Local Identities in the Ancient Mediterranean

Abstracts

a conference in memory of Corinne Crawford

Kelcy Sagstetter, Asian fusion: intellectual resistance to Greco-Scythian cultural mixing

This paper argues that Herodotus' portrayal of the Scythian rejection of Greek culture is a reaction of Greeks from Olbia (Herodotus' informants) to aspersions cast on their 'Greekness' by other Greeks. Mediterranean Greeks largely ignored the Black Sea colonies in times of food shortage or military threats, forcing the colonies to depend largely on each other or neighboring communities for support. Though trade relations flourished, it is evident that other Greeks did not see the denizens of Olbia as 'Greek'. The literary descriptions of violent Scythian denunciation of Greek ways is a means of highlighting the 'otherness' of the Scythians and, conversely, the 'Greekness' of the Olbiopolitans.

Herodotus' Scythian ethnography makes much of Scythian resistance to absorption of Greek culture. The sage Anacharsis was killed by his own brother for importing Greek religious practices. Skyles, the Hellenophile king, dressed in Greek clothing, worshipped Greek gods and married a Greek woman. His countrymen were so scandalized that they exiled and eventually killed him.

However, Herodotus also tells us that Scyles' mother was a Greek who taught him Greek language and letters, revealing her high social status. Further, king Arapeithes had other sons by Scythian women, yet Scyles inherited the throne. Evidently Scythian hatred of all things Greek did not extend to marriage alliances between noble Greek families and Scythian royalty. Coins at Nikonion inscribed ΣΚΥΛΑ or ΣΚΥΛΕΩ lend credence to the literary account and even imply a measure of Scythian control over the Greek cities. The combined evidence suggests that bilingual children of mixed marriages were more common Herodotus' account would elsewhere suggest. These details imply major propagandistic revision in Olbian reports of their relations with the native Scythian population in order to make contacts with indigenous cultures more acceptable to the Greeks of the wider Mediterranean.

Duncan Macrae, The Two Catulli of Verona: Hybrid Identity and Social Performance

The place of Verona, the poet's hometown, in Catullus' poetry has generally been dismissed as a feature of his 'early poetry' or as a touch of nostalgia. This paper argues that such a view is reductive and that Verona is used by Catullus to negotiate a hybrid cultural identity. Taking Poem 17, O Colonia, as a case study, the paper will examine the dynamics of this interaction between local and metropolitan identity. The poem is addressed to Verona and is concerned with the town's wish for a new bridge and Catullus' wish to see a certain fellow Veronese man, who is being cuckolded by his young wife, thrown off the bridge.

Catullus' hybrid identity plays out in two ways. On the one hand, the poem presents an image of Catullus as an insider in the provincial community. By revealing his acquaintance with the personal lives of his fellow Transpadanes, but excluding the Roman reader from full knowledge, Catullus asserts his place in the provincial social network. The Salisubsali sacra that the town performs on the bridge is presented as an obscure local ritual. On the other hand, Catullus 'makes sense' of Verona for his Roman audience through particularly Roman discourses. The language of urbanitas is used to express negative judgments on the old bridge and the cuckold. In the same way, when Catullus designates Verona as a colonia, implying a legal status that the city did not have, he presents Verona's aspirations in terms of Romanocentric political discourse. Most of all, Catullus' performance of hybridity can be seen in the possible allusion to the Roman ritual of the Argei and the related proverb sexagenarios de ponte. Several critics have suggested that the poem's conceit of throwing the husband off the bridge relates to the jettison of mannequins into the Tiber during the Argei. The modern debate over whether there is such an allusion has taken the form of an interpretatio Romana, where succesive critics have made judgments on the Roman-ness of the poem's premise. The ambiguity of the allusion can be interpreted in the light of postcolonial notions of hybridity – the ritual is transformed in the provincial situation and becomes an imperfect, hybridised version of the Roman original.

As a coda, this paper shows how this hybrid identity becomes a strategy within a wider social performance aimed at elite Roman readers. The performed hybridity seen in Poem 17 allows Catullus to assert a particular place in Roman society – au fait with the insiders' discourse of urbanitas, attached to a locality in Italy and engaged with the sophisticated literary forms of Hellenistic culture.

There are currently two opposite views concerning the gymnasium in Ptolemaic Egypt. One regards it as an institution reinforcing segregation between Greeks and Egyptians (e.g. Bingen (1975), Lewis (1986), Anagnostou-Canas (1989)). The other sees it as an institution that could, in some cases, include Egyptians (e.g. Brady (1936), Legras (1999), Habermann (2004)). Developing the second approach, this paper explores how the gymnasium became a tool of integration for Greeks and Egyptians belonging to certain strata of the population from the mid-second century BC on.

I argue that the gymnasium became flexible enough, especially outside of the Greek poleis, to allow some Egyptian soldiers to join, creating new hybridized identities within the local elite. First, I locate the papyrological, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence concerning the gymnasium, the gymnasiarchoi, and its different groups of members (epheboi, neaniskoi) in the larger but closely related context of the army and of associations devoted to the royal cult. Second, I establish how change within the army's composition between the third and the second century and the emergence of a mixed Greco-Egyptian local elite in Egyptian villages and cities are directly reflected in the gymnasial membership and in the integration of local deities in the gymnasium. I suggest that the formation of local hybridized identities occurred faster in the chôra, where Egyptians joined the army and where intermarriage between Greek soldiers and Egyptian women had been far more common than in the more rigid structure of the Greek poleis of Egypt. To conclude, a look at the genealogy and onomastics of families who wanted to demonstrate their membership in the gymnasial class of Roman Egypt (e.g. Bagnall (2000), Ruffini (2006)) supports that the integration of the native elite must have already occurred under the Ptolemies.

