Bryn Mawr Classical Review

2012.02.20

2012-02-09T20:22:00.001-05:00

Tim Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance. Greek culture in the Roman world. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 299. ISBN 9780521823913. $99.00.

Reviewed by Paraskevi Martzavou, University of Oxford (paraskevi_martzavou@hotmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents and Excerpt

This new and inspiring book explores what Whitmarsh calls the "Greek romance", an ensemble of Greek-language fictional narratives sharing sentimental and erotic themes. The "Greek romance" has been fashionable as a topic recently, and BMCR reviews have kept pace with the numerous publications.¹ Whitmarsh sets out to examine two main aspects: the narrative form of romance, and the relation of form to identity (social, sexual and cultural). The basic aim is "not to show what identity is (in a universal sense) but how it is configured within a particular body of literature" (4); what is at stake is "Greek identity" / Hellenicity / Hellenism (139). Whitmarsh perceives in the "Greek romance" a certain "elasticity" that manages to accommodate, within generic confines, both a conservative model and a more challenging model of Hellenicity. Hence, for Whitmarsh, the genre's "success" (260).

Whitmarsh defines his approach as historicist. But although the questions he asks are clearly historicist ("Why did the Greek romance emerge when it did, where it did and why did it achieve such success?", 6), he successively deconstructs the main interpretations proposed up to now and based on specific causal models (civic decline and religious change in the late Hellenistic period; the reorganization of the sexual protocols of the imperial period; the emergence of the "Second Sophistic" scene, 6-12). He further claims that "the emergence of romance is even more difficult to relate to particular historical changes, because it was, it appears, composed outside of civic institutions…. the romancers…wrote for readers and environments that they could not predict and would never encounter" (11). I will return to this point later on.

The main body of the book is structured in two parts. Part I, "Returning romance", functions as a historical introduction, a short description and a discussion of the surviving romances, but also as a general interpretation of the character of "Greek Romance" as genre between the first and fourth centuries CE (a very useful appendix summarizes the extant romances and the larger surviving fragments). "Greek Romance" is considered to have a specific time and place of birth (Western Asia Minor, sometime in the first century CE), developing and enduring until the 4^th cent CE. Without considering his model as evolutionary, Whitmarsh observes that first-century romances (Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesos) feature an emphasis on civic identity, whereas second-century romances (Achilles Tatius, Longus) seem to focus upon domestic rather than civic contexts; finally, the ultimate romance, both in chronological and quality terms (Heliodorus), has strong religious connotations, redolent notably of Isiac religion. Whitmarsh visits and revisits the central themes of returning (nostos) and of the heterosexual couple that unites, separates, and then reunites towards the end, after having faced a sea of adventures, in order to provide a happy closure.

Part II, "Narrative and identity", explores "Greek romance" in the Roman world through a central argument: the genre "embodies a particular way of expressing the relationship between self and society, one that could be identified over a long period as characteristically Greek, while also accommodating the radical changes that Greek identity underwent over four centuries" (139). The emphasis is on the structural features of the "Greek romance", through close analysis of three basic features. First, Whitmarsh examines the role of desire (pothos) in the narrative economy of romance, and, simultaneously, its role in confronting the audience/reader with the endless world of counterfactuality. Next, he examines closure, the "happy end" of the romances, as prescriptive and open at the same time. Finally, he analyses liminality, that is, the main, middle part of the romances filled with adventures, which, in a way, determines the closed or open character of the "happy end". This second part confronts a whole series of questions of literary criticism beyond the problems defined in the introduction and assessed in the conclusion to the whole work; it constitutes the richer part of this book. In this review, I would like to focus on the questions of the precise contexts for creation and diffusion of the "Greek romance", as raised by Whitmarsh in his introduction. These questions are crucial to understand the identity that the romance constructs through the structural features as analysed in part II.

As Whitmarsh acknowledges, the hypothetical emergence and diffusion of the romance outside of a civic world is a historical problem, comparable to that of the conditions of creation and diffusion of other genres (for instance the performative contexts of Greek tragedy— Whitmarsh's comparandum). Contexts matter, in order to understand the form and the nature of the interaction of the "Greek romance" with its audiences, and notably the agency that the romance exercized. Whitmarsh offers his own historical framework in the place of those he rejects: "… it is not far wrong to see the ancient romance as… emerging from the literate interconnectivity of the Hellenistic and (particularly) Roman empires…" (11). However, the historical context defined as "literate connectivity" remains vague: who or what was connected, in what way ? What were the preconditions and the results of such connections ? These problems of "birth" and intended audiences, though mentioned (12), are not really elucidated.

Whitmarsh claims that he does not necessarily see a relationship of cause and effect between history and genre (12). Instead, in every romance, he perceives "…a distinctively creative working-through of contemporary identity politics…". But again: whose politics? We cannot escape this question even if the identity behind the creation of each romance cannot always be attributed to one individual, especially since personhood can be perceived as diffused and shared by a community.

Community may be the crucial word here. We might want to ask what kind of communities we must posit to study the emergence and the audience of the "Greek romance", both from a sociological and from an emotional point of view. Specifically, we might wonder in (or from) what communities the "Greek romance" emerges, and what communities it contributes to form. These two questions should be addressed in parallel. To answer the former, we should think through the conditions of the creation and the diffusion of Greek romance, with a view to defining processes of historical change that preceded the creation of the romance. To answer the latter, we should try to reconstruct the agency of the romances as literary texts, especially the economy of emotion, in order to pinpoint the historical change that developed in parallel with the creation and the diffusion of romance. The emergence of "emotional communities" related to texts, is a phenomenon that might be tackled independently from the language that "Greek romance" was written in, as a crucial element to understand social change in the Roman empire.²

An awareness of the relevance of other types of sources, not only for the question of identity that (?) Whitmarsh himself alludes to (259) but for the question of the emergence and the diffusion of the "Greek romance" could help. Firstly, we might explore the archaeology of the material world that produced the romance. The material record of the Graeco-Roman East is abundant and studied in sophisticated ways—for instance in Roman Athens or Ephesos or Aphrodisias…—can the world of statuary, mosaics, ceramics, monumental and domestic architecture, small finds, etc. help understand the conditions of production and reception of romance ?

Secondly, epigraphy offers material that can help to pin down a form of shared culture, between inscriptions and the "Greek romance". These elements of shared culture seem to describe some sociological and emotional (if not geographical) contexts that are at least similar to those where the "birth" of the "Greek romance" is considered to have taken place. For instance, the decree IG V.2 268, of the late first century BCE-early first century CE, from Antigoneia in Arcadia, honours a couple of local benefactors: it presents a narrative which shares some basic key- themes and many stylistic features with the Greek romance especially of the earliest period: difficult maritime travel, emphasis on the concept of a successful marriage as a union of bodies and of souls, focus on the idea of the couple as an emotional ideal, an emphatically positive concept of the polis. It is also significant, for the sociological background of this kind of rhetoric, that the decree emanates jointly from the Antigoneians and the "Romans who conduct business in Antigoneia". The double origin of this text makes the elements that it shares with the "Greek romance" a challenge to the "Greekness" of the themes in romance.

Because of the abundant festival imagery in the "Greek romance", according to Whitmarsh, romance should be seen as (259) "the product of a world that still construes identity using the festal language of the face-to-face civic community, but in the context of an intercontinental Greek-speaking expanse, impossible to conceptualize in its totality". This expanse, in addition to size, was also highly complex. We might try to see the romance in a competitive environment, using a diasporic model.³ In other words, it might prove useful to introduce into the debate about identity in the "Greek romance" a differentiation between ethnic identity and language. What is written in Greek language cannot and should not automatically be considered straightforwardly "Greek" in an innocent way. In a globalizing world where language is not necessarily equivalent or directly related to origin, Greek language can surely express (and has expressed) certain diaspora cultures—witness the Acts of the Apostles or martyrological texts, hardly "romance" but still significant narrative forms. Styles, tropes and mannerisms can be used to create awareness and differentiation against other diasporic or quasi-diasporic cultures. I propose seeing the "Greek romance" as a product of a particular Greak-speaking diaspora or quasi-diaspora, of diverse origin: hence the importance of the concept of "homeland" (not always "Greece" proper), and of the leitmotiv of wandering, typical of the workings of diaspora literatures and constructions of diasporic identities. Thus, in my eyes, the Greek romance as analysed by Whitmarsh is not a way to configure the Greek identity but a very particular, historically situated Greek-speaking identity among many others.

For the Graeco-Roman world we do not have the equivalent of Don Quixote or of Emma Bovary; that is, literary constructions that embody the impact that romance has on the formation of a person's character. But we do have the romances themselves and if we consider that they actually participate in an open and dynamic debate on identity (Greek-speaking, or of a social class or of a certain emotional background), the romances bear in themselves some elements of self-reflexivity. What are these? Perhaps the tensions which Whitmarsh perceives as inevitable and as due to the interaction between centrifugal and centripetal dynamics in the construction of Hellenism, and also as part of the "elasticity" of romance, require interpretation as ways of reflecting upon a Greek-speaking identity but not necessarily "Greek identity". "Elasticity" should not be seen as merely an inherent element of the romance, which contributed to its "success", but as the result of a fierce struggle and of the exercise of power coming from a variety of centres and a variety of pressure groups.

Notes:

1.   See for instance, Michael Paschalis, Stavros Frangoulidis, Space in the Ancient Novel, Groningen 2002, 2003.10.01; Tim Whitmarsh (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, Cambridge, 2008 2009.03.47; Michael Paschalis, Stavros Frangoulidis, Stephen Harrison, Maaike Zimmerman (eds.), The Greek and the Roman Novel. Parallel Readings, Groningen 20072010.02.42; Beatriz Ávila Vasconcelos, Bilder der Sklaverei in den Metamorphosen des Apuleius, Göttingen 2009 2010.08.41; Michael Paschalis, Stelios Panayotakis, Gareth Schmeling (ed.), Readers and Writers in the Ancient Novel, Groningen 20092011.03.06 ; Romain Brethes, De l'idéalisme au réalisme: une étude du comique dans le roman grec Salerno 2007 2011.03.53; Stefan Tilg, Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel, New York 2010 2011.03.23.
2.   For similar methodological questions, see "Readers respond to Rousseau: the fabrication of romantic sensitivity" in R. Darnton, The great cat massacre and other episodes in French cultural history, New York 1984 and also, more recently, Barbara Rosenwein, Emotional communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca 2006.
3.   On diasporas, Valery A. Tishkov, "The Diaspora as a historical phenomenon", Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia, 41/1, 2002, 54-88.

2012.02.19

2012-02-09T20:05:00.001-05:00

Norman Austin, Sophocles' Philoctetes and the Great Soul Robbery. Wisconsin studies in classics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. Pp. xiii, 282. ISBN 9780299282745. $29.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Susan A. Curry, University of New Hampshire (sak243@unh.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

In Sophocles' Philoctetes and the Great Soul Robbery, Norman Austin brings religion and psychology to bear on several of the challenges Sophocles' late drama poses for the modern reader. By reminding his own readers of the religious origins of ancient tragedy and the cults of Neoptolemus and Philoctetes and by unpicking the psychological aspects of Sophocles' own text, especially those concerned with issues of identity, Austin provides a plethora of insights, major and minor, into many puzzling facets of the drama: Neoptolemus' multiple roles and identities, Philoctetes' responsibility for his own suffering, Heracles' appearance at the end of the drama, and the cultural significance of "strong words" such as psychē and daimon. General readers with a basic knowledge of the tragic genre and the Greek language and scholars, especially those for whom names such as Harold Bloom, Sigmund Freud, and Hans-Georg Gadamer cause fear and trembling, should pay particular attention to Austin's book; for Sophocles' Philoctetes and the Great Soul Robbery is a remarkably successful example of how the language and concepts of psychology and modern philosophy need not be anachronistic impositions on an ancient text, but can help the modern reader so removed from the context of the original performance come to grips with difficult ideas arising from the text itself.

In the last section of the book, "Appendix: The Problem of Helenus's Prophecy and Its Relationship to Neoptolemus," Austin notes that readers of the play are "placed under a double restraint" because "on the one hand, as post- Enlightenment humanists, we are often advised to brush aside the religious language in our study of Sophocles, while, on the other hand, we are cautioned not to import into our reading any insights to be gleaned from modern psychological theory" (208). As a result of this "double restraint," scholars have focused primarily on the political aspects of the Philoctetes. While in no way denying the political purpose of Odysseus and Neoptolemus' mission to Lemnos, Austin focuses his attention on character development and the moments of religious import that occur after Neoptolemus begins to put Odysseus' false drama into motion. This book is Austin's own response to this "double restraint." Throughout, Austin gives Sophocles himself the benefit of the doubt. Where some have viewed the play's difficulties as faults or weaknesses, Austin sees innovations; he sees in the character of the wily Odysseus, for example, the seed of the graeculus of New Comedy (100-102). When making a claim about the moral development of one of the characters, Austin defers first and foremost to the text. Details of the text itself provide the most compelling evidence for Austin's main claim that Odysseus and Neoptolemus are not simply trying to deceive or persuade Philoctetes, they are, in effect, there to steal his soul.

