Europe: Ancient and Medieval
ordinated and by which they are interpreted. To sim-
plify a subtle analysis, Rebillard argues that most Chris-
tians organized their identities laterally, with
“Christian” simply one among several identities that
they could activate (“Roman citizen,” for example,
might be another), while bishops and other leaders
wanted their followers to organize their identities hi-
erarchically, with “Christian” being the overriding one.
Rebillard tests his theory by studying North African
Christianity from the career of Tertullian at the turn of
the third century to that of Augustine in the early fifth
century. Chapter 1 examines the writings of Tertullian
and concludes that Carthaginian Christians did not pos-
sess as high or consistent a level of “groupness” (p. 2)
as Tertullian would have liked, or as modern scholars
have assumed. “Christian” was one of several identities
that they activated, and was not necessarily the fore-
most one. Chapter 2 covers instances of persecution in
the third century, understandably focusing primarily on
the so-called Decian Persecution. It finds, not surpris-
ingly, that persecution was infrequent and rhetorically
mobilized by Christian authors. More originally, it ar-
gues that Christians did not usually respond to perse-
cution as a group; rather, Christians acted individually.
Like non-Christians, they belonged to several catego-
ries and did not always privilege the religious. Rather,
when Decius ordered his subjects to sacrifice, “the ma-
jority of Christians complied, as it was a requirement of
their membership in the imperial commonwealth” (p.
60). They might have been “unaware” that compliance
violated their Christian identity, or “they simply did not
activate their Christian membership in this context, at
least not until they were challenged to do so by Cyprian
and his clergy” (p. 60). Chapter 3 turns to the writings
of Augustine and finds that for most Christians “Chris-
tianness was not the common frame of interpretation
for everyday experience” (p. 91). Although a bishop
could mobilize his flock for anti-pagan actions at times,
usually Christians did not think of themselves “as a
group opposed to another group” in their city (p. 91).
The conclusion draws all of this together and suggests
that the choices of late ancient Christians in specific
contexts reflected not “the intensity of their religious
allegiance, but its salience in the different arenas of
their everyday life” (p. 97).
The model of multiple identities and their conflicting
arrangements does indeed provide the kind of clarify-
ing lens that Rebillard wants, and the book is certain to
stimulate conversation among everyone who studies
early Christianity, late antiquity, and (I hope) religious
pluralism in general. Along these lines I wonder about
the evidence and “Christianness.” Can we be sure about
the thinking of the so-called lapsed? Were they really
unaware of the incongruity of sacrifice with a Christian
commitment, or did they simply act as inhabitants of the
empire rather than as Christians? Maybe they really
saw the conflict and acted out of fear. How can we
know? And does this line of interpretation assume that
activating one’s Christian identity in this situation
would necessarily have meant refusing to sacrifice? If
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
1753
so, do we then once again accept Bishop Cyprian of
Carthage’s exclusivist definition of “Christian” and pre-
clude possible alternatives? Relativizing “Christian” as
one of multiple identities in a lateral arrangement may
still obscure the fact that Christians then and now con-
test what being a Christian means. And even a lateral
arrangement of identities could hardly be completely
flat: does not the choice of which identity to activate in
a situation, the decision as to whether an identity is sa-
lient, reflect something of a hierarchy of commitments
(or lack thereof) and thus the “intensity” of commit-
ment to any particular identity? Very few books say so
much of importance and raise so many interesting ques-
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tions in so few pages.
DAVID BRAKKE
The Ohio State University
NINO LURAGHI, editor. The Splendors and Miseries of
Ruling Alone: Encounters with Monarchy from Archaic
Greece to the Hellenistic Mediterranean. (Studies in An-
cient Monarchies, no. 1.) Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Ver-
lag, 2013. €49.00.
Autocracy in recent years has become a subject of much
interest, whether in the ancient Near East, medieval
Europe, or, as here, in the ancient Greek world, from
the Archaic to the end of the Hellenistic periods. In
many recent volumes on ancient kingship, one of the
essential questions has been about legitimacy: how is it
acquired and how is it lost? The question of legitimacy
is also one of the main themes of this current collection
of essays.
