Roman Phrygia Culture and Society

The bleak steppe and rolling highlands of inner Anatolia were one of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of the Roman empire. Still today, for most historians of the Roman world, ancient Phrygia largely remains terra incognita. Yet thanks to a startling abundance of Greek and Latin inscriptions on stone, the cultural history of the villages and small towns of Roman Phrygia is known to us in vivid and unexpected detail. Few parts of the Mediterranean world offer so rich a body of evidence for rural society in the Roman Imperial and late antique periods, and for the flourishing of ancient Christianity within this landscape. The eleven essays in this book offer new perspectives on the remarkable culture, lifestyles, art and institutions of the Anatolian uplands in antiquity.

1. Phrygia: an anarchist history, 950 BC–AD 100 Peter Thonemann; 2. In the Phrygian mode: a region seen from without Barbara Levick; 3. The personal onomastics of Roman Phrygia Claude Brixhe; 4. Grave monuments and local identities in Roman Phrygia Ute Kelp; 5. Phrygians in relief: trends in self-representation Jane Masséglia; 6. Households and families in Roman Phrygia Peter Thonemann; 7. Law in Roman Phrygia: rules and jurisdictions Georgy Kantor; 8. An epigraphic probe into the origins of Montanism Stephen Mitchell; 9. The 'Crypto-Christian' inscriptions of Phrygia Edouard Chiricat; 10. Phrygian marble and stonemasonry as markers of regional distinctiveness in late antiquity Philipp Niewöhner; 11. The history of an idea: tracing the origins of the MAMA project Charlotte Roueché.

Peter Thonemann is Forrest-Derow Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History, Wadham College, Oxford. He is the author of The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium (2011), the winner of the Anglo-Hellenic League's prestigious Runciman Prize 2012 and co-author (with Simon Price) of The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (2010). His most recent book is an edited collection of essays on Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations and the State (2013).