COLLOQUIA ANTIQUA
————— 7 —————
REGIONALISM AND GLOBALISM
IN ANTIQUITY
Exploring Their Limits
Edited by
FRANCO DE ANGELIS
PEETERS
LEUVEN – PARIS – WALPOLE, MA
2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Introduction – G.R. Tsetskhladze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VII
Preface – F. De Angelis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IX
List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
XI
List of illustrations and tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
XIII
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
Introduction: Approaches to the Movement of Ancient
Phenomena through Time and Space
F. De Angelis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
Innovation and the Transmission of Knowledge in
Antiquity: A Look at Current Networking Models
Z.H. Archibald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21
The Mediterranean Context of Greek Colonisation –
A View from Prehistory
N. Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
The Relationship between Egypt and the Levant during
the 12th Dynasty: Four Case Studies and the Generation
of Prestige
C. Wastlhuber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
69
Banquet, Marzeah, Symposion and Symposium during
the Iron Age: Disparity and Mimicry
A.J. Nijboer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
95
A Regional Performance Culture? The Case of Syracuse
D.G. Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
127
Influence, Inspiration or Innovation? The Importance
of Contexts in the Study of Iconography: The Case of
the Mistress of Animals in 7th-century Greece
A.E. Barclay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
143
Apollo akersekomas and the Magic Knot of Heracles
A.M. Nicgorski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
177
The Greek Bosporan Kingdom: Regionalism and Globalism
in the Black Sea
G.R. Tsetskhladze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
201
VI
CHAPTER 10
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Consumption and Choice in Ancient Sicily
J.St P. Walsh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
229
Coan Asylia: Small-state Diplomacy and the Hippocratic
Legend
E.D. Nelson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
247
Gender, Sexuality and Space: Geopolitical Reflections
on Propertius 3. 13 and 14
B. Weinlich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
267
Régionalisme fiscal dans l’Égypte romaine: le cas des
terres limnitiques mendésiennes
K. Blouin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
291
L’arc honorifique de Trajan à Constantin: le triomphe
de la romanitas
C. Blonce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
319
Glocalising an Empire: Rome in the 3rd Century AD
M. Sommer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
341
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
353
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
355
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
GLOCALISING AN EMPIRE:
ROME IN THE 3RD CENTURY AD
Michael SOMMER
Abstract
How ‘Roman’ was the Roman empire’s periphery? ‘Romanisation’, as an analytical
tool, was first applied by Mommsen before the term was coined by Haverfield: as a
matter of course, 19th- and early 20th-century scholars used to project the cultural
unity of the post-French Revolution European nation-state onto the Roman empire.
Since then, a wealth of local studies has revealed the persistence of cultural traditions
in the periphery. In this paper it is argued that the cultural impact the centre had on the
imperial periphery, promoted, in the long run, the development of distinct identities
rather than levelling cultural diversity. Texts such as Herodian’s portrait of the emperor
Elagabalus and the fragments which survived of Celsus’ polemics against the Christians, but also for example the imagery of Dura-Europos, suggest that at least from the
early 3rd century onwards, it was possible to conceptualise the Roman empire and
Roman culture from a variety of different angles.
And what was said by Homer, ‘The earth was common to all’, you have
made a reality, by surveying the whole inhabited world, by bridging the rivers in various ways, by cutting carriage roads through the mountains, by
filling desert places with post stations, and by civilising everything with your
way of life and good order. […] And now, indeed, there is no need to write
a description of the world, nor to enumerate the laws of each people, but you
have become universal geographers for all men by opening up all the gates
of the inhabited world and by giving to all who wish it the power to be
observers of everything and by assigning universal laws for all men and by
stopping practices which formerly were pleasant to read about, but were
intolerable if one should actually consider them and by making marriage
legal between all peoples and by organising the whole inhabited world like a
single household
(Aelius Aristides Ad Romam100-102).1
Bold words, indeed, spoken in the middle of the 2nd century AD by the orator
Aelius Aristides, in praise of the city of Rome and in the eternal city itself.
There is hardly any classical text that mirrors the genuinely modern notion of
1
Translation C.A. Behr.
