A new publication on the topic of cult associations in the Hellenistic and Roman world.

See the BMCR review.

Groupes et associations dans les cités grecques (IIIe siècle av. J.-C.-IIe siècle ap. J.-C).

Actes de la table ronde de Paris, INHA, 19-20 juin 2009. Hautes études du monde gréco-romain, 49. Genève: Librairie Droz, 2013.

The Greek cities of the Hellenistic and imperial era were living political communities, as is recognized today by the majority of historians. Each one of them constituted a small society with its own statutory divisions, collective practices, and internal networks and tensions. For some twenty years, researchers have been presenting very new perspectives on this world of the poleis, but while focusing on political institutions rather than on social history. This book, issued from a round table of scholars, concentrates on a characteristic phenomenon of the period in question: the blossoming of various groups and associations that composed, cut up, and structured civic societies. It tries to multiply perspectives on this phenomenon by examining gymnastic groups and professional or religious associations in parallel, in both the large and the small and medium-sized cities of Ancient Greece and Asia Minor. The authors attempt in particular to analyze how the identity of each individual, whatever his social status, was constructed or enriched by membership in one or more of these associations. The aim is to also to better understand the slow changes that occurred in the civic communities of the Greek world between the lower Hellenistic era and the High Empire.