We may sum up the impact of the social sciences and critical theory as two-fold. On the one hand, scholars in recent decades have been much more willing to investigate a whole range of topics beyond the narrow field of political and military developments and have demonstrated that these topics are equally important for understanding the society and culture of the empire. On the other hand, in order to investigate these areas, they have deployed a wide range of analytical tools and methodologies that were originally developed in other disciplines. As I noted above, this two-fold impact is one of the reasons that documentary and archaeological evidence is playing an increasingly important role in the study of the Roman Empire. Both these developments are in turn important for the third and last of my categories of ‘‘interdisciplinary approaches,’’ those that focus on the interactions between different cultural and linguistic traditions. I have already mentioned the key role played by archaeological and documentary evidence in the study of the Roman provinces. In addition, the social sciences and critical theory have provided crucial analytical tools for examining the relationship between Roman and/or Greek culture and the other traditions with which it interacted, both within and across the imperial borders. I will limit myself here to just a few observations.
As one example of interest in the interactions between the Roman Empire and areas beyond its borders, we may consider recent work on connections between Rome and northern Europe. As Barry Cunliffe has noted, ‘‘for far too long the study of the classical world of the Mediterranean and of the barbarian communities of temperate and northern Europe have remained very separate disciplines.’’ But since the 1960s, he argues, two developments have led to increasing interactions between the two: firstly, ‘‘archaeologists have become more and more interested by the systems at work in society’’; secondly, ancient historians have begun to study the ancient economy ‘‘in terms of model building, using a wide range of analogies and supporting their arguments with quantified data susceptible to statistical testing’’ (Cunliffe 1988: 1-2). In short, a convergence of interests and methodologies has created a common meeting ground for Roman historians and prehistoric archaeologists and so allowed for the interdisciplinary study of the economic and cultural interactions between the Roman Empire and northern Europe. Cunliffe himself, for example, has proposed a comprehensive interpretation of these interactions that treats the Mediterranean and Europe together as a complex but unified core-periphery economic system. Although other scholars have questioned the specific model proposed by Cunliffe, few would now take issue with his general conclusion that ‘‘barbarian Europe and the Mediterranean world must be studied together, since for much of the time their development was interdependent’’ (Cunliffe 1988: 201).
Roman interaction with other cultural and linguistic traditions was of course not restricted to the periphery of the empire: centuries of imperial expansion meant that a great many cultures had been absorbed into the Roman world. It is fair to say that in the last two decades there has been an explosion of interest in the interaction between Roman and local cultures within the empire. As I noted above, interest in this topic goes back at least to Mommsen in the nineteenth century; much early work, however, tended to be rather mechanistic in tracing the spread of Roman civilization and rather uncritical in evaluating its effects. More recent approaches, influenced especially by postcolonial theory, have tended to focus on the complexity of these interactions and particularly on the active role played in them by native peoples (for general discussion, see, e. g., D. J. Mattingly 1997 and Woolf 1998: 1-76). So, for example, the editor of a recent collection of papers argues that ‘‘we need to rethink our understanding of indigenous societies in contact with Rome. They were neither passive victims, nor enthusiastic participants, nor entirely free agents in those relations.... The first priority must be to locate indigenous people in the power networks and colonial discourse that bound them to Rome, and to seek to understand the prelude, processes and results of their complex negotiations (societal and personal) with the imperial power’’ (D. J. Mattingly 1997: 10). Similarly, Susan Alcock, in the conclusion to her study of Greece in the imperial period, says that its ‘‘primary advantage... lies in its attempt to recover some measure of response to imperial incorporation on the part of the population at large, to make them active participants in their own history’’ (Alcock 1993: 229).
