At some point in the first century BCE, Yang Yun, one of nine ministers at the Western Han court, fell from the emperor’s grace. His uprightness, incorruptibility, and administrative skills were appreciated far and wide, but Yang Yun’s tendency to brag about these abilities, combined with a personality that appeared somewhat aloof, was destined to create friction. In 56 BCE, a series of charges led to his denouncement and his being stripped of his official position and noble title. Yang Yun was spared the death penalty, at least for the time being, to live a commoner’s life beyond the imperial palace. In his own words, ‘I lead my wife and children, and they join my efforts in plowing fields and planting mulberries, in watering orchards and kitchen gardens, in managing money-making ventures from which we pay taxes to the state thereby’.

The chapters assembled in this part turn to the key question of how the exercise of power was subject to a broad array of performative practices, in places as diverse as the administration of the state, public spectacles, agricultural production, and literature. Taco Terpstra kicks off with the performative dimension of statecraft. Due to their substantiated degree of structured hierarchies, standardized procedures, and the ability to employ officials with specific assignments, the imperial administrations of Rome and Han China capture, in exemplary fashion, the design of premodern statehood. Yet both governments looked rather different. While the Chinese relied on a large apparatus of officials who were appointed and paid by the state, Rome governed via a notoriously narrow pool of magistrates whose bureaucratic powers quintessentially built on the support of countless unsalaried local elites. Terpstra’s discussion of these differences departs from an analysis of how administrative rank and agency were expressed through clothing and other symbols of power. Prima facie minor aspects of the grand scheme of empire, the study of Sima Biao’s (third century CE) Treatise on Carriages and Robes, and On the Magistracies of the Roman State by John the Lydian (sixth century CE) offer exciting insight into the ways in which state power was conceived of and articulated throughout the empire. The chapter then segues into the question of state formation and the emergence of bureaucratic structures. Terpstra discloses how, in China, the thrust toward performance-based appointments and promotions preconditioned the rise of a professional bureaucratic corps, whereas the Romans, he argues, actively discouraged such a development. Both dispositions had eminent consequences for the longue durée of state power.

Russell opens the book with a plea for a new approach to the comparative study of ancient cities. Past scholars – with Rykwert as the foremost example – have pointed to claims in ancient Chinese and Roman literary materials that link cities with the cosmos. They have, furthermore, used these claims to argue that, in both ancient Rome and China, the idea of the city as a microcosmos is what led to what we might call ‘placemaking’, the process by which abstract space is made meaningful to humans. Rather than disproving these claims, Russell shows the limited reach of the literary materials. First, whatever the texts claim, real cities are never scaled-down models of the cosmos: whereas the texts may seek to imbue features of the human landscape with symbolic meaning, these are most often later ascriptions, explaining features of the city that have arisen for much more concrete, mundane reasons. Second, starting from the observation that both ancient China and ancient Rome are civilisations that take great pride in their past traditions, Russell shows how the theories that associate cities with cosmological ideas are, in fact, classicising constructions of a fairly late date (last two centuries BCE), part of a growing body of technical literature, that itself was spurred into being by the cultural and intellectual changes that attended Chinese unification and Roman imperial expansion. Thus, the similarities between Roman and Chinese cities turn out to hinge on highly abstract and relatively marginal concepts of space. By showing this, Russell frees up the field for a historical investigation of cities, not as spaces but as concrete, complex places with multiple and constantly evolving social meanings. This mode of investigation gets fully underway in subsequent chapters of the book.

