Constructing and Contesting Public Space in Late Antiquity

Appearances of the sovereign or his representatives animated the life of the late-ancient city; the streets resounded with the cheers of the crowd. As scholars such as Hendrik Dey have outlined, the centrality of public political ritual in this period shaped contemporary ideals of urban space. Between the fourth and sixth centuries, a coherent “grammar” of urban forms including wall circuits, gates, and colonnaded streets emerged to connect the most important loci of political representation into a unified processional armature (Fig 1).

Undoubtedly, parades and pageantry were essential for political authority to be deemed legitimate at this time, at least by elite observers—but what of the crowd? All too often, their participation is reduced to passive acclamation and obedient approbation: “staged applause” for a power that exists irrespectively. This paradigm, however, not only underestimates non-elite participation in urban politics, but also overlooks the social conflict inherent in the elaboration of the built environment—from its construction to its ritual activation (Fig. 2). Focusing on spaces of passage and gathering within the late-Roman streetscape, especially those of Rome and Constantinople, this paper will highlight the dynamics of discipline and resistance by which public space was constituted. In sum, I will show that the built environment of the late-ancient city was far from empty propaganda for a nakedly autocratic regime. To the contrary, it was both the medium and mechanism through which authority was produced in the encounter of sovereign and subject.