After an introductory chapter, which provides basic information about Sophocles and the place of the characters of the Philoctetes within the epic tradition, the first two chapters of the book detail Austin's own approach to the text, situate the play within the culture of late fifth century Athens, and describe how each of the three Greek tragedians re-worked aspects of the epic tradition in the composition of a Philoctetes. In the first chapter, "The Problem of Translation," Austin uses Gadamer's concept of horizons to suggest that "in reading an ancient text" we need "to fuse the two horizons, both ours and the ancient poet's" and notes that real gap between our horizon and Sophocles' is religion (9). He also addresses the state of Athens at the time of Sophocles' composition of the Philoctetes and relates the contest for the soul of Philoctetes to a contest for the soul of Athens. In the second chapter, "The Strong Poet: Tradition versus Originality," Austin relies on Bloom's notion of the "strong poet," a poet whose art is the result of "the anxiety of influence matched by an equally powerful solipsism," and Dio Chrysostom's essay on the three Philoctetes of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles to show how each tragedian came to terms with the influence of Homer and, indeed, uniquely transformed the material of the epic tradition.

The next nine chapters each concern a different part of the play: prologos, parodos, first episode, stasimon, etc. Austin begins each of these chapter by providing a definition and describing the function of each of these parts of the tragedy, especially helpful to the non-specialist. After these introductory descriptions, Austin engages in a close reading of the text, sometimes elaborating on single words, sometimes lines or sections, while never straying too far from his main theme: the contest for the soul of Philoctetes. Where relevant, Austin provides the Greek text and a translation of a passage, often referring to different translations of the play in order to relate the word choices of various translators (R. C. Jebb, H. Lloyd-Jones, and T. B. L. Webster, etc.) to the multiple nuances the Greek word had in a late-fifth-century context.

Among the many interesting and provocative ideas to emerge from these close readings, consider the following highlights: in the third chapter, "The Prologos (Verses 1-134)," Austin closely examines a number of what he terms "strong words" contained within the prologos: logos, physis, psychē, ekkleptō, etc. By pushing the meanings of these words to their limits, so to speak, and by examining how Plato writing within the same cultural context deployed these words in his dialogues, Austin effectively demonstrates just how much these already charged words meant at the time of Sophocles' composition. For example, when Odysseus gives Neoptolemus his orders, he is not simply telling him to "beguile" Philoctetes' "mind" as Jebb has it; he is instead ordering Neoptolemus to "steal" Philoctetes' "soul." The evidence Austin provides through his study of the uses of the words psychē and ekkleptō in the late fifth century is very convincing. Furthermore, since so many of his "strong words" have religious importance, one sees how aspects of religion permeate the play from the very beginning.

Just when it looks like Neoptolemus has succeeded in his mission, a number of incidents occur that further complicate the drama. In the fifth chapter, "First Episode (Verses 219-675)," Austin discusses Neoptolemus' growing compassion towards Philoctetes as he begins to overcome his own disgust and to befriend the suffering man (108). While concepts such as compassion, sympathy, and love are not the first to come to mind when considering a Homeric hero, Austin again credits Sophocles' foresight and innovation here. Although we are more likely to associate these concepts with early Christian culture, Austin suggests that they are present in a nascent form in the Philoctetes. The compassion that begins to grow in Neoptolemus in part results from what Austin essentially terms Neoptolemus' "conversion." Relying on a careful critique of the text itself, Austin argues that the bow of Heracles is a sacred object, the cave of Philoctetes, a sacred space, Philoctetes himself, a kind of holy man. When Neoptolemus touches the bow, when he enters Philoctetes' cave, his mission, his loyalties, and his role in the drama are radically affected. A new, different drama, begins.

As Neoptolemus gradually begins to repent his theft of the bow, Philoctetes' sole means of support, therefore, his life, his soul, it begins to seem that Neoptolemus and Philoctetes will never achieve their heroic destiny at Troy. Austin addresses the issue of Philoctetes' stubbornness and his own responsibility for his continued suffering in the eleventh chapter, "The Exodos (Verses 1218-1471)." Neoptolemus has regretted and taken responsibility for his own hamartia in deceiving and stealing from Philoctetes, but Philoctetes must also take responsibility for the fact that "his wound was caused by his own transgression into the sanctuary of the goddess Chrysē" (183). Yet, Philoctetes will not let go of his identity as wronged and injured victim and his stubborn refusal to go to Troy, his desire only to return to his home, a return Neoptolemus lovingly promises to effect, means he will continue to suffer from his wounded state and he and Neoptolemus will fail to fulfill their heroic destinies at Troy. Austin quite correctly points out that continuing hatred for Odysseus is itself causing Philoctetes further suffering. Neoptolemus' promise to return Philoctetes to his homeland also puts Neoptolemus in a bind: he, in a sense, takes on Philoctetes' wound through his commitment to his earlier promise and sacrifices his own future as hero. The drama has reached a dead end.

Enter Heracles! The last chapter of Austin's book, "Heracles: Deus ex Machina," is, perhaps, the strongest. The religious and psychological threads Austin has been chasing through Sophocles' text come to fruition in his discussion of the sudden arrival of Heracles on the scene, a seemingly random instance of the deus ex machina. Having shown how religion pervades the text from the prologos on, Heracles' sudden appearance, an "epiphany," makes far more sense. In fact, suggests Austin, Heracles has been a part of the play all along through the presence of his sacred bow, the attempted acquisition of which has propelled the plot forward from the start. Austin (following C. Whitman) writes that "over the entire play hovers the figure of Heracles as Philoctetes' Eidos, his Platonic Idea of himself" (194). Heracles, in a sense, does the work of both religion and psychology. His supernatural appearance accomplishes what human persuasion cannot: he will get these men to Troy to become the heroes they are destined to be. Philoctetes will have no choice but to obey, giving up "the self with which he has become identified on Lemnos" (195) however difficult that will be for him.

Austin does not convince on every point. While identity is clearly a major theme in the play, it is sometimes difficult to follow the shifts in identity Austin proposes. At times, he suggests, Neoptolemus acts as the leader of the chorus, at other times Philoctetes does. Perhaps, but sometimes these shifts seem so numerous that one wonders whether an Athenian audience would really view the tragedy in this way. The discussion of the revelation of the details of Helenus' prophecy within the play is also problematic. Austin is right to remind us that no proper version of the prophecy was written down and consulted by Sophocles in his composition; but, there is more to be said about what the characters in the drama know about the prophecy, when they know it, and the audience's own knowledge of the prophecy. These are minor criticisms. Ultimately, Austin effectively demonstrates how the lenses of religion and psychology can enrich a traditional close reading. Sophocles' Philoctetes and the Great Soul Robbery is a generous work of literary criticism and an exceptional contribution to the ongoing study of what is perhaps the most perplexing of Greek tragedies.

2012.02.18

2012-02-08T20:45:00.001-05:00

Andrea Nightingale, Once out of Nature: Augustine on Time and the Body. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. xiv, 244. ISBN 9780226585758. $39.00.

Reviewed by James F. Patterson, University of Texas at Austin (james_patterson@utexas.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Once Out of Nature is a remarkably learned and interdisciplinary study of Augustine's views on time and the body that should quickly become a standard addition to bibliographies of both Augustinian and early Christian thought. Nightingale considers a wide range of subjects including individual and collective memory, space, relics, hagiography, martyrdom, and textuality, and thereby grounds otherwise abstract views in the mundane concerns of early Christianity. In this way, the book contributes to a number of scholarly disciplines while serving as an excellent introduction for newcomers to Augustine and Christian antiquity.

Nightingale's principal contention—self-described as "radically new" (7), and perhaps rightly so—is that the body and mind participate separately in two distinct types of time, to which she refers as "earthly" time and "psychic" time (cf. 7-9 and 56 for a definition of these terms). Earthly time is that in which the body participates and is roughly equivalent to the commonplace notion of time as a linear sequence of change (though Nightingale (56 and n.6) rejects the conflation of "earthly" time with "objective" time). Indicative of this participation are bodily activities such as birth, growth, death, decay, procreation, ingestion, and excretion. Thus, the earthly body participates both actively and passively in what Nightingale calls the food chain (cf. especially 24-5). Furthermore, a central component of this interpretation is her claim that in earthly time a body exists only at an ever-changing present 'now'—a claim that her exegesis of Szymborska's poem, "Tortures," nicely accentuates (1).

By contrast, Nightingale's psychic time—which corresponds to the phenomenon that Augustine (in)famously describes in Confessions 11 as a distentio animi—is that in which the mind is drawn away from the present into the past via memory and into the future via expectation. However, participation in psychic time is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we function in the world because of it, e.g., by being able to perceive changes that occur in earthly time, find meaning in language, and make informed decisions about the future. Yet on the other hand, this participation results in a feeling of estrangement from ourselves, from God, from the earthly world in which we live, and from the spiritual world to which we belong. In Nightingale's words, the embodied soul lacks self-presence (passim, but cf. 1) because it is unable to experience either the physics or the metaphysics of presence (cf. 8, though precisely what she means to express through the use of these terms remains somewhat unclear).

Nightingale begins in chapter 1 with an account of 'transhumanism', the state of minimal participation in earthly and psychic times (cf. 4, 26) that is enjoyed by Adam and Eve in Eden at the beginning of human history and by the saints in the City of God at its end. Thus, this chapter nicely frames the rest of the book, which explores various effects of heterochronic participation on the human response to the earthly world and earthly things. But Edenic and saintly transhumanism differ in slight yet significant ways. According at least to Augustine's later thought (26ff.), Adam and Eve participated in earthly time, but they were not subject to it. For instance, they ate food and could engage in sexual intercourse, but their bodies neither aged nor decayed. The resurrected saints, however, will do neither: even in the City of God the saints will have bodies, yet these will be 'spiritual' bodies (i.e. perfect versions of the bodies to which their souls are wed on earth, cf. 42ff.). With respect to psychic time, Edenic and saintly transhuman minds are distended (albeit minimally) for slightly different reasons. Adam and Eve retained memory of God's commandments, and the resurrected saints will retain memory of their past sins, though there is for neither a future to anticipate. Thus, for Nightingale's Augustine, transhumanism is a state characterized by either partial (as in Eden) or complete (as in the City of God) removal from earthly time and nearly complete removal from psychic time. And because Christian teleology was progressive rather than regressive—in other words, directed forward toward the City of God rather than backward to Eden (42)—human behavior should be guided by the prospect of attaining saintly (as distinct from Edenic) transhumanism at the end of time.

In chapter 2, Nightingale explicates her heterochronic interpretation of Augustine's conception of time. As I have outlined this interpretation supra, I shall make only a few additional remarks here. A large portion of this chapter is devoted to Augustine's account of memory and recollection in Confessions 10, for, as Nightingale notes (15, 58), Augustine used it as a foundation for his discussion of time in Confessions 11. Because memory is unceasingly flooded with new images (imagines) of things experienced, and because these images can themselves be a blur, memory denies the self any lasting stability: the self is, in Nightingale's words, "riddled with absences and lacunae" (105). However, in a welcome discussion of Augustine's rather perplexing use of tendere verbs, Nightingale suggests that, for Augustine, intentio (or "active-attention," as she defines it, cf. 63) counteracts—although does not overcome—distentio by reducing the sense of fragmentation caused by participation in time, by giving order to images scattered in memory, and by focusing the mind's attention toward God (99). Thus, while memory is perhaps the place where the fragmentation caused by heterochronic participation may be seen most clearly, it is also in memory that this fragmentation may be at least somewhat reduced.

Nightingale considers Augustine's view of the disunited self most directly in chapter 3. Doubtless, Augustine is best known as the first truly introspective thinker in the Western literary tradition. But the subject (the mind) and object (again, the mind) of this introspection are elusive things, for they are so mired in time that the self never stands sufficiently still to be viewed as a unified whole. Moreover, as it was Augustine's view that neither the body nor its necessary earthly associations were evil per se (cf. 114 and the Appendix), Christians must inevitably attend to the body, though in moderation (here, perhaps our Edenic predecessors serve as a model to be followed, for while Adam and Eve ate food, they did so not out of hunger or desire). As a result, as long as the mind dwells on earth, in time, and in an earthly body, one can never ascend to God.

In Chapter 4, Nightingale explores a number of issues concerning textuality. Texts (and language in general) involve both earthly and psychic times to operate, for, qua material object, a book exists in earthly time, but the words contained within it have meaning only to a distended mind. Furthermore, as some texts (esp. Scripture) aim beyond the earthly world toward God, a book may also be a place where the earthly and spiritual worlds converge and a means by which God may enter into a human soul (152). Therefore, it is no surprise that the conversions described within the Confessions—including Augustine's own—came about by means of books (132, 150), and that Augustine used the Confessions to present himself as a model for conversion. Yet, he did so in a way that is starkly different than Athanasius did Antony in his Life of St. Antony, for while Antony removed himself from the public sphere as far as possible in order to forget his past, Augustine did quite the opposite by openly memorializing his own.

