This work is Jesper Madsen's latest study of the responses of the communities of north central Anatolia to the arrival of Romans and Roman power, from the early first century b.c.e. through the high Empire of the early third century c.e. It results from the author's participation in a Danish Council of Independent Research-funded joint research project that brought him and other members of the project team to Turkey on a number of occasions over three and a half years, for conferences, site visits, fieldwork and general travels, ‘to experience the region's geography and road networks; or to study the many unpublished epigraphic remains’ (245).

The author's contribution to that project begins with the late 60s b.c.e. — when Pompey the Great created the administrative and legal framework for what became Roman Pontus through the founding of ‘poleis’ (e.g. Pompeiopolis, Magnopolis, Megalopolis) and the establishment of a provincial charter — and concludes in the early third century c.e., ‘when most of Pompey's settlements stood as well-established urban centres in which Greek culture played a key role both in urban landscapes and in people's everyday lives’ (8). M. frames his investigation around three questions: What drove Pompey to take the actions he did in the late 60s? What was the initial role and organisation of the new poleis? How did these new settlements subsequently develop?

The author is steeped in the sources and long scholarly tradition about the Romans in Pontus and environs (the latter helpfully synopsised in the work's Introduction). He is at pains throughout his study, however, to interrogate current orthodoxies. M. readily — and regularly — admits the spotty evidentiary record on which much of his research rests but does not let it deter him from speculation.

M. organises his study into four broadly thematic chapters. The first considers the situation facing Pompey in the 60s b.c.e. and what might have motivated his decision to organise three new provinces in the East and instigate urbanisation in the former Mithridatic hinterlands, heretofore characterised by small villages amid large rural estates. M. considers Pompey's decision ambitious but rejects explanations that see it as driven by a desire to civilise the locals by importing Greek civic institutions and culture (and Greeks). Nor does he see Alexander, the founder of another network of poleis, as an inspiration to Pompey. Rather, for M., Pompey's programme in north central Anatolia must be seen against his drive to play a dominant role in the politics of Rome. To achieve that end, Pompey sought success in the East and thereafter, a stable system for administration and taxation.

Ch. 2 considers the nature of the settlements that Pompey founded and interrogates the consensus view that they were built on Greek models and to Hellenise the area. M. is not so sure. His discussion includes excurses on Augustus’ founding of Nicopolis near Actium, the founding and development of Cyrene and Strabo's account of the cities of the area (of which he was a native). For M., all of this points to a different model and motive for the new urban centres begun by Pompey. Whether from their Pompeian inception, or from their return to direct Roman rule during the early Empire, the internal organisation of the new cities was based upon Roman, rather than Greek models, to meet Roman administrative needs. Eventually Greek culture and institutions infiltrated, but not, in M's view, until the late first century c.e. M. reads Strabo as viewing the Pontic settlements of his time as non-Greek, as opposed to the poleis along the coast.

In ch. 3, M. surveys evidence for the institutional landscape of his area as it developed from the late first to the early third centuries c.e. While noting that communities increasingly exhibited structures and behaviours that could be seen as Greek, he continues to emphasise the strong Roman influence on developments. M. argues that the imperial cult owed less to local impetus and Hellenistic ruler cults than scholars such as Beard, North and Price recognise, but rather was the product of Roman models and subject to considerable imperial oversight. Likewise, the practice of forming regional councils — koina — while having Greek precedent, arose here to manage relations with Rome. A review of the area's best preserved and studied site, Pompeiopolis, then leads to a consideration of identity. Here, M. emphasises recent scholarship that sees identity not as monolithic, but as a malleable composite of membership in or exclusion from multiple groups.

Against this background M. proceeds in his last chapter to examine the identities available to the peoples of his study area and their expressions. While in early years the Amaseian Strabo privileges his Greekness, later figures such as Marcus Antonius Rufus from Sebastopolis and Gn. Claudius Severus from Pompeiopolis advertise their Roman identity to local audiences. For M., the latter are not examples of modern concepts such as creolisation or code switching, which he finds of little or no applicability. Rather, M. sees in his region the availability of a multiplicity of identities which its denizens were equally eager to express.