Discussion 8

Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

Roman and Modern Imperialism: A Reassessment Author(s): Gary B. Miles Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 629-659 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/178956 . Accessed: 14/01/2015 17:20

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Roman and Modem Imperialism: A Reassessment GARY B. MILES

University of California, Santa Cruz

Those who view Rome from the perspective of modem empires have been struck by Rome's longevity (for example, Brunt 1965:267; Doyle 1986:81- 103; Syme 1958:1). Attempts to explain this phenomenon, however, have given little if any consideration to why movements of national independence have occurred in modem times, but not in Roman antiquity. This is the more striking inasmuch as nationalist rebellions against imperial rule typically ac- companied the dissolution of direct imperial control over native populations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Certainly the decisions of mod- em imperialists to give up their empires have been influenced by political idealism or by calculations of economic self-interest unique to their historical situations (Luthy 1964:34). Nonetheless, the role of their subjects must also be taken into consideration, because it was the initiative of the colonial natives, not that of the imperial masters, that typically has resulted in the first calls for independence and, most often, in the nationalist rebellions that provoked imperialists into dismantling their empires. Idealistic impulses and calculations of economic self-interest alike have taken place within the con- text of that initiative and cannot help but to have been colored by it. It would be a mistake to identify nationalist sentiment and rebellion as the only reasons for the collapse of modem empires, but they must be included among the decisive reasons.

A nationalist rebellion against imperial rule, as I understand it, entails (1) the forging of a larger, common identity and allegiance among native subjects who previously had regarded themselves as essentially separate and distinct, and (2) the formation of new social and political organizations (even when undertaken in the putative defense of tradition) in the name of the common identity created by that rebellion. Authority is regarded as legitimate insofar as it is presumed to express the collective identity. Each of these two elements poses special challenges to imperial control. Because nationalist indepen- I would like to acknowledge the thoughtful responses to earlier drafts of this essay by the editors and readers of Comparative Studies in Society and History and by my colleagues at the University of California, Santa Cruz: Dilip Basu, Gary Lease, and Dan Selden. Above all I am indebted to the generous assistance of my colleague Terry Burke, whose guidance, stimulation, and encour- agement have contributed immeasurably to this essay. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for the argument as it is presented here. Numbers following the names of ancient authors or texts are not page numbers, but refer to the standard editorial divisions of their respective texts. 0010-4175/90/4168-7344 $5.00 ? 1990 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

629

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dence movements unite within the imperial territory groups and peoples who had previously perceived themselves as essentially separate and had acted independently or even in opposition to each other, they mobilize, more wide- spread and diffuse opposition to imperial rule than do local uprisings at- tempted in the name of traditional authority. Because nationalists perceive their very identity as a people at risk and because national independence is sought in the name of that collective identity, limited concessions to specific social or political groups are not sufficient to satisfy the nationalists' demands; compromise is difficult. All this has not enabled nationalists to overpower their imperial masters, but it has enabled them to provide sufficiently wide- spread and persistent opposition to imperial rule that moder imperialists have often found it convenient or at least acceptable to withdraw from their territo- ries when confronted by nationalist movements.

Ancient historians agree that there were no rebellions of this sort against Roman rule (Brunt 1965:277; Walbank 1972; MacMullen 1966, ch. 6), but the question as to why there were not any has only been addressed incidentally or tacitly, most often in discussions about the comparative longevity of the Roman Empire. The answers given in this context, whether explicit or im- plicit, have been incomplete and often reflect misunderstandings either about Roman antiquity or about moder nationalist movements of resistance to imperial rule. A recent attempt to identify general principles governing the rise and fall of empires, for example, anachronistically discusses the consol- idation and decline of the Roman empire in terms of "transnational" factors, "national political institutions," "national loyalty," and the like (Doyle 1986:83, 84, 87, 100), and attributes to the reforms of Augustus a more decisive impact both in stabilizing the central government of Rome and in checking the excesses of Roman provincial administrators (Doyle 1986:93- 96, 107, 119, 121, 137) than most Roman historians would accept. There is good reason to believe that bribery and extortion in the provinces remained significant even after Augustus's reforms (Brunt 1961), and the central gov- ernment undoubtedly became increasingly unable to control its agents in the last centuries of the Empire (Jones 1964:1053-8; MacMullen 1988:122-97). More important, Doyle's emphasis on "the Augustan threshold" minimizes the significance of wars for imperial succession among Roman generals. These wars briefly disrupted the Roman government during the first century, reached crisis proportions in the third century (twenty-two emperors in forty- nine years), and had profound and lasting consequences in virtually every aspect of the Roman Empire, including the economic, social, political, and cultural (Brown 1978; MacMullen 1966, ch. 6). Despite these upheavals, the Empire remained politically intact in the West beyond the middle of the fifth

century. The most extensive comparative discussion by a Roman historian remains

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 631

that of P. A. Brunt (Brunt 1965). This essay (many of whose arguments are repeated, although with different emphasis, in Brunt 1976) intermingles a number of sound observations with others whose validity or relevance to the question of Rome's longevity as an empire now seems questionable at best. His observation, for example, that Rome's western subjects were disunited might well help to explain how Rome came initially to control them, but scarcely serves to explain why subsequently there were no movements towards national unification among them, as was typical among the subjects of empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His assumption that an established national identity motivates nationalist rebellions (Brunt 1965:282-3) is not consistent with the general consensus among students of modern nationalist movements. Scholars as different as Emerson, Gellner, and Deutsch, for example, argue that national identity and unity are as much the goals (often not fully realized even after the achievement of political independence), as the sources, of nationalist movements (Emerson 1967:93, 149-50, 277; Gellner 1983:46, 49, 55-57; Deutsch 1966:5). Many scholars argue that the adoption of nationalist ideology, itself a product of Western influence (for example, Kedourie 1971:23-69 and 93-106; Anderson 1983:66, 78), constitutes an obstacle to the realization of a true native identity, a task only now beginning (Wansbrough 1968; Guha 1989; Chatterjee 1986). Brunt's principal conclusion (Brunt 1965:284-8), that West- ern liberal ideology was the decisive factor leading moder imperialists to disband their empires, finds little support among students of modem imperi- alism (Emerson 1967:15, 389).

The inquiry into the circumstances encouraging or discouraging nationalist rebellions does not call for the wholesale rejection, but for a more precise and selective application, of the terms which Roman and modern empires have been compared. Of the many circumstances that may have encouraged or been conducive to formation of national identity among imperial subjects in mod- ern times, I am concerned about identifying only those factors that seem both to be shared generally by modern nationalist movements and to be absent from the Roman empire, that is, those factors that appear to constitute neces- sary causes of nationalist rebellion. The efforts of modern historians to explain nationalist resistance to imperial rule in recent history, especially Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, provide a helpful new perspective on Roman antiquity. They suggest that three factors-one ideological, a second sociopolitical, and a third technological-have been decisive in fostering modern nationalist resistance movements: These are, respectively, the exam- ple of nationalism set by modern imperial nations themselves, the creation of an alienated professional class among colonized peoples, and the distinctive nature of modern communications. I shall argue in the first section that the absence of nationalist resistance to Roman rule is due principally to the absence of those three conditions in Roman antiquity. In the next section, I

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632 GARY B. MILES

shall argue that those same three circumstances go a long way towards ex- plaining the ultimate weakness of Roman imperial control-in short, why the Roman Empire evolved into a single territorial state, but did not become a single nation.

THE ROLE OF NATIONAL MODELS

There can be no doubt but that the existence of European nations provided discontented subjects with models both of independence and of specific in- stitutional forms in which nationhood might be expressed: for example, In- dia's adaptation of the British parliamentary system. But European nations did more than exemplify political autonomy; they also embodied a particular expression of that ideal: autonomy as national separateness, a sense of identity that at once transcended the local yet perceived itself as limited, in relation to (often in conflict with) other nations (Anderson 1983:15-16). Even more important, after the American and especially the French revolutions, colonials had models not only for the ideal of national identity, but for its full realization through revolution (Emerson 1967:16-17, 112, 189).

