‘Rethinking identity’ through some travel experiences in the Roman Empire”

Abstract: Evidence deriving from some travel experiences in the ancient Roman world gives us the opportunity to focus on how Roman globalisation managed to create and then diffuse a political identity and how the identity itself (regarding country, law, customs, language, creed, culture) appeared. Aelius Aristides wrote the famous manifesto of the successful Roman globalised world in II century A.D., through which the Greek sophist exalted how functional it was travelling from Asia Minor to Rome and how rich, happy and peaceful this oecumene was perceived. Another voice comes later from a noble Gallic poet, Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, who travelled from Ostia Antica to Tolosa, during the so called Barbarian invasions, in V century A.D., returning by sea to his family lands: the situation has now changed. His astonishment at ruins highlights how people, even non-Romans, perceived the Fall of Rome and its dramatic intimate consequences to whom suddenly felt forsaken.