Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
The nature, and indeed the reality, of Romanization in the east is controversial. One of the most influential accounts of Romanization in the western provinces notes that ‘by contrast, where Greek was already the language of culture, of government and of inter-regional trade, the Romans carried further the process of Hellenization … in general what was specifically Latin in the common civilization of the empire made little impact in the east’, the exceptions being the influence of Roman law and the popularity of gladiatorial games. That verdict endorsed the view that ‘the emperors made no attempt to romanise the Greek speaking provinces’, which saw the foundation of cities as a continuance of Hellenistic royal practice, and which regarded the establishment of the rare eastern colonies as motivated by practical considerations rather than any attempt at encouraging cultural assimilation. More recently, a fuller survey of exceptions to this general rule nevertheless concluded that ‘On the one hand, the culture and identity of the Greek east remained fundamentally rooted in the Classical past. On the other hand, the visible presence of Rome, outside those zones where the legions were stationed, was extremely slight.’
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25. Pliny, Epistles 8.24; cf. Cicero, Ad Quintum fratrem 1.1.28.
26. Principally the preoccupation of imperial period Greeks with their past, although other influential ideas may have been notions of natural cycles of the growth, apogee and decline of cities and empires and in some areas also ideas of decline resulting from truphe and wealth.
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33. Digest 1.16.4.
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49. Cf. the works cited in nn. 3 and 5.
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52. I hope to discuss these developments more fully in the future in a work provisionally entitled Becoming Roman in Gaul.
53. Bowersock (n. 23) 7.
54. Strabo, Geography 1.4.9. The work none the less reflects a consciousness of variable degrees of civilization among the peoples of the world which tends to undermine the idea of a sharp dichotomy in these terms between Greeks and barbarians, cf. e.g. 2.5.26 and 3.2.15.
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