The centerpiece of the collection is undoubtedly
chapter 4, Hans-Joachim Gehrke’s “The Victorious
King: Reflections on the Hellenistic Monarchy.” Since
the essays are arranged in roughly chronological order,
Gehrke’s piece does not come first, but most of the
other essays refer to it and take their inspiration from
it. This chapter, originally published as “Der siegreiche
König: Überlegungen zur Hellenistischen Monarchie,”
(Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 64 [1982]: 247–277), has
lost neither its sparkle in translation, nor any of its bril-
liance and importance, and so deserves more thorough
elaboration.
Gehrke argues that Hellenistic monarchy is essen-
tially charismatic in the Weberian sense. The Hellenis-
tic diadochs, the successors to Alexander, provide ex-
amples of the type, who prove their right to rule through
success in warfare: “it is predominantly possession of
the necessary ability, which proves itself in action and
which justifies the confidence of the people” (p. 78). In
fact, the essential character of charismatic kingship is
the bond, not necessarily “legal” in the strict sense,
which is created between the ruler and his subjects. The
lack of success or weakness of a ruler, as Gehrke notes,
could have an immediate impact on the perceived le-
gitimacy of his rule. Succession, however, was essen-
tially problematic, especially the succession of a child-
king. In these cases, Gehrke shows it was possible to
lean on the success of one’s predecessors to bolster
DECEMBER 2014
1754 Reviews of Books
one’s own position (even to cover up the break in a dy-
nasty by a usurper). Gehrke’s essay is important for this
collection, but it also has broader interest and appli-
cation outside the Hellenistic world.
A number of other essays use Gehrke’s chapter as
their starting point, though disappointingly very few use
it as a tool to critique other periods or other instanti-
ations of kingship in the Greek world. As editor Nino
Luraghi makes clear in his opening chapter, sole rule
fundamentally lacked legitimacy among the Greeks.
This view is taken as axiomatic throughout the volume,
and it is never acknowledged that there might be other
possibilities. In particular, it is generally assumed in this
volume that “tyranny” is extra-constitutional or illegal,
even in the Archaic period, when constitutional forms
were rudimentary, and “legitimacy” achieved through
charisma had its own kind of legality, precisely as Geh-
rke describes. Nevertheless, Alcaeus of Mytilene is of-
ten cited as evidence of the abhorrence of “tyranny,”
whose target is the elected ruler of Mytilene, Pittacus.
The idea that the Greek cities ideologically rejected au-
tocracy at least needs to be critiqued, although some
essays in the volume (especially chapter 3, “To Die Like
a Tyrant,” Luraghi’s other contribution) could open the
way for such a discussion.
Indeed, other readings of Archaic autocracy, and Al-
caeus’s vitriol in particular, are possible. Although
Christian Mann argues in chapter 2, “The Victorious
Tyrant: Hieron of Syracuse in the Epinicia of Pindar
and Bacchylides,” that Hieron of Syracuse was trying to
legitimize and support extra-constitutional rule in char-
ismatic terms expressed through epinician poetry, one
could question whether the rulers of Sicily were really
extra-constitutional (Hieron’s brother and predecessor,
Gelon, was elected by an assembly of citizens on the
basis of his military brilliance), or whether they were
simply using strategies of legitimization that were com-
mon from other periods and other places. In fact, other
early Greek rulers, whether they were later called ty-
rants or kings, and whether elected or not, used the
same or similar strategies as the Hellenistic kings to as-
sert their preeminence, and thus their right to rule: mil-
itary achievement; victories at the pan-hellenic games;
and colonization. Indeed, Gehrke’s reading of Helle-
nistic kingship should lead us back to the principle that
Greek kingship always had roots in charismatic ruler-
ship. What has disguised this fact is the discourse of
tyranny, which Luraghi himself discusses very effec-
tively in chapter 3. In the classical period, he argues, the
autocrat—whose ideological position outside the law
could be matched by the lawlessness of the communi-
ty—was represented as a danger to society; the loss of
legitimacy is described by Greek authors in violent
terms. Though Luraghi himself is keen to point out that
this is discourse, not reality.
