In late antique Italy the histories of some simple vici (Trani, Tropea, Nicotera, Albano) were changed by the presence of a cathedral. For these rare rural settlements, where the bishop performed a typically ‘poleogenetic’ function (G. Otranto, Italia meridionale e Puglia paleocristiane: saggi storici, Bari 1991, 250, borrowing the expression from E. Dupré Theseider, ‘Problemi della città nell'altomedioevo’, in La città nell'alto medioevo, Spoleto 1959, 37), it would be extremely interesting to investigate to what extent Christianity operated as a factor in civic identity.
However, this question may sound (and to a certain extent is) contrived when applied to Aquileia, a city in which Calderini (Aquileia romana, ricerche di storia e di epigrafia, Milan 1930) found signs of inexorable decadence at the very moment when Christianity began to alter the civic fabric.
Calderini's interpretation, which is typical of the historiography of the first half of the twentieth century, is, quite correctly, turned on its head by Claire Sotinel. She argues that it was Constantine's tetrarchic reforms that favoured the growth of the city, which reached its high point in the fourth century (pp. 16–28). Whereas the response of many small rural dioceses was the brief duration of their urban facies, being in fact abandoned during the early Middle Ages if, or as soon as, they lacked the structural factors of development that could still give meaning to episcopal activity, it is evident that the civic identity of Aquileia was firmly established well before the diffusion of Christianity, however utopian might have been Herodianus' famous description (viii.2, 3–5), and despite the still limited political and administrative importance of the city in the third century (pp. 8–10).
Thus, even though Aquileia grew in civic self-awareness as its Christian community developed – a community, moreover that included, as in Rome or Carthage, members of the local upper classes (p. 89) – other factors determined that growth. Although Aquileia was never an established imperial residence, emperors frequently stayed there (pp. 20–4); the town had been the caput provinciae since the time of Diocletian and was therefore the governor's habitual residence (although Milan was the residence of the vicarius); a mint was established there in 295 ad; and the legio Moesiaci was based there, as was the military fleet whose praefectus was installed in the city (pp. 16–18).
A number of factors thus combine to show that the civic self-awareness of Aquileia's community had grown independently of the elements that the adoption of Christianity could have brought to it: the recent dating, for example, of the inscription of P. Valerius Maro to the fourth century (G. Paci,‘Virgilio ad Aquileia’, Quaderni catanesi di cultura classica e medievale 1 [1989], 176–86), an inscription by means of which the civic community identified itself with the emblematic poet of imperial Rome; the statue, erected in the second century bc and carefully preserved in the forum until its abandoment, of Titus Annius, triumvir of the senatorial commission that in 169 bc had conferred civic status on the expanded colony; and a general policy of refurbishing and restoring the urban centre (pp. 39–41).
In order to avoid any misunderstandings, therefore, the title of this book should therefore be interpreted in broad terms (see chapter ii ‘Les Paradoxes de l’église d'Aquilée'). Otherwise this valuable book is soundly organised and based on a solid chronology, and the quantity and richness of the material analysed is so staggering that it might well discourage anyone else from attempting something similar. Sotinel's maturity can be measured by the extraordinary expertise manifested in her reading of the sources, which is never slavish even when she is dealing with the well-established interpretations of authoritative scholars (local and non-local) in the field. Despite the vast bibliography accumulated over the last forty years (and thanks also to the Settimane di Studi Altoadriatiche), Claire Sotinel almost always manages to produce fresh interpretations, whether she is dealing with the decorative planning of the first Christian basilicas (pp. 41–7, 73–84) or with some controversial epigraphs such as that of Anicia Ulfina, virgo devota (pp. 278–80), with famous passages of ancient historians (pp. 7–8) or with Christian texts swarming with such difficult doctrinal disputes that they are often avoided by historians tout court.
Although Sotinel provocatively describes as ‘une chimère des études urbaines’ the possibility of writing a ‘total history’ of a city such as Aquileia, for two centuries not a megalopolis but rather an average-sized western city (p. 13), this volume is a fine demonstration that sometimes, in attempting the impossible, one can produce outstanding results.
