URL originale : https://books.openedition.org/efr/62587

Inscribing a “fiscal-social contract”
Law, fiscality and the language of rebuilding in Rome, 350-450 CE
p. 285-310
Résumés
This article examines rebuilding inscriptions in Late Antique Rome. Past scholarship has questioned the efficacy of these testimonia as reliable witnesses to the rebuilding process. This paper challenges this view by returning rebuilding inscriptions to their social and economic context. It is argued that new mechanisms for the collection of tax and the imposition of liturgical duties meant that the City now relied increasingly on its free urban population and adjacent land-owners to carry out and finance maintenance on public projects. This arrangement required a degree of compliance and accountability on the behalf of the City’s administrators and the population. The framework of New Fiscal Sociology is applied to suggest that these two groups negotiated a new social contract, one grounded in fiscal concerns. This development, it is argued, led to a re-articulation of the language and process of commemoration.
Cet article examine les inscriptions de reconstruction dans la Rome tardo-antique. Les travaux antérieurs ont remis en question l’efficacité de ces testimonia comme témoins fiables du processus de reconstruction. Cet article interroge ce point de vue en replaçant les inscriptions dans leur contexte socio-économique. Les nouveaux mécanismes de collecte de l’impôt et l’imposition de devoirs liturgiques impliquèrent que la Ville compta de plus en plus sur sa population urbaine libre et les propriétaires voisins pour réaliser et financer l’entretien des projets publics. Cet arrangement exigeait un certain degré de conformité et de responsabilité de la part de l’administration et de la population. L’application du cadre de la nouvelle sociologie fiscale suggère que ces deux groupes négocièrent un nouveau contrat social, fondé sur des préoccupations fiscales. Cette évolution conduisit à une réarticulation du langage et du processus de commémoration.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : Rome, impôts, inscriptions de reconstruction, édifices publics, contrat fiscal-social
Keywords : Rome, taxes, rebuilding inscriptions, public buildings, fiscal-social contract
Note de l’auteur
I am grateful to the friends and colleagues whose helpful comments have guided this paper to completion, not least Bradley Hald, Graham Andrews, Silvia Orlandi, Carlos Machado, and the editors of this volume, Charles Davoine, Bruno Bonomo, and Cécile Troadec. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the École française de Rome who provided the wonderful venue for the conference from which this paper arose. All translations are my own, unless cited otherwise.
Texte intégral
Introduction
1Late-antique sources are replete with testimony of building at Rome, describing both the monuments themselves and the processes of their creation, destruction, and repair. While these sources make clear that Rome was a living city – that it was a place in need of constant construction and reconstruction –, it is with the maintenance of the City’s fabric that legal and epigraphic testimonia become increasingly preoccupied in late fourth and fifth centuries. Both the emperors and Rome’s elite continued to lavish attention on the erstwhile capital, but it was often redirected toward the repair or restoration of existing public structures. We are reminded repeatedly that in order to realize their aims Rome’s patrons relied on the labour of the City’s population.1 New structures for financing rebuilding also meant that these men needed the fiscal resources of the same population. Rome’s many public buildings, therefore, were not only part of the physical fabric, but also the fiscal fabric of the City. Their encroachment on both spheres guaranteed that the processes of reconstruction and repair were also a means to negotiate, establish, and advertise certain social relations. The most visible attestation of this process remains the many inscriptions that advertised interventions in the City’s fabric. Yet the value of rebuilding inscriptions as testimonia of the reconstruction process has been questioned in past scholarship.2 In what follows, I argue that when read in light of fiscal and legal reforms that occurred in the late-antique City, rebuilding inscriptions offer evidence for the development of certain social conventions inextricably intertwined with the rebuilding process.
2In the first part of this paper, I chart the salient developments that are visible in the legal evidence related to rebuilding. Emphasis is placed on the organization of labour and the means by which the mass of the population and materials were mobilized to meet the ever-increasing demand for rebuilding in the City. I argue that new mechanisms for the collection of tax and the imposition of liturgical duties (munera) meant that the City now relied increasingly on its free urban population and adjacent land-owners to carry out and finance maintenance on public projects. This arrangement required a degree of compliance and accountability on the behalf of the City’s administrators and its population. I apply the framework of New Fiscal Sociology to suggest that these two groups negotiated a new social contract, one grounded in fiscal concerns. In the second part of this paper, I argue that this development led to a re-articulation of the language that commemorated rebuilding in the City beginning in second half of the fourth century and into the fifth century. When the emperors and Rome’s elite erected inscriptions to commemorate their reconstruction activity, they began to include language outlining the precise extent of the work that was carried out, the means by which building materials were acquired, and the fact that the project contributed to the public well-being. The City’s patrons, in other words, began to more frequently advertise that they were acting within the prescribed limits of social and fiscal expectations. Rebuilding inscriptions might then, I argue, be profitably read as a testament to shifting social and economic relations between Rome’s patrons and its people from the mid-fourth century until the middle of the fifth century.
Law, taxes, and rebuilding in Late Antique Rome
3The repair and restoration of urban fabric was always of concern for civic councils, local elites, and, at Rome, the senate and the emperor. A distinct feature of cities in Late Antiquity, however, is the extent to which such repair was required. By the late-Roman period, most cities had acquired a full complement of public buildings, while relatively high urbanization rates, especially in provinces like Italy, meant that many cities had in addition to public buildings a dense urban fabric.3 Decay and decline of these early imperial monuments whether by the ravages of time, natural disaster, or human intervention became a more pressing concern for both local and imperial administration throughout the fourth century.4 This was particularly true of Rome, as the sheer quantity and monumentality of urban structures created a more constant need for repair and restoration. This concern for rebuilding is most manifest in the legal evidence, in which imperial authorities are continually seen attempting to limit new building and instead impose reconstruction work on the cities’ various constituencies.
4Already during the reign of Constantine, provincial governors were urged to refrain from undertaking new buildings until those already begun had been completed.5 By the middle of the fourth century, the legal evidence reflects increased concern for monuments in disrepair. In late 364 and early 365 Valentinian I issued two laws to the praetorian prefect of Italy in which new construction was proscribed.6 In one of these constitutions, the license to undertake new buildings was forbidden (amputabit) in order that all provincial magistrates would direct their efforts to restore public buildings.7 In the other, the emperors attempted to curtail the process whereby the “most splendid” metropoles of Italy were exploiting the fabric of small communities so as to undertake new projects.8 At the center of concern in both cases was the repair of decaying urban fabric, but the laws also disclose a level of interest in larger urban centers. In fact, the first constitution to prescribe that precedence must be given to the repair of buildings pertained to Rome, the largest of all metropoles, and the Urbs then received particular attention.9 On repeated occasions in 376 and 390 the emperors proscribed the building of new structures by any member of the City’s administration, stipulating that they direct their attention to repairing Rome’s old and ruinous structures.10
5These constitutions were part of a systematic programme that sought to redirect vigour for construction in the Urbs to the restoration of old structures. Given their aim, the laws are often cited as evidence for the decline of cities and the impotence of local administrations to intervene to stem urban decay. Rita Lizzi argues in the case of Rome that the legislation reveals a latent conflict between the old senatorial families and the new Christian majority, as the former sought imperial support that permitted them to control and maintain the ancient appearance of the City, and thereby their authority.11 Neither view considers the financial and legal processes that came to underpin the maintenance of Rome’s urban fabric, the complexity of which the continual and repetitive nature of the laws implies.
