ABSTRACT
Approximately fifty to sixty million people lived within the confines of the Roman Empire at its height. This great mass was ruled by one man whose ability to retain power depended ultimately on brute force and terror. The emperor’s subjects reacted to their powerlessness in a variety of ways: by accommodating themselves to reality in a spirit of realism or self-deception; by dissociating themselves from the state as far as was possible, and making their lives and careers within alternative value systems in which Roman politics and public affairs could be seen as irrelevant; or by committing themselves to oppose the state, by open defiance of imperial propaganda or (less commonly) by armed rebellion in the form of political conspiracies, banditry or national revolt.1