Chapter 5 will be of particular value to those interested in the history of Christian asceticism and the cult of martyrs. As Nightingale explains, ascetic practices such as fasting and celibacy were intended to decrease the body's participation in earthly time and remove it momentarily from the food chain. Thus, Augustine considered asceticism a form of "bloodless martyrdom" inasmuch as it makes the body "less earthy" (194-5). While ascetic practices attempted to raise the body up toward heaven, relics and holy places were a means of bringing heaven down to earth. The martyr's body and its location became an earthly intersection of both God and humanity and the past, present, and future: localized in the present, these places commemorate the past and anticipate "the divine removal of all human bodily matter from earth on Resurrection Day" (171).

A short Epilogue and Appendix nicely complement the book. The former presents three modern literary responses (by Melville, Thoreau, and Çapek) to earthly time and the food chain that help counterbalance Augustine's own response. The latter discusses Augustine's use of the Pauline distinction between sȏma and sarx (Latin corpus and caro, respectively) in his response to the Manichees and Pelagians. Augustine walked a fine line between these two opponents, arguing that, while the flesh (sarx, caro) was condemnable, the body (sȏma, corpus) was "an essential part of the human being" (213) and could only achieve perfection in the City of God.

It is worth addressing a concern about Nightingale's heterochronic interpretation of Augustine's account of time. Augustine appears to have presented two different accounts of time in his work, one "subjective" and the other "objective," and whether the two are mutually exclusive remains a debate. While Nightingale convincingly argues that they are complementary rather than contradictory accounts, it is unclear whether her earthly and psychic times are different perspectives rather than ontologically distinct things. Nevertheless, Nightingale's description of these unique temporal experiences greatly contributes to our understanding of Augustine's views on time, the body, and embodiment.

2012.02.17

2012-02-08T20:33:00.001-05:00

Anthony Dykes, Reading Sin in the World. The Hamartigenia of Prudentius and the Vocation of the Responsible Reader. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xx, 273. ISBN 9781107004535. $105.00.

Reviewed by Gerard O'Daly, University College London (gerard.odaly@orange.fr)

Version at BMCR home site

Hamartigenia (The Origin of Sin) is less well known than Psychomachia and the other didactic/polemical poems of Prudentius. Directed against the radical dualism of the second century theologian Marcion, it argues for God's unity and for human, as opposed to divine, responsibility for evil. Marcion had made the God of the Hebrew scriptures the creator of a flawed universe from which Christ has rescued humanity. In Marcion's view, Judaism and Christianity are radically opposed, and only a severely restricted selection of New Testament texts reveals Christian truths. Prudentius focuses on Satan's rebellion, cosmic evil (no less a consequence, in his opinion, of the sin of Adam and Eve than moral evil), the degeneration of humanity after the Fall (beginning with Cain's murder of his brother Abel), the typological and figurative interconnectedness of the Old and New Testaments (highlighted through biblical examples of moral choice), and imagined rewards and punishments in heaven and hell. The poem (966 hexameters long, with a 63-line preface in iambic trimeters) is as vivid as it is puzzling: the summary just given of its themes cannot convey the complexity of its structure. Anthony Dykes' monograph provides a welcome and long overdue detailed engagement with the problems of its interpretation.¹

Dykes contends that Hamartigenia is designed by Prudentius to engage the reader's responsibility and call her to account (17-18). Its "partial disorder" (20) reflects the effects of sin in the world, and its strategy of "ensnaring the literate reader" (25) aims to stimulate the exercise of human choice that is the poem's core message. This strategy is partly achieved through radical manipulation of biblical texts, through the poem's uncertain genre (is it didactic or satire, or both?), through complex allusiveness to Latin literary antecedents (principally Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal), and through the presentation of post-lapsarian sin in sexualized and eroticized terms.

An informative introductory chapter deals with Prudentius' literary output and attitude to poetry, Marcion's views, and early Latin versions of the Bible, and provides an outline of the proposed interpretation of the poem. In chapter 2 the theme of human responsibility is central, and the focus is on three sections of the poem where, it is argued, the erotic content of sin (actual as distinguished from original) is revealed. Chapter 3 considers Prudentius' biblical strategy. Chapter 4 deals with the question of the poem's genre. But, given the global scope of Dykes' interpretation, there is considerable and justified thematic overlap between individual chapters. This in turn permits the critic to concentrate on the book's core themes. I shall thus give most attention to Dykes' most important and exciting claims: the sexualized presentation of sin; the complexity of allusiveness in the poem and its contribution to the reader's confusion and ultimate understanding of the poem's meaning; the problematic nature of its genre.

Dykes finds (83-9) a homoerotic colouring in the first line of the iambic preface, which refers to Cain and Abel: Fratres ephebi fossor et pastor duo. Dykes argues that the conjunction of the first three words amounts to a cumulative "evocation of sexual impropriety" (89). But Prudentius' other uses of ephebus, with one exception, denote no more than 'youth'.² Petronius uses frater in the sense of 'same-sex lover', but it is far-fetched to find that sense here. The claim that fossor alludes to obscene meanings of fossa or fodio is unconvincing: there is no clue in the text that it is anything other than a contemptuous reference to Cain as 'digger', announcing the narrative that follows of Cain as the jealous fratricide. A sexual sense of the opening line does not cohere with the Cain-Abel narrative. Dykes is of course aware of this, and suggests that if we were to imagine the line as a fragment "we would have no hesitation in assigning the words to a homosexual love poem or to an anti-homosexual satire" (89), just as Formosum pastor (Virgil, Eclogues 2.1) serves as a headline or summary of the poem that follows. But the problem with this kind of argument is that we have both Virgil's poem and Prudentius' preface, and we know in fact what their themes are.

What of Dykes' other claims for eroticized language in the poem? In Prudentius' narrative of the destruction of Sodom (Ham. 723-76), there is a detailed description of the metamorphosis of Loth's wife into a salt effigy. There is irony in the portrayed mutation of a woman, conventionally typecast as fickle and inconstant (levis uxor  mobilitate animi, Ham. 738-9; cf. 755-6), into a hard, rigid solid mass. Dykes reads this change from soft to hard as a sex-change, a masculinization (89-101), of Lot's wife, even going so far as to assert that it is "sexual desire, it is libido, which has effected her change" (94). But this is to run counter to what the poem actually says. The libido of Ham. 776 is the 'desire' that is involved in the contrasting choices of Loth and his wife, the exercise of free will that can lead to good as well as evil actions (Ham. 775): Prudentius presents the episode as a fable illustrating two reactions to a divine command (Ham. 769-75). The echo of Eclogues 2.65 in Ham. 775-6 does not compel us to import Virgil's homoerotic context into Prudentius' poem: Dykes' sexed-up interpretation of the narrative does not convince (95-6), not least because the narrative insists on the enduring femininity of Lot's wife in her sodium chloride state, even to the extent of evoking the tilt of her chin as she perpetually looks back (Ham. 744-8).

Dykes rightly insists on the role of what he calls the "transvalorisation of the pastoral landscape" (21) in the episode of the two brothers in Ham. 789-803 (discussed 59-79). Here the beautiful, shaded sloping path with its fruit-trees is a deceitful snare: only in paradise is the pastoral idyll what it seems. Here again, Dykes' suggestion that the landscape is sexualized poses problems. It is based on the recurrence of the verb in Juvenal 2.165 (sese indulsisse) in the account of the errant brother's choice (Ham. 799). The context in Juvenal is homoerotic, but Prudentius' use of the verb carries no implication of "sexual surrender" (74). There is surrender, but it is to the unspecified deceptive pleasures of the primrose path.

A motive for Dykes' reading of erotic content into the passages just discussed is the sexual emphasis of Prudentius' tirade against the corruption of men and women in Ham. 258-97. Dykes' analysis of this passage is one of the best sections of the book (211-31), not least because it includes a subtle demonstration of the range of allusiveness in the passage. The force of Prudentius' polemic does not lie in the conventional choice of motifs (female cosmetics and jewellery, feminized men wearing flimsy exotic clothes and using non-Roman perfumes), but in the lively indignation of the passage's style and effective use of detail that the range of allusiveness enriches. This section, resorting to the tried and tested details of a satirical tradition castigating luxus (Ham. 298), does not need the reinforcement of a sexualized reading of the other passages discussed. Rather, the force of Prudentius' argument is strengthened precisely by the variety inherent in his examples of moral choice: Cain, Lot's wife, and the errant brother, even while they all exhibit the precarious condition of fallen humanity, have different motives for their disastrous actions.

The corruption of our senses and of our appreciation of our environment is a theme of Ham. 298-336. Dykes provides a sensitive interpretation of this theme, but there is a difficulty with one detail of his discussion. He points out the allusion to Lucretius 1.936-50 in Ham. 330-8 (discussed 181-90). He interprets the Lucretius passage as if the simile of the medicine laced with honey to make it more palatable for children makes Lucretius' readers, for Prudentius, into pueri who are to be deceived by his doctrine: "the 'puer' is a didactic victim" (186). This may be the case. But then Dykes slides into the assertion that this was Lucretius' intention: "Lucretius has, as we see, established the 'pueri' as his readers" (189). Memmius, the distinguished adult addressee of Lucretius' poem, would not have been amused. But there is no sign that Lucretius intends us to accept that the pueri of the simile leak, so to speak, into the text and argument of the poem. Quoting a debatable modern assessment of the Epicurean teacher's view of his students as anything but responsible pupils does not help Dykes' argument (186).

To return to Dykes' discussion of Ham. 258-97: it is placed in his chapter on genre, and a considerable part of his argument is that the uses of allusiveness in this part of the poem contribute towards the constructive confusion of the reader, and that this confusion is principally due to the uncertain genre of the poem. Is this interpretation tenable? Dykes rightly identifies didactic and satirical elements in Hamartigenia. But the poem's movement between these elements is hardly as confusing as he claims. If one function of signalling the genre of a literary work within the work itself is to create expectations in the reader which the author can then exploit, then Prudentius' signalling of the didactic aspect of this poem will predispose the literate reader to its satirical elements, for satire is present in Greek and Latin didactic poetry from the beginning, and not least in Prudentius' great Latin precursor Lucretius. The attentive reader does not necessarily question anxiously whether she is reading satire or didactic: it is in the nature of didactic in the tradition within which Prudentius writes to be frequently satirical. Dykes' concern about the question of genre is relevant to his insistence on the active reader response that the poem demands, but this concern also reflects a recurrent theme of modern critical work on Prudentius. It has become a commonplace to insist on Prudentius' mixing of genres without always conceding that "crossing genres" is an established feature of Latin poetry from at least the Augustans onwards. It is indeed questionable how important genres were, once literary production, while influenced by traditional models, was divorced from specific social contexts and conditions of performance. Dykes' discussion shows that the issue exists, and that it does not admit of easy answers. But there is need for a more general discussion of the role and function of genres in the Latin literature of late antiquity.

It is a matter for celebration that in 2011 two new English-language studies of Hamartigenia appeared.³ The carping critic may seem to be the unwelcome guest at the party. But critics, too, should be responsible readers. If I have given most attention to those aspects of Dykes' interpretation which I have greatest difficulty in accepting, I should nonetheless stress that this is a study of considerable scholarly merit, working closely on the detail of complex Latin texts and modern studies in several languages, and showing great skill and expertise in doing so. Whether or not one accepts the individual elements of Dykes' interpretation, it remains the case that our reading of Hamartigenia, and so of Prudentius in general, is radically modified by engagement with his arguments. His treatment of several issues—in particular the demonstration of the transformation of pastoral, the contradictory implications of allusiveness, and the creative use of the Bible—are sure to become starting points of future debate on the nature of Prudentius' poetry.

Notes:

1.   There is an older English-language commentary by J. Stam, Prudentius. Hamartigenia (Amsterdam, 1940), and a more recent commentary in Italian by R. Palla, Prudenzio. Hamartigenia (Pisa, 1981).
2.   Of the other five instances, only Peristephanon 10.189, in a passage referring to Hyacinthus and Apollo, has a homoerotic context.
3.   The other study, with an annotated English translation and an interpretative essay, by M. Malamud, The Origin of Sin (Ithaca and London, 2011), appeared towards the end of the year.

2012.02.16

2012-02-08T20:08:00.001-05:00

Gillian Clark, Body and Gender, Soul and Reason in Late Antiquity. Variorum collected studies series, CS978. Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Pp. 346. ISBN 9781409423751. $154.95.

Reviewed by Mark Masterson, Victoria University of Wellington (mark.masterson@vuw.ac.nz)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

As Gillian Clark is a leading historian of late antiquity, this volume of eighteen papers is quite welcome. Scholars have been contending with the dispersal of these papers from 1993 to 2005 in journals and edited volumes. Thanks to this volume, appreciating the range of Clark's thought will be an easier task. Clark's work places front and center issues of gender and sex and offers both broad vistas of late-ancient society and closely argued explications of short passages of iconic text. She reads Christian and pagan sources together often and confidently places her analyses in cogent relationship with late-ancient society as a whole. There is a brief preface from Clark and an equally brief index (both are two and one-half pages) and just over seven pages of addenda (providing, for the most part, more recent bibliography and the occasional authorial comment). The volume helpfully preserves the pagination of the originals while giving each paper a Roman numeral designation for use within the volume. Hence, the volume will seamlessly interact with scholarship that cites the originals. In this review I will refer to the papers using these Roman numeral designations.