6In general, the responsibility for this work in the public sphere devolved in the fourth century onto the urban prefect and his office. In the early imperial period, public building in the Urbs was overseen by the emperor and officials appointed by him to manage various tasks. Maintenance and repair of public buildings was organized and controlled by a series of boards or curae, at the head of which sat officials called curatores.12 Many of these curatorships persisted long into Late Antiquity, but the early fourth century saw a number of administrative reforms through which the oversight of public building and of all the associated officials came within the purview of the urban prefecture. André Chastagnol has argued that this process occurred under Constantine and reached its completion by 331.13 This new primacy of the urban prefect is reflected in the epigraphic record. By the middle of the fourth century, the inscribed monuments that advertised the completion of public works most frequently commemorated the City’s prefects as dedicators, founders, and restorers, while emperors remained present but only as those to whom work was dedicated.14 Even the various curatores who had previously found expression in the epigraphic record are either absent or relegated to only oblique reference.15
7The efforts to carry out reconstruction and repair also required the marshalling of significant financial resources. The imperial administration was careful to ensure that cities possessed sufficient funds to take care of the necessary repair of public buildings. A law of 349 attempting to limit the spoliation of tombs for building materials provides a starting point to consider this issue:
Sed si ex praecepto iudicum monumenta deiecta sunt, ne sub specie publicae fabricationis poena vitetur, eosdem iudices iubemus hanc multam agnoscere; nam ex vectigalibus vel aliis titulis aedificare debuerunt.16
But if monuments have been ruined by the order of a governor, so that the penalty (of one pound of gold) not be avoided under the pretext of public building, we order that those very governors assume this fine. For they ought to build from vectigalia and other tituli.
8The edict establishes that funds for public building must come from taxes. At least from the reign of Valentinian I and Valens, if not earlier, one third of all taxes that were collected from the estates attached to municipalities were assigned to the maintenance and restoration of public buildings.17 In Italy, this was made possible by the Diocletianic reforms that saw to the abolishment of the ius Italicum; from this point forward, both Italy and Rome were subject to taxes as elsewhere in the Roman empire. Under this new fiscal regime, the imperial government relied primarily on a cadastral tax assessment carried out with several factors.18 However, taxes were also pendant on non-landholding urban populations. The collection of both variable and fixed taxes devolved onto a city’s administration, who came under the purview of the praetorian prefect. Other taxes on civic estates were paid to the sacrae largitiones, a portion of which might be remitted to cities. In addition to the regular sources from taxation, cities could also still rely on extraordinary benefaction from the emperor and the patronage of the local and senatorial elite.
9The law cited above states specifically that its stipulations applied to Rome.19 Here too then reconstruction and maintenance were to be funded by two distinct forms of taxation: vectigalia and tituli. But just what these taxes were remains less certain. Vectigalia, in particular, is a rather protean term. Often it is suggested to refer to “civic revenues” and “indirect taxes” broadly conceived.20 Nearly a full century prior to our period of inquiry, however, the jurist Ulpian provided a legal definition: public vectigalia were fiscal revenues levied by the imperial fiscus on transmarine trade, the sale of products, and on rents from certain types of private productive enterprises.21 Three imperial letters issued in 321 imply that the criteria for vectigalia remained largely unchanged into the fourth century.22 In essence, these were variable taxes charged on output and trade. But there seems to be regional and local variation on what forms of commerce were taxed. In Constantinople, for example, Cyzican operarii paid vectigalia, while in Antioch they were levied on shops operating out of porticoes.23 Elsewhere cities levied taxes on religious rites, and in Italy by the fifth century various taxes or vectigalia were paid on the commercial revenues and rents of urban property.24 Our evidence therefore presents a picture in which vectigalia are comprised by various sources extracted unevenly across different cities.25
10In the case of Rome, the collection of customs taxes is known well-enough, but Chastagnol long ago endeavoured to add various other fiscal dues to account for the City’s vectigalia. He suggested that these included a tax on foreigners residing in Rome (peregrini), a tax on private property, and another levied from craftsmen.26 The only evidence that could allude to the assessment of tax on peregrini sojourning in the Urbs, however, comes from a constitution issued in 370, which stipulates that some foreigners entering Rome for a prolonged period needed to register with the officium censualium.27 This law says nothing about the collection of a tax from this group. It is equally unlikely that taxes on urban private property were ever included among the vectigalia of Rome. Evidence for this tax is limited to a constitution dated to 405, in which Rome is granted exemption from what is identified as an extraordinary levy.28 Concerning the tax on urban crafts and trades, Chastagnol suggested that a passage from the Historia Augusta implies their existence. It states that Alexander Severus had imposed a very lucrative vectigal on the various trades in Rome, the proceeds from which were to be used for the repair of public baths.29 While we should be circumspect about certain claims in the HA, the work is a product of the later fourth century and, without pressing the point too far, it is fair to suggest that the details might reflect the fourth-century situation.30 Besides, sometime between 314 and 318, either Licinius or Constantine introduced a tax that was assessed on commercial and artisanal assets: the collatio lustralis or the chrysargyron.31 As its alternative designations imply, the tax was to be paid in gold and silver and was originally assessed and collected on a four-year cycle. Urban craftsmen, artisans, general merchants, and even doctors and teachers were all at some point subject to this tax.32 So it would seem that the collatio lustralis was levied on each person who earned money, either selling goods or their services in the City, and a portion of it was remitted to the Urbs for maintenance.33
11While what constituted Rome’s vectigalia remains difficult to assess, if they were only customs taxes and fiscal dues owed by craftsmen, merchants, and entrepreneurs, Rome would have needed to supplement these resources to adequately fund reconstruction work.34 This additional funding came of course from the aforesaid tituli. As I have mentioned, the most regular tax assessment was on land. This tax could be raised in money or in-kind and could be used to serve the provisioning of the Urbs. Grain, for example, was requisitioned from cities in Campania,35 pork from the suburbicarian districts,36 and wine from all landowners in Italy.37 These taxes would be paid to various arcae, the oversight of which was managed by the urban prefect. From these arcae, the prefect would ensure that Rome’s entitled population received their free distributions of bread and pork and could purchase oil and wine at a subsidized price.
