Chapter 2 Rich Corduba on the Quiet Baetis: Politics, Society, and Economy in a Hispanic Provincial Capital between the 3rd and 5th Centuries
In: A Companion to Late Antique and Medieval Islamic CordobaSearch for other papers by Sabine Panzram in
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Abstract
This contribution examines Corduba, a flourishing provincial capital of the imperial period, between the 3rd and 5th centuries. Taking into consideration the events of this period (the ‘imperial crisis’, the invasions of the Suebi, Vandals and Alans), it investigates the continuity and discontinuity of its politics, society and economics. The changes that occurred in all three fields, indivisibly connected with one another, were not the result of military threat, pillaging or destruction, but rather primarily of the exhaustion of natural resources (mines), confiscations (Septimius Severus) and administrative reorganisation (loss of its capital-city function). The low-ranking elite that remained in Corduba did not seem to have had the means of being supra-regionally and politically active, and those present in Rome among the circles of the imperial aristocracy evidently did not act in this way. In any case, this structural deficit of a “closed” society in the long-term prevented the development of episcopal rule (Tarraco) during these decades, and the city’s importance permanently diminished.