Some of the renovations that were discerned in the city’s buildings can be attributed to the damage caused by the earthquake. The scaena frons of the theater was rebuilt at this time in two stories and the theater was made a third smaller. A new propyleum was constructed on the southwestern side of Palladius Street; it led to the western thermae and utilized architectural elements from the earlier prophyleum that was most likely also destroyed in the quake. A dedicatory inscription, which was not in situ, was found next to the theater; it states that during the tenure of Avlevius, the magnificent metropolitan, the city was renovated, probably in the aftermath of the earthquake.

 

Other building projects were connected with the city’s new status as the provincial capital. For example, the provincial governor, Palavius Prophirius Palladius laid a new mosaic pavement in the stoa of the colonnaded street. The eastern and western thermae were expanded to include large thermae and numerous other elaborately decorated halls, stoae and rooms were added to them and public latrines were built next to them. It seems that the two thermae in the civic center of Scythopolis were now meant to be used both by the citizens of the city as well as by the flow of visitors that came to the provincial capital to arrange administrative, commercial and economic matters. The city’s governors mentioned in many inscriptions that were found in the western thermae therefore thought it best to devote significant resources to developing the bathhouses. Another smaller bathouse was built south of the theater and it reflects a type of local thermae, the likes of which were most likely also in other neighborhoods of the city.Remains of two of these were already found in the past in the southern part of the city that was annexed to the city during the Byzantine period.

 

A significant change to the city’s appearance is connected with the rise of Christianity and the change in its religious image. This is manifested by the dismantling and often even covering over of its temples that may possibly have been partially destroyed as a result of the earthquake and caused no great sorrow to the ecclesiastical establishment. Thus the temple of Zeus Akraios was dismantled that stood at the top of the tell and served the city as an acropolis was dismantled. Subsequently a church was built on top of its foundations. The temples of the agora were dismantled and covered; the level of the agora was raised and redesigned. The temple in the center of the forum/basilica was also dismantled and its parts were now put to use in secondary construction. The stoa compound was abandoned and by the end of the Byzantine period was even partially covered over with construction debris.