Christian Civic Values or Classical Tradition?

For those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning, you are perhaps a little puzzled as to exactly what is late antique, amongst the things that we have been studying. Ah yes, there is now a possible church on the Lower Agora. Furthermore, the city wall looks like a symptom of a changed and perhaps scarier world. But what of all these porticoes, monumental stairs, street pavings, sidewalks, shops, fountains, statue groups, and so on? Give or take a bit of reused material can we talk of it really being anything new, anything late antique? Surely, there is much were that seems to be simply in continuity with the classical tradition, perhaps with a slight stress on everyday amenity? But this is nothing that a Sagalassos resident of the 1st c AD would have found particularly strange. Then there is the statuary. We seem to have a group of redisplayed pagan religious images on the Lower Agora, probably put there at the same time as a statue of Julian was erected. This is the best interpretation for a coherent group of seven blank bases re-erected here on the east portico. If this was not enough, we then have a series of new-cut statuettes of pagan deities, done for the 6th c. state of the Colonnaded Street. One need not even mention the busts of Ares and Athena, reused in the NW gate of the fortification.

Can we exclude the Church from involvement in this? We do not have here any programme in which the interests of the Church are put at the centre. Rather we have clearly part of a continuing classical tradition, it is civic, and it is ‘secular’. Yet, at the time when much of this work took place, in the first half of the 6th c., the councils of notables that ran cities were chaired by bishops. Some degree of influence is thus to be expected, even if bishops often claimed to have better things to do that judge and administer secular matters. What we see is not a serious diversion of funds, nor an attempt to set churches at the centre of power. This is not Gerasa in Jordan, where the bishop’s residence is set in the city centre and late work on the main street is designed to frame it. Neither is it Abu Mina in Egypt, where the church building is the focal point of the city plan.

Rather, we have at Sagalassos ‘side-benefits’ for the Church: advantages from association. Thus, the church discovered by us on the Lower Agora is not a civic structure but it is clearly bonded together with the Agora Gate late stairs, and part of a rebuild of this area. At the NW Gate in the city wall, the adjacent Bouleuterion Church, now both dated to the 6th c., seems to share a similar masonry technique with the fortification, if better executed. Perhaps the bishop was able to benefit in some way, not by transferring funds but by bringing forward developments to share in the skilled labour or placement decisions that took place when major civic works were organised. He was probably very welcome. A small fountain on the Colonnaded Street had a large cross on its pediment, whilst crosses painted or carved on the nymphaea of the city and on statue monuments, to suggest some sort of episcopal adoption, of things the Church extended its blessings to, but which were maintained at civic expense.

29.1 Bouleuterion church with detail of masonry type seen on adjacent fortification wall. Both have well chosen reused blocks but with joints cut to fit.

29.2 Adjacent fortification wall at NW Gate.

29.3 Crosses carved on statue bases. An example from Sagalassos is on the right.