‘Romanization,’ the term most often used to refer to the cultural change with the spread of the Roman Empire and increasing connectivity in the Roman Mediterranean, is a difficult concept to define. Different approaches to this deceptively simple first-order task can and have led to remarkably divergent conclusions. Is Romanization primarily the transmission of Roman religious or philosophical beliefs, or does it manifest principally in the consumption of Roman material culture? And further, does one invariably lead to the other? For the moment, it will be enough to define the term in
broad strokes; subsequent discussion of the sarcophagi of Jewish patrons in the Roman world and their sculptural programs will offer further insight into cultural change in the Roman world of Late Antiquity.
A consensus has increasingly formed around an understanding of ‘Romanization’ as a cultural process marked first and foremost by the adoption of Roman material culture. This view, which for obvious reasons is especially popular among classical
archaeologists, stands in direct contrast to earlier research which saw Romanization as a primarily linguistic, philosophical, religious and intellectual phenomenon. Where earlier scholars regarded material culture as significant primarily for its indication of
philosophical or religious cultural change and describe Romanization as a process of “becoming Roman,” or conversely, “making Romans,” those who study the provincial impact of Romanization today are quick to emphasize the flexibility and complexity of the process.72 Gardner captures this complexity, writing that “change occurs at a
multiplicity of rates on a multiplicity of levels of social life, producing a multiplicity of narratives.” In other words, change takes place unevenly, everywhere and always.
Moreover, it is now widely acknowledged that the adoption of Roman art, architecture and other cultural forms by local populations rarely, if ever, signaled a complete displacement of local beliefs and practices.73 Rather, ‘Romanization’ is now
72 See especially: Boatwright 2012; Hope 2001; Mattingly 2011; Mattingly 2014; Webster 2001; Woolf 1994;
1998.
often seen as a process that was more generative than it was destructive, giving rise to new ways of expressing local identities. Along these lines Dietler described cultural change in the Roman world as “an active process of creative appropriation,
manipulation and transformation played out by individuals and social groups with a variety of competing interests.”74 It has also been suggested that cultural change was
often a great deal more superficial than traditionally imagined. For instance, whereas the outward aspect of funerary practices (architecture and location) was a locus for
redefining social positions in Roman Syria, it seems that funerary rituals themselves and beliefs about the afterlife changed to a much lesser extent.75 Thus, current models of
Romanization mirror Bowersock’s conception of Hellenization as an “extraordinarily flexible medium of both cultural and religious expression... not necessarily antithetical to local and indigenous traditions... it provided a new and more eloquent way of giving voice to them.”76
In light of the recognition of the significant degree of complexity involved in processes of cultural change in the Roman world, some scholars have taken issue with the term ‘Romanization’ itself. Cooper for example has cautioned that the term
‘Romanization’ masks what was in reality a “complex process whereby individual consumers of Roman-style material culture did not necessarily adopt an entire Roman
74 Dietler 2005, 63.
75 De Jong 2007, 38.
‘package.’”77 Gardner has even gone so far as to abandon the term entirely, claiming that
“‘Romanization’ as a catch-all paradigm for understanding a transformative process across the empire, has collapsed.”78 While it is important to be mindful of such critiques
and heed their example in observing the complexity and unevenness of cultural change, the term and the study of the phenomena it describes is nevertheless useful for
conceptualizing the spread of a common material and visual culture across the Mediterranean in the Roman periods.
One of the most enduring points of contention in the study of Romanization is locating the driving force behind cultural change across the empire. Where earlier studies suggested important roles for the imperial family and the army, two possibilities are more commonly offered now: a top-down model of social change emphasizing the role of local elites,79 and a more organic model of social change that locates cultural
change in the gradual economic and political incorporation of the provinces into the Roman Empire, and particularly their urbanization.80 Neither model is mutually
exclusive, and both share a perception of Romanization as largely a locally-driven process.
Those who favor a top-down approach view the cultural practices and consumption of local elites as evidence of the adoption of Roman material and visual culture for
77 Cooper 1996, 95.
78 Gardner 2007, 32-3.
79 Eg. Brunt 1976; Brunt 1990; MacMullen 2000; Woolf 1994; 1998.
political and social competition. The Roman imperial system that governed the provinces was, by modern standards, minimal and laissez-faire in many respects. It focused in large part on retaining local power structures and coopting local elites into the program of Roman rule, especially from the first several centuries of Roman rule into the 2nd century C.E. In this model of ‘Romanization’ it is understood that local elites
‘bought into’ Roman culture and ideology as a way of ensuring their continued socio- economic status.
