Dam, 'Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9502
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9502-dam-anatolia
@@@@95.2.2, Mitchell, Anatolia
Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia
Minor, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Pp. xx,
266, and xvi, 200. $69.00 and $60.00. ISBN 0-19-814080-0 and
0-19-814933-6.
Reviewed by Raymond Van Dam -- University of Michigan
Stephen Mitchell's Anatolia immediately takes its
place as one of the best books about the eastern Roman empire,
more accessible and friendly than the voluminous but scattered
writings of Louis Robert, more theoretical than T.R.S.
Broughton's Roman Asia Minor, more analytical and
chronologically extensive than D. Magie's Roman Rule in Asia
Minor, and more focused and comprehensive than A.H.M. Jones'
The Greek City and Cities of the Eastern Roman
Provinces, to mention only some of the other great books
about Asia Minor under Roman rule. These two folio-sized volumes
contain thousands of up-to-the-minute footnotes, eighteen
excellent maps, and sixty-five photographs of vistas, sites,
monuments, inscriptions, and coins, as well as over a quarter of
a million words of text. Amazingly enough, it is all very
readable; even more amazing is that it is all worth reading.
The title is a bit of a misnomer, however, since the main
focus of the book, as of most of Mitchell's earlier publications,
is primarily the region of Galatia in central Asia Minor and
secondarily its immediate neighboring regions of Lydia, Phrygia,
Pisidia, Lycaonia, Isauria, Cappadocia, and Pontus. This emphasis
on central Asia Minor immediately distinguishes Mitchell's book
from many other books about Roman Asia Minor, which have often
stressed either the numerous cities and their urban society in
the most Hellenized and hence most Romanized provinces in western
Asia Minor, or the role of the army on the frontier along the
upper Euphrates river in eastern Asia Minor. With Mitchell's
volumes the interior highlands and mountains of Asia Minor
finally start coming into focus as important, and intriguing,
components of the Roman empire.
The subtitle for Volume 1 is "The Celts and the Impact of
Roman Rule." This first volume begins with the invasion of the
Celts during the early third century B.C. and extends through the
invasions of the Roman armies and the imposition of Roman rule to
the invasions of the Goths and Persians during the mid-third
century A.D. The first section of this first volume discusses the
Celts in Anatolia in three extensive chapters. Much of this
discussion is straightforwardly encyclopedic: the chronology and
nature of the Celtic invasions, the settlements of the Celts in
the region thereafter known as Galatia, their relationships with
the kingdom of Pergamum and then with Roman commanders, the
development of hereditary leadership within the Galatian
aristocracy, the nature and consequences of Pompey's
administrative reconfiguration of central and eastern Asia Minor,
the details of the extensive manipulation of eastern dynasts and
kings by Marcus Antonius and then again by Octavian. The most
interesting of the discussions in this section is the chapter (4)
on the ethnography and settlement of the Celts in Galatia, in
part because it is more speculative and suggestive. In order to
reconstruct the competitive ethos of Celtic chieftains in Galatia
Mitchell uses the well-known observations of Posidonius about
Celtic society in pre-Roman Gaul. On the basis of onomastic
evidence he suggests that the indigenous Phrygian population was
transformed into slaves by their new Celtic overlords. He uses a
passage from Caesar's Gallic War to support his argument
that Celtic religion survived even though the Celts adopted
indigenous cults, and epigraphical evidence to suggest that
Celtic remained a viable spoken language well into the later
Roman empire, especially in districts in northern Galatia where
few inscriptions have been found. The evidence of archaeology
encourages suggestions about the location of the settlements of
different Celtic tribes in Galatia, their subsequent expansion
and contraction, and their inability to develop the urbanized
culture and political centralization that had begun to appear
among Celtic tribes in pre-Roman Gaul. These comparisons and
suggestions are very illuminating, not because they are
necessarily correct, but because they provide a consistent
interpretive flamework for central Asia Minor during the
pre-Roman period that new evidence, whether inscriptions or
archaeology, can now confirm or modify.
The second section of the first volume includes ten chapters
on the impact of Roman rule. Some of these chapters again provide
extensive but fairly straightforward exposition. One chapter (5)
discusses the mechanics of provincial administration (and hence
should be read with the two appendixes at the end of Volume 2
about the shifts in provincial boundaries); another chapter (6)
surveys the military campaigns under Augustus that led to the
pacification of the western Taurus Mountains in Pisidia, southern
Galatia, and Isauria; another chapter (8) analyzes the importance
of the imperial cult and its priesthoods for local aristocrats,
primarily at Ancyra; another chapter (9) provides information
about military garrisons along the roads, the expensiveness of
building roads, and military recruitment; and still another
chapter (13) discusses changes in provincial society during the
third century, in particular the use of soldiers to collect
taxes. Other chapters are more topical and synthetic, and in them
Mitchell often applies models that were developed with other
provinces in mind, and sometimes modifies those models on the
basis of evidence from central Asia Minor. These chapters discuss
cities and urban life (7, 12), estates and rural life (10, 11),
and the connection between cities and the countryside in terms of
the nature of the ancient economy (14).
