Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World by Andrew M. Riggsby (review)

358 PHOENIX When the chapters are taken together, the interplay of diverse datasets and methodologies highlights how much we still stand to learn about this complex period. That being said, this reader was left wanting further engagement with the ideas presented in the volume’s introduction. Concepts of empire, hegemony, and anarchy appear throughout, but are often addressed only in a casual manner or without consideration of how models could change when they are combined. For instance, Roth’s chapter on increasing elite investment in municipal communities characterizes the municipalization phenomenon as part of Rome’s growing claim to “comprehensive hegemony of terra Italia” (103). Yet one could also explore how municipalization, driven by Rome’s hegemonic claims, could itself become a decentralizing, and thus potentially anarchic, force within Roman Italy. Similarly, the interplay of these concepts fades into the background within the papers concerning the post-Social-War world. Can we still call Roman power in first-century Italy hegemonic, or do we have anarchy in a post-conflict zone? When do the conceptions of empire identified by Ando widely apply to Italy? Is it only with the Civil Wars and Augustus, or do they follow in step with municipalization? A concluding chapter by the editors would have been a welcome addition to help connect the findings of the papers and to show the potential that these models have for our understanding of this key historical period. These minor criticisms aside, the editors and contributors should be applauded for producing a stimulating volume that will quickly become essential reading for all students of republican history. The question posed by the volume’s title is still very much open and invites further research and reflection. University of Toronto Drew Davis Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World. By Andrew M. Riggsby. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019. Pp. 264. Contributing to a lively scholarly discussion, Mosaics of Knowledge aims to provide a better understanding of the Romans’ “balkanized informational world,” in which information was not controlled by the needs of any particular group, and individual Romans would have had access to a “ ‘tessellation’ of contributions by intellectuals, bureaucrats, and tradesmen (. . . the ‘mosaic’ of the title)” (9). To achieve his purpose, its author studies lists, tables, and tabular organization, weights and measures, and the representation of three dimensions (perspective) and two dimensions (plans and maps), in what he refers to as the “Latin World” up to the end of the third century c.e. After a useful “Brief Orientation,” the first chapter discusses specialized types of “Lists,” i.e., tables of contents in miscellanies, alphabetized lists, indexed lists, and nested lists for large and continuously expanding public records. The second chapter deals with “Tables” (in the narrow sense of matrices with meaningful rows and columns) and “Tabular Organization,” for example, in centuriation and military duty rosters. They are shown to be useful for clearly defined expert communities of users and producers to constitute (bring into being rather than record) data in contexts in which priority is given to organization itself over content. The third chapter on “Weights and Measures” demonstrates that their creation and use appear as a localized process, with many units of measurement presenting no absolute values, but rough approximations and proportions, or even metonyms. This unsurprising fact, familiar until early modern times, is explained by the absence of what the author refers to as “state regulation” and the lack of market BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 359 pressure. The fourth chapter addresses “Representing Three Dimensions” in Roman painting, focusing on three “sacro-idyllic” representations from Rome: a columbarium found on the grounds of the Villa Doria Pamphili, and the walls and stucco ceilings of the suburban villa found under the Villa Farnesina (all now accessible on the same floor of the museum in the Palazzo Massimo in Rome). The chapter shows the use not of a single system, but of a variety of “spatializing tactics.” These create a network of connections at a distance, giving three-dimensional structure to representations which are “spatial” in a “more topological,” rather than Euclidean, sense (7). The fifth and final chapter on “Representing Two Dimensions” focuses on what the author calls “maps...