Engaging with the approach known as ‘spatial turn’, this volume focuses on the ways in which Rome's dominance influenced, changed and created landscapes, and how (Roman) landscapes were narrated and symbolised. The book has twenty chapters, divided into four sections, plus a list of figures and tables; it is accessible via open access, and it includes full-colour images.
Part 1, ‘Introducing Roman Landscapes’, opens with ‘Le regard du Vainqueur?’ by Hächler and Horster, who criticise the simplistic use of the dichotomy of Rome vs others, that fits well with current studies on Roman identity and ethnicity, such as M. Kahlos (ed.), The Faces of the Other. Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World (2012). The contributions emphasise that the Roman world was highly dynamic, but at the same time highlight the perseverance on keeping certain elements or labelling some attitudes as ‘Roman’, generally with a propagandistic aim (e.g. Chapters 14, 15, 19 and 20), but sometimes hiding other xenophobic attitudes not studied here (see A. Lampinen, Studia Celtica Fennica [2014]). The chapter mentions the issue of citizenship, referred to in many contributions (e.g. Chapters 5, 10 and 13); however, this reviewer missed a mention of the role of personal legal status to define the law applicable to individuals (e.g. citizens, civil law vs foreigners, ius gentium) in different spaces (E. Mataix Ferrándiz, Shipwrecks, Legal Landscapes and Mediterranean Paradigms [2022]).
In the following chapter Horster makes an important point: it is the individual researcher who defines a landscape, justifying the different approaches used in the book to understand the human side of ‘lived’ landscapes. The observations laid down in the chapter provide general insights on the study of landscapes, even though it ignores some of the new trends on the environment, such as cultural and historical ecology (e.g. D. Hughes, Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans: Ecology in the Ancient Mediterranean [2014]), which engage with some of the chapters (e.g. Chapters 6 and 14). In addition, Horster notes the temptation (p. 7) to devote the volume to a specific landscape, but there are several chapters that focus on particular areas such as Spain (Chapter 5), Portugal (Chapter 7) and Gaul (Chapter 10).
Part 2, ‘What Have the Romans Ever Done for Them?’, comprises six chapters, five of them devoted to milestones and roads, making one miss chapters focusing on other infrastructures, such as ports or warehouses. The section starts with A. Kolb's chapter, in which she considers roads as instruments for empire building and consolidation, the basis of mobility and economy, and streets as places of representation. Some important elements from this chapter are the way in which it connects roads with the topic of mobility in the Empire (cf. L. de Ligt and L. Tacoma [edd.], Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire [2016]), and the discussion of the relation between the private sector and the public interest in building roads, an issue that can be paralleled with other topics related to infrastructure and empire (e.g. S.J. Keay, Rome, Portus and the Mediterranean [2013]). In Chapter 4 F. Carlà-Uhink focuses mostly on how the road system resulted in long-term connectivity between urban communities and changed the perception of the organisation of places and their distance. Carlà-Uhink also refers to milestones when dealing with the perception of distances, arguing that travellers were expected to pay attention to these milestones to derive clear knowledge about distance and sequence between towns (p. 77). This chapter revolves around the Republic; this is a reason why we should not be surprised when we read in the following chapters concerning milestones, by S. España-Chamorro (p. 97), C. Campedelli (pp. 127–8) and, especially, S. Lefebvre (p. 133), that in the Empire milestones had mostly a representative and propagandistic aim, which evidently links to the broad topic of the epigraphic habit in the Empire (cf. F. Beltrán Lloris, in: The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy [2014]). This points to an evolution in road signalling from the Republic to the Empire and indirectly suggests that travellers may have acquired a sense of orientation, and probably travelling tips were provided by word of mouth thanks to long-term connectivity.
España-Chamorro's and Campedelli's chapters are complementary, as one provides a thorough analysis of the material evidence of milestones in Hispania, while the other places the evidence in the human context and develops the research questions laid down by España-Chamorro. Both contributions underline that in the case of Hispania, more than creating a new road system, Romans relied heavily on pre-Roman communication and territorial systems. Finally, Lefebvre provides a study of Lusitania, which demonstrates how in late antique Lusitania the road systems evidence a shift in power from the cities to rural areas, where families had villae and big estates. In the last chapter of Part 2 S. Kerschbaum shows that the phenomenon of building aqueducts in Asia minor was a conscious attempt by municipal elites to imitate a superior urban Roman lifestyle, including their bathing habits. Kerschbaum also connects the issue of the private/public financing of these infrastructures (cf. Chapter 3), the relation between city and rural areas (cf. Chapter 7) as well as the existence of a ‘Roman’ imperial identity that provincials aspired to imitate (cf. Chapter 13).
