In her first monograph, Dance of the Islands (2007), C. described the nesiotic character of Archaic/Classical Delos and its sanctuary. The present volume continues the exploration of this theme during the period of Delian independence (314–166 bc). The introduction summarises much of C.’s earlier work, establishing Delos’ sanctuary and its insularity as the defining criteria for its development as a regional hub. C. argues that the region is a useful heuristic device for the ancient historian, and suggests that well-documented regional interactions in the ancient world might provide new models for thinking about regionalism more generally, uncoupling the concept from contemporary political and economic structures. For C., networks provide a good way of thinking about regions and their concomitant regional identities as functions of connectivity and interaction. Delos, both as a highly connected node in Aegean networks and as an island with an unusually rich epigraphic record, provides a good test case. C. explores the relationship between Aegean social networks and regional and other identities through different bodies of evidence and at different scales in four case studies.
The first, ‘The Politics of Connectivity’, presents the scant evidence that exists for the organisation and function of the Islanders’ League, known exclusively through inscriptions. C. argues that the League was not an Antigonid or Ptolemaic imposition, but a canny response to rapidly changing external pressures, which could only have developed out of pre-existing Aegean networks that had helped constitute a nesiotic identity. This bottom-up approach is plausible, but the evidence is too thin to be conclusive. The chapter also serves as a general introduction to the political environment of the Aegean in the third century bc and outlines what little is known about the sequence of political events in this period. C. is at pains not to get bogged down in chronological disputes and makes the case for writing a different kind of history for this period, one shaped by the types of available evidence.
In her second case study, ‘Building, Investing, and Displaying on Delos’, the only one that does not rely exclusively on epigraphic sources, C. considers the built environment of Hellenistic Delos and how this both reflected and constituted new relations of power and identity. Central to this topic is the question of investment, and C. distinguishes between the aims of civic and religious monuments constructed by the Delian dêmos, private individuals and Hellenistic monarchs. She rightly insists that motivations for and receptions of these monuments were complex, but that visibility and response to the existing urban landscape were key considerations. C. argues that the Delians encouraged royal investment, leveraging their position as a ‘threshold’ between Antigonids and Ptolemies and as a central node within Aegean networks, but also speculates the Delians had control over what was built in their sanctuary and where.
The people within these networks become the focus of C.’s third case study, ‘Proxenies, Statues, Crowns’. Like the Hellenistic kings, individuals were keen to make use of Delos’ position as an Aegean hub to display themselves through the smaller-scale monumentalisation of proxeny decrees and, to a lesser extent, honorific portraits. This is not new territory, and C. draws heavily on work done by W. Mack and G. Reger to argue that her ‘network of Delian honours’ cannot be understood as a proxy for commercial networks; Aegean interactions, like the reasoning given for the honours themselves, can rarely be parsed into single categories like ‘economic’, ‘religious’ or ‘political’. Though she does suggest that political or diplomatic interventions are more likely to be emphasised and financial contributions are downplayed, C. resists casting this emphasis in terms of banausic anxieties, and she does not deny Delos’ importance as a trade hub. Rather, she persuasively shows that Aegean economic transactions cannot be disentangled from political, social and religious interactions, and offers a richer, thicker description of the relations (both social and material) through which the economy of substance operated. C.’s original contribution to this discussion of Delian honours is to map out the network formed by the recipients, grouping them in geographic clusters. She argues that, although the honorands come from a wide geographic scope, Delos was primarily a stage for the islanders of the Cyclades and southern Aegean islands. The rationale behind the clusters is not given (is it based on distance from Delos? average sailing time?), but they follow what one might call ‘common sense’ divisions of areas in and around the Aegean. Alternative groupings based on non-geographic criteria are not tested.
The final case study, ‘The Social Dynamics of Dedication’, uses the Temple inventories on Delos to examine how different identities (island, region, gender, status and combinations thereof) were articulated through cult participation. Here we get a glimpse of Delian individuals (as opposed to the community) and other islanders. The chapter echoes the finding of the previous one, that Delos was a local and regional sanctuary and an area of display first, but with significant enough importance to attract visitors from across the Mediterranean world. Individual dedications are recorded more often than community-sponsored ones. Additionally, the nature of the evidence affords an opportunity to explore dedicatory practices in relation to gender. Distance, perhaps unsurprisingly, was an especially limiting factor for female dedicants (only 5 out of a recorded 46 are not Aegean residents). C.’s exploration of elite vs non-elite dedicants is the book's weakest point, largely because the evidence does not support an exploration of such categories. Elite here stands in for royalty or members of royal courts, non-elite for everyone else included in the inventories. The results will not upset any assumptions (e.g. of the 5 non-Aegean female dedicants mentioned above 4 are royal women). It is, of course, not fruitless to explore the difference in opportunity, behaviour and sense of identity between, say, the 5% and the 0.1%, especially when levels of inequality are high; but ‘non-elite’ is a stretch – most non-elite Islanders did not leave behind records of their dedications and are outside the scope of this study.
Five appendices follow, namely, honours given by Delian decrees, honours known from inscriptions on statues and exedras, honours mentioned in the Delian accounts, toponyms associated with the ethnics of honorands and, lastly, dedicants recorded in the Temple inventories (including their community of origin, gender, status and number of dedications).
As C. is aware, the fragmentary quality of the data does not lend itself to the types of formal analyses employed in many network approaches. But network-thinking provides a multi-scalar framework for exploring how regional island identities were constructed and maintained. C. is right to insist that imperfect data should not dissuade us from using it altogether; new models can help us present the old imperfect evidence in new, meaningful ways. C. offers a tightly written account of what inscriptions and monuments can say about Aegean identities and the social history of independent Delos. Although the use of archaeological material here is limited to monumental architecture and there is little discussion of style, materiality, spatial syntax and so forth, art historians and archaeologists should find the book's themes and evidence stimulating and complementary. Given the somewhat insular nature of the epigrapher's discipline, C.’s work is commendable for bringing these rich texts and the valuable insights of specialists into wider debates surrounding power, religion, identity and the economy of the Hellenistic world.
