Globalizing Roman Culture - Richard Hingley

[Ursus]

The last generation has seen some interesting questions posed about the Roman Empire. What were the real reasons (not those posed by Gibbon’s rhetoric) the Western Empire fell? Did the Empire really fall, or did it merely evolve? How worse or better were the lives of citizens after it collapsed? Et cetera. Now, in the age of post-colonial destruction, the ultimate question rears its grim visage: just how “Roman” was the Roman Empire? The answer, whatever it may ultimately be, shall certainly cast its shadow over all future Romanophile studies. Richard Hingley in his Globalizing Roman Culture: Unity, Diversity and Empire seems to gleefully open this Pandora’s Box of difficult questions.

 

One might not expect an Archaeology lecturer at Durham University to instigate a revolution. Nonetheless, the deed is done. To be fair, Hingley, like any good modern scholar, stands on the shoulders of generations of research and theoretical musings crafted meticulously by others. But if others were left to forge the weapons, Hingley is the archer that fires the opening salvo in what most likely will be a very interesting conflict of identity and heritage.

 

Our current intellectual epoch seeks to confront the problems imposed by European civilizations’ previous attempts to impose themselves on other cultures. The whithers and wherefores, the failures and triumphs, are debated ad nauseum. Then, to make the exercise of some relevance to the modern world, the same arguments are applied to perceived American hegemony. All of the aforementioned has amalgamated into a discourse of globalization, the power dynamics between an imperial authority and its subject cultures.

 

But what does this have to do with Rome? Current theory holds we cannot, try as though we might, escape our own biases. We project our parochial agendas and contemporary understandings on the past, whether we wish to or not. Ronald Syme famously did so when his landmark Roman Revolution assessed the rise of the Principate with an eye to the one party dictatorships spreading through Europe in the 1930’s. More recently, Karl Galinsky saw the beneficial side of Augustus’ res publica and compared it to the Pax Americana.

 

Perhaps though the most egregious example is to be found in the bygone glory days of the British Crown. The explosion of classical studies occurred in Britain at roughly the same time British influence penetrated the high seas. Entire generations of well-educated military and civil officials from London were reared on the classics. They saw - could not help but see - a direct parallel between Virgil’s “empire without end” and their own empire on which the sun never set. The latter found a certain justification in the precedent set by the former.

 

We have come then full circle. As British imperialism has receded and American hegemony is openly challenged everywhere, the quintessential imperial state of Western Civilization is now busily poked and prodded. The British tried to make British out of Indians, and Americans seek to Americanize Iraqis. How, then, did Romans try to Romanize their neighbors? What were their means, their ends, and what successes or failures did they have?

 

One first has to define Roman identity. In Hingley’s words, Roman identity could be “inherited, achieved or awarded.” On one front Roman identity was forged by a certain educational process, where Latin language and literature (and the values expressed therein) were grafted to those literate enough to appreciate them. A far more visible component of identities was material in nature: art, architecture, urban planning, dress and cuisine, and “consumer goods.” All these elements conglomerate to give us the picture of men in togas living in a luxurious villa in a well-planned town, surrounded by Hellenistic art and pottery, and quoting Virgil at the drop of a hat.

 

At heart is the concept of humanitas, a process whereby a human becomes fully cultured and rational. The Greeks believed they possessed humanitas while the Barbarians, by definition, did not. The Romans justified their conquests by claiming they were doling out Greek humanitas liberally to the barbarians – in effect, bringing the benefits of civilization to savages. It was under the Augustan regime that Rome’s allegedly divine mission to foment humanitas reached its most articulated version. And it was under Augustus, not coincidentally, that the Imperium expanded at its most rapid pace. “Empire without end” – a world destined to emulate Roman culture.

 

Hingley is an archeologist, and the last generation or two has seen archeological evidence challenging the assumption of a monolithic Greaco-Roman cultural landscape paying homage to classical humanitas. Through material remains it is now suggested the Empire was not a singular civilization, but a patchwork of civilizations: Roman Britain and Roman Gaul, Roman Spain and Roman Africa, Roman Italy and Roman Greece. Cultures were not absorbed wholesale into the Imperium Romanorum. Rather, they negotiated power relations with the central authority. New identities were forged in which local cultures displayed their own versions of Romantis, as evidenced by various literary and material artifacts.

