Imitation Greeks: Being Syrian in the Greco-Roman world (175 BCE--275 CE).

Abstract

Because of their relevance to the modern world, the topics of ethnicity, cultural performance, and civic affiliation are central issues of the current scholarship on the ancient Near East. My dissertation therefore analyzes the formation of Greek civic performances among Syrians within the contexts of Greek colonialism and Roman imperialism. By examining how the Near East's inhabitants reinvented concepts of Greek, Roman, and Syrian identification by interweaving the traditions of these cultures, it demonstrates how the development of Greek communities that had extended citizenship to ethnic Syrians generated a third space. Within this symbolic framework, local subjects reoriented idioms of diverse cultural origins in ways that produced innovative expressions of Greekness and Romanness. The first chapter explores how the Seleucid king Antiochus IV (175-164 BCE) promoted commonality among ethnic Greeks and Syrians. He did so by prompting Greek cities to mint coinage with Near Eastern idioms and by conferring the rank of Greek city upon Near Eastern communities. The second examines Cicero's relationships with prominent Near Easterners and how he portrayed them in his extensive writings. While it explores Cicero's perspectives, it also shows how Near Easterners responded to the intervention of Roman imperial figures such as Cicero, who was the proconsul of Cilicia in 51-50 BCE. The succeeding chapters demonstrate how civic identifications and affiliations were articulated in particular parts of the Near East during various stages of Roman imperial intervention. After the reign of Augustus, the Roman imperial administration increasingly prompted Greek cities to grant citizenship to Syrians or even transformed Near Eastern communities into official Greek <italic> poleis</italic>. Individuals with Aramaic names and Near Eastern genealogies appear in the inscriptions and papyri of numerous Greek city-states and Roman colonies as citizens and civic councilors, and they often signed public documents in Aramaic or worshipped divinities of Near Eastern origin. Wall paintings and statues reveal that Greek citizens alternatively wore Greek, Roman, and Syrian styles of clothing. Such evidence indicates that Syrians used diverse cultural idioms to articulate numerous overlapping identifications, and they thereby created new forms of Greek and Roman civic culture distinct from those of classical cities.