in time. Lepelley 1979–1981 is a fundamental examination of urban and elite change and continuity, particularly through the inscriptions. Potter 1995 points to considerable changes in late Roman urban topography, with new Christian foci altering the city, and Leone 2007 charts the transformation of the urban landscape in the provinces of Zeugitana, Byzacena, and Tripolitania in considerable detail; both provide a greater sense of urban change than does Lepelley 1979–1981. Many of the works in other sections of this article cover African cities (see chapters in Temporini and Haase 1972–1996, Vol. II.10.2, cited in Reference Works; also see citations in Anthologies).
Bénabou, Marcel. 1976. La résistance africaine à la romanisation. Textes à l’Appui. Paris: Maspero.
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Key postcolonial approach to Africa under Rome; emphasizes physical, cultural, and religious resistance to Rome on the part of the natives. Has been criticized for its dichotomy between “Roman” and “African.”
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Leglay, Marcel. 1961–1966. Saturne africain. 3 vols. Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 205. Paris: CNRS.
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Includes Saturne africain: Histoire and Saturne africain: Monuments, the latter comprising Vol. 1 (Afrique proconsulaire) and Vol. 2 (Numidie-Maurétanies). Comprehensive assessment of the preeminent African god and his places of worship. Although the catalogue of sites is increasingly out of date, this remains an essential text for the study of the relationship between African and Roman in the cities of North Africa.
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Leone, Anna. 2007. Changing townscapes in North Africa from Late Antiquity to the Arab conquest. Munera 28. Bari, Italy: Edipuglia.
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Makes greater use of the archaeological evidence and works on a longer time frame than Lepelley 1979–1981. Catalogues the evidence for building work across the cities and demonstrates the transformation of public buildings for new uses.
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Lepelley, Claude. 1979–1981. Les cités de l’Afrique romaine au bas-empire. 2 vols. Paris: Études Augustiniennes.
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Vol. 1, La permanence d’une civilisation municipale; Vol. 2, Notices d’histoire municipale. Points to the vitality of the urban infrastructure in the 4th century. It could be argued that the focus on public inscriptions and municipal structures downplays the importance of Christianity.
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Mattingly, David J. 1995. Tripolitania. London: Batsford.
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Study of the regions’ cities and their rural hinterlands, military presence, and tribal groups. The main focus is on the early Roman period, but Mattingly also examines changes into the late Roman period.
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Potter, Tim W. 1995. Towns in Late Antiquity: Iol Caesarea and its context. Occasional Publication 2. Sheffield, UK: Ian Sanders Memorial Committee, Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, Univ. of Sheffield.
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Analysis of the fate of public space at the end of Antiquity; these spaces were being transformed/abandoned from the late 4th century onward.
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Sears, Gareth. 2011. The cities of Roman Africa. Stroud, UK: History Press.
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Charts the development of the Roman city by using archaeological, epigraphic, and literary evidence; there was great diversity in evolution within the African “Roman” city. Accessible for students.
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Zimmer, Gerhard. 1989. Locus datus decreto decurionum: Zur Statuenafstellung zweier Forumsanlagen im römischen Afrika. Munich: Verlag der Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
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Zimmer examined the development of the forum, and its statuary, at Cuicul and Thamugadi (see also the chapter by Claude Briand-Ponsart in Berrendonner, et al. 2008, cited under Anthologies). This is a balanced assessment of the integration of the emperors and imperial propaganda into municipal spaces.
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CYRENAICA
As with Egypt (see Egypt; also see Alan Bowman’s chapter in Fentress 2000, cited in Anthologies), Cyrenaica is often peripheral to discussions of Roman urbanism, but, lacking papyri, Cyrenaica does not even feature in debates over demography. Stucchi 1975 remains the most extensive monograph on the region, but the focus is more clearly on monuments than on the nature and role of the Cyrenaican city. Laronde 1996 and Luni 2006 focus on Apollonia and Cyrene in particular—Cyrene was the regional capital in the early Roman period; Apollonia, at the end of Roman control. The letters of Synesius of Cyrene that suggested the ruination of the cities used to be taken at face value, but more-nuanced approaches have moved away from this picture; Roques 1987, for instance, moves away from a simple idea of 4th-century decline at Cyrene. Although it separates churches out from the rest of urban development, which is potentially problematic, Ward-Perkins and Goodchild 2003, a corpus of churches and other Christian buildings in the region, does demonstrate the development of the Christian topography.
