CULTURE 223the other major capitals, the visual and material parameters that defi ned urban
identity in the imperial metropoleis drew on a multiplicity of styles and forms that
defi ned the empire itself, well beyond Greek and Italic precedents into Egypt, the
East and the West (Elsner 2006).
The emergence of new identities and new styles of public and private life in the
west did differ in that it more often took place within the framework of political
institutions imposed by Rome and based (if only loosely) on Italian and Roman
models (Dondin-Payre and Raepsaet-Charlier 1999, Rüpke 2006). The contrasts can
be exaggerated. There were new Roman style civic constitutions in parts of Asia
Minor and a scatter of Roman colonies east of the Aegean (Mitchell 1993, Salmeri,
Raggi, and Baroni 2004). Elsewhere, notably in Egypt and Greece, local urban forms
were rapidly transformed under Roman rule without becoming very similar to
Italian forms (Bowman and Rathbone 1992, Spawforth 2012). Equally some western
cities had ancient Punic or Greek roots and there was no centralized attempt to erase
local traditions. But general trends can be discerned such as the construction of
theatres and amphitheatres, the organization of local festivals around the cult of the
emperors and the growing popularity of gladiatorial games. During the second
century AD there is increasing evidence for gladiatorial games in the East and athletic
agones in the West, Greek rhetoric enjoyed some status in the larger western cities
(and Latin rhetoric in Africa and Gaul rose to impressive heights by late antiquity)
and western styles of bathing were provided for in great monumental complexes in
major Greek cities such as Ephesus and Sardis, supplied by aqueducts and constructed
using technologies developed in central Italy (Robert 1940, König 2005, Newby
2005, Yegul 1992). The ubiquity of the monumental imprints of civic life – roads,
aqueducts, baths, theatres, amphitheatres, temples, fora , colonnaded streets, honorifi c
statuary, public inscriptions – are signs of a common culture in a single if multi-
lingual and multi- cultural imperium. The parallelisms of villa structures and their
decoration (mosaics, sculpture, etc.) in elite private life attest to a similar aspiration
to a common culture in the dominant elites across the empire (Hales 2003).
Differences always remained but there are clear signs of a common set of cultural
norms, and also that these extended some way beyond the elites.
There are few long epigraphic documents from the western provinces, and much
less literature was composed in Latin: as a consequence we know less about the
strength of local identities and traditions in these parts of the empire (Derks and
Roymans 2009). It is evident from the archaeology of north Africa, Iberia and
southern Gaul (and to a lesser extent from that of Britain, the Gallic and German
provinces and those of the Danubian frontier) that a broad conformity to new styles
of dress, dining and architecture emerged. But it is not possible to show that those
who made these choices and paid for them, thought of themselves as thereby
acquiring a Roman identity, or even Gallo-Roman, Romano-British identities and
the like. For these reasons, and others, the idea of Romanization is now less and less
employed (Woolf 1998, Le Roux 2004, Mattingly 2004, Janniard and Traina 2006).
More probably those that could, felt they were approximating to notions of civilized
behaviour that were generalized in the empire as a whole. Such models of what was
culturally normative as a buy- in for elites across the empire allowed much space also
for cultural dissonance (rather than anything so simple as resistance) by religious,
local and ethnic minorities and by those outside the elite – but also the possibility for
appearing to conform where useful or necessary. Romanitas fi rst appears in a
Christian text composed around AD 200, and even those Latin texts like Pliny’s