Furthermore, provincial Romans did not abandon their native culture; rather, they blended it with the Graeco-Roman model. Archaeology has shown that towns such as Atuatuca in Gallia Belgica had pottery, sculpture, town layout and religion similar to, but distinct from, comparable sites such as Dionysias (modern Suwayda) in Syria and Thugga/Dougga in Africa. Thugga/Dougga is an excellent example of a cultural synthesis that seamlessly integrated Numidian, Punic, Hellenistic and Roman elements into a unique whole. Furthermore, the empire was itself divided into the Latin west and the Greek east: a division that not only affected the future of the Roman Empire but that remains a real force in Europe two millennia later. The Latin west To tell the truth, there are many parts of Italy in which no man puts on a toga until he is buried in it. Juvenal, Satires 3.1712 Culturally and economically, the

Latin west consisted of two parts: the Mediterranean regions of Italy, Spain, Africa and southern Gaul, and the rest of Gaul, Britain, Roman Germany and the Alpine and Danubian provinces. Hispania, south-eastern Gaul and Africa, linked by maritime trade to Italy, were originally suppliers of raw materials and agricultural produce to the Italian market. As Cato

Thanks to bustling ports such as Puetoli in Italy, Carthage in Africa and Gades in Hispania, goods could circulate through the Mediterranean region in days. However, goods bound for the north-west of the empire by ox waggon through the Alps could take months to arrive. Gradually, exports became more sophisticated and inter-regional trade expanded. Archaeologically, this can be seen in manufactured products such as oil lamps. In the early period, these were generally of Italian provenance but by the second century CE were locally made or even exported to Italy. Ease of access by sea also encouraged wealthy Romans to acquire lands in the Mediterranean provinces; in later centuries much of the province of Africa was owned by Roman senators. In Hispania, peace and imperial control of the silver mines led to efficient exploitation of the p

In his Natural History (33.78) Pliny the Elder reports twenty thousand pounds of gold were mined from Galicia, Asturias and Lusitania alone. The province also supplied the empire with most of its copper. This bounty led to prosperous towns and wealthy provincials, who became an important constituency in the Roman senate. The emperors Trajan and Hadrian were both born in the city of Italica in Hispania Baetica. The north-west of the empire generally underwent greater social and cultural change than the Greek east or Italy, where urbanism had been common centuries or even millennia before. For the Greeks, and scarcely less for the Italians, the heroes of Homer and the Olympian gods were integral to their landscape and culture. Hercules, for example, had allegedly visited Evander on the site where Rome was later founded. In contrast, before their absorption into the empire, Britain and northern Gaul had known the Mediterranean world only through rare visits by tr