The debate regarding the nature of the transformation of the Roman world continues, and that regarding the fate of cities during what is often now called the ‘Long Late Antiquity’ is particularly lively. To portray this debate as ‘continuists’ vs ‘catastrophists’ is not always too gross a caricature, but Hendrik Dey claims, in his book, to be able to circumvent this rather limiting dichotomy (“once and for all, if possible”, p. 251). This might be a rather optimistic hope, but without doubt Dey has produced an interesting contribution to the field, which will be consulted by a good number of students and specialists.
Dey looks at urbanism across the full geographical extent of the former Roman world, from the western successor states to the Umayyad Levant, focusing on the monumental topography of the city. In this way, a remarkable continuity is demonstrated, albeit at times with rather speculative ‘proofs’. In the first substantive chapter, Dey sets out what he sees as the characteristic feature of the late Roman city: the colonnaded or porticoed street, which functioned as the key location for political ceremony. Chapter 2 looks more closely at what Dey calls the ‘ceremonial armature’ of the city, demonstrated most clearly in Tetrarchic capitals, which display a striking uniformity, albeit at times on a miniature scale, as at Diocletian's Split. The next chapter shows how urban ceremonies and their distinctive architectural settings were adopted and adapted for use by ecclesiastical as well as political office holders during the fourth century. Dey argues that the interests of secular and Christian authorities merged, with both ‘sides’ working together and making use of these monumental backdrops, in both East and West, as, for instance, at Rome, Milan and Constantinople. Chapter 4 ranges most widely, looking at post-Roman cities from Visigothic Spain to the Umayyad Levant. Evidence for the continued maintenance of monumental armatures is presented, extending into the Byzantine ‘Dark Ages’ (seventh to ninth centuries). In his analysis, Dey pushes the transformation of the classical city later than has traditionally been posited, arguing, for instance, for a new chronology for Sauvaget's (Reference Sauvaget1934) iconic account of the transformation of the colonnaded street into the suq in the Levant. Finally, the Postscript illustrates continuity in the showpieces of the Carolingian Empire, stating that we can see Aachen as “simply the last in an unbroken sequence of ‘capitals’” (p. 241). A fascinating range of cities are thus covered in this study, from ‘mini’ Recopolis in Visigothic Spain, through late Roman Lincoln (a perhaps unlikely location for colonnaded streets), ‘Dark Age’ Corinth, Lombard Pavia and Umayyad Anjar.
As even this abbreviated account demonstrates, this is an ambitious and wide-ranging study. Dey has integrated a large number of cities into his study, showing an admirable range and fluency over a large geographical area and long chronological span. His account integrates literary sources alongside the archaeological record in elegant fashion. The text is well written and very nicely illustrated, including a number of plans, many drawn by the author himself. Overall, the argument for the continuity of a distinctively Late Roman monumentality is convincing. Dey's contention that the colonnaded street is an important but consistently underrated aspect of late antique urbanism, in the West as well as the East, should be noted. The book also generally wears its theoretical pretensions lightly; for example, the use of Geertz's (Reference Geertz1980) account of Bali, the ‘theatre state’, works nicely, as Dey argues—in this case, of the Visgothic kingdom—that “the semiotics of power continued to be encoded in the contours of urban architecture” (p. 139).
Not every reader will be convinced by everything in this book. Dey admits that he has been selective in his choice of cities, picking those that fit his argument (p. 17). Moreover, his claim that his examples represent the “tip of the iceberg” (p. 245) can only really be speculative, although we can accept his sensible point that continuity is bound to be harder to demonstrate than disruption.
Ultimately, this is a picture of political topography that tends to assume that the grand designs of the leaders who commissioned and/or used these monuments were basically successful. It is a picture of consensus rather than conflict (as in Chapter 3, looking at the symbiosis between ecclesiastical and political leaders). Therefore, this reviewer is not so convinced that this take on the city really represents, as Dey claims, an approach that recognises “urban history is human history” (p. 251) as an alternative to ‘processualist’ accounts. Rather, it could be argued that what Dey has really written is a book very much in the tradition of classical archaeology, focusing on the city as a collection of successful elite monuments.
