new walls to enclose the harbor area. The Embolos lost its centrality. Its southern
flank became an “industrial zone,” with mills, stone-cutting and ceramic factories,
while other workshops were built on the edge of where the terrace houses had once
stood. No doubt this location protected the harbor from both noise and pollution. A
road south of the Embolos became the workaday thoroughfare, while the “Byzantine
palace,” closely protected by the seventh-century walls, became the new center of
administration.
Yet the new walls did not stave off disaster and decay. The Baths of Vedius were
destroyed—though some families made their homes in the rubble until the roof
collapsed, probably at the end of the sixth century. The Church of St. Mary itself was
partially destroyed—perhaps in the early seventh century—and rebuilt as two
separate smaller churches within the original space. Finally, in the wake of the Arab
attacks, the bishop abandoned his palace by the harbor and moved to a church about
a mile and a half outside of the city.
The fate of Ephesus—much reduced in size but nevertheless still a center of
production and habitation—was echoed in many cities circling the eastern
Mediterranean in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Elsewhere, the urban centers of the
Byzantine Empire became little more than fortresses in the course of the seventh and
eighth centuries. Constantinople itself was spared this fate only in part. As with other
cities, its population shrank, and formerly inhabited areas right within the walls were
abandoned or turned into farms. As the capital of both church and state, however,
Constantinople boasted an extraordinarily thriving imperial and ecclesiastical upper
class. It also retained some trade and industry. Even in the darkest days of the
seventh-century wars, it had taverns, brothels, merchants, and a money economy. Its
factories continued to manufacture fine silk textiles. Although Byzantium’s economic
life became increasingly rural in the seventh and eighth centuries, institutions vital to
urban growth remained at Constantinople, ensuring a revival of commercial activity
once the wars ended.
Ruralization