G.’s book on the organisation of public space in the Roman Republic offers a valuable contribution to our appreciation of public life in third- and second-century Rome. G. treats many aspects of Rome's political, legislative and religious institutions. One of the strongest features of the book is the access its style grants to complicated and specialised institutions and traditions for readers with different levels of knowledge of Rome's early organisation; at the same time, it offers experts an interesting and stimulating new approach to the field. A further strength is the use of literary sources to establish how the ancients themselves understood the role of the different political and religious institutions and traditions, how they were connected with one another and how ancient commentators interpreted the space these institutions occupied in Roman public life.
The book is divided into six chapters, each devoted to a key aspect of Roman rule and public life. After a short introduction in which G. explains the purpose of the book, it opens with a survey of how Roman authors understood the city's political space and political institutions, cults and the legislative framework, how they described the history of these institutions and how they followed them back to a distant past. Chapter 2 focuses on how political life in Rome was organised in the Middle Republic – the role and history of each magistracy and how the empire was formed and managed through infrastructural reorganisation, such as the formation of provincial communities and road building that made it possible for Rome to regulate the administrative standards and ensure efficient communication across Italy. Here G. shows how Romans understood the empire as rule over people and polities, not territories, how the Roman elite ruled their subjects by appointing commanders and armies to manage their subjects and, as part of that process, created an administrative space in which their representatives were able to act.
Chapter 3 focuses on the administrative and political relationship between Rome and its Italian subjects. G. points to how, in the Middle Republic, Romans rarely issued their magistrates and generals with clearly defined assignments and that the powers generals and magistrates were given were loosely defined to solve specific and ad hoc tasks. Italy was the exception to the rule as Rome here drew up borders and introduced a more unified organisation that, among other things, allowed the Romans to recruit the armies with which they conquered the Mediterranean.
In Chapter 4 G. turns to religious institutions. He considers the space Rome's elite established for cults and how other religious sites were set up to allow the god-fearing Roman elite to create secret spaces in and outside the pomerium or to make room for the augurs to perform the rites that were essential for public activities to be carried out in safety and with respect for the gods. As is pointed out by G., the Roman elite seem to have felt no need to extend the spaces occupied by these religious institutions beyond the immediate vicinity of Rome – from a public and political point of view, the city remained the religious centre for the empire.
G. shows how the Romans used different forms of constructed spaces as a source of inspiration when new political and administrative rooms were required. In Chapter 5 G. describes how the administrative space that magistrates were assigned provided a model according to which other administrative spaces were created in Rome and in the provinces. Magistrates used the form established by the augurs in Rome as a source of inspiration when they formed new colonies and camps in order to establish a similar space that allowed them to perform the same public rites and acts as the augurs in Rome. G. concludes the survey by discussing how lawmakers, like augurs, tried to define spaces for the laws and edicts they framed and then tie them to the magistrates either in Rome or in the field, to the people concerned or to the different norms that regulated public life.
The way in which G. explains Roman public activities and sacred life through the lens of space is an interesting approach and offers an inspiring way to think about how the Roman elite understood their political institutions in the Middle Republic. The manner in which G. shows the continuity in how Rome's elite defined administrative and sacred space and perceived their own boundaries between Rome, Italy and the empire provides valuable and refreshing insights into Roman political thinking in the Republic.
The book will be the natural starting point for those who study Roman politics and organisation in the Middle Republic and, in particular, how the city's political classes perceived their own public institutions as inherited from their ancestors; it offers important insights into how the Roman elite remembered their own administrative history. The book will be a valuable addition to reading lists for undergraduate and graduate students and a stimulating read for more advanced students and scholars alike.
