How Roman was the Roman empire?

Pliny on Rome’s mission

• “To bring civilisation to man”
  - Natural History 3.39

• Describes Italy as the centre of the world
  - Roman POV of Italy’s centrality

Importance of roads

• key for military use and the movement of troops

• Also used for trade and by other non-military persons (actors and doctors)
  - also non-voluntary movement

Funeral inscription of Julius Mydonius

• Celebration of complex identity
  - Partian origin
  - Manumission
  - Roman citizenship → achievement

Strabo and Cassius Dio on Germans

• “Barbarians”

• transformed into Romans
  - adopting Roman customs

Inhabitans of empire before 212

• Most were NOT Roman citizens

Juvenal on migration to Rome

• Late c1 CE

• Complains that “foreigners” have “taken over” Rome
  - “Full of Greeks”

Romanisation of Britain

• spread of Roman culture
  - gradual and “consensual” - Tacitus, Agricola

• Inscriptions in public spaces
  - new buildings and monuments
  - Togidubnus as an example of British chiefs buying into Romanness
  - inscriptions was not a celtic habit

key points

• empire was culturally and linguistically diverse

• no deliberate policy of cultural assimilation
  - but there were some homogenising tendencies