Roman Ionia: Constructions of Cultural Identity in Western Asia Minor

Martin Hallmannsecker, Roman Ionia: Constructions of Cultural Identity in Western Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). 9781009150187, 9781009158510.

Reviewed by Joshua P. Nudell, Truman State University, jpnudell@gmail.com.

Archaic Ionia has traditionally received the bulk of attention in Anglophone scholarship when compared to the region’s later history. This earlier period, it is often supposed, was when the cities of Ionia were free bastions of Greek culture where literature and philosophy flourished before being eclipsed by their larger neighbors. Homer hailed from the region, even if ancient tradition did not agree on which polis he should have called home. And so it seems only natural that a region with such importance to the formation of Greek identity located largely on the western coast of Anatolia should itself warrant investigation into its origins. As such, as Martin Hallmannsecker points out in Roman Ionia: Constructions of Cultural Memory in Western Asia Minor, scholars often resort to mining Hellenistic and Roman sources for answers about the earlier era while leaving the later context behind as unwanted gangue. In Hallmannsecker’s view, that refuse should not be so quickly discarded, because it represents a valuable lode of material that, properly smelted, reveals the complexities of provincial identity in Roman Asia Minor. Although (and perhaps because) “Ionia” was not an administrative unit in the Roman world, Hallmannsecker argues that “Ionian” remained a potent category of identity, distinct from both “Greeks” in general and the other Greeks of Asia.

Hallmannsecker sets up his analysis in the introduction. Here he explains that Roman Ionia is, at its core, an evaluation of six themes—mental geographies, the Ionian koinon, cult and myth, naming and dating customs, dialect, and the intersection of this identity outside of Ionia itself—that together made up a positive “discursive construction of Ionianness in the Roman period” (p. 11). Each thematic chapter takes a synchronic approach that allows him to capture both the malleability of these identities and their persistence.

As one might expect in a dissertation-turned-monograph, this introduction also dedicates a portion of its space to situating the book within the scholarly literature. Hallmannsecker engages with both identities as a broad concept (pp. 6–8) and ethnic and cultural identities more specifically (pp. 8–11), explaining that what he sees as an “impasse” in constructivist approaches to ethnic identity led him to frame the study as a constructivist approach to cultural identities, of which a narrowly conceived ethnic identity might be one variable (p. 10). Hallmannsecker also offers a cogent explanation for using inscriptions, coins, and, as best as possible, Ionian literature as a source base: these allow him to reconstruct an “emic” definition of Ionianness. However, these discussions are not comprehensive. Hallmannsecker cites representative scholarship that explains where his study sits in the constellation of existing research without getting drawn so deeply into that discourse that it detracts from the one that sits at the heart of his project.

Hallmannsecker then guides the reader through six detailed body chapters that are striking in their progression, demonstrating in compelling fashion the existence of a coherent Ionian identity in the Roman world by leading the reader from the most specific expressions of “being Ionian” to the most diffuse.

The first chapter, “Mental Geographies,” examines the tension inherent in examining a coherent “Ionian” identity given the political fragmentation which inhibited the composition of a dedicated regional history in antiquity. Hallmannsecker thus opens the chapter with the observation that Artemidorus of Ephesus is the closest we have to an “internal” perspective from written sources of this period (p. 22), but that Strabo’s reliance on Artemidorus results in his “Ephesocentrism” (p. 31). Hallmannsecker follows the model established by Peter Thonemann in The Maeander Valley to circumvent these issues,¹ identifying “Ionian” as a cultural identity stemming from the “lived space” of its inhabitants (p. 25–28) rather than from specific geographical boundaries. Hallmannsecker then substantiates this definition by evaluating how “Ionianness” coincided with other markers of identity in both honorific inscriptions and civic titulature. For instance, he notes that Ionian poleis appear to largely respect the claims of other Ionian poleis, which leads to the amusing note that Nysa and Magnesia issued coins claiming to be, respectively, the sixth and seventh cities of Ionia (p. 55). Finally, Hallmannsecker closes the chapter with one of his recurring observations: that as the ties of an individual to the polis declined in significance, “supra-civic” institutions grew in importance (p. 59).

The second chapter, “The Ionian Koinon,” transitions to a discussion of one such supra-civic institution. Here, Hallmannsecker demonstrates that the Ionian koinon was a living institution in the Roman period. In particular, he argues that the desirability of koinon offices for civic elite (p. 78) and the addition of new offices (p. 79) both suggest that this was not merely a parochial relic of an earlier age. He then underscores this point by concluding the chapter with a comparison to Hadrian’s Panhellenion. Miletus is the only Ionian polis with secure evidence for participation in the latter organization, so Hallmannsecker suggests that most Ionians regarded their local koinon as more prestigious (p. 80–81). Absence of evidence does not itself conclusively prove that the Ionians paid little attention to the Panhellenion, but it offers compelling evidence that the identities created through these networks were not easily transferable when juxtaposed against the positive evidence for activity at the Panionion.