12Rome’s tituli were then largely in-kind tax revenue assessed on land that served to provision the Urbs. Yet in-kind taxes could also be commuted to payments in cash, a process known as adaeratio which became more regular over the course of the fourth century.38 In addition to this, revenue from the sale of subsidized products, such as wine, would be returned to their respective arcae.39 Some of these arcae were at the disposal of the urban prefect to contribute to the maintenance and repair of the City’s fabric. Symmachus implies that there was a fund under the purview of the urban prefect particularly for the repair of aqueducts, while it seems that arca vinaria served as an important source for funding rebuilding in the Urbs.40 Out of this arca, for example, came a portion of the established rate for lime-burners and freight-craters who were supplying the City with lime for maintenance and repair.41
13In addition to revenue from certain tituli that had become earmarked for public construction, there were also taxes in-kind levied on building materials. Land-holders in Terracina and Campania were required to pay a tax in lime and, in addition, to furnish a portion of the payment established by the state for lime-burners.42 Similar taxes for the upkeep of the City’s fabric were also requisitioned from owners of land that supplied sand.43 The evidence reveals that a complex system of subventions, remittance, and redistribution of Rome’s vectigalia and tituli financed repair and maintenance in the Urbs. These funds were all extracted as variable or fixed taxes from people residing within the City and its territory, and they came under the purview of the urban prefect.
14In addition to these abundant fiscal resources, physical resources were required in the construction process, and the late-antique tax regime also effected the supply of labour. Just as fiscal burdens were assigned to individual base on the assessment of their land, liturgies (munera) came to be apportioned to individuals both based on the land they owned and the work they performed. The most obvious example of such liturgical obligations in the case of Rome is associated with the annona, for the supply of which munera were imposed on shippers (navicularii), bakers (pistores), and swine-herds (suarii) to furnish set amounts of grain, bread, and pork annually.44 In exchange for completing these munera, those to whom they were assigned received immunity from various other imposts.
15These arrangements were not confined to those who serviced the City’s annona, however. A series of constitutions issued around 360 suggests that they also impinged on those working in the building industry.45 These laws concerned the supply and processing of lime, which was critical to the production of concrete used in the repair of buildings. Lime-burners and freight-carters were required to supply Rome annually with three thousand cartloads of lime. In exchange for this work, they were granted exemptions, presumably from other liturgies and taxes to help alleviate the burden of their public munus.46 The lime they processed and supplied was to be used for the maintenance of public structures: of the three thousand cartloads, fifteen hundred were assigned to the aqueducts and the other fifteen hundred to the general maintenance and repair of buildings (sartis tectis).47 The impetus for the enforcement of this system was the desire to provide for the “dignity” of public buildings (publicorum moenium dignitati) and “appearance” of the City (statum urbis). These constitutions place the work of the lime-burners and freight-carters within the very framework of reciprocal exchange that saw the exemption of one task given for the imposition of another, which the architecture of late-antique fiscal regime made possible. There is an earlier indication that this type of arrangement had long-prevailed in the building sector and that it extended well beyond the supply of lime. An inscription dated to the first decade of the fourth century records an imperial epistula that imposes a munus on Rome’s builders (fabri artifices) in exchange for certain exemptions.48 The inscription does not disclose the munus, but it is likely associated with the maintenance of the city.
16Constitutions that address the imposition of liturgies to supply labour to complete building repair and maintenance reveal an increasing interest in corvée labour as we progress into the later fourth century. A law issued to the praetorian prefect of the Oriens in 384, for example, suggests that corvée labour was required for the repair of aqueducts, ports (or storehouses), and walls.49 In 423, this compulsory labour was extended to all people, regardless of rank, in all provinces in the East, for the repair of roads, bridges, and buildings belonging to the res privata or the church.50 Also in the fifth century, all people in the province of Illyricum were compelled to contribute to the construction of walls, regardless of rank (sine ullo privilegio).51 In the latter case, the compulsory labour is referred to as a tax (tituli) and a liturgy (munus) assessed in proportion to each person’s tax burden. Corvée labour is also attested at Rome by 440 CE.52 At this time, all Roman citizens and members of guilds were exempted from military service in exchange for their maintenance and repair of walls, towers, and gates.53
17While corvée labour does not appear to have been a feature in Rome until the mid-fifth century, the aforementioned inscription reveals that already in the early fourth century the City’s government imposed a liturgy on its builders.54 That this arrangement prevailed into the later fourth century is evident from the Relationes of Symmachus, urban prefect in 384. Here, the prefect claimed that it was the labour of Rome’s craftsmen, arranged in guilds (corporum ministerio) that was responsible for the upkeep of the City (tantae urbis onera sustineri).55 Of particular importance, he singled out those individuals whose “workmen-like hands” (fabriles manus) built and repaired Rome’s venerable monuments.56 Both the longevity of this arrangement and the compulsory nature of it are made clear in the same report.57 In return, however, Symmachus is also quick to point out that their obligatory service granted these men certain immunities (iugi obsequio immunitatis nomen emerunt).
18The munus assigned therefore to Rome’s craftsmen might be fairly said to be the contribution of labour to the maintenance of some of Rome’s public monuments. The constitutions also make clear that the taxed material and the labour to provide it were assigned to reconstruction and repair and, although the state determined the quantities and apportioned the burdens, it was largely the preserve of the urban prefect to decide to which reconstruction projects materials were applied.58
Rebuilding Rome and the “fiscal-social contract”
19The foregoing discussion demonstrates that the maintenance and repair of the increasingly imperilled fabric of late-antique Rome was incumbent on its population. The state relied on various forms of variable and fixed taxes, including liturgies, for both the financial and physical resources that rebuilding required. The responsibility for the management and distribution of these taxes was assigned to the City’s most visible administrator, the urban prefect. The majority of these taxes were what can be defined as “internal” revenues, those derived from a broad base and more or less permanent collection points, such as land owners, farmers, or in this case registered urban craftsmen.59 The New Fiscal Sociology provides a productive framework to consider the type of social interactions generated by this exchange.60 Any fiscal regime that relies on internal revenues requires a certain amount of taxpayer consent. The individual taxpayer will only comply, short of coercion, if they deem that the demanded contributions fairly reflect the costs of providing for public goods.61 Should the taxpayer perceive a lack of consistency between these two elements it might provoke resistance, such as evasion or protest. Underlaying this exchange is what is referred to as the fiscal-social contract, in which the state provides public goods and controls="true" its officials from over-reaching and in return expects taxpayer compliance. Violating the fiscal-social contract would likely elicit a negative response from both parties.
20Considering the significant role internal taxation came to play in funding public building in late-antique Rome, I suggest that viewing taxation as a social interaction is a productive way to frame the socio-political dynamics of rebuilding in the late-antique Urbs. Ammianus Marcellinus’ accounts of two urban prefectures – that of Ceionius Rufius Volusianus signo Lampadius and Claudius Hermogenianus Caesarius – serve as an illustrative example.
