Two common themes loosely connect the fourteen chapters in this collection: the relationship between rulers, elites and governments on the one hand and the general public on the other; and the formation of identity at different scales ranging from specific societal groups (such as nobilities and civic associations) to entire civilisations (insiders vs ‘barbarians’). Taken together, these contributions not only advance our understanding of historical similarities and differences, but also highlight the potential and limitations of the comparative perspectives on display.
A number of chapters embrace and reinforce the (conventional) view that political power was more centralised and ‘top-down’ in early China than in Greece or Rome. The editors, in their joint overview of how ‘the people’ were conceptualised in those three systems, note the absence of the notion of citizenship from early China and the intensely paternalistic image of its rulers. Vankeerberghen, in a stimulating discussion of how aristocrats expressed their status in the Roman Republic and the Western Han Empire, observes stronger familial discontinuities in the latter case even as – unlike in the former – elite status was formally hereditary. Autocratic intervention explains this difference. Unfortunately, Vankeerberghen does not address what she considers the ‘fascinating’ question (p. 47) of whether this changed under the Roman monarchy, which would have allowed her to compare like with like (i.e. the position of nobles under a monarchy).
M. Brown and Z. Zhang study how local notables were honoured – with inscriptions and statues in Roman-era Greece and with stelae in the Han Empire – by giving parallel accounts of the attributes and popularity of these types of monuments in each setting. In Greece, these artefacts were public-facing and focused on the local community, rooted as they were in the polis tradition and the ‘strength of local identity’. In Han China, by contrast, they were connected to tombs and familial commemoration, the ‘byproduct of personal networks’ that were trans-regional in nature and reflected the primacy of the empire over local relations and the ‘pull’ of its capital (pp. 85–6).
C.F. Noreña stresses the same features in a comparative assessment of associations of craftspeople and merchants. Common in the Roman world, where they represented a default template for corporate identity and collective action in urban contexts, they were far less prominent in Han China, in as much as they existed at all. He identifies both genetic and structural reasons for this difference, which shaped the lived experience of urban middle strata: the deep roots of the city-state format and the ‘upward pull’ self-governance by local elites exerted on middling groups in Roman cities, and the ‘downward push’ the Han version of centralised imperial rule inflicted on commoners. Yet we might ask whether structural factors – different imperial strategies of controlling cities – can meaningfully be separated from historical legacies – different experiences of urbanism and state formation (p. 115) – or should simply be viewed as a direct function of the latter.
The distinction between autocratic centralisation and localised participation also shapes F. Pina Polo's chapter on oratory in Rome and China. While elite-controlled public oratory was a key feature of Roman Republican politics, no such thing existed in early China where officials vied for the emperor's attention, offering advice and even criticism in the hope of guiding policy by persuading him. Under the Roman imperial monarchy, by contrast, the much more publicly exposed emperor was expected to act as persuader-in-chief. And drawing once again on the contrasts between patriarchal citizen republics and China's top-down monarchy, Beck, in the chapter on censuses, concludes that, although people were routinely counted in both contexts, specific practices reflected a ‘fundamentally different political culture’ (p. 218).
Y. Huang and H.J. Kim elaborate on this binary template with a well-matched pair of papers that advance competing views of the evolution of collective identity and othering. Huang situates the invention of the ‘barbarian’ and the polarisation of group identities in the context of hostile encounters with others, which occurred in the Western Zhou period in China and from the early archaic period onward in the Mediterranean as Greeks traded and established new settlements. He thus champions the idea of a relatively early adoption of stylised us-versus-them categories, whilst noting that the Chinese version, by attributing differences to cultural codes rather than essentialised properties such as race, left more room for cross-overs and absorption (on these matters cf. my review in CR 71 [2021], 205–7). Conversely, Kim argues for a later emergence of the Greek/‘barbarian’ dichotomy. Toying with an etymology of ‘barbarian’ that ties it to tax obligations under Persian rule, he draws a sharp line between Greeks who, striving to avoid being added to the many ‘barbarian’ subjects of the Achaemenid empire, idealised freedom and a Chinese world empire bent on absorbing others, where this concept held little appeal.
Only a few of the chapters lack a strong comparative dimension. To his credit, R.D.S. Yates mounts a spirited defence of the one-sidedness of his survey of evidence for the status of women in legal documents from early imperial China. Faced with serious obstacles to a comparative approach – Roman legal sources are far more abundant and early China's legal tradition was much weaker –, he sets himself the task of laying the groundwork for future comparison by reviewing only Chinese material. Having found that women could be heads of households and that formal marriage laws were absent, he suggests that early China appears to have been considerably less patriarchal than Roman society – a tantalising hint that sustained comparison might well yield rich rewards.