342
MICHAEL SOMMER
a globalising world to a similar extent. ‘Like a single household’ – is there a
better expression for the immense opportunities the Roman empire provided to
Aristides and his like: an educated, cosmopolitan elite deeply rooted in Greek
paideia and classical tradition? ‘Like a single household [oikos]’ the empire
guaranteed uniformity of law, security, freedom of movement and the means
of transport, travel and communication in a vast area, that was, before the
coming of Rome, fragmented, unstable and dangerous. Men like Aristides
shared a strong belief in the dividend of empire; they were convinced of the
empire’s mission of, as Aristides puts it, ‘civilising everything’. In other
words: the empire was a political container for the classical oikoumene, the
spiritual commonwealth belonging to which Aristides and his fellow intellectuals were so proud of.2
We may confidently assume that most decision-makers of Aristides’ day,
and certainly his Roman audience, will have emphatically agreed with such a
statement. And so did most of the classical scholars who created innumerable
modern images of the Roman empire, which converge on one important issue:
the Roman empire was, and by some still is, perceived as a Prometheus who
transformed the gloom of barbarity into the bright light of civilisation – and
thus ‘Romanised’ the ancient world from the Firth of Forth to the cataracts of
the Nile. Present-day scholarship applies the term ‘Romanisation’, rightly, as
I am inclined to believe, with the utmost caution. Recent studies have contributed substantially to differentiate the concept of Romanisation, and Richard
Hingley recently suggested that we may replace it altogether with
‘globalisation’.3
As an analytical tool, globalisation works indeed far better than Romanisation. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy states that globalisation ‘refers
to fundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which the significance of space or territory undergoes shifts
in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in the temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity’.4 Such a concept leaves room for the countless
regional and local developments archaeological research can trace now; it is
sufficiently flexible to conceive the Roman empire as a cluster of various
actors, horizontally and vertically, rather than a monolithic block; and it points
to the possibility that wherever there is globalisation there is also the reverse:
2
Klein 1983. On Aristides and paideia, see Sommer 2006b, 23-25.
Hingley (2005, esp. 118), like (Woolf 1994; 1998), emphasises the general flexibility of
Roman culture, which could be adopted by local elites and provided tools to others to express
their own, distinctively local identities. As a consequence, ‘globalisation’ and ‘localisation’ went
hand in hand. Hingley also provides a comprehensive survey of the history of research.
4
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization/.
3
GLOCALISING AN EMPIRE: ROME IN THE 3RD CENTURY AD
343
localisation. Perceiving early imperial Rome from what has been called the
‘Augustan threshold’5 onwards as a globalising society also provides a new
perspective on post-classical antiquity, as a period in which old patterns of
integration (like the classical city as a horizon of collective identity) gradually
gave way to new, more network-like structures (like the clergy of religious
communities). The evidence suggests that the decisive period when this farreaching change took place, was the early 3rd century AD, more accurately:
the Severan period, when a number of crucial decisions were on the agenda.6
As a result, the reputedly homogenous, integrated monolith of the oikoumene praised by Aristides in his speeches and invoked by so many classicists, began to melt. This was strongly felt by at least some of the period’s
intellectuals. One generation after Aristides, the Platonist philosopher Celsus
wrote his pamphlet against the rising Christianity, Alethès logos.7 In this book,
of which only fragments survive through Origen’s polemic replication Contra
Celsum, Celsus blames the Christians for rejecting and negating classical erudition as a whole, for, as he puts it, advocating foolishness and ignorance
(Origen Contra Celsum 3. 44).8 He accuses them of seducing the children of
reputable Roman families to their fatuous faith, thus scattering the fruits of
classical erudition (Origen Contra Celsum 3. 55).9 He claims that Christianity
5
As used by Doyle 1988, 93, and universalised recently by Münkler 2005, 112-26.
This process is perhaps best illustrated by the evidence from the Mesopotamian frontier
town of Dura-Europos which was captured by the Romans in the course of L. Verus’ Parthian
War and became firmly integrated into the Empire during the reign of Septimius Severus, who
transformed the Middle Euphrates-Khabur-region into a heavily fortified military frontier. Wall
paintings from various sanctuaries (a Christian domus ecclesiae, a Synagogue and a number of
‘pagan’ temples) suggest that religious communities (rather than the town’s civic body) became
the main focus of the locals’ increasingly ‘diasporic’ cultural identities. They clearly interacted,
but interaction mainly resulted in delimitation (Dirven 1999; Sommer 2004b; 2006b).
7
Glöckner 1927; Pichler 1980.
