This chapter summarizes and brings together all the work conducted in the book. It offers an answer to the original question concerning what it meant to be Assyrian in the second millennium bce and how this changed over time.

This chapter develops the theory of social categories, a new theoretical framework that offers a universal prism through which to understand all social groups. The theory builds on work in social psychology and sociology.

During the second and third centuries AD, recruitment in the Roman army brought many Palmyrenes from their home city to various parts of the Roman Mediterranean and its hinterland. Military recruitment brought them to Dacia and Numidia in particular, but a famously well-documented unit of Palmyrenes was stationed at Dura-Europos on the Middle Euphrates. Most Palmyrene soldiers served in units of the auxilia or numeri, and many of these then settled in the regions in which they had served. Their descendants could be found in the same regions generations later. As Palmyrene soldiers and their descendants faced varied degrees of dispersal and isolation from their compatriots, they endured diverse pressures to assimilate. They also witnessed their ancestral divinities being adopted by fellow soldiers, military collectives or networks and local populations. Did Palmyrenes maintain social or cognitive links to their ancestral homeland under such circumstances? Did they conceive of themselves as part of a broader, dispersed Palmyrene community even as they became enmeshed in local ones? This chapter address such questions.

9.1 [603] So then, by taking up our shield a longside the doctrines of the truth with the utmost endurance, so it seems to me, we have held our own against the nonsensical words of those who know only how to disparage our doctrines.1 But because our opponent bears down upon the ineffable glory with all his sails unfurled and dares, as it were, to lead forth his profane ideas in unbearable assaults, expending his most effective resources on the task of stripping the nature of God the Father of his progeny and stripping the true Son, who came from his nature, of his hypostasis2 (for he does away with his existence and engages in such extremely perilous undertakings), come now, “putting on the breastplate of justice,” while also lifting up “the shield of faith” and whetting against him “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,”3 let us show that he is a liar and in his extreme arrogance all but kicks against the goads4 and leaps down into the deep pit of destruction.5 [604]

1 The successes of your holy empire are noteworthy, remarkable, and cannot be expressed in words, and the incomparability of your piety, which is like an inheritance come to you from above, you have successfully defended from the arrows of envy, thanks to the skill in all things excellent that you received from your father and also your grandfather,1 as is obvious in this instance.2

Sacra: Letter omicron, concerning conceit and appearance, and that being is better than seeming; for this is a hindrance to virtue2

To understand the integration of Palmyra in the wider system of the Roman Empire and Mediterranean societies, this study will follow the paths of individuals between their place of origin and different Mediterranean locations. Palmyrenes in the Mediterranean were traders, soldiers or craftsmen, and their itineraries have to be integrated in a more complex picture. The personal names and the use of Palmyrene Aramaic generally testify to individuals of Palmyrene origin. If the routes are beyond our evidence, it is often possible to understand the relationships of those individuals with the populations around them and their local integration.

The concept of leadership has not received much attention in Assyriology as it was overshadowed by the concept of kingship and its omnipresence in ancient Mesopotamia. As the available sources mostly are written from the perspective of the leader – in the case of ancient Mesopotamia this is the king or the city ruler – also Assyriologists mostly took this standpoint and wrote ‘history from above’. Much scholarly effort was invested in the study of various aspects of kingship. Because of the scarceness of sources discussing the experience of the ruler’s leadership and the abundance of royal inscriptions, we usually do not take the perspective – to use a widespread political metaphor – of the sheep, but only that of the shepherd. Nevertheless, there are some texts that critic the leadership of kings. These texts are mostly of literary nature but they allow us at least a partial ‘view from below’, as they describe the problems of people living under a powerful king.

Cyril of Alexandria was a central figure in many of the theological developments and religious conflicts that challenged the stability of the fifth-century eastern Roman Empire. Crucial moments during his episcopacy (412–44) marking wider and more complex developments may be seen with sharp clarity in the outbreaks of overt violence between Christians and Jews and between Christians and “pagans” in the metropolis of Alexandria during the first years of his episcopal career. Moreover, roughly halfway through his tenure as bishop, he would involve himself in a doctrinal dispute underway in the eastern capital of Constantinople, opposing its bishop Nestorius because he believed the truth of the gospel was dangerously undermined by what he took to be Nestorius’ errant Christology. Through the savvy manipulation of ecclesiastical and imperial politics, Cyril succeeded in having Nestorius deposed by the Council of Ephesus in 431, though it took eighteenth months of negotiations to restore communion between the warring factions.

The chapter is focused on the Palmyrene Tariff (CIS II.3913), a lengthy bilingual text in Aramaic and Greek promulgated in the city in AD 137 to regularize local taxation, i.e. taxes on goods entering and leaving the city which originate within its immediate vicinity, and on trades being plied within the city, not taxes on long-distance trade. Attention is given to the book on the Tariff by Ilia Sholeimovich Shifman, published in Russian in 1980 and republished in English in 2014, and to the publications of Michał Gawlikowski (2012, 2014) on the original location of the Tariff stone opposite a shrine devoted to Rab-Asīrē and close to the Agora. The respective roles of Greek and Aramaic are explored, including the question of which had priority in the drawing up of the Tariff. The sources and composition of the text are analysed with reference to the role played by earlier Roman authorities. A final section considers the position of tax collectors in Palmyrene society and the light which the Tariff can throw on life in Roman Syria.

Palmyra is usually studied for one of three reasons, either its role in the long-distance trade between Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, its distinctive cultural identity as visible in the epigraphic and material record from the city or its rise as an independent regional power in the Near East in the third quarter of the third century AD. While Palmyra was indeed a special place, with a private sorte, or destiny of its own, as Pliny famously expressed it (HN 5.88), the city’s ability to maintain its distinctiveness arguably rested on deep entanglements with her local and regional surroundings. This chapter addresses how the city engaged with its neighbours and its Roman imperial overlords. Actions, events and policies attested in the epigraphic record from the city and from the Palmyrene diaspora in the Roman Empire are discussed in light of theoretical insights from archaeology, sociology and economics. It is argued that Palmyra’s remarkable success built on the city’s ability to connect with the range of social networks that constituted the Roman Empire.

A prevalent idea in scholarship on Athenian politics of the classical period is the assumption, based on figures like Pericles and Demosthenes, that political leadership depended on the ability to give good advice and communicate well with fellow citizens in the Council and Assembly. Without necessarily challenging this assumption, the present chapter focuses on a mechanism for attaining political leadership that has received less attention: gift-giving to both individual citizens and the entire community. Athenians with political ambitions built networks of followers (clients) through private gifts, but the phenomenon has not been fully appreciated because of the supposition that nothing comparable to the Roman patron/client relationship existed in the Greek polis. This chapter focuses on the case of Demosthenes.