The emphasis in the volume, however, is on the Hel-
lenistic successors of Alexander, who for the most part
assumed the diadem and called themselves kings (the
Hasmoneans, engaging with Davidic traditions of king-
ship, called themselves High Priests), although they did
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
not define their rulership according to particular ter-
ritories or cities. The relationship with the territories
they ruled was one of constant negotiation. Just as
Mann had argued for a relationship between the praise
poets and the Sicilian rulers of the early fifth century to
present a picture of ideal kingship, so in the Hellenistic
period Matthias Haake argues in chapter 7, “Writing
down the King: The Communicative Function of Trea-
tises On Kingship in the Hellenistic Period,” that kings
and philosophers together presented an idealized pic-
ture of the “good king.” This representation was de-
signed to act as a counterweight to the discourse of tyr-
anny, which presented a sole ruler as a threat.
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The Spartan kings, however, had traditionally been
bound by institutional controls on their power. Early
charismatic kings such as Cleomenes I in the sixth cen-
tury B.C. and Agesilaus in the fourth had been able to
stretch the limits of these controls, but even Agesilaus
II felt bound to obey the ephors. D. Alexander Walthall
shows in chapter 4, “Becoming Kings: Spartan Basileia
in the Hellenistic Period,” how successive kings of
Sparta in the Hellenistic period managed to break down
the powers of the ephorate and the gerousia, the council
of elders, to become more like other Hellenistic mon-
archs. In particular, while Agesilaus II had flaunted his
simplicity, the Spartan kings of the Hellenistic period
used luxury as a marker of their power in the manner
of their contemporaries.
Similarly, in chapter 5 (“Agathocles and Hiero[n] II:
Two Sole Rulers in the Hellenistic Age and the Ques-
tion of Succession”) Haake demonstrates that the rul-
ers of Syracuse, although their rule was based within the
context of a specific city, also modelled themselves on
the successors of Alexander. Haake argues, however,
that their position was fundamentally unstable and the
transition of rule was even more difficult, since Syra-
cuse, “due to its ‘typical’ traditions and political self-
awareness” (p. 117), was unsuitable for sustaining a
monarch.
With the coming of Rome, when military victory was
no longer an option, the Sicilians and other kings across
the Hellenistic world had to find new ways of legitimiz-
ing their rule, as Ulrich Gotter discusses in his fasci-
nating chapter, “The Castrated King, or: The Everyday
Monstrosity of Late Hellenistic Kingship.” The kings of
Pergamum chose “prestige investments” in public
building works, while Antiochus I Theos of Com-
magene embedded his cult in every important sanctuary
in his kingdom. Mithridates VI of Pontus, however,
took a different route and ordered the execution of ev-
ery Roman or Italian citizen in Asia Minor, and so rep-
resented himself, according to Gotter, as a reincarna-
tion of Alexander.
In the final chapter, “Between Hellenistic Monarchy
and Jewish Theocracy: The Contested Legitimacy of
Hasmonean Rule,” Kai Trampedach shows how the
Hasmoneans, who broke away from Seleucid control
and remained, at least for a time, independent of
Rome, were also charismatic rulers. Yet their rule had
a rather different trajectory, since their point of refer-
DECEMBER 2014
 Europe: Ancient and Medieval
ence was the Hebrew Bible, not the Greek tradition. As
a result, their military victories needed to be couched
in terms that demonstrated that they were obeying, and
enacting, the will of God.
While some of the underlying assumptions of this vol-
ume need to be considered in more subtle terms—some
of the old and easy orthodoxies need revision—and
there are some topics that could be better developed
(the women, families, and courts of rulers, topics which
might suggest rulers did not rule completely alone, are
only briefly touched on, if at all), the volume itself pro-
duces a coherent argument for the importance of char-
ismatic rulership in the Greek world. Most of these es-
says were originally written in German, but translated
into English. Despite a disappointing number of typo-
graphical errors, they are a most welcome and impor-
tant addition to the Anglophone discussion of autoc-
racy and legitimacy.
LYNETTE MITCHELL
University of Exeter
JOSEPH E. SKINNER. The Invention of Greek Ethnography:
From Homer to Herodotus. (Greeks Overseas.) New
York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xi, 343. $85.00.
