The Fabric of Hellenism: Hellenic Culture and Civic Identity in the Imperial Greek World

by Ewen Bowie (Editor), Calum Maciver (Editor)

Overview

This authoritative series of essays brings together a group of eminent scholars engaged with Imperial Greece in the first work of its kind to address the art-history, archaeology, numismatics and prose literature of Imperial Greek cities in one volume, covering the period from pre-Imperial Hellenistic developments to the late third century CE.

The book provides a wide coverage and is organised into thematic sections including: the overall context of Greek cities in the Roman Empire and their Hellenistic roots; festival culture; prominent figures who shaped Hellenic identity; some key prose-writers of the period; Hellenism in action in the Roman Empire; and further perspectives on Hellenic culture outside the learned mainstreams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399552455
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2026
Series:	Edinburgh Leventis Studies
Pages:	712
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Ewen Bowie was Leventis Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh in 2023, and E. P. Warren Praelector in Classics, Corpus Christi College, Oxford from 1965 to 2007.

Calum Maciver is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh

Table of Contents

Preface
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Abbreviations

Part I: Introduction

1. Introduction.
Ewen Bowie


Part II: The Hellenistic Prequel

2. Hellenistic Civic Identities: Evolving Intersections of Classical Athens, Paideia, and Democracy
Ben Gray

3. Acraephia and its Material Past in the Ptoia of the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial Period
Paraskevi Martzavou


Part III: Ephebes and Festivals

4. Religious Visibility According to Ancestral Custom: Greek Festive Traditions, Poetic, Ritual and Other
Athena Kavoulaki

5. Gymnasia, Ephebates, and Hellenic Cultural Identity in Imperial Achaea
Matthew Evans

6. Celebrating Pythian Games: Hellenism and Local Identity in Civic Festivals of Asia Minor
Zahra Newby


Part IV: The Claudii Attici

7. Claudius Atticus, Father of Herodes, and the Spartan Agōgē: New Evidence
Tony Spawforth

8. Bodies, Landscape, and Entanglement: Reading Herodes Atticus’ Marathonian Monuments through IG ii² 3606
Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis


Part V: The Perspectives of Philosophers, Sophists and Litterateurs

9. Eternal City? Delphi, Hellenism, and the Civic in Plutarch
Judith Mossman

10. Defining Hellenism: the Ideal Greek City According to Dio and Plutarch
Thomas Schmidt

11. The Pride of Being Hellenic in Prusa ad Olympum and Rhodes.
Anne Gangloff

12. The Fabric of Hellenic Civic Life in Alexandria According to Strabo, Dio of Prusa and Plutarch
Lucia Athanassaki

13. Questioning Greek Civic Identity at the Imperial Symposium: Plutarch and Athenaeus
Katerina Oikonomopoulou

14. Aelius Aristides on Smyrna and Rhodes
Michael Trapp

15. Imperial Cyzicus: Strabo, Tryphaena, Aristides
Janet Downie

16. Festival Athletics in the Imagines of the Elder Philostratus
Jaś Elsner and Michael Squire

17. Hellenic Culture and Identity in the Epistles and Other ‘Minor’ works of the Philostratean Corpus
Owen Hodkinson

18. Attic Landscapes Re-imagined: Alciphron’s Letters and the City-praise Tradition.
Jason König


Part VI :Hellenic Traditions in Action

19. The Tomb and Library of Celsus at Ephesus: Converting Roman Power into Local Privilege
R. R. R. Smith

20. Communicating by Coinage: Money Talks
Ewen Bowie


Part VII: Greek Novels

21. Aphrodisias, Latin Poetry, and the Early Greek Novels: The Case of the Ninus and Chione Romances
Daniel Jolowicz

22. The Elite, the Dēmos, and the Balance of Power in the Cities of the Ancient Greek Novels (ca. first-third centuries AD)
Sophie Lalanne


Part VIII: Outside the Ivory Towers

23. Seriously pederastic: The politics of pederasty in Roman Greece.
Tim Whitmarsh

24. The Fabric of Hellenism and Popular Culture in the Imperial Greek City: Materiality and Resistance
Lucy Grig

25. Christian Greek Literature in the Tradition of Hellenic Paideia in the Mid-third Century
Stephen Mitchell

26. Thinking about the Future with Greek Cities
Estelle Strazdins

Bibliography
Index