Urban Life And Culture 235
do not. In other words, the evocative picture of city life did not exist, either
materially or functionally, or it had lost its appeal for Italy’s elite.2
In this chapter, we will examine the specific elements listed in Variae 8.31—
elite residences, artisanal, commercial and legal activity, baths, and water
supplies—in order to see what evidence we can find that they were still in
existence in Ostrogothic cities. As we will see, while there is a certain amount
of archaeological evidence for these things, our analysis will depend largely on
textual sources. One reason for this is that there do not seem to be materially
distinguishable changes between the 5th and the early 6th centuries, and thus
while objects with dates attached to them—such as some inscriptions—can
precisely pinpoint them in the Ostrogothic period, most other objects such as
building materials, jewellery, or pottery that are generally dated to the “5th cen-
tury” or the “early 6th century” may or may not actually be ‘Ostrogothic’.3 The
textual sources are at pains to stress the continuity of Ostrogothic Italy with its
Roman past, and modern scholars have agreed with that assessment, at least
in the larger cities of Italy. In general, historians and archaeologists see a sig-
nificant change in the 3rd century and another after the Gothic War and the
Lombard invasion; thus, Ostrogothic cities are viewed as more or less the same
as they had been in the later Roman Empire.4
However, while cities with origins in the early imperial period had indeed
been embellished with large public buildings and decorations, such as paved
streets, a forum with government buildings, statues, porticos, temples, public
baths, sewers, and places of public entertainment, by the 4th century these
structures were already decaying in most of Italy’s cities.5 The memory of
Roman urban infrastructure remained, but much of it no longer functioned.6
Many cities in northern Italy had been devastated by invasions in the 3rd cen-
tury and had not been rebuilt.7 Thus, there may not have been much material
difference between cities in the Ostrogothic kingdom and in the immediately
preceding period, except in the rhetoric about cities that Theoderic and his
propagandists promoted.
2 See Lepelley, “Un éloge nostalgique”.
3 Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlements”, p. 113.
4 e.g. Humphries, “Italy, AD 425–605”.
5 Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, p. 199, citing Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, p. 12.
6 Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, p. 226.
7 Fauvinet-Ranson, idem, pp. 200–4.