24 See K.W. Russell, ‘The earthquake chronology of Palestine and northwest Arabia from the
2nd through the mid-8th century AD’, Bull. American Schools of Oriental Research 260 (1985),
37–60. M. Meier, Das andere Zeitalter Iustinians. Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung im
- Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2003), approaches the his-
tory of the sixth century through a study of catastrophes, including plague and earthquake;
see Chapter 5 above for the problems surrounding the Justinianic plague.
25 Useful introductions: S. Barnish, ‘The transformation of classical cities and the Pirenne
debate’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 2 (1989), 385–400; M. Whittow, ‘Ruling the late Roman
and early Byzantine city: a continuous history’, Past and Present 129 (1990), 3–29 (an optimis-
tic view based mainly on the Near East); see also out of a large bibliography G.P. Brogiolo
and B. Ward-Perkins, eds., The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early
Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Most of these urban settlements were small by modern
standards and the terms ‘city’ and ‘town’ are often used more or less interchangeably in
modern archaeological literature, bypassing the legal and administrative issues connected
with cities and city status (on which see Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2004)).
26 J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, The Decline and Fall of the Roman City (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), is not afraid to use the term ‘decline’ and sees this as setting in before the end
of the fi fth century in the west and already during the sixth century in the east; see also
Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005), Chapter VI, 124–37.
27 For the process seen on a grand scale in the high empire, see G.M. Rogers, The Sacred Identity
of Ephesos (London: Routledge, 1991).
28 Buildings V.2.1–5, describing Helenopolis in Bithynia.
29 Buildings IV. 1.19–27; the identifi cation is not universally accepted due to the lack of epi-
graphic confi rmation: see B. Bavant, ‘Caricin Grad and the changes in the nature of urban-
ism in the central Balkans in the sixth century’, in Poulter, ed., The Transition to Late Antiquity
on the Danube and Beyond, 337–74; however, assuming it is correct, Procopius’ description
now seems nearer the mark than was earlier thought.
30 Denys Pringle, ‘Two fortifi ed sites in Byzantine Africa: Aïn Djelloula and Henchir Sguidan’,
Antiquité tardive 10 (2002), 269–90; Proc., Buildings VI.6.17–18.
31 See Kaegi, Muslim Expansion and Byzantine Collapse, 106–12.
32 Nicopolis was founded in the second century AD with grid plan and public buildings on the
model of the cities of Asia Minor; destroyed by the Huns in the fi fth century, it was rebuilt
after 450 on very different lines. For discussion see M. Whittow, ‘Nicopolis ad Istrum:
backward and Balkan?’, in Poulter, ed., Transition to Late Antiquity, 375–89, with A.G. Poul-
ter, Nicopolis ad Istrum: A Roman, Late Roman and early Byzantine City (London: Society for the
Promotion of Roman Studies, 1995).
33 See Whittow, art. cit., 386 with Sodini, ‘The transformation of cities in late antiquity in the
provinces of Macedonia and Epirus’, and J. Crow, ‘Amida and Tropaeum Traiani: a com-
parison of late antique fortress cities on the Lower Danube and Mesopotamia’, in Poulter,
ed., The Transition to Late Antiquity, 435–55.
34 See T.E. Gregory, ‘Fortifi cation and urban design in early Byzantine Greece’, in R.L.
Hohlfelder, ed., City, Town and Countryside in the Early Byzantine Era (Boulder: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1982), 54–5. Others may have retreated to the islands: Sinclair Hood, ‘Isles of
refuge in the early Byzantine period’, Annals of the British School at Athens 65 (1970), 37–45.
35 See now F. Curta, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region,
c. 500–700 (Cambridge, 2001); good short exposition in S. Mitchell, A History of the Later
Roman Empire, AD 284–641 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 405–8.
36 D. Metcalf, ‘The Slavonic threat to Greece’, Hesperia 31 (1962), 134–57; id., ‘Avar and Slav
invasions into the Balkan peninsula (c. 575–625): the nature of the numismatic evidence’,
Journal of Roman Archaeology 4 (1991), 140–8. The extent of Slav occupation in Greece in the
early Middle Ages is hard to establish and has been highly controversial in the context of
the history of modern Greece.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 7