Urban Life And Culture 247
urban buildings.84 There is archaeological evidence that many had gone out
of use by as early as the 270s and certainly by 450, especially in the smaller
towns;85 in others we have inscriptions that record repairs or games through
the 4th century,86 and in those cities we cannot tell when these structures
stopped being used.87 The Variae tell us that the amphitheatre in Catana
was a useless ruin in Theoderic’s day and that he permitted the citizens to
use the stones to rebuild their city wall.88 The Anonymus Valesianus says that
Theoderic built an amphitheatre in Pavia,89 and a surviving inscription praises
Athalaric for sponsoring games there in 528/9: “D.N. Atalaricus Rex gloriosissi-
mus has sedis spectaculi anno regni sui tertio fieri feliciter praecepit.”90 Rome’s
Colosseum continued to function, although already in the mid 5th century the
upper tiers of seats had been put out of use and access to the underground
rooms reduced; on the other hand, between 470 and 520 the names of the
occupants were inscribed on the high-prestige seats.91 Moreover, as we have
seen, an inscription from the Ostrogothic period records repairs to that sta-
dium after an earthquake.
Most scholars consider the entertainments described in the Variae and
other texts as the last gasp of a dying culture. There is no evidence for any of
these forms of public entertainment after the Gothic War, when there was no
longer a government with an interest in paying for them.
84 The most famous example of this is the church of San Lorenzo in Milan, supposedly built
from the masonry of the amphitheatre after it was closed in the late 4th or early 5th cen-
tury. See Kinney, “Evidence for the Dating of S. Lorenzo”, pp. 98–101.
85 Malineau, “Le théâtre dans les cités”, provides a list of all known theatres in late antique
Italy. Material evidence (stones robbed, graves or houses inside them) suggests that the
following had gone out of use (been abandoned?): Rome (Theatre of Marcellus and
Theatre of Balbus), Alba Fucens, Amiternum, Benevento, Gioiosa Ionica, Locri, Miseno,
Nuceria Alfaterna, Scolacium Minervia, Venafro, Asolo, Albintimilium, Aquileia, Augusta
Bagiennorum, Aosta, Bologna, Brescia, Civitas Camunnorum, Iulia Concordia, Pola, and
Volterra. See also Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 222–3, and Fauvinet-Ranson,
Decor civitatis, pp. 221–5.
86 Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, pp. 95–6.
87 For example, Naples had an amphitheatre and stadium, of which no trace survives,
although the Roman-era theatre and odeion still survive today. Archaeological evidence
suggests that these two public structures had gone out of use by the later 6th century
(Arthur, Naples, pp. 40–1).
88 Variae 3.49.
89 Anonymus Valesianus 71.
90 CIL 5.6418; The inscription was placed on a slab of a 2nd-century Roman sarcophagus.
91 Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 219.