[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
This book is the result of a two-day conference held at the University of Exeter in 2021. The title page states that “this volume introduces the notion of ‘stranger-kingship’ to the field of ancient history and evaluates its use as a new way of thinking about kingship as a political, social, and cultural phenomenon”.
The starting point of this book is the theory of stranger-kingship, as defined by the American cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (‘The stranger-king or Dumézil among the Fijians’, in The Journal of Pacific History 16 [1981], pp. 107-132, and in other publications thereafter). The book’s editors, Henry Anderson, Julius Guthrie and Emma Nicholson, clearly explain the concept in the introductory chapter. According to Sahlins’ idea, a stranger-king is a king who is a foreigner to his subjects, in the ethnic, geographical or cultural sense. In the most extreme cases the stranger-king might even be divine or be able to communicate with the gods. This is related to immanentist thinking, prevalent also in antiquity before Christianity, according to which gods and humans interacted on the same plane of existence. Sahlins calls this ‘cosmic polity’. The stories of stranger-kings are not always strictly historical but include myths or legends.
An essential element of the model is that the people whom the stranger-king rules must have local origins. The stories of stranger-kings often include some type of disruptive element. For example, the king might use violence to seize power upon arrival or disrupt the social order in some other way. Essential to the model of stranger-kinship is that the tension between the ruler and the ruled, or the external and the internal, never fades completely, despite the attempts at restoring harmony, e.g., through marriage to a local woman. For examples from antiquity, one could think of Aeneas or Alexander the Great.
This book discusses Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman typologies of kingship or sole rulership. The editors note that despite the many different categories of kingship in different times and places, enough common ground exists to allow the examination of ancient kingship as a single phenomenon. They write that “this volume aims, then, to offer a series of studies which test the validity of the anthropological theory of stranger-kingship as a universal phenomenon and explore whether it can be applied to antiquity and still retain its efficacy” (p. 12).
The introduction of the book anticipates that the theory of stranger-kingship does not fit well with many rulers in antiquity. In fact, even in the best cases, the examples studied in this volume fit the model only partially. This might sound discouraging, but I must agree with the editors who state: “As with any anthropological framework, therefore, the stranger-king theory is not a key that fits all locks; nevertheless, it proves a fruitful and useful tool through which to further the study of ancient monarchies” (p. 14).
In chapter 2 titled ‘Strangers and Chameleons: On Hellenistic Kings’, Benedikt Eckhardt examines Hellenistic kingship from the perspective of the stranger-kingship theory. He starts by observing that, even though Sahlins’ stranger-kingship model can be applied to Hellenistic kingship, there are many incompatibilities. Eckhardt notes that Hellenistic kingship has already been examined using various theories and models, and his main concern in this chapter is to consider whether the stranger-kingship model can contribute anything new and useful.
Eckhardt does this by comparing the stranger-kingship theory to three other well-known theories that have been used to explain Hellenistic kingship: ‘Chameleon kings’, ‘Charismatic kings’, and ‘Divine kings’, followed by the fourth ‘Native kings’ model that applies more specifically to post-Hellenistic monarchic formations in the Near East. Hellenistic kingship itself is difficult to define and underwent various phases in different eras and places. For this reason, different models may apply well to some specific cases, but none fit well with the whole phenomenon. This is also the case with the stranger-kingship model. Eckhardt argues that the model comports well with the transition phase from Hellenistic to post-Hellenistic era, but that on the general level it does not explain Hellenistic kingship any better that the other models. Nonetheless, the final verdict (and a sentiment that in my opinion applies to the whole book) is that “fragments of the stranger-king model – certain lines of argument, or even just figures of thought – can help us question what we already know, and reveal gaps in the models we most commonly use” (p. 28).
This chapter does not focus on any single Hellenistic king but successfully manages to discuss the complicated phenomenon on the general, theoretical level. Citing essential earlier studies, the chapter offers a very useful comparison and synthesis of different possible models and how the stranger-kingship model could fit into the bigger picture. This chapter’s position right after the introduction is appropriate, as it provides an overview of the current Hellenistic kingship theories while applying the stranger-kingship model. The book’s remaining six chapters are more limited case studies and are divided into two sections titled ‘Individuals’ and ‘Groups’.
Starting with the first section, in chapter 3 titled ‘King, Emperor, or Princeps: Augustus as a Stranger-King in Early Imperial Rome?’, Amber Gartell examines whether Augustus’ representation of himself as the princeps fits Sahlins’ stranger-king model. Gartell’s examination is commendably systematic and thorough, but the conclusion is that Augustus does not fit the model in any way except in his divine alterity, stemming from his divine descent and his closeness to gods such as Apollo. This was not unique to Augustus, of course, but the Julio-Claudians after him followed the same pattern.
Chapter 4, ‘Clearchus of Heraclea Pontica as Stranger-King: Power, Religion and Tyranny on the Black Sea’, by Marcaline J. Boyd focuses on tyrant Clearchus I, the founder of the Clearchid dynasty in 364-3 BCE. Clearchus I has usually been studied through an anti-tyrannical lens and considered a typical extravagant tyrant. The purpose of this chapter is to find out whether the stranger-king model can provide a different perspective. Boyd convincingly finds many concordances between Clearchus’ rule and the stranger-kingship theory, especially in the way the tyrant posed as divine. Boyd perceptively connects the case to the wider Greek context: “we can begin to reconceptualise Clearchus’ behaviour not as the actions of an out-of-touch and megalomaniac ruler, but as part and parcel of the practises and approaches utilised by other sole rulers from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period” (p. 56).
