Editing Late antiquity (section)

=== Public building ===
In the cities the strained economies of Roman over-expansion arrested growth. Almost all new public building in late antiquity came directly or indirectly from the emperors or imperial officials. Attempts were made to maintain what was already there. The supply of free grain and oil to 20% of the population of Rome remained intact the last decades of the 5th century. It was once thought that the elite and rich had withdrawn to the private luxuries of their numerous [[villa]]s and town houses. Scholarly opinion has revised this. They monopolized the higher offices in the imperial administration, but they were removed from military command by the late 3rd century. Their focus turned to preserving their vast wealth rather than fighting for it.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}}

The [[basilica]], which had functioned as a law court or for imperial reception of foreign dignitaries, became the primary public building in the 4th century. Due to the stress on civic finances, cities spent money on walls, maintaining baths and markets at the expense of amphitheaters, temples, libraries, porticoes, gymnasia, concert and lecture halls, theaters and other amenities of public life. In any case, as Christianity took over, many of these buildings which were associated with pagan cults were neglected in favor of building churches and donating to the poor. The Christian basilica was copied from the civic structure with variations. The bishop took the chair in the apse reserved in secular structures for the magistrate—or the Emperor himself—as the representative here and now of [[Christ Pantocrator]], the Ruler of All, his characteristic late antique [[icon]]. These ecclesiastical basilicas (e.g., [[St. John Lateran]] and [[St. Peter's Basilica|St. Peter's]] in Rome) were themselves outdone by Justinian's [[Hagia Sophia]], a staggering display of later Roman/Byzantine power and architectural taste, though the building is not architecturally a basilica. In the former Western Roman Empire almost no great buildings were constructed from the 5th century. A most outstanding example is the [[Basilica of San Vitale]] in Ravenna constructed {{circa|530}} at a cost of 26,000 gold [[solidus (coin)|solid]]i or 360 [[Roman pound]]s of gold.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}}

City life in the East, though negatively affected by the plague in the 6th–7th centuries, finally collapsed due to Slavic invasions in the Balkans and
Persian destructions in Anatolia in the 620s. City life continued in Syria, Jordan and Palestine into the 8th. In the later 6th century street construction was still undertaken in [[Caesarea Maritima]] in Palestine,<ref>Robert L. Vann, "Byzantine street construction at Caesarea Maritima", in R.L. Hohlfelder, ed. ''City, Town and Countryside in the Early Byzantine Ear'' 1982:167–70.</ref> and [[Edessa, Mesopotamia|Edessa]] was able to deflect [[Chosroes I]] with massive payments in gold in 540 and 544, before it was overrun in 609.<ref>M. Whittow, "Ruling the late Roman and early Byzantine city: a continuous history", ''Past and Present'' '''129''' (1990:3–29).</ref>