The systematic education of natives (or at least of certain groups among them) that has characterized many modem imperial regimes has often been instrumental in disseminating knowledge of European nationalism among particularly influential groups of the natives. One view is that this emphasis upon education was necessitated by the demands of modem technology (Gellner 1983:18); another regards it as a response to the necessities of administering immense, far-flung empires (Anderson 1983:106). The imperi- alists themselves often viewed it in the context of Enlightenment ideals as part of their mission civilatrice. Whatever the motivating forces, the systematic propagation of Western Culture through the efforts of Western educators and missionaries has encouraged the development of nationalism by assuring the

exposure of colonial subjects-or significant members of their populations- to European nationalism and political ideology, and thus has helped to define and fuel the subjects' own aspirations (Brunt 1965:280). But this was only part of a larger, more diffuse, yet ultimately more pointed message-the example of the imperialists' own national identity and independence (Anderson 1983:108). If Western ideals of political freedom and self-government were important to natives, it was only because those ideals were associated with the very real and immediate power exercised by imperial nations. The association of power with nationhood manifest in the imperialists' behavior was further emphasized by the frequent and explicit connection of those two attributes in the imperialists' own analyses and statements of policy (Said 1978:32-45). This immediate, practical lesson in political ideology was often reinforced by Western educa- tion, insofar as it brought to the attention of the colonies the histories of their masters' own struggles for independence. In such ways modern imperialists

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 633

themselves provided not just an ideology but practical models of nationalism for their subjects to follow (Emerson 1967:189-90).

The influence of European historians and antiquarians should be seen in such a context. Brunt has correctly observed that it contributed to the coloni- als' sense of cultural identity (Brunt 1965:280-1); however, whereas he and others call attention to ways in which nationalist ideology often leads to the subsequent misinterpretation, almost parody, of Western historiography (Brunt 1965:283 and, for example, Kedourie 1971:35-69, 92-93,) it deserves to be pointed out that Western historical and antiquarian studies of colonial peoples have just as often been distortions of their own sort. They have ignored or rationalized native tradition, in effect recasting it, whether con- sciously or unconsciously, to conform to distinctively Western historiographic assumptions and ideology. If nationalists have found it necessary to rewrite the histories provided by imperialists, to decoloniser l'histoire, it is because rather than discovering their identities in those histories, they have instead found themselves represented as incapable of self-government and therefore inevitably and properly subject to the more civilized nations of the imperialists (Wansbrough 1968) or to a Westernized elite among the native population (Guha 1989). Thus, the historiographic tradition of Western imperialists tac- itly sets nationhood as the goal that must be achieved for the fullest realization of human potential and worth. The implicit form and ideology of their histo- ries have encouraged further their subjects' perception of themselves in terms of the rulers' own nationalist perspectives (Emerson 1967:71).

The ancient world offered no such perspectives. The ideal of local autono- my was well established. Roman citizens and those subjects educated in Greek or Latin might well have been exposed to works that celebrated the independence of particular communities or their liberation from alien rule, but freedom and autonomy were imagined on a limited scale in all of this. Formal theories as to what constituted political freedom and how it should be realized originated with the Greek philosophers, who assumed the city-state to be the norm. In fact, "Greek formal political theory was so dominated by the city- state that even a laudation of a federal state took the form of a claim that it was almost a polis," and in certain periods federations of Greek states seem to have chosen the system of primary participatory assemblies (rather than repre- sentative assemblies), as a result of this same bias in favor of the city-state. Insofar as representative government was developed in antiquity, it "was in states so small that, compared in expanse to the ancient empires, they might almost as well have been city-states" (Larsen 1966:104, ch. 4, 157-8). The extension either of hegemony or direct political control (empire) over others did not constitute a departure from this narrowly focused sense of identity: Hegemony and empire were conceived of as legitimate extensions of local (city-state), not national, power (Walbank 1972:148).

When the Romans applied Greek theory to their distinctive circumstances

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and traditions, they did not depart from this essential orientation towards the city-state. Cicero wrote his De Republica, his adaptation of Plato's Republic, at the end of the first century B.C., after Rome had established its control over the Mediterranean basin and beyond. In this work he traced the origins of Roman greatness to Romulus, who had founded his city inland, although on a river with access to the sea. Thus, Rome could safely export its surpluses and import necessities without being needlessly exposed to the unexpected dan- gers and the uninhibited influx of foreign customs and of enervating luxuries that beset maritime cities (De Republica 2.5-8). As a result, [Cicero concludes] it seems to me that even then [Romulus] divined that one day this city would provide the seat and home for a very great empire [summo imperio], since a city located in any other part of Italy could scarcely have possessed such great power [potentiam] as this [which Rome possesses now] (De Republica 2.10).

From such a perspective the growth of the Roman Empire did not mean the expansion of community so much as the increased reach of power emanating from a narrowly defined center of Rome, the City, Urbs Roma, and this concept of imperial power was reflected in Roman practice.

Rome's relations to its subjects may be divided into two somewhat overlap- ping periods: the Republican and the Imperial. For the more than two hundred years between Rome's acquisition of Sicily in 241 B.C. and the accession of Augustus in 27 B.C., Romans did possess two of the requirements of a nation: a strong sense of shared identity as a people and the concommitant sense that

authority must express their collective identity, if it was to be legitimate. During that time, however, Roman identity and authority were highly lo- calized. The Roman Empire ruled as a city-state: Authority resided ex-

clusively in the city and its traditional ruling aristocracy; the profits of rule accrued likewise to the city itself and to its officials. Outside of the Italian

peninsula, the empire imposed Roman governors on native populations and farmed out the collection of taxes to Roman agents; within the peninsula, Rome was leader of a hegemony, formally acknowledging the local autonomy of Italian communities, but requiring-through a series of separate, bilateral treaties-that each have the same friends and enemies as Rome. Thus Rome combined the two traditional means of exploiting non-citizens characteristic of city-states in antiquity. Despite a policy of extending citizen rights in varying degrees to selected neighbors, members of the ruling aristocracy at Rome kept rigorous control both of power and the access by "new men" to its use by regulating admission to the higher offices of the city. During this same period, rich and poor residents of the city of Rome were intensely jealous of their prerogatives, and their reluctance to share these privileges with their Italian allies, who had come to supply the bulk of Rome's military manpower, played a significant role in provoking the Italian revolt of 91-87 B.C. (Badian 1958:168-252). The Italians' first effort was to set up an independent alliance

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 635

in opposition to Rome. Most of them were induced to abandon this arrange- ment by a process of divide and conquer and to accept the offer of full and equal citizenship as an alternative to Rome's overthrow. But the value of this citizenship was qualified by Rome's tenacious persistence in blocking or diluting the Italians' effective participation in government. Even after formal discrimination against Italians was discontinued, Rome persisted in governing itself as a city-state: It remained necessary for citizens to be present at the various assemblies held in the City of Rome itself in order to cast their votes. The newly enfranchised Italians did not actually achieve widespread access to the higher Roman magistracies-with a full share in both the opportunities for power and the rewards that had been the traditional prerogatives of Romans- until the accession of Augustus, but by then a new era in Roman history had begun (Syme 1967:359-60).

After the accession of Augustus, the barriers that had separated Rome's subjects from full participation in the society and government of the city-state began to dissolve, slowly at first and then with increasing rapidity. Pro- gressive integration of new members into the life of the metropole, however, was accompanied by an important shift in the conception of Roman power. It continued to emanate from Urbs Roma, although less and less as a direct expression of the Roman people or the ruling aristocracy thought to epitomize Romanness; instead, the power of the City came to be expressed through, then embodied in, and ultimately displaced by the power of the emperor. From the very moment of Augustus' accession, Rome's provincial subjects treated him as a reigning monarch. The fiction of a restored republic, important as it may have been for the traditional aristocracy at Rome, was irrelevant in their eyes (Millar 1984). Augustus and his successors received cult worship, in Italy itself as well as in the provinces-everywhere except in the city of Rome (Price 1987:84). Throughout the history of the Empire, the single most impor- tant and persistent emblem of imperial authority was the symbolic representa- tion of military Victory (Price 1984:182-3; MacCormack 1981:182; McCor- mick 1986). Personal might and divinity, rather than national will or charac- ter, were the perceived sources of the emperor's authority outside of the city of Rome.

Within as well as outside of the city, the distance separating emperors from their subjects and from any notion of legitimacy based on collective will or identity gradually increased. The external signs of this development are famil- iar and have been effectively epitomized in H. P. L'Orange (1965): more extravagant display in imperial ceremonial and in the adornment of imperial capitals, greater formalism both in the depiction and actual behavior of the emperor, deliberate emphasis on his remoteness and the difficulty of access to him. Those external signs of his growing elevation above his subjects ex- pressed far-reaching changes in a second area, the emperor's constitutional relation to his subjects. By the mid-second century, law-once the expressed

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636 GARY B. MILES

will of the Roman people or of the Senate acting in their name-was formally identified with the personal will of the emperor. In the words of the jurist Ulpian (Digest 1.4. lpr), "What the princeps wants has the force of law: since indeed, by the law of kingship, which has been passed concerning command, the people confer upon him and in him all of its own command and power." The idea, even if only a formality, that the emperor ruled by the will of the people, as expressed by the Senate, came itself to be discarded. By the third century A.D. it was apparently regular practice for the Senate to ratify new emperors after letters announcing their formal acclamation had been read.'

