The Sons of Remus: Identity in Roman Gaul and Spain by Andrew G. Johnston

Abstract

418 PHOENIX et Militiae: Elite Religion at Rome in Response to External Triumphs and Crises”) describes this process as “accumulative civic polytheism” (126). Adopting an instrumentalist approach, Champion compares the official introduction of Magna Mater in 204 to the senate’s suppression of Bacchic cult groups in 186. He concludes that in both cases, the main issue was an attempt by the senate to exercise control over the cults that Rome encountered and assimilated. Even so, Champion cautions against interpreting these episodes as evidence of a consistent, far-sighted religious policy on the part of the aristocracy. Chapter Five (“Understanding Elites’ Religious Behaviors in the Middle Roman Republic ”) considers elite religious behavior in light of psychological, sociological, anthropological , and cultural theories. Psychological research in social cognition and attitudinal ambivalence, Champion argues, allows us to reconcile the fact that the same elites who occasionally made skeptical or incredulous statements about public religion nonetheless persevered in their commitment to the demands of religious orthopraxy. Cognitive dissonance theory, on the other hand, suggests that Scipio Africanus must have acted from genuine conviction when he delayed on the European side of the Hellespont during the campaign against Antiochus the Great. If Scipio had entertained serious doubts about the efficacy of public religion, then the psychological tension created by a delay of over a month at a crucial moment in the campaign would have been unbearable. Finally, Champion returns to a critique of totalizing theories of culture to argue for a distinct elite religious culture created, maintained, and consumed by the aristocracy. At times, Champion exaggerates the interpretive power of elite-instrumentalism as historical counterfactual. Roman elites were attuned to the social and political dimensions of public ritual, as Champion himself admits (180, passim). To accept this does not require us to reject the notion that they believed in their gods according to his definition of belief as “a genuine, collective conviction on the part of governing elites that Roman success, and indeed the city’s very existence, depended on maintaining correct relations with the gods through orthopraxy, or exactingly accurate performances of religious ceremony , ritual, and sacrifice” (xiv–xv, 223). Despite this tendency to frame the issue as a choice between mutually exclusive alternatives, Champion has produced an accessible and nuanced study of an important question in the study of Roman religion. His approach places individual experience at the center of analysis while keeping the individual’s social and cultural context clearly in view. As a result, his book suggests how we might conceive of the emotions and behaviors of elite Romans who were charged with maintaining the pax deorum. Baylor University Meghan DiLuzio The Sons of Remus: Identity in Roman Gaul and Spain. By Andrew G. Johnston. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2017. Pp. 420. In this elegantly structured, generously documented, and closely argued book, Andrew G. Johnston provides a fresh and original reading of the cultural and social changes that affected the four Gallic and three Hispanic provinces following their integration into the Roman empire. Grounding his analysis in concepts derived from the sociological literature on identity politics, he argues that identity in these Roman provinces BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 419 was rooted primarily in a “sense of belonging to local communities, which were persistently reimagined, redefined, and made meaningful by the agency of the provincial actors themselves” (4). Social memory and shifting representations of the past—both the local and the Roman past—served to construct, renegotiate, and perform both communal and individual identities, that is, in sociological terms, to foster “communalization,” a concept to which Johnston frequently resorts and which he defines as “a pattern of action that promotes a sense of belonging together” (5). Discourse was crucial to this process, as individuals—especially local elites—created locally imagined narratives, which, developing and changing over time, helped situate individuals and their local Hispanic or Gallic provincial communities within a broader cultural framework in which the imperial power of Rome loomed large. In this process, the pre-conquest past was never forgotten nor erased from memory, but elements of that lost world were selectively remembered, as each community, even those of privileged Roman status such as coloniae and municipia, developed its...