37 See C. Foss, ‘The Persians in Asia Minor and the end of antiquity’, English Historical Review
367 (1975), 721–47; id., ‘The Persians in the Roman Near East (602–630 AD)’ Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3.13 (2003), 149–70; Chapter 9 below.
38 Very useful indications in A. Augenti, Città e Porti dall’Antichità al Medievo (Rome: Carocci,
2010). This paragraph very briefl y summarizes some of the material presented at a confer-
ence on the western Mediterranean economy in the seventh century, held in Oxford in
March, 2011, organized by Vivien Prigent and Arietta Papaconstantinou.
39 Proc., Buildings II.10.2–25. Antioch was earthquake-prone; there were several in the fourth
century and a particularly severe one in 458, but Evagrius makes it clear that its effects were
felt chiefl y in the quarter known as the ‘New City’, where colonnaded streets, a tetrapyle
and the circus were damaged (Evagrius, HE II.12–15). John Malalas and Procopius claim
that 250,000 or even 300,000 people died in the 526 earthquake (Malal, p. 420.6; Proc.,
Wars II.14.6) these fi gures are hardly credible. For Antioch, see also C. Kontoleon, ed.,
Antioch. The Last Ancient City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); I. Sandwell and
J. Huskinson, eds., Culture and Society in Later Roman Antioch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2004).
40 Evagrius, HE VI.8.
41 Cathedral: Evagr., HE VI.8); Gregory: John of Ephesus, III.27–34 (also Heliopolis/
Ba’albek), V.17; Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 262–69; ‘the view from
Antioch’, 466–7.
42 Hugh Kennedy, ‘From Polis to Madina: urban change in late antique and early Islamic
Syria’, Past and Present 106 (1985), 3–27; ‘Antioch: from Byzantium to Islam and back again’,
in Rich, ed., The City in Late Antiquity, 181–98; C. Foss, ‘Syria in transition, AD 550–750: an
archaeological approach’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 51 (1997), 189–269; critical discussion:
Alan Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria. An Archaeological Assessment (London: Duckworth, 2007),
34–45, 126–29. See also J. Alchermes, ‘Spolia in Roman cities of the Late Empire: legislative
rationales and architectural re-use’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 48 (1994), 167–78.
43 See Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria, 45–7.
44 Caesarea: Robert L. Vann, ‘Byzantine street construction at Caesarea Maritima’, in
Hohlfelder, ed., City, Town and Countryside, 167–70. An imperial inscription guarantees the
identifi cation of the impressive remains of the Nea church at Jerusalem: N. Avigad, ‘A
building inscription of the Emperor Justinian and the Nea in Jerusalem’, Israel Exploration
Journal 27 (1977), 145–51; see Proc., Buildings, V.6.1.
45 See Whittow, ‘Ruling the late Roman and early Byzantine city’, 13–15; general survey of
building in the Near East: L. Di Segni, ‘Epigraphic documentation on building in the prov-
inces of Palestina and Arabia, 4th–7thc’, in J.H. Humphrey, ed., The Roman and Byzantine
Near East 2, JRS supp. Series 31 (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999),
149–78. For the mosaics, see G.W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1990), chap. 6; id., Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late
Antiquity to Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006);
M. Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, ed. Patricia M. Bikai and Thomas A. Dailey (Amman,
Jordan: American Center of Oriental Research, 1992); Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the
Roman City, 298–9. Greek inscriptions also indicate building and repairs in churches from
the seventh and early eighth-centuries at sites in modern Israel and at Gaza: Leah Di Segni,
‘Greek inscriptions in transition from the Byzantine to the Early Islamic Period’, in Hannah
M. Cotton, Robert G. Hoyland, Jonathan J. Price and David J. Wasserstein, eds., From Hel-
lenism to Islam. Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 352–73, at 358–9.
46 Z. Weiss, with contributions from E. Netzer et al., The Sepphoris Synagogue. Deciphering an
Ancient Message through its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts (Jerusalem: Israel Explora-
tion Society and Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005); ‘Artistic
trends and contact between Jews and ‘others’ in late antique Sepphoris: recent research’,
in David M. Gwynn and Susanne Bangert, eds., Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity (Leiden:
Brill, 2010), 167–88; see also Jas Elsner, ‘Archaeologies and agendas: refl ections on late
ancient Jewish art and early Christian art’, Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2001), 114–28; David
NOTES TO CHAPTER 7