In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic WorldElizabeth A. MeyerKent J. Rigsby. Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996. xvii 1 672 pp., 9 pls. (Hellenistic Culture and Society, 22)What was asylia, and what did the numerous grants of it signify? Kent Rigsby has tackled this 300-year-old question by compiling the first-ever collection of asylia decrees and coin legends, (...) thereby performing an immense service for those interested in Hellenistic diplomacy and religion, and putting the study of asylia on an entirely new footing.Asylia is “the declared inviolability of places” (19), not persons, granted by “Panhellenic recognition” (21), and embodying “first and foremost a religious gesture, increasing the honor of the god” (14). The body of material about asylia begins in the 260s B.C. and ends in A.D. 22–23, when the Romans reviewed claims to asylia (Tac. 3.60–63, 4.14); references to asylia thereafter are not to new grants, but to grants made before A.D. 23 (3, 29, 35). This declared inviolability of places includes both temples and cities, for “the inscriptions... by their language, geography, and chronology imply that asylia of temple and [End Page 460] city was the same” (20). As preface to the corpus there is a brief introduction (1–29), which surveys existing explanations of asylia, and an even briefer chapter called “The Documents” (30–40), which discusses terminology and the restrictions on the corpus itself. Finally, there is another brief chapter that looks at the mythical or quasi-historical examples of asylia at Elis, Delphi, Plataea, and Delos (41–53).In the corpus of 230 epigraphic entries that follows, the phenomenon of asylia in each area or city is discussed in its own chapter or section, parallel or supporting material thoughtfully examined, and the coin evidence scrutinized. This is not a book for beginners, as its policy of selective translation (40) and its lack of maps demonstrate. (All who know where Rhaucus and Baetocaece are situated, raise your hands!) The erudition is enormous, the scholarship meticulous. Even the fearsome editors of the Bulletin Epigraphique quailed at reporting all of Rigsby’s corrections and plausible conjectures and meekly recorded only five footnote-sized adjustments of their own. (Two of these, it should be noted, were based on information published too late to have come to Rigsby’s attention anyway; see REG 110 [1997] 484–85.) His grasp of detail and relentless good judgment must and will disarm all but the most aggressively knowledgeable critic with strong opinions on small matters. Louis Robert I am not.The question that seems to me worth asking, however, is: What can be made of this material? Rigsby, although he decided that “a corpus of the evidence would be of more use to scholars than another essay of historical interpretation” (xiii), does not neglect the necessary act of evaluating the significance of asylia. I do, however, question some of his conclusions, while emphasizing strongly that only his meticulous collection and study of the inscriptions make possible my qualified skepticism and the further questions I would like to see asked of this material.The introduction (1–29) critiques previous explanations of asylia from Spanheim (1706) to Pritchett (1991) and offers Rigsby’s own (13–19, 22–29). As he says, declarations of inviolability can hardly have been attempts to enact the proper (and traditional) immunity of “sacred or neutral places” when popular religious scruple was no longer upholding it: there seems little likelihood that what was not instinctively felt would be voluntarily observed in obedience to a mere declaration (15). Nor were grants of asylia promises of collective defense (against, e.g., pirates), for no such collective defense was ever mounted, those granting asylia were often in no position to offer useful assistance, and no oath—“the sine qua non of a serious military intent” (22–23)—secured compliance (16).So far, so good. But what function, then, did grants of asylia serve? Rigsby suggests (22) that a declaration of asylia “never brought a recipient anything but honor, and that for most of its history no more than honor... (shrink)

