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There was no “following municipality” for about 1000 years. Not one rich enough to fund that size of show.

jcranmer 6y ago
Practically speaking, after the deposition of the last Western Emperor, Italy was still nominally part of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire did actually reconquer most of Italy from the Ostrogoths, but they didn't hold onto it for long, and much was reconquered by the Lombards, except for the Exarchate of Ravenna. The collapse of Byzantine rule in Italy led the pope to ask the Carolingians for protection from the Lombards, and the pope got control of (most of) the ex-Exarchate of Ravenna in return, renamed the Papal States. The Republic of Venice gained independence from the Byzantine Empire at roughly the same time, and grew into one of the most dominant powers of the Middle Ages, eventually managing to conquer the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade. Other parts of Northern Italy also developed large, powerful merchant republic city-states throughout the Middle Ages: Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, Ancona, Gaeta, Ragusa (although that was actually on what is now Croatian coastline). I will point out that, throughout the Middle Ages, the largest, richest, and most powerful cities in Western Europe would have been these Italian city-states. They absolutely would have been able to fund that size of show--after all, these are the cities that patronized the arts and eventually the Italian Renaissance.
- usrusr 6y ago
  And Rome itself remained unable to rebuild itself into a strong city because it's bishops somehow managed to reestablish something like the imperial Roman bureaucratic control on the religious side, establishing Catholicism as a centralistic "church empire" reaching farther out than the secular empire ever did (well, secular except for the occasional deification..). This influence of the city's bishop (aka pope, still elected in an utterly informal process by the citizenry for much of the middle ages) reliably prevented the development of stable power structures in the city, because papal succession was so important outside that whenever an imbalance between roman "families of power" was developing the weaker sides were immediately supported by outsiders (the stronger side would not be open to outside influence). Outsiders like the seemingly endless succession of German kings that went to Rome with an army hoping to get emperor status in exchange for helping the next pope into his job, but also by many others (e.g. Normans in what is now southern Italy). Imagine what the District of Columbia would be like if elections routinely involved violence, war between US states wasn't unheard of and (kind of like the inverse of the US Senate) nobody outside of DC had a vote for the presidency.
- mncharity 6y ago
  > They absolutely would have been able to fund that size of show Perhaps collectively? The Colosseum killed what, order 1k ppl/yr? Peak slave trade through Genoa and Venice each seems to be mid-to-low order 1k ppl/yr?[1] And that's with women and children being common. Even Venice had a population an order of magnitude down from peak Rome - they'd all fit in the Circus Maximus. And its total slave population was two orders down, at a few thousand, majority women. So I don't quite see those cities individually being able to even afford the dead, let alone the rest of it. There looks a gap of maybe one or two orders of magnitude? [1] https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8610XH4 https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8610XH4 /The Black Sea Slave Population/
coldtea 6y ago
Well, the Eastern empire (where the capital was moved to) did well for those other 1000 years.

Practically speaking, after the deposition of the last Western Emperor, Italy was still nominally part of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire did actually reconquer most of Italy from the Ostrogoths, but they didn't hold onto it for long, and much was reconquered by the Lombards, except for the Exarchate of Ravenna. The collapse of Byzantine rule in Italy led the pope to ask the Carolingians for protection from the Lombards, and the pope got control of (most of) the ex-Exarchate of Ravenna in return, renamed the Papal States. The Republic of Venice gained independence from the Byzantine Empire at roughly the same time, and grew into one of the most dominant powers of the Middle Ages, eventually managing to conquer the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade. Other parts of Northern Italy also developed large, powerful merchant republic city-states throughout the Middle Ages: Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, Ancona, Gaeta, Ragusa (although that was actually on what is now Croatian coastline). I will point out that, throughout the Middle Ages, the largest, richest, and most powerful cities in Western Europe would have been these Italian city-states. They absolutely would have been able to fund that size of show--after all, these are the cities that patronized the arts and eventually the Italian Renaissance.

usrusr 6y ago
And Rome itself remained unable to rebuild itself into a strong city because it's bishops somehow managed to reestablish something like the imperial Roman bureaucratic control on the religious side, establishing Catholicism as a centralistic "church empire" reaching farther out than the secular empire ever did (well, secular except for the occasional deification..). This influence of the city's bishop (aka pope, still elected in an utterly informal process by the citizenry for much of the middle ages) reliably prevented the development of stable power structures in the city, because papal succession was so important outside that whenever an imbalance between roman "families of power" was developing the weaker sides were immediately supported by outsiders (the stronger side would not be open to outside influence). Outsiders like the seemingly endless succession of German kings that went to Rome with an army hoping to get emperor status in exchange for helping the next pope into his job, but also by many others (e.g. Normans in what is now southern Italy). Imagine what the District of Columbia would be like if elections routinely involved violence, war between US states wasn't unheard of and (kind of like the inverse of the US Senate) nobody outside of DC had a vote for the presidency.
mncharity 6y ago
> They absolutely would have been able to fund that size of show Perhaps collectively? The Colosseum killed what, order 1k ppl/yr? Peak slave trade through Genoa and Venice each seems to be mid-to-low order 1k ppl/yr?[1] And that's with women and children being common. Even Venice had a population an order of magnitude down from peak Rome - they'd all fit in the Circus Maximus. And its total slave population was two orders down, at a few thousand, majority women. So I don't quite see those cities individually being able to even afford the dead, let alone the rest of it. There looks a gap of maybe one or two orders of magnitude? [1] https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8610XH4 https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8610XH4 /The Black Sea Slave Population/

coldtea 6y ago

Well, the Eastern empire (where the capital was moved to) did well for those other 1000 years.