21In 365, Lampadius was urban prefect. The picture that Ammianus constructs of this man is particularly hostile, with special attention given to the prefect’s repugnant vanity.62 To best illustrate this conceit, Ammianus provides an example related to building. Upon all the restoration work that Lampadius carried out he saw it fit to inscribe his own name, not as restorer, but as founder.63 The epigraphic record does somewhat vindicate Ammianus’ censure. In at least one explicit case wherein the work entailed was repair, Lampadius commemorates his contributions with verbs evoking new construction rather than reconstruction.64 Yet the inscriptions also suggest that Lampadius indeed took a keen interest in maintaining the City’s fabric as urban prefect.65 It is this interest that Ammianus ties to his unpopularity among Rome’s population:
Hic praefectus exagitatus et motibus crebris, uno omnium maximo, cum collecta plebs infima domum [...] incenderat [...] eaque vi territus ipse [...] secessit a Mulvium pontem [...] ut lenimenta ibidem tumultus opperiens, quem causa concitaverat gravis. aedificia erigere exoriens nova, vel vetusta quaedam instaurans, non ex titulis solitis parari iubebat inpensas sed, si ferrum quaerebatur aut plumbum aut aes aut quicquam simile, apparitores inmittebantur, qui velut ementes diversa raperent species, nulla pretia persolvendo, unde accensorum iracundiam pauperum damna deflentium crebra aegre potuit celeri vitare digressu.66
This prefect (Lampadius) was disturbed by frequent outbreaks, but the greatest one of all happened when a mob of the plebs infima would have set fire to his house [...] But the prefect himself terrified by such violence [...] fled to the Milvian bridge [...] so as to await some end of the tumult, which a serious cause had incited: he, preparing to erect new buildings, or to restore some old ones, ordered that the contributions not be acquired from the customary taxes, but if he required iron, or lead, or bronze, or anything similar, his apparitores were sent, and as if purchasing the various supplies, they seized them without paying. Whence, by his swift departure he was barely able to avoid the rage of the incensed poor, lamenting frequent losses.
22Ammianus suggests that Lampadius’ prefecture was disturbed by frequent riots, and that the largest, which resulted in the prefect’s near flight from the City, was related to the prefect’s building practices. According to Ammianus’ account, the riot was motivated by Lampadius’ order in preparation to erect new buildings and restore some old ones to seize the outlay from the City’s craftsmen. What raised their ire, however, was not that the material was taken, but that it was done so instead of the accustomed taxes (solitis titulis) and without compensation.67 It seems possible that the iron, lead, bronze, and other similar materials that were obtained by Lampadius’ men were customarily requisitioned like pork from the swine-herds and lime from the lime-burners, and it was these tituli that should have been used. The materials’ supply would then be similar to lime, and the craftsmen who processed them (possibly the ferrarii and the aerarii) were subject to the same compulsory supply as the freight-carters and the lime-burners.68 Ammianus therefore connects Lampadius’ zeal for building and his brazen disregard for prescribed practices to the unrest of the people.
23The actions of Lampadius can be contrasted with those of Claudius, which are presented in another of Ammianus’ prefectural accounts. The much shorter portrait of Claudius is couched in a narrative of a disastrous flood of the Tiber in 374, which had left nearly the whole City under water.69 Despite the disaster, we are told that his urban prefecture was passed entirely in peace and that there was no public tumult that had a justifiable complaint. Directly connected with this claim, Ammianus credits Claudius for the restoration of many old buildings. This characterization of Claudius’ prefecture functions as an exemplum of proper comportment for an urban prefect and brings into higher relief Lampadius’ actions and their consequences some ten years prior. Claudius, an equally zealous builder, restored many buildings after a natural disaster in the City. He seemed to do so within the limits of prescribed social practices, as his efforts elicited no complaints. On the other hand, Lampadius’ penchant for building and his practices in both displaying his efforts and for achieving them were the cause of public discord.70
24Lellia Cracco Ruggini has proposed a similar reading of the Lampadius affair.71 She argued that the volatile reaction of Rome’s population to Lampadius was against the imposition of services they deemed intolerable. According to her view, it was the prefects who foisted these tasks upon the population to achieve their own self-aggrandizing aims. While this interpretation is largely correct, it should be stated that services or contributions were imposed on Rome’s population by the state. I would argue that it was only when prefects or elites transgressed what was deemed suitable by the fiscal-social contract that the population reacted. As we have seen, the duty of the urban perfect was to appropriately allocate the resources for rebuilding, much of which had been supplied by landowners, craftsmen, artisans, and workers as part of a system of munera and taxation. The burden to supply these materials would then rest on Rome’s population, and additional projects would require new inputs, unless the person undertaking the project paid for the material individually or found alternative means of acquisition. According to this model, if these inputs were unscrupulously extracted from the population, we would expect a negative reaction. In other words, the population of Rome expected Lampadius’ vigour for rebuilding to have been funded sua pecunia, and when he violated the fiscal-social contract Rome’s population collectively resisted.72
The inscribed language of rebuilding: the fiscal-social contract and the re-articulation of the language of euergetism in rebuilding inscriptions
25For the people of late-antique Rome, the many inscriptions mentioning the restoration or construction of public buildings, whether walls, baths, fountains, or churches, were visible attestations of interventions in the City’s fabric. This remains true for modern historians of the ancient world. Yet the efficacy of rebuilding inscriptions as testimonia for the rebuilding process has been questioned. Most prominent, perhaps, is the work of Edmund Thomas and Christian Witschel.73 They argue that the idiosyncratic language of rebuilding inscriptions not only fails to reveal the actual extent of interventions in the repair of monuments, but was also exploited by the elite so as to recast regular repair to meet self-aggrandizing aims. Others have questioned the far-reaching implications of this conclusion, which if accepted, invalidates completely the credibility of rebuilding inscriptions.74 Instead, they contend that the social aspect of inscriptions cannot be elided. In the case of late-antique Rome, the social function for rebuilding inscriptions has been read through a lens of elite competition: rebuilding inscriptions that proliferated in Rome in the fourth century often adorned buildings that purposely retained features of ruination alongside repair, thereby demonstrating physical restoration while also advertising both cultural and political renewal.75 Perhaps this is true, but I suggest that there is a visible tendency to move from the abstract and notional language of reconstruction to direct and precise attestations of the interventions in the buildings. This shift in the epigraphic habit may have been conditioned by the fiscal processes tied to reconstruction in the Urbs. Urban prefects, emperors, and bishops wanted to advertise that they upheld the fiscal-social contract. The new fiscal regime, therefore, reconditioned in some ways euergetic language and, when read in this way, rebuilding inscriptions in late-antique Rome may offer insight into the re-articulation of this social process.