‘Death is bad for those who die, but good for the undertakers and the grave-diggers’. And for archaeologists and for epigraphers as well, even though epitaphs, and especially simple or formulaic ones, are probably the most understudied and unloved area of ancient epigraphy. Yet the mere fact of an inscribed epitaph indicates deliberate and intentionally enduring commemoration, and therefore embodies a social attitude; epitaphs thus constitute a matter of historical importance that can be studied for the very reason that so (...) many—in Athens over 10,000—survive. Most Athenian epitaphs which have been found have been dated, and for approximately two-thirds of them a general find-spot has been recorded. Temporal and spatial variations within the distribution of Athenian epitaphs prompt not only the question of why aspects of this habit should change over time, but why the habit of epitaphs should exist at all; the answer suggested here links the function and distribution of Athenian epitaphs to changing concepts of Athenian citizenship. For epitaphs function as more than testimonials to grief: they represent what survivors saw as defining the deceased, and the significantly greater number of epitaphs in fourth-century Athens derives from Athenians' emphatic definition of themselves as citizens at that time. Finally, the Athenians's use of tombstones has no parallel in the classical Greek world, for the Athenians' developing perceptions of their own city and of their own special relationship, as citizens, to it, were also unparalleled. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.1 (2002) 136-140 [Access article in PDF] P. M. Petsas, M. B. Hatzopoulos, Lucrèce Gounaropoulou, and P. Paschidis, eds. Inscriptions du sanctuaire de la Mère des Dieux autochtone de Leukopétra (Macédoine). Meletemata 28. Athens: Kentron Ellenikes kai romaikes archaiotetos ethnikon idryma erevnon, 2000. 365 pp. Cloth, price not stated. The Macedonian sanctuary of the Autochthonous Mother of the Gods at Leukopetra, near Beroia, was discovered (...) by earth-moving equipment and emergency excavation in 1965, when a segment of the new national highway was being built. Although the site itself has never been fully excavated, many architectural pieces, four altars, three offering tables, stelai, and plaques were rescued and taken to the Beroia Museum. The original excavator, Photias Petsas, helped recently by a younger generation of accomplished epigraphists, has labored over the years and through many vicissitudes to publish these finds. For this was not [End Page 136] merely a sanctuary, not merely a small marble temple, but a sanctuary and temple covered with inscriptions, most of them (161 of 170 complete enough to categorize) recording the cession or consecration of slaves or children to the service of the goddess. Many of the inscriptions (127 of 194) are virtually complete and dated by local and imperial era, the earliest from A.D. 141-42 (?), the latest from A.D. 313.This handsomely produced and meticulously edited volume therefore publishes a corpus of material that contributes to a number of important topics: to the debate over the legal and actual status of the persons ceded to gods here and elsewhere; to the administration and health of a small sanctuary in the territory of a larger city in Roman Macedonia; and to the religious beliefs that may have undergirded all of the above. It also provides evidence of the erratic but apparent diffusion of Roman legal status, legal concepts, and legal practices even in the backcountry of a larger city, and thereby also sheds interesting light on what happens before and after the Constitutio Antoniniana in one specific place. All this should interest historians of Greece under the Empire, or students of the phenomenon of "Romanization," or historians of Greece keen to track continuity and change in the practices of sanctuaries and slaves.The volume itself is a pleasure to use. The lengthy introduction covers the mythical and actual history of the area (20-23); the geographical and social backgrounds of the dedicators (23-28); the goddess, her multiple names, and her financial dealings (28-33); the legal status of the consecrated (33-60, with a clear summary of a hundred-year-old controversy); onomastics (61-63); and language (63-73)--the Lefkopetra inscriptions constitute a "unique dossier" (63) for how Greek was spoken for centuries during the High Empire. How each lemma is to be laid out is then discussed (74), and the architectural and other pieces described (75-78); for the last, the drawings (figs. 37-51) are indispensable. All that is missing is a discussion of letter forms, itself noted as reserved for further study by J. Touratsoglou (75).The 194 inscriptions (plus five incerta) are clearly presented, restored when need be, translated, and discussed; all but three (nos. 79, 191, and 193) have pictures as well. Because the inscriptions themselves are also very (if not uniformly) formulaic, their readings seem relatively straightforward to me and I can make no suggestions for corrections in what seem to me to be well-read and well-restored texts except to suggest that numbers 136 and 160 belong to the same monument--a suggestion in which I have been anticipated by Marijana Ricl, who was kind enough to send me an article (forthcoming in Tyche 16, 2001) in which she discusses these inscriptions and suggests different supplements or explanations in only thirteen other cases (nos. 5, 26, 45, 46, 51, 53, 58, 63, 78, 90, 93, 115, and 150). In short, these inscriptions have been published by people who know what they are doing, and with all the proper aids and... (shrink)