The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (52 page)

Rome began this period as a city that controlled conquests through military occupation, colonization, and treaty. Its Empire was a quilt of languages, peoples, and cultures ranging from wild tribes to already ancient civilizations. The Roman military held it together under the strain of exploitation and taxation. Over time, however, Roman law, citizenship and military service, Greco-Roman education, travel, trade, and the development of a uniform urban culture combined to give the whole a sense of unity that went beyond conquered and conqueror.

By the end of the third century, provincials came to feel that an attack upon the province was also an attack upon Rome, not just upon their own particular locality. The barbarian invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries tore apart the social, cultural, and economic fabric of the Empire in the west, but the fabric of religious belief and church structure, and the idea of a united Empire, remained.

It's convenient to divide the Roman Empire into the east and west, and to a degree, this broad division holds. In the east, Rome conquered great cities and civilizations in Greece, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Seleucid Empire; these already had highly sophisticated cultures, histories, and systems of governance. Rome may have brought order, but none of these conquered territories would have recognized Rome as a “higher” civilization. They each had their own underlying culture and were bound together by a broad overlay of
Hellenistic
culture that everyone there recognized. Few in the east, for example, aspired to learning Latin except to use for conducting imperial business, but both east and west recognized the cultural and practical value of Greek.

 
When in Rome
Remember,
Hellenistic
refers to the Greek kingdoms and culture that continued to control the eastern Mediterranean basin after the death of Alexander the Great until their conquest by Rome.

The Romans of the Imperial Period administrated and taxed, but left areas largely to govern themselves, as long as the locals did not get out of hand and the taxes got paid. Some areas in the east such as Philippi and New Corinth were highly Roman in population (veterans and freedmen), but elsewhere, older cultures largely retained
their pre-Roman ways and identity even as they came to view themselves as “Roman” in the sense of an imperial system. Constantine's establishment of a new capital in Constantinople gave the eastern provinces a cultural, not just imperial, center on which they could continue to identify themselves.

The west was much different. Here Rome not only provided the urban centers that brought
romanitas
to the western provinces, but the infrastructure, civic structure, and high culture adopted by the Celtic and Germanic peoples. Latin language and Roman culture
was
high culture, and the western provincials added new strength and vitality to it as they came to identify themselves as Romans of the Empire with the city of Rome. The western provinces came to supply Rome with more than raw materials and manpower. They supplied it with poets, generals, and emperors.

The primary engines of Roman mass culture during the Imperial Period were the cities in which imperial bureaucracy, military headquarters, and major religious and economic centers were located. Here, Roman urbanism encouraged cultural, civic, and economic relationships that had parallels throughout the Empire. The same laws, currency, civic institutions, range of religious practices, and imperial language(s) bound these centers together and extended from there into the smaller cities and the hinterland.

Migrations between urban centers, especially from the provinces to Rome, were frequent and fervent. Juvenal the satirist would have us believe that second century Rome was awash in foreigners—and from grave inscriptions it appears that he may have been right! Notwithstanding Juvenal, however, the multicultural mix in the cities also encouraged a level of common culture throughout the Empire.

 
Veto!
When reading Juvenal, you have to keep in mind that you're reading satire. Remember that satire comes from real conditions and experiences (so what you read is, in some ways, true), but is exaggerated so that the problems or vices the satirist is attacking take on the proportions of caricature (so, in other ways, it isn't).

Cities began to decline with the economic and provincial troubles of the third century (see Chapter 18, “Barbarians at the Gates: The Fall of the Western Empire”). Nevertheless, the Augusti and their Caesars built their regional capitals (Rome, Constantinople, Trier [
Augusta Treverorum
], Milan [
Mediolanum
], and Antioch) into imperial “Roman” cities. Rome, which essentially remained a parasitic resource drain on the rest of the Empire (it got huge subsidies and produced primarily lawyers and administrators), survived better than most.

 
Lend Me Your Ears
“Romans, I can't stand a Greek Rome, although what percentage of our city scum really comes from Greece? The Syrian river Orontes has long since tainted the Tibur with its weird language, weird customs, weird music and the weirdoes who prostitute themselves at the Circus. Come on down, all you who have a thing for foreign chicks in tie-dyed hats! That good country boy of yours, citizen, now wears
Berkinstocks
to dinner and triathlon ribbons around a neck smeared with sunscreen. Foreigners come from all over Hell-(and gone)-ism and make a beeline for Rome's bowels to become our future masters.”

