The Oxford History Of The Classical World

There was also the pressing need to channel into legitimate forms of expression the social tensions which, left unchannelled, could have destroyed civic life. Life in
the ancient world did not possess the measured regularities of modern times- office hours and working weeks, factory shifts and teaching days, time-tabled transport,
deep-frozen food stocks, and regulated prices; not to mention the instant communication of verbal and visual information (what did the Emperor even look like?),
and a mode of political organization designed to promote class and economic interests by systematic process of election, discussion, and legislation. Ancient social
life was more discontinuous, the role of government more passive and intermittent. Through provincial councils focused on the imperial cult, cities could
periodically exchange views and explore their common interests, if necessary send an embassy to press their case before the Emperor; but for most of the time they
lived separate lives, as often inclined to seize advantage over their neighbours as to co-operate with them. Disputes about provincial primacy, as between Ephesus
and Smyrna, Nicaea and Nicomedia, or local economic rivalries, as between Lyon and Vienne, could impinge on the imperial administration because they led to
disorder. They might occasionally affect the course of a civil war or campaign for the imperial throne by a pretender, a situation in which a mistaken judgement
might lead a city into the need to make an expensive apology (or worse), but in which a correct one could enhance the status of a community and enrich those
leading members who had guided its choice.