The greater remoteness of the emperor in both ceremonial and constitu- tional terms was matched by shifts in the conception of the emperor's divinity. Although from the first the emperor was recognized as divine outside of the city, the Roman Senate came more slowly to an acknowledgment of this divinity. After Julius Caesar, rulers had been deified following their deaths by a vote of the Senate based on a formal interpretation by the Senate of signs appearing at or after the ruler's funeral. As early as A.D. 112, however, the Senatorial decree recognizing the divinity of a deceased member of the impe- rial family might precede his funeral, thus precluding the exercise of Sen- atorial interpretation of signs, that is, the exercise of Senatorial discretion (Price 1987:91-93, 103-5). With Diocletian and the Tetrarchy of A.D. 286, emperors were represented as divine in their own right, by virtue of the consent of the gods, so that "the verdict of humans ceased to matter" (Mac- Cormack 1981:110). In fact, a panegyrist could praise an emperor precisely because he had not been chosen "by the fortuitous consensus of men," "by some sudden wind of favor," "by electioneering and canvassing" (Panegyrici Latini 7.3.1, 7.2.5). Moreover, emperors came to be recognized as divine not only after their deaths but also from the moment of their accession to imperial power: Constantine was honored as princeps consecratus by his panegyrist in A.D. 310, even though the term consecratus had previously been used only for dead emperors, and the attributes of formal consecration in art came to be applied to living emperors (MacCormack 1981:180-1, citing Panegyrici Lati- ni 7.8.2). With the development of Christianity, the idea of the emperor's divinity was replaced with the view of him as the chosen of God and as replicating on earth God's divine rule in Heaven (MacCormack 1981:177, 188-9).

From this perspective, the difference between Roman and non-Roman was unimportant. The Romans thought of themselves not as a single ethnic group but as embracing all people. A Sibylline Oracle of the imperial period, for example, could survey separate populations within the Roman Empire as "neither Syrian, nor Greek, nor barbarian, nor any other people (ethnos) ..." (Sibylline Oracle 8.127); the subjects of Rome and its emperor were regularly

I Cassius Dio on Macrinus, (LXXIX,16,2), Historia Augusta, Max. 16; Claud. 4,2-4; [Probus 1-2].

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 637

identified in Latin as the orbis terrarum ("the whole world"), gentes humanae or genus humanum ("the human race"), cunctae gentes ("all peoples"); and in Greek as ethne, or "peoples" (Sherwin-White 1973:437-44). Even taken as hyperbolic metaphors for the Roman Empire, these formulae are significant. Implicitly, they lump Roman and non-Roman together. Far from expressing a sense of distinctive national identity, they convey the perception that all men are equal in their common subordination to and dependency on the emperor. A pangyrist of the fourth century praised the emperor Theodosius I as phi- lanthropos, like Zeus, a lover of all mankind, that is, of Roman and barbarian equally (Themistius, Oratio, 19). One of the Church Fathers could imagine the emperor's role, similarly, as analogous to that of the Christians' universal God:

Let households and cities [poleis] and townships [demoi] and peoples [ethne] and continents [epeiroi] enjoy the kings' forethought and prudent solitude, which God Himself, having set Himself as an archetype in intelligible matters, gives as an image of [His own] forethought. He wishes that matters here [on earth] be ordered in imita- tion of the supramundane.2

By the end of the third century A.D., the implicit equality of Roman and barbarian before the emperor had already been made explicit in the practice of adoratio (prostration before the ruler). This had once been an exclusively barbarian practice, one of the most signal indications of the barbarians' funda- mental difference from the free men of the Greek and Roman city-states, but from the time of the emperor Diocletian, everyone who was admitted to the presence of the emperor, barbarian and Roman alike, was required to prostrate himself (Price 1987:97). The tendency to treat Roman and barbarian as equal before the emperor was perhaps encouraged by two circumstances: The Ro- mans, unlike the Greeks, never developed the sharp and unambiguous sense of opposition between themselves and all other, uniformly inferior peoples; and the concept of a generalized barbarian enemy only emerged late, as a response to barbarian invasion and infiltration of Roman territory (Christ 1959; Sherwin- White 1973:ch. 19), but by then the immigration of German and other tribes- people was making the distinction between Roman and non-Roman in- creasingly problematic within the Roman Empire itself (Lot 1935:191-328; MacMullen 1966:ch. 6).

I have called attention to such particular changes in the imperial cere- monial, the constitutional relation of the emperor to the Roman people, and the conception of the emperor's relation to divinity, because they all represent an increase in the inherent separation between ruler and ruled3 at Rome-a separation precluding any sense that the ruler expressed the will of the ruled or that the ruled possessed the clear and distinct identity essential to nationalism.

2 Synesius, Oratio De Regno 4 [Patrologiae Graecae Tomus 66, col. 1065c]. 3 MacCormick (1981:170) argues that the relationship of emperor and gods was not mere

propaganda but expressed "a genuine removal of the emperors to a higher sphere."

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638 GARY B. MILES

Thus, Rome offered neither a republic nor an empire to its subjects as models of national identity. The empire governed under the republic was ruled by a city-state, a small community sharply circumscribed by tradition and locality. The empire that integrated its subjects into a single, unified state was ruled by an emperor whose authority was based on might and was understood as an expression of divinity. Rome did not present any model for national self- assertion to its subjects, much less one for national rebellion from imperial control.4

THE ROLE OF THE PROFESSIONAL CLASSES

Even if the idea of national rebellion had been available to Rome's provincial subjects, they would not have had the kind of leadership necessary to realize that concept in action. A central aspect of moder imperialism was the cre- ation in the colonies of a distinct class of Westernized administrative officers and professionals who identified with their European rulers but were excluded by Europeans from full participation and professional advancement in the life of the metropole (Emerson 1967:29, 44-47; Anderson 1983:127-8). It was not just the resources of European culture and the negative experience of European prejudice (whose combined impact is exemplified with particular vividness in Kedourie 1971:87-89) that shaped the nationalism of this particu- lar class of isolated colonials, but, according to Benedict Anderson, their education in the language of the metropole that gave (I would say enhanced) access to models of nationalism, and their literacy that made possible their imagination of a new "national" community (Anderson 1983:106-7 and Kedourie 1971:27-28, 112). Another positive factor was what Anderson has called their shared "journeys" or "pilgrimages" (Anderson 1983:58). Where- as a European official or professional might move from colony to colony, then back to the European metropole, the journeys of his colonial counterpart would be confined to his own colony. Encountering each other as they moved from post to post within the colony (but never outside of it), these colonials would come to recognize each other as sharing a common territory that would have previously appeared as quite separate and distinct territories occupied by separate communities. Where the imperialists had organized a formal educa-

4 The Jews are sometimes offered as an exception to the general lack of nationalist sentiment in antiquity (Walbank 1972:165; Brunt 1965:283-4, but see a more qualified judgment in Brunt (1976:165-6; and 1977). They do not qualify as an exception according to my definition of nationalist rebellions, inasmuch as their resistance to Rome did not entail the forging of a new and larger sense of community among hitherto distinct peoples, as modem national movements typically have done. Unlike modem nationalist rebellions that typically have been led by Western- ized professional and administrative classes in the native population, the Jewish rebellion was led by traditionalists whose support came largely from the conservative agrarian population, while Hellenized Jews-in contrast to the Westernized natives of modern empires-were generally ready, if not eager, to make accommodations with Rome (Brunt 1977). In any event, the failure of Jewish resistance did not offer an attractive model for other Roman subjects to follow.

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 639

tional system, colonials might experience similarly formative pilgrimages in the course of their education, as they encountered each other on their journeys from local to regional to territorial centers of education (Anderson 1983:105, 111). The experience of exclusion from the society of the metropole seems only to have been heightened for those natives whose educational journeys took them to the metropole before returning them to their native lands (well- exemplified in Kedourie 1971:87-88).

