Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Revised ed., 1/18/2007
EAN 9780521030878, ISBN10: 0521030870

Paperback, 404 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

These especially commissioned essays open up a fascinating perspective on a crucial era of western culture. In the second century CE the Roman empire dominated the Mediterranean, but Greek culture maintained its huge prestige. At the same time, Christianity and Judaism were vying for followers against the lures of such an elite cultural life. This book looks at how writers in Greek from all areas of Empire society respond to their political position, to intellectual authority, to religions and social pressures. It explores the interesting cultural clashes from which Christianity emerged to dominate the Empire. It presents a series of brilliant insights into how the culture of Empire functions and offers a fascinating and alternative understanding of the long history of imperialism and cultural conflict.

List of contributors
Introduction
setting an agenda - 'everything is Greece to the wise' Simon Goldhill
Part I. Subjected to Empire
1. From Megalopolis to Cosmopolis
Polybius, or there and back again John Henderson
2. Mutilated messengers
body language in Josephus Maud Gleason
3. Roman questions, Greek answers
Plutarch and the construction of identity Rebecca Preston
Part II. Intellectuals on the Margins
4. Describing self in the language of the other
Pseudo (?) Lucian at the temple of Hierapolis Jas Elsner
5. The erotic eye
visual stimulation and cultural conflict Simon Goldhill
6. Visions and revisions of Homer Froma I. Zeitlin
Part III. Topography and the Performance of Culture
7. 'Greece is the world'
exile and identity in the Second Sophistic Tim Whitmarsh
8. Local heroes
athletics, festivals, and elite self-fashioning in the Roman East Onno van Nijf
9. The Rabbi in Aphrodite's bath
Palestinian society and Jewish identity in the High Roman Empire Seth Schwartz
List of works cited
Index of major passages discussed
General index.