ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

certain far-flung mid-Republican colonies, and conclude that the political structureswhich Zanker assumed defined a Roman colony, the arx and its capitolium, the forumwith a comitium/curia structure, were not ubiquitous in mid-Republican colonies.While this type of study is helpful in terms of dispelling the imperial image cast uponRoman Republican colonies as a whole, it is still Romano-centric in that it glosses overwhether each colonization effort was affected by various events and people within themiddle-Republic, or what contribution the local population made toward shaping thestructure of the colony.Another problem with interpreting archaeological evidence, especially in terms ofthe nature of religion in the colonies, again returns to the applicability of imperialinscriptions to mid-Republican habits. Bispham quite rightly urges caution whenanalyzing the inscriptions on first and second century CE altars found in variouscolonies. 164While it is tempting to connect the prescription that the rites at these altarsshould mirror those of Diana on the Aventine with the importance of Diana in thefledgling Roman Republic, all that can really be said about the use of Diana in thiscontext is that her cult was an acceptable model in imperial colonies. As with thequotation of Aulus Gellius, it is all too easy to conflate the many stages of Romancolonization from the archaic through imperial periods into one, concrete, and definableprocess. Moreover, the tendency of Roman historians to create a fused picture of Romancolonization allows other scholars wishing for a foil to their own colonization studies to163 Bispham (2006), p. 74. See also Mouritsen (2004), p. 42, who notes that there was "no urban parallel tothe political use of the forum envisaged in the Latin colonies," not even in the colonial model developedfrom comparison to military camps since the soldiers would have been ritually restricted from entering theforum space as in Rome.164 Bispham (2006), pp. 73-74.