公元270年至535年间，罗马城经历了巨大的变化。这座曾经辉煌的帝国首都在重新定义其政治重要性、规模和身份的过程中，变成了西方基督教世界更卑微的中心。古罗马晚期的城市空间和贵族权力通过关注城市的权势精英，即元老院贵族，并探索他们参与城市变革的过程来审视这些变革，在当代人和现代学者的眼中，这将标志着古代世界的终结和中世纪的诞生。它认为，罗马晚期的古董历史不能仅仅被描述为衰落的产物；相反，它是动态的社会和文化力量的产物，在史无前例的历史变化时期，这些力量使这座城市具有相关性。
该书结合了这座城市独特的文学、碑文和考古记录，详细考察了城市生活的方方面面，包括行政管理、公共建筑、仪式、住房和宗教生活，展示了晚期罗马贵族如何赋予城市空间新的形态和意义，自共和党时期结束以来，在一定程度上，它是地中海世界上最大的城市。
Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome: AD 270-535 (EPUB)
Between 270 and 535 AD the city of Rome experienced dramatic changes. The once glorious imperial capital was transformed into the much humbler centre of western Christendom in a process that redefined its political importance, size, and identity. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome examines these transformations by focusing on the city’s powerful elite, the senatorial aristocracy, and exploring their involvement in a process of urban change that would mark the end of the ancient world and the birth of the Middle Ages in the eyes of contemporaries and modern scholars. It argues that the late antique history of Rome cannot be described as merely a product of decline; instead, it was a product of the dynamic social and cultural forces that made the city relevant at a time of unprecedented historical changes.
Combining the city’s unique literary, epigraphic, and archaeological record, the volume offers a detailed examination of aspects of city life as diverse as its administration, public building, rituals, housing, and religious life to show how the late Roman aristocracy gave a new shape and meaning to urban space, identifying itself with the largest city in the Mediterranean world to an extent unparalleled since the end of the Republican period.
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