This book has an ambitious brief, in addressing the questions of how monarchical regimes on the periphery of the Roman Empire, faced by the expanding power of Rome, envisaged their own futures and the futures of their heirs. It draws extensively on artistic production, mainly in the East Mediterranean, but reaching in the south to the kingdom of Juba I and Juba II in Mauretania and in the north to the realm of King Cottius in the Alps. The first chapter is concerned with how peace between native kingdoms and Rome might be construed. Here, the most obvious way of regulating relations between states, even when one state is vastly more powerful than the other, is through treaty, like that of the Greek polis of Astypalaia with the Senate at the very end of the second century bce, laid out in terms that were inscribed on the Capitolium in Rome as well as being displayed in Astypalaia. T. demonstrates how Cottius’ arch at Susa 80 or so years later provided a visual counterpart, though here the relief including a solemn suovetaurilia sacrifice has the nature of a state relief, as Cottius took on the character of a Roman prefecture into which his kingdom morphed. A similar transition from independent ruler to becoming a governor on behalf of Rome can be seen in the local coinages of a number of kings in the eastern provinces, though as regards the West T. fails to mention the important evidence from Britain, covering some of the same ground, especially as discussed by J. Creighton in two books (Coins and Power in Late Iron Age Britain [2000]; Britannia. The Creation of a Roman Province [2006]): following the creation of client kingdoms after Julius Caesar's incursions in 55 and 54 bce, rulers in some polities took the title Rex (bestowed by Rome) and, as Strabo records, set up offerings on the Capitol ‘and have made almost the whole island Roman property’ (Strabo 4.5.3). After the Claudian conquest in 43 ce, Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus, ruling from Chichester, West Sussex, and his suburban palace at Fishbourne, was given the title Rex Magnus Britanniae (RIB I,91) and acted both as local Roman patron, builder of temples, baths and Roman style infrastructure and as de facto Roman official, very much in the style of a governor, down to the late Flavian period, ‘remaining totally loyal down to our own time’ (Tacitus, Agricola 14), though the historian quips that this was an aspect of Rome's traditional policy of making kings agents of enslaving their subjects.
The key to such a change as T., like Creighton, maintains, lies in the children of a dynasty, whose continuance or even its legacy depended on heirs. This was true in the Hellenistic world before Rome exerted any controlling interest, thus in the Ptolemaic realm the child, Ptolemy V, is shown c. 200 bce with features approaching those of an adult looking forward to a time in which he could rule in his own right, rather than being shown as the infant he was, in the style of contemporary child images. A rather similar forward projection is represented in the Seleucid realm in c. 175 bce with coins showing jugate portraits of Laodice IV and her child Antiochus also as more adult than he was. Perhaps the most interesting case is that of Cleopatra VII at the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty, when Rome already had a considerable stake in Egypt, to the extent that Julius Caesar fathered a son, Caesarion, projected in native Egyptian art as a functioning and powerful Pharaoh. However, as Mark Antony had fallen under her spell, and if the Battle of Actium in 31 bce had gone the other way, it is plausible that, far from being merely clients, Cleopatra, Antony and Caesarion would have founded and ruled an independent and powerful east Mediterranean Empire. That case apart, from the reign of Augustus onwards the pattern for most client rulers was being sent to Rome by the reigning client king as an obses, partly as security for the good behaviour of their parent, but also to be educated into Roman ways, and such ‘barbarian’ infants are shown alongside the children of Roman aristocrats on the processional friezes on the Ara Pacis. T. singles out Mauretania, ruled under Augustus and Tiberius by the accomplished and scholarly client king Juba II, married to Cleopatra VII's daughter Cleopatra Selene. They groomed their son Ptolemaios to succeed, promoted by them in sculptured portraits and coins. Under Tiberius, Ptolemaios even obtained Roman honours, the ornamenta triumphalia, shown on one of his coin issues. The instability of such prestige was demonstrated when, after his precocious youth, Ptolemaios fell foul of Caligula who had him assassinated. Again the British evidence is of interest here. Tincomarus, who was a contemporary client ruler of the Atrebates in southern Britain, issued coins that copied or adapted coins of Juba II, initiating a trend in southern Britain for the issue of coins with obverses and reverses in the style of Graeco-Roman art.
The third chapter addresses an aspect of the spiritual side of kingship; the relationship with the natural world and cosmology, a subject that has become popular with archaeologists and epitomised by the great sanctuary that Antiochos I of Kommagene erected on the mount at Nemrût Daği in the middle of the first century bce, drawing on dynastic traditions from both Persia and Macedonia, at a time when it was not certain whether his kingdom would fall into the Parthian or the Roman sphere of influence. Astrology, and especially the prominence of the sign Leo in sculpture on the site and indeed on coins, promised a continuity beyond the vicissitudes of politics. Astrology also played an important role in the Nabatean kingdom at the sanctuary of Khirbet et-Tannur, which outlasted the annexation of the kingdom by Trajan. In neither case is there evidence of conflict when the kingdom ended, and with regard to Kommagene, at the end of Chapter 4, one encounters the striking monument of Gaius Iulius Antiochos Epiphanes Philopappos, erected in c. 114–116 ce by the grandson of Antiochos IV of Kommagene, a great a patron of Athens, a friend of Hadrian, who had been suffect consul under Trajan in 109 ce. The descendants of a king here, as was the case of Cottius’ heirs in Gaul, and as both Creighton and I (M. Henig, The Heirs of King Verica. Culture and Politics in Roman Britain [20102]) have suggested in the case of Britain for the heirs of Togidubnus and others, became the magistrates and patrons of cities and the prosperous owners of villa estates. The memory of Togidubnus’ former kingdom is probably preserved in the Roman name for Chichester (Noviomagus Regnorum).
Such a development did not always work, and the most notorious example is Herod the Great, and to a large degree his successors, friendly to Rome but at odds with the strict religious mores of their people. Herod's great Temple and his palaces, even the palace on the impregnable fortress of Masada, fell victim to the iconoclasm of the rebels in the first Jewish War (66–70 ce) or later to Roman reprisal against the rebels. Even so Agrippa II survived as a king to rule various territories. In Britain the Icenian client kingdom, ruled successfully by a client king Prasutagus, fell to Rome after his death under his wife Boudicca in 61 ce only a few years before the Jewish revolt.
This is an extremely rich book, the examples of art and architecture selected to exemplify themes are almost all well selected although not all the details in the photographs are easy to see. It is a pity that some of the themes previously explored making use of material evidence were not incorporated into T.'s grand narrative.
