CONCLUSION 235of Roman religion, particularly in the urban environment, the main area of
imperial/local confrontation. However, religious transformation was on the
whole the product of long- term peaceful penetration rather than coercion.
Unless their moral sensibilities were outraged, as in the extreme case of
human sacrifi ce, the Romans intervened with force only against cults and
priesthoods held to be politically subversive. Political considerations led
some of Rome’s rulers (Caesar, Augustus, Claudius) to favour the Jews, and
others (Vespasian, Titus, Hadrian) to repress them. Christianity, identifi ed as
a subversive force but not regarded as dangerous, was the main benefi ciary
of the Roman government’s passive acceptance of innovation, the licence it
gave to the individual to follow his own religious preferences. Emperors did
not ‘tolerate’ Christianity, they looked the other way. Christianity was
offi cially tolerated only in the aftermath of offi cial persecution, and there
was none in the period of the Principate.
Rome the imperial capital felt the full impact of the ensuing changes at all
levels when monarchy emerged out of the wreckage of the Republic. In the
realm of culture, emperors looked to writers, artists, educators and
philosophers, and to their own clients in particular, to promote or at least
not undermine the imperial regime and its values. The results are visible in
the poetry of Virgil and Horace and the oratory of Pliny, the fates of Ovid,
Demetrius the Cynic and Helvidius Priscus the Stoic, the burning of the
books of T. Labienus, the career of Quintilian the professor of rhetoric and
the overt use of offi cial art as propaganda. But the history of literature,
education or architecture cannot be reduced to a study of the personal
preferences and relationships of emperors.
Roman emperors lacked any grand design to spread the culture of Rome
through the empire. Romanization, better described as the fusion of imperial
and local institutions and cultures, was the joint product of central
government actions and local initiatives. In the West, a crucial factor was the
incidence and depth of urbanization. In African, Spanish and Gallic cities, a
Roman- style educational system produced men of culture, many of the most
able and ambitious of whom moved to Rome to pursue literary, forensic and
political careers. The career of Apuleius, who wrote Latin literature from a
provincial base, is one indicator of the special vitality of Romano-African
civilization in the latter part of our period – to be set alongside, for example,
the brilliant innovations of African mosaicists.
What were the limits of Romanization? The position of Hellenic culture
in the East provides a useful parallel. This was predominantly a civic culture.
It made little impact on the indigenous cultures of the countryside. Moreover,
its advance was resisted by the unique and durable Jewish, Egyptian and
Oriental cultures, and by the resilient native traditions of Phoenicia. Finally,
the Greek world proved susceptible in a limited way to Roman cultural
infl uence. In the western provinces Rome was the dominant but far from
ubiquitous cultural infl uence. Roman cultural hegemony was exercised
principally in the cities and their immediate hinterlands. The possession of