The first four papers are grouped under the heading "Bodies and Minds: The Limits of Reason." The second group (papers V to XI) come under the title, "Bodies and Gender: Christian Challenges." The final section, "Bodies and Souls: The Philosophic Life," contains papers XII to XVIII. While these headings do help with organizing the contents, they only imperfectly categorize the papers that, granted, do have connections with one another (though the placement of the two papers on Victricius of Rouen in section three is rather odd, but he was probably always going to be the odd-man out). Taken as a whole these papers are wide- ranging and yet come from an integrated base of concerns that have animated Clark's overall intellectual project. On the one hand, Clark has been concerned to read as an historian, reading her chosen authors in their "social and intellectual context" (preface, x), while, on the other, her frequent emphasis on gender and ecological concerns shows her to be responsive to prevailing interests in the academy of recent decades.

Major areas of emphasis in the volume include the works of Augustine and Porphyry, which makes perfect sense given her considerable work elsewhere on these authors.¹ Augustine figures in a paper on the place of animals in his thought (III). Paper VI features a discussion of Confessions 2.2.2. In this passage Augustine regrets that his male friendships were befouled by "mists from the muddy lust of the flesh." This passage then becomes the basis for an interesting discussion of the place of the body in Augustine's thought. This is a challenging paper and its conclusion that the body in later Christian thought is no longer solely dichotomized with the soul/mind but instead "becomes a zone of interchange [for good or evil and] a harmonious union of flesh and spirit" (VI.220) is surely correct. But I must say that the paper as a whole and the final conclusion sit oddly with the quotation with which it started. I will have more to say of this at the end of the review. In papers VII and X, Clark discusses in persuasive terms Augustine's quite stunning bestowal of a uterus on Adam at Confessions 13.20.28. Augustine uses arresting language to make the reader pause; this violent authorial gesture causes an aporia in the reader that both underscores humanity's confused state and suggests the profundity of the wound that is sexual differentiation, a wound which will be healed in the end times (X.22). Porphyry is quite naturally a centerpiece for a discussion of animals (IV). In his De abstinentia he maintained that animals weakly possessed the logos (and were therefore in possession of souls) and they were not be eaten because of this. The final five papers (XIV-XVIII) all contain substantial discussions of Porphyry and his notion of the proper way to live one's life. Clark contrasts his views with those of Iamblichus (XV) and Augustine (XVIII). Augustine and Porphyry also feature often in the other papers and in some sense feel like presiding presences.

Although ultimately not influential in his own time (but rather more so now, considering the attention he has received in recent decades), Victricius of Rouen features in two important papers in the volume. In a highly interesting, if overheated sermon (De laude sanctorum), which is his only extant work, Victricius theorizes how relics work, i.e., how sanctity can be perceived (outrageously) in bits and pieces of martyrs' bodies. Clark's two papers provide discussion of the sermon's content (XII) and of its legal and social context (XIII). Her excellent translation of the entire sermon comprises one half of XII.

In addition to the focus on these authors, Clark writes authoritatively on gender. Paper V features an important discussion of women and asceticism. Clark sensitively presents the ways in which the adoption of asceticism by women clashed profoundly with expectations for them in the secular world (e.g., V.38-39). Paper IX is an early discussion of masculinity that helped to open the subject up in the early 90s. Presentation and discussion of ideas about the proper roles of men and women in Christian and pagan literature emerges often (see, e.g., papers XV, XVII, and XVIII). Paper VIII speaks of martyrdom and gender differentiation visible in accounts we have of it. Paper XI, "'In the foreskin of your flesh': the pure male body in antiquity," tracks changes in the valuation of circumcision. Clark shows how circumcision went from being associated (by those who did not practice it) with excessive interest in sex to its becoming a metaphor that functioned as "a sign of religious commitment" among men who were physically uncircumcised and, even, as a metaphor applicable to women. I think this paper is exceedingly well done.

A number of the papers consider the effect of paradox (a trope much beloved by the late-ancient authors). Clark twice considers Augustine's ascription of a uterus to Adam (as previously noted) and paper XVI features a consideration of Porphyry's exceedingly odd notion of framing properly pursued askesis as a "fattening of the soul" (De abstinentia 4.20.10-11). In the paper, the observation of this paradoxical metaphor functions as a springboard to a consideration of differences between late- Platonism and Christianity. The former worries more about things alimentary, while the sexual transfixes the latter. This conclusion impresses me as possibly controversial, though I find myself in substantial agreement with it; I read Clark as indicating broad trends and not asserting absolutes. Clark is also quite nicely attentive to Victricius' obsessive embrace of paradox in the two papers concerned with him. I note here too that the role that nature plays in the late-ancient thought world receives a well-supported and lengthy discussion in papers II-IV. It emerges that the late-ancients, relentlessly anthropocentric in their orientation, do not therefore center nature and animals in the way we see it done in current eco-criticism. Paper I features consideration of both the impact of late- ancient interest in asceticism on actual children and late-ancient ideas about the proper way to raise them.

I will offer a recommendation and introduce and ask a question to conclude this review of an excellent collection of papers. First, I suggest that readers bear in mind that asceticism had deep roots in religious fasts and the avoidance of certain foods undertaken in the interests of securing ritual purity. Clark (along with many other scholars) privileges the important philosophic background to asceticism while the story is coming to be seen as more complicated than that.²

Second (and as noted above), the final conclusion of paper VI (embodiment's enmeshment, for good or bad, with the divine) sits oddly with the marquee quotation (Confessions 2.2.2) that gives the paper its name, "'The bright frontier of friendship': Augustine and the Christian body as frontier." Here is part of the passage from Augustine relevant in the present instance: "et quid erat quod me delectabat, nisi amare et amari? sed non tenebatur modus ab animo usque ad animum quatenus est luminosus limes amicitiae, sed exhalabantur nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis…." This passage is not irrelevant to Clark's argument; the clouds from the muddy lust of the flesh causing feelings and thoughts surely speak to an interaction between body and mind/soul. I feel, however, that an erasure has occurred. Clark was certain that this passage contained no reference to same-sex sexual (if I may offer this as a synonym for "homosexual") acts in her commentary published in 1995.³ She does not take a position in this paper originally from 1996 and instead refers the reader to her commentary and to the one by O'Donnell (1992, ad loc.⁴), who believes that Augustine is not concerned about what we may think he may have done in some carnal way to compromise his friendships. While Augustine came to associate amicitia with marriage and sexual relations between men and women in De bono coniugali and we surely can relate Confessions 2.2.2 to sexual relations in marriage in an expansive consideration of Augustine's thought, I do question the impulse to erase a clear res of this passage, i.e., the eruption of carnality that compromises friendship between males. Clark's elision is at the very least somewhat violent to the actual sense of the passage and it also prevents perception of germane and interesting continuities between same-sex desire and desire within the context of marriage between man and woman.

Notes:

1.   E.g., her translation of Augustine's Confessions (1993) and a text and commentary of Confessions 1-4 (1995) (both Cambridge) and a translation with commentary of Porphyry's De abstinentia (Cornell 2000).
2.   See, for example, Richard Finn's Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge 2009).
3.   P. 118 (Confessions 1-4, Cambridge).
4.   James J. O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (Oxford 1992 [consulted online 27 November 2011 here].

2012.02.15

2012-02-07T19:50:00.001-05:00

Henrik Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. vi, 344. ISBN 9780521856133. $99.00.

Reviewed by Rose MacLean, Princeton University (rmaclean@princeton.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

At a time when the most important works on Roman freedmen still refer to "the decline of the Italian stock" and "the infiltration of the Roman population by foreigners," Mouritsen's comprehensive study of The Freedman in the Roman World represents an invaluable contribution.¹ Given the importance of manumission to the way that Romans thought about their society, as well as ex-slaves' unique position in economic and political life, Mouritsen has built a firm foundation not just for historians interested in ancient slavery but also for those with a wide array of concerns, from the discourses of power and honor to demography and legal practice.

Taking a synchronic approach, Mouritsen divides his book into two sections – three chapters on the construction of the Roman libertus and three on the practice of manumission. Separating the ideological aspects from more technical questions creates a useful analytical boundary, but at critical points Mouritsen shows how these two sides of the problem influenced one another. In a final chapter, an attempt is made to ascertain the experiences and identities of former slaves from their own perspective.

The categories of "slave" and "free" were fundamental and inalienable in Roman juridical thought – a construct that rendered manumission problematic because it implied movement from one status to the other. By adding "freed" as a third modal category, the jurists ensured that ingenui and liberti remained essentially different, since the latter carried the stain of their past, the macula servitutis. The roots of this bias lay not in the theory of natural slavery, which most Romans rejected, but rather in the idea that people fell into slavery as a result of bad fortune. Still, an appreciation of slaves' basic humanity did not preclude the perception of their moral and physical character as weak, childlike, cowardly, and incapable of legitimate honor.

Slavery left an indelible mark on a person's ingenium, just as it could on his body. Such degradation was immediate and automatic but could be exacerbated or alleviated depending on how the slave was treated or on his natural aptitudes. A slave who had been beaten or tattooed had little chance of bettering his position, while an educated servant who won his master's favor could improve in the eyes of slave-owners; he could, in essence, "grow up." This developmental model reassured manumitters that they were releasing into the free population only those mature enough to participate in the civitas.

The patron-freedman relationship ensured the continuity of this ideal after manumission by constructing ex-slaves as their patron's children sine natura. This fiction helped perpetuate a dynamic of authority and dependence, while at the same time integrating freedmen into the familia in a way that legitimated their proximity to power as agents of the ruling orders. Although this paradigm was not always manifest in reality, legal and social norms helped impose a standard of behavior on freedmen based on deference, industry, and fides. The distance between these qualities and those most valued by male elites – in particular, honos and virtus – fed back into the definition of the ex-slave as free but still inferior. Although one wonders how this distinction may have changed as aristocrats adapted to monarchy, it is clear that the degradation of freedmen conditioned their place in society.

Despite a long tradition of enfranchising freedmen, the Romans sought to limit this group's political influence. The inscription of liberti in the four urban tribes and the practice of excluding ex-slaves from municipal councils may be viewed within this context. On the other hand, Mouritsen's interpretation of the Augustan reforms aligns the laws about freedmen with other parts of the program by reading them as ideological statements. Augustus' attempts to regulate manumission were strikingly inefficient and probably represent "official declarations which emphasized the need for proper selection and 'quality control' in the manumission process" (p. 84). Like the marriage laws, they articulate a self-styled return to traditional mores. Further, by limiting the number of freedmen who received the full franchise, Augustus portrayed the citizenship as a privileged status that could be coveted by provincials.

The emperor's slaves and freedmen emerged as a central administrative body that symbolized the autocratic nature of the principate. Republican elites had employed slaves and liberti to perform public duties, but the rise of individual magnates heightened the visibility of such staff. In turn, influential members of the imperial family came to exemplify the transition from a government based on intra-elite competition to one ruled by the auctoritas of one man. Likewise, the extent to which a princeps controlled or was controlled by his freedmen became instrumental in shaping his image. Although the reliance on such personnel developed for practical reasons, the familia Caesaris (and wealthy freedmen in general) became focal points for ideological conflict about status, wealth, and political authority.

These discussions convey the full complexity of "the freedman" as a cultural construct linked to a range of other concerns. Importantly, Mouritsen maintains an awareness of the Romans' capacity to hold contradictory views simultaneously, to see freedmen as human beings but also as inherently dishonored. As Fitzgerald did for slaves in Latin literature, Mouritsen shows how the Romans used liberti to interrogate basic boundaries and to channel anxieties about social and political change.² Further, the Romans' ideals about freedmen help explain why they kept manumitting slaves despite the unsettling paradoxes that arose from this change of status. We come to appreciate the intricacies of the Roman social imagination in its connection to social practice.

Mouritsen's treatment of more technical problems is executed as masterfully as his examination of ideology. He rightly accepts that we lack sufficient documentation to establish demographic measures with any precision. The strength of his discussion is not to solve insoluble problems but to compile the evidence – most of which indicates that manumission at Rome was more common than in other slave systems, but selective on the basis of the ideal that only deserving slaves should be freed. Thankfully, the reasons for why the Romans manumitted so many slaves are easier to ascertain. On the one hand, the promise of freedom was a powerful incentive by which to inspire diligence and good behavior. But the frequency of manumission cannot be explained by this single function; and the social and economic benefits of the patron-freedman relationship were the key to sustaining the Roman system.

This emphasis on patronage leads Mouritsen to downplay the importance of self-purchase, which some others have placed in the foreground. Roman manumission did not necessitate a replacement of services lost, because freedmen remained tied to the familia. Nor can the peculium be linked unequivocally with self-purchase; it rather served as a general indicator of the slave's status within the household. Similarly, testamentary manumission may not have been as appealing to slave-owners as is often assumed, because masters were more likely to see the benefits of capitalizing on freedmen's continued service during their lifetime. Although it is impossible to pinpoint the frequency with which these types of manumission were used, Mouritsen makes a convincing case that the patron-freedman relationship was a determining factor.

