Roman Knossos: The Nature of a Globalized City

The nature of Roman Knossos has been poorly understood, and the misleading supposition that there was a marked change in Knossian society in the first centuries B.C.E./C.E. following the Roman conquest has become an accepted hypothesis. This paper applies globalization theory to a diachronic synopsis of Roman Knossos. By viewing cultural developments in Knossos as relative to Rome and the empire, rather than falling under a subsuming process of Roman acculturation, an alternative perspective to the romanization of Knossos may be explored; that is, that the city underwent a slow process of globalization and the ultimate effects of this cannot be seen until almost 100 years after the foundation of the colony.