This chapter investigates the nature of the relations between the rules of professional associations and the shaping of community values in early Roman Egypt.

The abundance of private and voluntary associations was a key characteristic of the Roman world, in the West and in the East, during the late Republic and the High Empire.1 Most of the time, those communities were called collegia, corpora or sodalicia and their social recruitment was rooted in the urban plebs, the plebeians.2 From a certain point of view, they were very diverse. Indeed, their specific names suggested that their members decided to unite for different reasons: because they had the same occupation, the same geographical origin or the same devotion to a specific god, for instance. Nevertheless, they were usually engaged in very similar activities. All of them were religious associations.

Associations were variably anchored in space and place.1 Being active in different spheres of life, associations carved their own space into the urban fabric or in the countryside to accommodate their multifaceted activities. Associations were emplaced in civic, sacred and funerary space, enriching and expanding it through their dedicatory, honorific, religious and commemorative practices.2 In these respects, their activities informed the built environment, which in turn framed social interaction.

Obviously, this is not the place to argue about the impact of the description on Demosthenes’ rhetorical strategy.2 The passage is significant in another, rather neglected, respect. It reflects the ambience created by these kaloi thiasoi, ‘brilliant groups’, an atmosphere of hustle and buzzes. It is exactly this sense of thorybos conveyed by the passage that interests me. Similar thorybos may be behind the decision of the deme of Piraeus to ban groups of worshippers convening outside the Thesmophorion in Piraeus, except on certain festival days.3 Thorybos (that is, cheers, shouts, heckling and laughter) was an essential feature of social activity in the ancient Greek world. Quite apart the religious sphere, several scholars emphasised the role of thorybos in the working of Athenian democracy, in the assembly and in the lawcourts.4 Judith Tacon claims that thorybos (that is, cases when speakers interrupt each other, demos interrupts speakers, demos allies with opposing speakers) was an integral feature of assembly debate and by extension of Athenian democracy. Anti-democracy theorists regarded it as negative.

One of the most often repeated facts about ancient associations seems to be that they were imitating the state. Even a cursory reading of scholarly literature reveals a number of concise definitions. Associations were ‘cités en miniature’, ‘mirror-images of the city on an organizational level’, they ‘posed as little republic[s]’ – the list could be continued.1 And the main insight is of course correct. The designations for officials, the delineation of sacred space, the formulae of honorific decrees, voting procedures – all these elements were regularly taken over by associations from the model provided by their respective cities.

1 scholars have traditionally opted for units of study comprising distinct cultural and political entities, such as ‘Classical Greek,’ ‘Hellenistic,’ or ‘Roman’ associations. Occasionally, though, Greek and Roman traditions for associating have been treated as an implicit case of Mediterranean institutional unity, constituting one overarching fenomeno associativo, ‘associational phenomenon’.2 Thus, particularly the older historiography of the subject reflects this basic premise of wider Greco-Roman institutional connectedness and compatibility, in that even though the two subjects are most often dealt with separately, they are assumed to add up to a mutually coherent framework for interpreting one or the other or both.

This chapter proposes to look in some detail at a few evocative cases, primarily from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, where associations or other groups, such as bands of worshippers, were especially concerned with purity or where they published inscribed rules of purity.1 Limited in number partly due to the vicissitudes of epigraphic preservation, partly due to the geographic and chronological specificities of this material – post-Classical Asia Minor and the Aegean – other factors may also explain their scarcity and warrant further investigation.

Private Associations in the Ancient Greek World investigates the rules and regulations produced by ancient private associations in an attempt to show why and how associations were creating a system of well-ordered groups within their communities. Regulations represent, in fact, an understudied aspect of ancient associative life: this book aims to fill this gap by approaching the well-known phenomenon of ancient associations from a new angle. It analyses the organisational structures, legislative mechanisms and features of associations, while at the same time investigating the potential models from – and interrelations with – the habits and strategies of political institutions. It also provides an assessment of the associations’ impact on the broader socio-cultural and physical environment and of their role in local societies, thanks to the establishment of such regulations. The book explores the ideology, values, ideas and aspects of identity embedded in the regulations as ways adopted by associations to create a specific profile to present to the outside world, as well as to members (both existing and future).