Priene ellenistico-romana: fattori di continuità o dinamiche di trasformazione?

Mauro Corsaro’s in-depth analysis of the epigraphic documentation of Priene concerning the relationships between royal and city land and the political-legal categories of the subjects residing there constitutes the starting point for a re-examination of the evidence – literary, epigraphic, numismatic and archaeological – on the Ionian city between the late Hellenistic and the Imperial age. The available data allow not only to ‘rebalance’ the perspective – already followed by Michail Rostovtzeff and destined to weigh heavily on subsequent historiography – inclined to detect a substantial ‘latency’ of Priene in the centuries of Roman rule, but also to grasp the concrete dynamics of transformation of the city of Asia Minor, which in fact played political, cultural and religious roles of considerable importance and fulfilled economic and commercial functions that were far from negligible.