ABSTRACT
The casual visitor to the archaeological remains of Roman towns of the early imperial period will be struck by the uniformity of their appearance. Like modern cities with their shopping malls and office blocks, Roman towns in Britain looked much like those in Italy or Africa and not greatly different from those in Syria or Egypt. Among the rich élite who paid for and commissioned the designs of public architecture, there developed a high degree of cultural consensus, such that a provincial aristocrat from one corner of the empire would have a great deal of cultural common ground with his counterpart in the furthermost reaches of Rome’s domains. Such cultural agreement was of high value in cementing the political co-operation of the upper classes in the government of the empire. It is also reflected in, and contributed to, the extraordinary cosmopolitanism of the early Christian movement, so that St Paul, a Jew from Cilicia, could write in mutually comprehensible terms to fellow-believers from many parts of the Roman world.
