Byzantine Preservation of Ancient Monuments at Miletus in Caria

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was merely a matter of convenience, as it was for example at Spalato/Split, where Dio-
cletian’s palace is exceptionally well preserved, because it could conveniently be used as
a stronghold and safe haven throughout the medieval period.55 In the case of Miletus
there is definite archaeological evidence for intentional antiquarianism that was not
convenient but required extra labour and care as well as defying some near universal
trends in Byzantine architecture that had been set by the capital Constantinople and
were followed most everywhere else.
The early Byzantine renovation of the Baths of Faustina is a case in point: follow-
ing the renovation, the baths were newly decorated with numerous ancient sculptures,
some of which may have stood in the baths before, but not in the same positions, while
others were probably salvaged from elsewhere in the city.56 The statues now seem to
have been arranged according to dress, as if to mirror the experience of the bathers,
dressed or semi-dressed in the entrance and changing area and nude in the bathing
rooms. Moving and placing the large, heavy, and fragile marbles was a major under-
taking, and as the main decorative feature the sculptures would have greatly enhanced
the antiquarian atmosphere of the ancient building.
The Serapeion Gate of the Byzantine city walls should also be considered in this
context. Apart from the former temple door, the gate had two additional doors, one on
each side of the temple porch (Fig. 3-4). The planning of a tripartite city gate around
the pre-existing porch required forethought, and the easternmost of the three doors,
which opened onto a side street or lane and appears to make little sense in terms of
traffic, seems to have been added mainly for the sake of symmetry, in order to frame
the porch as the centrepiece of a tripartite gate. Tripartite gates are known to have
served as urban showpieces on ceremonial occasions, for example the Golden Gate
at Constantinople, the only marble gate of the capital, which figured in triumphal
processions when the emperor passed through the central door.5? Focusing such a
gate, the largest and most elaborate gate of Byzantine Miletus, on the serapeion was
a strong antiquarian statement, as it turned the former temple porch into a signature
monument for the Byzantine city.
Antiquarianism of a different quality becomes apparent in the architectural dec-
oration of the city’s early Byzantine churches: in the later sixth century the ‘Great
Church’ and the round church of St Mary employed newly carved capitals in the
Corinthian tradition (Fig. 6),58 which at Constantinople had gone out of fashion a
century earlier, when, in the fifth century, it was superseded first by composite capitals
of the so-called Theodosian type and then by the various hybrids of the sixth century.59
Most provincial workshops followed the trends that were set in the capital and widely
disseminated through the export of Proconnesian marble, for example to Lycia and

55 Marasovic (2004); Jovic Gazic (2011).

56 Schneider (1999), pp. 8-12; Bol (2011), pp. n-12; Dally (2012); Schneider (2012); Dally/Maischberger/
Scholl (2015), pp. 336-338.

57 Meyer-Plath/Schneider (1943), pp. 39-60; Bardill (1999); Asutay-Effenberger (2007), pp. 54-61.

58 Niewöhner (2016a), pp. 30-32.115-116; Feld (1996).

59 Peschlow (2004), cc. 96-103.