Laronde, André. 1996. Apollonia de Cyrénaïque: Archéologie et histoire. Journal des Savants1.1: 3–49.
DOI: 10.3406/jds.1996.1593Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Account of the historical development of Apollonia, primarily from the perspective of the long-standing French mission’s work at the city, including underwater excavation. For Apollonia this updates Stucchi 1975.
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Luni, Mario, ed. 2006. Cirene: “Atene d’Africa.” Monografie di Archeologia Libica 28. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider.
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Also see Cirene nell’antichità: “Atene d’Africa” (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2010), likewise edited by Luni. Volumes primarily on the University of Urbino’s excavations at Cyrene under the direction of Luni and Sandro Stucchi. The books bring together work undertaken since Stucchi’s volume on the region.
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Roques, Denis. 1987. Synésios de Cyrène et la Cyrénaïque du bas-empire. Etudes d’Antiquités Africaines. Paris: Éditions CNRS.
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Argues against superficial readings of Synesius’s works and suggests that Late Antique Cyrenaica and its cities were actually flourishing.
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Stucchi, Sandro. 1975. Architettura cirenaica. Monografie di Archeologia Libica 9. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider.
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Volume remains a key text for research on the Pentapolis, although the focus is primarily on monuments rather than the city per se. For Late Antiquity the focus shifts from Cyrene to Apollonia and Ptolemais.
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Ward-Perkins, John B., and Richard G. Goodchild. 2003. Christian monuments of Cyrenaica. Edited by Joyce Reynolds. Society for Libyan Studies Monograph 4. London: Society for Libyan Studies.
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Examines the churches of the Cyrenaican cities and their rural hinterlands, and therefore the Christianization of society. Despite its focus on only one part of the city, this is a good place to start for research into the Late Antique city in the region more generally.
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EGYPT
The preservation of papyri makes the study of the city in Roman Egypt exceptional in the Roman world, although there are debates about whether Egyptian cities themselves differed from the “norm”; Bowman and Rathbone 1992 argues that they gradually became more like cities elsewhere. Personal documentation allows other aspects of urban life to be studied than is true of other regions. Moments of change have come in for particular attention. Alston and Alston 1997 tries to put what settlements should be thought of as cities on a firmer basis, while Alston 2002 proposes the “Augustan settlement” as a major change for the region’s cities. Bowman and Rathbone 1992 also argues that there were considerable changes between Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. See Roger Bagnall’s chapter in Storey 2006 as well as Bagnall and Frier 1994 (both cited in Demography and the City) for the use of papyri to examine urban populations. For the late Roman period, works by Richard Alston and Bagnall (Bagnall 1993) are the obvious starting points for research into society and the city in general. Alexandria was one of the megalopolises of the Mediterranean world throughout the Roman period, and both Haas 1997 and McKenzie 2007 examine the position of Alexandria in Antiquity; the former in terms of religious change and its effects on the topography, while the latter explores the city over time, bringing in evidence from other Egyptian cities. Both Christopher Haas and Alston have explored the transformative effect of Christianity.
Alston, Richard. 2002. The city in Roman and Byzantine Egypt. London and New York: Routledge.
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Engages with models of the city discussed in the City and Economic Models; uses urban theory, but ideology is as important in the city as social function.
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Alston, Richard, and Robert D. Alston. 1997. Urbanism and the urban community in Roman Egypt. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 83:199–216.
DOI: 10.2307/3822466Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Exploration of what should be thought of as a city in Roman Egypt and of the composition of urban societies.
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Bagnall, Roger S. 1993. Egypt in Late Antiquity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Useful introduction to various aspects of urban continuities and transformations. Includes chapters on cities and demography.
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Bowman, Alan K., and Dominic W. Rathbone. 1992. Cities and administration in Roman Egypt.Journal of Roman Studies 82:107–127.
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Argues that there were considerable differences between Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt; cities were a product of the Augustan period and over time became similar to municipalities throughout the Mediterranean.
