220 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
rustics stood out from other members of the congregations of, respectively,
John Chrysostom and Augustine.^28 In what follows, we treat city and
country as distinct categories for purposes of analysis.
Some cultural penetration of the countryside was inevitable. Peasants
were brought into contact with Roman infl uences through taxation,
conscription, money, cults, rural markets, customs stations, and itinerant
soldiers and civilian offi cials. But their commitment to the vernacular
languages and their native customs in general remained fi rm. In the Danubian
provinces of Pannonia and Upper Moesia, the ‘archaeologically and
epigraphically traceable’ sector of the tribal communities (the more
prosperous members) betray their origins in their wagon graves and tumuli
(which are much more widespread in the Roman period than previously),
tombstone sculpture (depicting local costume and astral symbolism) and
funerary inscriptions, on which Celtic, Illyrian (Pannonian) and Thracian
names abound. The very act of setting up an inscribed stone, and the use of
Latin, even if it is bad or rudimentary Latin, are manifestations of Roman
cultural infl uence. But this is not to say very much, especially when it is
borne in mind that the inscriptions are heavily concentrated in the
comparatively few urban centres of the provinces concerned, in the frontier
areas and along the main roads. As for the wide dispersion of local burial
customs in the Roman period, this is a refl ection not of Roman cultural
infl uence, but of the political achievement of the imperial power in imposing
settled conditions in a frontier area. When suddenly at the end of the second
century, Romanization did make something of a breakthrough in the
Danubian provinces in response to the enhanced political importance of
the region, it was colourless, shallow- rooted and ephemeral.^29
Latin received the same kind of token recognition from inhabitants of the
pre- desert zone in Tripolitania, who transliterated their Punic into Latin for
epigraphic purposes, as from the Pannonian and Moesian tribesmen. Closer
to the coast, at El-Amronni in the south- west Gefara, a prosperous farmer
laid claim to Roman citizen status in his funerary inscription of uncertain
date, when he recorded his name as Q. Apuleius Maxssimus (everyday name,
Rideus), but the names of his father (Iuzale), grandfather (Iurath) and wife
(Thanubra) were Libyan, and beside his inscription his heirs provided a neo-
Punic version. Romanization in his case was at best skin- deep, and that of
his sons (who bear stock Latin names) no different, unless they had emigrated
to the city (Gigthis and Sabratha were the least remote). Some Latin had
crept into the vocabulary of the countryfolk around St. Augustine’s see of
Hippo Regius. The word salus in their usage was heavy with religious
symbolism, since it combined the Latin ‘salvation’ with the Punic ‘three’
(compare the Hebrew, shalosh ). But these peasants were still Punic- speakers,
six centuries after the Roman conquest.^30
The degree to which rural areas were Romanized was severely circumscribed
by the character of Roman imperial policy, and the nature and limited extent
of the contact that was deemed necessary between Rome’s representatives