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

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." 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 elite. Senatorial and equestrian careers, along with the widespread practice of holding citizenship of multiple poleis, opened up new horizons for wealthy citizens. Simply put, the great notable had his mind—and money—somewhere else. The end of provincial coinage, a traditional locus for the expression of civic identity, compounded this process of "depoliticization" (dépolitisation).

Chapter 4 considers long-term interactions between the imperial administrative structure and the civic cells of Asia Minor. Although civic constitutions remained in place, Roman administrative practice superseded them. Liturgies, following Pont's meticulous analysis, replaced magistracies as the main form of civic governance. This process, as she convincingly argues, started with Augustus, intensified with the grant of citizenship granted by Caracalla in 212 ce, and culminated with Diocletian's reforms. These fiscal and territorial reforms did not suddenly impoverish civic elites but created a new urban hierarchy, with Nicomedia as an imperial capital and new city foundations on imperial estates.

Part III examines the years from 303 to 324 ce (chapter 5) and locates the final "disappearance" of the Greek polis in Asia Minor during the reign of Constantine (chapter 6).

Chapter 5 first reacts against an excessively benign view of the repression of Christians and then recasts this well-documented episode as an instance of the perennial evil of civic community known as stasis. Pont cites ample evidence to show that, beyond the scriptural motif of inner-family strife, religious partisanship disrupted civic solidarity and dispossessed the Christian civic elite. A famous inscription from Panamara in Caria, dated to 312 ce, which she reproduces and translates in an appendix to this chapter, records the lavish gift of oil by a prominent priestly family to citizens, foreigners, and soldiers encamped nearby on the occasion of the local festival. Pont views this document, despite its emphasis on consensus and inclusivity, as the swan song of civic religion, not a testimonial to its survival, as some have previously argued.

In chapter 6, Pont paints a picture of discontinuity between the Greek poleis of Asia Minor and the cities of Constantine, be it the great new capital of Constantinople or the small civic community of Orcistus, in Phrygia, whose fate as a predominantly Christian city in this period is documented by a rich epigraphic dossier. In her discussion of this text, Pont illuminates the nature of the pecunia pro cultis, the funds which continued to be allocated to the rival neighbor city of Nicolaeia. This evidence alone, however, is insufficient to prove a radical break, and here Pont relies on further aspects of the end of polytheistic religion to make her case: for instance, the new configuration of civic time and space. The conclusion summarizes the argument.

Throughout her analysis, Pont remains attentive to regional and chronological nuances, marshals a staggering quantity of source material, and charts a long arc of historical evolution, reaching back to the age of Augustus. The maps, designed by Fabrice Delrieux, are remarkable. Undoubtedly, the book's premises, concerning the vitality of the Greek polis in the Roman period, and her conclusions, regarding the novel character of the late antique city, will elicit further debate. This is also very much a story told from the perspective of civic elites, how they embraced the Roman imperial system and, for an increasing number of them, Christianity as a new religion. Perhaps future research on politically disenfranchised groups, or non-elite people more broadly, will complement this narrative. Unexplained technical terms—readers may not know, off the top of their head, what a Novatian is—and missing translations for some of the Greek and Latin texts cited in the original are regrettable, but these should not deter the non-expert from diving into this engrossing read. The scholarship is, by all measures, impressive.