The interaction between the Greek and Roman world has occupied scholars for more than a century. Over the years, the debate has moved from a view that Greeks were largely indifferent to what Rome had to offer and therefore less inclined to adopt elements from Roman culture to an understanding of how the two worlds influenced each other. It is still largely maintained that the inhabitants in the east, at least in the provinces dominated by Greek cultural values, were still highly resistant to the influence from Roman culture and less likely to define themselves as Romans, at least in the cultural sense of the word.

This volume offers another vital contribution to a more nuanced understanding of the cultural encounter between the Greek and Roman worlds. The book is a collected volume of papers including a discussion after each paper. In his paper on Plutarch's view of Rome, L. Van Der Stockt argues that Plutarch is not deliberately attacking Rome but that he acknowledges the cultural superiority of Greece, as well as Rome's debt to Greek culture in general. T. Whitmarsh addresses the question of resistance and Greek literary tactics in relation to Rome, arguing that resistance was embedded not only in political ideologies but also in the space of literature and emotions. U. Gärtner focuses on Greek epos in the imperial period: Gärtner concludes that there is no detectable influence from Latin literature in Greek epic, nor that there is any evidence that Greek intellectuals were inspired by Latin writing. In an exciting paper E. Thomas discusses how Roman architecture found a way into Greek urban landscapes and how, over time, Roman architectural features evolved into a hybrid between Greek and Roman building traditions. A. Heller treats the question of how Greek urban institutions evolved in imperial Rome and how they changed to be more in line with Roman practice, when the elite, or what is referred to as the aristocracy, assumed a more formal control over the political process. H.-G. Nesselrath discusses how Latin found access to the circles of Greek intellectuals, both the individuals who stayed among the Romans, such as Polybius, and those who followed a career in Roman politics, and writers like Ammianus who were of Greek descent but wrote in Latin. S. discusses Greek and Latin papyri found in Egypt and points to how Latin papyri constituted a marginal phenomenon. J.-L. Charlet discusses the Romanness of the Alexandrian poet Claudian.

The value of this book lies in its multifaceted approach to the interaction between the Greek and Roman worlds, in the high quality of the papers and in the discussions, where one can follow the debate of what seems to have been a very inspiring conference.