254 Deliyannis
northern Porta Sancti Victoris, Arian churches in Ravenna’s suburbs of Classe
and Caesarea, and Theoderic’s basilica dedicated to the Savior next to the pal-
ace. Moreover, documents show some Goths living side by side with Romans.126
Thus the evidence is too scanty and inconclusive to propose a concentration of
Goths in one part of the city.127
Urban Occupations, Production, and Trade
Other than government officials and soldiers, what did the occupants of
Ostrogothic cities do? Here we have little evidence except for Rome and
Ravenna.
Ravenna’s evidence comes from a variety of textual sources, including
documentary papyri, as well as inscriptions and archaeology. In addition to
the government and palace officials, both aristocratic and bureaucratic, a
municipal elite served as the magistrates and members of the local curia, or
town council.128 The documents that name them indicate that these officials
consisted of notaries and tabelliones, bankers (argentarii) and businessmen,
doctors, and lawyers.129
Artisans also appear both in the documents and in the Variae.130 Quantities
of building materials and possibly workmen were imported from the eastern
Mediterranean or were moved between cities in Italy under Theoderic; the
many buildings that he erected needed a large workforce of masons and crafts-
men. Workshops for luxury items in Ravenna may have continued to exist from
the previous century. In particular, large numbers of stone sarcophagi from the
early 6th century still survive in Ravenna, and their sculptural style and ico-
nography show influences derived both from Constantinople and from earlier
local practices.131 Theoderic gave the stoneworker Daniel a monopoly on the
furnishing of sarcophagi to the inhabitants of Ravenna, but abjures him not to
126 Lazard, “Goti e Latini a Ravenna”, p. 116.
127 Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 205; Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlements”, p. 121.
128 Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”, pp. 96–7, has traced the names of thirty men identi-
fied as curiales in the papyri from 472 to 575.
129 Pietri, “Aristocrazia e clero”, pp. 300–1; Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”.
130 See Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 289–90.
131 Farioli Campanati, “Ravenna e i suoi rapporti con Costantinopoli”, pp. 16–19.