466 Parshia Lee-Stecum
senators from other Eastern communities, and Egyptians generally remain the epitome
of the outlandish other in Roman elite texts (Hammond 1957: 79). The boundaries of
elite ethnicity may have been moveable and contestable, but, as these cases show, they
continued to play an important part in Roman aristocratic self-identity. Nor were all
locations within the boundary invested with equal sociopolitical prestige. Inge Mennen
argues that the families that figure most often in positions of “power and status”
in the third centuryCEwere predominantly associated with Italian origins, and that
these families formed a “nucleus” within the broader senatorial elite (Mennen 2011:
64–5). Some provincial newcomers to the Roman elite may have already identified
themselves and their families as ethnically Italian. The citizens of Romano–Italian
colonies, or Italian settlers in provinces (such as the family of Hadrian), may have
nurtured persistent Romano–Italian identities and distinguished themselves from other
sections of the local population. In such cases, being of “North African” origin might
still accommodate a deeply seated Romano–Italian self-identity, even if those African
origins could be activated in the tactical discourse of sociopolitical competition. For
some other aristocratic families, Italian descent may have been adopted or constructed in
the same way that earlier republican aristocrats constructed divine, mythic, and localized
ethnic origins for their families. Requirements in place by the second century CE that all
senators must own Italian land may have further encouraged and facilitated identification
with Italy. However, this only demonstrates that the increased ethnic diversification of
the elite did not erode the potency of ethnicity generally, or the value of traditional
Romano–Italian origins specifically, within the nuanced gradations of senatorial prestige
and power.
Conclusion: Mappa Imperii
The ethnic affiliations of the Roman elite never presented an authentic or accurate
ethnographic map of empire, but bolstered a model of elite strength constituted from
a diverse range of communities, regions, and ethnicities. This accorded well with the
wider ideology of Roman strength modeled in the myth of Romulus’ asylum. The
multiplication of elite ethnicities was far more gradual, contested, and formalized than
the mythic asylum, yet both models might support a similar imperialist ideology of
exploitation and accommodation (Lee-Stecum 2008: 71–9). If the ethnic expansion
of the senatorial elite did not correspond exactly to the diversity of Rome’s imperial
domain, it nevertheless echoed the expansion and consolidation of imperial power,
and has parallels in other expressions of imperial growth. Thepomerium, the sacred
boundary of Rome, was redrawn on occasion to accommodate each time a larger area
of the city. The reasons, and even the timing, of such occasions are not always certain,
but Roman sources suggest that a relationship to the expansion of Roman territory
was usually expected (Tacitus,Annals12.23–4). Augustus and Claudius both appear
to have extended the area enclosed within thepomerium(the second of these in 49
CE, the year following Claudius’ speech and the opening of the Senate to citizens of
Gallia Comata). Both emperors also boast prominently of their additions to Roman
territory as demonstrations of the legitimacy of their power and position. In Claudius’
case at least, the connection between imperial expansion and the extension of the