The Mediterranean territories, especially the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, remained the center of the empire. But, generally speaking, all coastal areas and Italy were of greater importance than the more peripheral regions. The so-called “decline of Italy” in favor of provinces in the northwest during the 1st and 2nd centuries is debatable. Seen from Rome, these provinces were distant and of minor interest. Paradoxically, it was because of the somewhat marginal character ofregions such as Gaul, Germania, and Britannia that the consequences of being part of the Roman Empire were more strongly felt there than in the Greek East. All in all, the Roman conquest brought many more fundamental changes to the West than to the East. In the East, tax systems, local law, and even old administrative units often remained intact; in the West, the coming of Rome was far more often an occasion for renewal.
The Celtic-Germanic societies of the West were less complex than Mediterranean societies, and were therefore wide open to influences from the—in many respects—more developed outside world. Urbanization was an essential part of this process: the Mediterranean world was, after all, characterized by city culture. Existing settlements were upgraded, and new cities were founded. In the West, this took place on a large scale, and all these cities were Latin cities. The army, too, proved an important instrument in turning provincial recruits into Roman citizens. Urbanization and the presence of the army were of prime importance for the dissemination of the Latin language and culture. But there was more than just Latin influence: there were influences from all over the empire. For this reason the
Figure 39 The Roman city of Timgad in Algeria (2nd-4th c. AD). Timgad was a Roman town in Numidia, in present-day Algeria. It is a good example of a Roman provincial town in the western parts of the empire. Such towns were built on a square ground plan with a regular grid, based on the layout of a Roman army camp, usually on virgin territory. Thus, these towns were new centers of Roman city life. Nevertheless, Timgad took its name from a local village, Thamugadi. After its foundation in 100 AD, the town was officially known as colonia Marciana Traiana Thamugadi (Marciana Traiana after the reigning emperor Trajan and his sister Marcia). The town had all the trappings of a Roman imperial town: a forum, a theater, triumphal arches, temples, market halls, bath complexes, dwellings for the elite with wall paintings and mosaics, and apartment buildings for the less well to do. In the photograph, one can see the city as it was laid out in the 2nd century AD, and a couple of “suburbs” of the 2nd, early 3rd centuries. The number of inhabitants is not known, but in its heyday (late 2nd and 3rd centuries), it will not have housed over 10,000. In the late 3rd and 4th centuries, Timgad was an important Christian center. Photo: from A. A.M. van der Heyden, Atlas van de antieke wereld, Amsterdam 1958 Elsevier
Word Romanization is not used here; the term is too one-sided. Not everyone in the empire “became Roman,” but every individual was an inhabitant of the empire and thus was affected by the process of acculturation. Most fundamental in this respect were the economic and accompanying social changes: economies that had always been self-supporting became part of the monetary market economy of the empire.
All this should, however, not lead to the conclusion that the Western part of the empire turned into an area with a homogenous Mediterranean city culture in no time. Rome did not have the slightest intention to exert direct authority and direct influence at all levels. Local elites and their networks of patronage were absorbed into the empire’s interrelationships, but for many others little changed. Acculturation is two-way traffic: despite “empire-wide” unifying elements, regional differences continued and thrived. There are only a few instances
Of opposition against change; one example is the Batavian Rebellion. Such rebellions may be seen as so-called nativist movements in which, within a context of acculturation, the subordinate party reacts against the dominant one by emphasizing its own identity. In fact, rebellions of this kind are usually an indication that changes have already taken place. As far as the Roman Empire is concerned, the (temporarily) successful rebellions characteristically owed their success to the extent to which their leaders had become integrated in the empire and were able to fight the Romans with Roman organization and technology.
World History
