THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYowned by small eastern churches, are not so much a sign of the prosperity
of the region as of an economic situation in which local donors chose to di-
rect their wealth towards otherwise obscure village churches;^62 this silverware
contrasts with the impressive late Roman silver found in late fourth-century
Britain, which demonstrate the still surviving but soon-to-end wealth of rich
Christian households.^63 John of Ephesus’ Lives of the Eastern Saints gives a vivid
picture with much circumstantial detail of village life around Amida (Dyarba-
kir) in Mesopotamia.^64 Rural monasteries were also a very important element
affecting the relation between town and country; they attracted donations,
attracted recruits, sometimes in very large numbers, and were themselves eco-
nomic units impacting on their surroundings.
We should not therefore be surprised if the rich epigraphic sources of the
earlier period give way in favour of Christian funerary inscriptions, which are
by comparison disappointingly brief, or hagiographic sources in the form
of local saints’ lives or miracle collections. While the latter material is often
rightly viewed with suspicion by historians because of its obvious bias and its
tendency to conventional exaggeration, it clearly refl ects the changed point
of view. Several cities in the crucial period are well provided with evidence
of this sort, which shows not only that they continued as vital centres but,
even more importantly, how their urban life was now articulated. One or two
have already been mentioned, such as Thessalonica in the early seventh cen-
tury, known from the Miracles of St. Demetrius, composed by the archbishop
of the city soon after AD 610 and vividly refl ecting the dangers of invasion
then facing the city; others include Seleucia in Cilicia, and late sixth-century
Anastasioupolis in Galatia, known from the Life of St Theodore of Sykeon.
Even having made all the necessary allowances, the picture that emerges from
these and many comparable texts is of an urban life no less vital but quite dif-
ferent in kind and fl avour from what we associate with the late antique city in
the fi rst part of the period, still with its municipal pride, its public spaces, its
great buildings and its civic autonomy. Times had changed. A comparison has
been made between cities at the end of our period and the decaying industrial
towns of modern Britain. Plausible or not, at least this suggests some of the
complexity of the changes that were underway.
Urban violenceLate antique cities could be turbulent places. We have already encountered ri-
oting in the context of religious division, especially in certain explosive urban
centres such as Alexandria. When the word was given for the destruction or
conversion of a temple, bishops often led the way in provoking the feelings of
the crowd; the imperial authorities on the other hand are found trying to re-
strain such enthusiasm. But rioting in Constantinople was endemic in the fi fth
and sixth centuries. The most serious episode – not a religious disturbance
- was the so-called Nika revolt of 532 (Chapter 5), when the emperor himself
was ready to fl ee, and the disturbance was put down only at the cost of great