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Haas, Christopher. 1997. Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and social conflict. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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Examination of the city in the 4th and 5th centuries. As part of that analysis, Haas deals with the city’s evolving religious urban topography.
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McKenzie, Judith S. 2007. The architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, c. 300 BC to AD 700. Yale University Press Pelican History of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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Charts urban evolution. Examines literary evidence, papyri, and the archaeological material for monuments and urban change in Alexandria and elsewhere.
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THE LEVANT AND MESOPOTAMIA
Debates have centered on the extent of Hellenization, the influence of Rome, and on continuity from the pre-Roman period. So, for instance, Millar 1993 emphasizes the influence of Greek culture throughout the region, and Sartre 2001 argues that the Roman era saw the greatest expansion of the “Greek” city, while Ball 2000 points to the fact that the Romans did not found a new city in the East and that after the Late Antique period, cities abandoned their Hellenized names (see also Maurice Sartre’s chapter in Lepelley 1998, cited in Textbooks). Sartre 2001 and Millar 1993 not only emphasize continuity but also diversity among the communities of this huge area; diversity is sometimes masked by general histories of “the East.” Judaea has often been seen as a place apart, but its cities at least were Hellenized in the Roman period (see Millar 1993). Roller 1998, an examination of the building program of Herod, demonstrates the impact of client kings on a region’s cities. Hall 2004, an examination of Roman-period Berytus, is notable for the application of debates since the late 20th century on Christianization or acculturation to a particular but perhaps atypical city, given its status as a Roman colony. Kennedy 2007, a study of the Decapolis, is a particularly successful, brief assessment of a region that saw growing prosperity throughout the Roman period but also the complexity of regional changes. The Dura-Europos volumes remain essential sources for one particularly well-preserved “Roman” city on the Euphrates (see Rostovtzeff, et al. 1945–2010). Downey 1963, although now outdated, does bring together a traditional history of the most important city in the East (see also Sartre’s chapter in Nicolet, et al. 2000, cited in General Overviews). (See, in general, Temporini and Haase 1972–1996, Vols. II.8–9, cited in Reference Works, for some individual cities.)
Ball, Warwick. 2000. Rome in the East: The transformation of an empire. London and New York: Routledge.
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Emphasizes continuity with the pre-classical past for the region and most cities; overall, “the Roman impact was small.” Criticizes others (particularly Millar) for viewing Near Eastern society as particularly affected by Hellenic culture.
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Downey, Glanville. 1963. Ancient Antioch. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Old, but collects together much of what is known about the Greco-Roman metropolis and late Roman capital.
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Hall, Linda Jones. 2004. Roman Berytus: Beirut in Late Antiquity. London and New York: Routledge.
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Examination of the multilayered religious and cultural identities of the city, engaging with work done since the late 20th century on acculturation and Christianization in Antiquity.
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Kennedy, David L. 2007. Gerasa and the Decapolis: A “virtual island” in northwest Jordan. Duckworth Debates in Archaeology. London: Duckworth.
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Engages, accessibly for students, with Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s approach to microregions (see Horden and Purcell 2000, cited in the City and Economic Models) and with research into Roman demography. The Roman period saw an increase in the number of cities and in the population.
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Millar, Fergus. 1993. The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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Emphasizes the impact of Greek culture and language on the cities of the Near East. Uses a range of source types. Presents a comprehensive overview, for students, of the range of cultures across the region.
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Roller, Duane W. 1998. The building program of Herod the Great. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
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Argues that Herod’s building work provided a model for other elites throughout the Levant for the whole Roman period. Compare with Millar’s similar assessment.
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Rostovtzeff, Michael I., Alfred R. Bellinger, Frank E. Brown, et al., eds. 1945–2010. The excavations at Dura-Europos, conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Final Reports 1–7. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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Frequently cited by works on the region and general histories of the city in the classical period because of the quality of the evidence.
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Sartre, Maurice. 2001. D’Alexandre à Zénobie: Histoire du Levant antique, IVe siècle av. J.-C.–IIIe siècle ap. J.-C. Paris: Fayard.
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Points to differences between cities in the region—the relatively uniform appearance of cities hides considerable complexity and diversity.
