Power and Politics: Approaching Roman Imperialism in the Republic

This paper presents an examination of Rome’s impact on its provinces via an analysis of local disaffection with Roman rule across the Mediterranean, focusing on the period from c. 150-70 BC. In this period Rome extended its empire across the Mediterranean, exposing diverse regions to Roman practices and attitudes. The affects of this expansion on the provinces has in the past been studied in relation to Rome and the elite (Santangelo 2007) or in relation to individual provinces or areas (eg Richardson 1986; Meloni 1987; Kallet-Marx 1995; Prag and Quinn (eds) 2013).

This paper examines the conditions on which Romans could acquire land in Italy and in the provinces during the Middle and Late Republic, arguing that while several Roman institutions and practices persistently made new land available to Romans, their legal construction also made sure that these economic benefits could not be translated into political capital in Rome. After all, imperial expansion not only spelt changes for the conquered, but also those conquering - changes that, as my argument shows, were heavily mediated and contested.

This paper examines how associations of Roman citizens acquired influence in the political systems of non-Roman cities in the Late Republic. The product of waves of migration from Italy and the spread of Roman citizenship in the periphery, these groups of Roman and/or Italian businessmen formed minority populations in non-Roman cities and went by names like Rhomaioi hoi katoikountes and conventus civium Romanorum.

This paper examines discourses concerning male sexuality in the Roman Republic as epiphenomenal to Roman expansionism in the third and second centuries BC. It finds that the Romans during this period sought to reassert traditional civic discourses advocating male sexual restraint, both at home and abroad. This emphasis on civic restraint is at odds with later discourses related to sexuality and empire manifest in the notorious statue from Aphrodisias representing the emperor Claudius as a heroic nude raping the female personification of Britannia (Whittaker 2004: 115-143).