The abundance of private and voluntary associations was a key characteristic of the Roman world, in the West and in the East, during the late Republic and the High Empire.1 Most of the time, those communities were called collegia, corpora or sodalicia and their social recruitment was rooted in the urban plebs, the plebeians.2 From a certain point of view, they were very diverse. Indeed, their specific names suggested that their members decided to unite for different reasons: because they had the same occupation, the same geographical origin or the same devotion to a specific god, for instance. Nevertheless, they were usually engaged in very similar activities. All of them were religious associations.

The abundance of private and voluntary associations was a key characteristic of the Roman world, in the West and in the East, during the late Republic and the High Empire.1 Most of the time, those communities were called collegia, corpora or sodalicia and their social recruitment was rooted in the urban plebs, the plebeians.2 From a certain point of view, they were very diverse. Indeed, their specific names suggested that their members decided to unite for different reasons: because they had the same occupation, the same geographical origin or the same devotion to a specific god, for instance. Nevertheless, they were usually engaged in very similar activities. All of them were religious associations.

This chapter focuses on occupational associations from Rome, Ostia, and other great harbours of the Roman west during the second and the early third century, and explores how these groups, rooted in the middling social categories, used, reacted to, and even created imperial imagery and ideology. Members of these communities met in meeting places where imperial imagery was omnipresent. Imperial imagines were a part of the decorative schemes of places where feasts and rituals celebrated the majesty of the domus Augusta. These objects fostered the politicisation of lower classes, spreading ideological conceptions of the central power and, at the same time, expressed adherence to the imperium. Associations expressed deference towards imperial power with several goals in mind. One part of their motivation was not political or ideological, but social. They aimed to appear to be honourable communities, respected because of their official recognition and their integration into civic life. The wealthiest members encouraged their peers to express loyalty towards imperial power, because political loyalism belonged to a specific habitus expected of candidates for social and civic climbing.

Dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of small boats operated inside or in the svrroundings of the greatest ports of the Roman West. They towed sea-going ships or transhipped their cargo. These working boats also connected different elements of port-systems by providing transportation between inner and outer harbours, or between maritime and fluvial ports. Archaeological evidence for these activities is becoming more and more abundant with the discovery of shipwrecks. For instance, the Arles-Rhône 3 boat was carrying stone, probably towards the Camargue in southern Gaul, when it sank in the Rhône during the Flavian era. On its return journey it might have transported imports from outer sea ports to the river port of Arles. The boatmen from the Rhône delta thus connected maritime navigation and long-distance river navigation. Indeed, the nautae of the Rhône and the Durance took charge of the latter upstream from Arles. Ostia and Portus also provide great archaeological evidence which has been recently studied by Giulia Boetto.