This paper will explore the complex process of identity construction in the Roman colony of Alexandria Troas (Asia Minor) by focusing on two major socio-cultural developments: 1. the emergence of a new colonial elite of Roman settlers and their acculturation to the Greek environment; 2. the identity construction of the Greek indigenous population under the impact of Roman rule and their assertion (or even invention) of local traditions and myths in the face of the changed political conditions.

In the late third century BC, the Orchomenoi recorded measures passed in the aftermath of their decision to become a part of what is in modern scholarship most commonly referred to as "the Achaean League" (IG V 2 344). They, however, put that action quite differently: "the Orchomenoi became Achaean" (Orchoménioi Achaioì egénonto).

As the above vignette illustrates, identity and identity negotiation were central to the remarkable process by which Achaea itself, - not just the "Achaean League", - "grew" from the few cities recorded by Herodotus (1.145), our earliest record, to being the most significant power of the Peloponnese by the mid-second century. To approach this merely as a political phenomenon is insufficient: political identity was inseparable for the Greeks from their broader local and even ethnic identity. Nor was identity simple: even after they "became Achaean", the Orchomenoi still declared themselves Orchomenoi, and considered their polis the polis of the Orchomenioi.

Drawing on epigraphical and numismatic evidence, as well as Pausanias, Plutarch and Polybius, this paper re-analyses the role of identity in Achaea, particularly during the turbulent and well-attested expansion in which Aratus was crucial. It offers a more nuanced approach, recognising the contingency and rhetoric inherent in expressions of identity rather than assuming that these reflect an unquestioned and unquestionable belief in political or biological kinship. Finally, it sketches the wider ramifications of this approach, particularly on our understanding of Peloponnesian myth and on the disjunction between ethnos and polis as they are refracted through the continual shifts in local, regional, and even national Greek identity.

Traditional island archaeological approaches toward the Maltese Temple Period have obscured the role of foreign contact in local identity construction. A re-examination of these concepts and of the archaeological evidence itself demonstrates that foreign contacts and objects were a key component in the creation of a unique island culture.

The concept of a Mediterranean "island archaeology" was, to some extent, born on Malta. John D. Evans worked extensively here before publishing his seminal 1973 article on the topic. He suggested that the physical boundedness of islands created a social environment well-disposed to conservative or unique development, free from competition or influence from neighboring societies.

The Maltese Temple Period (c. 4200-2500 B.C.) has been regarded as a prime example of this phenomenon. During this time, Maltese culture diverged from the central Mediterranean koiné to which it had previously belonged. Large megalithic temples and associated burial facilities were constructed, and ceramic styles differed significantly from those of neighboring regions. Nevertheless, the Maltese continued to import exotic objects, while marine iconography appeared for the first time.

Thus, attempts to reconstruct a local Maltese island identity on the basis its isolation are fundamentally flawed, since Malta was never cut off from the wider world. The Temple Culture did not develop because Malta was a backwater, nor because the Maltese chose to isolate themselves from exchange networks. Rather, foreign objects were obtained and used alongside unique local architectural and ceramic styles, particularly in ritual and funerary contexts. A sharp contrast between local and foreign objects would have been clear to all members of the society. It was a dichotomy that did not exist in previous periods, and suggests new values had become meaningful in the construction of a local Maltese identity - perhaps due to the efforts of an emerging Maltese elite.

Jason Aftosmis, Problems of Language and Colonization in Callimachus's Aitia

This paper addresses issues of language and colonization in the fragments of Callimachus's Aitia. It focuses specifically on those fragments dealing with the foundations of cities (e.g., fr. 43 Pf.) and marriages uniting the peoples of cities (e.g., frr. 67-75, 80+82 Pf.). Further, the confluence of issues of naming, renaming, and the translation of native cultures in these fragments will also aid our interpretation of a number of other Aitia fragments.

Taking into account recent studies of colonization and politics in Greek poetry (esp. Dougherty 1991, 1993, 1994; Calame 1990, 1993; Selden 1998; Stephens 2003), I take seriously Selden's claim that Callimachus was "fundamentally a political poet" (1998: 405) as well as Dougherty's application to Greek poetry the position (derived from Antonio de Nerija via Greenblatt) that language is the perfect instrument of empire. Set against typical Greek colonial narrative patterns (e.g., Dougherty 1993: 15), I focus on deviations from these norms in the Aitia's foundation stories: Callimachus routinely modifies these narrative elements, or presents us with problematic resolutions, as in the civic crisis and vacuous ritual associated with the naming of Zancle's founder (fr. 43.78-83 Pf.). In a number of situations such as this (cf. too Acontius et Cydippe [frr. 67-75]), I take up the issue of names and customs among integrated peoples, but I will also focus particularly on: the incorporation of independent testimonia (e.g., of Strabo) for the geographical and ethnic names in these passages; and the significance of Egyptian social and religious custom during the intense colonization by Callimachus's patron Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The implications of this study are far-reaching: they suggest, for example, that, not just knowledge (cf. Hutchinson 2003), but problems of language and colonization were central to the poetics of the Aitia as a whole.