Noah Kaye’s Attalids of Pergamon and Anatolia is the first monograph to be published on the topic in nearly 40 years, since R.E. Allen’s Attalid Kingdom (Oxford 1983), which had updated E.V. Hansen’s Attalids of Pergamon (Ithaca 1947, repr. 1971), the first monograph to treat the Pergamene dynasty, and R.B. McShane’s The Foreign Policy of the Attalids of Pergamon (Urbana 1964). However, all three books were traditional narratives by today’s standards. Kaye’s monograph could not come any sooner, given the importance of the Attalids in the Hellenistic world, as well as the plethora of new, mainly epigraphic material that has boosted our understanding of the dynasty in the last 30 years or so.
Following important publications over the last 20 years, most notably P. Thonemann’s valuable Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations, and the State (Oxford 2013) and Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World (New York 2016), a volume edited by C.A. Picón and Seán Hemingway on the occasion of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the study of the Attalid world has moved decidedly away from the traditional, mostly art-historical analysis that has dealt with Pergamene artistic production as isolated and simplistic policy. Indeed, in recent years, scholars have increasingly engaged in true interdisciplinary research, working at the intersection of Classics and disciplines such as political science, international relations and economics, to name but a few. The resulting work has offered us precious insights that have revealed a more complex picture of the Hellenistic world and prompted us to pose new questions and recast old debates. More recently, scholars like B. Dignas (Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient World (Oxford 2012)), Altay Coşkun (various works on Galatia) and J. LaBuff (The Peoples of Anatolia (Leiden 2022)) have stressed the importance of approaching Anatolia as a multicultural mosaic, offering a more nuanced and no longer monolithic understanding of the populations of the region where the Pergamene kingdom emerged and quickly pushed its borders, thereby becoming a major player in the Hellenistic world. Kaye unquestionably joins the select group of scholars to offer us an excellent account of the Attalid kingdom, how it came to be, how it was transformed and how it worked.
The result of painstaking research, this dense book traces the improbable rise of the Attalids and rethinks the impact of Pergamene imperialism. The introduction makes for a comprehensive historiographical essay, as well as an expert analysis of the methodology employed. It reflects a broader rethinking of core ideas about how Pergamene policies worked, especially after the kingdom’s expansion after the Peace of Apamea (188 BCE), offering at the same time a superb analysis of the Attalid economy and taxation system. Rather than viewing it in isolation, he presents it in modern economic terms, placing it at the same time in the context of the economies of antiquity, in particular the Hellenistic world and even beyond.
Chapter 1 (‘Eating with the Tax Collectors’) discusses ‘earmarks’, that is the Attalid policy of allocating tax revenues to territories, both urban and rural, under their control for specific regular local expenditures. In this respect, they displayed greater care in creating a unified kingdom despite the diversities of local political and social organization, going above and beyond the policies of their predecessors.
Chapter 2 (‘The Skeleton of the State’) examines Attalid fiscal institutions, monetary policies, direct and indirect taxation, the latter consisting of customs duties on mobility and exchange. Through a careful reading of the sometimes-scant epigraphic record and literary sources, Kaye convincingly reconstructs the Attalid model of interaction between the central authority and its subjects. Taxation was constantly negotiated with local communities, while the collection of taxes was assigned to civic communities themselves. Chapter 3 (‘Explaining the Cistophori’) focuses on the complexities and intricacies of the Attalids’ innovative cistophoric coinage and builds on previous work. Kaye considers the cistophori to have been a ‘coordinated coinage’, rather than representing an effort to model the Pergamene post-188 BCE economy after the Ptolemaic ‘closed-currency system’. In this context, he cites, among others, an unpublished version of my published study on the second-century BCE independent Attic-weight drachms of Ephesos, ‘The Mint of Ephesos under the Attalids of Pergamon’, in H. Friesinger-Fr. Krinziger, eds., 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos (Vienna 1999), 185–95.
Chapter 4 (‘Cities and Other Civic Organizations’) examines the use of culture as part of a greater policy of integration of local communities within the Attalid Empire. The ensuing discussion is especially timely, as earlier work generally focused on Pergamon as an empire comprising poleis, thereby neglecting the self-sufficient katoikiai within the new and old territories.
In chapter 5 (‘Hastening to the Gymnasium’), Kaye looks at Attalid patronage of gymnasia throughout their territory, which was part of their wider policy of integration within their kingdom. Gymnasia were crucial for strengthening civic identity but also served as networking hubs and set points of interaction between rulers and members of these institutions, including local elites. Finally, chapter 6 (‘Pergamene Panhellenism’) wraps up Kaye’s book by looking at Attalid cultural policies and the dynasts themselves as collectors, curators, producers and regulators of culture. Past studies of the Attalid kingdom have mainly focused on a presumed Greek heritage claimed and appropriated by the kings only. Kaye discusses the Library of Pergamon as a cultural centre and next examines the Attalid promotion of an Anatolian culture alongside the Greek mythical tradition. This part of his book is arguably the first comprehensive treatment of the subject and will be the basis for further nuanced studies of Attalid cultural leadership and influence within their kingdom and within the Hellenistic world.
One cannot underestimate the importance of this superb and delightfully written study that is essential reading for our understanding of the history of Anatolia, now seen in all its cultural diversity. It will be essential reading for our understanding of the Hellenistic world, Hellenistc civic and political behaviours, ancient economy, the Hellenistic kingdoms and the intricacies of Attalid social, economic and cultural policies.
