234 CONCLUSION
Given the high rates of parental mortality, extended kinship links and
personal reciprocal exchange relationships outside the family assume
considerable importance. The latter fall into three main categories: patron/
client, patron/protégé (or superior/inferior friends) and equal friends. The
emperor was patron to individuals with access to him and to the army and
the plebs of Rome in general. Far from trying to eradicate traditional
patronage relationships, emperors encouraged their continuation, in part
because they were the main mechanism for the recruitment of new members
of the imperial elite. A development of the Principate was the wider extension
of patronage relationships encompassing the provinces, where imperial
offi cials and successful provincials acted as patronal mediators for the
younger generation of potential Roman aristocrats. Vertical patronal links
also embraced the ‘respectable’ sections of the plebs and their social clubs or
collegia (which provided mutual assistance for their memberships), but
bypassed the unemployed and underemployed poor. Nevertheless, the
extensiveness of the patronage network was a powerful force for social
cohesion.
IV
The religious history of the Principate revolves around three main themes:
the stability of the offi cial religion, the confrontation of offi cial and
indigenous gods and cults in the localities, and the rise of Christianity. Rome
as the increasingly cosmopolitan capital of a vast empire was ever more
accessible to religious infl uences from abroad. Augustus was a religious
conservative, as were some of his successors and the senatorial aristocracy
as a whole. However, even emperors who were devotees of foreign, especially
Egyptian, deities (for example, the Flavians) drew a fi rm line between their
personal religious preferences and the public religion of Rome. Until the
early third century no new gods were admitted into the Roman Pantheon
with the exception of the Deifi ed Emperors, whose admission was a natural
outcome of the transition to monarchy. The admission of Isis and Serapis by
Caracalla is an important innovation to imperial tradition, refl ecting the
Severan dynasty’s more elevated view of its religious and political status. For
much of our period, however, the commitment of emperors to a changeless
state religion which projected an image of stability was unqualifi ed.
The ruler cult was the only Roman cult to become more or less universal.
It served three main functions: the diffusion of imperial ideology, the
focusing of the loyalty of subjects on the emperor and the social and political
advancement of those provincials who presided over its operation. In
addition, the western provinces were invaded by the traditional Roman
gods, especially the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno and Minerva), with
which emperors and the ruler cult were closely associated. Indigenous
religions disintegrated, were simplifi ed and reinterpreted under the impact