This hefty and composite volume aims to provide a ‘sophisticated and authoritative overview and explore questions’ concerning ethnicity in ancient history. The chronological and geographical scope covers from proto-history to late antiquity, the regions of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean Europe, and the Near East. The essays respond to and generally achieve three purposes: they ‘cover topics of ethnicity’ in a broad array of ancient civilisations and contexts; they also provide an array of definitions and explanations of the terminology, principal approaches and methodological issues; moreover they offer a critique of the tradition of studies, recent developments, settled arguments and open problems.
It would be unavailing to summarise the diversity and depth of all 36 essays, but I do wish to outline the general structure and salient topics (for the table of contents and index see http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1444337343.html). Chapters 1–8 constitute a preliminary section, each essay discussing one methodological approach or problem and each making its point with a case study, covering historical contexts from European proto-history to the Mediterranean Bronze and Iron Ages. Chapter 3, ‘Archaeology and Ethnicity’, discusses one major recurrent problem in this discipline and volume: the difficulties and cautions, and yet the necessity, of relating material cultures and archaeological evidence with literally attested peoples, ethnonyms and identities. Chapter 5, ‘Ancient Ethnicity and Modern Identity’, is a crucial general reading: ‘ethnicity’, ‘ethnic identity’ and a range of related phenomena are outlined with definitions, methodologies and approaches, and a critical history of modern scholarship is traced. Chapter 8, ‘Ethnic Identity, Borderlands, and Hybridity’, also functions as an introduction – different, complementary, by no means redundant – to general dynamics and phenomena of ethnicity in ancient history.
Chapters 9–13 cover the cultural-historical area of the Near East in the late Bronze and Iron Ages: the Hittite, Assyrian and Persian empires (Chapters 9, 11, 12 respectively), Egypt (Chapter 13) and the peoples of the Levant (Chapter 10). A recurrent issue of analysis in these essays deals with historical phenomena of imperialism: self-representation of dominant groups, ethnic taxonomy of subject populations, policies in multi-ethnic territories and the difficulties scholars encounter in having to deal with highly propagandistic sources.
Chapters 14–24 cover ancient Greece. Chapter 14, ‘The Study of Greek Ethnic Identity’, stands as another handbook explanation of features and mechanisms of ethnicity in antiquity and discussion on methodologies and scholarship, cautioning against employing modern assumptions and perspectives: an effective addition to the arguments of Chapters 5 and 8. Comparable to J. Hall's Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (1997), Chapter 15 ‘Ethnicity and Local Myth’ and Chapter 19 on Messenia illustrate the issues of the stratigraphy of multiple versions of ethnogenesis narratives and kinship myths, and of the instrumental, manipulable and situational character of ethnicity: hence the importance for scholars to contextualise sources and circumstances. The topics of ethnic contact and liminal populations are discussed examining Thracians and Scythians, and Phoenicians and Sikeliotes (Chapters 21 and 22 respectively): in the Black Sea and Western Mediterranean oppositional ethnicity and hybridity are key phenomena.
Chapters 25–35 comprehensively cover the period of Roman history. The multi-ethnic character of Rome, from its origins and throughout the empire, prompts recurrent questions on emic and etic ethnic identity within the ever-changing conglomerate of the citizen body and subjects. The interwoven Italic and Roman ethnogeneses and ethnic identities are treated in the perspective of the Latins, ‘Romans and Italians’, and municipia (Chapters 29 and 34); the same issue is discussed in the emic perspective of ‘Roman Elite Ethnicity’ (Chapter 30) and in its representation in religion (Chapter 31). The ethnic identity of liminal or subject populations in relation to Roman culture and in Latin sources has an overarching perspective: Chapter 25 is on the ethnicisation of Christians, Chapter 26 on Roman cultural Hellenisation, Chapter 28 questions racial prejudice towards Jews, Chapter 33 is on Romanisation and ethnogeneses in the late-empire in north-west Europe, Chapter 35 on etic metonymical ethnonyms in northern Africa, Chapter 37 on the ephemeral ethnic taxonomy of migration age peoples in late antiquity.
Chapter 36 does not concern ancient history, but rather the crucial role played by ancient Romanitas in the ethnogenesis of post-unitarian Italian national identity in the nineteenth–twentieth centuries. Though an arguable inclusion in this volume, this essay does compellingly point out the importance of shared historical memory, a mechanism fundamental also in ancient ethnicity.
The scholarly tradition on ethnicity in history is indebted, on the one hand, to the benchmark definitions developed by F. Barth and A. Smith and, on the other hand, to studies and research of the 1990s–2000s that produced, among others, the consequential works of J. Hall and I. Malkin.Footnote 1 This Companion's contributors copiously cite these references and rely on, iterate and explain – always critically – this scholarship. Compared with the state of the art, this Companion brings a quantitative addition in terms of chronological and geographic scope, scholarly perspectives and methodologies, diversity of interests and problems, and case studies.
The front and back matter is basic. The introduction is principally an abridgement of each essay. There is a twelve-page general index, but no list of ancient authors and works, and no list of maps and illustrations. Bibliographies are chapter-specific and include a useful list of ‘Further Reading’ with comments. Among errors and typos I should point out the repetition of ‘Ozolian Locris’ in the place of ‘Epicnemidian Locris’ in the map at page 277.
This Companion cannot be taken, on the whole, as a handbook on ethnicity in antiquity; rather it seems to have been designed for consultation of its essays according to readers’ special interests. The volume's structure only loosely responds to an organic exposition on ethnicity in antiquity, rather the essays are essentially a collation systematically covering a broad range of dynamics, historical contexts and cultures. Introductions to and definitions of ethnicity, explanations of major characteristics and mechanisms, and history of scholarship, are mostly – though differing in length and thoroughness – treated within each essay, each with its perspective, historical arguments and case studies.
The study of ancient ethnicity as presented in the volume carries a heavy burden of complexity: a multiplicity of approaches and interpretations, cautionary ‘questioning of formally accepted and fixed categories’, a dizzying diversity of expressions and mechanisms, and of case studies throughout history and cultures. The topic could have been eased for students in want of a more clear-cut and functional framework and knowledge: perhaps systematising the contributors’ efforts, or including a more comprehensive textbook introduction, an afterword or conclusion, complementing back matters with indexes, or a reference glossary.
The difficulties reside in the nature of the subject itself, as emerges from an integral reading of the volume: ethnicity is multicultural in evidence, it is constructed, mutable and instrumental in its dynamics, highly contextual – even evanescent – in its history; research must be multidisciplinary, it can hardly aim at a synoptic discussion and must rely on case studies, and scholars are constantly at risk of assumptions and modern anachronistic views. A Companion to Ethnicity as multifaceted and ‘sophisticated’ as this volume, and not an uncomplicated history of ethnicity, is possibly the only honest outcome in this field of research.