—Juvenal
Satire
3.60-72

The imperial capitals and Alexandria remained centers of imperial culture until the massive invasions of barbarians and Persian Wars in the fourth and fifth centuries. Rome survived Alaric and the Vandals (see Chapter 18) primarily because the barbarians had little interest in adopting urban culture. They left after they got what they wanted. Elsewhere in the west, however, where the barbarians settled, cities never really regained their central role.

In the east, only Alexandria and Constantinople remained vital after the wars with Persia had destroyed Antioch. It took a Roman, however, to complete the destruction of the two great classical cities: Rome and Athens. Justinian's reconquest of the west wiped out Rome in the sixth century, and he pulled the plug on Athens in an effort to stamp out the last vestiges of pagan legitimacy.

A Roman citizen was, at the beginning of the Empire, either a Roman or an individual of a community with a special relationship to the city of Rome. In the Republic, this relationship was exclusive—that is, the citizens of different communities didn't necessarily have the same relationship with each other that they had with Rome. After the Social War (see Chapter 6, “On Golden Pond: Rome Conquers Italy and the Mediterranean”), however, all Italians had similar rights, and Italy began to develop a
sense of “Roman” cultural identity. Emperors in the early Empire broadened this trend by granting the status of
colonae
to more and more provincial cities and municipalities.

As Roman culture broadened and deepened in Italy and the provinces, the meaning of Roman citizenship did as well. By the end of the second century
C
.
E
., the Roman citizen was subject to an emperor who rarely was in Rome and to legislation that extended from border to imperial border. Citizens and delegations traveled to provinces, rather than to Rome, to meet with the emperor or awaited his arrival in their capitals. The emperor had become the emperor of a world state, and his subject citizens came to see themselves as members of that larger order as well. They may have belonged to very different social classes, had different rights and privileges, and spoken different languages, but as the
Constitutio Antoniniana
in
C
.
E
. 212 had affirmed (see Chapter 16, “The [Mostly] Not-So-Good Emperors: Commodus to Aurelian”), there was a basic “Joe Roman” with whom all had something in common.

The Romans were a very class-conscious culture, and during the period of the Empire social classes became both marks of prestige and important demarcations of civic protection. This became clear when Septimius Severus (see Chapter 16) divided Roman citizens into ranks:
honestiores
and
humiliors. Honestiores
were senators, equites, the municipal magistrates, and all military personnel.
Humiliores
were all the “lower” people.
Honestiores
retained the right of appeal to the Emperor and the right to a swift and clean execution or exile as punishments;
Humiliores
did not have the right of appeal and could be thrown to the beasts or shipped off to the mines.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
Not only did the two-tiered punishment system begun by Severus survive into the Middle Ages, but some of the Roman nobility titles such as “duke” (
dux
) and “count” (
comes
) did as well.

As imperial structure became more regal and formalized, titles and class hierarchies were created to distinguish among the rich and powerful. The highest noble ranks were the
clarissimi
(most glorious) and the highest equestrian the
ementissimi
(most eminent).
Duces
(dukes), vicars, and governors were
perfectissimi
(most accomplished). Individuals who met with the Emperor's favor from any of these orders might be given the title of
comes
(count), which meant “companion.” There were first, second, and third class (
ordo primus, secundus, tertius
) companions to distinguish these special people.

The economic good times of the first two centuries of the Empire brought a degree of prosperity to all levels of Roman society. Wealth and urbanization created Italian and provincial upper classes who had more in common with each other than they did with their own, less wealthy, people. Although they came from different ethnic backgrounds, they had similar education, similar means of access to imperial power, and similar benefits.

As the emperors brought upper-class Italians and then provincials into imperial service and into the senate, new kinds of Roman aristocracies arose based throughout the Empire and not just in Rome. As provincials themselves became emperors, this homogenization increased even as the split between the wealthy and everyone else continued to widen. As the fortunes of the Empire waned and urbanism declined, the aristocracy were able to retreat to their fortified country villas and continue their lives more in the manner of feudal lords than civic leaders. The wealth of the upper echelons of imperial and provincial classes continued to increase, a kind of “suck up” as opposed to a “trickle down” economic syndrome that continued to concentrate wealth and power into the hands of a few even as the general civilization and culture disintegrated beneath them.