In chapter three, “Cults and Myths,” Hallmannsecker then transitions to a survey of Ionian cults and, of course, the Ionian migration. Here, he again critiques the tradition of a “historically positivist perspective” that tries to identify a true kernel of Ionian migration behind the layers of mythology (p. 114), and instead uses the foundation myths to show how they reinforced contemporary religious institutions and vice versa. 

Chapters four, “Times and Names,” and five, “The Ionian Dialect,” then expand into broader forms of identity formation. Once again, the chapter titles do not mislead. The first addresses calendrical systems and onomastics while the second interrogates inscriptions for the continuation of a distinct Ionian dialect. In both cases, Hallmannsecker offers compelling evidence that these cultural remnants continued to exist as recognizable markers of identity, albeit being too uncommon to be dominant elements in its formation. Rather, at this point, Hallmannsecker is exploring the substructures of Ionian identity, aptly demonstrating that the performed aspects of Ionian identity rested on a deep foundation of distinctive cultural markers.

Finally, in chapter six, “Ionianness Outside Ionia,” Hallmannsecker expands his argument that “Ionianness” was valued by exploring both how poleis outside of Ionia situated themselves relative to the koinon and how the Ionians themselves might have responded to such claims. He retains his interest in the contemporary world of these claims: kinship diplomacy in the ancient world renders the historicity of the claims moot, and instead, Hallmannsecker argues that the promulgation of these lineages indicates the value of “being” Ionian, while the “original” Ionians were largely happy to support claims that de facto reinforced their own prominence. However, he also points out that every claim to “Ionianness” was itself contingent on individual circumstances. Even within Ionia proper, smaller poleis like Priene, Samos, and Teos felt compelled to assert their Ionianness on coinage, while the larger provincial metropoleis like Ephesus and Smyrna did not (p. 223, but cf. p. 177 with regard to names). In other words, the less status an individual polis had, the more its citizens appealed to “Ionia” for clout.

Each chapter in Roman Ionia presupposes Hallmannsecker’s thesis that there was a coherent Ionian identity, but his synchronic approach sometimes leads him to accept the existence of discourses and proceed to his analysis without accounting for their genesis. For instance, a section of the introduction defends his claim that “Ionianness” was a “prestigious asset which continued to be harnessed for identity constructions in the Roman period” (p. 14) against the more broadly assumed stereotypes about Ionian decadence and effeminacy (pp. 14–17). Hallmannsecker offers two worthwhile observations: the persistence of these negative stereotypes both helped perpetuate “a notion of Ionianness” in their own right and “likely…spurred the Ionians to further emphasise the positive aspects of their Ionianness” (p. 17). The persistence of these negative stereotypes in the Roman period make this an important acknowledgement, but Hallmannsecker also treats the stereotypes themselves as carrying weight already in the time of Herodotus, when there is a more complicated story behind their development that likely makes them as Roman as the positive characteristics that Hallmannsecker examines here.² In this case, Hallmannsecker might describe these stereotypes as etic and literary definitions of Ionianness, which place them largely outside the scope of this project, but the brevity of the discussion struck this reviewer as a missed opportunity to further situate the positive identity in a larger constellation of Greek identities and prejudices under Rome. However, other limitations of this synchronic approach are more muted elsewhere in the book, because Hallmannsecker focuses on the continuation and manipulation of an existing identity in the Roman world rather than its evolution.

Roman Ionia is a book that reflects the complexities of identity in more ways than one. Even among the best-documented subjects, identity is multifaceted and contingent, with every aspect of a person’s identity coexisting alongside other variables. And ancient Ionia is not the best-documented subject, which leaves Hallmannsecker to carefully piece together expressions of elite culture in order to recreate what he argues is a living identity within the Roman world. And he reconstructs the bounds of this identity with aplomb, tracing its contours across the stones of Ionia, though the nature of the evidence also often leaves him offering speculative reconstructions for what it might have meant to Ionians outside of this world of elite politics. This is a function of the extant sources, of course, but it also underscores that this is a sophisticated piece of scholarship that is primarily going to be of interest to specialists working on either Greeks in the Roman World or ancient identities rather than one that is likely to find a broader audience. But those scholars will find themselves richly rewarded for picking up the volume.

Table of Contents

Introduction (1–21)
1. Mental Geographies (22–59)
2. The Ionian Koinon (60–83)
3. Cults and Myths (84–138)
4. Times and Names (139–79)
5. The Ionian Dialect (180–99)
6. Ionianness outside Ionia (200–230)
Concluding Remarks (231–39)

Notes

1. Peter Thonemann, The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

2. See for instance, Robert J. Gorman and Vanessa B. Gorman, Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2014).