On this understanding, the Roman empire presents something of a paradox. For
the empire did witness an extraordinary efflorescence of religious activity, particu-
larly among utopian cults, and there can be no doubt that the political stability and
social order provided by the empire contributed very directly to that phenomenon.
But neither the imperial government itself, nor the empire’s governing class, con-
tributed in any concerted and sustained way to the propagation of any particular
religion. The only exceptions might be imperial cult, on the one hand, and on the
other the intensification of public displays of loyalty through oath-swearing that
followed upon Caracalla’s grant of universal citizenship, the most famous of which
took place under Decius (Rives 1999; Ando 2000: 206 –15). But these are not true
comparanda, for reasons that will emerge across this chapter and which I revisit in
its conclusion. Thus might it be said, not untruthfully, that the Romans gave the
Mediterranean world all religions but their own.Colonies
Roman citizens existed in Italy before the Social War, and in the provinces before
the Constitutio Antoniniana, in a number of configurations, some formal, others not.
Although traders and soldiers were normally the first Romans to enter and, indeed,
to settle in new territories (see e.g. Hatzfeld 1919), it is to colonies that scholars
have traditionally turned in seeking concentrated populations of Roman citizens self-
consciously seeking to replicate the forms and institutions of a specifically Roman
culture (exemplary essays drawing on scholarship of this kind are Millar 1990 and
Edmondson 2006). Although it would be misleading to suggest that such scholars
have no evidence for this understanding of Roman colonialism, they do as a group
rely heavily on the heuristic value of a single imperialtext, by which to interpret the
abundant but tessellated evidence from the middle and late republic. That text is
the concluding paragraph of a chapter in Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights, in which Gellius
reflects on the difference between municipiaand coloniae, and himself refers to a
speech of Hadrian in which the emperor touched on just that topic.
But the relationship of colonies (to Rome) is different. For they neither come into citizen-
ship from without, nor do they grow from their own roots, but they are developed
as offshoots of the citizen body, as it were, and have all the laws and institutions of the
Roman people, not those of their own devising. This condition, although it is more
constrained and less free (than that of municipalities), is nevertheless thought prefer-
able and more prestigious because of the greatness and majesty of the Roman people,
of whom colonies seem to be little images, as it were, and sort-of representations (propter
amplitudinem maiestatemque populi Romani, cuius istae coloniae quasi effigies parvae
simulacraque esse quaedam videntur). At the same time, the rights of municipalities have
become obscure and largely forgotten, and hence out of ignorance they are not able
to be exploited. (Gellius 16.13.8 –9)In reading this passage, scholars have tended to concentrate solely on the phrases
“little images” and “sort-of representations,” and have not been urged to cautionExporting Roman Religion 431