Did Antiquity Disappear in the Cities of Asia Minor Long Before the Fall of the Roman Empire? (Book Review: Pont, A.-V. La fin de la cité grecque: métamorphoses et disparition d'un modèle politique et institutionnel local en Asie Mineure, de Dèce à Constantin / A.-V. Pont. – Genève : Droz, 2020. – XIII, 585 р. – (Hautes études du monde gréco-romain ; vol. 57))

In: Vestnik Volgogradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta: naučno-teoretičeskij žurnal = Science journal of Volgograd State University. Serija 4, Istorija, regionovedenie, meždunarodnye otnošenija = History. Area studies. International relations, Heft 6, S. 377-384

Abstract

Introduction. The publication is a review of a monograph by Anna-Valerie Pont, Professor of the Sorbonne, devoted to an attempt to determine the time of the disappearance of an ancient city (polis) on the material of Asia Minor. Analysis and results. There is an extensive and complex source base of research in terms of composition and quality, which includes both scanty reports of late Antique and early medieval written heritage, as well as archaeological data, among which the author legitimately highlights epigraphic material. As criteria for the extinction in the city, it is the ancient indicators of public life that have priority: the decline in the functioning of self-government institutions by urban communities, a decrease in the activity of wealthy citizens in organizing spectacles, subsidizing essential products, an increase in the specific weight of imperial bureaucratic control and local management, an increase in the influence of Christians on public processes in policies. The review indicates that the French researcher actually ignored the evolution of municipal property (the degradation of which in the chronological framework under consideration was very modest). In fact, the evolution of such estates as curiales and plebs (whose position at the time under consideration was by no means catastrophic) was also left aside. The social historical realities in the monograph are touched upon only insofar as they are related to institutional elements (the work of city councils, the implementation of magistracies, etc.). The author of the review points out that such a method of analyzing late-antique processes is outdated and goes back to the Enlightenment views on the fall of the Roman Empire. The review focuses on the legitimacy of the priority of epigraphic monuments for the disclosure of the stated topic (due to the insufficiency of narrative sources). However, consideration of the reduction in the number of such monuments at the turn of the 3rd – 4th century (compared with the times of the classical Empire) as an indicator of the extinction of the antique parameters of the policy is doubtful.