Part 3, ‘Measuring the World à la romaine’, starts with two chapters dealing with changing landscapes in Etruria (G. Schörner) and Gaul (X. Deru and R. Auvertin), which, although devoted to different areas, underline how the Romans used different strategies when changing the landscapes of their Empire (e.g. centuriation in Etruria vs case by case in Gaul). Both chapters highlight the influence and persistence of previous populations (in these cases, Etruscans and Gallic tribes) on Roman imperial landscapes. F. Bono's chapter also addresses imperial attempts to regulate the Roman landscape in late antiquity, dealing with the case of alluvial lands in Nov. Theod. 20 and offering a chapter in which we can see not only the importance of legal evidence to define land and ownership, but also of the interaction of land and water (cf. G. Kantor, T. Lambert and H. Skoda [edd.], Legalism: Property and Ownership [2017]). A book about landscape could not lack a chapter concerning the Roman limes, and this is offered by E.J.S. Weaverdyck in a discussion of auxiliary forts and their roles as marketplaces. E. Muñiz Grijalvo and F. Lozano address the subject of ‘ritual landscapes’ through the case study of Oenoanda and Demosthenia, a topic that nowadays is also studied using new technologies such as agent-based modelling (e.g. K. Crawford, Open Archaeology 5 [2019]). The authors focus particularly on the importance of rural communities around the city during the conduct of public feasts within the framework of public cult and thus engage with the issue of the relation of the city with rural areas (along with some previous chapters, e.g. Chapters 7 and 8). Hächler analyses the so-called expositio totius mundi et gentium, which describes the landscape as characterised by the interaction between the fertile land (cf. Chapter 11) and its adaptative inhabitants (i.e. cultural ecology). Since trade is one of the elements that speaks strongly about connectivity in the Roman Empire, it is significant that the chapter mentions the importance of mercantile activities for the homogenisation of landscapes.
The last Part, ‘The Semantics of Roman Landscape Representations’, starts with I. Köster's contribution, in which she examines differing accounts of Cicero and Caesar concerning Gaul and the Gallic Wars through the focus of the anti-landscape (cf. D. Nye, The Anti-Landscape [2014]), to examine the question of how foreign landscapes are transformed into Roman ones (cf. Chapters 9 and 10). Thanks to that approach, the chapter adds a new dimension to the study of war landscapes in Latin literature (see B. Reitz-Joosse, Landscapes of War in Greek and Roman Literature [2021]). In the following chapter A. Gangloff deals with the important phenomenon of the Roman villa and how its perception changed during the Empire, especially including the Roman notion of otium, which reinvents the landscape as a frame for the intellectual activity of the elite. From the point of view of this reviewer, the chapter lacked a reference to the land and sea interaction and so to the importance of the villa as a symbol of the victory of humans over the sea (e.g. Stat. Silv. 2.2). A. Walker's chapter focuses on the mythical landscape represented in paintings dealing with Polyphemus and Galatea. D.A. Maticic explores another mythical episode, the battles of Hercules and the earth giant Cacus and the allusions that Propertius and Virgil made on the ethics and symbolism of Rome's water consumption. In this way the authors allegorise Rome's power on earth, but also its subterranean, hydraulic influence in the world, its relationship with the Greek past and the excesses of its thirst for power. C. Chinn's chapter focuses on Statius and how politics influenced the construction of a Roman Italian landscape (cf. Chapter 16) or the economic exploitation of lands (cf. Chapter 11). Last but not least, S. Diederich's chapter is the only one in the volume that deals with the cartographic evidence of the tabula Peutingeriana, as a result of the DFG-funded project (Commentary on the Tabula Peutingeriana); it claims that the Roman state rules over the known landscape in concordance with a divine cosmic order, and underlines the existing dichotomy as an outpost of civilisation between tribes and wilderness (cf. Chapter 19).
This volume makes a valuable contribution to the field in some key areas. First, the work broadens our understanding of the Roman Empire's landscapes, by not only studying these through a multi-scalar approach, but also conceiving these as dynamic and in constant evolution. This is an important aim at a time when scholarly trends are focusing increasingly on the reciprocal nature of relationships between Rome and the territories within its sphere of influence. Second, many of the contributions draw on recent scholarship in other fields, such as sociology, anthropology, science and digital humanities, which greatly enhances the theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of Rome and its landscapes. As noted above, given the interrelated material of many of the chapters, it would have improved the work to have more conversation between the individual contributions, even something as simple as a reference to other chapters in the book that treat similar material.