Understanding the practice of manumission requires asking who was freed and for what reasons. Epigraphic evidence suggests that children were manumitted in exceptional circumstances but that slaves in their late teens and twenties had a decent chance of receiving their freedom. Such a pattern implies a shortfall of home-born slaves, but Roman elites did not manage their households in strictly rational terms. In fact, the reasons for manumission were highly subjective, relying above all on familiarity and trust. As a result, we rarely hear of Roman masters freeing agricultural slaves, with whom they would have had little contact; and patterns within the familia Caesaris usually followed an impersonal standard. Again, the ideological foundations of Roman manumission – namely, that enslavement was caused by misfortune and that slaves of good character could earn their libertas – reinforced actual practice.

A continued focus on the patron-freedman relationship guides Mouritsen's discussion of ex-slaves in the Roman economy. While not a bourgeoisie, freedmen were uniquely positioned to succeed economically because of their integration into the familia. Unlike freeborn clients, liberti had a quasi-familial bond with their ex- master that made them prime candidates for posts in the family business and provided a source of start-up capital. This model casts doubt on the category of the "independent freedman," the ex-slave whose patron had died and who therefore could become rich beyond normally acceptable levels. In fact, we know of many wealthy freedmen whose fortunes grew with the active support of their patrons, and ex-slaves emerge as a social group that was subject to stigmatization but also intimately involved with the freeborn ruling orders, so in some senses a group of insiders.

Freedmen's role in political life is interpreted along similar lines. The Augustales, for instance, represent a locally specific phenomenon whose unifying function was to allow ex-slaves to participate in civic society through acts of euergetism. Moreover, the sons of freedmen who entered politics – often held up as icons of economically driven upward mobility – were not seen as essentially different from other ingenui. They faced hurdles similar to those encountered by any "new man," though more extreme because they started at a lower rung of the social ladder. Rather than cast first-generation ingenui as social upstarts who bought their way into the elite, Mouritsen invites us to contextualize their success in an environment where newcomers joined the public sphere with the support of powerful patrons.

Given Mouritsen's sensitivity to the patron-freedman relationship, which was by nature two-sided, it is surprising that he relegates his discussion of the freedman's perspective to a brief final chapter. He correctly observes, as have others, that Petronius' caricature of the wealthy freedman has exerted undue influence on historians.³ In particular, interpretations of ex-slaves' funerary commemorations have overwhelmingly focused on the desire to advertise status. By contrast, Mouritsen stresses the importance of the nuclear family, to which manumission granted a newfound stability.⁴ Trimalchio's grip on the historical imagination weakens as we come to appreciate the degrees to which freeborn society ostracized or integrated liberti; one could praise a freedman in one breath and deride the infimus ordo in the next, depending on social or rhetorical context. Nevertheless, the views of freeborn Romans are imperfect measures of how freedmen constructed their own communities. Mouritsen brings us closer to an authentically freed perspective when, in closing, he points out that the vast majority of former slaves married individuals of the same status. Again, the valuation of family emerges as a cultural product of freedmen's common experience of having endured enslavement and achieved at least a limited freedom.

Filling an obvious gap in the scholarship, Mouritsen offers historians the opportunity to comprehend manumission in its ideological and practical aspects, as well as in the correspondences between the two. In the process, he sheds light not just on how the Romans approached this institution, but also on how manumission interacted with other areas of discourse, with social structure more broadly, and with political and economic developments. Mouritsen's depth of insight and breadth of knowledge have, at last, produced an overarching account of manumission in the Roman world that will be an essential point of departure for future work on this topic, as well as an invaluable resource for teaching.

Notes:

1.   E.g., Duff, A. M. (1958), Freedmen in the early Roman Empire (New York); Treggiari, S. (1969), Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic (Oxford), 231–2.
2.   Fitzgerald, W. (2000), Slavery and the Roman literary imagination (Cambridge).
3.   Petersen, L. H. (2003), 'The baker, his tomb, his wife, and her breadbasket: the monument of Eurysaces in Rome', The Art Bulletin 85: 230–57; and (2006), The freedman in Roman art and art history (Cambridge).
4.   See his article on the same topic: Mouritsen, H. (2005), 'Freedmen and decurions: epitaphs and social history in imperial Italy', JRS 95: 38–63; and (2011), 'The families of Roman slaves and freedmen,' in B. Rawson (ed.), A companion to families in the Greek and Roman worlds (Malden, MA), 141–3.

2012.02.14

2012-02-07T19:36:00.001-05:00

Marina Prusac, From Face to Face: Recarving of Roman Portraits and the Late-antique Portrait Arts. Monumenta Graeca et Romana, 18. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. xvii, 202; 155 p. of plates. ISBN 9789004182714. $226.00.

Reviewed by Elisha Dumser, Ursuline College (edumser@ursuline.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

Recarved marble portraits of emperors and private citizens were common in the Roman empire, though recent scholarship has focused, perhaps overly so, on imperial portraits reused after the condemnation of the original subject's memory, or damnatio memoriae.¹ Prusac's work notably diverges from this tendency to explore reuse in both imperial and private portraits through late antiquity, when recarving became a standard working practice among Roman sculptors. Prusac posits that by the third century CE, economic concerns had replaced memory sanctions as the primary motivation for reuse, and by the fourth century, recarved images were more common than new ones for both imperial and private portraits. No longer driven primarily by ideology, reuse emerged as a dominant practice in late antiquity due to practical concerns. Its ascendance had a direct impact on the appearance of portraits and Prusac argues that the techniques used to refashion a portrait produced characteristics typically associated with 'late-antique style' such as large eyes and uplifted gazes. Prusac's work has significant repercussions for our understanding of both late-antique portraiture and the broader issue of Roman attitudes towards reuse in antiquity.

The foundation for Prusac's work is her intensive study of several hundred recarved portraits and her close observation of the recarving methods employed. From this formalist core she draws conclusions concerning the nature of Roman attitudes towards portraiture and sculptural reuse. It should be noted at the outset that Prusac focuses on portrait heads in isolation. The study does not address the bodies, presumably also reused, that once completed many of the statues, and portraiture in relief, such as imperial portraits on public monuments and private portraits on funerary reliefs and sarcophagi, is treated only in passing.

The concept of 'reused' sculpture is a rather broad one, and in Chapter One Prusac articulates many of the varieties that fall under its scope and lays out general criteria by which recarved images can be recognized. Much of the information in this chapter will already be familiar to specialists in the field. Prusac presents it in order to sketch the context in which recarved portraits are found, but it is not strictly necessary for the arguments developed in subsequent chapters and inaccuracies mar its utility.²

Chapter Two concisely presents statistical analyses of the distribution of recarved portraits by chronology and geography. The chronological data is derived from four major portrait collections and Prusac rightly cautions readers that the analysis can only represent "significant trends and tendencies" (29). Yet the data do reflect a dramatic increase in the number of recarved portraits after the mid-third century CE, which in turn supports a central tenet of Prusac's study: that in late antiquity the normative practice was to commission a recarved portrait rather than a new image.

Chapter Three initiates a sequence of chapters devoted to the chronological exposition of recarved portraiture with an account of recarved imperial portraits from the first and second centuries CE. At that time few private portraits were recarved, and most recarved imperial images were altered after the invocation of memory sanctions. Following Eric Varner, Prusac traces the shift from recarving images of condemned emperors in the first and second centuries CE to the mutilation and destruction of their portraits under the Severan dynasty.³ The first and second centuries CE are presented in this chapter as a foil to late antiquity, when Prusac argues that portraiture operated under a different set of beliefs about reuse.

The era of the soldier emperors (235-284 CE), detailed in Chapter Four, saw an increasing number of recarved portraits, especially private portraits. Prusac contends that difficulties procuring fresh marble in a war-torn empire pushed sculptors to recarve existing images, and that the growth of this practice occasioned a change in attitudes towards portraiture. In sum, economic factors led to a diminished reverence for a portrait's 'archetype' and a greater willingness to recarve images, even imperial portraits of 'good emperors.' Under Gallienus (r.253-268 CE), "an important intellectual barrier" (56) was crossed and portraits of earlier, well-respected emperors began to be refashioned. These portraits represent the "first known to have been recarved from an earlier emperor without recourse to damnatio memoriae" (52). Gallienus' decision to recarve portraits of Hadrian and the Julio- Claudian emperors may have led to the stylistic qualities lauded as 'Gallienian classicism.' Prusac tends to view this style as an unintended consequence of the recarving process, but given Gallienus' careful cultivation of links to Augustus and Alexander the Great, original images of Hadrian and the Julio-Claudian emperors might have been chosen intentionally in order to allude to earlier 'good emperors,' and thus represent an early example of positive association by appropriation as often proposed for the Arch of Constantine.

The chronological account of recarved portraiture concludes in Chapter Five which spans the Tetrarchy through Justinian I with an emphasis on the Constantinian period as the "apex of sculptural reuse" (64). From the fourth to sixth centuries CE, Prusac argues that portraits were almost exclusively recarved, and that recarving techniques influenced the style of late-antique portraiture, creating features that are often attributed to religious or ideological choices such as large eyes, an uplifted gaze, and a stylized appearance. While Prusac never excludes ideological motivations for reuse, her focus on technique as a generator of style opens an important new avenue of consideration for late-antique imagery. Receiving special attention is the Colossus of Constantine in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, arguably the most famous and frequently published late-antique portrait included in her study.⁴ Like Cécile Evers, Prusac believes that a portrait of Hadrian preceded the current image of Constantine. She adds, however, that the Hadrianic original may have been recarved into an image of Maxentius before being refashioned with Constantine's features.

Though sound in its overall lineaments, Chapter Five is marred by some missed opportunities. For instance, Prusac's discussion of tetrarchal sculpture begins with imperial portraits in porphyry, none of which were recarved. Left unrealized is the potential to contrast these portraits which were sculpted in extremely hard, 'virgin' stone with recarved images in marble, an omission that is especially regrettable given her emphasis on the stylistic impact of technique. Later in the chapter, Prusac's lengthy treatment of the Arch of Constantine includes her take on some of the ongoing debates, but fails to capitalize on her unique position as a connoisseur of recarved images to develop new insights into the arch's sculptural program.

Chapter Six details how recarved portraits can be recognized. Up until this point, the reader has been asked to accept Prusac's determination that a portrait was recarved largely on faith; here the author at last demonstrates how she identifies recarved images. A recarved portrait is betrayed by lingering imperfections, and for each variety of revealing flaw – at the ear, eye, mouth, or hairline – Prusac presents multiple examples to help readers learn to spot the presence of recarving.

In Chapter Seven, Prusac revisits private portraits from the fourth to sixth centuries CE to place select examples into seven groups based upon their appearance. These groups are then used to explain the recarving techniques that produce their characteristic features. This chapter finally fully explains how the sculptor's choice of technique results in features that have previously been considered part of 'late-antique style' and motivated by ideology, a point made repeatedly in earlier chapters and one likely to generate considerable debate in the coming years. As an example, to increase the volume of marble available to rework the upper facial features, a sculptor could position the recarved face at an angle to the original so that the chin was lifted and forehead tilted back. This procedure results in the thick set necks and uplifted gazes often seen in late-antique portraits. Chapter Seven is filled with thought-provoking observations like this, but understanding the author's points can be slow going since the prose here is often awkward.

Chapter Eight explores some of the rules and norms that governed recarving. Prusac observes that it was atypical to see imperial images recarved as a private citizens and vice versa, whereas images of deities could be recarved into imperial portraits. Cross-gender recarving is rare due to proportional differences between the sexes. Different rules may have applied when recarving female rather than male portraits. From the first to the mid-third centuries CE, a time when male private portraits were seldom recarved, women's private portraits were often refashioned: the hairstyle would be recut, but little alteration made to the face. While the recarved image could represent the same subject with an updated hairstyle, Prusac argues that the heavy idealization of female portraits meant that a new coiffure potentially recast the image as another woman. The divergent practices for recarving female and male private portraits led Prusac to conclude that Romans placed a "lower social value" on female portraits (116).

Following the last chapter comes a catalog of 508 recarved portraits, with concise entries that include the portrait's subject, provenance, original subject if discernible, and bibliographic references. The volume is amply illustrated with 155 black-and-white plates though readers are referred to Eric Varner's 2004 catalog (also published in the Monumenta Graeca et Romana series) for images of most portraits that predate late antiquity.⁵ Also included are an extensive bibliography, an index of museums and collections, concordances with major catalogues of portraits, and a general index.

While Prusac's ideas are stimulating, the book is not perfect: much of the background in chapters one and three summarizes the work of others and could be condensed. Neither the introduction nor conclusion are necessary for Prusac's arguments, and could be profitably shortened or even omitted. Presenting conclusions before clarifying the methodology is an unusual choice, and some readers may prefer to begin with chapters six and seven before delving into the chronological account in chapters three, four, and five. And crucially, the English translation is often cumbersome and unclear. It is inevitable that the peculiarities of the book will detract from the new ideas Prusac would like to advance, and that is indeed a shame.

