The present study, a revised version of the author's Ph.D. thesis (2017), sets out to trace the impact of Roman rule in the Near East from Pompey's campaign in 64 bc to the final suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in ad 135. Geographically, it does not attempt to cover the entire southern Levant but focuses on three regional cases: Galilee (pp. 22–46), Ituraeans and Nabataeans (pp. 47–87) and the Decapolis (pp. 88–180).
In the preface C. explains his choice of these three regions and the omission of others, for example Judaea (p. viii). This is followed by an introductory chapter on ‘Romanisation(s) in Global Times’, offering a quick overview of recent controversies within ancient studies concerning such key concepts as ethnicity, identity, globalisation and – of course – Romanisation. On p. 8 the concept of ‘glocalisation’ is introduced, and in the following pages the problems and pitfalls of using archaeological evidence in the search for ‘ethnicity’ are summarised. After a short excursus on the spurious letter of king Areus to the high priest Onias (1 Macc 12:20–2), the concluding section re-introduces and defines ‘glocalisation’: ‘the Jews, the Arabs and even the cities that declared to be “Greek” glocalised Greek culture, because they maintained their own peculiarities, although they actively participated in the new world’ (p. 20).
The first and shortest of the three regional studies, ‘A Melting Pot of Different Peoples’, provides a history of Galilee down to Pompey's intervention in 64 bc (pp. 22–8), followed by a discussion of Galilean identity (pp. 29–35). Interesting and detailed as it is, the first half of the chapter builds almost entirely on familiar textual evidence, which also serves as the framework for the interpretation of the archaeological evidence from p. 35 onwards. On the last few pages (pp. 44–6) C. sets the received wisdom based on the textual sources against the evidence of archaeological finds – or archaeological non-finds: ‘the lack of archaeological data has confirmed that [the Galileans] were not Ituraeans converted to Judaism’ (p. 44).
Chapter 3 on ‘The Arabs in Southern Levant’ (sic) deals with two separate groups, the Ituraeans (pp. 50–60) and the Nabataeans (pp. 60–83). For each, the literary sources are presented first, followed by the coinage and archaeological evidence – very sparse where the Ituraeans are concerned, far richer for the Nabataeans. C. concludes that, although the terms occur earlier, ‘Ituraean’ and ‘Nabataean’ only emerge as ethnic categories around 100 bc, when the Seleucid kingdom was approaching its final break-up. Possibly ‘Ituraean’ and ‘Nabataean’ originally designated elite groups ruling territories that included other, non-Ituraean or non-Nabataean tribes (p. 86).
Chapter 4, ‘The Decapolis: a Greek island?, which takes up nearly half the book, opens with a short survey of the genesis of the Decapolis as part of Pompey's reorganisation and its subsequent history (pp. 88–97). It remains uncertain exactly which cities were included within the Decapolis; probably the ‘ten cities’ were at least twelve in number (pp. 97–8). Each of these is dealt with in turn: Canatha (pp. 98–104); Adraha (pp. 104–6); Raphana, Dion (pp. 107–10); Hippos (pp. 110–19); Gadara (pp. 119–27); Capitolias (pp. 127–31); Abila (pp. 131–5); Scythopolis (pp. 135–44); Pella (pp. 144–50); Gerasa (pp. 150–9); Philadelphia (pp. 160–70). First, the literary sources are discussed, then the urban monuments. In the cases of Adraha, Raphana, Dion and Abila, however, these are too few, too poorly preserved or too difficult to identify for them to make any contribution to the analysis. The results are summarised on pp. 170–5, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of one specific type of urban monument, the theatre (pp. 175–9).
While these three central chapters contain a mass of interesting detail and provide the careful reader with a good overall impression of life in the southern Levant at the turn of our era, they rarely address any of the big questions raised in Chapter 1, such as the impact of Roman rule, the ‘glocalisation’ of Greek culture or the ‘interweaving local cultures’.
Part of the problem is that a disproportionate part of the book is taken up by narrative history of the most conventional kind. For instance, of the ten-page section dealing with Philadelphia in the Decapolis (present-day Amman), half is devoted to a retelling of the city's history from the literary sources. This includes no less than fifteen direct quotes, many of which deal with events before 64 bc or after ad 135 and thus fall outside the chronological frame of the study.
Archaeology, especially the study of portable and tradeable artefacts such as pottery (e.g. pp. 42–3), can provide important insights into economic and cultural interaction. But in the interpretation of artefacts and their distribution, the focus too often shifts from material culture as an indicator of trade, ethnicity or identity to a sort of ‘historical archaeology’ where the finds are used to illustrate or corroborate the events of conventional kings-and-battles history (e.g. pp. 38–9).
Whereas Chapters 2 and 3 include discussions of coinage and inscriptions (e.g. pp. 71–6), the studies in Chapter 4 leave them out of the analysis. Nor are portable artefacts taken into account, save on rare occasions. On the positive side, the interplay between history and archaeology comes out far more clearly in this chapter, because both categories of evidence – narrative history and built monuments – belong to the ‘political’ (in the Aristotelian sense of the word) sphere. On the negative side, this further widens the gap between what we know (the source evidence) and what we should like to know (cultural interaction, identity formation, Romanisation, glocalisation).
As C. points out in his discussion of theatres (pp. 175–9), establishing the cultural connotation of a monument type is no straightforward matter. Though theatres might prima facie be interpreted as emblems of ‘Greekness’ (p. 178), they were thin on the ground in the Seleucid kingdom. During the Roman period, stone-built theatres appear in the cities of the Decapolis: should this be interpreted as evidence of ’Romanisation’, of Roman-mediated ’Hellenisation’ or of increasing economic prosperity? Much depends on the social context of the monuments, whether they were sponsored by local euergetai and which role they played in the collective self-perception of the cities: questions that inscriptions and coins, respectively, might have helped to answer. Prosopography and onomastics might also throw light on the personal interactions – the ’interweaving of cultures’ – between local elites and Romans. The conclusion offers answers to some of these questions, though it is not always quite clear how the results presented here derive from the analysis offered in the preceding chapters.
The quality of the halftone illustrations varies. Illustrations of the types of pottery and distribution maps described in Chapters 2 and 3 would have been helpful to the reader, as would an index of places and an index locorum. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography (pp. 187–216).
