This book is about the citizens of Antioch in Syria. Kristina M. Neumann investigates the production of coins at Antioch from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity, but the unifying thread is the exploration of the agency of the citizens of Antioch. N. has chosen an excellent subject in which to investigate civic agency. Antioch was the metropolis of Syria, founded by the Seleucids and thriving through to Late Antiquity. It was the capital of Seleucid Syria, seat of the Roman governors and later a major Christian centre. Coins were minted by different authorities: citizens, kings and emperors as well as provincial officials. Different authorities, which often minted at the same time, had different intentions and their coinages served specific functions within the local and eastern Mediterranean contexts. This means that the interconnectedness of these coinages allows us to construct a differentiated picture of various political agencies. One way to look at the coinages would be an analysis of the iconography and the messages on the coins. That is not, however, the focus of N.'s book, which instead takes a quantitative approach aimed at reconstructing the agencies and impact of the various minting authorities.

The statistical basis is a database of about 300.000 coins, compiled from stray finds and hoards from Antioch and from other places in the ancient world where Antiochene coins were found. These robust data allow N. to explore the frequency and distribution of Antiochene coins via an Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA). This method can be described as a commonsensical approach by which data is analysed according to a wide array of spatial and temporal research questions and plotted on graphs and distribution maps. In an appendix to her book, the method is described in detail. The data are assigned to five periods of investigation: 1) 300–129 b.c.e., the heyday of the Seleucid empire; 2) 129–31 b.c.e., encompassing the disintegration of the Seleucid empire and the Roman conquest; 3) 31 b.c.e.–c.e. 192, the Roman imperial period to the Antonines; 4) c.e. 192–284, the ‘Third Century’; and 5) c.e. 284–450, Late Antiquity.

The EDA approach provides the reader with a wealth of robust observations concerning specific agencies of minting, of which I can outline only the most important. For 300–129 b.c.e., N. underlines how the Seleucid rulers first used Antioch as an important Levantine mint for silver and bronze and minted royal coins with royal imagery. What is remarkable, however, is that at the same time the citizens of Antioch started minting their own bronze coinage which can be understood as a self-conscious expression of civic agency. These civic coins were not, however, as widespread as the royal bronzes, either in Antioch or in the wider region. The diminishment of Seleucid control in the next period, 129–31 b.c.e., allowed more scope for the agency of the civic body of Antioch. The civic bronzes became more important in a regional perspective, while the citizens of Antioch navigated through turbulent times by negotiating with external powers such as Tigranes II of Armenia and the Romans and their Antiochene coinages. In the first two centuries of the Roman imperial period, 31 b.c.e.–c.e. 192, the Romans had to come to terms with the citizens of Antioch, and provincial tetradrachms and provincial bronze coins were minted in addition to civic bronzes. The provincial bronzes were a unique phenomenon, intended to circulate in the larger region. N. is able to disentangle this mélange and show how the provincial administration interacted with the citizens of Antioch and how and where the coinages were used in the region and in the broader Middle East. In the ‘Third Century’ (c.e. 192–284), the Roman imperial coinage became more and more important, first with Roman imperial denarii minted at Antioch and later with the so-called Antoninianii, also minted at Antioch. These imperial silver coins with imperial messages became most widespread, but there was also a local civic response, since civic bronze coins became larger and were more widely used than provincial bronzes. In Late Antiquity (c.e. 284–450), the imperial coinage (minted at Antioch) became ever more dominant and the citizens of Antioch became less visible in numismatic testimonies. This does not, however, mean that the civic pride of the citizens of Antioch was lost, as N. shows on the basis of literary sources, but rather that coins were no longer the appropriate medium in which to express it, because of the eventual imperial streamlining of the organisation of minting.

The book is well written and learned, presenting up-to-date discussions of specific numismatic research questions and of the historical context and cultural profile of the given periods. It is an indispensable contribution to the study of Antioch in a longue durée perspective. The EDA approach is a fresh and innovative approach to analysing numismatic data. This book deserves many readers and it is hoped that more such studies will be undertaken, although one probably has to admit that Antioch is unique in the number of minting authorities; it would be hard to write the same book for other cities.