M.L. Kim provides a detailed account of various mechanisms of distributing food in early China, such as welfare schemes, (apparently largely imaginary) handouts to the elderly and feasts. Yet her modest comparisons with the ancient Mediterranean are shaky: she seems unaware of the existence of public grain funds in Hellenistic cities and is confused about the differences between Roman food handouts that were limited to the capital and empire-wide risk-buffering and distribution schemes under the Han. The relevance of her work for broader historical questions remains unclear.
G.P. Olberding's chapter centres on an appropriately entertaining analysis of the iconic tale of Jing Ke's failed attempt to assassinate the King (and future First Emperor) of Qin in 227 bce as a comedy of absurdities and petty motives. But his Roman examples – about the killing of Caesar – are rather weak: A.J. Woodman's famous dissection of the ‘amateur dramatics at the court of Nero’ on display in Tacitus’ account of the Pisonian conspiracy (Tacitus Reviewed [1998], pp. 190–217) would have offered a much closer analogy to the Chinese case. A. Yakobson's chapter, on Augustus’ manoeuvring in 22 bce, is not comparative at all.
No one except perhaps a true polymath will come away from this book without having encountered a lot of unfamiliar information. But what is the pay-off in terms of historical understanding? Few of the contributors explicitly address this question. Noreña endeavours not merely to track similarities and differences but to ‘generate a new explanation for the nature of the urban experience in the Han and Roman empires’ (p. 119 n. 2). But does a comparative approach improve our understanding of either one of these cases? Huang remarks (p. 409) that consideration of the Chinese experience affects our understanding of the Greek case by directing our attention to the importance of encounters with others and to the process whereby binary concepts of collective identity developed. From that perspective, comparison may not be necessary, but has its part to play by nudging us in promising directions.
Others fall short. While Brown and Zhang do ask about pay-off (p. 86), their observations – that the honorific customs they study declined in both environments, due to the prolonged interruption of imperial networks in post-Han China and to centralisation in the Later Roman Empire – may be perfectly plausible, but are not informed by the underlying comparison. R. Robinson, in her chapter on the calendar reforms of the emperor Wu and Julius Caesar, is right that only comparisons can render similarities ‘visible’. But even though she claims that this ‘can lead to different questions and very different conclusions’ than those found in single-case studies (p. 386), she neglects to tell readers how or even if that applies to her contribution. The editors’ remark that, when it comes to comparison, ‘similarity is not the point, nor is synchronicity’ (p. 2) is worth considering. Yet sometimes that is precisely the point – when we are interested in trans-cultural commonalities (arguably more intriguing than inevitable differences) or in shared outcomes that were driven by transcendent forces such as climate or pandemics.
Only D. Engels advocates a more ambitious goal. In his study of the fall of Qin, the removal of Caesar and the subsequent emergence of much more durable regimes in both settings, he employs comparison to weigh the relative importance of chance and dynamic trends in shaping historical outcomes and, in this specific instance, to explore the underlying logic of these somewhat parallel processes. Engels buttresses his argument by addressing five possible objections to the analogies he draws between the Qin–Han and Republic–Principate transitions. His conclusion that the end of the Roman Republic was not a mere accident prompts him to ask to what extent actors enjoyed agency instead of serving as ‘exponents of an inevitable structural dynamic’ (p. 348). For him, comparison is meant to serve a higher purpose: to help us understand history's morphological structures and regularities (or ‘laws’: p. 329). He correctly regards this agenda as a step beyond the customary focus on static comparisons that seek to identify and account for similarities and differences. To be sure, his approach is more challenging as well as easier to challenge. Yet in the end it promises to deliver more interesting arguments. It is hard to deny that dynamic processes deserve greater attention in the context of comparative studies.
So, what can we ask for? Comparison should not only put individual cases in a new light but also enhance our understanding of causation, contingency and transcultural patterns. The essays acknowledge and pursue these goals to widely varying degrees. At the very least, comparative projects, by reminding us of our ignorance of analogous circumstances in historical settings beyond our own area(s) of specialisation, ought to shame us into broadening our horizons instead of drilling ever deeper in intimately familiar terrain – whether by striking out on our own or by teaming up with others. The pages of this volume reveal both a welcome willingness and a lingering reluctance to do so. All in all, this collection, much like similar ones that have appeared in recent years, reminds us how far we are still away from a genuinely comparative history of the ancient world.
