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: The Attalids of Pergamon and Anatolia: Money, Culture, and State Power

2024; Archaeological Institute of America; Volume: 128; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/729773

1939-828X

Marcus Chin,

African history and culture analysis

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewThe Attalids of Pergamon and Anatolia: Money, Culture, and State Power By Noah Kaye. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2022. Pp. 300. ISBN 9781316510599 (hardcover) $135; https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009279567 (open access).Marcus ChinMarcus ChinCentre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford; [email protected]PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreIn 188 BCE, Eumenes II of Pergamon acquired an Anatolian empire extending from the Troad to Pamphylia—a gift of Rome for loyalty in the war against Antiochos III. How he and his successors Attalos II and III (159–133 BCE) managed to hold these disparate territories together over more than five decades, and the impacts this had on their social and cultural makeup, forms the subject of this magisterial study by Kaye. Where earlier studies had centered on the royal court and its administrative priorities within the wider drama of Roman imperial expansion (E.V. Hansen, The Attalids of Pergamon, Cornell University Press 1971; R.E. Allen, The Attalid Kingdom: A Constitutional History, Oxford University Press 1983), Kaye instead grounds his analysis in the sinews of the Attalid state: its monetary and fiscal practice. This builds on more recent work (e.g., P. Thonemann, ed., Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations, and the State, Oxford University Press 2013) but goes further, demonstrating the interrelatedness of fiscality to cultural politics: in effect, how the Attalids "tied their own economic reproduction to the cultural reproduction of their subjects" (14).Six chapters are roughly divided between economic reproduction and cultural reproduction. Chapters 1–3 suggest that Attalid fiscal and monetary policies were far-reaching but also, paradoxically, were sustained by the devolution of authority to local communities. Kaye first considers the Attalid state's practice of earmarking, whereby royal money was injected into local communities for purposes largely defined by local agents, such as oil distribution, a festival at the gymnasium, or a cult. The negotiation this involved is then traced in the evidence for direct and indirect taxation (ch. 2), which shows bold state intervention, as for example in the fortifications in the Milyas intended to guard the collection of customs dues (119–22), but also decentralization, with tax collection devolved onto cities (95–101, 108–13). Attalid monetary policy (ch. 3) also demonstrates the coexistence of interventionism with local agency, as Kaye argues that the unusual cistophoric coinage was neither royal nor civic, but rather a coordinated currency, where production on a common type and standard was based at several mints. At the same time, coinage continued to be struck on the more prevalent Attic standard. The dominance of smaller cistophoric denominations at Tralleis (didrachms and drachms) is interestingly seen to reflect Tralleis' liminal position between currency zones north and south of the Maeander, even if these denominations were still fairly high-value (no obols are known), and the hoard evidence is poor (152–63). Overall, the Attalid kingdom was not a closed currency zone, like Ptolemaic Egypt, but combined state initiative in monetary production with an openness to a diversity of currencies.The second portion of the book considers how the local embeddedness of Attalid wealth management encouraged a diversity of social formations beyond cities alone (ch. 4), a penchant for patronizing the gymnasium (ch. 5), and a cultural self-fashioning that hearkened to Pergamene and Anatolian traditions (ch. 6). In addition to cities on the polis model, the Attalids fostered the existence of a variety of settlement types—villages, temple-states, and koinai based on subcivic units, as in the case of the Mysians, which Kaye narrates with verve (209–23). Earmarking, as defined in chapter 1, did ultimately rely heavily on civic institutions, and chapter 5 offers a novel explanation for its prevalence in the gymnasium, an institution the Attalids patronized more than any other Hellenistic monarchy: namely, that the gymnasium's relative externality to the mainstream polis made it attractive as a site for interaction between kings and the civic elite. One consequence was that noncitizens gradually infiltrated the gymnasium. The elite character of the gymnasium is perhaps slightly overemphasized—its military function in the Hellenistic period suggests broad-based citizen participation was likely in some cases (cf. L. D'Amore, "Ginnasio e difesa civica nelle poleis d'asia minore (IV–I sec. a.C.)," RÉA 109, 2007, 147–73), while the evidence for noncitizen participation (274–80) is mostly post-Attalid and confined to citizens of foreign poleis: the example from Mylasa (275) is very much an outlier. Nevertheless, Kaye rightly emphasizes the Attalids' contribution to the later efflorescence of the gymnasium in the late second and first centuries BCE. The wider ideological impacts of Attalid earmarking are then explored in chapter 6, over a variety of topics: the propagation of a Trojan identity for the Attalids by intellectuals at Pergamon's library, Anatolian precedents for tumulus tombs at Pergamon and the very conception of Pergamon as a hill city, conceptions of the Galatians as regionally specific enemies