Whether Creoles (the descendents of European settlers) or natives, they shared a peculiar isolation within their own colonies: Their identification with Western culture separated them both from the rural peasantry and from the traditional ruling aristocracies of the colonized peoples. Their interests typ- ically were in conflict with the latter. Whereas the traditional elites wanted a return to the old ways that legitimatized their authority and privilege, Western- ized colonials advocated the more radical course of nationalism. It was their discontent that fuelled modern nationalist movements, their sophistication that determined the means of rebellion, and their aspirations that determined its goals (Emerson 1967:196-7; Kedourie 1971:27, 80-89, 106). Because they were outside the traditional structures of native power and authority, they had to find new social bases for support and new ideologies and programs to mobilize those supporters (Emerson 1967:215, 238-9). In this way they con- tributed not only to the independence of their fellow natives but also to their acquisition of new kinds of consciousness and new understandings of community.

Although recent experience has suggested that European racism is one obvious explanation for the modern imperialists' exclusion of natives, Brunt and others have argued that this phenomenon does not seem to have played a significant role in Roman policy (Brunt 1965:286-7; Sherwin-White 1967; Saddington 1975). Indeed, racism itself can only partially explain the ex- clusive attitude of European imperialists toward colonials, for it was not directed only at non-European natives of the colonies.5 Creoles in the Amer- icas experienced the same sorts of restricted professional and administrative pilgrimages as their native counterparts in other parts of the world. This is true also of the settlers in the British colonies, although there appear to have been a very few exceptions in the American colonies during the period of the British civil wars (Syme 1958:54-57). However directly or exclusively British might be the ancestry of an Australian, a Canadian, or a New Zealander, there was little more hope of advancement out of a particular colony into larger British society and government than for an Indian (Anderson 1983:88-89). Anderson suggests that the reason for such exclusion is to be found in the nationalist identities and loyalties of the European imperialists themselves and further argues that racism is the indirect product of a particular phase of European

5 Nonetheless, as Liithy points out (1964:35), ethnic and racial prejudice remain the most critical problems related to moder nationalist movements.

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nationalism-a displacement to the colonies of the snobbishness that in- formed aristocrats' efforts to capitalize on growing European nationalism in order to protect their own privileged positions (Anderson 1983:83, 103, 136- 7). Thus, not only the models for nationhood, but also the experience of exclusion that helped to precipitate nationalist rebellions in the colonies can be traced back to European nationalism itself.

Roman imperial policy, by contrast, did not create the kind of alienated professional and administrative class that played a central role in modem nationalist movements. Roman practice was to rule through the intermediacy of the governing bodies of settled and formally constituted communities. Romans were encouraged to do this by their native conservatism and because they relied on a very small governmental bureaucracy (Garnsey and Saller 1987:21-26). Even in the mid-second century A.D., the Roman bureaucracy was less than a fourth of the size of that with which the Athenians governed their much smaller empire in the fifth century B.C.6 and perhaps only one- twentieth of the Chinese imperial bureaucracy (Hopkins 1983:186). Because Romans themselves were spread so thin, it was obviously convenient for them to coopt local leadership. Though Roman demands on provincial subjects could be extortionate, their weight rested principally on the peasantry. The responsibilities of local leaders, on the other hand, provided them with occa- sions both to exercise power and extend patronage, through the collection of taxes, administration of justice (and thus keeping of the peace), recruitment of soldiers, and organization of corvees when Rome required local roads, postal service, or the like (Garnsey and Saller 1987:32-33).

In exchange for their active support, Rome offered protection and preferen- tial treatment to native leaders, and new opportunities for distinction among members of their own local communities (Brunt 1976, who emphasizes the extension of Roman citizenship to them; Garsey 1970:9, 77-85, 266, who emphasizes the quite separate extension both of informal and legal privileges). During the Republican period, the granting of various degrees of citizenship was but one way of enhancing the position of favored leaders and, more rarely, favored communities-although, it must be remembered, such grants very rarely meant admission to the ruling aristocracy and a share in the actual government of Rome. In those areas where settled agrarian life and a degree of urbanization were well established, Roman policy appears to have worked smoothly. This was true in the settled areas of the west, such as Sicily, and of the east in general. Romans intruded very little there in local government, their intervention being chiefly a passive encouragement of the tendency for democracies to devolve into hereditary oligarchies.7

When Rome encountered nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes, its policy was

6 This calculation is based on estimates of the size of the Roman and Greek bureaucracies by Finley (1978:8) and Hopkins (1983:186), respectively.

7 For the Greek east, I follow Garnsey and Saller (1987:38-39); Bowersock (1965:87-88) over Jones (1940: ch. 11, 170-91).

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 641

generally to contain their movements strictly or to force them into settled, agrarian communities. Domestication of tribal societies often entailed long and bitter conflict-the pacification of Spain took two centuries (Dyson 1971, 1975). The process of replacing tribal leaders with a leadership of landowners functioning within a constitutional framework might have given birth to some- thing like the disaffected professional and administrative classes of modem empires. One reason it did not is that it coincided roughly with increasing opportunities for important classes of provincials to share in the privileges of Roman citizenship and participate fully in the life of the metropole. It is perhaps significant that these opportunities were extended first and most widely in precisely those territories in which political stability was most precarious: Africa, Gaul, and Spain (Garnsey and Saller 1987:9).

At least three specific circumstances reinforced the process of extending the privileges of the Empire to provincials, especially to local aristocrats. The first of these was the Romans' persistence in trying to administer their ever- growing holdings through a very small governmental bureaucracy. The second factor was the failure of the members of the Roman ruling aristocracy to replace themselves. It has been estimated that at least through the first two centuries A.D., only 25 percent of Roman Consuls in any given generation were succeeded in office by their sons (Hopkins 1983:ch. 3). Thus, "each generation . . . 75 percent of the consulships were open to men of upwardly mobile families. Italians and provincials moved in to take up the vacuum in the senatorial aristocracy and married into already established families" (Garsey and Saller 1987:141-5). In particular, the need for competent gener- als and governors encouraged promotion from the lower ranks of individuals who showed promise (Pflaum 1974:64-66). Consequently, Romans not only used local provincial aristocrats to assist in administering their own commu- nities and territories, but also opened admission for some of them into the very highest levels of the Roman bureaucracy and ruling aristocracy.

Finally, the particular nature of imperial succession at Rome undoubtedly helped to legitimate the recruitment of new members from outside Italy, the traditional center of imperial government. The lack of an orderly process of succession had allowed a situation to develop in which members of local aristocracies, and ultimately all but the lowest ranks (freedmen and slaves) throughout the empire, might be elevated to the emperorship. Their rise validated upward mobility among those beneath them. Outsiders were not always received without resentment, but Brunt is quite right to emphasize that during the imperial period provincials were assimilated into the Roman Senate with remarkable ease and thoroughness (Brunt 1965:287; 1976:166-7, 169).

The integration of local officials from the western empire may have been facilitated in the early stages of Roman occupation by the fact that many of these officials, Italian colonists who had settled in the newly pacified territo- ries, became large landholders in their regions and thereby qualified for positions of leadership in the governments of their local communities. But it is

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essential to bear in mind that the privileges extended to officials of provincial communities were never restricted to those of Italian descent or even to those who possessed Roman citizenship: Descent and citizenship by themselves counted less than position in one's local community in determining one's relations with Rome (Garsey 1970:9, 77-85, 266). Thus, there are examples of distinguished natives being included even in the colonies of Roman vet- erans (whom they would have outclassed in wealth and political influence), appointed to high office in those colonies, and advancing from them to the Senate (Ebel 1988:582-3). This may help to explain the apparent ease and completeness with which Roman colonists assimilated into the native so- cieties in which they lived. African tribesmen, for example, honored the descendant of an Italian colonist for his services and pietas to them, "his own people of birth," nationi suae (Rostovteff 1979:330). Price (1984:89) argues that in the Hellenized east "specifically Roman culture in fact receded in [Roman] colonies; the Latin language declined in the face of Greek, except for official documents, and the colonies became partly assimilated to the domi- nant Greek culture, even to the extent of being referred to as poleis, or Greek cities." Whether native or Italian, then, local officials in the Roman Empire did not experience the double exclusion (from native society and from the metropole, alike) of the Westernized professionals and administrators in mod- em imperial territories.

