While the focus of preceding chapters has been on written sources, this chapter looks at the archaeologicy of cities as evidence for underlying ideas. The old model of the disintegration of a city of straight lines into tangled suqs is hard to reconcile with the evidence. New cities continue to be built through Late Antiquity, with the model set by Constantinople. Far from indicating the grid as the ideal, it is based on Rome itself, a notably non-gridded city. Despite contrasts of terrain, Constantinople competes with old Rome wherever possible. Justinian was responsible for a series of new cities, as Procopius claims, for which we have the advantage of good archaeological studies. If there is a model for these, it is Constantinople itself. Visigothic Reccopolis follows the same pattern. Exceptional among these new cities is the Umayyad foundation of ‘Anjar, outstanding as the most mathematical grid plan since antiquity; the model seems to be in Roman forts. Finally, Charlemagne’s Aachen is examined; though a palace rather than a city, contemporary court poets celebrate it as a New Rome.

It is often suggested that new thinking brought by Christianity spelled the end of ancient ideas of the city. Three Christian authors of the fifth century -- Orosius, Augustine, and Salvian -- have much to say on cities and citizenship. Despite the shock of the sack of Rome, all three are convinced of the value of Roman citizenship, and respond resiliently to the troubles of Rome and other cities of the empire. Augustine’s treatise, the City of God, while offering the Heavenly City and a citizenship in faith as the ultimate aspiration, see it as entangled in the terrestrial world of cities. Salvian is scathing about the moral failings of the city elites, to which he attributes the divine wrath of barbarian devastations, and vividly portrays urban corruption, but in a plea for better cities rather than abandonment of cities.

Isidore’s Etymologies, written in the early seventh century, offers one of the most extensive analyses of the city, yet they have been dismissed as an antiquarian compilation of out-of-date views. Isidore emerges as more than an antiquarian, someone at the heart of contemporary politics with close relations with the Visigothic kings. The concern of these kings for cities comes out in their foundation of new cities, especially Reccopolis. Isidore’s writing, far from being buried in a classical past, is more influenced by Christian writings, and shows memories of the past recycled and reinterpreted. For him the city is timeless, stretches throughout the history known to him, and covers an area wider than the classical, including Persia. His detailed analysis of the city may contain antiquarian details, but is engaged in a present and the foundation of new cities.

The History of the Franks of Gregory of Tours, along with his Saints’ lives, show a world of cities that maps with surprising accuracy onto the administrative world of late Roman Gaul. The squabbling Merovingian kings treat cities almost as stocks and shares, something of value worth fighting over, valued for their resources and taxes and manpower. From the perspective of Gregory as bishop, he and his fellow bishops play a central role in city administration. Yet they too are descendants of the local land-holding elite, with whom their interests align. The idea that city councils have disappeared is based on a misinterpretation of the senatores, who are simply Gregory’s way of describing the old landed elite who held office in cities. The bishop, as representative of the church and its land-holdings, proves to be the key figure in the adaptation of the old order.

“Ars” came to be laden with specific meaning in the intellectual culture of late-Republican Rome, with some artes being regarded as intellectually and socially worthier than others. These “higher artes” were distinguished by several features that would form the premises for the scientific culture of the artes in the early Roman Empire. These premises were established in Rome by the reception of Greek notions of technê (τέχνη) but were elaborated independently and joined for the first time into a unified conception of specialized knowledge by Roman thinkers, including Cicero and Varro. The higher artes are logically organized and systematically presented, hence systematic. They are related to one another in their principles and methods, hence interdisciplinary. They entail explanatory knowledge of their methods in terms of causes in nature, and are hence explanatory. And they balance experience and practical know-how with theoretical knowledge, and are hence balanced.