Ostrogothic Cities 99
When the Ostrogoths entered the Italian peninsula, most of the towns that
had flourished in classical times were still alive, although few of them could
show much of their past splendour. Cities were expensive projects. Their devel-
opment and maintenance had been possible in the number and size we find
in Italy primarily because cities enjoyed a long-standing privileged condition
created by the dominant political status that Rome had established for Italian
regions since Augustus. Low taxation, an abundant flow of spoils from military
campaigns, and the possibility of selling Italian products at very favourable
prices were factors that lasted for more than two centuries. These factors gave
nearly all urban communities in Italy (and particularly their most prominent
citizens) the opportunity to reinvest wealth in ambitious building programmes
that would be visible in both public and private spaces.3
As is well known, things began to change during the 3rd century due to sev-
eral concomitant factors. Military expansion ceased and so ended the flow of
war booty; Italy slowly began to lose its political primacy to provincial territo-
ries; and eventually the pressure of barbarians on the borders of the empire
diverted more and more resources towards the needs of the army and the
bureaucracy that supported it. One of the consequences of all this was that
local communities faced reduced budgets due to the growing fiscal pressures.
In turn the exactions of the central government progressively eroded the dis-
cretionary monies that had previously been available to city councils. To be a
local magistrate gradually became a heavy burden, reducing the former pres-
tige derived from the possibility of investing locally collected resources in the
kind of public works that benefited urban populations and made them proud
to be part of an affluent community. The disappearance of inscriptions com-
memorating public works sponsored by local magistrates in the course of the
3rd century speaks to this change more than anything. For the same reasons,
imperial patronage of public buildings also diminished. Perhaps the fact that
emperors, in general, no longer came from Italian families contributed to a dis-
inclination to invest in the improvement of the cities of Italy. The preference of
emperors for their natal origins is shown, for example, in the case of buildings
erected by Septimius Severus in the towns of Libya.4
By the end of the 3rd century some Italian cities bore evident marks of
material decay, due not just to the lack of newly constructed buildings, but
more to growing difficulties in the maintenance of existing ones. The radical
reforms of the Roman state enacted by Diocletian and Constantine between
the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th became entrenched as
3 Marazzi, “Cadavera urbium”, pp. 33–66.
4 Baratte, Tunisia e Libia.