• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The supposed anatomical peculiarities of foreign peoples were a frequent theme in the Roman imagination. In India, for example, it was said that there were “people who slept in their ears.” At the same time, the Romans appeared to have considerable respect for the highest caste of Indians, the Brahmans, who were said to be “vegetarians, wearing no wool or leather, indeed often no clothes at all, men of immense physical self-control, completely celibate for thirty-seven years (after which they married as many wives as they could).”

In general, Easterners, including Syrians and the people of Asia Minor, were “sissies” in battle, clad in feminine cloaks and fighting with “unmanly” bows and arrows. Corrupted by luxury, gems, and exotic foods, these Easterners were soft, decadent, sycophantic, and overly subservient to their kings. By contrast, the peoples to the west of Rome were generally crude, uncultured, and warlike, while the Sardinians were “ferocious, unattractive brigands and congenital liars.”

The Spaniards were admired for their extraordinary military prowess. Compared to, say, the “particularly barbarous” Thra-cians, Armenians, and Parthians, the Spaniards were relatively civilized. Apart from “the infestation of their country by rabbits,” they had just one peculiar characteristic: “They cleaned their teeth in urine, and even bathed in it.”

Interestingly, the Romans had particular distaste for peoples of excessive size and height. In general, northerners were “vast and beastly” with ghastly “huge limbs.” The Britons and Caledonians were of “atrocious size.” The Germans, like the Celts and Gauls, were a “race of giants.” But their “abnormal” height was accompanied by inferior intelligence and only hindered these barbarians in battle.

Even on his own turf, the oversized northerner “did not know how to husband his strength.” He was even worse in a warm climate, where “he ate too much and, parched by thirst, he drank too much, particularly of the wine which was not easy to obtain in his own country; and so he quickly put on weight. He could not stand the heat or the dust, but ran for shelter in the shade.” The Alpine Gauls, in particular, were “superhuman in size, with the spirit of wild beasts.” “At their first attack,” a Roman explained, “they are supermen but, after that, like women. With some resemblance to the snow on their own Alps, at the first heat of battle they break into sweat and after slight action they are, as it were, melted by the sun.”

In short, the Romans regarded their own stature as a kind of golden mean. It was a blessing that their soldiers were on average probably between three and six inches shorter than the Gallic and German soldiers. “Romans were superior to northerners in intelligence, to southerners in physical strength.”16

Yet, despite such prejudices, Romans were able to draw into the empire all these diverse “barbarians,” enlisting their talents, allowing them to rise within Rome's ranks, and in general coexisting peacefully with them. According to Gibbon, Rome in the second century AD was “the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was the most happy and prosperous.”17 How did Rome bind its different peoples together and induce them all to work for the benefit of the empire?

THE ALLURE OF ROMAN CULTURE AND CITIZENSHIP

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Roman Empire was the attraction that people felt toward it. Conquered subjects from Britannia to Arabia wanted to be a part of it—to be “Roman.” As Gibbon observed, Roman magistrates seldom “required the aid of a military force” because “the vanquished nations, blended into one great people, resigned the hope, nay even the wish, of resuming their independence, and scarcely considered their own existence as distinct from the existence of Rome.” But what was Rome's allure?

More than any other ancient power, Rome represented a com-munis patria, a common fatherland, for its diverse