This chapter explores the idea of gendered social performance through the texts of Plutarch and Sima Qian. Chandra Giroux investigates two categories of social performance in particular: friendship and authority, and death and grief. Both categories are approached from the perspective of each author’s own social performance in these scenarios as well as how they represent the social performance of women in them. Through an investigation of Plutarch’s and Sima Qian’s self-representations of their own social performances, she argues that both authors attempt to establish themselves as exemplary figures, ones that focus on the idea of the maintenance of harmony. In this way, Plutarch’s and Sima Qian’s actions are meant as a mirror for their readers’ own lives. In comparison, the chapter analyzes the examples of Timokleia and Timoxena in Plutarch’s corpus, as well as that of Nie Ying in Sima Qian’s work, to explore the authors’ notions of the ideal female reaction to friendship and authority, as well as that of death and grief. In this analysis, Giroux finds that both authors’ representations of women are based in the gender expectations of their respective societies. It is thus the differences between their cultures’ approaches to gender relations that dictate how Plutarch and Sima Qian understood the ideal female reaction to death, grief, friendship, and authority.

Martin Mohr’s chapter extends issues of urban space and infrastructure to the critical theme of Sacred Roads. It thus complements the chapters on neighborhoods, water supplies, and public gardens. Within the city and beyond its urban environment, roads have been both a facilitator of mobility and a conveyor of meaning at all times and in all cultures. Acknowledging the fundamental difference in the basic configuration of ancient Greek and Qin and Han Chinese societies, Mohr’s exploration of the significance of monumental roads emanates from the careful crafting of a meaningful matrix of comparison. He finds this in the typology of ancient societies as modelled in the works of Christoph Ulf; although tied to observations in the ancient Mediterranean, Mohr explains how the model is applicable to ancient worlds in general. Reliance on bureaucratic structures and techniques set Chinese building projects apart from the notoriously small scale of Greek roads. The question of physical disproportions set apart – note how Chang’an contained a monumental grid of multi-lane passage fares – the chapter demonstrates how the Direct Road, from Yunyang to Jiuyuan, was the religious and topographical backbone of Chinese society, much like sacred procession roads in ancient Greece, for instance on the island of Samos. In both cases, the purpose of reinforcing central strategies to establish physical connections between political and religious centres went hand in hand with the goal of achieving societal cohesion. The comparison concludes with further insight into regions between China and the Mediterranean, whose monumentally and ideologically inflated palatial cities once again accentuated an intriguing foil for the Greek example.

Zhou Yiqun, in her chapter, draws attention to the performance of power by rulers who, having won military victories, bring the surrendered foreigners into their territories. Both Emperor Wu and Nero entertained foreign ruling groups with elaborate performances that included, in the case of Nero, the emperor himself taking the stage and, in the case of Emperor Wu, an attempt to show how his country was able to best foreigners at their own forms of entertainment. Both emperors were severely criticized by their contemporaries, either for being too militaristic (Emperor Wu) or for failing to uphold Rome’s military values (Nero). Through a careful analysis of these two emperors’ performances involving foreigners (through the eyes of their critics), Zhou Yiqun manages to draw out important contrasts between Western Han and imperial Rome. Like Tian Tian, Zhou notices, in the case of Han China, a strong focus toward material things and monetary cost. Zhou locates this both in Emperor Wu’s motivations to engage with foreigners and in the historians’ critiques of these engagements, and attributes it to a near total lack of appreciation for the cultural achievements of the foreign places surrounding Han China. Nero, on the other hand, seems driven by a desire to absorb some of the cultural values and practices of Parthia and Greece, two places that Rome has subdued, and is therefore willing to defy Rome’s behavioral codes.

