The Rise and Fall of the Curiales
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• Conglomeration of cities, relying on local elites for administration, road building and most importantly taxes. City left to own devices if it paid taxes etc.
• Hereditary oligarchy of landowners who sat on curia – not only economic centre but focus of political, social and cultural lives.
• Curalies civic donations to show status within cities and between cities – baths, gymnasia, temples, agorai arches – thus bigger and bigger theatres in smaller cities.
• Not for need of civic buildings, rather extraordinary cultural behaviour of Roman Elite – not inevitable – could well be expressed without paraphernalia.
• Not one off – network of families in cities linked to imperial power eventually
• Crisis 3^rd century - political and fiscal – endowments of curiales shed value as inflation (coinage less valued). 3^rd and 4^th centuries cities facing financial crisis – needed central administrative role if they were to survive.
• By 3^rd and 4^th century, after imperial intervention, Theodosian and Justinian codes it is clear that a financial environment much less favourable to curiae.
• Flight of the curiales – more central admin, new capital, more administrative posts, new opportunities for employment, patronage. Although curiae hereditary “flight of the curiales”. Whittow: “nearly everyone who was able to escape from the curia did so”.
• Remaining curiales burden and declining status – 4^th century being bullied by for their taxes – upkeep heaps of classical masonry, performance of civic ceremonies – increasingly obsolescent cultural apparatus
• 4^th + 5^th centuries stream legislation to protect curia, minor administrators, cities important part of classical, civilised empire.
• Given up by 6^th century and John Lydus’s (De magistratibus 550s – curia abolished by end of the century curia and curiales things of the distant past
• Liebeschutz – fall of Roman Empire in east – Jones loss of vitality and initiative to the city as “lost most rich and enterprising members” – Whittow sees this as misleading erring too important – masks political, social, structural change

Other Notes in this Category

1. A Continuous History
2. Education
3. Ruling the late Roman and Byzantine City
4. Society and Economy
5. The Disappearance and revival of cities
6. The Rise and Fall of the Curiales
7. The Wealth of the Late Roman Cities in the Near East

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