HELLENISM, ROMANIZATION AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN MASSALIA
Kathryn Lomas Universiry College London
The identity of the Greeks in the Roman world is a large and highly complex subject-not least because it embraces the difficult and fre quently ambivalent and contradictory relationship between the Romans and Greek culture. 1 It also touches on some key methodological ques tions of how cultural and ethnic identity were defined, who set the agenda, and how differing constructions of identity interacted. Greek definitions of their own identity in the Hellenistic and Roman peri ods show a general tendency to shift from the oppositional identity of the 5th and 4th centuries, based on the notions of 'us' and 'them' Greeks versus non-Greeks-to the notion of a potentially transferable cultural identity.2 When looked at from a western Mediterranean perspective, the issue of identity acquires a whole extra layer of com plexity. For the colonies on the margins of the Greek world, issues of ethnicity and cultural identity were immediate concerns through out their history, and they were forced to confront otherness and non-Greek cultures at very close range, simply by virtue of their location and colonial origins. After the expansion of Rome as the dominant power in the Mediterranean, the identity of the Western Mediterranean Greeks poses a whole additional set of methodolog ical and intellectual questions. The political and cultural impact of their contact with Rome, and the nature and extent of the ethnic, cultural and demographic changes which took place during the later
1 A topic with a very extensive bibliography, but see in particular G. Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World (Oxford, l 965), id., Hellenism in Lat,e Antiqui!)I (Cambridge, l 990), E.L. Bowie, 'The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic' in M.I. Finley (ed.), Studi.es in Andent Socie!)I, 166-209, E. Gruen, Studi.es in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden, 1991), S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire (Oxford, 1996), to give only a small selection. See also D. Konstan, 'To Hellmi.kon etltnos. Ethnicity and the construction of ancient Greek identity' in Malkin, Anci.ent Perceptions of Greek Etltnici!)I (Washington DC, 2001), 29-50, for a discussion of the role of Greek culture in the Roman empire. 2 Konstan, 'To Hellmi.kon etltnos', 37-43. 476 KATHRYN LOMAS history of these communities make them a fascinating case study of cultural change in action. Specifically, it provides an opportunity to examine the interaction between the two dominant cultures of Classical Antiquity, Hellenism and Romanitas, and to study what happens when Romanization and Hellenization meet and potentially conflict. The aim of this paper is to examine one particular city-Massalia-as a case-study of the evolution of Greek colonial identity in the Roman world. Until relatively recently, there was a strong tendency in scholar ship on the Western colonies to regard the Roman period of their history as a time of decline and deculturation-an inexorable progress towards Romanization and a loss of Greek culture. 3 This was some times interpreted as the result of economic decline, depopulation, or demographic changes which physically replaced the Greek popula tion with Romans. 4 Where cultural or demographic elements which were neither Roman nor Greek were present, it was also occasion ally interpreted as a process of barbarisation-a concept which owes much to the world-view and prejudices of some of ancient authors. 5 More recent approaches to Romanization, Hellenization and other forms of cultural change in the ancient world have stressed the rec iprocal and interactive nature of the processes at work, and the fact that cultural and ethnic identities are not one and the same thing. There are clear areas of overlap, to the point where it can be difficult to disentangle and categorise them, but ethnic change and cultural change cannot be seen as synonymous, nor as automatic conse quences of each other. In addition, both Hellenism and Roman iden tity were diverse and constantly evolving concepts, particularly outside the areas in which they were the dominant indigenous culture, and should not be viewed as monolithic cultural entities. The result is that different aspects of civic identity can sometimes be established, which could co-exist and which could be prioritised according to context and to their intended audience. It was, for instance, per-
3 U. Kahrstedt, Der Wirtscheftsliche uige Grossgriechenlands unter der Kaiserzeit (Historia einzelschriften 4, 1960), AJ. Toynbee, Hannibal's legacy (Oxford, 1965), P.A. Brunt, Italian manpower, 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (Oxford, 1971). t F. Costabile, Municipium LJJcrensium (Naples, 1978), L. Gallo, 'Popolosita e scarcita: contributo allo studio di un topos' Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Asa ser. III, lO (1980) 1233-70. 3 E.M. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian (Oxford, 1989).