26Evolution in the language of rebuilding inscriptions at Rome has been recently documented in relation to public baths. Silvia Orlandi and Giorgio Crimi have noted that by the late fourth century, rebuilding inscriptions that advertise the repair of public baths came to include precise language about the scope of intervention.76 Inscriptions began to disclose the parts of the building involved in the repair and, in some cases, detailed indications of the material used. For example, in 414 CE, Caecina Decius Acinatus Albinus, then urban prefect, commemorated the repair of baths on the Aventine by stating that he propped up (fulcivit) the collapsing walls of the tepidarium with a double-vaulted arch.77 The same baths apparently underwent earlier repairs, which a fragmentary inscription implies included work on the walls, a porticus, and the pavement.78 In addition to this, the inscriptions disclosing repairs to bath structures also came to contain explicit mention of the population as beneficiaries of the restoration, an element which is particular to Late Antiquity.79
27This trend did not only occur in inscriptions commemorating repair work on the City’s baths. In 391, the urban prefect Flavius Philippus restored a nymphaeum to its former appearance, which the inscription claimed had been “defiled by filth and stripped bare of marble”.80 The implication is that Philippus had only re-adorned the fountain. At the end of the fourth century, the emperors Honorius and Arcadius commemorated the repair of the Theatre of Pompey. The inscription advertised the scope of the repairs, which consisted only of the re-raising of the exterior circuit and part of the interior.81 Later, in the middle of the fifth century, two comites of the aqueducts commemorated their repair of piers, arches (or possibly a single arch), and a parapet of an aqueduct and, once again, they advertised the precise extent of the intervention.82 Inscriptions also advertised the public good that the repair of public monuments provided. Like when the elder Symmachus, as former urban prefect, completed his restoration of the pons Aurelius and rededicated it to Valentinian I in 367, the inscription claimed the work was carried out for the “usefulness of the eternal City”.83 Both developments may reflect the new fiscal-social contract posited above. Rome’s population consented to contribute the new taxes imposed on them in exchange for certain public goods. In this sense, the inscriptions that commemorate repair represent a sort of record of accounts: the dedicator advertised the specific work to which taxes were applied and that it had been done according to the will of the population.
28All of the examples cited cluster in the late fourth and early fifth century, and they indicate a shift in the social conventions associated with commemorating reconstruction. There was now an apparent desire to state the precise extent of the work and, in some cases, to emphasize that this work served the benefit of the population. This seems to be closely connected to the fiscal developments adumbrated above. An explicit testament to this assumed connection may be found on an inscription datable to the 430s commemorating the repair of the baths of Constantine:84 the urban perfect Petronius Perpenna Magnus Quadratianus restored the baths of Constantine, which had long been in a terrible state of disrepair, but he did so “at little expense, only as much as the paucity of public funds permitted”.85 Here the concern over the repair of public monuments, the funds that permit them, and to what public benefit those funds were applied converge, and this relationship is reconfigured to become a testament to the beneficence of the prefect. He repaired the City’s monument, and he did so within the prescribed limits of a fiscal-social contract.
29It was not just funds that were exacted from the population, however, but also materials. And there is evidence, albeit slightly more conjectural, that new forms of material acquisition for rebuilding also advertised in the epigraphic record displays a new euergetic ideology. The best example comes from the inscriptions that commemorated the massive restoration and reconstruction effort that the emperor Honorius carried out on the Aurelian walls:
S(enatus) p(opulus)q(ue) R(omanus), / impp(eratoribus) Caess(aribus), dd(ominis) nn(ostris) invictissimis principib(us) Arcadio et Honorio, victorib(us) ac triumfatorib(us), semp(er) Augg(ustis), / ob instauratos urbi(s) aeternae muros, portas ac turres, egestis inmensis ruderib(us) ex suggestione v(iri) c(larissimi) / et inlustris com(itis) et mag(istri) utriusq(ue) militiae Stilichonis, ad perpetuitatem nominis eorum / simulacra constituit. / Curante Fl(avio) Macrobio Longiniano, v(iro) c(larissimo), praef(ecto) urb(i), d(evotus) n(umini) m(aiestati)q(ue) eorum.86
The Senate and the people of Rome set up these statues for the emperors and Caesars, our domini, the most invincible principes, Arcadius and Honorius, victorious and triumphant, always Augusti, for the perpetuity of their names, on account of their restoration of the walls, gates, and towers of the eternal city, with the exhaustion of a large amount of “rubbish” according to the suggestion of the vir clarissimus and illustris, the comes and magister of both soldieries, Stilicho. Flavius Macrobius Longinianus, vir clarissimus and urban prefect, devoted to their divinity and majesty, oversaw the work.
30In the process of the restoration, the inscription records that a significant quantity of rudera, or “rubbish”, was removed from around the walls. In the context of rebuilding inscriptions, rudera only appears in the epigraphic record in the fourth and fifth centuries at Rome and elsewhere in the Latin West.87 In each case, the rudera are somehow occupying or otherwise imposing themselves on the building that is the object of the reconstruction efforts. Robert Coates-Stephens has argued that the immensa rudera in the case of the Honorian Wall were the ruined remains of buildings destroyed over a century prior while clearing space for Aurelian’s wall. The swathe of destruction that the initial construction of the wall would have entailed was likely enormous, perhaps extending 20 m beyond the wall’s curtains.88 This demolition would have no doubt generated a large amount of removed, stripped, and deconstructed materials.
31It seems unlikely that these materials remained heaped up around the wall for over a century, especially given the attention lavished on the appearance of the City by the emperors, the senatorial elite, and the bishops in the intervening period. The reuse of material, however, in the construction process is a well-known feature in Late Antiquity, and the process of spoliation and reuse was also systematically organized.89 Such practice even received imperial consent as late as 458, when Majorian forbade the general pillaging of the City’s monuments but permitted that, should buildings be torn down of necessity, their materials be transferred “for the adornment of another building.”90
32It was not just marble or decorated architectural elements that constituted spolia; bricks also came to be included among reused material. Recent architectural analyses of the elevation of the Honorian wall have demonstrated that the builders of the wall primarily employed reused material for the brick facing.91 The efforts to salvage and reuse bricks, in this case, were directed by the urban prefect, and it was done for a large-scale imperial project. It is possible that this material, or at least some of it, was drawn from the rudera mentioned in the inscription commemorating the wall’s reconstruction. The inscription therefore might well be attesting to the emperor’s initiative to reuse existing material for the restoration of the wall.
33Rudera has been restored in a second inscription that also attests to the reconstruction work of Honorius at Rome. It records the restoration of the Theatre of Pompey:
Dd(omini) nn(ostri) Arcadius et Honorius [Invicti et] / perpetui Augg(usti) theatrum Pompei [collapso] / exteriore ambitu magna etiam [ex parte] / interior[e] r[uen]te convulsum [ruderibus] / subductis et excitatis invice[m fabricis] / [novis restituerunt].92
Our Lords Arcadius and Honorius, invincible and always Augusti restored the destroyed theatre of Pompey, after its large exterior circuit collapsed (?) and even part of the interior was in ruins, after pulling up the rudera and erecting in turn new structures.
