Citizenship, Culture and Ideology in Roman Greece by Jamie Patrick Nay B.A. (Hons.), Dalhousie University, 2005 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies  Jamie Nay, 2007 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Citizenship, Culture and Ideology in Roman Greece by Jamie Patrick Nay B.A. (Hons.), Dalhousie University, 2005 Supervisory Committee Dr. Gregory D. Rowe, (Department of Greek and Romans Studies) Supervisor Dr. Gordon S. Shrimpton, (Department of Greek and Roman Studies) Departmental Member Dr. Cedric A. Littlewood, (Department of Greek and Roman Studies) Departmental Member Dr. Warren Magnusson, (Department of Political Science) External Examiner iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Gregory D. Rowe, (Department of Greek and Roman Studies) Supervisor Dr. Gordon S. Shrimpton, (Department of Greek and Roman Studies) Departmental Member Dr. Cedric A. Littlewood, (Department of Greek and Roman Studies) Departmental Member Dr. Warren Magnusson, (Department of Political Science) External Examiner A study of the cultural and ideological effects of Roman citizenship on Greeks living in the first three centuries AD. The ramifications of the extension of citizenship to these Greeks illustrates that ideas such as 'culture' and 'identity' are not static terms, but constructions of a particular social milieu at any given point in time. Roman citizenship functioned as a kind of ideological apparatus that, when given to a non-Roman, questioned that individual's native identity. This thesis addresses, via an examination of four sources, all of whom were Greeks with Roman citizenship - Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, Ulpian, the minters of eastern civic coins - the extent to which one could remain 'Greek' while participating in one of the most Roman institutions of the Empire. Utilizing these sources with the aid of a number of theoretical bases (notably Louis Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu), this study attempts to come to a conclusion about the nature of 'Romanness' in the ancient world. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee.................................................................................................. ii Abstract.........................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents...........................................................................................................iv List of Figures.................................................................................................................v Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................vi Introduction: Old Worlds and New Ideology...................................................................1 Chapter One: The Ideology of Identity............................................................................7 Chapter Two: Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities and Graeco-Roman Identity..........................................................................................................................27 Chapter Three: Paul’s Three Identities in the Acts of the Apostles..................................42 Chapter Four: Ulpian and the Universality of Roman Law.............................................59 Chapter Five: Civic Coinage and Elite Identity..............................................................79 Conclusion....................................................................................................................97 Bibliography...............................................................................................................104 v List of Figures Figure 1 (Harl 1987, pl. 30, no. 12) .................................................................................79 Figure 2 (Roman Provincial Coinage Online, 725) ..........................................................85 Figure 3 (Howgego et al 2005, pl. 1.3, no. 25) .................................................................88 Figure 4 (Howgego et al 2005, pl. 1.3, no. 26) .................................................................89 Figure 5 (Burnett et al 1999, 1112) ..................................................................................90 Figure 6 (Howgego et al 2005, pl. 1.1, no. 2) ...................................................................90 Figure 7 (Harl 1987, pl. 30, no. 13) ..................................................................................91 Figure 8 (Sutherland and Kraay, pl. 21, no. 850) .............................................................92 Figure 9 (Harl 1987, pl. 36, no. 1) ....................................................................................92 Figure 10 (Harl 1987, pl. 36, no. 7) ..................................................................................93 Figure 11 (Harl 1987, pl. 30, no. 7) ..................................................................................96 vi Acknowledgments While my name may be on the front page, I could not have written this thesis without the support of many people. I owe a great deal of thanks to my advisor, Dr. Greg Rowe, whose expertise in every topic I even considered exploring always pointed me in the right direction (even from halfway across the world!), and Dr. Gordon Shrimpton, on whom I could always rely for sage advice and comforting words about anything, not just school. Thanks also to my other committee members, Dr. Cedric Littlewood and Dr. Warren Magnusson, and the rest of the faculty of the Department of Greek & Roman Studies – I am very fortunate for having met and worked with you all. Thanks to a couple of past mentors, Dr. Peter O’Brien – who taught me Latin, convinced me to pursue the classics, and whom I will always admire – and Sean “Mr.” Nosek, whose enthusiasm for teaching literature convinced me to enter the arts in the first place. And, while they may not have taught me literature or languages, I could always rely on my fellow graduating Master’s students – Sarah, Derek, and Liz – for good company at the most trying times. To my family: Mom, Dad, Angela. They constantly remind me that, despite all the books I’ve read on identity and being, the most important piece of self-identification is realizing how lucky I am to have such a supportive family. To Kerry, who, even after the worst day at the office, could cheer me up with one look. I owe so much of where I’ve come to you. And finally, to Lucy, whose constant struggle with her feline identity has been an endless source of inspiration. Introduction: Old Worlds and New Ideology In a favourite passage for anyone writing on the intersection of Roman and Greek cultures, Horace states that Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio (‘Greece, captive, captured her fierce conqueror and brought the arts into uncultivated Latium’ Epist. 