Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract This chapter brings together the different strands that make up the argument of the book. As emperors distanced themselves from the city, reorganizing the administration and the services that regulated life in late antique Rome, Roman aristocrats began to play a growing role in the life of the city, redefining its spaces and institutions. The city became a central element in the social and political strategies of the Roman elite: its spaces and the buildings that gave shape to it, the festivals and ceremonies that animated it, and the hierarchies and instruments of control that defined it were progressively appropriated. These developments took place at a time of dramatic changes in the empire, and late antique Rome was as a result a more provincial and smaller city than in previous centuries. Aristocratic dominance did not prevent the rise of new elements in Roman society, bringing with it the elements that would contribute to the development of a new, Christian Rome, under the leadership of the Church and its bishop.