In parts of the west, the settlement of barbarian peoples and tribal warlords only quickened that cultural shift. Romans in Gaul and Italy were required to give at least one third of all possessions (including land and slaves) to the newcomers. Romans retained some separate legal rights and provisions. The Vandals in north Africa simply confiscated everything and sent the Roman nobility packing or reduced them to
coloni
(tenement farmers). Over time, the upper classes of the western Empire either made the shift to the new world order or joined the church hierarchy where they could retain power. This led to further conflicts between old and new Romans as the old converted to orthodoxy while the barbarians remained Arian (see Chapter 17, “Divide and [Re]Conquer: Diocletian to Constantine,” for a discussion of Arianism).

In the first two centuries, sufficient public income allowed cities and municipalities to provide subsidized or free food and education services for the poor, and games and festivals kept the city masses entertained, if not satisfied. As inflation soared, however, and imperial revenues had to be diverted to defense, funds for these services disappeared until the poor in Rome and Constantinople only could hope for some kind of relief. Even with imports of subsidized food, the capitals had deplorable urban conditions in the later Empire.

Urban flight from cities and from wretched rural conditions brought imperial edicts against translocation. These edicts primarily succeeded in creating a class of workers and serfs for the remaining aristocracy.

The middle class grew and did well for the first two centuries. The stability of the
pax Romana
, the influx of wealth, the development of the provinces, and the ability to travel made for entrepreneurial times. A blossoming system of imperial roads within and between the provinces made business and pleasure travel possible as never before. Mid-sized landholders and producers and businessmen, especially in the provinces, exploited local markets for local and export trade. Traders, especially those who dealt in luxury imports, could do very well. These middle-class people came to make up the
curiales,
the people who made up the town councils (
curiae
) of their towns and cities, who funded civic improvements and functions, and who collected taxes for the Empire.

 
When in Rome
Pax Romana
means “the Roman Peace” and is the term that refers to the peace and stability that Rome maintained (within its borders) during the early Empire.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
For travelers, the homogenization of urban culture in the high Empire allowed one to enter a city nearly anywhere in the Empire, get a bath, find a place to stay, take in a gladiator fight, get some dinner, wake up, and think, “Geez, now
where
am I again?” Plus, more vacation spots and amenities became available to the middle-class traveler. A tourist of the Empire could, for example, visit ancient Greek antiquities and take a guided climb of the Mt. Etna volcano. At the top, he could camp with his guide overnight on the mountain to watch the sunrise and then soak away sore muscles in one of the many hotel/hot springs that dotted the mountain the next day.

But as inflation and civil disruption hit in the third and fourth centuries, the middle class suffered and declined. Caracalla's
Constitutio Antoniniana
in
C
.
E
. 212 had broadened the tax base by making all freedmen tax-paying citizens, but then as now, who was
eligible
to pay taxes was much different than who actually
paid
taxes. The increasing burden of taxation and the enforcement of tax revenues fell hard on the middle
class and
curiales.
Many were driven into ruin when they couldn't enforce taxation upon the wealthy and couldn't squeeze it out of the poor. Urban flight ensued, which Constantine put a stop to by legally tying the middle-class citizens to their professions and locations. Those that did escape became
coloni
and hired workers for the wealthy or joined the military.

 
When in Rome
Coloni
were tenant farmers who lived on the lands of the rich and worked them for a share of their crops.

Augustus's laws on morality attempted to roll back and restrict the gains that women, at least upper-class women, had begun to enjoy in the late Republic. These laws were unsuccessful in putting the genie back in the bottle. In fact, the law making women who bore three children (or produced a document so stating) free from their guardians actually did the opposite! After Augustus's death, women continued to make slow gains, and the role of a woman's “guardian” became more like a lawyer: Wealthy women could hire and fire their guardians based on petitions to the court.

It's important to realize that legislation, especially Roman legislation, is a very conservative thing, and it often reflects realities and attitudes that have already been present for some time. Women of the politically powerful class were assertive and active; besides the biographies of the women of the imperial household, inscriptions and dedications from around the Empire make it clear that women were civic patrons and an established presence in civic and imperial circles.