This work is an excellent collection of essays examining the concept of “citizenship” in the towns of the Roman Empire during its later stages—the period of Late Antiquity, the sub-Roman period, the Byzantine East, and medieval towns. There have been many volumes concerning this topic in recent years; the editors, however, have a more nuanced view of what citizenship and identity meant to Roman and post-Roman citizens, a view which moves far beyond the idealization of the Greek polis model of democracy that used to be the dominant discourse. The effect of the changes to Roman citizenship of the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 CE are also underplayed.

The editors have gathered a group of authors whose collected articles provide a varied and fascinating account of how the concept of “citizenship” and civic identity changed over the period looked at and how infinite were the ways in which the citizens of the late Roman empire and the early Medieval period defined themselves in relation to their identity, context, and civic situation. Claudia Rapp, in her incisive conclusion, reinforces this. The extensive use of epigraphic evidence is one of the ways in which this book differs from others. This is a specialist volume but one that should interest quite a wide range of readers.

After a thorough introduction, the first two chapters cover Roman and Greek town civic structures during the first to third centuries CE. Part II covers the period of Late Antiquity, Part III the redefining of identity and citizenship in the post-Roman world, and Part IV civic identity in the early Middle Ages. I would like to mention two articles in particular. Ralph Mathisen's “Personal Identity in the Later Roman Empire” uses epigraphic evidence widely and demonstrates that during the Late Antique period, individuals referred to themselves in a wide range of ways, for example, as gens, origo, and natio when describing their civic identity. Second, the article by Anthony Kaldellis, “Civic Identity and Civic Participation in Constantinople,” demonstrates how the populus of Constantinople could manipulate and control events in spite of living in an imperial autocracy.