6 Urban elites and cultural definition: Romanization in southern Italy1 Kathryn Lomas Two of the key themes explored in the history of the Roman world in recent years are the social and economic rôle of the urban elite in the cities of the empire, and the problematic question of acculturation—what Romanization was, how it was expressed and how it was disseminated. Much valuable work has been done to clarify the processes of urban social interaction and those of acculturation, but with one major drawback—a surprisingly small amount of it has focused on Italy. Despite the wealth of research on the epigraphy and archaeology of Roman Italy which has been undertaken in recent years, comparatively few attempts have been made to synthesize this into a full-length study of Italian urbanism, and studies of a very limited number of individual cities—notably Pompeii, Ostia and Rome itself—have dominated the field. To some extent, this pattern has been generated by the evidence. The epigraphic record left by the urban elites of the eastern empire is far more abundant than that of most Italian cities, and has provided the basis for illuminating studies of euergetism, elite self-definition, and urban social structures.2 Similarly, processes of acculturation are more clearly identifiable in regions where contacts with Rome developed at a later date and where the indigenous and Roman cultures can be clearly distinguished—for instance, Britain, the Danube provinces, and Africa.3 In Italy, the inadequate evidence for the history of the Roman conquest and the similarities between Roman and many other Italic cultures make the processes of Romanization very difficult to trace. There is, however, one region of Italy of distinctly non-Italic culture, for which it is possible to make some assessment of acculturation and of the cential al rôle of the urban elite in disseminating cultural influences and manipulating cultural rôles. The title of this paper, perhaps misleadingly, refers to southern Italy as a whole; the area on which I intend to focus is Magna Graecia, or rather on those cities of Magna Graecia which retained a distinctively urban identity after the social war. The Greek background of these cities makes them an interesting case- study in acculturation and particularly in the integration of Italy after the Social war, partly because of their non-Italic culture, but also because of the increasingly privileged status accorded to Greek culture by the Roman elite of the late republic and early empire.4 114 URBAN ELITES AND CULTURAL DEFINITION That major changes had taken place in these cities in the last two centuries BC was a fact recognized even in antiquity. Strabo comments, significantly, that of all the Greeks in Italy, the Neapolitans, the Rhegines and the Tarentines were the only ones to retain their Greek identity. The rest had become barbarized (i.e. Italicized), which is to say that they had become Romans, since all south Italians had subsequently become Roman. Now, apart from the Tarentines, Rhegines and Neapolitans, they [the Greeks] have become barbarians, and some have been captured and held by the Lucanians and Bruttians, and by the Campanians—in name, that is, but in reality by the Romans. For they themselves have become Romans.5 This phenomenon, as observed here, was clearly more than just political integration. It also had a cultural dimension. There are, however, some chronological problems. Doubt has been cast on whether Strabo was genuinely recording contemporary circumstances or was quoting from a 4th century source. Whether or not this statement is derived from an earlier author, it reflects some important considerations, and is also substantially supported by the epigraphic evidence from the region. Assuming, for the purposes of this paper, that Strabo is accurately reflecting the contemporary state of Magna Graecia,6 his comment raises a number of very important questions about the processes of acculturation in Italy. To what extent, and in what forms, did Hellenism persist in southern Italy? To what extent were these cities Romanized? Were the elements of Romanization and local, or more specifically, Greek, identity mutually exclusive? I hope to demonstrate, through examination of the epigraphic records left by the elite of these cities, that a number of the Greek colonies in southern Italy retained a specifically Greek identity until the 2nd century AD; that Greek elements in civic life were con sciously and deliberately cultivated by the elite, irrespective of the actual ethnic nature of the city; that this process was an important part of the language and ideology of power in these cities; and that such elements of civic life performed an important function in mediating the relationship between the municipal elite of southern Italy and that of Rome. One problem which must be confronted in any discussion of cultural history and identity is that of terminology. Terms such as “Romanization” and “Hellenization” are rightly regarded as unsatisfactory in their implication that cultural influences are always transmitted in one direction only, from a dominant to a subordinate culture.7 This is a clear oversimplification and distortion of the processes of cultural change and interaction, since it is very rare that these are simple one-way processes. In the case of interactions between Greek and Roman culture, the processes are very complex and far from being onedirectional.8 In southern Italy, there is the additional complication that there was already a considerable degree of interaction between Oscan and Greek culture before the region ever came under Roman control. This factor poses a terminological restriction in that “acculturation” cannot be used to describe these processes as it URBAN ELITES AND CULTURAL DEFINITION 115 is sometimes necessary to differentiate between the different elements involved. For the purposes of this paper, I intend to continue to use the terms “Hellenism” and “Romanization”. Bowersock, in a recent work, has made a powerful case for the use of “Hellenism” rather than “Hellenization” in that the former preserves the concept of a set of cultural ideas and artefacts which can be transmitted as a whole or in part and adapted in various ways, without the implication of dominance or cultural imperialism.9 Romanization is a rather more problematic term to define, since Rome was in fact politically dominant and this undoubtedly affected the process of cultural transmission. What is certain, is that Romanization cannot be regarded as a simple linear process operating at the same rate and in the same manner at all levels of society.10 Perhaps it could be defined as: The transmission of a characteristically Roman set of cultural attributes and assumptions, assuming that the speed and mode of transmission and the nature of their reception vary according to the nature of the recipient and the social and economic level at which the transmission operates at any given moment. Even with a workable definition, the means by which such cultural changes can be recognized and studied remain problematic, particularly where written records are scarce. The problems of interpreting archaeological evidence for acculturation are legion. Diffusion of artefacts, or of technologies and stylistic features associated with them, is not a reliable indicator of the dissemination of cultural influences on a wider scale within society. Anthropological studies show that the significance and uses of artefacts can change dramatically in the process of transmission, making it difficult to assess the true extent and nature of the process of acculturation.11 For the Roman period, however, some light can be shed on the question by the use of literary sources and inscriptions which give some insight into reactions to external cultural influences and the uses to which they were put. Inscriptions are, in themselves, a problematic category of evidence, since the significance of why they were used, the motivations and social assumptions behind them, the interpretation of the forms and language used, and the social signals they were intended to send, are only imperfectly understood.12 However, some of the cities of Magna Graecia show some interesting epigraphic peculiarities which may cast light on both acculturation in southern Italy and on the behaviour of local and Roman elites. As a means of elucidating these matters, a group of the Greek colonies in southern Italy can be treated as a case-study. Effectively, this is limited to those cities which continued to flourish under Roman rule and for which there is a reasonable amount of literary and epigraphic evidence. Those which failed to recover, as cities, from the wars of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, or which are known mainly from archaeological evidence, will be omitted. Paestum and Cumae, already considerably Oscanized by the time of the Roman conquest, both have considerable quantities of epigraphic source material,13 as do Tarentum, Naples and Rhegium, the cities mentioned by Strabo, and Locri, Vibo and Velia.14 The fact that most of the evidence is epigraphic means that it is 116 URBAN ELITES AND CULTURAL DEFINITION inevitably affected by patterns of excavation, and of recovery and survival of inscriptions, but examination of this evidence shows enough consistency in the cultural development of these cities to suggest that important trends can be recognized. Although the vast majority of the inscriptions are epitaphs, the texts which are of greatest interest from the point of view of acculturation are those which record the activities of the civic elites, for instance, cursus inscriptions with details of political careers, decrees of the local senate, records of religious festivals, and commemorations of individual acts of patronage and civic euergetism. By examining these, it is possible to gain some insight into how the municipal elites operated, and how they exploited their cultural background to establish higher status for their cities and to generate patronage from Rome.