It is a truism these days to state that the most important scholarship on Greek cities under Rome is produced in French. The monograph on the decline of Greek polis institutions by Anne-Valérie Pont makes a major contribution to the key debate between J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, The Decline and Fall of the Roman City (2001) and M. Whittow, P&P 129 (1990), 3–29 (summarised at 14–20), not only supporting Liebeschuetz's argument for fundamental institutional and ideological change rather than ‘continuous history’, but dating the key developments much earlier than Liebeschuetz did, to the Tetrarchic and Constantinian age. Her study is resolutely (and rightly) regional: just as Claude Lepelley had shown the ways in which North Africa bucked empire-wide trends in late antiquity, P.'s analysis, reacting to his example (23), is specific to the historic circumstances of its chosen region. It is, besides everything else, a treasure-house of well-selected detail on Asia Minor between the 240s and 330s a.d., in the best tradition of Louis Robert; anyone working on that period should consult its index regularly.

The book opens with a detailed survey of the evidence from martyr acts in ch. 1, particularly useful for the lesser known acta (though I would question the relevance of some of the detail on the manuscript tradition). The argument progresses slowly via the discussion of the impact of the invasions of the 250s–280s in ch. 2, and two chapters on the relations of the cities of Asia Minor with Roman power at the beginning of the period and under the Tetrarchy, to the two final chapters dealing with the anarchy of a.d. 303–24 and with Constantine. It builds up to a powerful case that in Asia Minor the process of ‘depoliticization’ was largely complete by the end of Constantine's reign. For pre-Tetrarchic Asia Minor, P. draws a detailed picture of civic vitality, in key respects similar to the picture of the vitality of traditional religion in Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians (1986). Even in spheres dominated by the central government, active participation by the cities and their elites is confirmed: armed resistance to the invaders in the third century is convincingly linked with the civic agonistic tradition (158–73), jurists learn law within Asia Minor and return to their home cities (220–4), and the persecution of Christians is still dominated by local agency (80–108). We then proceed to the world in which civic offices and civic pride rapidly disappear, and political participation via the assembly and council becomes confined to a much narrower group. Pace Whittow, P. sees as particularly significant the shift from mentions of civic offices to commemoration of the ‘first men’ of a city (208–19); she also argues for the impact of Diocletian's fiscal reform (298–304) and the increase in the number of provinces (312–23), as well as of the move of the imperial capital to Nicomedia and then Constantinople. Orcistus, the usual example of the vitality of inter-polis rivalries, is presented as a ‘city of a new type’ (418).

While I found P.'s book profoundly stimulating, I am not wholly convinced by her central argument. It would therefore be only fair to say that it may find further support in G. Watson's recent argument that issuing cities had essential control over local coinages in Southern Asia Minor (Connections, Communities, and Coinage (2019), 182–3), which makes the disappearance of local mints a more significant rupture. I can, however, see three potential issues. Firstly, shifting the chronological frame may suggest a more complicated dynamic. One could argue that in the 190s a.d., when Super and his centurions terrorised Syedra for Pescennius Niger (SEG 64.1496) and Severan soldiers applied unauthorised torture in Lycian cities (G. Reger, Chiron 50 (2020), 253–85), the autonomy of the cities was infringed upon by the Roman military to a higher degree than a century later, and that the loss of central control in the 260s resulted, on the contrary, in a short-lived last age of polis independence. Secondly, P.'s account, while making excellent use of legal sources for her analysis of Tetrarchic and earlier civic obligations (250–79 and elsewhere; see especially the collection of sources at 260–63), downplays both the re-use of imperial constitutions in later codifications and the later constitutions in Cod. Theod. What is one to make, e.g., of 12.1.69 (a.d. 365–373), compelling senators to continue undertaking municipal honores in the dioecesis Asiana, or of 12.1.94, addressing the situation in Pontus in a.d. 383? The third question is posited in an insightful article by A. Blanco Pérez, Historia 70 (2021), 116–32, which appeared in parallel with P.'s monograph: was what he terms ‘a decline in epigraphic activity not relating to Roman administration’, a process convincingly demonstrated by P., primarily driven by changes to the epigraphic culture or to the institutions themselves? One may compare the analysis of the disjunction between epigraphic and literary evidence for the fourth-century rhetoricians by L. Van Hoof, Antiquité Tardive 18 (2010), 211–24 (contrast P.'s discussion, 179). It is notable that, for instance, of the 39 co-disciples of Libanius counted by P. Petit (Les Étudiants de Libanius (1955), 193), nine were members of city councils and one a pagan priest, and yet this is not something that we could have guessed from epigraphy.

None of this is to deny the potency of the questions posed by P. I am still left wondering, however, whether a better analytical tool would be not the concept of ‘depoliticization’ but of redefining the political, as excitingly attempted by B. Gray, Annales HSS 77 (2022), 633–71, for the earlier period.