Reviewed by: La fin de la cité grecque: métamorphoses et disparition d'un modèle politique et institutionnel local en Asie Mineure, de Dèce à Constantin by Anne-Valérie Pont François Gerardin La fin de la cité grecque: métamorphoses et disparition d'un modèle politique et institutionnel local en Asie Mineure, de Dèce à Constantin Anne-valérie Pont Hautes Études du monde gréco-romain 57. Geneva: Droz, 2020. Pp. xiii + 585. ISBN: 978-2-600-05742-4 Who killed the Greek city? The polis, as an ideal form of collective organization and esteemed as an object of historical (chiefly epigraphic) investigation, has kept ancient historians busy for a very long time indeed. The Greek city, as everybody knows, did not die at Chaeronea. In what is arguably the greatest achievement in this field of study over the last decades, Louis Robert and his disciples pinpointed the decadence of civic life, starting with the last quarter of the second century bce and continuing well into the early Roman period—the socalled Hellenistic turn. In this well-researched and powerfully argued book, Anne-Valérie Pont tells the story of a slow, limited, and tardy death. Hence her title and subtitle: "The Demise of the Greek City: Metamorphosis and Disappearance of a Local Political and Institutional Model in Asia Minor, from Decius to Constantine." [End Page 242] After gradual alteration in the early Roman period, the political bodies of Roman Asia Minor suffered minor though serious ailments in the third century ce, before the policies of the Tetrarchs dealt the final blow. On this account, the first quarter of the fourth century ce really is a watershed. What came after was something else. According to Pont, the city became, after Constantine, a mere tool of imperial governance (citéoutil, a term she uses on page 333), not the lively organism it had been. In her Introduction, Pont characterizes this "civic model," invented in the Greek Archaic period, as the peaceful articulation of the "few" and the "many." In these close-knit communities, those in power and the rest of the population shared in the same view of the "common good," the same collective "energy." Pont, against Mark Whittow's hypothesis of the Greek city's "continuous history," postulates a "meantime" (entretemps) in which the demise of this civic model took place. Her book is divided into three parts of two chapters each and follows a chronological as well as thematic order. Part I explores the two shocks of Christian persecutions (chapter 1) and foreign invasions (chapter 2) from roughly 250 to around 275. According to Pont, there was no crisis of the city in this period. Despite internal as well as external challenges, the civic framework obtained but did not remain unshaken. Jews and Christians, she argues, had been participating in civic life, despite recurrent tensions. Those confessing to be "Christian," however, started to manifest "indifference" toward their home city, thinking of themselves primarily as dwellers of the celestial Jerusalem. Cities also resisted invasions because they had kept a vigorous tradition of military training in the gymnasium and broad participation in athletic contests. Yet, throughout the third century, Roman-style entertainment gradually took over, with gladiatorial games and circus races replacing civic competitions. Pont's thorough and comprehensive review of all the available evidence sets a high bar for the analysis of civic responses to both the repression of Christians and foreign invasions. In Part II, with no less acumen in her treatment of Roman law sources, coin evidence, and epigraphic material, Pont singles out the true culprits. She argues that the cosmopolitanism of civic elites (chapter 3) and the new norms imposed by Roman administration (chapter 4) brought about the demise of the civic framework. Chapter 3 builds on the research of Anna Heller and Henri Fernoux, who both advocated a vitalist view of the Greek city in the early Roman period. Evidence from the third century ce—namely, honorific decrees, coin types representing the demos or personifications of the city, and popular elections of city magistrates—betrays continuing popular participation in civic politics, in contrast to the growing disinterest of the...
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Jun 1, 2023
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