Recent years have witnessed a frankly astonishing outpouring of scholarship on ancient labor. This timely volume on skilled labor and professionalism joins a very large number of conference proceedings, monographs, and articles that have appeared in the last decade alone.Footnote ¹ All of this interest is a good thing, first of all, because it throws light upon the lived experiences of large segments of ancient populations not previously the target of historical research. It is also welcome because of the relevance of labor, and particularly skilled labor, to ancient economic history. Current orthodoxy holds that the institutional structures of the Hellenistic and Roman economies lowered transaction costs and fostered a period of growth, and this in turn raises the question of how productivity rose to meet favorable trading conditions.Footnote ² Ancient craftspeople, farmers, and other makers will have become more productive in many ways, from technological improvements to capital investment and beyond; however, a classic explanation focuses on how trade promotes specialization, which in turn allows workers to become more efficient and more productive.Footnote ³ Our overall evaluation of the ancient economy therefore requires us to understand how and why workers acquired specialized knowledge. This book raises the idea that professionalism and the social rewards of skill were relevant to this dynamic.

The volume's title claims a Greco-Roman perspective, although its contents are heavily weighted toward Greece and within that toward classical Athens; nonetheless, four chapters on Roman topics, as well as the overall line of inquiry, offer much of interest to readers of this journal. Among the ample current scholarship on labor, this volume breaks new ground by focusing on skill and professionalism, two aspects which emerge from analysis as separate but closely related.Footnote ⁴ As the editors’ introduction notes (1‒25), ancients recognized that skill, referred to by terms like ars and technē, conferred a premium on the value of work. By contrast, “professionalism” is an etic category for antiquity, and one moreover often understood as specific to the capitalist economies of the modern world. For guidance, the editors and many chapter authors turn to modern theories of professionalism by scholars like Eliot Freidson, Daniel and Richard Susskind, and especially Magali Larson.Footnote ⁵ In the introduction, it is argued that their and other definitions of professionalism form a flexible and thus potentially accommodating category which can help illuminate the world of ancient work. In particular, four commonly recurring elements of professionalism are noted: (i) professions form around specialist knowledge and training; (ii) the possession of that knowledge and training is regulated or certified, often by professionals themselves; (iii) professions have an ethical or “service orientation” component, which motivates professionals in complement to, or in lieu of, monetary rewards; and (iv) in large part as a result of that component, professions convey an elevated status upon practitioners, something which often endows a degree of autonomy and corporate identity to professions in ways that distinguish them from occupations (10‒11). Claiming these aspects for antiquity is bolder in some cases than in others, but the question remains whether professionalism as a whole forms a productive way to think about ancient work.

The distinction between skilled labor and professionalism is explicitly confronted by E. Harris's paper, appropriately titled, “Many ancient Greek occupations, but few professions” (29‒67). H. draws upon previous work by him and D. Lewis on horizontal specialization in Athenian sources.Footnote ⁶ Here, he intends to emphasize how few known occupations might be called professions, selecting four examples for discussion: actors, philosophers, doctors, and sculptors. What primarily sets such occupations apart is that not only were they highly skilled but in H.'s analysis they conveyed high status, which gave them an often interregional profile and sometimes supported corporate identity, with actors and philosophers at least forming associations with elected officers, buildings, and common funds. These occupations also seem distinguishable for rigorous training regimens, often extending beyond the household or kinship structures. Several appendixes lay out relevant evidence, mainly epigraphic but also usefully including an up-to-date catalog of Greek theaters.

The following paper, by N. Massar, on “Skilled workers in the ancient Greek city” (68‒93), lays out a rich and informative discussion of technitai, workers who possessed a technē, in the employment of classical Greek cities, starting with their recruitment and the terms of their employment, and concluding with an excellent sketch of their mobility from town to town. The last topic adds welcome detail to recent opinions of high levels of non-elite mobility in the ancient world, as M. notes that it is unlikely that technitai traveled alone, but rather that this form of professional mobility would have involved movements of families and companions.

