Research on associations in the ancient world has increased greatly in the two decades since O. van Nijf's book on professional associations appeared in 1995. Numerous papers and books have been published by I. Arnaoutoglou, R. Ascough, V. Gabrielsen, P. Harland, J. Kloppenborg and J. Liu – to name just the most prolific researchers from 2000 onwards. So why yet another book on associations? The answer is that E., for the first time, understands the development of associations in the provinces of the Roman empire as a marker of Romanisation and interprets the way in which their members and Roman administration handled them as promotion of Romanisation.
E. tries to prove his thesis by a tripartite approach. The monograph's first part (Chapters 2–4) deals with the ‘Roman’ idea and administration of associations, i.e. with Roman legislation and its traces in inscriptions – mainly from Rome and Italy – related to individual associations. In the second part (Chapters 5–8) E. searches for the impact these ideas and administration had on the world of associations in the Greek east (with a short excursus on North Africa on pp. 173–9). The book closes with a short outlook on late antiquity (Chapter 9); there is no general conclusion.
Concerning Rome's notions and handling of associations E. draws the following picture: only collegia that had been approved as such by Roman authorities could be considered legitimate. The prerequisite for this was that their existence was presumed conducive to the public good. These associations, classified by E. as ‘parastatal’, primarily included the fabri and centonarii, but also those groups who took on tasks in public cults or were involved in the food supply.
Apart from these, there were non-licensed ‘private’ clubs mainly focused on religious purposes. As long as the numbers of people involved were not too large and the participants did not meet too frequently, they, too, were within the lines of legitimacy. However, they always lived with the threat of being classified as illegal and banned. E. tries to explain the fact that both types of associations barely differ in their structures and behaviour with the concept of institutional isomorphism (in German this should rather read ‘institutionell’ than ‘institutionalisiert’), borrowed from institutional theory. Those clubs worried about the threat of a ban would have oriented themselves towards such associations that they considered successful and ‘safe’.
This model is decisive for E.'s view of the relationship between Romanisation and associations: the same effect of institutional isomorphism led clubs in the Greek east to seek Roman concessions or at least to imitate Roman associations. In order to prove this, E. points to the Roman authorities’ roles of prohibition and approval of associations in the eastern provinces. He then tries to present evidence of change in both the naming and the structure of the associations. In a further step he examines the occurrence of associations named after professions, with a look at the unions of the νέοι and the γερουσίαι. The continuation, revival or reinvention of traditions within associations is the subject of the next chapter before a passage on translocal organisations rounds off the study.
E. has written a learned book that is largely convincing throughout its first part. However, his enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of professional caution when the second part relies on rather weak evidence. While the phenomenon of epigraphic habit is addressed, E. largely ignores one of its major consequences: namely, that phenomena are not necessarily innovations of the Principate just because we can grasp them only in inscriptions from the imperial period. Documents from Roman settlement colonies are compiled indiscriminately along with those from Greek πόλεις. Thus, most occurrences of collegium or κολλήγιον come from Roman colonies, refer to institutions at Rome or even originate from the largely Latin-speaking province of Dacia, such as the example from Alburnus Maior (cf. esp. pp. 114–20).
Not only is the use of συνήθεια, as far as we know, restricted to Macedonia, but the same also applies to the mass of evidence for συνήθεις (pp. 122–6). Consequently, we are dealing with a regional phenomenon radiating into the neighbouring regions. It remains to be proven whether that was really the result of Roman influence in Macedonia.
The attempt to prove the existence of executive bodies within the associations in the Greek east resembling an ordo decurionum within Roman civitates seems quite bold (pp. 130–5). This can neither be derived from the designation of functionaries as δεκανεύσας or δεκανεύοντες nor from the προεδρίαι in Hierapolis, whatever προεδρία meant in those inscriptions.
While these doubts regarding single points remain, nonetheless, E. has written a stimulating book that represents an important contribution to the history of Roman associations.
