490 foreigners and barbarians: The Americas an inferiority complex toward the Greeks, whose language, literature, and knowledge of science they considered superior to their own Any Roman who could afford one wanted a Greek and not a Roman physician Romans therefore made exceptions to their laws when it came to the Greeks This policy toward the Greeks may have influenced how Rome shaped its laws for other foreigners To the Romans any foreigner was a barbarian, and as the Roman Empire expanded, it absorbed numerous foreign cultures, all of which had their own supposedly barbaric laws and customs It seemed unreasonable to the Romans to apply laws to the barbarians that the barbarians would not understand For instance, foreigners from cultures in which everyone communally co-owned the farmland would probably have trouble understanding a law against planting crops on someone else’s property The Romans were practical, and Roman magistrates based their interpretations of laws on general principles about how people should treat one another; they saw the need to make humane—rather than merely legal—decisions when a barbarian ignorant of Roman ways violated a Roman law Still, there were certain behaviors Romans did not tolerate from barbarians One was rebellion Another was disrespect to Roman gods Romans were willing to allow worship of foreign gods, but they also expected everyone to follow the rules regarding Roman gods When emperors became godkings, shrines were established for them in Roman cities, and everyone was expected to pay proper respect In regions such as North Africa this worked out well The North Africans were content to turn whole temples over to the worship of Roman emperors because they saw themselves as being protected by those emperors Palestine was different It took the Romans hundreds of years to figure out why Jews and Christians refused to offer simple, inexpensive sacrifices to the Roman emperors After numerous very bloody revolts by Jews, Titus (r 79–81 c.e.) the son of the emperor Vespasian (r 69–79 c.e.), destroyed Jerusalem in 70 c.e A sign that the Romans still failed to understand Jewish religious beliefs was the founding of the city Aelia Capitolina on the site of the ruined Jerusalem in 130 c.e., something the emperor Hadrian (r 117–38 c.e.) expected the local people to greet with happiness The Jews instead revolted because of the violation of their sacred city, and the rebellion lasted three years (132–35 c.e.) before the Romans put it down Hadrian had good reason to think Aelia Capitolina would be successful Almost everywhere Rome built a city, people welcomed it, and it fi lled quickly with local people as well as Romans This the Romans took as evidence that their way of life was better than everyone else’s Romans were sure that being Roman was the best thing any human could ever be Romanization—the process of changing the behavior of barbarians into behavior that matched or at least closely resembled that of Romans themselves—usually succeeded, and Romans were surprised when it did not When Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (r 211–17 c.e.), nicknamed Caracalla for a style of coat he supposedly designed, became emperor, the Roman Empire extended throughout North Africa, east into Mesopotamia, west through Spain, and north to the Rhine River and even into Britain Many people in these areas came to speak like Romans, behave like Romans, and think of themselves as Romans, but Roman citizens still considered them foreigners Then, in 212 c.e., Caracalla changed their status by declaring every free man living in the Roman Empire a Roman citizen This sweeping decree did not, however, end Roman snobbery Italian Romans continued to regard the accents of North Africans and northern Celts as somewhat primitive They viewed the Parthians to the east as self-indulgent and decadent, morally inferior to “real” Romans And they considered the Germanic peoples of northern Europe and Ukraine crude, dirty, and excessively violent That Germanic tribes eventually overran the Western Roman Empire did not stop Romans from thinking of them as uncivilized THE AMERICAS BY PENELOPE OJEDA DE HUALA The ancient remains of the indigenous people of the Americas offer few clues about their attitudes toward strangers and foreigners However, archaeological evidence points to a high level of interaction among the diverse groups that populated the New World, including a widespread trade network Longdistance trade was only one component of the relationships among foreign and local communities Along with commodities the varied societies of the New World exchanged ideas, customs, and beliefs—and sometimes forced them upon one another These ancient cultural clashes are difficult to decipher, though scholars and scientists have gleaned valuable knowledge concerning them From very early times the indigenous groups of the Americas depended on local trade for survival The diverse and sometimes harsh weather and geography of the American continents not only allowed for but indeed almost demanded interregional reciprocity Neighboring groups often depended on one another, and over the course of time especially through migration and intermarriage, larger social and economic networks developed NORTH AMERICA In the Middle Woodland Period (ca 300 b.c.e to 500 c.e.), Hopewell culture came to encompass a unique cultural sphere of influence Centered in southern Ohio, the Hopewell built on the burial practices of their predecessors, the Adena culture, expanding and disseminating a mortuary ceremonialism throughout the woodland areas of the northeast and as far away as Illinois This Hopewell interaction sphere (system of exchange) included wide-ranging interregional interactions and exchanges, where foreign and local traditions and art forms flowed freely from place to place Mound building