Citizenship, culture and ideology in Roman Greece
Date
2007-08-30T19:02:27Z
Authors
Nay, Jamie P.
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Abstract
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.
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rome, greece, culture, ideology, citizenship, identity, apparatus, ideological apparatus, habitus, race, dionysius of halicarnassus, ulpian, coinage, coins, paul, tarsus, acts of the apostles, law, legal, louis althusser, pierre bourdieu, romanization, romanitas, numismatics, roman empire, imperial, dio chrysostom, ethnography, historiography