This book does not provide a bird's-eye view to the problem set out in the title. Unlike other titles in the collection Key Themes in Ancient History, which offer something closer to the state of the art on the specific subject, it is explained in the introduction that this ‘book is necessarily an essay, with no pretensions to comprehensiveness’ (p. 17).
The volume brings an exciting perspective to a topic that has attracted great scholarly attention. Even without giving a clear answer (which I think actually does not exist) to what would be the best approach to understanding the relationship between empire and political cultures in the Roman world, D. provides a broad assessment of the long-standing (and lasting) scholarship on the subject and points out promising ways for studying the theme. Rather than merely describing the different historiographical developments in the area, D. manages to put them in dialogue as possibilities that illuminate relevant aspects of the problem. In general, she avoids approaches that overemphasise the empire as a producer of consensus and those that overstress the resistance to Roman rule. This is valid, for instance, for the more traditional views of ‘Romanisation’ and also for the most recent view of ‘globalisation’. As she convincingly argues, the multiplicity and complexity of elements involved in these processes are irreducible to one main explicative variable. These elements were not dissolved in a melting pot, but interact with each other and can be distinguished in competition between different spheres of power.
D. shows that the Roman empire had a great capacity for co-optation, in some cases turning individuals or groups from subjects into insiders, and that the relationship between centre and periphery is not limited to the domination–resistance dyad. The Roman Empire is seen as the result of systems of power and authority that competed to build a multifaceted universe with varying levels of integration (and autonomy). Empire played a complex role in Roman dynamics of political culture, one that cannot be seen as simply producing a binary distinction between ‘Romans’ and ‘natives’. Suggesting a more concrete and unambiguous delimitation of the process also allows D. to consider that the label Romanitas or ‘being Roman’ does not imply a complete transformation limiting other interpretative possibilities, ‘including those that work within local systems of authority’ (p. 13).
The book is organised around five themes that illuminate the problem from different and complementary perspectives. Each chapter has an introduction that presents the main elements to be analysed and the general line of argument that follows. The book begins with an introduction that revisits Francis Haverfield and his notion of ‘Romanisation’. The following section, ‘One Hundred Years of Imperial Change’, presents some of the main lines of a wide and long debate on the book's theme. The introduction ends with a brief delimitation of the volume's topic, including the definition of ‘political cultures’, and its chronological breadth, ‘between the early reception of Macedonian dialects of conquest and empire ca. 300 bce and the “high” empire of the second to third centuries’ (p. 16).
The first chapter, ‘Toward a Roman Dialect of Empire’, presents an interesting approach to various mechanisms of Roman power and sovereignty that interact with earlier ones that are both continued and compete in the empire. The chapter introduces the notion how ‘various groups and individuals were able to use and claim the Roman state's modes of power and sovereignty for various ends including self-actualization’ (p. 20).
The second chapter deals with ‘Territory’ and ideas of territorial domination. This chapter shows disputes and tensions between the effectiveness of imperial space, however without necessarily producing loyalty to Rome or consensus. It could be summarised as showing a dynamics implicating ‘the everyday plurality of loyalty and interest’ (p. 49).
Chapter 3, ‘Wealth and Society’, initially addresses the important and large problem of the nature and limitations of economic interventions by the Roman imperial state and the impact of the empire on local economic dynamics. The focus adopted seems too limited for such a broad problem, missing many analytical possibilities. However, one should note that this chapter alone could give rise to a new book. This limitation is natural for a short book with a wide horizon of analysis. D. opts, once again, to work with some case studies instead of producing an exhaustive presentation of the theme. The chapter also provides a very interesting analysis of the relationship between imperial wealth and forms of social hierarchy, including the building of spaces, such as the hierarchy of theatre.
Next, the analysis indicates the importance of the two elements that form the title of Chapter 4, ‘Force and Violence’, but also emphasises ‘the distinctive role- and rule-playing (and breaking) in which the Roman state and individual actors were involved along with, to a more limited extent, friends, subjects, and allies’ (p. 107).
Chapter 5, ‘Time’, is an illuminating study that examines various examples of how Roman and local systems of timekeeping established relations of rapprochement and remoteness between imperial, provincial and local spheres, producing a plurality marked by the actions of diverse actors and interests in communication and competition.
The last chapter, ‘Epilogue: Becoming Roman’, develops the main conclusions and the complexity of the theme analysed throughout the book. One of the main conclusions is the invitation to ‘appreciate the performative aspects of identity in the Roman empire, and, just as profoundly, the thinly stretched nature of Roman Power, and its coexistence with competing systems of power and authority, along with the opportunism engendered by the Roman empire's substantial reliance on local states and groups’ (p. 157).
The book is well written and has a clear and sophisticated language, already familiar to those who have read D.'s Romulus’ Asylum (2005). There are minor editorial problems such as references to Benefaction and Rewards in the Ancient Greek City: the Origins of Euergetism, quoted on pp. 49 and 74 as Gygax 2016, but listed in the bibliography as Domingo Gygax 2016.
The volume has great merit in pointing out important and new ways for the analysis of the empire and its relations with political cultures, establishing important alternatives for future studies. The book seems to be of more interest to those already studying the subject than to those seeking an initial introduction to the topic. Undergraduate and especially graduate students will find an outstanding contribution to the debate and an important source to reflect more profoundly on different approaches to the topic and some future perspectives. D. highlights more structural aspects of the empire operating alongside those that were the product of the action of individuals and groups, without considering one or another alone as a determinant in the processes analysed, and also articulates the impulses of the centre (in its multiplicity) and the peripheries (in their plurality) in the building of a complex imperial framework, without pre-established determinations around consensus or resistance. This diversity does not produce a fresh model of analysis in my view (alternatives to ‘Romanisation’ or ‘globalisation’) but allows us to think provocatively about the alternatives we have to think about the Roman empire and its cultural diversity. It is a great achievement for a short book.
