Late Imperial Statutes Maintain Urban Infrastructure

Empires age into paperwork. In the late 4th century, as the political map shifted toward Constantinople and Ravenna, the state wrote maintenance into law. The Theodosian Code’s Book 15 preserves titles that read like a steward’s checklist: De aquaeductu (on aqueducts), De operibus publicis (on public works), De itinere muniendo (on road repair) [9].

The impulse follows a tradition. Frontinus, three centuries earlier, had defined the cura aquarum as guarding the city’s “convenience, health, and safety” and built inspection into his office [5]. Now, statute fixed responsibilities across the empire’s surviving centers. In Rome, the arches at Porta Maggiore still strode; in Constantinople, new works demanded similar care; in Ravenna, roads through marsh needed special attention.

Three places illustrate the need. In Rome, aqueducts feeding the Aventine and Caelian required constant descaling and policing of illegal taps to keep baths and fountains flowing. In Constantinople, cisterns and aqueducts like the Valens line anchored provisioning for a capital on the Bosporus, a city Strabo could not have imagined. In Antioch, colonnaded streets and baths relied on statutes to mandate repairs after earthquakes.

The legal language addressed practicalities: who funds repairs, which officials supervise, what penalties apply for damage or negligence. The color of late empire may be darker—bronze inscriptions dulled, stones weathered—but the sound of governance persists: scribes copying rescripts, messengers riding along the Via Flaminia, inspectors knocking at a conduit hatch near the Quirinal.

Law anchored habit against decline. Even as tax bases shifted and garrisons moved, the code tried to guarantee that water would still arrive at fountains, that roads would still carry carts, and that public buildings would not collapse from neglect. It is the administrative afterlife of earlier confidence.