8
Celsus, according to Origen, asserts that ‘the following are the rules laid down by them. Let
no one come to us who has been instructed, or who is wise or prudent (for such qualifications are
deemed evil by us); but if there be any ignorant, or unintelligent, or uninstructed, or foolish
persons, let them come with confidence. By which words, acknowledging that such individuals
are worthy of their God, they manifestly show that they desire and are able to gain over only the
silly, and the mean, and the stupid, with women and children.’
9
‘We see, indeed, in private houses workers in wool and leather, and fullers, and persons of
the most uninstructed and rustic character, not venturing to utter a word in the presence of their
elders and wiser masters; but when they get hold of the children privately, and certain women as
ignorant as themselves, they pour forth wonderful statements, to the effect that they ought not to
give heed to their father and to their teachers, but should obey them; that the former are foolish
and stupid, and neither know nor can perform anything that is really good, being preoccupied
with empty trifles; that they alone know how men ought to live, and that, if the children obey
them, they will both be happy themselves, and will make their home happy also. And while thus
speaking, if they see one of the instructors of youth approaching, or one of the more intelligent
class, or even the father himself, the more timid among them become afraid, while the more
6
344
MICHAEL SOMMER
is an inferior doctrine, as compared to Greek paideia, as it roots in Judaism
and hence is of barbarian origin (Origen Contra Celsum 1. 2).10 Celsus’ charges
culminate in the Christians’ alleged illoyalty: they pay no respect to the imperial authorities and refuse to side with the Roman state (Origen Contra Celsum
8. 75).11 Should Christianity get the upper hand over classical paideia, Celsus
predicts an age of chaos and lawlessness:
We must not disobey the ancient writer, who said long ago, ‘Let one be king,
whom the son of crafty Saturn appointed’ […] If you set aside this maxim, you
will deservedly suffer for it at the hands of the king. For if all were to do the same
as you, there would be nothing to prevent his being left in utter solitude and
desertion, and the affairs of the earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and
most lawless barbarians; and then there would no longer remain among men any
of the glory of your religion or of the true wisdom (Origen Contra Celsum 8. 68).
Again one generation later, the equestrian historiographer Herodian is even
more pessimistic and sceptical about the prospects of classical civilisation
when confronted with the adverse forces of religious sectarianism and fragmenting barbarism. Herodian’s perfect example of paideia is the emperor
Marcus: he cultivated every kind of arete (Herodian. 1. 2. 3); thus the succinct
profile Herodian draws of him. In Herodian’s eyes, Marcus’ successors can
hardly catch up with the stoic emperor. A particularly grim case is the Syrian
offspring of the Severan house, Varius Avitus, who ruled Rome from AD 218
to 222. When the reader first meets the Emperor, he is the high priest of the
chief god of his hometown Emesa, a solar deity of obscure origin, from whom
the emperor himself got his nickname: Elagabalus.12 This god, worshipped in
forward incite the children to throw off the yoke, whispering that in the presence of father and
teachers they neither will nor can explain to them any good thing, seeing they turn away with
aversion from the silliness and stupidity of such persons as being altogether corrupt, and far
advanced in wickedness, and such as would inflict punishment upon them; but that if they wish
(to avail themselves of their aid), they must leave their father and their instructors, and go with
the women and their playfellows to the women’s apartments, or to the leather shop, or to the
fuller’s shop, that they may attain to perfection – and by words like these they gain them over.’
10
‘Celsus next proceeds to say, that the system of doctrine, viz. Judaism, upon which Christianity depends, was barbarous in its origin. And with an appearance of fairness, he does not
reproach Christianity because of its origin among barbarians, but gives the latter credit for their
ability in discovering (such) doctrines. To this, however, he adds the statement, that the Greeks
are more skilful than any others in judging, establishing, and reducing to practice the discoveries
of barbarous nations.’
11
‘Celsus also urges us to “take office in the government of the country, if that is required
for the maintenance of the laws and the support of religion”.’
