URBAN CHANGE AND THE LATE ANTIQUE COUNTRYSIDEwork; yet closer study of the Buildings reveals that Procopius often exaggerates
or misrepresents the nature and extent of Justinian’s building programme,
and recent studies have suggested that some of these structures may in fact,
like the great walls of Amida (Diyarbakir), have been earlier constructions,
subsequently much rebuilt, or merely refurbished under Justinian. On the
other hand, many of Procopius’ statements are confi rmed by other evidence,
so that we cannot be uniformly sceptical. A case in point is his account of
Carthage and North Africa, where omissions and exaggerations make his evi-
dence infuriating to use, but which is nevertheless clearly based on fi rsthand
experience.^22 A fi nal illustration of the range of problems encountered is pro-
vided by the evidence (both archaeological and literary) for earthquakes and
plague in the late antique and early Byzantine period. Non-specifi c damage to
material remains is frequently attributed to a convenient earthquake; however,
this may fail to take into account the fact that unless the literary sources give
precise details, there is usually no way of knowing its scale – it may well have
been a mere tremor. Sometimes indeed the cause of the damage is very clear,
as at Scythopolis,^23 but even when major earthquakes are known to have taken
place, they have in most historical periods proved a stimulus to rebuilding,
often on a large scale, as can be seen in the case of Antioch in our period. As
for plague, despite what seem like detailed and authentic literary accounts
and references to plague in the sixth century (and later, especially in the Near
East), it has proved notoriously diffi cult to trace its effect on the ground, and
this remains a serious puzzle for historians.^24
The decline of cities and the end of classical antiquity?With this growth in archaeological investigation, the question whether late
antique cities were in decline has typically been rephrased in terms of urban
change or transformation. If we put together the evidence from archaeological
investigation of sites very widely scattered round the Mediterranean, a general
picture seems to emerge of contraction, and of shifts in urban topography,
and there is evidence from widely different regions to suggest that signifi cant
urban change was already taking place before the end of the sixth century.^25
A contrast has been drawn between the west, where urban life seems to have
been in decline already by the late fi fth century, and the east, where many, if
not all, scholars hold that late antique urbanism continued to fl ourish well into
the Islamic period.^26 However, the picture is not uniform, and new evidence
and new interpretations are emerging all the time. There is unlikely to be a
single or simple cause for these changes, even if in individual cases particular
local factors may be plausibly adduced. But by the end of the period now
covered, deep-seated social and economic change seems to have been taking
place all round the Mediterranean, if at varying pace and for local as well as
macro reasons. The rest of this chapter will investigate the process in more
detail and we will have cause to return to it in the case of the eastern provinces
in Chapters 8 and 9.