A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean

Roman Elite Ethnicity 467

pomeriumis explicit. The inscription on the boundary stones marking Claudius’ new
pomeriumreads:

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, son of Drusus, pontifex maximus, with

tribunician power for the ninth time, imperator for the sixteenth time, consul for the fourth,

censor, father of the fatherland, after the boundaries of the Roman people were expanded,

has extended and delimited thepomerium.CIL6.31537a (see Osgood 2010: 161)

It may only be coincidental that these twoprincipesalso admitted senators from new
regions and peoples (as did Tiberius, who does not appear to have been concerned to
move thepomerium). Yet, the two acts may be ideologically analogous. If understood,
in part, as a gesture of imperial expansion, the inclusion in Claudius’ speech of reference
to his conquest of Britannia may not be the clumsy, digressive boast it might otherwise
appear (Osgood 2010: 166).
Gestures of this sort may have become even more significant as opportunities to expand
the territorial boundaries of Rome became fewer. As the Roman elite drew on, incor-
porated, and grew from the ethnic as well as sociopolitical capital of the provinces,
traditional themes of aristocratic and imperial ideology were reinforced. The ethnicities
of the Roman elite embodied and expressed empire, and this worked to legitimize and
renew elite power and status. It is this that underlies Claudius’ argument to the Senate
and, through inscription in places such as Lugdunum, to the people of the empire.

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