of Asia (and not of the Greeks more generally), and Pisidian reception of Pergamene culture (in imitative market buildings and local reproductions of motifs from the Great Altar). While there could be more argumentative cohesion here, the vision of a distinct Attalid-driven Graeco-Anatolian brand of Panhellenism is a rewarding and compelling outcome.The chapters are richly documented, which sometimes makes for dense and difficult reading; nevertheless, this also means they stand as self-contained reference essays. The bibliographical appendix of inscriptions is useful as well. Overall, two main themes are worth highlighting. The first is the notion that the Attalid state exploited and intensified existing developments and institutions among local communities and that this contributed to its relative durability. In itself, this is an important statement of Attalid distinctiveness, in line with more recent assessments (P. Thonemann, "The Attalid State, 188–133 BC," in Thonemann 2013, 1–47), and one that complicates the dichotomy between royal and civic power that has characterized studies of Hellenistic monarchy more generally and has unhelpfully colored readings of the Attalid state, as Kaye shows throughout. The Attalids' knack for localizing camouflage, however, does inevitably raise questions around agency: were the phenomena we observe products of a decided royal strategy, or simply organic manifestations of preexisting cultural and economic trends? For some of these—taxation, cistophoric coinage, settlement typologies—a concerted method of royal domination is discernible; in other cases, like the popularization of market buildings in Pisidia, evolving social inclusivity in the gymnasium, or mixed Phrygian and Greek ceramic assemblages in western Galatia (321–27), the association with the Attalids per se is perhaps more questionable. Clearly, these represent a variety of processes involving different levels of agency and cultural complexity. Moreover, the local embedding of Attalid power is seen as part of its success—a positive conclusion overturning prevailing historiographical views that have stressed Attalid weakness (361–62). A further corollary, however, might be to ask if this imbrication with local institutions also laid the seeds of weakness and failure. In the last years of Attalos III's reign and the immediate aftermath of his death in 133 BCE, for instance, one is faced with a scenario of imminent conflict between citizens and military settlers, as seen in the Pergamenes' decree (Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae 338), and considerable social unrest, which fueled utopian visions of a Sun City (Strabo 14.1.38). Were these tensions the logical long-term result of the Attalids' strategy of devolving authority onto the constituent groups of their empire? The clarity of Kaye's model invites us to ponder further.A second takeaway is the importance of the Attalids' Anatolian context. Kaye persistently challenges the notion that the Attalids pursued a philhellenic policy that sought to compensate for their non-Greek origins, with traditional centers of Panhellenic Greek identity, like Athens and Delphi, being their main audience (e.g., E. Gruen, "Culture as Policy: The Attalids of Pergamon," in N.T. de Grummond and B.S. Ridgway, eds., From Pergamon to Sperlonga: Sculpture and Context, University of California Press Berkeley 2000, 17–31); rather, observing their efforts in Anatolia brings out new perspectives. This emerges most strongly from chapter 6 but also in the discussions of taxation and settlement types (chs. 2 and 4), how cistophoroi monetized inland regions (ch. 3), or how gymnasia functioned less as emblems of philhellenism than as sites of political interaction (ch. 5). The Attalids' welding of coastal and inland Anatolia resulted in a cultural politics with a regionally specific shape—one which might be defined as Greek, in mythographic and artistic style, but was not tied to Old Greece alone. The model this suggests may be useful for approaching other Hellenistic Anatolian kingdoms, like Bithynia, Pontos, and Kappadokia, which still seem mired in dichotomizing debates around their philhellenic or philo-Persian character (see, e.g., C. Michels, "'Achaemenid' and 'Hellenistic' Strands of Representation in the Minor Kingdoms of Asia Minor," in M. Blömer et al., eds., Common Dwelling Place of All the Gods: Commagene in Its Local, Regional and Global Hellenistic Context, Franz Steiner Verlag 2021, 475–96).Kaye's conclusion brings together three themes—the temporal contingency of Attalid rule, its reliance on monetary management, and its harnessing of the coastal and inland Anatolian interface (355–61). By this point, the reader will have gained a new vision of the Attalids: these were not proto-liberal monarchs who pursued a laissez-faire attitude toward their subjects, and were anxious about their lack of Greekness, but rather rulers who vigorously engaged with the proud diversity of cis-Tauric Anatolia to shore up their state. This is a significant shift, making Kaye's work the most authoritative standalone account in decades and essential reading for those interested not only in the Attalids but also in Hellenistic and ancient imperialism, fiscality, and cultural history more generally. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 128, Number 2April 2024 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 164Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/729773 PermissionsRequest permissions Views: 164Total views on this site HistoryPublished online February 06, 2024 Copyright © 2024 by the Archaeological Institute of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.