The chapters in this final part deal with places that permeate peripheries and accentuate endpoints – of individuals and of states. Their focus is, first, on how borders were experienced as markers of the confines of one civilization and zones of transition to another and, second, what types of performance were established to deal with the existential crisis of death. Alex McAuley begins with the discussion of the Hindu Kush region, typically considered a realm in between: at its most western stretches, the city of Ai Khanoum has been labelled an outpost of Hellenism, while in the east, the city of Dunhuang in today’s Gansu province is understood as a fringe settlement on the edges of the Western Han. Traditional views of centre and periphery highlight the remoteness of both sites from the cultural core of their civilization and the corresponding centres of political authority. McAuley, too, asserts that the cultural traditions of Ai Khanoum and Dunhuang were designed to stand out from their environments. He takes this distinction as indicative of a peculiar dynamic between imperial centre and periphery, and between place and political culture. Seleucids and Western Han established remarkably similar mechanisms to link distant reaches to their domain. McAuley explores two means in particular: the strengthening of imperial integration through urban connections and designs, and the establishing of dynastic networks that linked client kings to the central core. Prevailing orthodoxies view these measures from the centre. McAuley’s chapter distinguishes itself by bringing local experience on the periphery to life, that is, by demonstrating how the central regions of empire, around Chang’an and the Seleucid tetrapolis, were transported by these measures to the edge of empire, where they wielded their own dynamic in place – and whence they radiated back to the imperial court. Effectively, this chapter not only enriches perspectives on the Hellenistic world and Han China from the vantage point of the Hindu Kush but also demonstrates how the imperial frontiers of both civilizations overlapped in Central Asia, suggesting that the divide between East and West in antiquity is shrinking.

Neighborhoods are a universal feature of sedentary societies. Despite differences in meaning functionality, their inherent qualities derive from the sheer amount of lifetime individuals spend in them. In premodern societies, they often demarcate the radius of quotidian agency. Ryan Abrecht approaches the vibrant cities of Rome and Chang’an, microcosms of the respective empires they represented, through the decentered lens. In the shadow of polished public places, typically modeled to serve as monumental stages for the conduct and the performance of politics, he explores the lived experience in less shiny places of town. The academic quest for neighborhoods is not confined to archaeohistorical endeavors. Rather, turning to Henry Lefebvre’s groundbreaking work on rhythmnanalysis, Abrecht demonstrates the value of tracing daily patterns within cities – the places people navigate in their quotidian lives – and the sensory experience this generates among those who share a neighborhood space. In doing so, the article brings to life the perspective of tenants in insulae (“blocks”) and vici (“villages”), and in Chang’an residential districts respectively. Abrecht diagnoses a deep difference in neighborhood experience as such: Rome’s open community structures, with porous and permeable boundaries between vici, are contrasted with circumstances in Chang’an, where affiliations mattered more and were also regulated through official controls. The concluding discussion of poems from the Hanshu and Liu Yiqing reveals how corresponding patterns of behavior played out over time to shape unique neighborhood experiences and local cultures.

Death constitutes a deep life crisis to the living – depending on the departed, to families, communities, and societies. In this chapter, the author discusses the eminent strategies of overcoming this crisis, that is, funeral and burial practices, and the ritual sequences that connect the two. Both the Roman and the Chinese cases have received much scholarly attention. Armin Selbitschka’s chapter distinguishes itself through its comparative perspective and the theoretical charge with which it is enriched from performance theory and sociologies of place. In the study of each culture, careful consideration is given to the historical development across time. Embarking from conceptual debates on the disruption of the social order and the innate capacity of social performances to restore it, he discusses various practices revolving around the dead, including the preparation of the departed, funerary cortèges, and orations. The subsequent section extends the analysis to the inherent meaning of tombs – their place in the urban landscape, their commemorative force, and their embodiment of social hierarchies. In so doing, it reveals a curious spatial dynamics between the funeral’s beginning in the private sphere and its transition into the public arena. Due to the different configuration of public in Rome and in China, Selbitschka in conclusion makes visible the culture-specific traits in the performances that accompanied mourners on their way to the tomb and beyond, into a future where the social crisis of death was resolved, for the time being.