Mitchell stresses that much of the Hellenization of these
interior regions was in fact due to the policies of urbanization
promoted by various Roman emperors, starting already with
Augustus, who established cities such as Ancyra as well as
several military colonies near the Taurus Mountains. Yet there
were also limits on imperial support for urbanization, since
Mitchell argues that in Cappadocia annexation as a province had
the opposite effect; there so much of the land was confiscated as
imperial estates or as public land that the establishment of
cities was not encouraged. The expansion of urban society and
culture had several predictable consequences for larger cities in
central Asia Minor, even if the evidence is sometimes scarce. One
was the rewriting of history as cities appropriated traditional
Greek myths and invented new legends and rituals to explain their
origins. Another was an increasing emphasis on public buildings,
funded either by the cities or by private benefactors; and
another was an increase in the number of agonistic festivals. But
two of Mitchell's suggestions about urban life will deserve
further consideration. One is a claim about social
transformation, that "in the third century agones took
over the role of public building, and provided the best
demonstration of the civic status and pretensions of a community"
(1:199); the other is the hint that many smaller cities in
central Asia Minor did not wish, or were unable, to finance much
urban construction or many festivals and games.
Mitchell's discussion of the rural economy is outstanding.
He starts, appropriately enough, by describing the soil and the
climate, the most important factors influencing agrarian life and
the underdeveloped economy of the ancient world. These two
factors had effectively divided the central plateau of Asia Minor
into two zones, one dominated by sedentary agriculturalism, the
other by pastoralism. But under Roman rule, especially from the
second to the fourth centuries, villages spread over the plateau
and their inhabitants switched to cereal cultivation. Often these
villagers were working land that belonged to others, either local
municipal elites or absentee landlords or the emperors
themselves. The best regional example of patterns of landholding
is, predictably, Galatia, and Mitchell provides a finely nuanced
discussion of changes in landowners, different means of
exploitation, and the tempo of imperial acquisition: "The first
century AD had been an age of individual opportunity, the second
was one of imperial consolidation" (1:158). His analysis of rural
society is equally impressive. It includes discussions of the
diet of rural dwellers, the survival of native languages, the
nature of small communities, and the diversity of local cults.
Villages may have represented a rural society that strongly
contrasted with the urban life of cities, but in central Asia
Minor cities seemed to carry less significance than elsewhere in
the empire: "villages were, from first to last, the bedrock of
communal life in Asia Minor" (1:170).
Mitchell's chapter on taxation and the economy is an
excellent attempt to insert the evidence from central Asia Minor
into larger models about the nature of the Roman economy in
general. He suggests that since most peasants lost much of their
available surplus through rents, taxes, or extortion,
"comparatively little coin moved out of the cities into the
countryside" (1:255); hence, "Large parts of central Anatolian
society were not integrated into the monetized economy of the
wider Roman world" (1:245). He also argues that much grain was
transported from the plateau to the coast, most likely as a form
of taxation in which the high costs of transportation overland
were included as part of the tax liability. Some of this grain
perhaps went to feed Rome, and much of it probably went to supply
the troops along the lower Danube, the upper Euphrates, or the
middle Euphrates frontiers, all regions connected to central Asia
Minor by a complex system of roads. One implication of these
arguments about limited monetization and taxes paid in
commodities is that the important changes in taxation between the
early empire and the third century were only in scale and
intensity: "The mechanics of tax collection were militarized, but
the underlying principles of exaction in kind remained the same"
(1:253).