Prusac's research has the potential to move the studies of reuse and of Roman portraiture forward in vital new directions. She has put forward a thesis at odds with the art historical orthodoxy that style always carries meaning, and that will certainly attract critics. In an ideal world, her scholarship will spur a reassessment of some assumptions that underlie our practice, and inspire many fruitful discussions about the intent behind late-antique portraiture and its style.

Notes:

1.   Key works include: E. Varner, Mutilation and Transformation, Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture. Monumenta Graeca et Romana, 10. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 2005.04.10 E. Varner, ed. From Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture. Atlanta, GA: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2000. D. Kinney, "Spolia. Damnatio and Renovatio Memoriae" MAAR 42 (1997) 117-48. Beginning to move the discussion of recarved images away from the focus on damnatio is K. Galinsky, "Recarved Imperial Portraits: Nuances and Wider Context," MAAR 52 (2008) 1-25.
2.   For example, Prusac's accounts of sculpture from the villa at Chiragan (pgs. 4 and 19) inaccurately characterize material from the site, and the in-text citations direct readers to sources that contradict rather than support her points.
3.   Varner 2004, 156 and 198-99, as cited in Prusac.
4.   On the recarving of the Colossus of Constantine: E. Harrison, "The Constantinian Portrait." DOP 21 (1967) 81-96. H. Jucker, "Von der Angemessenheit des Stils und einigen Bildnissen Konstantins des Grossen," in Von Angesicht zu Angesicht, 40-70. Bern: Stämpfli & Cie, 1983. C. Evers, "Remarques sur l'iconographie de Constantin," MEFRA 103 (1991) 785-803. E. Varner, "Tyranny and the Transformation of the Roman Visual Landscape," in From Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture, ed. E. Varner, 9-26. Atlanta, GA: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2001.
5.   See note 1.

2012.02.13

2012-02-07T19:19:00.001-05:00

Anna Modigliani, Patricia Osmond, Marianne Pade, Johann Ramminger (ed.), Pomponio Leto tra identità locale e cultura internazionale: atti del convegno internazionale (Teggiano, 3-5 ottobre 2008). RR inedita, Saggi 48. Roma: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2011. Pp. xii, 284. ISBN 9788885913523.

Reviewed by Julia Haig Gaisser, Bryn Mawr College (jgaisser@brynmawr.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference on Pomponio Leto held in Teggiano, Italy in 2008 under the joint auspices of the Parco Letterario Pomponio Leto in Teggiano and the Repertorium Pomponianum, an international consortium of scholars dedicated to research on Pomponio and his sodality.

Pomponio Leto (1428-1498) is one of the most fascinating figures in Italian Renaissance humanism.¹ He taught at the Studium Urbis in Rome for several decades in the second half of the fifteenth century, gathering around him dozens of students devoted to the study of Roman antiquity and still more to Pomponio himself. He headed a famous sodality (generally called "the Roman Academy"), whose members took classical names and transcribed classical texts, modeling their script so closely on Pomponio's distinctive hand that modern scholars sometimes find it hard to distinguish the imitators from their master. Pomponio and his sodality read Roman authors, studied Roman topography, explored the catacombs, staged Roman comedies, and celebrated the Parilia. In 1468 they fell afoul of Pope Paul II, who charged them with paganism, sodomy, and conspiracy. The validity of the charges and the real basis for the pope's animosity remain in doubt, but the disastrous consequences for the Pomponiani are well documented. Several, including Pomponio and Platina (later prefect of the Vatican Library), were imprisoned and tortured for months in Castel Sant'Angelo. The sodality was dissolved and reestablished only under Paul's successor, Sixtus IV. Disdaining the culture and institutions of fifteenth-century Rome, Pomponio tried as far as possible to live like an ancient Roman. He modeled his dress on that of the ancients, cultivated his garden in the manner prescribed by Varro and Columella, and longed to be buried in a sarcophagus on the Appian Way. He had an elaborate funeral at the church of Araceli, but did not get his Roman sarcophagus. As Symonds puts it, "He was conveyed from Araceli to S. Salvatore in Lauro, and there buried like a Christian."²

Pomponio was interested in the whole of Roman antiquity. Monuments, topography, history, texts, inscriptions, institutions—he was a passionate student of them all. But he published rather little. Much of his work is preserved in the lecture notes of his students and the marginalia of his manuscripts. The breadth of his interests, the complex history of his sodality, and his collaborations and relations with other humanists make him an important focus for the study of classical reception and fifteenth-century intellectual history. The same extent and diversity—combined with the fact that most of the essential materials are in manuscripts (many as yet unidentified) scattered in libraries all over Europe (and a few in the US)—make it difficult to get a full picture of his achievement. At the beginning of the last century, Vladimir Zabughin collected and discussed a mass of material in a large two-volume work.³ Zabughin's work, a rudis indigestaque moles, disorganized and badly indexed though it is, remains of fundamental importance; but there have been many important discoveries and advances in manuscript studies in the last century that it could not take into account. In the last twenty years or so there has been an exciting resurgence in Pomponian studies, based on recently discovered materials and both broadening and deepening our understanding of Pomponio and his world. Many of these articles and books are the work of members of the Repertorium Pomponianum and the contributors to the present volume.

The volume hangs together very well. The fifteen papers are arranged to highlight several themes, as the editors note in the preface (ix- x): "Pomponio: Vita e insegnamento"; "Pomponio filologo"; "Pomponio storico-antiquario": and "La fortuna di Pomponio." The intellectual quality of all the papers is high. In what follows I will follow the thematic structure of the editors, emphasizing the papers that seemed to me of the greatest general interest to classicists and scholars of reception.

Pomponio's life and teaching are the subject of the first three papers. Massimo Miglio ("Homo totus simplex. Mitografie di un personaggio") gives a quick but very useful sketch of Pomponio's life in the context of late fifteenth-century Rome, emphasizing Pomponio's distance from contemporary culture and institutions, including the Curia and Studium. He makes the interesting argument that Pomponio's sodality was an alternative to the culture of both. Rossella Bianchi's paper ("Gli studi su Pomponio Leto dopo Vladimiro Zabughin") will be an essential starting point for anyone working on Pomponio. Her primary subject is the contribution to the subject made by Maria Accame in her recent book, Pomponio Leto. Vita e insegnamento (Rome 2008), which she places in the context of Pomponian studies from Zabughin on. The paper highlights Accame's most important arguments, sets out the current state of our knowledge, and gives a fine picture of Pomponio's intellectual interests and achievements. Arturo Didier ("La patria di Pomponio Leto") gives a geographical and demographical account of Diano (modern Teggiano), Pomponio's probable birthplace.

Five papers on Pomponio as a philologist follow. Maria Accame in "Note scite nei commenti di Pomponio Leto" takes as her starting point Pomponio's travels to the Black Sea and beyond in 1479 or 1480 (the date is disputed) and goes on to excavate notes on Scythia from Pomponio's commentaries and the course notes of his students. The project is more interesting than it sounds. Accame is able to cite a very large number of notes on the customs, food, and flora and fauna of Scythia—some drawn from Pomponio's own observations, others from Pliny's Natural History, but very few from contemporary accounts. Lucia Gualdo Rosa's valuable paper ("La fortuna—e la sfortuna—di Seneca nel Rinascimento europeo") should be of special interest to classicists. She discusses the history of the pseudepigraphic correspondence between Seneca and Paul and traces the discussions about the identity (or identities) of Seneca from Lorenzo Valla to Marc-Antoine de Muret, with particular emphasis on the contributions to the debate by the Pomponiani, especially Paolo Pompilio. The paper is particularly important for its presentation of the Senecan discussions in their historical and political/religious contexts. Fabio Stok ("Pomponio Leto e Niccolò Perotti") discusses the joint study of Martial and Statius by Pomponio and Perotti in 1469- 70 and makes the interesting suggestion that Perotti played a role in Pomponio's reentry into Roman cultural life after his imprisonment (pp. 83-6). Marianne Pade ("Pomponio Leto e la lettura di Marziale nel Quattrocento") is also concerned with the work of Perotti and Pomponio on Martial. Her detailed discussion makes a close examination of their intellectual exchanges and teases out the relations among their Martial commentaries in three different manuscripts. Giancarlo Abbamonte ("Il commento di Pomponio Leto alle opere di Virgilio: problemi ecdotici") is interested in the complex problem of sorting out the strata in the several versions of Pomponio's commentary on Virgil. He suggests (p. 125) that a critical edition of Pomponio's notes might be formatted like the Harvard Servius—a terrifying prospect for anyone familiar with the publication history of that work.

Next, four papers on Pomponio the historian and antiquarian. Francesca Niutta ("Fortune e sfortune del Romanae historiae compendium di Pomponio Leto") reconstructs the phases of composition and follows the fortuna of this history, one of the small number of Pomponio's published works. Her brief discussion of Pomponio's treatment of Mohammed in the Compendium and its fortunes (p. 157) is particularly interesting. Angelo Mazzocco ("Biondo e Leto: protagonisti dell'antiquaria quattrocentesca") compares the antiquarianism of Pomponio and Biondo with respect to their purposes and audiences. Biondo, he suggests (p. 177), wanted to give a complete picture of Roman civilization as a stimulation and inspiration to scholars and princes, while Pomponio was writing for his students and colleagues. The argument is nicely supported by his quotation (p. 177) of Zabughin's translation of a comment from Pomponio's antiquarian work De Romanorum magistratibus: "Scrivano più diffusamente gli altri: a Pomponio basta piacere ai suoi." The words would make a suitable epigraph for Pomponio's work as a whole. Patricia Osmond ("Testimonianze di ricerche antiquarie tra i fogli di Sallustio") discusses the manuscript commentaries in copies of Pomponio's edition of Sallust (1490). She observes (p. 193) that Pomponio's method was not to synthesize but to focus on detail, commenting on texts or composing handbooks on laws, magistrates, and institutions. But she also uses Pomponio's notes to suggest that he, not a native Roman himself, considered "Romanness," or at least Roman culture, open to newcomers and even foreigners. Federico Rausa ("Pomponio Leto, Pirro Ligorio e la querelle sull'edificio decagono dell'Esquilino") contrasts the "new" sixteenth-century archeology of Ligorio and his contemporaries with the antiquarian approach of Pomponio and his fellow humanists.

The volume concludes with three papers on the fortuna of Pomponio. Anna Modigliani's interesting discussion ("Pomponio Leto e i Romani: tracce della memoria di un grande maestro") treats the cult of Pomponio after his death. Pomponio's pupil Marco Antonio Altieri provided in his will (1511) for an annual celebration for himself, Platina, and Pomponio on the anniversary of his death. But there are other signs of a cult as well, which she traces in contemporary legal documents containing examples of "Pomponio" or "Pomponia" as a child's name—the suggestion being that these children were named after their master by members of the sodality. The name is unusual, and she makes a good case (p. 223-4) for her claim that Pomponio had assumed it himself in imitation of some ancient Pomponius (perhaps Titus Pomponius Atticus). Johann Ramminger ("Pomponio's Nachleben: A Phantom in need of research?") briefly sketches the early reception of three printed works, two definitely by Pomponio (De antiquitatibus urbis Romae and Romanae historiae compendium) and a third of possible but not certain Pomponian provenance (a poem with the title Carmen in gigantum ossa), and looks at the dissemination of Pomponio's ideas by his students. He suggests some directions for further research, particularly on the transmission of Pomponio's ideas by his students into northern Europe. Annalisa Esposito (". . .Il cardinal Federico Borromeo raccoglie notizie intorno a Pomponio Leto") discusses the foundation of the Ambrosian Library in Milan in the early seventeenth century by Borromeo and Borromeo's attempts to find information about Pomponio. The fact that Borromeo's informants could find out very little leads her to the conclusion that within a century after his death Pomponio had become virtually unknown.

The volume as a whole gives a good sense of the range of current Pomponian studies, presenting snapshots of Pomponio, his activities, the breadth of his interests and associations, and the fortunes of his works and reputation. It should certainly stimulate further research. Unlike many such collections, it has indices (one of manuscripts, the other of names). Its usefulness is somewhat marred, however, by its lack of a general bibliography. Anyone wanting to pursue particular topics is condemned to trolling through the very detailed notes to each article.

Notes:

1.   The contemporary biography (1499) of Pomponio by Marco Antonio Sabellico is given on the Repertorium website.
2.   John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy. Part two. The Revival of Learning. New York, 1881. 362.
3.   Vladimir Zabughin, Giulio Pomponio Leto. Saggio critico 2 vols. Rome-Grottaferrata, 1909-12.

2012.02.12

2012-02-06T20:08:00.001-05:00

Julia L. Shear, Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xv, 368. ISBN 9780521760447. $99.00.

