Urban Life And Culture 245
The running water provided other benefits as well. At Rome water from the
aqueducts was apparently being used to power the city’s many mills, although
this was a practice that was illegal.70 Another service was sewers. Here again,
in the Variae Cassiodorus points out the importance of maintaining the sewer
system, in the context of Parma where it had been allowed to run down, and
at Rome.71 Thus, at least as an ideal, the inhabitant of a reasonably large city
could assume access to fresh water and public bathing facilities, and some
level of publicly regulated waste disposal.
Spectacle and Entertainment
Most cities of any size included a theatre and possibly an amphitheatre or cir-
cus, dating to the first two centuries AD. The entertainments that took place
in them were extremely popular throughout the Roman period, and despite
the opposition of Christian churchmen, continued to take place into the
6th century.72 The emperor Honorius was said to have ended gladiatorial com-
bats in 404 after seeing a priest mauled to death,73 but we know quite a bit
about the other spectacles thanks to Cassiodorus’ learned discourses in the
Variae about chariot racing, theatrical performance, and gladiator—beast
combats.74 Theoderic ostentatiously supported such entertainments in the
circus and amphitheatre, at least at Rome, for which the Anonymus Valesianus
tells us that he was compared to the Roman emperors Trajan and Valentinian.75
When Theoderic’s son-in-law Eutharic was selected as consul in 519, extrava-
gant games were held in Rome and Ravenna.76 Boethius, too, describes in his
70 Variae 3.31.
71 Variae 8.29–30 and 3.30.
72 Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, pp. 92–118.
73 Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.26.
74 Variae 3.51 (chariot racing), 4.51 (theatre), and 5.42 (gladiator—beast combat).
75 Anonymus Valesianus 60: “exhibens ludos circensium et amphitheatrum, ut etiam a
Romanis Traianus vel Valentinianus, quorum tempora sectatus est, appellaretur.... Per
tricennalem triumphans populo ingressus palatium, exhibens Romanis ludos circen-
sium.” Anonymus Valesianus 67 tells us that Theoderic gave circus games at Rome in hon-
our of his thirty-year anniversary. See Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 212–18, and Fauvinet-Ranson,
Decor civitatis, pp. 379–440.
76 Cassiodorus, Chronica, a. 519 (MGH AA 11, p. 161): “Eo anno multa vidit Roma miracula,
editionibus singulis stupente etiam Symmaco Orientis legato divitias Gothis Romanisque
donatas. Dignitates cessit in curiam. Muneribus amphitheatralibus diversi generis feras,
quas praesens aetas pro novitate miraretus, exhibuit. Cuis spectaculis voluptates etiam