34As I have said, the inscription claims that both the exterior walls of the theatre and the interior, at least in part, had collapsed and that the emperors raised up the rudera, in this case almost definitely the collapsed structures, and in their place erected new buildings. The restoration of rudera is relatively secure. A fragment likely dated to the same period and also pertaining to the repair of the Theatre of Pompey suggests that the structure was occupied by rudera.93 The message of the Honorian inscription is then clear: Honorius and Arcadius saw to the reconstruction of the theatre, which included the removal and possibly the inclusion of the materials—the rudera—from the previously damaged building.94
35A similar process is witnessed later in the fifth century in a different context. Hilarus, the bishop of Rome in the 460s, set up a building inscription to commemorate his work near the Lateran:95
Hic locus olim sordentis cumuli squalore congestus sumptu / et studio Chr(ist)i famuli Hilari ep(iscop)i iuvante d(omi)no tanta rude/rum mole sublata quantum culminis nunc videtur ad / offerendum Ch(ist)o d(e)o munus ornatus atq(ue) dedicatus est.
Formerly piled up with the squalor of a filthy heap, by the expense and zeal of the bishop Hilarus, the servant of Christ, and with God helping, after raising up a mass of debris as much as now is seen (to the height) of the roof, this place was dedicated and adorned for the purpose of offering a duty to Christ our God.
36It has been suggested that the pile of debris referred to was the remains of an earlier bath complex cleared from the site nearby the Constantinian baptistery.96 If this is true, the inscription would seem to offer a clear testament to the reuse of materials that had formerly piled up at a site. The bishop then makes a claim to not only restoring the appearance of the site, but also about how he achieved it: Hilarus carried out the construction at his expense (sumptu) and openly commemorated his reuse and reconstitution of the old material.97
37This particular language which adorns the inscribed monumenta of ecclesiastical, senatorial, and imperial projects seems to be a product only of the late-fourth and fifth centuries. This shift may have been conditioned by the administrative developments that saw the obligatory supply of materials become part of a system of munera imposed on Rome’s various craftsmen and one integral to the process of repair and reconstruction in the late-antique City. The direct result was that the use of rudera in the reconstruction of Rome’s urban infrastructure served a dual purpose: on the one hand, much like the supply of lime served the repair of buildings (sarta tecta) that contributed to maintaining the City’s appearance, the clearing and reuse of rudera contributed to improving Rome’s façade. On the other, by advertising the reuse of materials, displayed as they were in the newly raised walls of the now repaired buildings, the inscriptions disclose the re-articulation of the traditional language of the euergetist. By ostentatiously refusing to requisition more material, the emperor, the bishop, or the senatorial patron were contributing to the repair of the City’s fabric without burdening the people for whom they were responsible. This very same reasoning might be applied to the inscriptions which take evident pains to commemorate the precise work that was carried out. In advertising restraint in their repairs, claiming to limit interventions to only necessary reconstructions, the euergetes aimed to reinforce to the people of Rome that they were not like the much-maligned Lampadius.
Conclusion
38Repairing and maintaining Rome’s urban fabric was a complex process. It required considerable investment of both financial and physical resources. While managed by the urban prefects, the emperors, Rome’s numerous other elites, and the church, these resources were extracted from the City’s population. They were constituted by various forms of fixed and variable taxes, a significant portion of which required a certain level of population compliance to ensure their collection. So while building continued apace in the fourth and fifth centuries, the social, fiscal, and economic interactions that underpinned its processes came to redefine euergetic language and ideology. The various rebuilding inscriptions that continued to advertise interventions in the City’s fabric might then be profitably read along with these shifts in the fiscal life of the City to reveal the re-articulation of certain long-enduring sociopolitical interactions. The City’s various patrons remained committed to maintaining Rome’s venerable monuments, but they recognized the burden imposed on Rome’s other constituencies. The net result was that a certain parsimony in the distribution of public funds to maintenance projects was now seen as desirable. Advertising the precise interventions in buildings, the acquisition of material through extra-fiscal channels, and the fact that a restoration project served the public good demonstrated that the City’s patrons were acting in good faith and according to new social and fiscal expectations. None of this argument suggests that claims in rebuilding inscriptions ought to be accepted wholesale, it simply insists that that the social function of these inscriptions needs to be considered in context, and that when economic considerations are factored, the appearance of new language to describe old processes may prove meaningful.
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Notes de bas de page
1E.g. Symm., Rel., 14, 3.
2Most prominently by Thomas – Witschel 1992.
3E.g. Wilson 2011, p. 180-193 on urbanization rates.
4See, in general, Ward Perkins 1984 on the urban developments of cities in late-antique Italy.
5CTh 15, 1, 3. This constitution was issued to Saturninius Secundus Salutius, praetorian prefect in the East from 361 to 365 CE, but the subscriptio contains a consular date of 326. Lizzi 2001, p. 681 argues that the relevant constitution ought to be dated to the reign of Julian since a later edict of Constantius II issued in 361 (CTh 15, 1, 7) implies that ex novo construction was still freely permitted for local magistrates. On this reading, CTh 15, 1, 3 could not have been issued prior to that date. I do not find this reasoning convincing. CTh 15, 1, 3 does not proscribe new construction, rather it only insists that provincial magistrates “be reminded” (commoneri) that they complete projects in progress before initiating others. It seems a better solution then that CTh 15, 1, 3 may have been promulgated in 326 and repeated again under Julian, which instances the compilers of the Theodosian Code conflated.
6CTh 15, 1, 14 dates to January 365; CTh 15, 1, 16 is dated to March 365, but Lizzi 2001, p. 678 argues convincingly that it must predate CTh 15, 1, 14, as the latter references a previous law of Valentinian I that proscribes new construction and reflects the language of CTh 15, 1, 16.
7CTh 15, 1, 16. Similar laws were evidently also issued locally to the provincial governors, e.g. CTh 15, 1, 17 issued to the consularis of Picenum.
8CTh 15, 1, 14. This reflects a similar concern that was expressed in a constitution dated to 357 and issued to the proconsul of Africa (CTh 15, 1, 1).
9CTh 15, 1, 11 (364).
10CTh 15, 1, 19 (376); 15, 1, 27 (390). While Rome received direct attention from the imperial administration, this same prohibition extended to all cities in Italy (CTh 15, 1, 28 [390] and CTh 15, 1, 37 [398]).
11Lizzi 2001. Lizzi produces a learned study of this rebuilding legislation in the historical context, yet her conclusions are grounded in an anachronistic view that sees religious antagonism as central to the identity of fourth-century Rome’s Senatorial elite. Some of the epigraphic evidence also works to undermine Lizzi’s conclusions. For example, she argues in support of her position (p. 683) that the elder Symmachus, to whom CTh 15, 1, 11 is addressed, likely petitioned the emperors for the legislation and that his intentions in this process are made plain by the rebuilding activities of his various relations, all directed to pagan monuments. While I cannot but agree with the former view, the best evidence we have for Symmachus’ own rebuilding objectives comes from CIL VI 31402 = ILS 769, which records his restoration of the pons Aurelius, hardly a bastion of pagan religion.
12On the administration of public building during the Principate and, in particular, the role of the curatores, see Eck 1992, Kolb 1993, Bruun 1996, and Daguet-Gagey 2015. See also Horster in this volume.