Roman manners, entertainment and material goods provided the means for local elites to visibly mark their social status, to confirm their role in the new imperial order, and to display their cultural sophistication and facility with the mediums of the
dominant culture. The symbiotic relationship between the political order of the Roman Empire and local elites thus resulted in changes in the social and material culture of the provinces driven by elite consumption and conspicuous display. This argument is common in studies of ‘Romanization’ in Roman Palestine and the Galilee.81 To Schwartz,
‘Romanization’ and cultural change was “the response of the city elites to conditions created by the end of Jewish autonomy and the imposition of direct Roman rule” beginning already in the 1st and 2nd centuries C.E.82 Levine has suggested that the
diffusion of the Roman visual vocabulary in Jewish circles in the 3rd and 4th centuries
81 See, for example: Levine 2005; 2013; 2016; Schwartz 2001.
C.E. has its root in the practice of urban aristocracy, and particularly the wealthy, pro- Roman Patriarchate.83
The urbanization model, on the other hand, provides a more organic model for the spread of Roman culture, arguing that it was the Roman urban environment and its public and civic institutions which encouraged the spread of Roman culture, and to a much broader audience than local elites alone. In a time when most people lived in rural villages and settlements,84 urbanization brought an array of cultural forms, practices and
goods that were only available to the populace of the provinces in urban environments. As Braudel formulated it, “towns are like electric transformers. They increase tension, accelerate the rhythm of exchange and constantly recharge human life.”85 Or, more
recently, Harris wrote that:
“It was in towns that specialist workers of almost all kinds came into existence, it was in towns that wealth was accumulated, it was in towns that decisions were made about peace and war… As for qualitative differences, it was in town that most literacy was imparted, it was mainly in town that Romans benefited from aqueducts, it was in town that if they were very poor they sought casual work. And so on. And then there are the big cities, Rome, Alexandria, and one or two others. It was not their population that mattered most, but their consumption power and the huge numbers of workers, agricultural and otherwise, that it took to maintain them.”86
Across Roman Syria, beginning in the Severan period many cities “received a standard package of civic buildings, shapes, and decorative motives.”87 This process
83 Levine 2005; 2013; 2016.
84 Estimates vary, but generally agree that 80-90% of the population of the Roman world lived outside of
cities. See Harris 2005, 30.
85 Braudel 1981, 479.
86 Harris 2005, 33-4.
included the building of public buildings, main streets, and communal necropoleis and can be seen at many cities, large and small, across the region.88 To recognize these cities
as part of a broader trend of urbanization in the Roman East is to recognize their role in promoting the spread of Roman culture; it was primarily through the city and its institutions that local populations encountered Roman culture. For example, prominent cities in the Galilee like Sepphoris and Tiberias were administratively organized
according to the Roman model, providing their elite citizens a chance to participate in Roman governance through city councils (boulai) and to practice Roman law.
Likewise, typical Roman entertainment and leisure facilities, especially bathhouses and theaters, were constructed in both cities in the Roman period. The cultural impact of such entertainment and leisure facilities has been underscored by a number of scholars.89
Eliav asserts that bathhouses were an important “social arena” in the Roman urban environment by virtue of their accessibility to all classes and the diversity of activities and messages associated with the dominant Roman cultural world on display. These ‘Roman’ activities and other cultural facets included mythological sculpture, mosaics, magic, medicine, athletics, nudity, massages and so forth, a variety that, as Eliav puts it, “came to encapsulate Romanitas: the Roman experience of life”.90
88 Pensabene 1997. For Roman Syria in particular, see De Jong 2007.
89 See, for example: Eliav 2010; Schwartz 1998; 2001; Weiss 1999; 2010b.
90 Eliav 2010, 607. In a similar way, Millar (1993, 524) contends that the most important Greek influence on
popular culture was likely exerted in the realm of entertainment. Weiss (1999, passim), writing about the Galilee in particular, concurs. His reexamination of literary evidence persuasively supports an important role for public spectacles, particularly of the theater, in Jewish life in the first centuries C.E; 2010b, 635.
Against this backdrop, the connection between the architectural forms characteristic of urban environment and changes to the funerary landscape of Roman Syria has been thoroughly explored by De Jong, who pointed out that tomb architecture and decoration of all forms mirrored in multiple ways the civic architecture that spread during the Roman period, from tomb facades to sarcophagus pedestals.91 From their decorative
schemes to their architectural elements, tombs across the region participated in a new sculptural vocabulary that was “common all over the Roman world of the first centuries of the common era and part of an imperial fashion or koine.”92 At the same time, the
adoption of new styles associated with Roman culture was not exclusive nor did it entail the abandonment of local traditions:
“The people in Roman Syria therefore, mixed symbols and materials that were part of a Mediterranean and probably imperial style of architecture with local forms, and perhaps with motifs originating from outside the Roman world. The tombs in Syria were hybrid buildings in their outward appearance and represent not a Hellenized or Parthian, but a local, Syrian-provincial way of burial."93
Like other local peoples with substantial diaspora populations in the Roman world, Jews encountered Roman culture in different places and different times across the ancient Mediterranean. For Jews living in the heart of the Roman Empire—the city of Rome itself—daily cultural contact and substantial exchange with the Roman world can be taken more or less for granted. Romanization and the adoption of ‘Roman’ material
Furthermore, the studies of Weiss and Eliav both reveal that rabbinic literature confirms the frequent attendance of Jewish patrons at bathhouses and spectacles. See Eliav 2002; 2010; Weiss 1999; 2010b.
91 De Jong 2007, 169.
92 De Jong 2007, 170.
and visual culture among the Jewish community of Rome needs little reconstruction here aside from assessing some of the dynamics of the community and its position (both social and geographical) in the city in the following chapter. On the other hand, for other Jewish communities across the Roman world, interaction with Roman culture was mediated by their provincial and local settings. Thus, for the community of Beth She’arim, evidence for Jewish interaction with Roman culture must be considered in light of the history of the region in the Roman period and patterns of urbanization in the Galilee and across Roman Syria, which we will reconstruct in Chapter 5.