(R.) Hingley Globalizing Roman Culture. Unity, Diversity and Empire. Pp. xiv + 208, ills, maps. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Paper, £16.99 (Cased, £50). ISBN: 0-415-35176-6 (0-415-35175-8 hbk).

Abstract

occupied modern scholarship on the Second Sophistic (identity, competition, elitism, the role of paideia, Greeks and Romans, past and present, power, gender). Chapters 3 and 5 o ¶er the freshest and most original pieces of interpretation in the book. Chapter 3 ('The Politics of Language and Style') surveys Atticism through its advocates (lexica), its satirists (Lucian) and its opponents (Galen, Epictetus) (pp. 43-9; cf. S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire [Oxford, 1996], pp. 43-64). Its strength lies in the sociological interpretation that it o ¶ers for the elusiveness of the standards that assessed canonical versus anomalous (or original) linguistic usage, thus suggesting a dynamic framework for examining the place of Atticism in the power struggles of the era (pp. 52-6). Chapter 5 ('The Second Sophistic and Imperial Greek Literature'), with which the book concludes, investigates 'the points of intersection between … sophistic literature and the wider literary culture of Roman Greece' (p. 74). Biography, autobiography and the novel are explored here. The intersection in question is found to be primarily concentrated on the attention to 'the self', a phenomenon which W. intrinsically links with the issues of identity and performance that he explores in previous chapters (especially Chapter 2). Insightfully, he establishes that this inward focus is not in fact incompatible with the epideictic culture of the era, thus showing a new direction to which study of this cultural trend of the second century a.d. can move (p. 85). The clear and stimulating content of the book is matched by its presentation: all Greek is transliterated, the historical and cultural background is deftly illuminated by the analysis, and all the key points are e ¶ectively consolidated. Particularly impressive is its judicious and attractive use of theory (literary, cultural and sociological), together with its cultural sensitivity with regard to scholarly interpretations of the Second Sophistic (see pp. 6-10, 49-51).