3 REPRODUCING DIFFERENCE Mimesis and Colonialism in Roman Hispania

3 REPRODUCING DIFFERENCE Mimesis and colonialism in Roman Hispania Alicia Jiménez* Introduction Mimesis forms a central idea in archaeological studies of cultural transformation in the Mediterranean. Explanations for resemblances in material culture from different regions have always been closely tied to the idea of copying and emulation. This concept is often implicitly associated with changes we are able to track in the material record, whether to explain the spread of techniques and ideas, to analyse proc- esses such as ‘Orientalisation’, ‘Hellenisation’, ‘Punicisation’ and ‘Romanisation’, to theorise about the relationship between centre and periphery or to describe the path from barbarism to civilisation. Scholars studying the classical period in particular have traditionally perceived the Mediterranean as the ‘natural’ geographical frame- work within which to trace the spreading of an ‘original’ model to a wide network of regional replicas. It is not by chance that such histories revolve, usually quite literally, around cities situated in the middle of this sea, namely Athens and Rome. It is indeed likely that the allegedly Graeco-Roman roots of Western civilisation are at least in part to blame for the construction of a ‘Mediterraneanism’ in classical studies quite similar to Said’s ‘Orientalism’ (Herzfeld 1987; de Pina-Cabral 1989; 1992, quoted in Blake and Knapp, 2005: 2; Harris 2005: 2). It is important, however, to point out that the concept of ‘the Mediterranean’ is just as slippery as others usually taken for granted, such as ‘Europe’, whose margins seem to be no easier to define in geographical or ecological terms than those of the Mediterranean. The very fact that the notion of the Mediterranean as a cultural construct makes sense both in Greek and Roman times (when the region was called the oikoumene or mare nostrum) and * I am grateful to Peter van Dommelen for greatly improving the English and the content of this chapter with his suggestions, to Michael Rowlands, Bernard Knapp, Corinna Riva and Ana Rodríguez Mayorgas for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper and also to all the participants in the Material Connections seminar held at Glasgow University (March 2009) for their feedback on my presentation. I would also like to thank Juan Pimentel and Jesús Bermejo for their help during the writing of this paper. This chapter draws on research funded by the European Social Fund (Contrato Postdoctoral I3P; project SP6.E.58/03). reproducing difference in the present (Horden and Purcell 2000: 27–8) turns it into an interesting object of study within a critical and postcolonial analysis that looks beyond currently perceived frontiers between Europe and Africa, Orient and Occident or Islam and Christianity (van Dommelen 1998; 2006; Morris 2005; Vives-Ferrándiz 2006; Jiménez 2008a; see also Blake and Knapp 2005: 3). Comparing ancient and contemporary discourses on the Mediterranean is, moreover, of interest in its own right, because the notion of modern Europe as the principal heir of classical culture sits uneasily in the vast regions of north Africa that were once part of the Roman world. The model of Rome: interpretations of mimesis The period spanning the final centuries of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire (late third century BC to first century AD) is especially suited to a study of mobility, connectivity, conflict, co-presence and the role of material culture in the construction of identities during times of transition. Roman military expansion in the Mediterranean during these centuries resulted in a new model of resource exploitation largely based on intensified interactions among the provinces of the empire and supported by the establishment of Roman colonies around the sea’s basin. The question of Mediterranean homogeneity or unity versus heterogeneity (Harris 2005: 20–9) is particularly critical to understanding the so-called ‘Romanisation’ process, as it is traditionally seen in terms of the spread of Roman material culture around the Mediterranean in the wake of the conquests. Studies of the desire to ‘become Roman’ or to ‘stay native’ in the newly created provinces by mimicking or rejecting Roman material culture have been central in the archaeological debate in the last decade or so (Woolf 1997; 1998; van Dommelen 2007; Jiménez 2008b). This may partially explain the increasing number of reviews and critiques of the centre– periphery model of transformations in material culture spreading from a metropolis or central place (Rowlands 1987; Woolf 1990). It may also account for recent debates in the utility of the term ‘globalisation’ for understanding the expansion of Roman material culture across the Mediterranean (Witcher 2000; Malitz 2000; Hingley 2003: 118–19; 2005; 2009; Hitchner 2008; Sweetman 2007). The idea of mimicry as a pathway from barbarism to civilisation is not entirely original, since Plato