Bret Devereaux

Rome's own mythology begins with stories of intermarriage and community-fusion, from Aeneas and Lavinia to the Sabines, in cases where the fusion of those societies resolved a violence-soaked recent past (to gloss over some decidedly disquieting parts of these stories). 3/12

Archaeology from Rome itself in the early period confirms Rome's self-conception of itself as a fusion-society. The city was born not out of one people, but a mix of Etruscans, Latins, etc., with settlements on different hills forging a community around a common forum. 4/12

Of course it did not stop there. Rome's institution of citizenship was radically expansionary compared to almost any other ancient state. More and more people, to borrow Greg Woolf's phrase, became Roman. That did not mean they stopped being Gauls or Egyptians, etc... 5/12

But that they became Roman besides. I love to show my students pictures of some of the Mummy Portraits in the British Museum (e.g. https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=119830&partId=1&object=21468&page=1 …). The figures are often clearly Egyptian or African, yet they also wear the purple stripe...6/12

...the stripe that screams ROMANUS CIVIS SUM - I am a Roman Citizen! - as loud as a portrait can. That man in that portrait, with his curly black hair and dark skin and adorable mustache is more Roman than any modern hate-monger. And that was the secret to Roman success! 7/12

And once more for the people in the back: the secret to Roman success was how the Romans - unintentionally, in most cases - embraced diversity. It unlocked vast reserves of resources and manpower outside of the narrow ager Romanus... 8/12

...it turned a one-note Italian heavy infantry system into an unbeatable combined arms force through allies and auxiliaries, many of whom served for the right to call themselves Roman. And through the local buy-in it fostered, it turned provinces... 9/12

...which in any other empire might have been thinly held and always looking towards the door into coherent parts of the whole that fought, kicked and scratched to remain in the empire, even when it started to fall apart. It made the impossible task of administering... 10/12