7 - Consuming Rome

Summary

A new world of goods

The testament of the Lingon, discussed in the previous chapter, demanded that the altar beside his tomb be built of marble from Luni in Italy. The stipulation reveals not only a desire for the best quality stone but, more significantly, a knowledge of where the best marble was to be found. That discrimination is part of the Lingon's self-representation, as an aristocrat of taste who recognizes and demands quality. But it also serves as a reminder of the complexity of the cultural competence that Gallo-Roman aristocrats had had to acquire in order to consume in accordance with their new identities in the imperial order. Like all upwardly mobile groups they must have found their new positions bewildering at first, as they were presented with unfamiliar choices from all the good things of the empire. Consumption was problematic enough for Italian elites in this period, but the new aristocracies of the western provinces faced additional difficulties as they struggled to avoid provincialism. The reputation of Valerius Asiaticus, a Julio-Claudian senator from Vienne, renowned not only for his wealth but also for his ostentatious display of it, suggests that at least some of them did get it wrong.

Consumption was problematic principally because it was one way in which Romans expressed their public identities. The late Republic and early empire were characterized by fierce debates about what kinds of consumption were appropriate for members of the Roman elite.