ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

II.ConclusionsOverall, trying to create a rigid policy of colonization or fill in the blanks for one colonybased on analogy to others diminishes the individuality and, thus, what is most interestingabout the religious systems of each colony. The outlines of Roman colonization can,however, be depicted by a macro-model, such as the Colonial Agency Chart (Figure 1.3),which allows for the differences as well as common traits of mid-Republican colonizationefforts. There are certainly similarities between colonies because they were produced bysimilar situations and legal processes. The colonies were founded by commissioners withsimilar skill-sets and housed colonists that mixed Romans and Latins with localpopulations of Greeks, Samnites, or Etruscans, among others. Nonetheless, this system isflexible, so admits different motivations and diverse outcomes in colonial religionespecially.Thus, if we focus on the efforts and motivations of individuals and small groupsamong the commissioners, the colonists, and the locals, the uniqueness of each colony'sset of gods, temples, and rituals shines through. It is then also possible to see that thereligious systems of the Roman and Latin colonies fit the requirements of the colonistsinstead of following a Roman agenda of cultural expansion. Nonetheless, the very fact ofdiversity and choice in constructing the colonial religious environment implies that somecolonies may have been very similar to Rome, such as Luna, while others had very littlethat is purely Roman in them, such as Fregellae or Sora. The local population contributedto the diversity of each colony's religious system. For example, the cults of Paestum246