This interesting collection of papers benefits from being concerned with both Greek and Roman colonization. While in terms of space the emphasis is on the Roman experience, the early chapters show how the results of new work on Greek colonization are encouraging reconsideration of its Roman counterpart. The editors pick out several important themes: the politicization of our literary sources, which offer potentially misleading and unrepresentative ideal types; the importance of archaeological evidence in providing a corrective to this weakness in the literary evidence; a questioning of the relationship between colonization and empire in the light of post-colonial historiography; scepticism with regard to periodizing and defining colonization according to developments in state-formation; and the great diversity of colonial experience, which should be seen as part of the constant mobility promoted by the Mediterranean environment.

The collection begins with David Gill on early colonization at Euesperides in Cyrenaica, surveying the intermittent excavations there from the late 1940s to the present. Gill discusses a selection of individual buildings, the problems of establishing absolute and relative chronologies for the site, and the difficulties in discovering the origins of colonists on the basis of pottery finds. He manages to place Euesperides in the context of Archaic colonization as a whole, though a map would have helped the general reader better to appreciate the topographical discussion.

A more provocative and theoretical piece is offered by John-Paul Wilson, who begins by outlining the way in which former received wisdom has been undermined, partly by a post-colonial perspective that challenges unspoken ideological assumptions, and partly by changes in the relative value attached to literary and archaeological evidence. He emphasizes how the many population movements of the Dark Ages are automatically described as migrations or invasions, whereas their successors in the Archaic period are termed colonization, without any clear distinction established between the two. The so-called age of colonization, a label which privileges one form of migration over many others, is not entirely imposed by modern prejudice but is already present in the sources, in which classical norms impose anachronistic uniformity on a varied experience, and arbitrarily exclude from consideration movements of people that do not fit these models. Wilson offers some examples of how these issues might affect our view of more specific problems. Od. 6.2–11, 9.116–41, and Il. 2.653–69 do not reflect colonization c. 700 b.c. but rather a world of migration and genuine discovery c. 800 b.c. The cult of the oikist reveals no guiding hand behind the constitutions of colonies, since there is no secure literary or archaeological evidence for such cults before the middle of the fifth century b.c.: the phenomenon is no earlier than the late sixth century b.c., and consists of traditions often invented to emphasize specific contemporary alignments with other cities. Likewise the centrality of Delphi for collective and individual acts of colonization is a retrojection of Classical conditions. Wilson's essay is useful in showing the range of possibilities now open to scholars in this field, the slipperiness of traditional categories, and the need to avoid circular arguments. The specific subject matter is, of course, Greek, but the approach and themes provide a broader context for the pieces on Roman colonization which follow.

Michael Crawford's discussion of Poseidonia/Paestum bridges the divide between Greek and Roman and continues the questioning of common assumptions. In a thorough analysis he shows that there is in the archaeological record little trace of political, institutional, or ethnic change from Greek to Lucanian. A little more can be associated with the creation of the Latin colony in 273 b.c., but less than others, notably Torelli, have suggested. In particular Crawford rejects the idea that votive statuettes of children are colonial rather than Lucanian, and he sees no reason to think that the well-known statue of Marsyas does not pre-date the Latin colony. Excavation has not yet discovered the new Latin colonists, and changes in the public space occurred only gradually, and in general respected the layout of the Greek city. The impression is one of ‘slow evolution of the urban fabric, without institutional or social change having any causal relationship with architectural developments’ (67).

Guy Bradley continues Wilson's theme of variety in the causes and types of colonization. He accepts much of the information on colonies in the early Republic preserved by the annalists, but seeks to rescue it from the anachronistic context in which it is presented. Bradley emphasizes the conditions in which early colonization took place: under-developed state machinery and horizontal élite mobility across weak and ill-defined ethnic and state boundaries. This leads him to suggest that the official state-led schemes which we find in the annalists were in fact more like the enterprises of powerful condottieri seizing territory for their followers. There was no difficulty in including locals, an inconvenient fact which the annalists had to explain away in unlikely rationalizing narratives. Bradley admits there is evidence for the exclusion of locals (e.g. at Cosa) in the middle Republic, but contrasts this with the situation at Paestum and Ariminum and elsewhere, thus emphasizing the absence of a consistent policy in this regard. He is also prepared to allow a greater role to social conflict than to the creation of propugnacula imperii as a cause of colonization. The attempt to remove the record of early colonization from its anachronistic context must in principle be valid, but there remains a concern about the degree to which a record of state-led colonization can be removed so easily to an entirely different context without further historiographical discussion.

John R. Patterson begins with a more traditional survey of the character and importance of Roman colonization, pointing to location and chronology as evidence for strategic planning, especially after 338 b.c. He identifies four contexts in which the sources place the settlement of colonies: military (distribution of land to veterans), social conflict (relief of land-hunger by the state), manpower (individual land grants), and extension of the citizenship (the theme of Velleius’ discussion). Each of these is a framework within which one might set Roman Republican history as a whole. As does Bradley, Patterson finds good reason to accept the link between colonization and the condition of the plebs. He argues that reports of difficulties in recruiting colonists appear incongruous (to both us and Livy), and is unimpressed with stories of resistance to the sending of colonies, since joining a colony was the only way the ordinary citizen could benefit from conquest. Such accounts are considered to be retrojections from the second century b.c., when we hear (presumably authentic) reports of unwillingness to join colonies. From the Gracchi onwards colonization attracts negative treatment in the sources: no longer is the theme one of unwillingness to join colonies, but instead resistance to their creation, and emphasis on the havoc created by Sullan and especially triumviral colonies. Maybe Livy's description of the outrage felt by dispossessed Italian communities in the fourth century b.c. was informed by his own experience of the triumviral colony at Ateste, near Patavium, an experience similar to those of Vergil, Propertius, and Horace. Thus we can account for the extremes of the colonist as ‘upstanding soldier on the one hand, a threat to civic order on the other’ (210).