It is also significant that Rome offered geographical as well as upward mobility to such privileged provincials. The horizons of a successful provin- cial aristocrat were not bounded by his own province and Italy. Consider the following commemorative inscription for a Roman African:

To Quintus Lollius Urbicus, son of Marcus, of the tribe Quirina, consul, legate of Augustus for the province of Lower Germany, fetial [priest], legate of the emperor Hadrian in the campaign in Judaea, in which he was presented with the spear of honour and a golden crown, legate of the 10th Legion Gemina, praetor as Caesar's candidate, tribune of the plebs as Caesar's candidate, legate of the proconsul of Asia, urban quaestor, tribune with the broad stripe [i.e., as a potential senator] of the 22nd Legion Primigenia, member of the Commission of Four for the maintenance of roads, patron [of Tiddis], by decree of the town councillors [decurions] at the public expense. (Wells 1984:246-7)

Quintus Lollius' career gave him responsibilities in at least five distinct ter- ritories of the Roman Empire. Although not all officials from the provinces would have enjoyed such wide experience, an administrative career that took one outside one's native province was not at all unusual. Indeed, from the reign of the emperor Trajan, establishment of a residence in Italy was a requirement for all Roman Senators (Garsey and Saller 1987:66). Thus, none of the major officials in the Roman Empire, regardless of where they were recruited, would have suffered the kinds of restricted administrative pil- grimages of modem colonials. As a consequence, the kind of common experi-

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 643

ence of a circumscribed territory that encouraged a sense of solidarity among modem colonial officials and helped to shape their perception of a common community simply did not exist in the Roman Empire.

This reliance on local aristocracies tended towards stability in several ways. Most obvious, perhaps, it united to Rome the interests of those who already held positions of power and influence among the native populations. When ambitious or disgruntled chieftains or local magistrates did rebel against Rome, on the other hand, their revolts were what historians of modem imperi- alism have called "traditional" or "primary" resistance movements: They did not attempt the formation of radically new ideologies that might have pro- vided broader and deeper bases of resistance, but would also have threatened their own traditional claims to legitimacy. Their alliances were expedients to reestablish the structures (tribal or city-state) from which they had originally derived their authority or to advance the interests of their own groups. They were organized by traditional associations, each, typically, jealous of its own interests and suspicious of the others; and their fragile unity was little able to withstand Roman opposition (see, MacMullen 1966:ch. 6; Brunt 1959; 1960; Walbank 1972).8

The importance of Roman reliance on and assimilation of local provincial aristocrats, although certainly essential to the stability of the Roman Empire, should not be made to bear too much weight by itself, but should be seen as part of a larger pattern of inclusion of which other aspects were also vitally, not peripherally, important. As among Senators, members of the Equestrians (the next lower rank, from which military officers and bureaucratic officials were chiefly drawn) replaced themselves at a low rate. The admission of new members to their ranks was even more open than to the Senate (Garnsey and Saller 1987:123-4). The single greatest avenue for the advancement of provincials was the Roman army, which came to be composed almost entirely of provincials as military service became unattractive to Italians. These troops enjoyed a definite advantage in legal status over fellow provincials (Garnsey 1970:245-51), and treated civilians with a confident arrogance that is well attested through the end of the Roman Empire (Baynes 1960:ch. 22; Mac- Mullen 1963:86-89). The combination of Roman citizenship, together with allotments of land and severance pay on discharge, assured that even the common soldier would enjoy advantages over the ordinary provincial peasant. The quite substantial pay and bonuses for even the lower officers often made them eligible for positions of local political importance and put a few veterans (and more often their descendants) in a position to enter the imperial bureau- cracy (Garnsey and Saller 1987:110, 116-7, 124). In this way not only a significant number of common provincials but two especially important segments

8 This is not to deny the important role that primary resistance movements and the memory of them have often played within the larger context of modem nationalist movements (see, for example, Ranger 1968).

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of the provincial population-young men of military age and experienced vet- erans-were given a positive stake in the perpetuation of Roman rule.

Gradually, Romans extended citizenship, until, under the Emperor Ca- racalla in A.D. 212, it was granted to all free members of their empire. Although it is true that the practical value of citizenship had declined by this time, this does not alter the likelihood that the extension of citizenship none- theless tended towards stabilization of relations between provincials and Rome. It facilitated the integration of provincial aristocrats into the Roman government (Brunt 1965:274). Moreover, to be "Roman" of whatever status, was to have some standing, however limited, within the empire (Garnsey 1970:270). Numerous provincials seem to have taken the name of Caracalla in the tradition of those who regarded themselves as beholden to the author of their citizenship (Sherwin-White 1973:386-7). Whatever the imperial moti- vation for extending citizenship, the new citizens did not themselves regard its grant as merely nominal or as only an administrative device by which to extract citizen taxes from a larger population (Sherwin-White 1973:402-8).

The more prominent provincials, moreover, profited from legal develop- ments that paralleled the dimunition of citizenship rights. An increasing dis- tinction between those classed as honestiores and those as humiliores cut across the citizen and non-citizen categories. Whereas humiliores, citizen and non-citizen alike, became subject to penalties once reserved for slaves, the law favored honestiores, whether citizen or non-citizen. Honestiores in-

cluded, significantly, veterans, officials of provincial communities, and others of wealth and high status in the provinces, regardless of their formal citizen status (Garnsey 1970:9, 77-85, 266). Roman rule, therefore, meant the per- petuation, and in many cases undoubtedly the exacerbation, of social and

political distinctions; but it is critical to recognize that those distinctions were not systematically extended along ethnic or regional lines. Consequently, as Roman citizenship was more broadly extended, provincials would not have

experienced social inequity as the unfair privilege of alien exploiters over a native population among whom such inequity had previously been unknown. The kind of insoluble conflict of interests and mentalites that separate moder colonizers from colonized (Memmi 1965) and the kind of stark contrast Fanon delineates between the zone of European settlers and that occupied by "nig- gers and dirty arabs" in moder colonies (Fanon 1963:31-33) does not appear to have characterized the Roman Empire. If those at the bottom end of the citizen scale in the Roman Empire harbored resentments, they would most often have been directed not solely nor even primarily at foreign interlopers, but at the privileged members of their own native communities. Relations between the privileged and unprivileged members of the Empire would have been complicated, moreover, by the extensive operation of patronage in Ro- man antiquity: The very individuals who served as agents of Roman authority and exploitation (especially on the local level) would have been the personal

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 645

patrons upon whom the less powerful depended, and they would often have been perceived as mediators between local clients and Rome (Garsey and Saller 1987:151-3; MacMullen 1988:58-121). Even if the protections of Roman law did not evoke powerful loyalty among erstwhile subjects, the nature of their extension did at least serve to minimize the development of potentially divisive ethnic, racial, or regional divisions.

THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATIONS

A third way in which modem and Roman imperialism differ is in how they transformed native societies. That the imperial metropoles of Europe-with their industrialization, capitalist economies, Christianity, and distinctive Western cultural tradition-were significantly different from the societies they colonized is self-evident, as is the fact that the introduction of European technology, economy, religion, and culture led to the radical disruption of traditional patterns of life among colonized peoples. At first glance, the vast gulf that separates the comparative backwardness of ancient society even at its most developed from the world of modem imperialists may suggest that Roman imperialism was inevitably closer and, therefore, less disruptive to native societies than modem imperialism has been, but, as noted above, there were still numerous occasions for radical conflict of cultures between Rome and the peoples taken into the empire, especially with nomadic and semi- nomadic tribespeople. Particular sources for conflict during this process of pacification included not only Roman efforts to force nomadic peoples into sedentary lives, but also encounters between nomads and new settlements that blocked or bordered their traditional routes, and taxation. The latter fre- quently required the adoption of a limited money economy in order to make cash payments and also frequently led to abuses by Roman citizens lending cash for tax payments at exorbitant interest rates (Dyson 1971, 1975). On some occasions, as was the case with the Druids of Gaul, the Romans eradi- cated native religion, and with it, of course, the associated systems of authori- ty. It is difficult to imagine that the consequences of such changes would have been less devastating for traditional native culture than the changes introduced in moder times by capitalism, industrialization, and moder technology.

