ABSTRACT

Late Antiquity has traditionally been associated with a major change that is now described as a transition. The physical remains of that transition can be found throughout not only Central Italy, but also the rest of the Roman Empire as well. A classic example comes from the Via Flaminia, just north of Carsulae in Umbria. Here, the Romanesque church of San Giovanni de' Butris has been built over the top of a Roman bridge that had originally taken the Via Flaminia across the river.! This example of discontinuity between the classical and medieval periods is not unusual, but it remains poorly dated. We do not know: when the bridge collapsed, how an alternative route was facilitated, or what effect did the destruction of the infrastructure of this long distance route have on the social and economic history of the region. However, elsewhere we find continuous use of the road, with Romanesque churches sited by the side, pointing to a continuity of settlement and transportation. A useful example of this phenomenon is the location of the church of San Damiano at Carsulae (Figure 4.2). Literary sources point to a similar contradiction. Procopius observed the survival of the paving of the Via Appia from the turn of the second century AD (he attributes this to the original builderAppius Claudius):

After much laborious smoothing. the slabs were cut into polygonal shapes and he then laid them together in such a way without using lime or anything else. And they were fitted together with such care and gaps filled so well that, to the onlooker, they appear not to be the work of man but of nature?