The first comprehensive study of Rome's relationship with the kingdom and city of Pergamon (modern-day Bergama in Turkey) from the late third century BC to the fourth century AD across multiple cultural spheres (art and architecture, history and politics, literature and poetry, philosophy and thought, scholarship and rhetoric).
This interdisciplinary volume provides the first comprehensive study of Rome's relationship with the kingdom and city of Pergamon. It surveys the rich and diverse interactions between these two cities from the late third century BCE to the fourth century CE, ranging across multiple cultural spheres (including art and architecture, history and politics, literature and poetry, philosophy and thought, scholarship and rhetoric). The book reassesses the nature, scope, and extent of Pergamon and Rome's so-called 'special relationship', shedding light on much-discussed problems, offering new evidence for their cultural interactions, and questioning long-established assumptions.
One recurrent theme concerns the limitations of our knowledge: extant evidence is limited and often skewed by later Roman sources, and it is frequently very difficult to identify and define cultural features that are distinctively 'Pergamene'. Nevertheless, there was certainly an important relationship between these two cities, which this volume seeks to map out with greater nuance, precision, and breadth, setting it within a wider interconnected Hellenistic context. As a whole, the volume reflects on the scholarly reception of Pergamon, uncovering how and when a certain view of a cohesive 'Pergamene culture' took shape among modern scholarship and what factors, prejudices, and assumptions undergirded its creation. It also challenges and rethinks the frameworks that shape our view of cultural activity in the Hellenistic world, emphasizing the porousness of cultural movements across political boundaries. This book will be of interest not only to scholars of Roman culture, but also to those interested in the impact of Hellenistic culture on Rome more generally and to scholars engaged with theories and models of cultural influence.
Introduction
1: Thomas J. Nelson, Giuseppe Pezzini, and Stefano Rebeggiani: Pergamon and
Rome: A 'Special Relationship'?
History, Politics, and Identity
3: Paul Ernst: The Cultural Practices of Italians in Pergamon, from 133 bc to
the Beginning of the First Century ad
4: Megan Wilson: Politicized Theatre and Political Theatrics at Pergamon and
Rome
5: Susan Mattern: Galen's Pergamene Identity
Scholarship and Rhetoric
6: Maria Broggiato: Grammar, Philology, and Literary Criticism between
Pergamon and Rome
7: Massimo Giuseppetti: The Chronica of Apollodorus of Athens between
Pergamon and Rome
8: Andrea Balbo: Inter omnes Asiae civitates Pergamum clarius: Elements of
Possible Pergamene Influence on Roman Oratory and Rhetoric in the Middle and
Late Republic
LITERATURE
9: Giuseppe Pezzini: Pergamene Influences in Mid-Republican Roman
Literature?
10: ThomasĀ J. Nelson: From Colophon to Rome: Pergamene Nicander, Latin
Poetry, and Ovid's Ceyx and Alcyone
11: Stefano Rebeggiani: The Flavian Cultural Revolution: Between Pergamon and
Alexandria
Philosophy
12: Myrto Hatzimichali: Philosophy between Pergamon and Rome
13: Riccardo Chiaradonna: The Neoplatonist 'School of Pergamon': Philosophy
and Politics in the Fourth Century ad
Art and Architecture
14: Eugenio La Rocca: Temple Architecture in Rome after the Second Punic War
and its Relationship with the Architecture of Pergamon and Asia Minor
15: Eugenio La Rocca: Sculpture in Pergamon and in Rome
16: La Eugenio Rocca: Celtomachies in Italy and the Influence of the
Pergamene Gauls
17: Ann Kuttner: Pergamon and the Ara Pacis Augustae
Thomas J. Nelson is a Career Development Fellow in Ancient Greek at St Hilda's College, Oxford. He has previously held research and lectureship positions in both Oxford and Cambridge, including a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. He has published widely on archaic, classical, and Hellenistic Greek literature and its Roman reception, with particular interests in early Greek intertextuality and Hellenistic poetry beyond Alexandria. He is the author of Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry (2023) and co-editor (with Matthew Chaldekas) of Hellenistic Aesthetics: Approaches and Frameworks (BICS 67.2, Oxford 2024).
Giuseppe Pezzini is Tutor and Fellow in Latin at Corpus Christi College, Oxford which he joined in 2021, after five years of teaching in St Andrews (20162021), and research fellowships at Magdalen College Oxford (20132015) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2016). He worked as an assistant editor for the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (completed in 2013), and has published especially on Latin language and literature, philosophy of language, and the theory of fiction, ancient and modern. He was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship in 2019 and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2021.
Stefano Rebeggiani is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California. His main interests are in Roman literature and culture, especially epic and its relationship with the socio-political contexts of the Roman empire; the interactions of poetry and philosophical traditions; and the interplay of texts and monuments in Republican and Imperial Rome. He has written on Lucretius, Virgil, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, on the role of Greek works of art in Republican and Imperial monuments, and on the political significance of myth in Roman monumental contexts. His first monograph was published in 2018: The Fragility of Power: Statius, Domitian, and the Politics of the Thebaid (Oxford).
