The study of Greek influence on Roman culture has a long pedigree; more recent studies have focussed on the Second Sophistic and the re-interpretation and employment of the Greek past as a means through which Greek elites asserted their place and defined their identities in relation to the Roman imperial state. While most of these studies focus on Greek agency and the Greek impact on Rome, this important book examines the opposite process. S. argues that the cultural revolution instigated by the Augustan regime created a novel model of Hellenism. The Augustan model addressed Roman concerns about degeneration and Roman ambiguities about Greek culture and their Greek subjects; building on the contemporary Roman denigration of Asia, the new model presented a Hellenism based on old Greece and admirable for its eloquence and humanitas originating from Athens and its Spartan military virtue. This new model addressed Rome and the West as well as Greek subjects in the East, and S. examines the ways in which elites in mainland Greece responded to the Augustan model of Hellenism. A second important contribution of this book is its countering of the widespread view that while ‘Romanisation’ had a deep impact in the West, the Greek East was relatively unaffected. S. shows how a range of cultural practices, from archaising priesthoods to building programmes and techniques, found their way to Greece through the direct intervention and investment of Augustus and his court, as well as through adoption and expansion by resident Romans and members of the Greek elites with connections to the wider court. The book is an important step in exploring the processes, the agents and the networks of communication and interaction between imperial centre, resident Romans and Greek elites.
Chapter 1 introduces the wider argument and stresses the Roman impact on the Greek debates about oratory and style. Chapter 2 concerns the evidence for direct Augustan activity in Athens and Sparta in the form of the construction of the Agrippeum in the Athenian agora and the participation of Augustus in the Spartan syssitia. S. interprets the Agrippeum as a building used for declamations for an elite audience, and links it to the Roman celebration of Athenian eloquence. The Augustan participation in the syssitia is attributed to the Roman celebration of Spartan martial valour and discipline, and linked with the Roman influence on the Spartan invention of tradition or the re-interpretation of old festivals, such as the whipping of Spartan boys in the festival of Artemis Orthia.
Chapter 3 examines the commemoration of the Persian Wars in the Augustan period in Athens, Sparta and Plataea. Augustus employed the Persian Wars as a model for reconfiguring the Roman confrontation with the Parthians, by celebrating the virtue of Old Greece and presenting Rome as the champion of civilisation over the barbarians; this Augustan re-employment is seen as a stimulus for novel investment and novel practices in the commemoration of the Persian Wars in Greece. The restoration of sites and monuments relating primarily to the Athenian victory at Salamis is used as evidence of the importance of the theme in Augustan Athens, alongside the contemporary prominence of descendants of Themistocles and the role of foreign magnates like Iulius Nicanor, who espoused the Augustan programme; the Spartan evidence concerns the renovation of the Persian Stoa and the construction of a marble theatre, whose function, S. claims, was related to funeral orations in honour of Leonidas and Pausanias; finally, S. attempts to re-date the introduction of the oratorical competition in the Eleutheria Games at Plataea to the Augustan period.
The next two chapters explore the impact of the wider Augustan programme on Greek communities. Chapter 4 examines the archaising restoration and re-interpretation of cults and priesthoods in the light of Augustus' religious programme. S. discusses the Roman interest in the Eleusinian mysteries and its attendant re-organisations, the antiquarian emphasis of practices such as the publication of lists of cultic celebrants in Sparta, or the novel prominence of institutions like the Athenian gene or the Peloponnesian gerousiai. Chapter 5 explores the new building programmes in Greek cities that related to the imperial authorities and their outlook, focussing in particular on Messene and Mantineia. Chapter 6 brings the story forward to the second century, by re-examining the Hadrianic cultural programme in the light of the Augustan. S. offers a compelling interpretation of the Panhellenion within the Hadrianic programme, as well as presenting a very interesting sketch of forms of Greek opposition to the Roman model of Hellenism.
The overall argument concerning the Roman impact on Greek culture and identity needed to be made and is plausible and convincing on the large picture; interpretation of particular aspects will certainly create debate given the nature of the evidence. The bigger questions that the study raises, though, concern the wider picture. The evidence for the implementation of the Augustan cultural programme in Greece during Augustus' time seems rather limited compared with later periods, and is often open to alternative interpretations. It is also essential to think further whether we are dealing with a single cultural programme with its internal contradictions or with a range of loosely connected discourses and practices. The co-existence of archaising temple restorations with new, Roman materials and building techniques raises questions which will require further study (pp. 221–3); the same applies to the inscription from Mantineia, which combines various elements of the Augustan programme with an Asianic oratorical style, which was apparently disfavoured by the Augustan regime (pp. 225–8).
As S. shows, many aspects of the Augustan cultural programme can be found already in Hellenistic times, raising the question of the extent to which their attestation in Augustan Greece can be interpreted as a reaction to the Augustan model, or should be seen as parallel or unconnected with it. Moreover, the important question and a future desideratum is what it meant for Greeks outside Athens, Sparta or Olympia to adopt the model that prioritised an old Greece based on those communities and places: what difference or change did it make for a Greek from Thebes or Tarsus to subscribe to this model? S. examines Greek communities outside Athens and Sparta primarily in Chapters 4 and 5, which examine the wider effects of Roman attitudes to cults and building programmes, rather than the more specific Augustan model of Hellenism; we get some interesting comments in Chapter 6 (pp. 261–4), but more work is required.
S. does us a great service by covering the earlier Augustan era, when most studies focus on the Second Sophistic. But his study makes very evident the great gap that exists between studies of Greek identity and culture in the Archaic and Classical periods, and the equivalent studies on the early Empire. The reformulations and continuities in Greek identity and the Greek past that took place between Alexander and Augustus are still shrouded in mystery, with scholars all too often forgetting about them, making unsubstantiated statements or projecting the developments of the Second Sophistic back to the Hellenistic period. Future work will need to situate S.'s book on the Roman impact on Greek culture and identity in Augustan times within the wider story of their development during the Hellenistic period.