12
The historicity of the accounts on Elagabalus (apart from Herodian chiefly the Historia
Augusta and Cassius Dio) and the character of the cult of Emesa have been discussed quite controversially in the past. For Frey (1989), who provides a detailed reconstruction of the events,
Elagabalus was the will-less tool of his ambitious female kinsfolk. Von Domaszewski (1909,
197-216) takes Elagabalus for a religious fanatic who deliberately attempts to turn upside down
GLOCALISING AN EMPIRE: ROME IN THE 3RD CENTURY AD
345
the form of a conic meteor stone, a betyl or baitylos, was utterly alien for any
western observer: Herodian describes the exterior of the temple as ‘richly
ornamented with gold and silver and valuable stones’ (Herodian 5. 3. 4); the
striking aniconism of the cult ‘which had no man-made statue of the god,
the sort of Greeks and Romans put up’ (Herodian 5. 3. 5); the baitylos which
was believed to represent the sun (Herodian 5. 3. 5); the sumptuous, exotic
outfit of the high priest (Herodian 5. 3. 6); and finally the cult itself which
involved music and dancing. The reader anticipates: this young man, fated to
become Rome’s emperor, can neither be Roman nor Greek – with his socialisation in the temple of Emesa, he embodies the antithesis of paideia, bound to
become an anti-Marcus in any respect.
Once emperor, Herodian’s Elagabalus again and again challenges the classical canon of the oikoumene. Still on his way to Rome, he has an image of
himself painted, sent ahead to the capital and put up in the Senate house,
because ‘he was anxious that the senate and people of Rome should get used
to seeing his dress, and to test out their reaction to the sight before he arrived’
(Herodian 5. 5. 6). The conflict between classical paideia and an unsettlingly
outlandish emperor escalates in the heart of the Roman world, within the imperial palace, where Elagabalus’ aunt, Julia Mamaea, has her son Alexianus
instructed in Latin, Greek and philosophical sophrosis by traditionally minded
teachers to prevent Elagabalus from making him a priest (Herodian 5. 7. 4).
Enflamed with rage, the emperor has the didaskaloi removed from the court,
and has some of them killed (Herodian 5. 7. 7). Though the episode is the
prelude to the emperor’s fall and death, it is also like the writing on the wall.
Herodian’s Elagabalus is not the usual tyrant, the paranoid madman whom
Roman historiography often employs to explain the real flaws of an ideally
flawless political order – and to entertain their audiences.13 Herodian’s Elagabalus foreshadows a world in which classical erudition and the cultural canon
of antiquity cannot claim a monopoly anymore, but face the threat of powerful
competitors: new grand narratives explaining the world according to utterly
unclassical paradigms. This did not only happen, it was also perceived, as
Celsus and Herodian bear witness, giving expression to a notion that could be
the religious order of the Roman empire by orientalising it. Hay (1911) and Pietrzykowski (1986)
deconstruct the textual evidence and portray the emperor as an ambitious, though tragically failing reformer of the political system of the Roman empire. Kettenhofen (1979), Optendrenk
(1969), and Turcan (1985) all attempt to draw information on the ‘true’ nature of the cult of
Emesa from the sources, explaining Elagabalus’ behaviour as emperor with his being brought up
in the local sanctuary. My own scepticism is explained in Sommer (2004c). On the significance
of baityloi and Greco-Roman constructions of alterity linked to them, see now Gaifman 2008.
13
On Roman historiography and mad emperors in more detail, see Sommer 2006a; 2007.
346
MICHAEL SOMMER
described as ‘Krisenbewußtsein’.14 This crisis, however, had little if anything
to do with the alleged economic crisis of the 3rd century AD, which generations of scholars have been busy tracing.15 It was a profound crisis of identity
of the Roman elite, which had been so far the avant-garde of globalisation
under the auspices of the oikoumene.
The empire’s upper crust was complex in composition. It included, of
course, the imperial family, the senators and the members of the ordo equester.
Numerically far more important, however, were the countless local notables,
magistrates and council members, many of whom held Roman citizenship.16
Though politically already insignificant, citizenship, to those who held it,
meant prestige: being a Roman citizen in a non-Roman environment was
equivalent to a substantial amount of social capital; citizenship was hence a
prime factor of integration: the prospect that children or grandchildren could
acquire Roman citizenship and rise to equestrian or even senatorial rank made
Rome’s subjects potential stakeholders of empire. Local elites in particular
took pride in their tria nomina, displayed their Roman-ness ostentatiously and,
with their competition for honour, their euergetism and their epigraphic habit,
contributed substantially to the changing faces of their hometowns.17
All this changed by the middle of the 3rd century AD: the embellishment of
cities through euergetism in the civic domain came to a halt in the better part
of the Roman empire (though religious munificentia and building activity
flourished), the maintenance of the existing public buildings could by no
means be taken for granted, the epigraphic habit of local elites changed (or
rather ceased), local coins, so far testimony of many provincial cities’ civic
identities, were no longer struck, urban layouts gradually abandoned their uniform shape and assumed more local patterns, and in many towns civic space
was built up with private structures.18
14
A concept brought into the discussion by Alföldy (1975; 1989).