13Chastagnol 1960, p. 30-53.
14Machado 2019, p. 65-69 provides a recent and a careful assessment of this process.
15Prior to the 330s the various curatores frequently appear in the epigraphic record connected to the oversight of projects on behalf of the emperor, e.g. the curator operum publicorum (CIL VI 31901a = VI 1673 = ILS 1211); curator aedium sacrarum (CIL VI 33856; IG XIV 1026 = IGUR I 191-192); curator aquarum (CIL VI 773 = ILS 626), the curator alvei Tiberis riparum et cloacarum (CIL VI 1242 = 31556 = ILS 5894; CIL VI 40770). Subsequently, only a certain Eustochius is mentioned as a consularis aquarum in 365 but under the oversight of the urban prefect (CIL VI 319863 = ILS 5791), while two additional inscriptions mention an unspecified comes and consularis that oversaw projects, also under the purview of the urban prefect (CIL VI 45 = CIL VI 39807; CIL VI 102 = ILS 4003).
16CTh 9, 17, 2.
17CTh 5, 15, 35; 15, 1, 18; 15, 1, 33. Lewin 2001, p. 34-35 makes the case that cities across the empire had access public revenues for building already under Constantine. Lenksi 2016, p. 173-174, however, has argued persuasively to the contrary, suggesting that Constantine realigned urban fiscal structures, which included the redirection of some civic revenues from city treasuries to imperial coffers.
18For studies on the complex changes that occurred in the tax regime of Diocletian see, for example, Carrié 1994; Bransbourg 2008 and 2010.
19CTh 9, 17, 2, 1. It was also issued to Ulpius Limenius, who was both urban prefect and praetorian prefect of Italy in 349 (PLRE I, 510; Chastagnol 1962, p. 128; Moser 2018, p. 99-100).
20E.g. Jones 1964 refers to vectigalia as (p. 110) “other dues”; (p. 174) “civic taxes”, (p. 434) “customs”. Delmaire 1989, p. 275 suggests that vectigal could refer to tax, but that he reserves the use for “impôts indirects et taxes d’utilisation du domaine public”.
21Dig. 50, 16, 17, 1 Publica vectigalia intellegere debemus, ex quibus vectigal fiscus capit: quale est vectigal portus vel venalium rerum, item salinarum et metallorum et picariarum; “We must also regard as being public those taxes from which the imperial treasury derives revenue, such as a harbor tax or a tax on saltworks, mines, and pitch factories” (trans. Watson 1985).
22CTh 4, 13, 1-3. All three letters were issued by Constantine. CTh 4, 13, 3 adds that vectigalia must be paid on goods purchased for the intention on resale at a profit.
23For Constantinople see CJ 11, 43, 7 (445); for Antioch, Libanius, Or., 26, 20.
24For tax paid to perform religious rites, see MAMA 7, 305 and Lenski 2016, p. 109-113. On the taxes from rents in Italy see CTh 11, 20, 3 and 15, 1, 41.
25Delmaire 1989, p. 279-282 provides additional examples.
26Chastagnol 1960, p. 336-339; Machado 2019, p. 79 follows Chastagnol.
27CTh 14, 9, 1. CTh 14, 2, 2 implies that incolae, that is foreigners that had domicilium in Rome, were laden with some sort of fiscal or liturgical burden, but there is no reason to see this as particular to their status as foreigners.
28CTh 11, 20, 3 (405). Chastagnol 1960, p. 338 acknowledges this constitution, but suggests that perhaps such a tax developed later as it did, according to him, in Constantinople.
29HA, Sev. Alex., 24, 5.
30Cameron 2011, p. 743-782 on the date of the Historia Augusta, and more recently Savino 2017.
31Delmaire 1989, p. 356; Chron. Pasc., 525 b; Eus., HE, 10, 8, 12.
32The legislation reveals the full scope of those liable for the collatio lustralis both through grants of exemption and orders of assessment, e.g. CTh 13, 5, 5 (navicularii), CTh 13, 3, 2 (doctors/archiatri), and CTh 13, 1, 10 (painters). On the collection of the collatio lustralis see Delmaire 1985, p. 120-129 and 1989, p. 357-360 and Bagnall 1992, p. 15-17. For extent of the assessment see Delmaire 1989, p. 360-367 and Carrié 2002, who demonstrates that the tax was incumbent on all urban craftsmen and entrepreneurs.
33Both vectigalia, broadly conceived, and the collatio lustralis were paid to the sacrae largitiones. On the vectigalia see Delmaire 1989, p. 275-282.
34At Edessa, for example, the collatio lustralis only generated 140 pounds of gold (a little over ten thousand solidi) every four years, see Jones 1964, p. 432.
35Symm., Rel. 40; CIL VI 1747; Chastagnol 1960, p. 301; Lo Cascio 1999, p. 166-168.
36CTh 14, 4, 3; Nov. Val. 36.
37This includes Italia Annonaria and Suburbicaria: CTh 11, 1, 6 and 11, 2, 2-3.
38Lo Cascio 2007, p. 85-98 and Tedesco 2016, p. 124-126.
39On the arca vinaria, see Symm., Rel., 29.
40Symm., Rel., 20, 2: addresses funds belonging to a condita formarum (aqueduct account). The arca vinaria was purportedly established by Aurelian (HA. Aur., 48). See Dey 2011, p. 106-107 for discussion. For a detailed and nuanced assessment of the function of this arca as a fund controlled by the urban prefect to finance building see Chastagnol 1960, p. 339-346 and Vera 1981, p. 254-272. The best information to support the view that the arca vinaria played a role in the financing of public building, however, comes from an affair involving Memmius Vitrasius Orfitus, see Amm. 27, 3 and 27, 7; Symm., Rel., 34; Symm., Ep., 9, 150, and discussion in Machado 2019, p. 78-82.
41CTh 14, 6, 3 and discussion below.
42CTh 14, 6, 3.
43Nov. Val., 5, 4.
44Pistores: CTh 13, 5, 2 & 14, 3, 1-2; Sirks 1991, p. 130-142 and 1998, p. 334-337; suarii: CTh 14, 4, 1; Sirks 1991, p. 141-142 and 1998, p. 334. These were originally munera patrimonialia, tied to land (Sirks 1991, p. 325), but became munera personalia by the last quarter of the fourth century (CTh 14, 3, 13; 14, 4, 5; 14, 2, 12; and CTh 13, 5, 13). On the late-antique annona see Jones 1964, p. 396-418, Durliat 1990, Sirks 1991, Lo Cascio 1999.
45CTh 14, 6, 1-3.
46In addition to their exemptions, the lime-burners and freight-carters were remunerated at a price fixed by the state, CTh 14, 6, 1 (359).
47CTh 14, 6, 3.
48AE 1941, 68; Fabiano 2019, p. 67-85.
49CJ 8, 11, 7. This law is the same as CTh 15, 1, 23, with the exemption that the latter does not include walls.
