This is one of those books that is both cumulative and transformative. It is cumulative, building on earlier work; it includes a translation of the excavation report on the statio of a beneficiarii consularis at Obernburg am Main originally published in German (Germania 83: 67–94), as well as having a strong relationship to N.-C.'s work setting out the role of stationes as places of state power published almost ten years ago (‘Les stationes comme espace et transmission de pouvoir’, in A. Kolb, Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis [2006]). The book is transformative because it brings together a powerful group of twelve authors drawing on a range of projects mainly from the Roman West, but also with papers that include North Africa and Egypt, to put the case that the statio was a key entity in the delivery of state power in the Roman Empire.

The latter needs to be commented on further. Most models of the Roman Empire explain the delegation of state power to cities and to governors of provinces, holding assizes and so on, with the military defined by their forts and the limes. This volume disrupts this neat delegation of power that tends to see the Roman military or state power as distant from the lives of those in the provinces, with the provincials buying into Romanness on a voluntary basis. Instead, what we find, building from the 164 dedicatory altars excavated at Obernburg am Main, is a military or state presence at these road stations with the military personnel occupying a statio for a period of six months (January to July or July to January). This causes the roads of the Roman Empire to be transformed from mere infrastructure of transport into a facility to deliver state power across considerable distances and to see the roads of the Roman Empire as an infrastructure to exert power over the provincials. The reach of the state can be defined as all encompassing – reporting on the EU Interreg III project Alpis Graia, P. Leveau draws our attention to stationes at 2,200 to 2,400 metres above sea level in the Saint Bernard passes that are only avalanche free currently between June and October. The structures themselves are quite varied, defying any possibility of an architectural typology. Some do feature Mediterranean style courtyards, but others appear like any other structure excavated nearby. This produces a difficulty of definition, in contrast to Roman forts. The definition of a statio tends to emerge from inscriptions referring to religious practice and, as a readers will discover, a statio often had its own Genius, or there was a Genius of the Beneficiarii, or was associated with dedications to Mithras, or associated with temples.

In the introductory chapter the editors set out their project to define the relationship of state power and Roman roads, which is followed by P. Leveau on stationes in Gallia Narbonensis and the Alpine Provinces. There follow three chapters with detailed examples of excavated remains from structures found at Martigny, Bordeaux and Obernburg am Main. A slight disappointment is that the 164 dedicatory inscriptions from the altars found at Obernburg am Main have yet to be published. This is followed by a brief note on the meaning of portus and statio in Digest 50.16.59, leading into a full chapter by the editors on textual evidence for stationes and a chapter on Egyptian ostraca as evidence for routes and stopping points in Egypt. Later in the volume, there is a full chapter on the use of the term statio, stationarius and mansiones in the Digest. There are a further three chapters, each dealing with the provinces of a region: the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and Asia Minor.

The importance of stationes should not come as a surprise, after all the speech of Hadrian delivered at Lambaesis to Legio III in July 128 makes it very clear that the soldiers were distributed in many and varied stationes (CIL VIII. 2532). The presence of beneficiarii serving magistrates in the provinces produces a further distribution of military personnel. Adding the stationes of the cursus publicus, there is yet another distributed state-body with its stationes. Interestingly, the focus on these structures has come from historians studying epigraphy and legal texts and it is only recently that the archaeological definition of the material culture of stationes has begun to take place. However, what is clear is that the very term statio had a range of meanings and associations and, as those who study the city of Rome will realise, there is evidence for stationes of traders, as well as anything from the banks of the Tiber and sewers to the Annona. This illustrates that there was such a thing as a detachment of the state or another authority that required premises to carry out its work and to accommodate its staff. This causes us to rethink the Roman state somewhat and to see it as a spatially distributed power network, which could control the connectivity of its subjects and citizens. There is a sense though that the evidence we are looking at is extremely fragmentary and only really comes together at the truly exceptional site of Obernburg am Main – where we have a very detailed epigraphic record of dedications of altars (every six months) and excavation of living accommodation in close proximity to a major fort. What the beneficiarii may have been doing on a day-to-day basis even here is something of a mystery.

This book reshapes the issues and reviews the evidence from inscriptions to law and archaeology – providing the reader with the detail from which to become deeply informed of what the evidence is for these road side lieux de pouvoir. Questions of social relations with others inhabiting the neighbourhood of these places has yet to be investigated fully. Indeed, how do we integrate the stationes into our models of connectivity, Romanisation and globalisation? The evidence lies in this book and we may begin to reshape our conception of the Roman Empire to accommodate the statio as a key feature of state power.