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The Mediterranean and Ancient History 29
Hellenistic and Roman–imperial Greek still needs attention, the
Latin words even more; 89 and once again let us not make the
Mediterranean too Graeco-Roman.
. Can we legitimately say that ancient Mediterranean culture
was urban? This has been widely assumed, and the doctrine
has been the foundation for whole programmes of
research. 90 Horden and Purcell have now contested the notion
and presented an interesting alternative way of looking at patterns
of Mediterranean settlement. But their doctrine seems to
have fallen on somewhat stony ground, 91 and we shall re-consider
the issue (though all too briefly) in the following section.
. Nothing like cultural unity in more general terms was
ever reached in the coastlands of the ancient Mediterranean
prior to the Roman conquests, that is obvious, but it remains a
central and open question of Roman history how much the
populations of these territories, and not just their elites, shared
social forms, productive technology, languages, artistic forms,
religious practices and beliefs, and many other cultural features.
Horden and Purcell claim that such cultural unity as there was
lasted into the Middle Ages; 92 be that as it may, the study of
cultural unity has to be the study of its formation and disintegration.
4. ‘ruralizing’ ancient history
The most original aspect of The Corrupting Sea may be its
attempt to ‘ruralize’ ancient and medieval history (the authors’
quotation marks). The whole category of town or city is made to
shrink into insignificance. These terms are not being wholly
wished out of existence, but neither is this simply a shift of
89
Lendon, Empire, 272–9, gathers some material, but his analysis of the
Latin vocabulary is a model of how such things should not be done: in
particular he forces a number of different concepts into the straightjacket of
English.
90
The Copenhagen Polis Centre, founded by M. H. Hansen. Its publications
have been extensive.
91
Shaw, 444–6; E. and J. Fentress, rev. of CS, Past and Present 173 (2001),
203–19: 211–13; H. Driessen, rev. of CS, American Anthropologist 103 (2001),
528–31: 530.
92
Yet in CS this doctrine is set about with so many reservations that one
may be confused as to where the authors finally stand.