The subtitle for Volume 2 is "The Rise of the Church." This
volume corresponds to the third section, which has the same title
and consists of five chapters. Because the journeys of St. Paul
included cities in Pisidia and Lycaonia, "The story of
Christianity in Anatolia begins at the beginning" (2:3). The
first chapter (15) of this section analyzes Paul's visit to
Antioch in Pisidia. Mitchell suggests that Paul took his Roman
name in honor of Sergius Paul(1)us, the proconsul of Cyprus whom
he converted to Christianity, and that he later visited Antioch
in Pisidia because it was the proconsul's hometown. Paul's
journeys are hence another indication of "the nexus of culture
and power that joined the provincial aristocracy to the Roman
governing class" (2:86) in the Greek East. The next chapter (16)
recreates the religious environment by discussing the many local
pagan cults, in particular those for Zeus, various Mother
Goddesses, and Men; the Jewish communities, which included in
addition many sympathetic "God-fearers"; the various early
Christian communities, especially in Phrygia, a region well
documented through inscriptions that indicate how early
Christianity had already splintered into various groups, most
notably the Montanists, that distinguished themselves by
differing doctrines and practices; the oracles of Apollo at
Claros and Didyma; and the ostensible similarities in doctrines
and values among pagans, Jews, and Christians. Christianity of
course eventually came to dominate, and in a long chapter (17)
Mitchell analyzes its rise and impact. He explains the prominence
of bishops such as Gregory Thaumaturgus by invoking a change in
values among local municipal elites, who from the mid-third
century tended to disengage themselves from civic
responsibilities by promoting their standing instead through
imperial service. He also concedes that the spread of
Christianity was uneven in central Asia Minor. For Cappadocia
Mitchell stresses the importance of rural shrines and country
bishops; yet it is the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers that
provide the most extensive evidence for urban society in the
later fourth century. Ancyra remained enough of a center of
classical culture that the emperor Julian hoped it would lead the
way in opposing Christianity, especially since its Christian
community was in such disarray through conflicts over doctrinal
orthodoxy. In some areas in Paphlagonia, Phrygia, Bithynia, and
Lycaonia the Novatians and other heretics were perhaps stronger
than the orthodox Nicene church. This enormous variety within
Christianity reappears in Mitchell's chapter (18) about
monasticism.
The final chapter is a bit unexpected, in part because it is
an extended commentary on a single text, the Vita of
Theodore of Sykeon, that Mitchell notes is particularly important
for "its detailed and unselfconscious depiction of life in rural
settings" (2: 130) in Galatia during the late sixth and early
seventh centuries. This chapter is also unexpected because in his
attempt to explain Theodore's involvement in so many eases of
spirit possession and exorcism Mitchell for the first time
proposes the use of comparative material from anthropology by
hinting at an interpretation in terms of "a series of symbolic
acts" or "a means of communication" (2:147, 148). For a book that
has made religious cults such a central concern these suggestions
are as welcome as they are belated. These hints should imply that
the illness of possession was a reading of and hence a text about
an underlying social or cultural disorder; that the ritual or
drama of exorcism represented Theodore's reading of that text,
and was hence another text in its own right; that the composition
of a Vita about Theodore involved a reading of that text
of exorcism; that Mitchell's reading of the Vita is yet
another interpretive text and hence open to further
exegesis...but unfortunately Mitchell's rather austere focus on
empirical realia seems to have prevented him from taking
seriously the implications of his own suggestions by fully
elaborating them.
For all its magnificence Mitchell's book cannot be taken as
the last word on all these subjects, for several reasons. He
himself admits that the archaeology of central Asia Minor is "at
a very primitive stage" (1:243). There are more inscriptions to
publish or interpret (or, sometimes, just locate in the
voluminous writings of Louis Robert). The writings of the
relevant church fathers need more study by scholars familiar with
Roman history and society, rather than primarily with Christian
theology. But by making so much material about Galatia and its
neighboring regions so accessible, a book this impressively
comprehensive and meticulous and sensible should only inspire
others to take up the issues Mitchell poses about Roman Asia
Minor.[[1]] NOTE [[1]] Here are the few slips I noticed:
Vol. 1: 69 n.72, "appears" for "appear"; 91, col. l, line 7, "at"
for "fat"; 93, col. 1, line 12, "know" for "known" ; 113, col. 1,
line 40, "," for ";" ; 141 n.205, "Nyssa" for "Nysa" ; 144,
col.2, line 37, "308" for "368" ; 230, co1.2, line 23, "This" for
"this"; 236, co1.2, line 18, "Damasus" for "Damasias"; 237, col.
1: between lines 29 and 30 a line or more is missing. Vol.2: 45,
co1.2, last line, "and" for "or"; 48, col. 1, line 30, "from" for
"fom" ; 59, col. 1, line 37, "370s" for "380s" ; 67, col.2, line
7, "362" for "363"; 69, col. 1, line 2, "370" (or perhaps "369")
for "361"; 69, col. 1, line 31, "Licinius" for "Diocletian" ; 69
n. 102, "19.8" for "8.8"; 70 n. 115, "sister St Macrina" for
"mother St Macrina"; 74, col. 2, line 6, "372" for "370"; 78,
col. l, line 19, "370" (or perhaps "369") for "371" ; 78, col. 2,
line 38, "political" for "politcal" ; 113, col. l, line 13, "362"
for "363"; 159, col.2, lines 17, 22, "Polemoniacus" for
"Polemonianus" ; 161 n.48, "138.2" for "138.8"; 161, col.2, line
27, "Nyssa" for "Nysa."