Chapter 5 ‘The Accession of Marcian and his Marriage to Pulcheria Viewed through the Stranger-King Paradigm’ by Henry Anderson focuses on Marcian, a military commander who became the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire in 450 CE. Anderson argues inter alia that the stranger-king model can be fruitfully applied to Marcian because of his marriage with the late emperor Theodosian II’s devout sister Aelia Pulcheria, who had made a vow of chastity. Through the marriage, Marcian gained legitimacy and Pulcheria’s sacral power. This is another well-argued case where the stranger-king paradigm, with some adjustments, can add nuance to our prior understanding.
The last three chapters belong to the second section of the book dealing with ‘Groups’. In chapter 6 titled ‘The Cypselids, Stranger-Kingship, and the Immanent Limits of Greek Political Thinking’, Julius Guthrie examines the Cypselid dynasty that was founded by Cypselus, the first tyrant of Corinth in the 7th century BCE. This is one of the most interesting chapters of the book because it expands what could have been a simple case study into a much wider argument about the development of Greek political and religious thinking down to the 4th century BCE. Guthrie states that it is impossible to know anything historical about the Cypselids, but the different versions of the legend still provide valuable information about the world in which these stories were created.
Guthrie not only examines the Cypselids through the stranger-king model, but also compares the model with the “loimos schema” (i.e., the stories of expelled members of ruling families who later return and seize power, often violently, as defined by Daniel Ogden in The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece [London 1997]) and with tyrant stories in the context of the change in Greek political thinking from the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE. In this way, the chapter uses the stranger-king theory and the legends of the Cypselids as a starting point in order to examine the development of the concept of sole rulers and their relationship with gods. It reaches the conclusion that during this period, “the debate about sole rulership in the Greek world underwent a profound shift that reflected the rise of the assembly and law as the governing factors of political life” (p. 96). Guthrie also cautiously challenges the popular theory of the Axial Age in the Greek world, arguing that the immanent worldview did not completely become replaced by second-order thinking.
In chapter 7, titled ‘Hecataeus, Manetho, and the Ptolemies as Stranger-Kings of Egypt’, Marc Gehrmann studies the beginning of the Ptolemaic rule in Egypt and how Theban priests instrumentalized the foreignness of rulers to serve their own interests. Gehrmann examines three textual sources and concludes that Sahlins’ model of stranger-kingship does not apply well to this situation. Nonetheless, Gehrmann uses the example to argue that the Egyptian society in this period has often been seen too uniformly, not taking into consideration the diverging interests and statuses of different areas and societal groups. As an anthropological model, the framework of stranger-kingship examines social groups—instead of cultural groups such as ‘Hellenistic’ or ‘Egyptian’—and thus, in this case, it can be useful in revealing “fragments of a discourse that lies hidden just beneath the polished surface of Egyptian uniformity” (p. 115).
In the last chapter 8, titled ‘Waiting for the Barbarians? The Notion of the Stranger-King among the Ostrogoths and Visigoths’, Andrew T. Fear examines the establishment of the Visigoth kingdom in Iberia and Southern Gaul, and the Ostrogoth kingdom in Italy. Fear analyses how kings such as Theoderic the Great (493–526 CE) or Theoderic II (453–466 CE) negotiated between Gothic and local traditions, and between Arian and Trinitarian faiths, in their self-representation. The chapter makes an interesting comparison between the Visigoth and Ostrogoth kingdoms but remains a bit superficial because Fear does not engage with Sahlins’ stranger-king model and previous scholarship as actively as the other authors of this book.
To conclude, this book is a worthwhile interdisciplinary experiment in which the authors valiantly try to apply the anthropological model of stranger-kingship, as defined by Marshall Sahlins, to Graeco-Roman antiquity. At first glance, the table of contents might seem to present a random collection of unconnected case studies from archaic Greece to late antiquity. Upon closer inspection, however, the stranger-king model serves as a strong common thread for all the chapters. Often the results are slightly disappointing—the model does not apply well to many rulers and groups of the ancient world. Still, even in the most ‘unsuccessful’ cases the chapters manage to provide new nuance and perspectives to many old questions about sole rulership, political thinking, and religious beliefs in antiquity. In some cases, however (especially Eckhardt [ch. 2], Boyd [ch. 4] and Guthrie [ch. 6]), the authors manage to use the stranger-kingship model to create particularly interesting comparisons with other models and to reveal some significant gaps or weaknesses in our prior understanding. After this first foray, it remains to be seen what else the stranger-kingship model can contribute to the field of ancient history. In any case, this book will be a stimulating and useful read for anyone specializing in the study of soler rulership in antiquity.
Authors and Titles
- Introduction, Henry Anderson, Julius Guthrie, and Emma Nicholson
- Strangers and Chameleons: On Hellenistic Kings, Benedikt Eckhardt
Section 1: Individuals
- King, Emperor, or Princeps: Augustus as a Stranger-King in Early Imperial Rome?, Amber Gartrell
- Clearchus of Heraclea Pontica as Stranger-King: Power, Religion and Tyranny on the Black Sea, Marcaline J. Boyd
- The Accession of Marcian and his Marriage to Pulcheria Viewed through the Stranger-King Paradigm, Henry Anderson
Section 2: Groups
- The Cypselids, Stranger-Kingship, and the Immanent Limits of Greek Political Thinking, Julius Guthrie
- Hecataeus, Manetho, and the Ptolemies as Stranger-Kings of Egypt, Marc Gehrmann
- Waiting for the Barbarians? The Notion of the Stranger-King among the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, Andrew T. Fear