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GREECE AND ASIA MINOR
Traditionally, cities in Greece were seen as declining from the pre-Roman period onward, with urban Greek society being essentially unaltered by Rome (Jones 1940 remains the classic evaluation of the Greek city). Work over several decades has taken us beyond such a picture and even beyond merely noting that some public spaces changed under the impact of Rome. Parrish 2001 provides a useful statement of knowledge about a series of important cities in western Asia Minor. Urban density varied across Greece and Asia Minor (see J. W. Hanson’s chapter in Bowman and Wilson 2011, cited in Anthologies, for city territories). Mitchell 1995 argues for considerable urbanization under Rome in Galatia. Levick 1967 explores the fate of those Roman colonies founded in south-central Asia Minor—here, cultural change can be seen in reverse, with the use of Latin gradually dying out to be replaced by Greek, but this should be read in conjunction with the material on cultural change discussed in Romanization. More broadly, Thomas 2007 (cited in Monumentalization and Euergetism) and Hanson’s chapter in Bowman and Wilson 2011 point to the influence of Rome in the decoration and connectivity of cities in Asia Minor. Woolf 1997 argues that Roman power made a considerable difference to urbanism in the East. Alcock 1993, an examination of urban and settlement density in Roman Greece, also argues for considerable change; Cartledge and Spawforth 1989 also points to the reduction in smaller settlements in Sparta’s territory during the Roman period. Patterson 1991 (cited in Regional Studies), an examination of more-marginal areas, argues for elite competition as the reason for elite munificence in Asia Minor and Italy; Zuiderhoek 2009argues for a need to appease the lower classes. Thonemann 2011, an examination of the Maeander River valley and its settlements and elites, makes for a stimulating intellectual journey along the river. Engels 1990 (cited in the City and Economic Models), an assessment of Roman Corinth, is important in providing an alternative economic model to the consumer city.
Alcock, Susan E. 1993. Graecia capta: The landscapes of Roman Greece. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Roman rule had a deep impact on Greek society, with a redistribution of population to nucleated settlements, leading to the growth of some towns.
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Cartledge, Paul, and Antony Spawforth. 1989. Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A tale of two cities. States and Cities of Ancient Greece. London: Routledge.
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Despite deliberate archaism in some aspects, in terms of its buildings and society, Sparta was typical of a small Romano-Greek city.
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Jones, Arnold H. M. 1940. The Greek city from Alexander to Justinian. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Remains a key assessment of the city, in spite of its age. Reprinted as recently as 1998. The concentration of wealth and political power contributed to the stagnation of the Roman city, which was parasitic on its territory.
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Levick, Barbara. 1967. Roman colonies in southern Asia Minor. Oxford: Clarendon.
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Examination of Augustus’s colonies, inserted into preexisting towns, in Pisidia. Examines foundation, government, development, and the decline in the use of Latin (and therefore Italian culture?) on inscriptions and coins. Compare Hall 2004, cited in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and Andrea De Giorgi’s chapter in Sweetman 2011, cited in Urban Institutions/Organization.
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Mitchell, Stephen. 1995. Anatolia: Land, men, and gods in Asia Minor. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
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Central and eastern Asia Minor were relatively unurbanized before Rome but were divided into city territories by the Flavians. The 2nd century saw an intense period of monumental building work except in central Anatolia.
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Parrish, David, ed. 2001. Urbanism in western Asia Minor: New studies on Aphrodisias, Ephesos, Hierapolis, Pergamon, Perge, and Xanthos. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 45. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Chapters present the chronological development of the cities in terms of urban plans and monuments, with an introduction that examines general trends.
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Thonemann, Peter. 2011. The Maeander Valley: A historical geography from Antiquity to Byzantium. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511974847Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Not about the city per se, but despite that, a crucial examination of the cities and communities of the Maeander River valley in their spatial, economic, and conceptual contexts from the 4th century BCEto the 13th century CE.
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Woolf, Greg. 1997. The Roman urbanization of the East. In The early Roman Empire in the East. Edited by Susan E. Alcock, 1–14. Oxbow Monograph 95. Oxford: Oxbow.
