The Greek City in the Roman Period complex a story of communal life, and even of extensive new construction
in the fourth to sixth and seventh centuries, remains to be written.^89 In the
Syrian region, however, major changes in the pattern of urbanism may have
been under way even before the Islamic conquests of the seventh century;^90
in Asia Minor, as the work of Clive Foss has suggested, the Persian inva-
sions of the early seventh century may have marked a decisive change.^91 But
these are as yet mere pointers. It remains the case that the ‘‘Greek city’’ which
we can know best is the Romanised Greek city of the high imperial period,
whose physical remains, inscriptions, and coins offer us a uniquely rich pub-
lic ‘‘image,’’ which still leaves fundamental questions of social and economic
history unanswered. But a very different history, whose framework would be
a changed relationship to the now Christian emperors, could now be writ-
ten, on the basis of changing types of evidence, to do justice to the complex
evolution of the ‘‘Greek,’’ or ‘‘Graeco-Roman,’’ city of the fourth to seventh
centuries.^92
. For late Roman Athens, see esp. A. Frantz,The Athenian AgoraXXIV:Late Antiquity,
..–(); for Aphrodisias, see esp. C. Roueché,AphrodisiasinLateAntiquity(),
andPerformers and Partisans in Aphrodisias in the Roman and Late Roman Periods(). For the
excavations at Scythopolis, see esp.Excavations and Surveys in Israel– (–): –.
Note () the mosaic inscription of building work carried out under the governorship of
Palladius Porphyrius, probably in the fourth century.
. See H. Kennedy, ‘‘FromPolisto Madina: Urban Change in Late Antique and Early
Islamic Syria,’’Past and Present (): .
. C. Foss, ‘‘The Persians in Asia Minor and the End of Antiquity,’’EHR ():
, reprinted along with other papers in hisHistoryand Archaeologyof Byzantine Asia Minor
(), no. I. Note also his studies of individual cities:Byzantine and Turkish Sardis();
andEphesus after Antiquity().
. See for instance M. Whittow, ‘‘Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City:
A Continuous History,’’Past and Present (): .