 

Furthermore – and this is where it really becomes interesting – within those patchworks of civilizations, Romanization differed markedly across social classes. Archaeology had in bygone times focused on the material remains of the elite, but new discoveries now focus on the lower classes, and the results are quite intriguing.

 

The local elites, as the junior partners of the central authorities, were the most likely to adopt Roman culture to secure their power bases. The local elites, however, are by definition a distinct minority. The poor, and especially the rural poor, were not especially apt to reflect Romanatis. This is especially true the further one departs from Italy, such as in the northwestern sector of Europe. The poor were most likely illiterate: they could not appreciate Greco-Roman literature and its sensibilities. The works of Plato and Cicero were lost on them. Nor could they afford all the material components that defined Roman culture.

 

Between the elite and the poor stood various middle classes, of which soldiers and skilled laborers are the chief examples. The relations these groups had between their native cultures and Roman culture were complex and multifaceted. Many soldiers most likely became with familiar in Latin in the performance of their duties, but this did not necessarily mean they internalized all the values associated with Latin literature. Skilled laborers could afford many Roman luxury goods, and perhaps chose to acquire them in the tried art of conspicuous consumption. It does not follow though that by consuming Roman goods, one internalized the deeper pathos of Roman values (just as Europeans can consume American products without absorbing American political and religious ideas).

 

Romanization is therefore a slippery concept. Indeed, Hingley eschews the very term. There was an incredibly complex set of negotiations between Rome, and those peoples whose geography and wealth placed them in contact with Roman power. Nonetheless how much Rome imposed itself on others is actually up for debate. How “Roman” was the Roman Empire forged by Augustus? If large stretches of the Imperium were simply not Roman at the core, then the division of the Empire and the sudden collapse of its western part can be seen in a new and powerful light.

 

More to the heart of we moderns, it raises questions of identity and heritage. How much do we owe to Rome? Many Westerners look to Germanic or Celtic cultures (whether real or romanticized) rather than to Rome for inspiration. They now possibly have a much firmer basis to do so.

 

Hingley’s prose is intelligent, but the nature of the work means it is sometimes mired in the technical jargon of post-colonial intellectualism. Nonetheless this was a very quick read. Part of that owes to the work’s brevity: there are 120 pages of text, and the remaining 100 pages or so are extensive notes. The author hopes this will be merely the opening act of a sustained dialogue. The author invites dissenting views if it serves to establish an intelligent discourse. I for one am waiting for the inevitable counter strike of arguments, for while the ideas are intriguing they have to be established as wholly convincing. Clearly we shall be sorting this mess out for some time to come. But Hingley has done a service to us by raising these questions. We owe it to ourselves to rationally analyze the benefits of proposed globalization – whether ancient or modern.

 

(minor editing thanks to the suggestions of docoflove)

[docoflove1974]

I had just a few comments; I took the article and copied/pasted it into a Word document. My changes were more comments; a couple of type-ohs, but not bad overall. But I can't attach it here! I can send it to you via email, though.

[Ursus]

Please do so. I thought I got them all, but apparently not.

[Segestan]

Good Post. One of the best written if read.

 

To me, it should seem obvious Mr. Hingley is correct. If Not then each Romanized province would have collectively kept Rome alive, enforced Romanization back onto any rebel provinces. No Rome was replaced by those who in earlier times were conquered. Roman Provincial Administration was never on the same page. It was only a matter of time before the Augustan System would fail. Internal Power grabbing , old and new enemies of the Empire had dreams of Independence.

Capitalism was the system that organized Romes early success and caused it's fall through slave trading.

I mean what conquering nation throughout history has ever truly converted it's subjected masses? It's the stuff revolution and patriotic idealism originates from.

 

' Like the Celtic War Lord who told the Roman Senate after besieging the city ... " Woe to the vanquised"