Greg Woolf

Beyond Romans and natives

Revisionist studies of Roman imperialism and Romanization continue to show the traces of modern debates on imperialism and colonialism, in particular a tendency to analyse cultural change in terms of the interaction of two ethnic cultures. An analysis of the changing unities and diversities of cultures in Gaul (modern France), and of the transformation of Roman culture during and as a result of imperial expansion, suggests a new view of the nature and genesis of Roman imperial culture.

Becoming Roman, staying Greek: Culture, identity and the civilizing process in the Roman East *

The nature, and indeed the reality, of Romanization in the east is controversial. One of the most influential accounts of Romanization in the western provinces notes that ‘by contrast, where Greek was already the language of culture, of government and of inter-regional trade, the Romans carried further the process of Hellenization … in general what was specifically Latin in the common civilization of the empire made little impact in the east’, the exceptions being the influence of Roman law and the popularity of gladiatorial games. That verdict endorsed the view that ‘the emperors made no attempt to romanise the Greek speaking provinces’, which saw the foundation of cities as a continuance of Hellenistic royal practice, and which regarded the establishment of the rare eastern colonies as motivated by practical considerations rather than any attempt at encouraging cultural assimilation. More recently, a fuller survey of exceptions to this general rule nevertheless concluded that ‘On the one hand, the culture and identity of the Greek east remained fundamentally rooted in the Classical past. On the other hand, the visible presence of Rome, outside those zones where the legions were stationed, was extremely slight.’

Monumental Writing and the Expansion of Roman Society in the Early Empire

The vast majority of surviving Roman inscriptions originated in a cultural phenomenon that is characteristic of, and in some senses defines, the early Roman Empire. At the end of the last century B.C. — roughly co-incident, then, with the transition to autocracy, the Roman cultural revolution, and the formative period of provincial cultures throughout the Empire — an epigraphic boom occurred, in Italy and in every province of the Empire. That explosion of new inscriptions, and the subsequent rise and fall of an epigraphic culture, was experienced by eastern and western provinces alike, in Greek as well as in Latin epigraphy. Many regional epigraphies remain to be characterized in terms of their chronology, but such local studies as have been done strongly suggest that, although there was certainly some inter-regional variation in the scale, rate, and timing of this phenomenon, in its broad outlines this pattern was very widespread. Across the entire Empire, the number of inscriptions set up each year began to rise from the Augustan period and increased more and more steeply through the second century. In every region that has been examined in detail, the majority of extant inscriptions were produced in the late second and early third centuries. The peak or turning-point seems to have been reached at slightly different times in each area. But everywhere the subsequent decline was much faster than the original rise, reaching a new low between the middle and the end of the third century A.D. Epigraphy does survive into the fourth century — in most areas of the Empire, if not in most cities — but late imperial inscriptions are very much rarer and differ markedly from early imperial examples in genre, form, and style.

Imperialism, empire and the integration of the Roman economy

Abstract While the political economy of the Roman empire is well understood, the nature of the economy as a whole is a matter of fierce debate. A range of competing hypotheses about the nature of the Roman economy are presented, and then distributions of amphorae and certain other artefact categories are used to suggest some broad patterns which successful theories of the Roman economy will have to address. In particular, it is argued that regional distributions of material usually constituted the highest level of integration achieved in the Roman world, and that larger‐scale patterning was only created during the period of imperial expansion during the last two centuries BC.