In the chapter “Money making, ‘avarice’, and elite strategies of distinction in the Roman world” (94‒126), E. Mayer tackles the topic of work and social status. M. sets out to prove that senatorial elites did not espouse the negative stance toward manual labor and profit-earning found in some sources. Reading through recent literature, it is not clear that this fact still requires proving, and indeed M.'s main targets are older works by M. Finley and R. MacMullen. More recent scholarship on Roman commerce is dismissed polemically as “micro-histories,” which have “not been sufficiently theorized” (97). Meanwhile, the paper frequently relies on its own debatable claims: for example, about the very late appearance of villas in Italy or the moral meaning of Vespasian's veristic portrait type.Footnote ⁷ For readers interested in less contentious discussions of elite Roman engagement in trade, I recommend recent books by A. Tchernia and T. Terpstra, while in a work that can hardly be called a micro-history C. Lis and H. Soly have ably demonstrated the social prestige of work in pre-modern Europe, starting from antiquity.Footnote ⁸

The following chapter, by D. Lewis, focuses on “Labour specialization in the Athenian economy” (129‒74) and particularly on our ability to recognize occupations in ancient sources. L. acknowledges criticism of previous work by him and Harris, and I agree that the translation from a list of some 200 Athenian occupational titles into a list of occupations is anything but straightforward. As I have noted elsewhere, while such a tally of occupation titles seems to offer a rapid quantitative method for comparing the extent of specialization across economies, we need to be mindful of how particular configurations of work may be shaping the evidence.Footnote ⁹ The Roman case is revealing: in Imperial Rome, in which one study identifies 192 different occupational titles,Footnote ¹⁰ we know that it was also not unusual for craft products to be passed to different artisans, who would concentrate on very specific aspects. Relating to the production of gold and silver plate, for example, we find vascularii shaping vessels from sheets, engravers called caelatores, crustarii making decorative appliqués (or possibly flaturarii, who cast similar elements), gilders or inauratores, and polishers called tritores.Footnote ¹¹ On the surface, this occupational specificity suggests an exceptional level of specialization, but who is to say that a vascularus was not capable of the task of the tritor, or what sort of training made one a crustarius and not a flaturarius? More broadly, we need to establish a method for determining which terms constituted distinct occupations. L. notes similar points of difficulty in the interpretation of Athenian material, listing 14 separate methodological issues. Such factors serve to inflate the tally, and L. suggests instead that a conservative accounting finds 162 different occupations in classical Athens; these are usefully listed in appendixes. In L.'s view, this figure remains historically significant as it shows comparatively high horizontal specialization in the city, although whether any of these were professions, and not merely occupations, is harder to say.

The following paper, by Alice Landskron, looks at “The perception of ‘skills’ in Ostia” (175‒201), turning largely to archaeological and epigraphic material. The evidence L. puts forward suffices to show that occupation was an important and visible marker of identity and status in this Imperial port city. The paper's analysis suffers somewhat from a lack of engagement with the theoretical discussions elsewhere in the volume, as the author follows her own understanding of professionalism, which is not as well distinguished in this paper as in others from the wider category of skilled labor. There is also a problematic tension in this chapter between an attempt to read Ostia as a case study for the wider place of work in Imperial urban society and the very particular character of this archetypal port city, which formed a sort of service community for its wealthier neighbor.

The following chapters revolve around the evaluation of three skilled occupations possibly understood as professions: sculptors, performers, and soldiers. In the first category, H. Hochscheid and M. Linder contribute studies of sculptors and artists in Archaic and Classical Greece. H. looks at “Professionalism in archaic and classical sculpture in Athens” (205‒29) and asks whether sculptors in Athens conformed to Larson's four-part definition of modern professionalism. She lands on a largely favorable answer to that question, noting that sculptors were in high demand and well paid, and they tend to be spoken of in positive terms in sources; while there were no formal organizations of stone carvers in Athens, H. sees informal “communities” of sculptors serving some practical concerns while also helping to give these groups ideological definition. Essentially, ancient sculptors were professionals, if not exactly in the modern sense of that word. L.'s paper on “Artists beyond Athens” (230‒42) looks at the wide interregional networks in which Greek artists freely moved, something that represents an occupational autonomy further attesting to the considerable renown and status attached to their artistic skills.

