Severan Culture. Edited by SIMON SWAIN, STEPHEN HARRISON AND JAS ELSNER. 
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 569. Cloth, 
$160.00. ISBN 978–0–521–85982–0.


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A CJ Online Exclusive: 2008.10.02

Ewen Bowie is already well known to students of the Second Sophistic and 
imperial literature, but he will surely become more famous with the 
publication of this collection of essays written in his honor. They serve 
as a testament to the work that Bowie has done—and continues to do—in 
this growing area of research; the reader can recognize this achievement 
with the aid of a list of Bowie’s publications, which the editors 
helpfully supply as a guide for further reading. But Severan Culture also 
testifies to the close relationship Bowie enjoys with his many pupils and 
colleagues, from whom the editors solicited these fine essays. The 
inclusion of a Greek letter from Philostratus to Longus regarding a certain 
“sophist from Caledonia,” elegantly composed by Donald Russell, not 
only adds a further shine to the book and draws a smile from the reader, 
but is in keeping with the genre of fictitious letters that grew 
increasingly popular in the Severan era and into the later empire.

Although the triad of editors, Simon Swain, Stephen Harrison and Jas 
Elsner, did not contribute any articles to the book, they have certainly 
set its inclusive tone and scope. There are 26 articles divided into three 
parts: Literature and Culture; Art and Architecture; and Religion and 
Philosophy. In the first part, Timothy Whitmarsh gives a broad overview of 
the prose literature of the period (Chapter 1) and Harry Sidebottom a 
similar one of its historiography (Chapter 2), before yielding the field to 
essays on more specialized topics. Despite the allure of the Greek 
literature of the period, the editors have brought contemporary Latin 
writers out of the shade with pieces on Hosidius Geta by Philip Hardie 
(Chapter 9), Minucius Felix by Jonathan Powell (Chapter 10) and Cyprian by 
Michael Winterbottom (Chapter 11). As these essays show, patristics does 
not suffer strict relegation to the third part of the book, but Christian 
authors and thought are kept in the foreground throughout. Standouts among 
the essays on Greek topics include Gideon Nisbet’s essay on some saucy 
epigrams of Philostratus and Fronto (Chapter 4) and John Ma’s evocation 
of the world of the fragmentary poet Nestor through an ingenious 
examination of his lean literary and epigraphic remains (Chapter 3).

The second part of the book covers material culture of the period, and any 
student of the High Empire, whether philologist or archaeologist, would do 
well to read Zahra Newby’s essay on transitional styles in Severan art 
(Chapter 12). The Severan Marble Plan receives thorough treatment from 
Jennifer Trimble (Chapter 16) and makes regular reappearances thereafter. 
Andrew Wilson’s enlightening essay on urban development in the Severan 
Empire (Chapter 14) shifts the focus from Rome and Lepcis Magna, the 
ancestral home of Septimius Severus, and his analysis of building 
inscriptions shows how already in this period the imperial government was 
cultivating increasingly showy displays of servility and gratitude from 
civic elites and local governments, attitudes that found their full 
development under the Tetrarchy and later. Late Antique scholars will want 
to take careful note of the evidence he gathers.

Although, as Mark Edwards notes (and many scholars may feel), Christians 
“seem to belong to this age only by accident of chronology” (p. 401) 
the editors have given their thought generous representation in the third 
part of the book and thus made men like Tertullian seem more like denizens 
of the period than aliens. Edwards himself begins the third part of Severan 
Culture with an overview of Christian identity and attitudes in the Severan 
period (Chapter 18); some of these receive more detailed study in the 
essays that follow, for instance, in Richard Finn’s on almsgiving 
(Chapter 19) and in Catherine Conybeare’s on marriage (Chapter 20). But 
pagan and non-Christian issues are not neglected as a result; Joseph Geiger 
presents an interesting comparison of imperial sophists and Rabbis (Chapter 
21) and Daniel Ogden examines contemporary attitudes toward magic, 
especially in Philostratus’ In Honor of Apollonius (Chapter 23). The book 
ends, fittingly, with an examination of the figure of Socrates in 
religious, philosophical and sophistic thought (Chapter 26), tying past and 
present, Christian and pagan together.

Severan Culture covers an admirably wide spectrum of the cultural, 
architectural and especially intellectual endeavors of the Severan era, a 
difficult task indeed, although some areas are left curiously unexplored. 
For instance, Roman jurisprudence receives much less attention than other 
areas, like rhetoric and philosophy, being awarded only a short summary 
(pp. 481–3) in Michael Trapp’s essay, “Philosophy, scholarship, and 
the world of learning,” late in the book. As Trapp states, “In the 
field of legal thinking and writing, it is something of a commonplace that 
the Severan period was one of huge achievement and importance” (p. 481). 
But Classical scholars already familiar with the literature or archaeology 
of the era would have benefited from an article or two discussing current 
scholarly appraisals of the vast output of Papinian, Paulus and Ulpian or 
the growing distinction between honestiores and humiliores in Roman society 
of the period. The Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, which extended Roman 
citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire and is referenced in 
several articles, would also seem to deserve more than passing treatment in 
any survey of the Severan world. Medicine receives similarly short shrift, 
with only a short sketch of Galen in Trapp’s essay.

But these are minor complaints for a large collection that marshals 
excellent essays from a number of scholars in a serious attempt to cover 
many different aspects of an important era in Roman imperial history, and 
any omissions are sure to be remedied by further and similar works in the 
future. Severan Culture serves both as a loving gift to a well-respected 
scholar from his legion of students and as a harbinger of an increasingly 
bright future for a still overshadowed period in the High Empire.

PATRICK PAUL HOGAN
Hope College


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