Die Genese der Städtewelt auf der Iberischen Halbinsel. Versuch einer Typologie ihrer Akteure

During the reign of Augustus and the emperors of the
Julio-Claudian dynasty, a process began in the Iberian
Peninsula that Greg Woolf, in respect to local elites,
rightly called »a period of formation«. They obviously
accepted the »Roman way of life« and participated in the
remodeling or upgrading of their cities in a way that
made them »little copies« of Rome. Partly this process
continued up to the Flavians, and partly, in occasional
cases, there was another »construction boom« due to the
intensification of the Imperial cult during the time of
the Flavians. It is tempting to tie not only public buildings
like temples and amphitheaters but also an aqueduct
or a basilica to members of the local or regional
elites, or the representatives of Rome. However, the
epigraphic evidence is so fragmentary that conclusions
concerning such connections must remain hypothetical.
This contribution intends to present a few case
studies of the making of Roman cities in the Iberian
Peninsula, and to establish a typology of their agents. It
calls attention to the problems that result from postulating
connections between certain buildings and
concrete agents of construction. In other words, this
paper postulates that the question of who the agents
were –who paid – is by no means as important as where
the money came from and whether the flow of money
was constant.