The last two chapters of this volume, appropriately, deal with endpoints in the form of tombs in ancient China and ancient Rome. Both chapters, however, make it abundantly clear that tombs should also be studied as points of beginning, namely, as sites where, through the performance of funerals and other rituals, the living renegotiated their own social relationships after a death in their community. Tian Tian’s contribution has a laser-sharp focus on burial money. Starting in Western Han, burial money featured prominently among other grave goods: huge quantities of money were hauled to the burial site – she speaks of two cartloads full in case of one elite tomb – to be subsequently, after a public reading of the funerary-objects lists, buried in the tomb. In Rome, burial coins spread together with the Roman empire, but never in quantities as large as in the case of Han tombs. Moreover, interpreting Roman burial coins remains difficult given that the explanation provided in literary sources (that the deceased needed one coin to successfully cross the River Styx to the underworld) is unsatisfactory to account for the richness of the archaeological record. (For Han China, the funerary-objects lists that were placed in the tomb really help when it comes to categorizing and interpreting the burial coins.) In the Roman case there is little evidence that money played a role in the way families sought to display their wealth and status as they publicly remembered their dead; in contrast, in Han China (and beyond) gifts of money by individuals or other families to the family of the deceased in order to defray funeral expenses were a prominent way to create and confirm communities; as Tian Tian reveals, local villagers even formed private associations (dan) especially for that purpose.

The second chapter in Part II (‘Performances of Power’) turns to a performative arena that is both fundamental to pre-modern societies and yet often forgotten – and that is particularly instructive for cross-cultural comparison. Darian Marie Totten discusses the organization of agricultural labour, not from an economic standpoint but with regards to its innate capacity to govern quotidian experience, endorse ideas of equality and inequality, and structure society. A similar avenue of inquiry is prevalent in Ryan R. Abrecht’s contribution on neighborhood encounters and the rhythm of social life (Chapter 7). In Totten’s take, labour, performed on elite estates and overseen by a court that claims ultimate superiority in knowledge and organizational skill, lies at the heart of social hierarchy and imperial statecraft. Building off theories of performance, the chapter first unravels the basic nexus of social reproduction and discrete agricultural activities – the communication of knowledge, its cyclical application and transmission into a structured workflow, among others. Resonance with real life, inevitably so, shapes and defines different social strata that are discussed in the chapter’s main section: the imperial court and elite landowners, estate managers, free and unfree tenants, and/or slaves. For each of these, Totten displays an ingenious investigative sense that makes voices heard and explores agencies, privileged and underprivileged alike. The bulk of evidence for the comparative study of context in Han China and the Roman Empire is of a literary nature, the Book of Han the Book of Later Han, Monthly Ordinances of the Four Seasons and the agricultural writings of Cato, Columella, and Varro, which figure prominently throughout. At the same time, Totten draws on the visual language of coinage, mosaics, and murals that signalled a forceful message to their ancient audiences: that agricultural performance was critical to the creation of the social cohesion around them. In conclusion, the chapter places its findings into communications between imperial ideology and its translation into the local horizon. Han Chinese and Roman culture relied heavily on agrarian activity, both economically and performatively. While both established similar practices in the amassing of resources, the performance of agricultural labour, argues Totten, followed rather divergent trajectories, with profound ramifications for the experience of empire.

The sites of Vindolanda in Great Britain and Jianshui Jinguan, present-day Gansu, have produced exciting paleographic evidence pertaining to the borders of the Roman and the Han Chinese empires, respectively. Archaeological excavations at both sites have brought to light many written sources, on inscribed thin tablets and strips of locally available woods, that cast a spotlight on what their authors associated with their assignment in the fringes of empire. Imperfect analogues as these two locations are, rich in cultural idiosyncrasy, Charles Sanft undertakes a comparative analysis that brings both data sets into close conceptual conversation. He begins his discussion with observations on the abstract nature of ancient borders: neither tangible nor “real,” borders were, Sanft argues, a projection of culturally encoded imaginaries. Following this investigative vein, he then explores the spatial essence of Roman and Han Chinese borders. Before turning to the actual sites and documents, Sanft reminds his audience of the convoluted relation between space and place; the latter is understood as a local environment that can be experienced by individuals who are, in turn, aware of the distinct experience of place. The examination of the Vindolanda tablets and Jianshui Jinguan reveals an absence of this type of experience from the written records; hence, the imagination of border postings does not find articulation in terms of experience. Sanft translates this discovery into extensive and indeed paramount conclusions on the Roman and the Han Chinese understanding of borderlands, which was subject to imaginations of far-flung imperial spaces rather than actual engagements with place.