Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
2016
Abstract
The fall of Rome was an urban affair. Alaric’s sack of the city in 410 CE may have been more emotionally jarring than genuinely disruptive, but its long echo down the corridors of history testifies to the imaginative power that the city of Rome held over citizens of its empire and their medieval descendants. But Rome was not the only city on whose monumental stage the empire played out its fate. The transformations that Late Antiquity wrought were enacted in urban microcosms from Gibraltar to the Euphrates. But even after they ceased to be ruled by a Roman emperor, communities at opposite ends of the Mediterranean seem to have maintained similar patterns in the built environment to embody the rituals of authority and ideals of civilized life associated with Rome at its height. The family resemblances among these architectural specters have inspired recent scholars to start mapping the “fall” of Rome in the patterns of construction and use of urban architectural features. Gregor Kalas’s recent book, The Restoration of the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity, for example, traces the shifting relationship between Roman elites and their urban environment in the restoration, re-use and maintenance of a single iconic site.
Recommended Citation
Robinson, Dana, "Dana Robinson on Hendrik W. Dey’s Afterlife of the Roman City" (2016). Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics. 123.
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/hist_fac/123
Included in
Architectural History and Criticism Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Religion Commons, Social History Commons
Comments
Originally published in Marginalia Review of Books. 2016. https://www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/urban-afterlives