This book is one the newest instalments in the series Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Editing a companion to Roman Italy is a task which has specific challenges and few precedents. The only book of the series which is dedicated to an ancient region is the Companion to Ancient Macedonia, edited by J. Roisman and I. Worthington (2010), but the volume under review set itself a more difficult task, in so far as the aim is to explore the impact of Rome on Italy, without focusing on Rome itself, on which plenty more has been written. It would have been similar if the editors of the Companion to Ancient Macedonia had chosen to study ancient Macedonia without focusing on Macedonian monarchy, shifting the focus from political agency to subtle processes of cultural history. Another difficulty of the task at hand is the risk of teleological reconstructions of Roman Italy as the inevitable outcome of the greatness of Rome, which was also the perspective of many of our most important literary sources on the topic. To what extent, then, can the history of Roman Italy be distinguished and separated from the history of Rome?

The book opens with an introductory chapter by E. Isayev, ‘Italy before the Romans’, which effectively synthetises current debates on cultural change in pre-Roman Italy, and advocates the antiquity and the complex stratification of different concepts of Italy. This is followed by a section entitled ‘The Impact of Rome – Unification and Integration’, comprising seven chapters, meant to provide a historical narrative of the Italian peninsula from the Mid-Republican period to Late Antiquity. R. Scopacasa analyses ‘Rome's Encroachment on Italy’ in the Middle Republic, advocating a greater degree of political agency by local Italian communities in the construction of Roman hegemony, in contrast to the narratives of ancient historiography, focused on the greatness of Rome. In Chapter 3, ‘Italy and the Greek East, Second Century bc’, C.E. Schultz considers the impact on Italy of the conquest of the Greek East. She brings together many different perspectives (cultural, economic, political, religious) and argues that traditional, simplistic narratives of the Hellenisation of Rome and Italy – seeing Hellenised Romans in charge of bringing Greek culture to the rest of Italy – should be rejected. In Chapters 4 and 5, ‘The Social War’ and ‘The Civil Wars and the Triumvirate’, E. Bispham attempts to strike a balance between the revisionist approach proposed by H. Mouritsen in his fundamental monograph on the history of this period (Italian Unification: a Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography [1998]) and more traditional reconstructions, arguing that issues of political rights (including enfranchisement) must have been at the forefront of the motives of the Italians. Chapters 6 and 7, ‘Coming to Terms with Dynastic Power, 30 bc–ad 69’ and ‘Italy during the High Empire, from the Flavians to Diocletian’, written by the editor, are dedicated to the history of Italy in the early Imperial period. C. mostly focuses on personal interventions of emperors, arguing that the region was the object of a progressive ‘provincialization’, in which the peninsula gradually lost its privileged status to become just one province among the others. In the final chapter of this section, ‘Late Roman and Late Antique Italy: from Constantine to Justinian’, N. Christie focuses mostly on economic and cultural changes in the Italian countryside.

Part 2, ‘Local and Regional Diversity’, includes a first sub-section on cultural diversity. This starts with Chapter 9 by E.-J. Graham and V.M. Hope on ‘Funerary Practices’. The authors argue that funerary practices are important because they reveal social structures and hierarchies, individual and group identity and are a way of representing social memory. The chapter offers a useful survey of types of evidence on funerary practices and related activities. In Chapter 10, ‘Diversity in Architecture and Urbanism’, M.L. Laird analyses civic and sacred architecture and city planning during key periods of social change. She argues that beyond a layer of common architectural forms and patterns of urbanism, one can recognise substantial regional differences promoted by local elites. Next, K. Lomas focuses on ‘Language and Literacy in Roman Italy’ and, in particular, on the factors leading to the diffusion of Latin and the gradual extinction of the other languages of Italy – except for Greek, which flourished in the Imperial period as a language of culture and prestige. The next sub-section, on ‘Greek Italy’, includes two chapters, both authored by K. Lomas, on Roman Naples and on Magna Graecia. For Naples in particular she underlines the importance of the concept of cultural hybridity of Greek, Campanian and Roman elements. She thinks that it is unclear whether the evidence for Greek culture in Imperial Naples shows any real continuity with the Greek past of the city or whether it is rather a revival based on the prestige of the Greek language. The chapter on Magna Graecia aims at contrasting ancient narratives of economic and cultural decline of the region during the Roman period, mainly derived from Cicero and Strabo. Chapter 14, ‘The Changing Face of Cisalpine Identity’ by C. Ando, forms the third and final sub-section of Part 2. Ando masterfully shows that the region was given different characterisations and identities (from Gaul to Roman) by a variety of media and agents, including myth, historiography and law.