On economic crisis: Mazza 1973; Sommer 2004a, 85-92; Corbier 1986; 2005a-b.
16
All magistrates and former magistrates (decuriones) of the coloniae and municipia of Latin
law. This affected probably the majority of decuriones in the Latin West (Vittinghoff 1994, 51-56).
On the enfranchisement of individuals, mainly in the East, see Sherwin-White 1973, 291-311.
17
Euergetism and the competitive ethics of elite groups in the cities of the Hellenistic East
has been studied extensively by Veyne (1976, 231-344; 1999). On the overlapping circles of
identity of local elites in Roman Asia Minor, who were citizens of their hometowns, Greeks and
Romans at the same time, see Stephan 2002, 114-260; Millar 1993a (reprinted in Millar 2006,
106-35). On acculturation in the Hellenistic East in general, see Woolf 1994. Stephan (2002, 23942), Millar (2006, 129) and Woolf (1994, 129) all reject, quite reasonably, as I am inclined to
believe, Veyne’s idea that being Greek and Roman was mutually exclusive. The evidence rather
seems to suggest that the Roman empire provided the ideal framework for living a Greek way of
life and defining oneself as Greek.
18
On the ending of local coinage in the Roman Near East, see Millar 1993a, 257. On the
changing epigraphic habit, see MacMullen 1982; Witschel 2006; Woolf 1996. On the maintenance
15
GLOCALISING AN EMPIRE: ROME IN THE 3RD CENTURY AD
347
There are, obviously, a number of ways in which such developments can be
explained, and it would be simplistic to blame the levelling effects of the constitutio Antoniniana alone. But the edict certainly took away one major stimulus for acquiring the visible insignia of Roman identity. Sure, the elites found
new ways to give expression to the various layers of social and cultural identity that defined them, but the loss of exclusivity which Caracalla’s edict meant
to them may well have triggered developments such as the outbreak of intraaristocratic strife in Palmyra that brought about the tyranny of one man, Septimius Odaenathus.19 It may have divided urban elites and alienated them from
Rome elsewhere, let alone the thousands of soldiers serving in auxiliary
cohorts whose main reward, Roman citizenship, was now practically worthless.20 Was it then the constitutio Antoniniana that swept away the classical
city? Was it responsible for the decline or transformation of the ancient world?
Personally, I believe that the dichotomy ‘decline’ versus ‘transformation’,
which currently sees a stunning revival in the academic debate on late antiquity (Krause and Witschel 2006), rather obfuscates our view than it does
lighten up things. To be sure, it is certainly legitimate to think of the reduction
of complexity, which can be observed in parts of the empire, as ‘urban
decline’.21 But the overall image is far too complex and inconsistent to justify
attaching to it such a generalising label or to go even further and dub the
agony of the Roman empire in the West ‘the end of civilisation’ as such.22
‘Transformation’, on the other hand, seems to be more an ongoing process of
the longue durée than a development that can be restricted to a particular
period or even reached its ‘peak’ at a given moment.
In Spain, Gaul and Italy but also in the Hellenistic East, the public building
activity had to drop at some point, simply because the cities were saturated
of public buildings, see Thomas and Witschel 1992. On the changing urban layout in the West
(Spain), see Kulikowski 2004; 2006, esp. 135. On the building-up of public space from the 3rd
century AD onwards, see Goudineau 1980 (Gaul); Ward-Perkins 1984 (Italy); Butcher 2003,
106-21, 240-55 (Syria). On the function and autonomy of cities and role of local elites (in the
East), see Jones 1940, 129-46; (in general): Carrié 2005, esp. 282-93; Liebeschuetz 2001a-b.
19
For a sound reconstruction of the events in Palmyra following the year AD 212, see Hartmann
2001, 65-161. On possible connections with the constitutio Antoniniana, see Sommer 2005, 213-24.
20
Ancient historians are still in the dark about the precise local effects of the constitutio
Antoniniana. The problem is briefly addressed by Carrié (2005), Jones (1940) and Vittinghoff
(1994, 290). On the constitutio in general, see Sasse 1958.
