Hellenization

Although Rome had a native tradition of performance, the Hellenization of Roman culture in the 3rd century BCE had a profound and energizing effect on Roman theatre and encouraged the development of Latin literature of the highest quality for the stage.

A period of peaceful Hellenization followed, such that the local Anatolian languages had been supplanted by Greek by the 1st century BC.

Hellenization never fully took root in Phrygia, unlike many of the surrounding Eastern regions of the Roman Empire.

Historian Michael Crawford attributes the disappearance of much of Tiberius Gracchus' support to the reduced level of citizen participation due to dispersal far from Rome, and sees his tribunate as marking a step in the Hellenization of Roman aristocracy.

In any case, the changeover was gradual and by 330, when Constantine inaugurated his new capital, the process of hellenization and increasing Christianisation was already under way.

Rizzi, Hadrian and the Christians, 4 The neighbouring Samaritans had already undergone such a process of Hellenization and religious syncretism, integrating their religious rites with Hellenistic ones.