undertook the construction of subsidiary roads, way-stations, and bridges. Of the latter, the most 'stupendous' (Gibbon's word), and certainly from a historical point
of view one of the most interesting, is the bridge over the river Tagus at Alcantara in western Spain, standing high over the river to accommodate winter spate and
built, as an inscription shows, by the co-operative efforts of eleven Lusitanian communities. The name of its builder, C. Julius Lacer, appears in another inscription
attached to the shrine of Trajan at the bridge; his achievement, he there declared with a totally justified pride, would 'last for ever through the ages'.
Along the roads of the Empire and across the pacified seas, the Emperor sent his emissaries, confident that, whatever diversities of culture and language they
traversed, they would be understood by those to whom they were sent. In turn, and perhaps still more to the point, provincial communities could dispatch envoys to
the Roman government with a similar confidence that, within the normal limits of human "will and energy and with only a small allowance for misadventure, they
would reach their destination; knowing too that within the mode of communication established by Greco-Roman culture and maintained by the educated elite, their
petitions would be understood. Such embassies, undertaken by leading citizens on behalf of their communities, are among the best-attested civic functions of Roman
society. They reveal vividly the sheer physical movement required of subject as well as of Emperor in the administration of the Empire and show how this too was,
from the point of view of the communities themselves, an expression of their social structure; for the ambassadors, filling their role as a social duty and deploying in
its service the classical education which marked them out as members of the elite of their cities, returned (if successful) as the benefactors and patrons of their cities,
leaving an enhanced prestige for their sons to inherit and, in their turn, surpass.
As all this implies, the comprehension of the Roman Empire as a rational social organization involves a marked simplification of its actual nature-a simplification in
which the emperors themselves and the leaders of local communities concurred, for it reinforced their power over outsiders and the less favoured classes. Celtic
might still be spoken in Gaul and Britain, Aramaic in the Levant, demotic in Egypt, Libyan in large areas of north Africa, and who knows what in the remoter parts
of Asia Minor; but all could be reached in one of two major languages. However diverse the physical nature of the communities of the Empire, they could be defined
in terms of one civic status or another (colonia, municipium, uicus, castellum) and their inhabitants' status described in terms of Roman law, even if the actual law to
which they were subject in minor matters was based on local practice and custom, administered by local magistrates. On major matters and before the Roman
governor, no such concessions were envisaged. Pliny the Younger, encountering Christians in a town of Pontus, consulted Trajan on certain matters of legal
procedure and social status, and on the question of anonymous denunciations posted in public places. In cases of admitted Christians of low social status, he had no
hesitation in ordering immediate execution and was apparently prepared to treat 'pertinacious obstinacy' as a punishable offence. Pliny noted to Trajan that before his
intervention the 'contagion' of Christianity had attacked not only the cities, but also the villages and the countryside of the province (it is the only reference to the
countryside in his whole correspondence from Bithynia-Pontus); now, however, the temples were full of pious worshippers and sacrificial meat was again on sale in
the markets. One wonders for how long that revival lasted, once Pliny had departed.
Town and Country
It is a natural instinct, encouraged somewhat by our sources, the products of city men, to see the Roman Empire as a vast confederation of city-states. If there is an
over-simplification here it relates to the degree of uniformity to be found in the cities and in their economic functions, and in the different rates at which cities in fact
developed. Tacitus in one passage shows himself aware of a process of urbanization which had in his own day become established in Numidia but had not yet begun
in the time of Tiberius. The process is documented for just that region by the archaeology and epigraphy of cities such as Madaurus, Cuicul (Djemila), Milevis, and
Sitifis, native settlements which progressed from municipal to colonial status at the turn of the first and second centuries. In Britain the governor Agricola
encouraged the use of the toga, the building of houses and public amenities, and the use of the Latin language, and put his name to the forum building at
Verulamium (St Albans) at a time when the settlement, though already a municipium, still consisted largely of wooden-framed structures and generally lacked
properly made-up streets. Again according to Tacitus, the tribe of the Frisii in the Low Countries, having rebelled under Tiberius because of oppression in respect of
their taxes, paid in elk-skins, were in the time of Claudius settled by the military governor and given 'senate, magistrates, and laws'. Presumably what is meant is
some sort of civic foundation with a charter; but we are left to imagine for ourselves what this new civic community actually looked like.
Everywhere in the West arose new cities. In central Gaul the Celtic oppidum of Bibracte (Mont Beuvray), inconveniently located in the hills of the Morvan, gave
way to Augustodunum (Autun), a city of immense circuit built on an accessible site by the river Arroux. By the time of Tiberius the sons of the Gallic nobility were