Preface

Summary

This book is a study of the origins and nature of the culture of the provinces of the early Roman empire. The creation of provincial cultures is not an obvious sequel to Rome's conquest of the Mediterranean world and its continental hinterlands. To illustrate the point we might imagine another – counter-factual – Roman empire, created in much the same way as the real one by armies led out on campaign by aristocratic generals to defend and extend Roman power, and to win booty, prestige and territory. As the campaigns become grander, the armies grow larger and fight further and further away from home until expansion ceases and there is peace in the provinces of this imaginary Roman empire. Taxes are paid and the odd rebellion essayed and suppressed but otherwise life goes on much as it did before in the cities of the Greeks, the villages of Gaul, the temples of the Egyptians and so on. If Counter-Rome's subjects farm a little harder and fight a little less, the day to day rhythm of their lives is unchanged, they speak the same languages as before, worship the same gods, inhabit the same houses and eat the same foods off the same pottery as they had always done. And when the empire withers away or collapses, as all empires – imaginary or real – must do, all is exactly as it was and no traces of it remain.