Complementing discussions of Greek sculptors, B. Russell's chapter on “Roman sculptors at work” (243‒65) asks whether these Roman artisans can be called professionals. His excellent study displays a nuanced discussion of how Roman sculptors learned their trade and what social opportunities such skill brought. R. is the only author here to engage in any serious way with the very rich papyrological evidence for apprenticeship and skilled labor from Egypt. He also displays great familiarity with material evidence of ancient stone-carving, including good discussion of material such as the numerous “apprentice pieces” from Aphrodisias. The measured conclusion suggests that Roman sculptors have a complex relationship to modern definitions of professionalism: such workers often received considerable social rewards, but Roman stone carvers did not employ any form of systematic self-regulation or other attempt to control the market for their products, as is typical of modern professions.

Three chapters look at performers in Greece. E. Stewart's discussion of “The profession of mousikē in classical Greece” encourages us to understand the work of musicians and poets as skilled craftsmen laboring in a competitive urban market which was intensely interested in skill and innovations. S. Aneziri looks at Dionysiac artists as “The first professional associations in the Ancient Greek world” (293‒312), arguing that the appearance of professional associations of actors in 4th-c. BCE Greece arose out of particular social contingencies: as the world of stagecraft expanded, such associations served to coordinate between a diffuse group of occupations and various festivals. The chapter's conclusion is welcome but calls out for more engagement with current work on Roman collegia, something this volume sorely lacked, especially because A. contrasts Greek associations to Roman ones, which she sees as more social and religious than professional in nature (297). This is J.-P. Walzing's old view, but it has been vigorously challenged by scholars who have reasserted the role that occupations played in structuring collegia, and in turn the role of such organizations in working life.Footnote ¹² The section closes with C. Mann's study of athletic performers in the Greek world as “Neither amateurs nor professionals” (313‒32).

The final chapters offer pendant discussions of military professionalism: S. Hodkinson on “Professionalism and skill in the classical Spartan army?” (335‒61) and D. Lee on “A professional Roman army?” (362‒82). As the question marks in both titles suggest, both authors conclude similarly that neither army was professional in the modern sense. L.'s conclusions are perhaps more useful beyond that point, as he engages at length with scholarship on modern professionalism and argues that Augustus's reforms of the army – chiefly the institution of service terms and the standardization of pay and pensions – represented important features that might be understood as “professionalization” in some sense. The slipperiness of modern terminology, though, means that we risk anachronism and false comparisons by referring to these sorts of changes as such.

On the whole, this book offers much material for the continuing study of skilled labor in antiquity. Importantly, it complicates our understanding of skilled labor, which does not appear as a single category oppositional to unskilled labor but displays great multiformity. Did some subsection of skilled workers in antiquity resemble modern professionals? In this regard, I return to those characteristics of professionalism raised by the introduction as common within modern discussions.

• Specialization. If the first aspect of professions is that they form around specialist knowledge and training, then it becomes important that skilled occupations existed and were recognized as distinct in Greco-Roman antiquity. It is also important that highly skilled workers earned a livelihood, and sometimes a decent one; salaries in Greece are discussed in this volume by Massar (78‒80) and have been discussed several times in recent work in relation to Roman living standards. In almost all cases, wages reflect levels of skill (I return to that fact below).

• Regulation and organization. The regulatory interests of modern professions find few parallels in ancient evidence. As the editors and contributors such as Russell duly acknowledge, there was no form of systematic training and assessment for crafts in antiquity – at least, nothing akin to modern medical schools or bar examinations. However, the introduction's claim that one finds no interests in credentials in antiquity is too absolute (10). Here is one place where the book has missed an opportunity to engage with the documentary evidence from Roman Egypt, where a group of papyri attest to apprentices performing a sort of demonstration or epideixis for local professional associations.Footnote ¹³ How widely this sort of thing went on either in Egypt or beyond is hard to say, and I think researchers can agree that, on the whole, the lack of systematic control is one of the clearer ways in which ancient skilled labor was different from modern professionalism.

• Service orientation. The ethical dimension of modern professions is another hard aspect to recognize in ancient occupations, but the book's contributions allow some headway. One issue is that we do not have much by way of skilled workers talking about their motivations, so we must work by inference. As Hochscheid rightly notes, religion was a main driver of demand for skilled sculptors in ancient Athens, while D. Padilla Peralta similarly places the gods behind much craft production in Republican Rome.Footnote ¹⁴ But it would be too much to claim on that basis that Attic sculptors or Roman potters saw their jobs as religiously motivated. Many chapters in this book describe civic honors accorded to philosophers, doctors, athletes, and so forth. Massar's chapter is particularly good on the mixture of monetary and non-monetary rewards for skill, for she shows that citizenship or land sometimes granted by cities to skilled laborers in lieu of money was intended to retain their future service by tying them to the city. It is also notable that certain occupations brought civic rewards sometimes but in many other cases did not. Compare to all of the civic decrees for doctors listed in Harris's paper (58‒60) those public doctors (demosioi iatroi) in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt whom one regularly encounters in forensic documents doing the drudge work of testifying in court cases, but who (so far as we know) were paid, not honored, for that work.Footnote ¹⁵ Were these figures somehow less professional?