and Aristotle (3.4) had already surmised that imitation produces learning. The concept of mimesis has implicitly resurfaced in modern academic writing, in particular in evolutionist theories that regard the imitation of superior cultures – in particular Greek and Roman – as a key route for native populations to become civilised. The process of becoming Roman in Hispania has similarly been described as coming down to a progressively increasing number of cities with Roman legal status and the consequent gradual development of literacy and monumental display in these towns. Writing in the late second century AD, Aulus Gellius (16.13.8–9) already asserted that Roman colonies ‘seem to be, in a manner of speaking, small representations [of Rome] and images of a sort’.1 When looked at in detail, the colonies may not have been exact copies of Rome, but it is true that most of them look quite similar (Bispham 2006: 75). This Roman ‘urban kit’ – a regular 39 alicia jiménez grid of streets surrounded by a city wall and equipped with a forum or central square, temples, a curia or senate house and a theatre – is present even in cities that never obtained the status of colonies. Such cases have simply been explained as instances of less privileged cities that emulated the material culture of Roman colonies like Tarraco, Emerita and Corduba, which thus in turn became important sources of ‘Romanisation’ in territories far from Rome. The notion of Roman cities abroad as simulacra Romae (‘images’ or ‘representations’ of Rome) has been carefully examined for the province of Hispania by Trillmich (1996; 1997; 1998). He focused on the three exceptional sites of Corduba, Tarraco and Emerita, the cities that had been designated as provincial capitals of Baetica, Tarraconenisis and Lusitania under Augustus, the first emperor. He also considered the imitation of a special urban space, which is the Augustan forum in Rome (Figure 3.1). The large-scale colonisation programme implemented under Caesar and Augustus is precisely contemporary to an increasingly ‘Roman appear- ance’ of the material culture of Hispania. The newly constructed public squares (fora) of Corduba, Tarraco and Emerita that Trillmich analysed were unusually symbolic, because they were probably set up personally by the emperor or provincial governors and because they were the scene of a wide range of political, ritual and commercial activities. Figure 3.1 Map of Hispania in Augustan times (base map courtesy of Trabajos de Prehistoria, http://tp.revistas.csic.es). 40 reproducing difference It is difficult to understand the meaning of the new ‘piazzas’ that mimicked Augustus’ forum in provincial cities such as Corduba, Tarraco Emerita or other towns outside Hispania, such as Arles, Pompeii, Vienne and Nyon without taking into consideration the special circumstances that surrounded the construction of the ‘model’ in the urbs itself. In the transitional years between the republic and the first years of the empire, Augustus built this new forum in Rome as part of his plan to transform a town of brick into a capital of marble that could replicate the most monumental of Hellenistic cities. It is important to note that he did not remodel the traditional old republican forum that was intimately associated with the tomb of the founder (Romulus) and the mythical origins of Rome; rather he decided to create a duplicate of this sacred space to promote his own ideological and iconographic programme. Much as Virgil had written around the same time a ‘new Iliad’ (the Aeneid), the new forum sought to connect Troy and Aeneas to the new imperial family of the Iulii and the new Golden Age (aurea aetas) of Augustus (Zanker 1987: 249–53). Augustus himself became an Figure 3.2 Plan of the forum of Augustus in Rome showing the location of the statues in the iconographic program (from Zanker 1987: 149, with permission). 41 alicia jiménez ancestor for the Roman people when, in 2 BC, to mark the consecration of the new forum, he was granted by the Senate and the people of Rome the title of pater patriae (literally ‘father of the fatherland’: Res Gestae 35). A fragmentary description by Ovid (5.551–70) and decades of archaeological excavations have documented the highly symbolic arrangements of this space (Figure 3.2). Ironically, some elements are only known to us thanks to provincial copies of this space. A temple devoted to Mars Ultor, the father of Romulus, the first king of Rome, overlooked the forum. The entrance displayed representations of the arms and armours of all the peoples defeated by Augustus. In a large apse on the left- hand (west) side of the square (Figures 3.2 and 3.3) stood a sculpture of Aeneas carrying his father Anchises and holding the hand of his son Ascanius as they fled from Troy and embarked on the journey that would eventually take them to Latium. Anchises holds a statuette that he has presumably saved from the destruction of the city.

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