Edward Bispham's contribution precedes those of Bradley and Patterson, but deserves consideration out of sequence since it is by far the most substantial piece in the collection (87 pages). Bispham is suspicious of the formulae associated with Roman colonization — Priscae Latinae Coloniae, Coloniae Latinae, Coloniae Maritimae, Coloniae Ciuium Romanorum — supposing them to be later inventions imposed on a much more fluid reality. The politically charged nature of such apparently neutral and technical expressions can be seen in the fact that no such distinctions appear in Velleius, whose account, if it derives from Claudius Quadrigarius, reveals an attempt after the Social War to remove the distinction between Roman and Latin colonies. In the same way a Gracchan source (reflecting the rebellion of Fregellae, concerns about manpower, and C. Gracchus’ proposal to make the Latin colonies Roman) may lie behind Livy 27.9, where the thirty so-called Latin colonies are described during the Hannibalic War as Roman. The puzzlingly high number of colonies referred to in Asconius, Pis. 3C reflects changing conceptions of what was and was not a colony, presumably including abandoned colonies, and garrisons — a confusion further suggested by the pro coloniis of the Lex Agraria. The argument is skilful, but I suspect there is in fact more in the literary sources than Bispham allows. Asconius can easily be shown to be consistent with the literary tradition (see CQ 58 (2008), 353–6), and while it is proper, for example, to take seriously the reports in Diodorus and Theophrastus of colonies to Sardinia and Corsica in the fourth century b.c., we must not immediately reject the possibility that there was something genuinely different about these overseas expeditions which accounts for their absence from the annalistic tradition, or even that they are the product of the perennial confusion in Greek sources between Etruscans and Romans.

Bispham draws attention to the difficulties in assessing the different degrees of Romanness displayed in the material culture and institutional structure of colonies. How, for example, are we to understand the Black Gloss produced at Ariminum and Cales compared with the less distinctively Roman output at Cosa, Alba Fucens, and Paestum? What about the brief and unusual period when consuls were the chief magistrates at Ariminum and Beneventum (both founded in 268 b.c.)? And how do we interpret the Roman topographical names applied to areas within some colonies? Bispham concludes that the particularly Roman features may be due to the more pronounced frontier nature of these colonies in the years after their foundation, leading to a spontaneous desire to display ‘strong affective ties’ with their mother city (91). In order to explain the colonial consulship (and maybe the status of the XII mentioned at Cic., Caec. 102), Bispham suggests that in the mid-third century b.c. receipt of the full citizenship by ciues sine suffragio endangered the privileged status formerly held by Latin colonists and led to ‘a new definition of colonial Latinity’ (89).

Bispham impresses most when addressing the archaeological evidence for urban centres, looking particularly at the urban context of cults at Cosa, Alba Fucens, Ariminum, Tarracina, and Minturnae. In an extensive archaeological survey Bispham effectively debunks claims regarding the early existence of a Capitoline triad at any of these colonies, identifying Apollo, Diana, and especially Hercules as the commonest colonial gods. He is rightly wary of claims that these gods were especially colonial, partly because their significance could be quite different in different places, partly because they are as likely as not to be examples of continuity with indigenous cult, and partly because their presence may simply reflect the general ubiquity of these cults in both colonial and non-colonial contexts. Bispham is prepared, however, to think that by the second century b.c. the rationalized account of Hercules (DH 1.40–4: destruction of tyranny, mingling of Greeks and barbarians, spread of civilization, foundation of poleis in barren places) had become a charter-myth for Roman colonization. The Capitoline triad, the most obvious sign of a colony as a little Rome, did become important, but only in the second century b.c., owing to new-found Roman confidence, wealth, and the emulation of new colonies by old ones.

How are we to react to the revisionist approach of this collection? We are presented with both criticism of previous approaches and new models with which to replace them. The disjunction between the narrow literary record and what we know more generally about archaic society reveals ways in which the traditional narrative may be very much distorted. This is an undeniable achievement of the collection. New models are offered that are less narrowly based than those they replace, but are they sufficiently well supported to justify our confidence? The emphasis on the bewildering variety of colonial experience and the politicization of all our sources does not breed faith in models. It may be in fact that we are being shown indirectly that a reliable history of colonization, as traditionally conceived, must begin much later than we have hitherto supposed. Any debate will owe much to this important volume, which makes one regret not attending the original conference at the ICS in July 1998, and regret even more that five contributions to that conference were not able to be included in the final collection. As it is, it remains an honest and thought-provoking attempt to challenge long-standing assumptions about Greek and Roman colonization.