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Brief chapter examines the impact of Rome on settlement and urban networks in the East. Urbanization, and the hierarchy of cities, was deeply affected by Roman rule even if preexisting cultural and economic links between cities remained important.
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Zuiderhoek, Arjan. 2009. The politics of munificence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, elites and benefactors in Asia Minor. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511576508Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The rise in civic euergetism was a reaction to increased concentration of wealth and hierarchization caused by Roman attitudes toward governance and the elite. Tentatively suggests that decline in euergetism from the 220s onward might have been caused by Christianization.
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THE NORTHERN BALKANS AND THE DANUBE
As with the Northwestern Provinces, the region was very diverse, and no one book deals with all elements. Given this problem, this short section focuses on a very few important cities from around the region and a few works on subregions or provinces; together they represent most areas in the northern Balkans and the Danube frontier. Wilkes 2005 is a useful entry for research on much of the area, providing a longer bibliography than there is space for here. Work on the region has benefited from the production of volumes on the Roman provinces in the 1960s and 1970s. Wilkes 1969 (on Dalmatia), Alföldy 1974 (on Noricum), and Mócsy 1974 (on Pannonia) remain major contributions to the study of the provinces and their cities. Diaconescu 2004 is a more recent examination of the towns of Roman Dacia. There are a series of important volumes for Salona and its hinterland, by a Croatian/French team: Duval, et al. 1994 has been included because of its focus on the city itself. Butrint, on the southern extremity of the region (Hansen, et al. 2013), has been extensively excavated, showing the evolution of the city across time. The authors of Doneus, et al. 2013 (cited in the City and Archaeological Methodologies) have done much to improve our knowledge of the town of Carnuntum. For more work on the region, see John Wilkes’s chapter in Lepelley 1998 (cited inTextbooks), as well as Walbank, et al. 1989–2005, Vols. 10–13, and Temporini and Haase 1972–1996, Vols. II.5–7 (both cited in Reference Works), for chapters both on regions and individual cities.
Alföldy, Géza. 1974. Noricum. Translated by Anthony Birley. History of the Provinces of the Roman Empire. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Although largely written in the late 1960s, this history remains one of the best examinations of the province. Uses epigraphy, archaeology, and literary text to examine the province and, in doing so, the city. See Wilkes 2005 for a more recent key bibliography.
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Diaconescu, Alexandru. 2004. The towns of Roman Dacia: An overview of recent archaeological research. In Roman Dacia: The making of a provincial society. Edited by S. William Hanson and Ian P. Haynes, 137–154. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 56. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Overview of the beginning, evolution, and end of the Roman-period towns in Dacia. Examines the relationship between pre-Roman and Roman settlements.
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Duval, Noël, Emilio Marin, and Catherine Metzger, eds. 1994. Salona: Recherches archéologiques franco-croates à Salone. Vol. 1, Catalogue de la sculpture architecturale paléochrétienne de Salone. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 194.1. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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Examination of Christian architecture at the city. One of four volumes by the team; the most recent, Vol. 4, was published in 2010.
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Hansen, Inge Lyse, Richard Hodges, and Sarah Leppard, eds. 2013. Butrint 4: The archaeology and histories of an Ionian town. Butrint Archaeological Monographs 4. Oxford: Oxbow.
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Hodges’s overview of the town makes interesting points about the relationship between archaeological interpretation and 20th-century political concerns. See also Hansen’s chapter inSweetman 2011 (cited in Urban Institutions/Organization).
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Mócsy, András. 1974. Pannonia and Upper Moesia: A history of the middle Danube provinces of the Roman Empire. Translated by Sheppard Frere. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Although from the mid-1970s, this remains a key text, with the city covered as one element in the different periods of Roman rule. See Wilkes 2005 for a more recent key bibliography.
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Wilkes, John J. 1969. Dalmatia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Remains an important examination of the history and archaeology of the province of Dalmatia and its cities. Something of a model for other provincial histories. See Duval, et al. 1994 for more-recent work on Salona.
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Wilkes, John J. 2005. The Roman Danube: An archaeological survey. Journal of Roman Studies 95:124–225.
DOI: 10.3815/000000005784016298Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A good entry point for research into the northern Balkans and particularly the Danube frontier.
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LAST MODIFIED: 08/26/2014
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0171
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