The significant difference between moder and Roman interference in native cultures, then, is not one of degree or extent, but of kind. It is related not so much to the destruction of native culture brought about by imperial rule (often as much a factor in antiquity as in moder times) as to the particular nature of imperial innovations.9 Especially important are ways in which mod- ern imperialism has provided the means for formation of new associations and new perceptions of common identity among natives. In this, the resources for

9 A point emphasized by Gellner (1983:121), although he identifies mass education rather than communications as the critical modem innovation, and by Kedourie (1971:14-22, 31-34), al-

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mass transportation and mass communication introduced by modem imperi- alists have played a unique and critical role. As a result of improved road systems and mechanized travel, face-to-face encounters between individuals even from quite distant communities became commonplace. Perhaps even more important than the increased opportunities to meet each other in person have been the opportunities provided by modem means of communication for indirect but even more far-reaching interactions among native populations. Mail and telephone service make it possible to extend personal interactions beyond one's sphere of physical mobility. Newspapers and radio extend the transmission of information and opinion to a wider audience than can be reached on a face-to-face basis; in addition, both the particular scope of their reach and the particular selection of their content help to imply, and so to create, a community of interest: Those who read or hear the same news are assumed to have the same interests and can identify with others never met in person who may be reading or listening to the news and reacting to it as they do (Anderson 1983:62; Gellner 1983:126-7). Radio in particular is important because it extends the reach of communication beyond the literate (Anderson 1983:123).

For Eric Hobsbawm, one measure of how truly revolutionary was the "Age of Revolution" lies in the contraction of the world, the enlargement of local horizons, that followed it (Hobsbawm 1962:24-26). In a very real sense, it may be useful to understand modem movements of national resistance as responses to a contracted world, as attempts to create new communities on a scale commensurate with new realities of social, political, and economic interactions demanded by modem capital and industrial economy, and made possible by modem technology.

By contrast, even in those territories where Roman pacification and exploi- tation were most complete, the vast majority of provincials lived directly off the land in small villages or on estates of wealthy land owners. Both the Roman roads and the greater safety of travel (whose effects are not to be overestimated) undoubtedly did create opportunities for some provincials to enlarge the range of their interactions, but most provincials would continue to live out their lives in relatively isolated communities. Their seclusion was unqualified by mass transportation and mass communication. To state the obvious, they had no automobiles, railroads, airlines, telephones, radios, or newspapers. Mail service was limited to small numbers of the imperial bu- reaucracy and private aristocrats who could employ personal slaves to carry messages. As a consequence, even that small percentage of the population

though he focuses on European traditions of individualism and ideological uniformity, and the impersonality of European administrative practices.

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 647

who could take advantage of whatever security in travel Roman rule provided or who were fully urbanized lived within an environment in which interaction was largely face-to-face and the limits on physical travel determined the effective limits of exposure to, and interaction with, people located beyond one's own locality. Lack of the means for rapid communication in antiquity has been adduced as one factor prohibiting popular elections of the moder type and making impossible "an effective public opinion over an area as large as the Roman Empire" (Larsen 1966:136, 144).

Moder technology, however, is not important simply because it has en- abled political leaders to reach larger audiences than before, but because such access makes possible a different kind of message with distinct types of implications for the way in which an audience perceives itself and its role. In antiquity any leader of forces larger than his own locality or his tribe could not hope to make personal appeals to all of his followers. He would have to appeal through other local leaders, chieftains, or perhaps priests. The loyalties of the great mass of followers could, in turn, be engaged only through the inter- mediacy of those traditional leaders. These intermediaries might indeed bring the common cause they shared with other communities or other tribes to the attention of their followers, but the very structure of the political situation would mean that individuals participated in common undertakings as mem- bers of separate and distinct followings, each with its own leader and its own identity. Whether mediated by tribal chieftains or city-state officials, ancient alliances, therefore, were characterized by a particular precariousness: They tended either to fragment or devolve into hegemonies whenever one member was in a position to dominate the others.10

This is not to deny that means for mass communication existed in Roman antiquity. Such means did exist but, because of their very nature, functioned to reinforce traditional hierarchies, perpetuating the established patterns of authority between powerful and weak; they were not readily accessible to groups or individuals who might want to challenge the established hierarchical basis of authority or to create new relationships across or outside of traditional boundaries. The very cost of deploying such media as statues, inscriptions, coins, or public ceremonials-especially on a scale encompassing an entire region-made them an effective monopoly of those already in authority. In the Roman world, only aristocrats could finance public statues or public festivities, and they did so typically on a local scale, in the communities in which they sought to enhance their personal standing among the aristocratic leadership. In addition, the cost resulted in a certain hierarchy of media, with

10 See, for example, MacMullen (1966:ch. 6), Brunt (1959 and 1960); Sherwin-White (1973:418-24, 445-51) on the nature of revolts against Rome; see Larsen (1966:68 etpassim) on the tendency of larger city-states to try to establish hegemony over Greek leagues and federations.

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the most expensive types reserved for the representation of the emperor. The use of gold and silver acquired symbolic meaning (MacCormack 1981:215- 16). Just as it was rare for anyone other than an emperor to be represented in martial cuirasse, so statues of solid gold or of colossal size were the exclusive prerogative of emperors and gods (Price 1984:181, 186-7). Similarly, the production of scarlet, a brilliant and expensive dye, became the exclusive right of emperors. Thus, the colors, the materials, and the size in which emperors were represented, emphasized the separation between them and their subjects, indeed between them and all other human beings.

The very media in which the emperor was represented served as reminders not of the commonality of all Romans but of the unique and unparalleled nature of the individual who ruled over all mankind, Roman and barbarian alike. This is in sharp contrast to modem means of mass communication. Some of these, such as duplicating the written word and, more recently, reproducing messages on tape cassette, are readily accessible: They require virtually no technical expertise and minimal capital investment. Others, such as telegraph or radio, may require wealth and expertise to set up but once in place are vulnerable to expropriation by insurgents, providing swift access to relatively vast audiences. Their vulnerability gives them a further potential significance: Disruption of these official instruments of communication may by itself constitute an important symbolic statement about the weakness of central authority, lack of consensus among its subjects, and its inability to control dissidents. Not only can the modem media of mass communication be used to bypass the intermediacy of traditional authorities, but, because they can be received privately, they are also readily adaptable to the clandestine distribution of their messages-whether distributed as, for example, political pamphlets, underground newspapers, radio transmissions, or tape cassettes. The very fact of secrecy reenforces a sense of solidarity among those who share in this covert process and sets them off sharply from the traditional authority they are seeking to bypass. In contrast, the ancient means of mass communication (statues, inscriptions, coins, public ceremonial), able to reach large audiences only by addressing them in public contexts, not coincidentally served the interests of traditional, hierarchical authority: Only a recognized authority could erect public statues and expect them to remain standing or could mint coins and expect them to be used. The deployment of such media presupposed official sanction, and that was part of their message.

In all this, it is essential to keep in mind that even though the mass media of antiquity required wealth and official sanction, they were scarcely a monopoly of the emperor. Statuary, inscriptions, public ceremonial (less often coinage) were deployed outside of the emperor's chosen capital primarily at the ini- tiative, expense, and discretion of local communities and their aristocratic leaders (Price 1984:36, 102, 174, 233). The image of the emperor they

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ROMAN AND MODERN IMPERIALISM 649

presented was as much constructed by the emperor's subjects in the periphery of the empire as it was directed by him from the imperial metropole (Price 1984:205, 232-3). The willingness of the emperor's subjects to contribute their resources to his glorification must be understood at least partially in terms of their own perceptions of their identity and interests. As noted above, the conspicuous exploitation of resources to honor the emperor was one means through which communities and their leaders competed among themselves for distinction. The use of media to ascribe power to the emperor was also a means both of appealing to the emperor and conferring upon him the power to intervene as protector and benefactor (Price 1984:174-5), as illustrated ex- plicitly in the following inscription:

Since in accordance with the joint prayers of the whole world the most divine and most pious emperor Titus Aelius Antoninus by taking over the kingdom given him by his divine father preserves the whole human race . . . has particularly promoted the stand- ing of our city (Price 1984:57).

In other words, the use of the public media to glorify the emperor was a means to simultaneously empower a patron while appealing to him. Thus, the char- acteristic depictions of the Roman emperor resulted from a coincidence of perceived interests between him and his subjects (Price 1984:66, 74, 75, 171, 235-9, 241-2). The ancient media provided a more or less uniform language, as it were, and a conventionally styled common symbolic vocabulary in which emperor and subjects could express their shared perception of their rela- tionship. But the point of the message conveyed through this common lan- guage and vocabulary emphasized not so much a relationship among subjects as that between subject and ruler. It was to this end that both parties empha- sized the associations with wealth, power, and public authority inherent in the ancient media for mass communication.

