SYRIAN IDENTITY IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD (GREEK CULTURE IN THE ROMAN WORLD) by Andrade, Nathanael J.

ISBN: "9781108456531

Cambridge University Press,  26 April 2018

Paperback 442 pages

By engaging with recent developments in the study of empires, this book examines how inhabitants of Roman imperial Syria reinvented expressions and experiences of Greek, Roman and Syrian identification. It demonstrates how the organization of Greek communities and a peer polity network extending citizenship to ethnic Syrians generated new semiotic frameworks for the performance of Greekness and Syrianness. Within these, Syria's inhabitants reoriented and interwove idioms of diverse cultural origins, including those from the Near East, to express Greek, Roman and Syrian identifications in innovative and complex ways. While exploring a vast array of written and material sources, the book thus posits that Greekness and Syrianness were constantly shifting and transforming categories, and it critiques many assumptions that govern how scholars of antiquity often conceive of Roman imperial Greek identity, ethnicity and culture in the Roman Near East, and processes of 'hybridity' or similar concepts.

Editorial Reviews

Review
"... [this] book is of great importance in both its method and its content for the study of Roman Syria and the surrounding region from the Seleucid period through the early Roman Empire. Scholars will benefit a great deal from Andrade's impressive contribution to, and reshaping of, these ongoing discussions."
Christine Shepardson, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Book Description
This book proposes a new means of identifying how Greek and Syrian identities were expressed in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.

About the Author
Nathanael J. Andrade is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Oregon.