"Peutingeriana "(a fourth-century map of the imperial road-system radiating from Constantinople), and the" Synecdemos "of Hierocles, a sixth-century account of the sixty-four Byzantine provinces and their more than 900 cities, these episcopal lists enable us to follow the continuity of Christian public life in Asia Minor throughout the troubled cneturies of political and economic decay that finally ended in the blank horror of Islamitic shepherdism."