This volume is a study of the language used by mainly Latin writers to discuss the relationship between imperial power and provincials. It focuses on the period from the late Republic to the early empire, with a nod to changes in the language of power in the late antique period. There is a concentration on the major prose writers, notably Cicero, Livy, Pliny the Younger and especially Tacitus. The work impresses in its range of texts and contexts and in the confidence which it negotiates this extended period of literary history. In gathering together a vast number of instances of the use of the language of slavery to discuss provincial-Roman relations, L. shows the long-lasting and pervasive use of such imagery and draws comparisons with other, more benefit-focused explorations of the imperial relationship, using the language of patronage notably, or the occasional use of the language of liberation, most obviously in the context of the conflicts with Hellenistic kingdoms. It is the relatively unchanging nature of the rhetoric which is the most surprising element of the study. My expectation was that Empire (in the sense of a changed governmental system) might have led to change in the way in which provincials were discussed, particularly to a down-playing of the regionalised hierarchies of Roman and provincial. L. sees some evidence of change, but it is only after his period of study that the relationship does shift profoundly. The observation poses an interesting question: did the relationship between Romans and provincials change significantly during the first century c.e.? L.’s observations would suggest, prima facie, continuity rather than change and L. claims that this flies in the face of at least some received opinion on the Roman empire, which would like to see the empire as a generally beneficial political structure.

In facing this problem, we hit issues of historiography and of method. I am not always certain that I can name these pro-imperial historians. I wonder whether anyone does believe the old nineteenth-century pro-imperial hype (away from the very populist end of popular history) and whether serious historians reproduce such views. Models of imperial-provincial interaction, often associated with the ideas of acculturation, are more complicated and becoming yet more complicated. Yet, even from the early decades of the twentieth century, few historians appear to have regarded Roman imperialism as an unvarnished good. The reception of empire has often been ambivalent.

Patterns of material culture and epigraphic exchange (dipped into in the book, but not fully explored) suggest reciprocity in the communication of honours and culture which, of course, does not mean equality and indeed embeds unequal power relations, but in an Empire of Honour, the relationships are more nuanced than those of masters and slaves. Models of hybrid culture, largely derived from post-colonial studies, open new spaces for debate, rejecting dichotomous them/us rhetorics. It is not easy to reduce the developments in urbanism, West and East, in a Roman imperial context to a master–slave dynamic. Such complexities are already there in the Latin texts: we can hardly read the master–slave trope in the Agricola unaware of its ambivalence; after all, we are explicitly told that some did not see the relationship in this way. The Latin texts were written within a material environment and although the violence of the Pax Romana is critically underestimated in much contemporary scholarship, the Roman world of 100 b.c.e. was different from that of 100 c.e. whatever the continuity within the metaphorical traditions of literary texts. One wonders about the decision to stick to mainly Latin texts and to maintain a focus on the West, practical though it might be. It is from the East that we find the majority of our writings from the Roman imperial period and complex understandings of imperial rule and universal empire not easily reduced to master–slave dynamics.

L. tries to avoid being dragged into these difficult issues by concentrating on the scripts of rule used by the Roman political elite. The study defends its linguistic boundaries on the grounds that social groups (elites and subalterns) are thought to have their ‘private’ (trans)scripts by which political relations are understood, deploying James Scott's thought on Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990). Scott is an influential figure in developmental studies and agrarian history and he is pointing to a ‘gap’ between official or state discourses and those of the provincials. Scott's view is shared by many post-colonial theorists for whom the rejection of state discourses is central to strategies of resistance and self-determination. Yet, as soon as one opens the door to multiple discourses of power, the issue of truth raises its ugly head and with the issue of truth we are pulled back once more towards material reality. If L. is uncovering a not very well hidden transcript of power among the elite, to what discourse is it an alternative? As an alternative to the discourses of the state, whatever they might be and by whoever they might be spoken or written, the metaphor becomes more interesting, pointing explicitly to relations of power which may be conservative or outmoded imaginaries? Context, and not just the immediate literary context, becomes key and one has to wonder whether the use of the imagery of provincial slavery in the Verrines is actually very close in meaning to the imagery of slavery in Tacitus and Pliny.

The problems become particularly acute when one finds slavery imagery in historiographical rhetoric or in a writer as difficult as Tacitus. Layers of irony cover the meaning of the words and, indeed, one of the central elements of the Tacitean project is to make us certain that words are not what they seem. L. suggests (p. 11) that Tacitus is more interested in using the language of slavery to account for the subjugation of the senators than the provincials, but it is exactly that parallel that makes the Agricola so interesting. In the Agricola alone, we are faced with three slaveries (of the senators, the provincials and chattel slaves) and we are bound to reflect on their similar forms and differences.

We may, of course, give words their legal definitions and we may think of the relationship between provincials and slaves in legal terms. Roman power may have often weighed heavily on provincial populations, but provincials were not slaves and nor were Roman senators. Slavery escapes its social contexts. Ovid was not a slave to love; devout Christians were not slaves to God. We think about society in metaphors. After all, society does not have material reality. The metaphor of slavery works to represent a relationship of domination and perhaps to replicate such structures of domination within social systems. Yet, not all those structures of domination were the same.

L. is careful about citation of post-colonial writers, deprecating those who too easily use Edward Said while cautiously pointing to some parallels with Said's work in his conclusions. The post-colonial tradition is, however, far more radical than is suggested here, taking us beyond the representation of empire into the generation of culture, arguing that discourses of power, including imperial discourses, make the way in which we understand the world. Yet, those discourses are always in contact with the world; Said's challenge is that literature is not just about words and metaphors, but about material power. As Classicists, we can ignore that critique, and so often senior Classicists and Ancient historians are casually dismissive of post-colonial theory (though L. is not), but without theory we risk simplifying the relationship between text and power and that between ideology and society.

This is a book about language. But words are never just about language.