[Claudius] made up his mind, you know, to see the whole world in the toga, Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, Britons, and all.
Seneca, Apocolocyntosis (c. ad 54)
The Romans were highly successful at assimilating conquered peoples and turning them into loyal provincials and, eventually, Roman citizens, whose manpower contributed to yet further conquests. Thus the descendants of conquered Cisalpine Gauls helped Rome conquer Gaul, while Gauls later took part in the Roman conquest of Britain. Assimilation was not pursued by deliberately attacking local cultures, languages and identities: the Roman Empire was actually one of the most successful multi-cultural societies ever created. This success was based on religious tolerance, which removed the most serious potential obstacles to assimilation. True, all citizens were expected at times to make token sacrifices to the official state gods, but this was a political act, a declaration of loyalty to the empire. The Romans did not care at all if those making the sacrifices actually believed in the existence of Jupiter, Mars and the rest. The Romans tried to stop human sacrifice, and they had difficulty taking some of the Egyptians’ animal gods seriously, but the only religions that ever faced persecution were monotheistic Judaism and Christianity. The insistence of Christians and Jews that they alone had a monopoly of religious truth, and their refusal to sacrifice to the state gods, fully justified their persecution as this intolerance threatened the cohesion of the empire. Not surprisingly, the empire became a much more totalitarian state after the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century. Religion, perhaps even more than language, played such an important part in cultural identity in the ancient world that the empire’s tolerance allowed the local identities of its subjects to continue to flourish, be they Gauls, Britons, Greeks, Egyptians and so on. This continued to be the case even after the emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire in 212.
For the bulk of the empire’s subjects, the peasants, Roman rule changed little: they continued to speak their native languages and worship their traditional gods; they continued to till the land in the same way that they always had, live in the same kind of houses they always lived in, and were exploited by the rich in the same old way too. Where the empire did begin to undermine local identities was at the top. For all their tolerance, the Romans had unshakable confidence that their way of life was the best and they encouraged their subjects to emulate it, but with mixed success. In the Hellenised east, the Romans had conquered a civilisation that was older and more sophisticated than theirs. The Romans could teach the Greeks little and were open-minded enough to realise they had much to learn from them. Rome was not a model of sophistication for the Greeks, and attempts to popularise entertainments such as gladiatorial combats were not very successful. It was very different in the Celtic west, where the social elite had, to varying degrees, already adopted elements of a Romanised lifestyle before they were actually conquered. Converted into a provincial aristocracy, the old Celtic ruling class gradually adopted a Romanised material culture, while their role in local government encouraged them to learn Latin and worship the state gods. This last was made easier by the Roman custom of twinning their gods with local gods, for example, in the Celtic world, the thunder god Taranis with Jupiter and the warlike god Teutates with Mars. This process of conflation was what Tacitus called the interpre-tatio Romana. Another Romanising influence was the army. Service in the legions was open only to Roman citizens but provincials could join the auxiliaries. Though the pay was inferior and the period of service longer, the award on discharge of Roman citizenship made service attractive. This was especially so in the Celtic west where military service was an honourable substitute for the old warrior tradition. The military life was thoroughly Roman. The language of the army was Latin. Every fort had its bathhouse and shrine to the state cults. After 25 years’ service recruits were very Romanised, but the flow was not entirely one way as the cult of the Celtic goddess Epona was spread widely through the empire by cavalrymen attracted by her role as protectress of horses.
That it was the Celts themselves who largely controlled the pace of their Romanisation is confirmed by burial practices. Four burials at Goeblingen-Nospelt in Luxembourg, dating from 50 to 15 bc, show both continuity with La Tene traditions and gradual change. The earliest two graves (50-30 Bc) were typical La Tene elite cremation burials with horse gear and weapons and only one Roman object between them, an amphora. A third, slightly later grave (30-20 bc) contained similar war and horse gear but also imported Italian pottery and a wine-serving set, together with locally made pottery incorporating native and Roman decorative motifs. The most recent grave (25-15 bc) contained a long Celtic slashing sword and horse gear, showing that the deceased had still identified with native aristocratic warrior tradition, but in all other respects the material culture represented by the grave goods was almost completely Romanised. A Roman wine-serving
Plate 15 Relief of Epona, Gaulish goddess, protector of horses, riders and travellers, from Gannat, Allier, c. 50 bc-400 ad (clay); Gallo-Roman
Source: Musee des Antiquites Nationales, St-Germain-en-Laye, France/Lauros/Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library, Www. bridgeman. co. uk
Set and dinner service show that more than Roman material culture had been adopted - Roman table manners had too. The graves of three aristocratic Celtic women from Heimstetten, near Munich, dated to ad 30-60, show a similar picture of acceptance of the new and retention of traditional cultural identities. In some areas of eastern Gaul it remained common to place weapons in male graves until the third century; in other areas almost completely Romanised burial practices, in which there are few distinctions between male and female burials, had been adopted well before the end of the first century ad. Clearly different communities took Romanisation at their own pace.
World History