Part 3, ‘Town and Country’, includes sub-sections on ‘Settlement Patterns’ and ‘Case-studies of Towns and their Territories’. The first includes chapters on urbanisation, urban peripheries and villas, by J. Berry, P.J. Goodman and N. Pollard respectively. Berry argues for a relative uniformity of urban shapes, including the types of buildings that each city was expected to have. Goodman focuses on the difficulty of defining suburban space in contrast to rural space, in the absence of a physical boundary, and argues that certain structures (sanctuaries in particular) were located outside of the city walls but functionally connected to them. Pollard questions the distinctions between different types of villas, arguing that the phenomenon of villa construction was rather uniform – although with multiple facets – and villas were places for both otium and negotium. The second sub-section includes case studies on the Tiber valley by S. Keay and M. Millet, on Cosa by E. Fentress and P. Perkins, on Pompeii by R. Laurence and on Ostia by J. DeLaine. The differences in urban development in these case studies are most striking, and all authors strongly warn against their generalisation, even in cases where the cities under consideration were very closely interconnected (e.g. the Tiber valley).

The fourth and final part is on ‘Economy and Society’. In Chapter 22, R.R. Benefiel discusses ‘Regional Interaction’, using epigraphic evidence of calendars with itinerant markets (nundinarii) and advertisements of gladiatorial games, arguing that there were several occasions on which a significant number of people would have travelled across a region. In Chapter 23, ‘Agricultural Production in Roman Italy’, R. Witcher challenges reconstructions of ancient agriculture based on literary texts and re-values the importance of animal husbandry and plants other than the so-called Mediterranean Triad (cereals, olives and wine). The two final chapters on ‘Local Elites’ and ‘Sub-Elites’, by J.R. Patterson and J.S. Perry respectively, show two complementary stances on social mobility in Italy, with Patterson arguing that vertical mobility was essential to the functioning of the allied (and later municipal) system, whereas Perry argues that membership of professional associations and Augustales created the illusion of vertical mobility, but only reinforced the structural solidity and the social hegemony of the aristocracy.

The book does a good job at fulfilling what is an inherently difficult task, for the reasons outlined at the beginning of this review. Edited books such as this typically lack a unifying and coherent perspective, but I found the diversity of views expressed by the authors, evident from the summary of the chapters, of great advantage. I have two general points and a minor observation to make. The first issue, which emerges from several chapters, is the question of political and social agency. To what extent was Roman Italy constructed by the Romans, and to what extent by the Italians? The authors take various stances on this question, but there seems to be a general tendency to give a healthy degree of agency to the Italians, which contrasts Romano-centric reconstructions. If Roman Italy is represented as the set of interrelated processes of cultural change, and if Italians are given a high degree of agency in these processes, it follows that the crucial transition between pre-Roman and Roman Italy should have been given perhaps more consideration. The second general point, partially connected to the first, regards the implications of unsettling established historiographical reconstructions, which is another recurring theme in this companion. While many of the chapters successfully challenge traditional reconstructions, frequently based on ancient literary sources, a radically new narrative of Italian history struggles to emerge from the pages of the volume. This is perhaps because the fragmentation of analysis inherent in a Companion does not allow the development of a coherent, refreshing view of the subject matter, and unsettling established narratives entails the positive consequence of creating the potential for further reflection. Finally, I found the selection of case studies very good, although I think that the section on cultural diversity would have greatly benefited from the inclusion of at least one chapter regarding a region linguistically or culturally closer to Rome (Etruria, Samnium, Umbria, even Latium?). Focusing on Greek Italy and Cisalpine Gaul only gives the misleading impression that other parts of Italy were less culturally diverse.

The book is highly recommended for its impressive, updated overview of a vast subject matter, which will benefit undergraduate students approaching ancient Italy for the first time and will serve as an excellent introduction to the curious reader. The volume is carefully produced and includes several images, maps and ample bibliographies.