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Roman Palmyra: Identity, Community, and State Formation

2014; Penn State University Press; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.2.1.0065

2166-3556

Bettina Fischer‐Genz,

Classical Antiquity Studies

This book, which originated as a PhD dissertation written at the University of Maryland, sets out to present a social and political history of Palmyra during the first three centuries CE in view of its unique setting as an oasis city-state on the desert frontier between Rome and Parthia. While influential works such as Millar’s The Roman Near East, 31 B.C.–A.D. 337 (1993) or Teixidor’s Un port romain du désert: Palmyre et son commerce d’Auguste à Caracalla (1984) have highlighted the political and economic development of this city, Smith’s focus on the process of sedentarization and the relationship between sedentary and pastoral communities to illuminate the evolution of Palmyrene “identity” is noteworthy.When looking at the structure of the book, it quickly becomes apparent that the first chapter, “Framing the Narrative,” is somewhat ambivalent, containing simple introductory parts such as the setting, a review of the available sources as well as a summary of Palmyrene history and urban development, but also introducing the theoretical concepts of the “construction of Palmyrene identity” (pp. 11–13) and “state formation at Roman Palmyra” (pp. 13–16). The following chapters (2–6) are more uniformly structured with an introduction and conclusion, each dealing with the problems of “Tribes and Tribalism,” “The Growth of Community,” “Mapping Social Identities,” “The Civic Institutions of Palmyra,” and “The Palmyrene Diaspora.” The two concluding chapters narrate “The Palmyrene Empire: A Crisis of Identity” and “Retrospect and Broader Implications” without any of the subdivisions of the chapters above. A rather extensive section at the end contains notes, references to ancient works, bibliography, and an index. The author starts out every chapter with a discussion of current research and definitions of the concepts approached, which should prove highly useful to students and novices in Palmyrene history and form a good backdrop for the following discussion of the actual archaeological and epigraphic sources used in the study.Smith’s starting point in the discussion of identities juxtaposes two different perspectives: one of Palmyra’s urban and social development being shaped by the respective political agendas of Rome and Parthia, and one of Palmyra as the center of its own political network sharing social, cultural, and economic relations with other centers and communities. Both are certainly valid and complementary approaches to the question of individual and communal identity, which Smith very ably situates in the academic discourse on ethnicity and the symbolic contexts that apply to the manifestations of identity and community, especially in the generation of boundaries that maintain distinctiveness and reflect power relationships between individuals and groups. He then summarizes the theoretical framework of the role of tribalism and the Greek polis in different models of state formation processes in order to provide a background for his discussion of tribalism in the Palmyrene territory in chapter 2. After reviewing the scarce epigraphic sources on this subject, the author paints a picture, not of dichotomy between settled and nomadic populations, but of mutual cooperation between the inhabitants of the city, the villages of the hinterland, and the pastoralists of the countryside supporting the mixed economy of Palmyra. A slow migration of people with tribal affiliations to the oasis seems to have been responsible for the gradual expansion of the settlement in the first century BCE. His analysis of tribal elements in the genealogical inscriptions is quite convincing, and in comparing these findings with sources such as the Safaitic texts in the countryside he concludes that the economic interdependence of pastoralist and semi-pastoralist groups with the traders in the urban center was supported by a social and cultural kinship based on tribal values.In the urban growth of Palmyra, the city’s institutional development as a Greek polis was a key factor, and by the second century CE it had all the required civic institutions and had endorsed monumental public building projects such as the Temple of Bel. The epigraphic evidence suggests that the building of this temple was a cooperative venture between different tribal groups already sharing a common identity. Palmyra served as a center for various cults that were shared by the different pastoralist and sedentary populations of its territory. Not unexpectedly Smith’s analysis of Palmyra’s economy, and most importantly the caravan trade, is based on the famous tariff inscription as well as other epigraphic evidence, which the author discusses in detail, again highlighting the integration of Palmyra with its hinterland and the special relationship between the city and the pastoralist groups in its territory. Smith provides a good outline of the architecture of domestic dwellings and the structure and marriage dynamics of Palmyrene families, but his use of these elements for the construction of identity does not reveal anything unexpected. The same applies to the role of women, freedmen, and associations, which, again, the author discusses very thoroughly despite their lack of distinctiveness from other societies under Roman rule. The civic institutions were established much in the same way as in other poleis of Greco-Roman type and reflect the increasing influ- ence of Rome in the second and especially third centuries CE, when the city was given the status of colonia. Contrary to that, elements of Greek culture such as the theater were only added relatively late, implying that other cultural influences were also dominant in this period of state formation. The institution of the “four tribes” with their respective sanctuaries was interpreted by Smith as an answer to increased economic pressure on the caravan trade and was a genuinely Palmyrene development. The military was a large enough force to entertain garrisons outside the city, but its sphere of influence was mostly limited to the eastern frontier where it was considered useful by the Roman authorities against the Parthians. A discussion of Palmyrene citizens in the numeri or those living abroad tries to summa- rize their cultural traits marking a distinctive Palmyrene identity, which is most notably in artistic expression and language. The book concludes with a narrative of the Palmyrene Empire under Odenathus and Zenobia, which Smith discusses in view of conflict of identities during their uprising against Roman authority.As an introduction to the political and cultural history of Palmyra, this book is indeed a very valuable contribution, as it positions and discusses Palmyrene inscriptions and archaeological remains in the context of Greco-Roman and eastern traditions alike. The author can certainly not be held responsible for the poor print quality of the illustrations throughout the book, which are almost unreadable, as in the case of the Google Earth image (fig. 1.3) or the city plan of Palmyra (fig. 1.5). He gives a useful list of Palmyrene tribal and family associations (table 2.1), in which, unfortunately, Aramaic names are not vocalized, making it very difficult to connect them with tribes referred to in other volumes. Not every chapter manages to add to the specific focus of the book—the construction of identity—as often the results merely confirm the place of Palmyrene civic institutions and social bodies within the Greco-Roman traditions encountered elsewhere. Nevertheless, they help to convey a rounded and faceted picture of the way the unique frontier setting of Palmyra in the desert between the Roman and Parthian Empires shaped its community and state formation.