The bleak steppe and rolling highlands of inner Anatolia were one of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of the Roman empire. Still today, for most historians of the Roman world, ancient Phrygia largely remains terra incognita. Yet thanks to a startling abundance of Greek and Latin inscriptions on stone, the cultural history of the villages and small towns of Roman Phrygia is known to us in vivid and unexpected detail. Few parts of the Mediterranean world offer so rich a body of evidence for rural society in the Roman Imperial and late antique periods, and for the flourishing of ancient Christianity within this landscape. The eleven essays in this book offer new perspectives on the remarkable culture, lifestyles, art and institutions of the Anatolian uplands in antiquity.

Peter Thonemann is Forrest-Derow Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History, Wadham College, Oxford. He is the author of The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium (2011), the winner of the Anglo-Hellenic League's prestigious Runciman Prize 2012 and co-author (with Simon Price) of The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (2010). His most recent book is an edited collection of essays on Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations and the State (2013).