But that unity, a top-down uniformity in which diversity was welcomed as long as it didn’t threaten the absolute sovereignty of Caesar, was always creaky, and often ugly. The “diversity” was, after all, still seen in strictly hierarchical terms: men over women, free over slaves, Romans over everybody else. Rebels were ruthlessly suppressed. “They make a wilderness,” sighed the Briton Calgacus, “and they call it ‘peace.’”19