Much recent work on this topic has been interdisciplinary in virtually all the ways that I have discussed so far: it employs social scientific methodologies and draws on critical theory, it is sensitive to environmental issues, and it is based largely on documentary and especially archaeological evidence. For example, Alcock uses the results of archaeological survey projects in order to compare the record of early imperial Greece with that of preceding and succeeding periods. Her organizing theme is that of landscape ‘‘as a social product, the consequence of a collective human transformation of the physical environment’’; changes in settlement patterns or territorial boundaries, for example, provide evidence for ‘‘the restructuring of political authority or the redistribution of economic resources’’ (Alcock 1993: 6-7). To take another example, Greg Woolf (1998) employs a variety of indices to analyze some of the processes of change triggered by the incorporation of Gaul into the Roman Empire: the changing distribution of inscriptions, the creation and organization of cities, the transformation of the countryside through the spread of villas, shifting patterns ofconsumption as revealed in the distribution ofceramics, and changes in religious ideas and organization. By employing these sorts of interdisciplinary approaches, recent scholars have encouraged us to think more carefully about the complex social transformations and cultural interactions that result from the expansion of Roman power.
Although much research on these topics has been inspired by work on modern imperialism and colonialism, it often differs from it in relying more heavily on archaeological evidence. The reason for this is simple: unlike colonial populations in the modern period, very few local traditions and indigenous cultures within the Roman Empire have left any written sources that reflect their point of view. There are only three significant exceptions: the Greek tradition, whose relationship with Rome is extraordinarily complex, and the Egyptian and Jewish traditions. Although interesting work has been done in the last 20 years or so on all these traditions (see, e. g., Swain 1996 on Greek culture, Frankfurter 1998a on Egyptian), it is to the Jewish tradition that I wish to call attention here. Texts originating in the Israelite-Jewish tradition survive from almost all periods of antiquity, although admittedly in problematic forms: biblical texts, the ‘‘Old Testament pseudepigrapha,’’ the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the rabbinic Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash. Given the possibilities that this literature presents for investigating the intellectual and cultural traditions of one particular ethnic/religious group that was absorbed into the Roman Empire, it is surprising how underutilized it is by Roman historians. Although this is no doubt partly because many of these texts are in languages and formats unfamiliar to most Roman specialists, the chief reason, as I noted earlier, is that Roman history and Jewish studies have long constituted separate disciplines: Jewish studies generally falls under the rubric of religious studies, which has an entirely different genealogy from that of Roman history. The same is true of early Christian studies. The extensive literary remains of early Christianity again constitute an invaluable source of evidence for the Roman historian, since many of these texts emanated from social strata outside the imperial elite. In this case there is not even a language barrier, since with very few exceptions Christian texts of the first three centuries are written in Greek or Latin.
The chief reason that they do not play a larger part in the study of the empire is again the disciplinary division between Roman history and religious studies.
It would be highly misleading to imply that there have been no attempts to bridge these gaps; on the contrary, there has over the years been a considerable amount of stimulating work done by important scholars on both sides of the divide. Nevertheless, the disciplinary boundary persists, noticeable particularly on the Roman side of things: Jewish and Christian sources remain more marginal to the study of the Roman Empire than they ought. To what extent this will change remains to be seen; I will here merely note one positive sign. It seems increasingly the norm for standard reference works in Classics and Graeco-Roman history to include coverage of Jewish and Christian topics. For example, the third edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996), has more extensive treatment of Christian material than the two earlier editions, with a lengthy entry on ‘‘Christianity’’ as well as entries on important Christian writers including St. Paul, Justin Martyr, Clement ofAlexandria, Tertullian, and Origen. More strikingly, for the first time it includes Judaism, with entries not only on ‘‘Jews’’ and ‘‘religion, Jewish,’’ but also, among others, ‘‘rabbis,’’ ‘‘Dead Sea Scrolls,’’ and ‘‘Mishnah.’’ Another example is the massive, multi-volume and rather sprawling survey of the Roman Empire in the second part of Aufstieg und Niedergang der rOmischen Welt. Under the rubric ‘‘Religion,’’ this collection contains extensive coverage of Judaism, both in Palestine and the Diaspora (volumes 19-21), and even more extensive coverage of Christianity (volumes 23-7). Whether or not students of the Roman Empire will consult this material is of course another question, but its availability in standard reference works will perhaps have the gradual effect of making it seem less alien.
World History