As his title is designed to intimate to those who know,
Joseph E. Skinner (University of Liverpool) is as much
interested in how modern historiography and ethnog-
raphy have constructed and inflected ancient Hellenic
ethnogenesis as he is in the process of ancient ethno-
genesis itself. “Invention” here works both ways, dia-
logically and dialectically speaking. There are very few
obvious omissions in Skinner’s 64-page bibliography,
but one noticeable one is Ian S. Moyer’s Egypt and the
Limits of Hellenism (2011), the first chapter of which is
based on his pioneering article, “Herodotus and an
Egyptian Mirage: The Genealogies of the Theban
Priests” (The Journal of Hellenic Studies 122 [2002]: 70–
90) . This not only shares much with Skinner’s book in
conceptual outlook and manner of approach, but also
makes an effort to see things (to borrow a phrase of
Clifford Geertz) “from the native’s point of view.” As
it is, Herodotus’s account of Egypt—and especially per-
haps 2.143, where Herodotus has fun with his prede-
cessor Hecataeus of Miletus’s encounter with Egyptian
priests—does not receive here quite the exposure it
surely merits.
Ever conceptually aware, Skinner warns readers to
beware the trap of expectations derived from our own
preconceptions. Those of us brought up (as I was at
Oxford in the late 1960s) on the great Felix Jacoby must
thus rid ourselves of the idea that Herodotus, even if he
may still be credited with inventing historiography in
some sense, was also the inventor of ethnography in any
sense, ancient or modern. That is one of Skinner’s bug-
bears. Through making full and skillful use of the sur-
viving vases, coins, and other archaeological data, to-
gether with the few relevant extant texts, he is amply
able to show that versions of Greek identity—not al-
ways mutually compatible—were being formulated and
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
1755
reformulated well before Herodotus’s pioneering and
groundbreaking account of the Greco-Persian wars
brought narrative consistency and intellectual cogency
to the multiple tales of “great and wondrous deeds” ac-
complished by both Greeks and non-Greeks.
His other main aversion seems to be to polarity (as
an intellectual construct): the modern scholarly view
that Greeks habitually defined themselves as such in
opposition to barbarians (non-Greeks—or everyone
else apart from themselves), whom they perceived and
represented as “other,” not just different from but polar
opposites of themselves in all culturally constitutive re-
spects. Since he includes my own work, for instance The
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Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others (1993, 2nd ed.,
2002), under this rather broad umbrella, I ought to
point out in my defense first that the German transla-
tion of the first edition includes a rather lengthy epi-
logue rebutting just this sort of charge and, second, that
as a matter of fact polarity was, along with analogy, a
characteristically ancient Greek (not just Athenian or
athenocentric) mode of thought and above all argu-
ment (G. E. R. Lloyd’s brilliant Polarity and Analogy:
Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought
[1966] provides the demonstration).
The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to
Herodotus, though densely argued and therefore hard
to summarize, is very well written. After a first theo-
retical and methodological chapter, the second chapter
considers how the Greek imaginaire was multifariously
populated, leaping backward and forward between var-
iously imaginary or imagined Phaeacians, Cyclopes,
and Egyptians, among several other groups. Chapter 3
examines the “systems of knowledge and understand-
ing” (p. 15) put in place to frame interactions between
Greeks and non-Greeks. Chapter 4 aims to show how
the intellectual concerns of a Hecataeus or Herodotus
were firmly embedded in “on the ground” (p. 148) dis-
courses of identity and difference. The book’s overall
conclusion, as expressed in the last chapter, is that dis-
courses of identity and difference were part of a wider
process—wider, that is, than Greek cultural identity-
bounding—involving groups and individuals through-
out the Mediterranean “positioning” themselves over
time vis-à-vis, on the one hand, narratives of the past,
and, on the other, other peoples. Culture and identity
are for Skinner intrinsically hybrid phenomena, and the
enticing narrative he proposes is one that can be traced
back to “long before the supposed apotheosis of the
barbarian” (p. 256). “Apotheosis” may be stretching the
point, but we know what is meant.
PAUL CARTLEDGE
Clare College, University of Cambridge
DAVID A. TEEGARDEN. Death to Tyrants! Ancient Greek
Democracy and the Struggle against Tyranny. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv, 261.
$45.00.
David A. Teegarden has offered an exasperating book.
He is absolutely correct that no previous study has pro-
DECEMBER 2014