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Philipp Niewöhner

newly carved columns in the later sixth century.74 All this re-use happened long after
the Delphinion would have gone out of use as a sanctuary75 and its eventual dem-
olition seems to have lacked any religious overtones, as some pagan altars were left
standing inside the shrine’s interior courtyard, probably because their round shapes
did not lend themselves to re-use.76
Similarly, a small naiskos or altar on the Agora appears to have remained standing
until the later sixth century, when its parts were re-used nearby in the atrium of the
‘Great Church’.77 The ‘Great Church’ replaced a Roman predecessor that also had an
apse, contained the larger than life-sized hand of what could have been a monumental
bronze statue of an emperor, and flanked a Roman market basilica, all of which makes
it a potential candidate for the sanctuary of the imperial cult that is known to have ex-
isted at Miletus.78 This cult would have ended two centuries before the ‘Great Church’
was built, and it is not clear what happened in the meantime.
The name of the ‘Great Church’ is misleading; it is larger than St Michael, but
small in comparison with most early Byzantine churches elsewhere, and this could not
have been otherwise, as the building site was restricted by pre-existing monuments on
all sides. A larger plot was not available in the centre of Miletus due to the contin-
ued preservation of ancient buildings, streets, and squares, and this may explain the
absence of a large early Byzantine basilica that could have served as cathedral. Such
a church from the fifth/sixth century seems to have occupied at least two blocks and
the intermediate street in the southern part of the city,79 where this did not pose the
same problems as in the centre, because the southern city was already in decline in the
early Byzantine period, leading to abandoned and vacant plots, and any pre-existing
buildings were likely utilitarian and thus of less antiquarian interest than the elaborate
marble architecture in the civic centre.80
Christian antiquarianism?
With no more paganism evidenced in Miletus after the fourth century, the city’s early
Byzantine antiquarianism should be conceptualized otherwise, and some of it was
expressly Christian: some of the ancient sculptures that were re-arranged during the
early Byzantine renovation of the Baths of Faustina were incised with crosses, and all
genitals were carefully erased with a fine chisel, as the sense of modesty had seemingly
changed with Christianisation and the display of sexual organs no longer agreed with

74 Müller-Wiener (1973/1974).

75 Herda (2006), pp. 24-27; Erhardt/Weiß (2011), p. 261.

76 Kaverau/Rehm (1914), pp. 153—155 hg- 42-44pl. 1,4, 6,7; Niewöhner (2009), p. 183.

77 Knackfuß (1924), pp. 211-213 fig. 221; pl. 25 fig. 222.

78 Niewöhner (2016a), p. 8 with discussion of the complex evidence and earlier bibliography.

79 Niewöhner (2016a), pp. 103-105.

80 Niewöhner (2016b), pp. 229-240.