21
Cecconi (2006, 309) is probably right in stating that the avoidance of the term ‘decline’ is
largely due to ‘sovrastrutture ideologiche alla base della formulazione dei problemi storici e
dell’orientamento degli interessi scientifici’. This point has also been emphasised by Liebeschuetz
(2001a-b). But its political incorrectness does not automatically make it work as a universal
explanatory tool for the ensemble of political, social and economic developments from the 3rd
century AD onwards.
22
However masterly and suggestively this was done recently by Ward-Perkins (2005).
348
MICHAEL SOMMER
with fora, basilicae, theatres, gymnasiums, nymphaea, and public baths.23 The
same applies to the epigraphic habit and the self-representation of local elites:
once their Roman-ness was beyond doubt, they could drop their habit of continuously putting it on display. Once Aristides’ ‘single household’ had virtually become a reality at least for the better-off, the forces that brought it into
being began to weaken. The process of imperial globalisation, hence, set off a
development that reversed parts of its own achievements, or better, because
more neutrally, it joined localisation. Localisation was the natural companion
of globalisation in more than one respect. The imperial peace accelerated and
facilitated the motion of people, goods and ideas throughout the Mediterranean
and beyond. Soldiers, traders, travellers, pilgrims, languages, religious ideas,
political and aesthetical concepts, they all floated through the vast empire.24
As a result, people of varying cultural affiliations came to live next to one
other. Wherever cultural difference determines everyday life, issues of identity
appear on the agenda: the distinction between ego and alter becomes vital.
Alterity is just the other side of identity and at the same time its indispensable
precondition.25
Therefore not surprisingly, places like Dura-Europos,26 a hotspot of cultural
diversity on the eastern fringes of the Roman empire featuring the influx of
vast numbers of soldiers, traders and craftsmen from all parts of the Roman
world, saw the rise of syncretistic, as it were, identities which eclectically, but
consciously, borrowed items from various traditions, using them for their own
purposes. An even better paradigm than syncretism is ‘creolisation’ which
embraces the actual novelty of the patterns created by putting borrowed elements together.27 A surviving reflex of such a ‘Creole’ identity is the corpus of
stunning wall paintings recovered in the Dura synagogue (Elsner 2001;
Gutmann 1983; Kraeling 1956; Weitzmann and Kessler 1990). The imagery,
partly adapted from the Graeco-Roman imperial tradition, partly of striking
23
Kulikowski 2006, 133: ‘In other words, the slackening of monumental construction, as
well as the decline of the epigraphic habit, are not a priori signs of decline. Rather, they reflect
the fulfilment of a very specific, functional end.’
24
Virtually all aspects of mobility have been studied extensively in recent years: travelling in
the Roman empire by Adams and Laurence (2001) and Giebel (1999); exile by Stini (2006); the
military by Herzig (2006); language, bilingualism and diglossia by Adams, Janse and Swain
(2002); pilgrimage by Elsner (1997; 2005); and trade and traders by Meijer and van Nijf (1992)
and Parkins and Smith (1998).
25
Identity has first been defined as a social construction by Berger and Luckmann (1966). As
such, it inevitably involves the presence of alterity. Theoretical approaches to identity and alterity are
collected in Eßbach (2000). As case-studies for the viability of the concept, see Gehrke 2004; 2005.
26
For an introduction to the history and archaeology of the city, see Dirven 1999; Sommer
2005, 270-354.
27
On creolisation and créolité, see Berg and Mair 1999; Enwezor 2002.
GLOCALISING AN EMPIRE: ROME IN THE 3RD CENTURY AD
349
originality, serves a diaspora community’s immediate need: to draw boundaries between the Dura Jewry and its polytheistic environment, and to define
the community’s place within the city (Sommer 2005, 329-54).
The relationship between the imperial tradition and the rising fractional
identities was symbiotic. As a matter of course, the same holds true for Celsus’
Christians and Herodian’s Elagabalus: they were all the children of the imperial oikoumene which, through creolisation, at its margins inevitably created
dissenters, renegades and opponents. The empire, which began to globalise
itself when overstepping the Augustan threshold, became fragmented into
local communities at the same pace. Globalisation and localisation went hand
in hand in the Roman world as much as today. Augustus’ successors ruled
over a glocalising empire hosting a rising number of local identities – arguably
the most lasting legacy it passed on to posterity.
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