Modern visitors who explore the remains of Roman cities in various parts of the former empire are eventually bound to be struck by the essential sameness of it all. Indeed, throughout the Roman world, cities shared many similarities in terms of lay-out, urban landscape, architecture and decoration of public buildings, monuments and private dwellings, the range of public amenities available, and the manner of exploitation of the urban hinterland — a truly remarkable feat given the Empire's extraordinary geographical and ecological diversity. While an older generation of scholars mostly viewed these similarities as deriving from a deliberate imperial policy of Romanization, since the 1980s researchers have increasingly stressed native agency, emphasizing how provincial populations (particularly, but not exclusively, their élites) adopted, and creatively adapted to their own needs, Roman ideas, institutions and material culture. Inevitably, with this change in perspective came a shift in focus, towards the diversity within and between Roman provincial societies that was also an enduring feature of the Empire.

This volume, a sequel to an earlier collection on similar themes (S. T. Roselaar (ed.), Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic (2012)), reflects that shift. Its contributors mostly problematize Romanization but, eschewing current modish and ideologically loaded terminology such as ‘globalization’, ‘creolization’ or ‘hybridization’, the volume's theme is defined in more neutral-sounding terms as processes of cultural change leading to integration. As Saskia Roselaar notes in her introduction, despite decades of debate, ‘it is by no means clear how exactly conquest led to cultural change: what exactly happened in the daily lives of people conquered by Rome, that made them change their culture and, often, the way they represented their identity?’ (2). In sixteen relatively short chapters, often representing work-in-progress, the volume's contributors, by and large younger scholars, ancient historians as well as classical archaeologists, try to provide answers to this question in one way or another, for different regions of Republican or Imperial Italy and the provinces. A refreshing aspect of many contributions is that their authors tend to view cultural change in allied or provincial communities not so much as initiated or caused directly by Roman activities, but rather triggered by Rome's growing power or imperial presence, yet following a course determined very much by local social dynamics and/or native preoccupations. Given the large number of chapters, I will only discuss my personal favourites, which often tend to reflect this perspective well (this selection is obviously biased by my own research interests and therefore by no means implies a negative appraisal of the contributions left unmentioned).

Thus Rafael Scopacasa shows how Samnite élites after the Second Punic War increasingly engaged in the conspicuous consumption of luxury wines from Rhodes and Cnidus, which they could import because Rome's growing Mediterranean dominance provided access to the relevant exchange networks. Inter-community status competition in the context of growing Roman dominance led to more uniform consumption patterns among the Samnite élite. In similar vein, Marleen K. Termeer demonstrates that the third-century b.c.e. boom in local coin production in Latin colonies and communities allied to Rome in central Italy and along the Adriatic coast was linked to the war-effort of the First Punic War, to which all these communities contributed troops that required pay. Again, Roman expansion provided a context for regional (in this case monetary) integration. Using Cicero's ties with the gens Caecina from Etruscan Volaterrae as a case study, Fiona C. Tweedie shows how horizontal relations of hospitium between élites from different Italian cities increasingly succumbed to the gravitational pull of Roman power, transmogrifying into hierarchical patronage networks with powerful Romans at the centre, not so much through direct Roman initiative, however, but because internal Roman political disputes (for example over land distributions) increasingly had repercussions throughout the peninsula and because Rome's wide sway made her the natural arbiter in conflicts between members of other Italian communities.

Even when the initiative for change came directly from Rome, however, as in the case of the foundation of colonies, cultural integration was powerfully driven by local social and political dynamics, as Aitor Blanco-Pérez and Tamara Dijkstra demonstrate in their respective chapters on the colonies of Apamea in Bithynia and Patras in the north-west Peloponnese. Despite the strong Roman linguistic and institutional imprint that the establishment of a veterans’ colony at Apamea brought about, literary and epigraphic sources show that the regional dynamics of intercity relations soon caused Apamea and its (élite) citizens to become thoroughly embedded in eastern Greek polis culture. At Patras, analysis of cemeteries shows how the Roman colonists immediately began to participate in the competitive funerary display that the city's Classical and Hellenistic Greek élites had already engaged in, but that this display assumed a very Roman form, with tombs above ground, an increase in cremation and the use of Latin inscriptions. Gradually, however, Greek eastern influences also began to creep in.

Two chapters on Roman mining provide contrasting images along similar lines. Patricia A. Argüelles Álvarez demonstrates the profound transformation of local transport networks and lines of communication brought about by Roman mining operations in north-west Spain (Asturias), while Alfred M. Hirt makes a clear case based on documentary evidence for the deep, active and interested involvement of native/non-Roman populations in the exploitation of mines, both in Spain and Roman Dacia. Enora Le Quéré in her case study of Cycladic Melos shows how economic interests could serve as a powerful force of integration into the wider imperial world, in both economic and cultural terms, even in an archipelago far from the Roman centres of power, which was divided up among several provinces, and which had no military presence to speak of. High demand for Melian minerals, rocks and clays led to the development of a typically Roman form of extraction-industry based on private property in a villa-system. The epigraphic record shows, however, that the Roman negotiatores in question became thoroughly integrated in the Greek polis life of Melos, acting as euergetai, magistrates, priests, ephebes, etc.

Of a number of papers focusing explicitly on cultural issues towards the end of the volume, two in particular reflect the ongoing debates on how precisely to understand the confrontation of Greek and Roman cultural identities. Daniele Miano attacks the old notion that the spread of cults of Virtues throughout Republican Italy was a conscious Hellenizing policy by the Romans, and argues that communities often adopted Virtue cults along with (a variety of) the Latin language. Christopher Burden-Strevens, finally, takes a closer look at Cassius Dio, and concludes that the historian's Roman and Greek identities were thoroughly intertwined: Dio wrote as a Roman when discussing the Empire's foreign relations, but employed his Hellenic cultural background in discussing ‘the political realities of the day’ (304).

All in all, the volume presents an inspiring interim report of ongoing work on identity and integration in the Roman world. One might regret the absence of certain regions (Egypt) or topics (the imperial cult), or some more discussion of the factors possibly responsible for the ‘sameness’ mentioned above, which characterized the Empire as much as the diversity highlighted here, but that perhaps requires another book. In the meantime, I found much that was interesting and inspiring in the contributions collected in this volume.