CULTURE 221abroad and the subject peoples. The elitist and town- centred character of
Roman civilization have been recurrent themes of this book. There was no
mission civilisatrice undertaken in the interests of the mass of the subject
population. Agricola’s conduct as governor of Britain is symptomatic (Tacitus,
Agr. 19–21). His aims did not include the imposition of the Roman educational
system on Britons of all classes. This would not have been a practical
proposition in Britain or anywhere else. In any case, Agricola would not have
believed in it. His civilizing efforts were aimed exclusively at British chieftains
and their sons: it was they who were led to live a comfortable urban life,
receive a Roman education and adopt Roman customs. He had no programme
for ordinary Britons, in town or country, beyond administering justice
equitably, moderating requests for taxes, supplies and military manpower,
and maintaining a close supervision through the army. In brief, if rural
populations gave no trouble and fulfi lled their essential obligations, then the
imperial administration was content to leave them in peace.
The army, where it existed in substantial numbers, was arguably the main
offi cial instrument of rural Romanization, to the extent that it ‘recycled’
peasants after exposing them to the dominant culture. There was, however,
a growing tendency for the army to recruit from soldiers’ families ‘in the
camp’, and to form a closed order, cut off from both the local population
and the rest of provincial society.^31
The local elites were potential disseminators of Roman culture beyond
the city boundaries. They, if anyone, were in contact with the mass of Rome’s
subjects, that is, the inhabitants of the countryside, in their capacities as
landlords and employers of labour, patrons, creditors and representatives of
urban authority. An index of the Romanization of British or Gallic chieftains
was the replacement of timber huts, circular or rectangular, by stone- founded
corridor villas, increasingly improved with baths, underfl oor heating and
mosaics. These Roman- style country- houses signalled their owner’s
allegiance to the new order and pointed to their enhanced status within it.^32
By the same token, the villa symbolised the accentuation under Roman
infl uence of the social divisions that were present in pre- conquest provincial
society. The possession of Roman culture was seen and valued by the local
elite as an additional criterion of social superiority. They had no more
interest than central government offi cials in transforming the style of life of
the mass of the population. It is symptomatic of this attitude that villas and
native farmsteads coexisted in south and south- east Britain, a relatively
Romanized rural area. The indigenous settlements were subordinate to or
formed part of the villa estates. Their survival implies that the material
culture of their occupants had not changed pari passu with the transformation
of their social and economic relationships with the villa proprietors.^33
In addition, villas were not everywhere: whether in Britain, Gallia Belgica,
Mauretania Caesariensis or Tripolitania, they occupied the inner ring of a
city’s rural territory. Beyond, rural life continued relatively undisturbed, and
retained its traditional character.