Reviewed by Matt Simonton, Stanford University (simonton@stanford.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Scholarly works on the revolutions at Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE tend to treat one of the two regimes only, or focus on reconciling the sources, or deal primarily with the legal issues involved. Julia L. Shear seeks to understand the Athenians' responses to the coups in their entirety – whether legal, ritual, or even architectural, whether at the level of the individual or of the collective – and how these responses changed from the Four Hundred to the Thirty. In assessing the Athenians' choice of responses, the author builds up an ambitious framework with which to interpret a wide array of evidence. (Indeed, in its breadth and interdisciplinarity this book does for the period in question what Greg Anderson's study on the "Athenian experiment" did for the Kleisthenic era.)¹ In a work as comprehensive as this one, some parts of the argument are inevitably more convincing than others. In this reviewer's eyes, moreover, certain methodological assumptions need to be reassessed. However, these issues do not ultimately diminish the importance of the book as a wide-ranging, up-to-date, and innovative account of a crucial period in Athenian history.

In Chapter 1 Shear situates her work alongside recent accounts of late-fifth-century Athenian politics. She promises to go beyond the studies of Loraux and Wolpert, who focus on the Thirty, and criticizes Loening, Todd, Quillin, and Wolpert again for "concentrat[ing] on individual men and their particular decisions which are not put in the larger context of Athens after the Thirty or the city's collective actions" (5). Shear will incorporate material culture: she rightly treats inscriptions not as "texts on pages" but as "monuments in their own right" (5), whose placement, content, and interaction with the viewer gave rise to different "dynamics" (a favorite word of the study) which affected individual and group behavior. Here Shear draws upon recent scholarship concerned with cultural memory, stressing the importance of ritual for collective remembering and the inevitable contestation that enters into the process of memorialization. At the chapter's end the book's major claims are set out: the responses to oligarchy included not only literature and oratory, but also "inscribed documents, the buildings, monuments, and spaces of the city and the city's public rituals" (14); these responses changed over time; the Agora, in particular, was transformed "from a multi-use space…to the space of the democratic citizen" (17); and the events of 404/3 were remembered "selectively as external war, rather than stasis, which together with the Thirty, was consigned to the gaps of memory" (17-18).

Chapter 2 assembles the evidence for the revolution of the Four Hundred, particularly Thucydides and the Athenaion Politeia. Shear follows many in seeing Thucydides as full of intrigue and violence, the Ath. Pol. as reflecting serious constitutional debates. The "hero" of the revolution of 411 for the Ath. Pol. is identified as Kleitophon (22), the language of whose proposals signaled an attempt to appeal to democratic sensibilities. As for Thucydides, Shear plausibly connects his treatment of the Four Hundred, especially the hardcore oligarchs, with the rhetoric of the hostile trials that occurred after the fall of the regime. Overall, Shear gives more weight to the Ath. Pol.'s picture of a crisis of constitutional ideology during the period, citing the constitution of Drakon, Thrasymachos 85 B1 Diels-Kranz, and passages from the Thesmophoriazusai as instantiations of a genuine patrios politeia debate. Whether or not we wish to use these as evidence (the first two cannot be securely dated and the last is not explicitly concerned with anything patrios), it should be noted that the historicity of the debate does not require that the arguments were put forth in good faith. Whatever evidence [Aristotle] and the other sources give us, Thucydides might still be right that it was a politikon schema (8.89.3), with empty and confusing slogans masking a ruthless power-grab.

Chapters 3-5 analyze the responses to the Four Hundred. Shear first looks at the process of collecting and inscribing laws during the period 410-404, focusing in particular on Drakon's homicide laws (IG I³ 104), the laws on the council (IG I³ 105), the sacrificial calendar (SEG lii 48), and other fragmentary laws (IG I³ 236, 237). Here the author's epigraphical and archaeological expertise yields new insights about the location and practical dynamics of these monuments. Through a painstaking examination of the fragments of the sacrificial calendar, for example, she convincingly shows that it was originally made up of separate stelai set into the annexes of the Stoa Basileios (89-96, with indispensable figures and tables here and throughout the chapter). Since the stone on which the archons swore their oath was also next to the Stoa, the archons "would quite literally have been surrounded by the relevant legislation" they were swearing to uphold (105). This powerful image reveals the payoffs to be gained from linking texts, social theory, and archaeology.

We are on less certain ground with the following chapter, which argues for a triumphalist democratic interpretation of various post-411 building projects, such as the new council house, the Stoa Basileios, and the temple of Athena Polias. Shear may be correct about the first two, given the strong analysis in the preceding chapter on the inscribed laws and the fact that the new bouleuterion lacked a vestibule that would hinder access to its proceedings, thus making them more public. The claim, however, that the temple of Athena should likewise be seen as democratic because "the demos did decide to finish the temple" whereas "the oligarchs could have undertaken the project…but…chose not to do so" (126), is strained. (Is a four-month reign really long enough to render the lack of building activity significant?) Nor was I convinced that the inscriptions on the acropolis set up by the Four Hundred constituted a "problem" which was solved by the reinstituted democracy carrying on exactly as before, thus allowing new decrees to obscure the oligarchic ones (128-29). There is insufficient evidence to argue that this amounts to a conscious strategy.

The next chapter, which expands upon the author's previously published work, is stronger. Shear convincingly reconstructs the logistics of the oath of Demophantos, showing how the demos swore by tribe and deme in the Agora before the Dionysia of 409 and how this process promoted stability by "mak[ing] Athenian unity tangibly visible to all participants" (138). The chapter concludes with a detailed study of the events of the Dionysia of 409, including the rewards proclaimed for Thrasyboulos the assassin of Phrynichos (IG I³ 102), the democratic pre-play rituals, and the production of Sophokles' Philoktetes. Shear's interpretation of the play's content is compelling, but it is surprising that she neglects to engage with the issue of Sophokles' relationship to the Four Hundred, especially since Jameson's 1971 treatment of the subject is cited elsewhere in the book.²

The next part of the book, Chapters 6-10, applies a similar analytic framework to the reign of the Thirty. Shear persuasively interprets the Thirty's destruction of stelai and reconstruction of the Pnyx as strategies to shore up their rule. The demos's response came in the form of reinscribed proxeny decrees, honors for the heroes of Phyle (SEG xxviii 45), rewards for foreigners involved in the democratic restoration (Rhodes and Osborne 4), the decree of Theozotides (SEG xxviii 26), the sale of the property of the Thirty (SEG xxxii 161), the continued revision of the laws and the sacred calendar, and, of course, the amnesty itself. Shear places the swearing of the amnesty on 11 Boedromion at the temple of Meter in Agrai (208-12). She observes that future encounters with the inscribed agreements would have recreated the oaths through the reperformance entailed by reading aloud (215- 16).³ Chapter 9 returns to the Agora to argue that the Mint, buildings A and B in the northeast corner, and the bronze statues of Konon and Evagoras should be understood as a continuation of the process of transforming the Agora from a multi-use space into the space of the democratic citizen. Since, as Shear acknowledges, the Agora continued to be used for commerce and other apolitical activities, it is probably better to say that the Agora's mundane characteristics were de-emphasized in favor of a greater political focus rather than supplanted.

Chapters 8 and 10 together contain one of the book's most controversial claims, inspired by the seminal work of Nicole Loraux: that the Athenians "officially" remembered the regime of the Thirty as a period of external war rather than stasis. I do not think this can be sustained: the absence of the word "stasis" in the inscriptions listed above does not prove that the idea of stasis was purposefully banished from memory. Indeed, the use of the term "oligarchy" in the decrees implies stasis, evoking civic division and strife rather than concealing them. Also problematic is the author's claim (260, 300-1, 318) that in 403, for the "first time," "democracy is also being defined as not being oligarchy" in addition to not being tyranny. Shear recognizes that oligarchy is referred to several times in the aftermath of the Four Hundred, especially in the fragments of Antiphon's apologia and in Lysias 20. She can explain this by labeling those speeches "individual" and "private," but the appearance of "oligarchia" in the decree of Patrokleides at Andokides 1.78 shows that the Athenians "officially" remembered the Four Hundred as an oligarchy at least once in the period 410-404, and probably many other times.

This leads us to a more general problem of the book, the repeated contrast between "collective" acts and those of "individual men" (see, e.g., 4, 15, 165, 190, 224, 312). For Shear, decrees and monuments are "products of the demos" (227), part of the "public, collective sphere where the unified Athenians remembered democracy and its past and forgot oligarchy" (165), as opposed to dicastic speeches, which are the private acts of individuals. This schema, however, does not do justice to the fact that politicians and plaintiffs alike were performing before popular audiences. Arguments in court had to be crafted to meet demotic expectations, while decrees of the assembly were the outcome of a complex process of interaction between individual rhetors and the sovereign majority. The decisions enacted in the name of the demos which we possess on stone are thus more contingent, and less the product of a unified agent, than Shear allows. Her claim that "the demos created new ceremonies in the form of Demophantos' oath" (135), for example, seems to me to get the relationship backwards: Demophantos convinced the demos to accept his proposal (in part by anticipating what he thought many of them wanted to hear); they did not demand anything of him en masse. Recognizing that the "products of the demos" lack collective intentionality, then, entails amending Shear's proposed explanation for the success of the amnesty, that the "collective memory of the democratic city's unity served to balance the individual actions of men working for their own ends" (312). This will not be the last word on the topic of responding to the oligarchy, but every future attempt will have to grapple with the evidence and arguments of Shear's formidable study.

Notes:

1.   The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 BC (Ann Arbor 2003).
2.   For more on the politics of the Philoktetes, see K. Hawthorne in CA 25 (2006), 243-76.
3.   J. W. Day has long espoused this approach to inscriptions, most recently in Archaic Greek Epigram and Dedication (Cambridge 2010).

2012.02.11

2012-02-06T19:59:00.001-05:00

Andreas Kakoschke, Die Personennamen im römischen Britannien. Alpha-Omega, Reihe A, Bd 259. Hildesheim; Zürich: Olms-Weidmann, 2011. Pp. 671. ISBN 9783487146287. €248.00 (hb).

Reviewed by Andreas Gavrielatos, University of Leeds (a.gavrielatos@leeds.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

Students of epigraphy and onomastics in particular, are familiar with Andreas Kakoschke's research. His last book, Die Personennamen im römischen Britannien, is an exhaustive catalogue of personal names connected with Roman Britain mainly attested from AD 1^st - 3^rd c. (with a few cases dated before Christ or later until AD 410). The requirement for the recording of a name is to be borne by someone who 'lived in or spent some time in Roman Britain'. Therefore, the names attested in stone inscriptions and/or coins are included, whereas the author is selective about the names found on instrumentum domesticum. Methodologically this reveals the author's position towards the problem of identifying the origin of the bearers, especially in the latter category. Literary sources are also considered, a modus operandi that verifies the comprehensive character of the list. The scope and the sources are discussed in the brief, yet very informative, introduction of the book, both in German and in English.

The material covered by this list proves the catalogue necessary for the historian as well as for the philologist. The record of the names of persons with an administrative position in Britannia, although without a British origin, serves as a useful source for the fields of prosopography and the history of Roman Britain. Equally important is the incorporation of the names attested in ancient literature. Although it seems confusing in the first place, the source of each entry is given, thus the names and the persons can easily be identified. Moreover, under each name the comments are given individually for each entry, usually accompanied with a relative bibliography, hence a clearer view of the name's bearer can be deduced.

The method of the work and the presentation of the list are well known and have proved to be successful in the author's previous publications. In terms of methodology, the book offers a simple table-like display for each name. The information provided for each name and their entries are indicative for the problems the list solves (see below for an analysis of the structure). The material is based on a parallel consideration of the most recent publications, such as the Names on terra sigillata by Hartley and Dickinson and the latest publications of the RIB series, as well as the essential OPEL etc., along with their reviews. Due to this fact, the reader of the book has a comprehensive overview of these names, instead of a work with a restricted area of attestation. Theoretical problems on Roman onomastics are not a subject of consideration in this book. However, accounts of e.g. the influence of Romanisation on nomenclature,¹ are considered and terms such as 'pseudo-gentilicium' are used, providing a clearer view of the names' function.

In the same way the book provides supportive material for a study of the bilingualism of this area; the names occurring in this milieu are of significant importance for such research² and, even though a researcher will not find theoretical answers in this book, the linguistic origin of every name follows each name. It is noteworthy that where the origin is doubted or ambiguous, other suggestions are also made. Among the names of the list it is reasonable that one finds abundant examples of Celtic names and thus, a comparative study is supported. Hence, the book becomes a compulsory supplement to the most comprehensive and up-to-date database of Celtic names in Britain, CPNRB, which the author takes into consideration, among other sources.

The catalogue is separated into two chapters, one for the names used as nomina (175 pages) and a second one containing the cognomina (454 pages). The names are recorded alphabetically. For each name the list provides all the entries collected along with the source.

Each record consists of three parts: a) an informative table, which provides the entries for each name, b) the other records of the particular entry, merely those in the works of Lőrincz and Mócsy among others, and c) comments on the entry. The comments consist of two parts, one with the author's comments on each of the entries and another with the bibliography on the name under discussion, which takes into account the basic tools of Roman onomastics. The praenomina are not recorded separately, which is reasonable, since most are the ones widely borne by individuals in the Roman Empire. However, in cases where a particular name has been recorded with a rare use as praenomen, it is highlighted in the comments. This practice enables a further study on the onomastics of the particular area and serves as a helpful survey for the study of the praenomen, whose function is always of interest.

