Italy was much less cosmopolitan and sophisticated and, according to literary tradition, much more sober and straitlaced than was Rome. It was the mistress of the empire, although the gap between it and the provinces was narrowing. Hadrian’s policies especially helped to reduce its privileged position. His use of circuit judges was resented precisely because with them Italy resembled a province; actually, Italy badly needed them, and their abolition by Antoninus Pius was soon reversed by Marcus Aurelius. Also, in Aurelius’ reign a provincial fate overtook Italy in the form of barbarian invasion; a few years later the country got its first legionary garrison under Septimius Severus.
The economic importance of Italy also declined. By the end of Augustus’ reign, the ascendancy of its wine, oil, marble, and fine pottery in the markets of Gaul and Germany had already begun to yield to the competition of local production in the West; and, by Flavian times, Italy was actually importing heavily not only from Gaul (witness the crates of yet-unpacked Gallic bowls and plates caught in the destruction of Pompeii) but also from Spain. The latter province was especially represented by its extraordinarily popular condiment, garum; its olive oil, too, was a sizable item on Italian tables after ad 100, only to yield its primacy there, by the mid-2nd century, to oil from northern Africa. By then, Spanish, Gallic, and African farm products all outweighed Italian ones in Ostia and Rome. Against such tendencies, the emperors did what they could: Domitian, for example, protected Italian viticulture by restricting vine growing in the provinces; Trajan and his successors forced Roman senators to take an interest in the country, even though it was no longer the homeland of many of them, by investing a high proportion of their capital in Italian land (one-third under Trajan, one-quarter under Aurelius). Developments in the provinces
The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon’s famous description of the 2nd century as the period when men were happiest and most prosperous is not entirely false. Certainly, by then people had come to take for granted the unique greatness and invincibility of the empire; even the ominous events of Aurelius’ reign failed to shatter their conviction that the empire was impregnable; and the internal disturbances of the preceding reign had not given cause for much alarm. The credit for the empire’s success lay less with what its rulers did and could do than with what they did not do: they did not interfere too much. The empire was a vast congeries of peoples and races with differing religions, customs, and languages, and the emperors were content to let them live their own lives. Imperial policy favoured a veneer of common culture transcending ethnic differences, but there was no deliberate denationalization. Ambitious men striving for a career naturally found it helpful, if not necessary, to become Roman in bearing and conduct and perhaps even in language as well (although speakers of Greek often rose to exalted positions). But local self-government was the general rule, and neither Latin nor Roman ways were imposed on the communities composing the empire. The official attitude to religion illustrates this—in line with the absolutist trend, emperor worship was becoming slowly but progressively more theocratic (Domitian relished the title of god, Commodus demanded it); yet this did not lead to the suppression of non-Roman or even outlandish cults, unless they were thought immoral (like Druidism, with its human sacrifice) or conducive to public disorder (like Christianity, with its uncompromising dismissal of all gods other than its own as mere demons, and wicked and hurtful ones at that—hence its liability to become a target for riots).
While there is no indication that the central authorities consciously opposed the increase of governmental personnel, the number of government employees certainly grew very slowly. Thus the responsibilities of the magnates in provincial cities were correspondingly great. In parts of southern Spain or in the area south of the Black Sea, for example, where the extent of the territories dependent on cities stretched out over many scores of miles into the surrounding landscape, city senators had not only to collect taxes but also to build roads and carry out much rural police work. Within their cities, too, senators had to see to the collection of taxes and tolls; as a group, they had to oversee and assign the income from municipal lands or buildings rented out and from endowments established by generous citizens; they had to authorize the plans and financing of sometimes very elaborate civic structures—an aqueduct, an amphitheatre, or a temple to the imperial family—or of great annual festivals and fairs or of ongoing amenities serving the public baths (free oil for anointing oneself, heating, and upkeep) or the public markets. In the eastern provinces, they had to replenish from time to time the stock of small local bronze coins; and they had to insure that magistracies were effectively staffed, even though there usually was no salary of any sort to attract candidates. Magistrates and city senators generally had to pay handsomely for their election and thereafter make further handsome contributions, as need arose and so far as they could afford, toward the adornment of their community.
What attracted candidates in adequate numbers were most often three inducements: the feeling of community approval and praise, offered in the most public ways (described by writers of the time with striking psychological penetration); the enhancement of personal influence (meaning power) through the demonstration of great financial means; and finally, the social and political advancement that might follow on local prominence through attracting the attention of a governor or of the emperor himself. It was from the provincial elite that new Roman senators were made.
Cities, through their elite families, competed with each other across entire regions. City rivalries in northern Italy or western Anatolia happen to be especially well reported. Within individual cities, elite families were often in competition as well. In consequence, the standards of municipal beneficence rose, encouraged by a populace who on public occasions assembled in large numbers in the theatre, demanding yet more expenditure from their leaders. The emperors, who realized that the well-being of cities, the jewels of their realm, depended on such munificence, increasingly intervened to insure a continued flow of good things from the rich of a community to their fellow citizens. Legislation might, for example, specify the binding nature of electoral campaign promises or of formerly voluntary contributions connected with public service. As a consequence, in the 2nd century consideration must for the first time be given to the local aristocrat unwilling to serve his city; the series of imperial pronouncements exerting compulsion on such a person to serve was to stretch far into the future, with increasing severity. Attempts to stabilize the benefits arising from ambitious rivalries thus had an oppressive aspect.
As to the lower orders, their voice is rarely heard in surviving sources, except in acclamation. So long as the rich voluntarily covered the bulk of local expenses and so long as they commanded the leisure and knowledge of the world to give to administration unsalaried, the poor could not fairly claim much of a right to determine the city’s choices. Thus they acclaimed the candidacies of the rich and their gifts and otherwise gave vent to their wishes only by shouting in unison in the theatre or amphitheatre (in between spectacles) or through violent mob actions.