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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book was specially comissioned for the UK's Open University level three degree course of the same name (AA309). The course and the book takes the view that the relationship between Identity, Power and Status in the Roman Empire is all important in forming an understanding of the Roman culture. Indeed exactly what was meant to be 'roman' is central to the course and the book. By trying to understand how the people of the Roman Empire saw themselves and others, we can get closer to the ordinary 'roman'. In fact the course suggests that throughout the Roman Empire period, most peoples of the conquered nations did indeed see themselves as 'roman' but also as celts, Greeks and Italians etc., different and similar to 'Romans in Rome' at the same time. Being 'roman' meant different things to different people at different times - there was not an uniform view, in fact 'roman' culture was a mass of varying forces and tensions pulling people in different directions at the same time. The best example of this is Philpappos who lived in Athens at the end of the 1st Century AD. He was a Greek and Roman citizen, a Roman Consul and Greek Archon and the dispossed ruler of a small kindom in Asia. He was therefore simultaneously: Greek, Roman and native Commagenian - all of these tensions were represented in his funeral monument. His status, power and idenity a complex package of three cultures intermixing at the same time. The book explores these tensions across many areas: Italy v. Rome, the Countryside v. City, Rome v. The Provinces and looks at the Roman economy, urbanization, religion and elite culture. The Romans were obsessed with identity and status and took every opportunity to express it on inscriptions, funerary monuments and artworld. Status was a complex affair and legal, economic and family status intermixed. Wealth did not mean political power, unless you were a free citizen of Rome and even that was hard to detect in everyday life were it was possible for a slave to go unnoticed in the forums of the Rome cities as there was no 'uniform' for slaves. The essays explore these themes. All of the contributors hold Phd's and work for the OU and other insitutions in the UK and the USA. The level of writing is high, appropriate to a third/honours year of a degree and not for beginners. Pictures and 'evidence' is by black & white photographes and well sourced, suitable for study. The OU's approach to cultural history is one of evidence and the interpretation of it (such as it is for anicent history) allowing you to challenge Secondary Sources, through these essays. They are here to be explored and debated as well as learnt from. One of the best complusory books I have had for a course.
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