In this book, stemming from her 2017 doctoral dissertation, W. provides a useful introduction to the shrine of Amphiaraos for students and non-specialists, especially those who might struggle with V.C. Petrakos's books published in modern Greek (Ὁ Ὠρωπὸς καὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ Ἀμφιαράου [1968] and Οἱ ἐπιγραφὲς τοῦ Ὠροποῦ [1997]). The introduction heralds the commendable aim of providing a ‘politically-focused analysis’ (p. 3) of the use and reuse of inscriptions by various agents active in the shrine: W. endeavours to bridge the gap between religious studies, epigraphy and political history by highlighting ‘the politicising role of the cult’, through ‘the concept of reinvention, the process of redefining one's existing relation to things, places and events’ (p. 3). This is undoubtedly a sound ambition, and W. shows precise command of the shrine's layout, history and large epigraphic corpus. However, the monograph does not quite achieve this aim because of its generally imprecise use of concepts, frequent circular reasoning and serious bibliographical omissions.
The brief introduction (Chapter 1) puts emphasis on spatial dynamics and on the agency of the individuals and communities involved in publishing inscriptions at the shrine. Acknowledging the influence (among others) of S. Alcock (Archaeologies of the Greek Past [2002]) and especially J. Ma (Statues and Cities [2013]), W. insists on the idea that reuse ‘functioned as a means of political display and social competition’ (p. 9). Although she presents it as a conclusion of her work, it rather seems to be the premise of her research, which in a way weakens the contribution of her case studies in strengthening this point. It is also slightly surprising that a monograph dealing heavily with proxeny decrees and the role of the elite ignores P. Veyne's influential work Le Pain et le Cirque (1976) as well as M. Domingo Gygax's now classic work Benefactions and Rewards in the Ancient Greek City (2016). On the reuse of statue bases, one would also have expected G. Biard, La Représentation honorifique dans les cités grecques (2017).
The book is then divided into four chapters arranged both chronologically and thematically, according to the nature of the epigraphical evidence available for each period. Chapter 2, still rather introductory, deals with the geographical and archaeological situation of the shrine as well as its origins. One might regret that it falls short of providing a clear and precise outline of the (admittedly complicated) history of the shrine and its successive periods of subordination to its Athenian and Boeotian neighbours. This is left for readers to reconstruct (from e.g. pp. 28, 40, 50–1). Yet, concerning the foundation date of the shrine, W. does give a clear and nuanced discussion of the evidence and scholarship (pp. 37–46) and cautiously concludes that the issue cannot be resolved.
Chapter 3 focuses on the intermittent Athenian domination of the classical period and the dedications by elite Athenians as well as the Oropian decrees. This chapter best exemplifies the problematic status of this book, which is neither a synthesis of the history of the shrine nor a general study of reinvention, which would have been better served by a series of different case studies. As W. clearly points out, epigraphic reuse is difficult to comment on for the classical Amphiareion, as very few of those inscriptions, usually written on stelae, have been found in situ. This is conveniently summed up in Table 1 (pp. 53–6), which lists dedications and public inscriptions from the period 500–335 bce, with descriptions of their findspots. Unfortunately, the map showing those Fundorte (fig. 7, p. 64), like most of the illustrations in the book, is rather poorly edited, and the names of inscriptions, printed in blue, are often hidden by the outline of structures. The concept of reinvention is less applicable for this period; consequently, this chapter, although useful for neophyte readers to follow the sequence of events, falls somewhat outside of the conceptual scope of the book.
Moving to ‘Agency and Aspirations’ (section 3.3, p. 67), W. examines, among other examples, the case of the fourth-century stoa that stood in front of the theatre. W. interprets the stoa as a sign of Boeotian influence (pp. 70–1), but this conclusion is based on an erroneous reading of J.J. Coulton's publication of the monument (ABSA 63 [1968], 147–83). W. seems to base her conclusion on the following sentence by Coulton (pp. 180–1): ‘[T]hough Boeotia was in part racially connected with the Dorian Peloponnese, the flourishing art of her neighbour Athens must have had a considerable effect’ (quoted on p. 70). Yet, Coulton goes on in the same paragraph to specify that ‘The stylistic evidence, therefore, though by no means conclusive, suggests a Macedonian rather than a Theban origin for the stoa’.
W. links the role of individual members of the Athenian elite in asserting their polis’ domination on the Amphiareion with their ‘interest in the sphere of religion’ (p. 85). This vague conception of Greek religion, also applied to Sulla (pp. 210, 215), would have been greatly improved by C. Sourvinou-Inwood's ‘polis religion’ model (‘What is Polis Religion?’, in: O. Murray and S. Price [edd.], The Greek City from Homer to Alexander [1991], pp. 295–322, absent from the bibliography, which includes papers by Sourvinou-Inwood on other topics) and its critical reappraisal by J. Kindt (Rethinking Greek Religion [2012]). W. concludes: ‘when an external polis assumed control of Oropos and its sanctuary, it was in fact a narrow group of elite agents who played out their ambitions within the shrine and determined its administration’ (p. 120): such a statement can hardly be debated, and Veyne's description of euergetism would have allowed W. to offer a more thorough analysis of the sociological, economic and political dynamics at work in this context.
Chapter 4 deals with the inclusion of Oropos and the Amphiareion in the Boeotian koinon in the early Hellenistic period and with the numerous proxeny decrees inscribed on earlier Hellenistic statue bases. This chapter is a revised version of a paper by W. (BICS 58 [2015], 55–81), although not properly referenced. W. presents interesting statistics on Oropian and Boeotian federal decrees and provides a useful synthesis of previous scholarship on the integration of Oropos in the Hellenistic Boeotian koinon (D. Knoepfler, E. Mackil, C. Müller). Her discussion of Oropos’ proxeny network, based on W. Mack, Proxeny and Polis (2015), reaches the expected conclusion that coastal cities were over-represented among Oropian proxenoi. W. goes on to show that among Boeotian poleis, those with access to the sea had significantly more proxenoi than their continental counterparts (pp. 153–4), but does not explain why Anthedon only has one preserved proxeny decree, and excludes from the analysis several poleis of Boeotia.
Chapter 5 studies the reuse of Hellenistic dedications in the first century bce to honour Romans, especially Sulla. This is by far the best part of the book, and the one where the concept of reinvention proves useful. W. convincingly argues that the Oropians’ reuse of Hellenistic statues to honour Romans was not only a means of securing good relations with the new dominant power, but also contributed to redefining their own identity. W.'s careful study of the spatial dynamics allows her to show that far from awarding second-hand honours, the Oropians gave Romans some of their best-situated bases in the row of honorific statues to the north-east of the temple, at the western end of this row, closest to the temple. Furthermore, by not erasing previous proxeny decrees and sculptors’ signatures, they made their Roman benefactors part of their own past (pp. 230–8).
Despite its convincing analyses of specific epigraphic, literary and archaeological evidence, this book leaves the impression of a somewhat missed opportunity. Some mistakes and lack of clarity prevent W. from channelling her precise knowledge of the shrine's epigraphical record into a nuanced and bibliographically informed sociological and political analysis.