Insofar as even the Roman emperor could be said to have had a mass following, then, it was largely mediated through local communities and their leadership, and reflected their concerns both to enhance their own status and secure the emperor's patronage. Of course, nationalist movements also have heroes to whom their followers turn for protection and assistance, but the perceived relationship between these heroes and their followers is very differ- ent from that between the Roman emperor and his subjects, and rests on a very different basis. Take, for example, the following expression of loyalty to Simon Kimbangu, martyred hero of Congolese nationalism:

1. Who is Mfumu S. K. in the first person? ANSWER: Mfumu S. K. is the executor, he who realizes the revelation through the

words of grace, through the words of power and through the words of miracles, he is the one who realizes the blessing. He is the one in whom lives the Lord God, the gracious father of the blacks.

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650 GARY B. MILES

4. Who is Mfumu S. K. in the fourth person? ANSWER: Mfumu S. K. is the sacred scepter of dominion, which the Lord God has

given to the black race that it may have dominion through it. He is the ruler's rod of the blacks. 1

These words make clear that Simon Kimbangu is important to his venerators not simply because he was believed to be personally powerful, but specifically as a champion of the black people. Indeed, inasmuch as the Simon Kimbangu on behalf of whom this declaration of faith was made was dead, the charac- terization of him here may be understood as a symbolic affirmation of the determination and potential of the black race whom he represented.

The kinds of oaths that inhabitants of the Roman empire swore to their

emperors are significantly different. The following is an example, an oath taken to Augustus by residents of Gangra in Paphlagonia in 3 B.C.:

I swear by Zeus, Ge, Helios, and all gods and goddesses and by Augustus himself that I will be loyal to Caesar Augustus and to his children and descendants all the days of my life in word, deed and mind, accounting as friends whomsoever they account friends and regarding as personal enemies (EXOQot) whomsoever they judge to be such, and that on their behalf I will spare neither spirit nor life nor children, but that in every way I will endure every danger in their interest. Whatsoever I may learn or hear that is said or planned or done adverse to them, that I will reveal, and I will be a personal enemy of any one who says, plans or does any such thing. Whomsoever they judge to be their personal enemies, them I will pursue and resist by land and sea with arms and iron. But if I should infringe this oath or not act in accordance with its terms, I invoke on myself and on my body, spirit, life, children and my line and whole race and interest utter and total destruction down to the last of my line and all who descend from me, and may the bodies of my family or issue not be received by land or sea nor enjoy their fruits (Brunt and Moore 1970:67-68).

What is striking here is the direct, even aggressively personal terms in which the relationship between emperor and subject is conceived. The oath is made on the authority of the gods and goddess, but even they are subsequently displaced by the authority of the emperor Augustus himself. Beyond the

participants' direct families and descendants, there is no sense of any larger community-not even Rome is mentioned. It is as though the relationship between emperor artd subject were established in a virtual vacuum. This oath, like the physical media through which the image of the emperor was created, implies a relationship of dominance and subordination based only on power and the immediate, very restricted interests of subject and ruler. The oath and the media discussed here were vehicles for the exchange of power between ruler and subjects, not for the diffusion of power among subjects; but even mass representations of the Roman emperor, it must be remembered, were an

1 From E. Anderson, Messianic Popular Movements in the Lower Congo (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksell [Studia Ehtnographica Upsallensia 14], 1958), 134-6, cited in Kedourie (1971: 472-3).

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essentially urban phenomenon: The great majority of Romans and of Roman subjects who lived in country villages or on isolated farms passed most of their lives beyond the reach even of imperial propaganda (Price 1984:21, 62- 64, 93; Stuart 1939; Garnsey and Saller 1987:192-5).

Among Roman subjects there were, to be sure, occasional efforts, besides the kinds of political alliances I have mentioned above, to transcend tradi- tional local and ethnic loyalties, to bypass the intermediacy of established local leadership. Modem scholars, like ancient Roman commentators, often deny a political motive to Roman suppression of the Druids. 2 That should not blind us to the likelihood that a major function of Druidism was political (Chadwick 1966:96-102) and provided a means to reach across traditional tribal lines separating Gallic tribes, thereby achieving some degree of unity against the common Roman enemy. The studies of "primary resistance" in central and east Africa by Terence Ranger describe religious movements performing precisely that function (Ranger 1968:pt. 1, 2). Similarly, the self- proclaimed divinity of Eunus, the leader of a Sicilian slave revolt of 133 B.C., or the political program of Aristonicus, who led a similar uprising in Per- gamum about the same time, may be understood as efforts to unite and achieve a legitimate leadership claim over socially and ethnically diverse bodies of followers lacking their own political organization. But without an ideology of nationalism and the resources of modem mass transportation and communication to bring together disparate groups and to forge a common identity among them, such isolated examples of untraditional leadership were insufficient to sustain deep-rooted and lasting opposition to Roman rule. Neither Eunus in Sicily, nor Aristonicus in Pergamum, nor the Druids in Gaul left successors to take their places.

ROMAN MIGHT AND ROMAN POLICY: LACK OF SOLIDARITY

The very circumstances-ideological, political, and technological-that mili- tated against the development of divisive nationalist tendencies within the Roman Empire also contributed to its own ultimate weakness: its lack of solidarity in the face of both the barbarian incursions of the third century A.D. and the more serious invasions during the fourth and fifth centuries. The unity of the Roman Empire depended in large measure on a mutually advantageous exchange of power and prestige between the metropole and the local aristocra- cies of urban centers in the periphery. Because Rome had neither a nationalist ideology of its own nor a policy of excluding provincials from equal participa- tion in the government and administration of empire, the Empire was able to

12 Among the ancient authors, for example, contrast Strabo, Geography, 4.4.5 (implicitly), with Tacitus, Histories 4.17-18 and 4.54; among modem authors, contrast Last (1949) with Chadwick (1966:96-102) and, more recently, Garnsey and Saller (1987:169), who take the position that "the essential explanation [for Roman suppression of the Druids] is political."

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provide a political structure and a symbolic system by which urban centers and their leaders in the periphery could enhance their own status in exchange for directing provincial resources towards the metropole. This exchange de- pended in part upon Roman might and policy, and Rome's ability and willing- ness to protect and advance the interests of local elites who served as inter- mediaries between the metropole and the vast majority of its subjects. Roman culture in its broadest context played an important role in this exchange of benefits. Its adoption was useful in two ways: First, in a practical sense, it facilitated communication between the inhabitants of the periphery and the larger "civilized" world that Rome controlled, especially between the inhabi- tants of the periphery and the imperial metropole; second, in a symbolic context, its adoption in the periphery constituted an acknowledgment of Rome's preeminence. At the same time, it offered a highly visible means to local aristocracies by which they could advertise the three essential bases of their status: their wealth, local influence, and privileged relationship with Rome.

The role of Greek and Latin, the linguistic koines of the Roman world, should be understood in this context. It has been plausibly argued that the development of print vernaculars (made possible by the printing press and driven by a capitalistic desire to expand the market for mass print beyond the small upper class of Latin readers) played a critical role in the formation of the first expressions of nationalism in Europe: The existence of a common print dialect served to define a community of readers who had previously been separated by differences in spoken dialects (Anderson 1983:41-42, 45-47, 122). This function was not performed by Latin, it has been argued, because that was the language of official, externally imposed authority and served to emphasize social stratification and hierarchy, rather than community of in- terests and identity (Anderson 1983:40, 46-47). It is reasonable to suppose that Latin in the west and Greek in the east performed the same function in Roman antiquity. There is ample evidence that they never displaced local languages (Jones 1964:991-7; Brunt 1976:170-2; Holl 1908); rather, their use was the prerogative of the social and economic elite, to be exploited as a means to enhance and display status. Thus, participation in the cultural koines of the ancient world no more led to a single national identity than does participation in the koines of English language and European manners among international businessmen today-in some ways even less so, because the cultural koines of the Roman world served more directly and explicitly to emphasize ties between individual cities and Urbs Roma, the center of the Empire, than connections among populations in the periphery.

The nature of ancient mass media was particularly well-suited to facilitate this kind of symbolic exchange: Because they were costly, could only be utilized in highly public settings, and their use implied official sanction, the media attested to the wealth and influence of the individuals and communities

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who deployed them, even as they proclaimed-either directly or implicitly, by imitation-the preeminence of the metropole. This aspect of ancient mass media and their role places in high relief a particular limitation of the general tendency to make Rome and individual cities in the periphery into the twin focuses of Roman identity and loyalty; for in the very process of strengthening ties between itself and the ruling aristocracies of individual provincial cities, Rome ran the risk of exacerbating divisions within the Empire and those between aristocrat and nonaristocrat within communities. While the over- reaching power of Urbs Roma and the emperor placed a limit on competitive impulses within the Empire, they also provided models that validated commu- nity and personal ambition.

