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Nijf, Onno M. van The Civic World of Profesional Associations in the Roman East 1997 This study examines the mentalité of craftsmen and traders in the Greek cities of the Roman empire through the epigraphic evidence for their membership of private associations based on shared profession. It places these associations firmly in the context of the civic world of the cities in which they were active. The author argues that such inscriptions are not straightforward and unproblematic records of reality, but rather were important elements in the strategies of self-definition practised by these associations. Epigraphic commemoration was used to transform private activities into public events; epitaphs and honorific inscriptions spoke a public language which aimed to present the associations of craftsmen and traders as status groups alongside other, well-established groups. The author investigates how successful the members of professional associations were in this form of epigraphic self-fashioning, through a discussion of their role in public ceremonial. The associations were present in public banquets and distributions, they took part in public processions, and they had reserved seats in theatres and stadia of the cities. Professional associations can thus be seen as taking their place in the hierarchy of status groups which made up the Greek city under Roman rule. This book makes an important contribution to the study of private sociability in the ancient world; it sheds new light on the nature of civic life in the Greek cities of the Roman empire; and it proposes a new approach to reading epigraphy

Introduction: civic honours, from classical to Roman times / Anna Heller and Onno van Nijf -- Part I. The economy of honour: financial and symbolic exchanges -- Praise and honour / Olivier Gengler -- Les timai dans le discours civique et moral a la fin du Ier siecle ap. j.-c. / Anne Gangloff -- La gestion des statues honorifiques a Rhodes a la fin du Ier siecle ap. j.-c. d'apres le Rhodiakos de Dion de Pruse (Or. xxxi) / Henri-Louis Fernoux -- The financing of public honours in Greece during the Roman imperial period: the case of honorary statues in the cities of the Greek mainland / Francesco Camia -- Part II. Honorific communities: competition and negotiation -- Le temoignage de Chariton d'Aphrodisias sur la pratique civique des honneurs / Sophie Lalanne -- Un-civic benefactions?: gifts to non-citizens and civic honours in the Greek cities of the Roman east / Arjan Zuiderhoek -- The refusal of the highest honours by members of the urban elites in Roman Asia Minor / Christina T. Kuhn -- Decrees awarding offices for life and by hereditary right as honours / Nikos Giannakopoulos -- Part III. The impact of Rome: integration and domination -- Romans in the poleis of Greek mainland and adjacent islands: the evolution of their relations in the light of honorific texts / Sofia Zoumbaki -- Les honneurs des cites d'Asie aux proches des gouverneurs / Gabrielle Frija -- Curateurs de cites et honneurs civiques / Eric Guerber -- Honouring senators and equestrians in the Graeco-Roman east / Annika B. Kuhn -- Le premier des citoyens a pergame sous le Haut-empire: C. Antius, Aulus Iulius Quadratus / Olivier Ventroux -- Part IV. Cities and empire: honours between local and global -- Martyriai: civic honours and imperial government / Christina Kokkinia -- On the rhetoric of imperial majesty: elements of the ideological interaction between emperor and imperial society on the basis of civic decrees, imperial pronouncements and literary testimonies in the Greek east / Kostas Buraselis -- Honorary statues in the theatres of Roman Greece / Valentina Di Napoli -- The agora as setting for honorific statues in Roman Greece / Christopher Dickenson -- L'iconographie des honneurs civiques statuaires pour les notables d'epoque imperiale / Martin Szewczyk -- Le reflet des honneurs / Jean-Baptiste Yon