50CTh 15, 3, 6.
51CTh 15, 1, 49 (412). The edict specifically claims that it only applies to the province of Illyricum, which may imply that other arrangements prevailed elsewhere.
52Scheidel 2018, p. 252-254 has argued that during the earlier Empire at Rome corvée labour was generally eschewed for labour market solutions, but that tolerance for the use of corvée increased as “egalitarian traditions were eroded in the later stages of the Roman empire.”
53Nov. Val., 5, 2-3.
54AE 1941, 68; Fabiano 2019, p. 67-85.
55Carrié 2002 argues that all craftsmen were joined to guilds, contra Sirks 1991. The responsibility of guilds for the maintenance of buildings elsewhere in Italy and Gaul, e.g. CTh 12, 19, 1 and 15, 1, 41.
56Symm., Rel., 14, 3.
57Symm., Rel., 14, 2-3. There is a later reference that suggests that the compulsion of guilds in the context of public construction was first put into effect by Aurelian for the construction of his wall (Malalas Chron. L.XII). It is possible that this munus may have gone through cycles of exemption and exaction. For example, CTh 13, 4, 2 (337) exempts craftsmen (artifices artium) from all munera (universis muneribus), but CTh 14, 2, 1 (364) is forced to reassert certain privilegia of guilds, because they had wavered, and, again, thirty years later, CTh 14, 2, 3 (397) reaffirms suffragia of guilds.
58CTh 14, 6, 3.
59Moore 2004, p. 299-311; Scheidel and Monson 2018, p. 15. This is opposed to external revenues or those collected from a small base, like a trade tax. Of course, as we have seen, Rome relied on both.
60On the New Fiscal Sociology and the relationship between fiscality and the social contract see Martin et al. 2009.
61This is referred to as “quasi-voluntary” compliance, since the state still possesses coercive authority, see Martin et al. 2009, p. 18-19.
62Amm., 27, 3, 5.
63Amm., 27, 3, 7.
64CIL VI 40793. Lampadius is commemorated for his role in the repair of thirteen bridges and the banks of the Tiber, which had been neglected for a long time (dissimulatio longa corruperat). The reason for the work clearly signals the process of reconstruction and repair, although the verbs used to express the work done are constituere and facere.
65CIL VI 31965 records additional work carried out by Lampadius as urban prefect.
66Amm., 27, 3, 8-10.
67“Taxes” appears the likely meaning of tituli, not as Chastagnol 1960, p. 340 suggested the arcae themselves. Elsewhere in his text, Ammianus uses tituli to refer to taxes imposed under certain pretexts, see den Boeft et al. 2009, op. cit. 3, 10, p. 60-61, where they cite Amm., 19, 11, 3 and 30, 5, 6.
68There is reference to these craftsmen in inscriptions from the catacombs: for the ferrarii see ICUR II 5208 and VI 15605; for an aerarius, ICUR VI 15774.
69Amm., 29, 6, 17.
70Immediately preceding his account of Lampadius’ prefecture, Ammianus provides the account of the elder Symmachus’ prefecture in 364 (27, 3, 3). Again, here he suggests that during this prefecture the City experienced “more peace and prosperity than it was accustomed” and this is linked directly, both grammatically and, to my mind, ideologically, to the prefect’s reconstruction of the pons Valentinianus, which was done to the “great joy” of the people.
71Cracco Ruggini 1997, p. 179-185.
72In fact, the legislation that addresses rebuilding states this much. The laws were only concerned with to what public funds (vectigalia and tituli) were applied. Maintenance and repair were to be funded by the imperial coffers, whereas new construction was to be paid for by individual accounts, see CTh 15, 1, 19 in particular.
73Thomas – Witschel 1992.
74In particular Fagan 1996, but also Kalas 2010. Alföldy 2001, p. 10-13 also suggests that rebuilding inscriptions in late-antique Rome have a tendency to reflect a more realistic background.
75Kalas 2010, p. 24-32.
76Orlandi – Crimi 2020, p. 249-250. Orlandi – Crimi 2019, p. 1-14 have found similar patterns in inscriptions related to the repair of public baths in late-Roman North Africa.
77CIL VI 1703 = ILS 5715 and CIL VI 1659.
78La Follette 1994, p. 19-21.
79Orlandi – Crimi 2017, p. 287-29 and CIL VI 30374.
80CIL VI 31912 = ILS 5733.
81CIL VI 1191 = 31258 = ILS 793.
82CIL VI 1765 = CIL VI 31925. Coates-Stephens 2001, p. 226-227 on the identification of the aqueduct as a branch of the Aqua Claudia.
83CIL VI 31402 = ILS 769. This is the only building inscription to the author’s knowledge from Rome in which the phrase ex utilitate urbis aeternae appears.
84Quadratianus was likely urban prefect in 433 or 439/441, see PLRE II, 931.
85CIL VI 1750: ... parvo / sumptu, quantum publicae patiebantur angustiae...
86CIL VI 1188 = 1189 = 1190 = 31257 = ILS 797 = AE 1997, 107.
87There are 14 inscriptions which mention rudera in conjunction with rebuilding (6 from Rome, 7 from North Africa, and 1 from Spain). All can be firmly dated to the fourth and fifth centuries, expect for two: one from Baetica (CILA II 992), which is fragmentary, and the other, dated to 251, from Numidia (AE 1946, 61). Two other inscriptions mention rudera, neither of which seem to be rebuilding inscriptions.
88Coates-Stephens 2012, p. 96. Dey 2011, p. 169 would extend this to 40-50 m.
89On spolia in Late Antiquity see, for example, Pensabene 2015. On the spoliation in the construction process and the organization of spolia in Rome see Marano 2011.
90Nov. Maj. 4, 3. Theoderic even came to recommend the use of material from ruined buildings for the repair of the City’s walls (Cassiodorus, Var., 2, 7; see also Wallace-Hadrill in this volume).
91Esposito et al. 2017.
92CIL VI 1191 = 31258 = ILS 793.
93CIL VI 30345 was found near the theatre: ------/[---] ruderibus occupatum et [---]/[---] deformi FA[---]/------.
94Even if the reuse of the rudera in the reconstruction is not explicitly stated, nor confirmed since the superstructure is no longer extant, it remains likely to my mind. If it were not used, the viable material would likely have been transferred to other buildings or to storage for later use, see fn. 89 above and Orlandi 2017, p. 216-217. See similarly Thomas 1998, who argues that ornamenta, particularly marbles and columns, that were stripped from one building were required to be transferred to another so as not to decrease the ornatus of the City.
95ILCV 977.
96Johnson 1995, p. 130.
97Tollere can signal removal, but it can also mean “to build” or “erect”, e.g. Dig. 39, 2, 26. In the case of the inscription the latter reading appears more likely as the process of “raising up” (sublata) the rudera is linked through the gerund for the purpose of adorning the site.
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Reconstruire Rome : la restauration comme politique urbaine, de l'Antiquité à nos jours
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