The cult of the Roman emperor in the Greek east, for example, appears to have had a distinct, regional character; moreover, its distribution exclusively among the more organized communities there served to sharpen a traditional contrast between Hellenized and barbarian peoples. Competition for regional precedence in emperor worship was one way in which the Hellenized commu- nities expressed their relative importance to each other; and, as noted above, the sponsorship of imperial celebrations, statues, and the like was used by local aristocrats as a means of distinguishing themselves within their commu- nities (Price 1984:ch. 4). Similarly, it has been argued that the praise for Rome and the Romans in Greek literature was perceived by its authors as one of the means by which to win advantages for their specific communities (Crawford 1978). In any event, that praise is chiefly concerned with the protection and encouragement (occasionally with the example) that Rome provided for the ascendancy of aristocratic Greek culture and society. Unless Roman culture served those ends, the Greeks reacted to it with indifference or superiority (Gabba 1982; Nutton 1978). The local adaptation of institutions and culture from the Roman metropole, therefore, tended to produce not a single uniform Roman culture, but rather a series of regional and local hybrids, each of which combined Roman and native elements in a distinct way (Sherwin-White 1973:402-17; Garsey and Saller 1987:12-19, 178). Seen from the perspective of urban centers in the periphery, then, the rela- tionship with Rome was valued at least as much-if not more-because it offered opportunities for local self-assertion and local distinction and because it offered membership in a larger community.

During the later Empire several far-reaching changes led to a gradual strengthening of local identities at the expense of ties to the central govern- ment. One concerns the Roman army. Considerable numbers of the Roman army were settled in frontier garrisons that gradually became self-perpetuating communities as legionaries married local women and legionary sons replaced their fathers in the garrison. Thus, the army became less effective than it had been earlier in providing upward mobility for native peoples and the integra- tion of some of them into the political structure of the government (Garsey

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and Sailer 1987:194). At the same time, the army's own allegiance to central authority became increasingly tenuous, while its local identity and allegiance grew. Garrisons might fight energetically in defense of their own territory, but they were not effective in defense of larger territories. Typically, once invad- ing barbarians breached the Roman border garrisons, they were able to move virtually unopposed through the interiors of Roman territories.

Other changes undermined the loyalty to Rome of local aristocrats, the middle men on whom the empire depended. The political chaos of the third century and its remedies significantly increased the cost of maintaining the empire. Armies became accustomed to expect ever increasing bonuses, and emperors paid them in order to secure accession to power. The reorganization of the army and the division of the empire initiated by the emperor Diocletian in A.D. 286 meant more soldiers to equip and pay, more capitals to maintain (not only Rome and Diocletian's Nicomedia, but later Constantinople and imperial residences elsewhere in the Empire), and an increasingly extravagant cere- monial to support. Difficulties in extracting the taxes to finance these new expenses encouraged the growth of a bureaucracy that added its own costs to the imperial budget. Local aristocrats, charged with transmitting revenues from their cities and the territories controlled by them, were caught between an increasingly hard-pressed peasantry and an increasingly importunate central administration. They began to falter in performance of those local services that had traditionally been the basis for special privilege and power in their commu- nities. From the middle of the third century on, agents of the emperor were called on more and more frequently to carry out the acts of civic patronage once

performed by local aristocrats. Inscriptions honoring the imperial agents came to replace those paying homage to local officials for whom the price of

supporting their privileged postion had become too great (Nutton 1978:219- 21). The interference of imperial administrators can only have aggravated the dilemma of the local aristocrat who, now in straitened circumstances, found himself in an unequal competition for honor with the emperor (Jones 1964:757-60).

Roman aristocrats, even if they had been familiar with an ideology of nationalism or with examples of nationalist independence movements, were unlikely to have responded to the deterioration of their position by attempting to form new translocal communities. Neither alienated from their local com- munities nor denied access to the life of the metropole, they had other, more direct alternatives available to them. They might simply decline to accept public offices in their communities, although this left them vulnerable to administrative coercion. A more effective device for those of sufficient wealth was, paradoxically, to advance further up the hierarchy of imperial govern- ment, where they would be exempt from local responsibilities, and their influence, both formal and informal, would afford them additional protection and privilege. During the later Empire, laws were passed that aimed to control

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this defection by requiring that local aristocrats hold the offices for which they qualified unless they left sons to hold them in their steads, but these laws provided no solution. Those who made their way into the growing bureaucra- cy of the Roman government extended their patronage to those beneath them, increasing their own power even as they diverted resources from Rome to their own service (Jones 1964:535-52, 775-8; MacMullen 1988:122-97).

This movement up the governmental hierarchy did not mean an increasing identification with "Rome" and an abandonment of local ties and identity. It did not, for example, result in the pattern of a culturally uniform aristocracy ruling over a series of culturally diverse local communities as Gellner's type of the agrarian state may suggest (Gellner 1983:16). For one thing, despite a small core of old families in the west who claimed descent from Senatorial families of the Republican era, "the aristocracy as it expanded became more and more mixed in its social and geographical and racial origins" (Jones 1964:545). For this reason and because of the low self-replacement rate among Roman Senatorial families noted above, the Roman aristocracy as a whole was decreasingly able to maintain the long family traditions and dense webs of interconnection through marriage ties that would have led to a strong sense of class solidarity (Garnsey and Saller 1987:123, 129). In fact, the early empire saw a shift in nomenclature among aristocrats from one that recog- nized only male lines of relation to one that recognized relations through female lines, as well-an acknowledgement that nobility now depended on broader, more diffuse family connections than it had previously (Garnsey and Saller 1987:127-9, 141-2).

More important, the qualification for advancement in Roman government was wealth, and was principally measured in land. Even those who initially acquired wealth through some other means were quick to invest it in land, so that the highest Roman officials were by definition the largest landowners (Garnsey and Saller 1987:65-67). Thus the sources of their power were rooted, as it were, in specific localities; and these continued to be a focus of their loyalties. It is revealing that Roman Senators had eventually to be re- quired to own land and maintain residences in Italy, as well as in their native territories (Garsey and Saller 1987:66). It is clear, also, that high officials in the Roman government used the influence and privilege of their positions to protect their local interests. This does not necessarily mean that they retreated into self-sufficiency, but it does mean that they sought to avoid the impositions of the central Roman government through strategies such as "tied" economies and gift exchange (Whittaker 1983). The essential focus of their interests, loyalties, and energies remained local, as they had always been, only now they were becoming increasingly detached from service to the Roman state.

After the initial shock of barbarian incursion in the fifth century, the sepa- rate localities of the Roman Empire passed rather easily into barbarian hands. Landlords continued to manage their properties; peasants worked the land;

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and members of the imperial bureaucracy fulfilled their functions-only now in the service of barbarian tribes and chieftains rather than of Roman emperors (Brunt 1965:277; Goffart 1980). For many of these Romans, the change was probably not much felt. Life at the local level went on much as before, and local identity, only nominally submerged under Roman rule, asserted its pre- eminence again. When Gaul slipped from Roman control in the fifth century, the name of its Roman capital, Lutetia Parisiorum (the city of Lutetia of the tribe Parisii), was simplified not to its Roman city name (Lutetia but to the name of the tribe in whose territory it was situated (Parisii). Augusta Tre- verorum is known to us today from its tribal identification as Trier, not from its Roman city name, Augusta.

M. I. Finley observed that, with Caracalla's extension of citizenship to all of its free inhabitants, "what we call the Roman Empire had ceased to be an empire" and had become instead, "a single unitary territorial state" (Finley 1978:2, 14). But it did not become a nation in either of the two common senses of that term (Gellner 1983:7). It did not become a single, uniform culture shared by all of its members; rather, it embraced a number of distinct local cultures governed by a small aristocracy, most of its members being only partially Romanized, with deep local roots flourishing beneath the veneer of a common identity as a class (Sherwin-White 1973:415; Garnsey and Saller 1987:12-19, 178). It seems doubtful, also, that the Roman Empire ever became a nation even in the more limited sense of a people who perceived themselves and each other all to be members of a single shared community (Anderson 1983:15-16). Although these various circumstances-the absence of a model of national identity for Roman subjects, Rome's heavy reliance on local elites for administration, and the paucity of resources for communication outside traditional lines of authority-minimized sources of conflict within the empire, they also limited the formation of a larger, national identity and solidarity.

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