The great cities of Early Byzantine Greece

As late as the 4th century AD, major socio-political events across the Late Roman Empire led to a relentless process of dissolution of the traditional models of city life and administration. Whether one considers such a process as a clue of "decline" or, on the contrary, as a phase of adjustment to unfavourable economic conditions, it proved to be an irreversible one. Even the Late-antique urban centres of Greece shared this common fate with those of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and other provinces. The lecture will focus on the efforts that were being put in effect to preserve these cities and their architectural prestige against decay. Conversion of public buildings, remodelling of urban spaces and the new monuments built thanks to the flourishing financial resources of the ecclesiastical elites became common features of the so-called "afterlife" of the cities in Early Byzantine Greece between the end of the 4th century and the economic upheaval occurred around the Mediterranean world during the 7th century.