Being Greek under Rome Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire

These especially commissioned essays open up a fascinating and novel perspective on a crucial era of Western culture. In the second century CE the Roman empire dominated the Mediterranean, but Greek culture maintained its huge prestige. At the same time, Christianity and Judaism were vying for followers against the lures of such an elite cultural life. This book looks at how writers in Greek from all areas of Empire society responded to their political position, to intellectual authority, to religious and social pressures.

These especially commissioned essays open up a fascinating perspective on a crucial era of western culture. In the second century CE the Roman empire dominated the Mediterranean, but Greek culture maintained its huge prestige. At the same time, Christianity and Judaism were vying for followers against the lures of such an elite cultural life. This book looks at how writers in Greek from all areas of Empire society respond to their political position, to intellectual authority, to religions and social pressures. It explores the interesting cultural clashes from which Christianity emerged to dominate the Empire. It presents a series of brilliant insights into how the culture of Empire functions and offers a fascinating and alternative understanding of the long history of imperialism and cultural conflict.

List of contributors; Introduction: setting an agenda - 'everything is Greece to the wise' Simon Goldhill; Part I. Subjected to Empire: 1. From Megalopolis to Cosmopolis: Polybius, or there and back again John Henderson; 2. Mutilated messengers: body language in Josephus Maud Gleason; 3. Roman questions, Greek answers: Plutarch and the construction of identity Rebecca Preston; Part II. Intellectuals on the Margins: 4. Describing self in the language of the other: Pseudo (?) Lucian at the temple of Hierapolis Jas Elsner; 5. The erotic eye: visual stimulation and cultural conflict Simon Goldhill; 6. Visions and revisions of Homer Froma I. Zeitlin; Part III. Topography and the Performance of Culture: 7. 'Greece is the world': exile and identity in the Second Sophistic Tim Whitmarsh; 8. Local heroes: athletics, festivals, and elite self-fashioning in the Roman East Onno van Nijf; 9. The Rabbi in Aphrodite's bath: Palestinian society and Jewish identity in the High Roman Empire Seth Schwartz; List of works cited; Index of major passages discussed; General index.

Simon Goldhill explores the cultural conflicts of the second-century CE Roman Empire, through the perspective of Greek writings. The specially commissioned essays investigate the intellectual and social tensions in the era which gave rise to Christianity.