• Labor and status. One thing that this book does do well is to confirm that Greeks and Romans derived social status from skilled work. Mayer's paper is at pains to disprove Finley's narrow reading of elite opinion based on statements in authors like Cicero which equate manual labor or wage-earning with slavery. As I have already noted, scholarship in recent years has largely demolished this view, and the book continues the trend by showing numerous instances where skill formed a source of personal pride and social standing. I think of the famous Latin inscription of Lambaesis honoring the engineer Nonius Datus. Nonius was apparently so highly skilled that he was the only one competent to tunnel an aqueduct through a hillside in the whole of two adjacent provinces in North Africa; in his absence, a project he initiated at Saldae had gone horribly wrong.Footnote ¹⁶ For his great skill, his name was known to procuratores. Then there is his inscribed monument itself, which proudly frames an account of his achievements with sculpted personifications of Patientia, Virtus, and Spes; contemporary viewers may have noted that the emperor claimed these same qualities.Footnote ¹⁷ Like the many doctors, artists, musicians, actors, and other skilled workers described in this book, Nonius translated his exceptional skill into exceptional social status. The question remains what is gained by calling him a professional.

Other aspects of professionalism could be added. The four aspects here do not necessarily equate with those used by several authors in the book, and indeed it is telling that the chapters by Hochscheid, Russell, and Lee, which most explicitly engage with theories of professionalism, all work with different ways of defining professionalism. However, this suffices to make the point that professionalism as it tends to be understood in modern discourse has some applicability for ancient trades but is not a perfect fit.

One point that this discussion emphasizes is that the value of skilled labor in antiquity was not only understandable in economic terms. Of course, the study of Roman incomes and slave prices readily confirms that some ancient skilled workers were valued more than others. We find some truly extravagant figures: Pliny records a slave grammarian sold for sesterces (HS) 700,000 and the actor Roscius, who earned HS 500,000 a year (HN 7.39). But even more normative sources for Roman incomes reveal variability. If we scan the 20 or so maxima for daily cash wages recorded in Diocletian's Price Edict, we find that the majority of those “skilled” occupations earned twice as much as unskilled laborers, HS 50 to 25.Footnote ¹⁸ However, a select few occupations earned more, including the wall painter and model maker, whose cash wages are listed at HS 75, and the well-remunerated portrait painter, who earned a maximum HS 150 per day.Footnote ¹⁹ Thus, in monetary terms Romans recognized that skill was not uniform but contained various gradations.

However, pay scale was only one way to understand such heterogeneity. In the occupations named in the Price Edict, for example, one further notes that it is neither the highly compensated portrait painter nor the model maker, but rather more “basic” skilled workers like fabri tignuarii or pistores, whom one finds most regularly in the evidence for Roman collegia. Theories of professionalism in this book suggest that occupational associations of this sort were vital to creating the autonomy and sense of corporate identity that distinguished professions from occupations. The implication, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the social differentiation of Roman skilled labor was not always equivalent to the hierarchy of wages.

That is, not only should we appreciate that ancient skilled work was not monolithic, but we also should recognize that there were different ways to draw divisions and that the idea of professionalism encourages a sociohistorical view. One recalls the Marxist distinction between work and labor: work is the expending of energy on a task, while labor is a markedly social activity carried out by humans bonded to one another in a society.Footnote ²⁰ In this sense, the book's many demonstrations that high skill translated into high status suggests that we are talking about ancient skilled labor, not just work. If I am pressed to answer the question posed by the title of this review – whether or not ancient professions existed – I would say that it mostly depends on which modern definition one employs; even then, many of this book's chapters suggest that ancient evidence is unlikely ever to provide a perfect fit. However, in this volume's search for ancient professions, what readers are usefully encouraged to remember is that the character of Greco-Roman skilled labor was as much social as economic in nature.