2.1.156-7). To paraphrase Susan Alcock (1993: 1), the history of Greece (and Asia) under the Roman Empire is paradoxical. Roman they may have been in name, but, for many of them, the world was still Greek; they were “true Hellenes”, as Dio Chrysostom said on more than one occasion.1 Yet, in reality, these Greeks were not as Hellenic as they thought, since their culture only existed under the umbrella of the Roman Empire. In other words, the meaning of ‘Greek identity’ now had to take into account the new, quite un-Greek monarchs in town. To be Greek was less a political than a cultural (or even moral) statement (Desideri 2002: 223). Greece meant high culture, ancient custom, rich history – in short, those things which Rome, the ferus victor, did not possess before annexing its neighbours to the east. Such a simple view of things, however – that Greece was governed by Rome but was still Greek – is not satisfying, since it ignores all of the grassroots political and social changes happening in the provinces of Greece and Asia. A prime example is the extension of Roman citizenship: it is one thing to be governed by Romans and still maintain one’s Greek identity, but to become Roman? To participate in the ideological institutions of the Empire? If, as the political philosopher Louis Althusser (1971: 160) says, “man is an ideological animal by nature” (simultaneously recalling and challenging 1 For example, Dio Chrys. 31.161-3; 44.10; 48.8. 2 his philosophical predecessor Aristotle), the establishment of such institutions as the Imperial cult must have had some effect on the daily lives of those who participated in them (in other words, everyone living under Roman rule). These institutions – ideological state apparatuses, to use Althusser’s terminology – are the primary way in which a ruler asserts his culture, practices and ‘victorious’ ideology on those being ruled. Ideology, “the imaginary relation of… individuals to the real relations in which they live,” is only a set of abstract ideas, manifesting itself in the culture of a society and obtaining a material existence through the practices or rituals that are associated with the ideological state apparatuses (Althusser 1971: 155). For example: the head of a modern-day religion has a certain ideological doctrine in mind for his followers (how they should best follow God), so he ensures that this ideology is accessible via apparatuses (individual churches), which themselves use rituals such as prayers and communion (practices) to deliver the ideology as intended. As long as the apparatuses reinforce the notion that the subjects should subject themselves (‘if I pray to God, subscribing to the beliefs and rituals of the ideology, everything will be OK’), the ideological machine rumbles forth, its institutions transforming the cultural landscape around it (Althusser 1971: 159-168).2 It is within this cultural landscape that new Roman citizens are born – some by birth, others by special appointment. Surrounded by ideological state apparatuses for their entire lives (if not physically, such as those living in ‘Romanized’ communities, then at least mentally, since cultivated Greeks would have at least known of Rome’s various institutions), those living under the Roman Empire were in fact living in what Pierre 2 See Howarth (2006) 73 for a discussion of a Roman religious ritual in quite Althusserian terms. 3 Bourdieu calls a habitus. This term represents the habits and dispositions an individual acquires (unconsciously or consciously) via the interaction with certain structures, causing that individual to behave in certain ways.3 Through habitualized rituals such as, for example, table manners (‘don’t slouch,’ ‘don’t talk while eating’), “the individual acquires a set of dispositions which literally mould the body and become second nature” (Thompson 2002: 12). These collective dispositions form the backbone of what Bourdieu calls ‘taste culture,’ which, “through differentiated and differentiating conditions associated with the different conditions of existence” – such as the hierarchy of the social structure, differences in language, regional differences in family conventions and educational systems, and the value ascribed to cultural products and objects – inscribe in a group of people (that is, a gathering of individuals) the idea of a fixed social order. Through this habitualization of prescribed cultural tastes, an individual gains “a ‘sense of one’s place’ which leads one to exclude oneself from the goods, persons, places and so forth from which one is excluded,” leading to the creation of a “common-sense world” governed by the practical (innate) knowledge of one’s social environment (Bourdieu 1984: 468-71). Bordieu’s habitus, shaped by his idea of pre-determined taste, is similar to the structure of Althusser’s ideological state apparatuses: individuals in a community are shaped by the institutions of those communities.4 If one is taught from childhood to 3 In Bourdieu’s own dense language (1977, 72), habitus represents “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and… collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor.” 4 Aristotle (Eth. Nic. 1105b3), who in many ways anticipated many of Bourdieu’s theories, recognizes this practice in his definition of virtue, which a#per e0k tou~ polla&kij pra&ttein ta_ di/kaia kai\ 4 sacrifice to Roman gods, participate in the provincial Roman property censuses, and so on, then one may well become Roman naturally. The age of the Empire and the extension of its institutions and habitualized practices meant that a traveling Roman “could recognize at least one temple in every city he visited and would know the prayers for one divinity in every ritual he witnessed” (Ando 2000: 407). These normalized ideological apparatuses made the most far-reaching provincial community part of Rome, in turn bringing even the most Greek of citizens under the umbrella of Roman identity. These provincials need not have accepted themselves as ‘Roman,’ necessarily, but they could not have avoided at least acknowledging the existence of a ‘Roman’ identity; their predisposition to the habitualized ideological apparatuses means that they would have had at least some level of investment in Roman culture. The ‘investment’ a person makes into the culture(s) to which they belong – native, Roman, religious, mixture – is what I shall call ‘ideological capital.’ This term refers to the extent to which an individual immerses himself in the habitus and ideological apparatuses of the community in which he lives. For example, a Greek provincial who adopts a Roman name, participates in as many Roman rituals as he can, and ignores his ‘Greekness’ is investing his ideological capital entirely in his rulers’ culture. On the other hand, a Greek who receives Roman citizenship yet still calls himself ‘Greek’ keeps most of his ideological capital invested in his ‘original’ culture. Participation in the Imperial cult is one example of an apparatus which demanded the investment of ideological capital via its participation, forcing natives to acknowledge Rome’s existence and influence. Nor were temples to Roma, Julius Caesar, Augustus and the like regarded as strictly ‘Roman’ sw&frona perigi/netai (“results from the repeated performance of just and moderate actions”). In other words, virtue is a product of a habitualized, ‘second nature’ process.