12 - Urbanism

Summary

Introduction

After the armies of the eastern Roman Empire had conquered the Vandal Kingdom, the emperor Justinian (527–65 ce) decided to build a city on the location of a minor and insignificant town, close to where his army had landed. The account by the contemporary historian Procopius shows his wholehearted support of the undertaking:

Justinian…conceived the desire to transform this place forthwith into a city which should be made strong by a wall and distinguished by other constructions as worthy to be counted a prosperous and impressive city; and the purpose of the emperor has been realized. For the wall and the city has been brought to completion, and the condition of the territory is being suddenly changed. The country-dwellers have thrown aside the plough and lead the existence of a community, no longer going the round of country tasks but living a city life. They pass their days in the market place and hold assemblies to deliberate on questions which concern them; and they traffic with one another, and conduct all the other affairs which pertain to the dignity of a city.

This one passage offers occasion for several reflections on urbanism in the Roman world. To begin with, the ancients did not perceive a city as merely a concentration of many people in one place. To them it was a symbol of prosperity and civilized culture. Hence, peoples without towns and cities were uncivilized. Concomitantly, country-dwellers are often depicted by the urban writers as boorish and ignorant simpletons, at best as naïve and unspoiled. Related to these ideas is the notion that a city is only a city if it contains the markers of civilized life: towns and cities had to be built around public monuments like temples, theatres, and baths, and contain halls and public spaces where councils and people assembled. In the later Roman Empire, walls had become an important feature too. Without these monuments and features such settlements would indeed have been no more than many people living in the same place. Hence, it was the duty of rulers and of social elites to support urban society by building and maintaining public monuments. Rulers of the Roman Empire could of course go a step further and, in the tradition of Hellenistic kings, create a city were none had been before. At the end of Classical Antiquity Justinian founded Justiniana Prima near his birth place in modern Serbia.