Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

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The most important debate about the nature of Near Eastern civilization in the classical period hinges on the question of whether, and to what degree, there was a continuation with the preceding centuries. Millar famously discussed this in terms of an “amnesia” (forgetfulness) of the region: with the exception of the Jews (see also the discussion by Rajak 2000) and to a lesser degree the inhabitants of the Phoenician coast, there was said to have been no “sense of a common past uniting the contemporary populations of the region and identifying them with the life of the cities of the ancient Orient” (Millar 1993: 6). Others have preferred to make more of the undeniable glimpses of continuation – such as the enduring popularity of the sanctuary of the old Phoenician healing god Eshmun, situated to the north of Sidon, which Strabo (16.2.22) referred to as the “grove of Asklēpios.” Similarly, discussion has focused on how the two halves of the period covered in this volume contrast with each other: whereas Millar famously argued that, in contrast to the Near East under the principate, “the preceding Hellenistic period has left us almost nothing which can count as the expression of a regional or a local pagan culture” (Millar 1993: 22 – the so-called “problem of Hellenistic Syria”; see id. 1987), Sartre (2001) insisted on studying the Roman evidence explicitly in the context of what there was in the Hellenistic period.