Hostages and Hostage-Taking in the Roman Empire (review)

This study of hostages in ancient Rome is both more and less than what is implied by its simple title. It is not a history of the practice of hostage taking, nor a study of the hostages themselves, both paths well trodden by previous scholars. Instead, it is a nuanced and brilliantly articulated consideration of Roman attitudes about hostages and how those attitudes reflected Rome's growing hegemony. As such, it does not chronologically restrict itself to the principate, but considers the de facto empire from its expansion in the second century b.c. to the beginnings of its decline in the second century a.d. Allen's central thesis is "that Romans expected to exercise authority over their hostages in ways that both reflected and reinforced their attitudes toward the periphery" (28). Although this may not seem an unexpected assertion, it is a perspective that has been only a tangential concern of earlier scholarship. The novelty of Allen's book is both its detailed exposition of this thesis and its methodological approach.

Allen's decision not to restrict himself to historical instances of hostage taking during the period in question necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. He considers incidents from the legendary history of Rome and even purely literary hostage episodes, which, as products of writers from this era, are just as revealing of contemporary attitudes regarding hostages. Moreover, since the ancient definition of a hostage was fluid, he considers not only those so labeled in the literary sources (hostage is an imprecise translation of obses in Latin or homeros in Greek), but any who share the situations of hostages. Not only does Allen handle the traditional historical sources with aplomb, but he also deftly controls literature from diverse genres and some archaeological material as well.

Far from the use of the word today, hostages in Rome were not simply coercive collateral; they could show considerable overlap with other categories of people, including guests, students, and even sons. Allen identifies "a common set of motifs and metaphors in describing their hostages, which placed the hostages in easily conceptualized and thoroughly justified positions of subordination" (35). These themes provide the structural basis for his work. Thus, a Roman's expected roles were as creditor, host, conqueror, father, teacher, or male, whereas a hostage was collateral, guest, trophy, son, student, or female. Although this organization, particularly the chapter entitled "Masculine-Feminine," seems likely to be viewed with skepticism by traditional historians, it is important to remember that Allen is not asserting that hostages were actually the inferiors of Romans in each of these power relations, only that this was the common Roman assurance. Indeed, to cite an infamous example omitted by Allen, the similarity of Caesar's position to that of a Roman hostage when he found himself seeking favor at the royal court of Bithynia as a young man may explain the persistence of the rumor that he played the queen to King Nicomedes.

Allen is completely convincing both in establishing these roles as literary tropes and arguing that any reversal of roles is used to symbolize resistance on the part of the hostage. The latter point is particularly well shown in a separate chapter on the historian Polybius, arguably the most famous Roman hostage of all. Allen contends that Polybius portrayed himself as the teacher or surrogate father of his Roman host, a reversal used to highlight his independence from Rome for the benefit of his countrymen. This chapter represents a significant reappraisal of Polybius, and seems likely to be influential in succeeding scholarship. So too does Allen's chapter on Tacitus, who "tells stories where foreign hostages and the Romans who rely on them fail utterly, while those who reject such a device are vastly more effective" (224–225). One theme that might profitably have been pursued is how this change in perception toward hostage taking related to changes in the actual practice during the second century a.d.

Sections of this work, particularly...