• January 8, 2026 | 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
• Golden Gate 6, Lobby Level

2E: Authority and Transformation in Late Antique Rome (Colloquium)

Organizers:
Gregor Kalas, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Colin Whiting, Dumbarton Oaks

Overview Statement:
This AIA session uses space as a means to connect secular administrative authorities with the ecclesiastic culture of late antique Rome. Although Rome was no longer the exclusive seat of emperors during this period, it remained the heart of the empire—and a critical locus for negotiation between the imperial government and the city’s powerful aristocrats, increasingly confident bishops, and enormous urban population. These Romans, too, continually refashioned their city in new ways, despite occasional crises (or “Falls,” in the title of one recent book on the subject). The approaches of the papers in the session draw upon a wide variety of material evidence and textual sources to better elucidate how, exactly, Rome’s diverse residents transformed themselves, their city, and their empire in this pivotal period. Recent investigations presented here highlight innovations in later Roman urban governance together with the rising influence of bishops that transformed the cityscape, as is witnessed in the buildings, pictures, and texts that will be examined in the session.

One paper, entitled “The Architectural Design of Late Antique Rome: Metrology and Acoustics on the Eastern Caelian,” draws upon new data to establish that a predetermined proportional system did not generate the Lateran Basilica’s layout, since acoustics together with liturgical and processional requirements more likely dictated the format of Rome’s first cathedral. This paper focuses upon the city’s episcopal complex featuring a major basilica together with the baptistry and the bishop’s palace to emphasize that sound was a fundamental element in the conceptualization of Rome’s late antique ceremonial spaces. The session then turns to the nexus of urban architecture and imperial power in its second paper, “Constantius II and Constantina in Rome: Dynastic Unity and Christian Piety.” This paper disputes the traditional view that this emperor’s non-Nicene Christianity had minimized his religious sway over the city. Evidence attests that the emperor’s sister Constantina worked as a cultural ambassador in Rome and linked her mausoleum to the Basilica of St. Agnes on the Via Nomentana. Doing so allowed her to foreground dynastic claims on behalf of Constantius in opposition to a usurper as she also established herself as an Augusta. In the third paper, epigraphic evidence is used to demonstrate that bishops pursued significant architectural transformations when they reconfigured Rome’s preexisting audience halls to create liturgical spaces. Entitled “The Transformed Radiance of Rome’s Late Antique Audience Halls,” this presentation establishes parallels between the shifting ownership of the marble-clad interiors and a heightened appreciation for generous supplies of reflected light. Although the profusion of light in these structures made the interiors all the more glittering to behold, that very abundance may have made bishops, perhaps contrary to expectations, ambivalent about such largesse; bishops only appear as intermediaries in the inscriptions and seem more likely to stress that inlaid marbles and mosaic decorations benefited from being replenished first and foremost by the light of faith. The final paper, entitled “Governing Rome at the End of Empire,” likewise draws upon epigraphy. It uses inscriptions that appeared in the city after the sack of 410 C.E. to argue that, during the last decades of the western capital’s prominence in the empire, urban prefects put on display new documentation of their administrative experience. Rome’s top-ranking officials of the fifth century appear to have rejected the independence of their forebears, as local prefects started to broadcast their loyalty to the emperors in the city’s public inscriptions. By drawing together these four studies on basilicas and bishops, emperors and epigraphy, cemeteries and saints, this panel will demonstrate how the changing spaces of the Eternal City can only be truly understood by drawing together the material and textual remains of the time and place.