The entries are given in the full form (duo or tria nomina), when it is used. The provenance and the particular location where each entry is attested are also given. Prosopographical studies are further facilitated by the fact that each entry suggests the status of the person who bears the name.

Although the catalogue's main aim is a survey of prosopography, the importance of the list for its linguistic aspects is also considered. In particular, each entry is followed by the name's linguistic origin. This linguistic approach is confined in this way and the second part of the commentary for each name provides the reader with further bibliography, which is basic and not an exhaustive one. Additions can be made for some of the entries, but they are only very particular accounts. Such examples may be Solin's account of the nomen Silvius and its derivatives,³ or the suggestions for some names being in use as 'translation names' in Celtic areas, which can be applicable in the case of Primigenius. Another possible addition could be a probable Celtic origin of the nomen Trebonius. At any rate, these additions are of secondary importance; they are definitely not the main interest of the work and they do not affect the overall importance of the book.

On the other hand, the function of the names as Decknamen or 'translation names' is taken into account and references are made to the supporting bibliography, and similarly with names of ambiguous etymology and origin. Although the author accepts the origin, which he provides with the entry, the bibliography of each entry serves as an account of the suggestions and assumptions made by previous scholars. Moreover, cases of pseudo- gentilicia are clearly pointed out and the name, which they are derived from, is mentioned, but without a cross-reference if it is recorded in the catalogue, e.g. the indicative Adgennius in the very first page of the catalogue of nomina, derived from the CN Adgennus. The lack of cross-reference does not cause any problem, for the alphabetical order of the records is convenient for the reader. In general, linguistic research on the names is facilitated and definitely not restricted to the aforementioned linguistic origin.

The book is written in German, but it does not reduce its importance for the scholar or the student of Roman Britain, while the English introduction serves as an adequate guide for the understanding and the use of the book. The price (€ 248.00) might be high for an individual's budget, but it is absolutely reasonable for what it offers and a necessity for a well-resourced library.

Notes:

1.   Dondin-Payre, M. & Raepsaet-Charlier, M.-Th., Noms, identités culturelles et romanisation sous le Haut- Empire, Brussels 2001.
2.   See, for example, Mullen, A., 'Linguistic Evidence for 'Romanisation': Continuity and Change in Romano-British Onomastics: A Study of the Epigraphic Record with Particular Reference to Bath', Britannia 38 (2007), 35-61.
3.   Solin, H., ' "Silvius" ', SCO 43 (1993), 359-71.

2012.02.10

2012-02-06T19:48:00.001-05:00

Ramsay MacMullen, The Earliest Romans: a Character Sketch. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. Pp. xi, 193. ISBN 9780472117987. $65.00.

Reviewed by John D. Muccigrosso, Drew University (jmuccigr@drew.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

In this fairly short work (122 pages of preface and main text), Ramsay MacMullen approaches the problem of understanding early Rome in the absence of detailed historical information. As he explains in the preface, he does this by treating the "entire people as one personality," and makes good reference to the famed eye-witness to the early United States, Tocqueville. The work is divided into two parts chronologically, the first bringing us down to 509 and the second to 264, and those sections are both divided into four chapters, each titled with one of the four main "personality" traits MacMullen sees in the Romans: conservative, tolerant, aggressive, and practical.

The chapters show a familiarity and comfort with not only the relevant historical scholarship, but also the archaeological, as will surprise no one familiar with MacMullen's extensive output. Students wishing to explore both recent and classic works on early Rome could do much worse than to start with the bibliography here. There are few images, mainly maps, and notes follow the text, with headings on each page that indicate the original page of the reference, a welcome convenience. The book ends with a short index.

The four traits that MacMullen focuses on will be familiar to a beginning student of the Romans, perhaps even to those who have not formally studied antiquity, and he makes a fair case for each of them. For myself I would have preferred a more contextualized approach, so that, if indeed the Romans were conservative, we had some standard of comparison: Were they more conservative than their neighbors...than the Greeks...the Celts? I also suspect that many readers will not be so willing to go along with his theoretical "personality" approach to any culture, especially one as complex and evolving as that of the Romans, even in its earlier centuries. The desire, with which he closes the book, to be able to answer the questions of why things turned out how they did with a "...because that's who the Romans were" will not satisfy too many of even the modern historians he cites.

However let me leave this part of the book's content aside, because it becomes clear very early on that the book's main goal is to make an argument about the reliability of the ancient tradition regarding early Rome and modern historiography of the same. The final chapter, "Wrap-up," is concerned almost entirely with this. There one reads a quote put into the mouth of the scholar wishing to write on "early Rome and its story" using these ancient written sources: "We cannot know, non liquet." To find this on page 117 makes one wonder what those preceding 116 pages were all about, though to be fair MacMullen uses a fair amount of archaeology, as mentioned above, so at least some of those preceding pages were justified by this standard. There is however a constant use of material that comes only from these unreliable writings.

The book becomes then another salvo in a long-running battle on how to approach ancient Rome, as MacMullen knows and describes in the book. The two sides might be described thusly (to my mind): on the one hand, those who are willing to start from a fairly trusting stance towards the ancient historians, however much they might need correction from, say, archaeology or epigraphy; and on the other hand those who find the ancients so unreliable as to be useless. Undermining their position, the latter group often, if not usually, does not refrain from an attempt at historical analysis of early Rome, and inevitably does so by using the material they claim is worthless. This book falls into that same trap.

For example in chapter eight we read about the plebeian secession of 494, and in chapter four of the arrival of Appius Claudius in Rome with his retinue. Neither of these events has even the slightest shred of evidence for it, outside the pages of the historians. On p. 91 MacMullen even engages in the same kind of source analysis he complains about when he judges accounts of early genocide by the Romans "more credible" for what he imagines would have been their distastefulness for men like Livy. (I do not disagree, but then I would put myself in the first camp described above.)

I am left unsure what use to recommend for this book. Scholars familiar with the debate on Roman historiography will find little to change their minds, whichever camp they place themselves in, and all but the most advanced undergraduates will be lost, I fear. Perhaps graduate students can find in it a readable introduction to the debate on early Rome and the myriad approaches to it.

2012.02.09

2012-02-05T20:56:00.001-05:00

Katharina Volk, Ovid. Blackwell introductions to the classical world. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Pp. x, 147. ISBN 9781405136426. $104.95.

Reviewed by Darcy Krasne, University of Arkansas (dakrasne@uark.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Volk knows exactly what sort of book she intended to create, and she has gone about it admirably. It is a book for Ovidian neophytes, specifically "readers of Ovid who would like to know more about what they are reading" (p.3). She includes in this group students, scholars in a variety of disciplines, and the "general audience"; she excludes classicists, but in this she does herself a disservice. Apart from scholars of Latin poetry, who will indeed already be well-versed in the book's subject matter, I think that most classicists will find a great deal more than a few "points of interest" within these pages.

The intended audience has placed a number of restrictions on Volk, which she briefly details: a minimal quotation of Latin, a minimal documentation of scholarly opinion (but lack of documentation does not imply lack of engagement; she has a nice habit of inserting critical readings of Ovid into her narrative without actually digressing to discuss a given theoretical approach), and a plethora of "generalizations" that fly in the face of Stephen Hinds' 1987 advice to the contrary (as Volk forthrightly observes, p.3).¹ But while she puts a repeated emphasis on her own oversimplification and generalization, these are, in fact, both effective and broadly accurate, and what she calls "generalization" is frequently actually a synthesis of the best Ovidian scholarship. I will begin by giving an overview of Volk's organization and general tendencies, after which I will address the very few, very minor points (both specific and general) to which I have objections.

Volk arranges her book thematically, rather than moving chronologically, in an attempt "to bring out the internal coherence of Ovid's work" (p.4); this arrangement is highly successful and requires surprisingly little repetition. The chapters and even sometimes subsections generally begin with helpful road-maps, and the book itself reflects this on a grander scale, with a road-map for the entire book occupying the last two pages of the Introduction. Each chapter (Work, Life, Elegy, Myth, Art, Women, Rome, Reception) is concerned with a different aspect of Ovid's poetry, invariably construed far more broadly than the chapter title might suggest—for instance, the chapter on "Women" actually also addresses sexuality and constructions of gender, while the chapter titled "Myth" includes a subsection on "Time." The types of art that Volk discusses in "Art" (which, incidentally, she considers to be the "central concern" (p.5) of Ovid's poetry as a whole) include such far-flung topics as: art as a learned or taught skill, the Ars Amatoria, rhetoric, manmade art versus nature, the figure of the artist, and artifice or deception. For her final chapter on "Reception," by contrast, she begins by acknowledging the impossibility of treating this enormous subject in a single chapter; her solution is precision strikes, isolating three points in time and in three different media.

A few recurring themes run throughout Volk's discussion. One such theme is Ovid's frequent prolonged revision of his works, including the Amores ("It is ... possible that the poet worked on the Amores, on and off, for about twenty-five years," p.7), the Metamorphoses, and the Fasti. Other themes are, for instance, the need to be cautious about a potential difference between Ovid's fictional literary persona and the historical poet Ovid,² or the repeated caution that we must interpret Ovid's poetry in its social context, not our own—earlier generations, says Volk, were repeatedly guilty of reading Ovid against their own societal expectations, and we are equally guilty. These themes are frequently warnings about the potential difficulties of reading Ovid, but another, different, theme is Ovid's apparent "modernity," which Volk sees as being responsible for the resurgence of interest in Ovid starting in the late 20^th century.

Volk also touches on a number of never-ending scholarly debates, and those which she takes up are well-chosen for an overview of Ovid.³ These include debates on whether all 21 Heroides are Ovidian, whether Ovid was "really" exiled, what Ovid's error could conceivably have been, Ovid's putative "feminism" versus his putative "misogyny," and whether Ovid's poetry is "pro"- or "anti"-Augustan. While Volk does sometimes eventually come down on one side or the other, she always attempts to air each side of an issue as seriously and neutrally as possible before letting her own opinion on the matter shine through.

Before I turn to the aspects of the book which bothered me in some fashion, I need to make it very clear that the book is excellent from cover to cover—while my list of problems will be longer than my list of praises, that is only because properly singing the book's praises would require a review the length of the original book, and to any question of "does Volk discuss X?" the answer will almost certainly be "yes."

The most pervasive problem with the book arises from Volk's uncertainty as to her intended audience—or perhaps it is more an uncertainty as to where to come down within the very broad definition of her intended audience. For instance, she cavils at using the "critical" term "persona" (p.20) but throws in the word "topos" (p.41) without second thought. Similarly, I cannot understand why Volk shies away from saying explicitly that the Metamorphoses actually metamorphoses its sources; instead, she says that "Ovid in the Metamorphoses is in a continuous process of creative engagement with his sources" (p.55). It might be a slightly reductive point, but at the same time, I think it is another example of Volk not necessarily being entirely sure about what level of audience she is writing for. The well-versed scholar who is not a classicist (or Ovidian) will presumably spot the underlying implication immediately; an undergraduate might or might not put two and two together. By contrast, a note that is clearly aimed at an unknowledgeable audience is her explanation of Latin non-capitalization (p.65) so that she can make the connection between Ovid's ars and his Ars.

Very occasionally, Volk's generalizing is too gross an oversimplification—for instance, while she usually steps back from coming down firmly on a given side of an issue, she states the case of the Metamorphoses' divisions far too simply: "The poem is divided into three blocks of five books each, a structure that corresponds to the chronological progression of the work's subject matter" (p.11). In fact, this is just one type of division into which the poem falls, and perhaps it is merely an oversight that Volk makes such a bald statement here. Another instance of probable carelessness is Volk's translation of Catullus' odi et amo as "I love and I hate," rather than "I hate and I love" (p.37); there seems to be no good reason for the inverted translation, especially since she goes so far as to quote the Latin, for once. But such slips are rare.

One instance of a possibly intentional omission solely for the sake of her argument comes in Volk's discussion of the Fasti's meter. She completely omits any mention of Callimachus here, and while introducing this explanation for the elegiac meter might undercut her very reasonable argument that "Ovid uses the work's elegiac meter as a justification of the introduction of erotic material into what might otherwise have been a rather dry subject matter" (p.48), it seems slightly facile not to mention the Aetia at all.

Volk gets around the issue of scholarly references within the text by having a final chapter devoted to "Further Reading." All of my following comments on possible supplements to this section are to be taken in the understanding that Volk naturally had to make difficult and presumably arbitrary choices of what to include or omit, given the wealth of material and the ferociously limited space available.

For the Heroides, since Volk does not exclusively restrict herself in this chapter to works in English, she might have mentioned the several Italian commentaries on the Heroides published in the Florentine Serie dei classici greci e latini—several of these, with commentaries by leading Italian scholars, cover poems not included in Knox's Green and Yellow edition (specifically 3, 9, and 12, with commentaries by Barchiesi, Casali, and Bessone respectively) and thus fill gaps in Volk's list of commentaries.⁴ For translations of the Metamorphoses, since she focuses on "recent" translations (p.131), it is odd that Raeburn's is the only translation she cites of at least four published in the 2000's. (A handy overview and comparison of nine older and more recent translations (1955-2004) is now Boyd's "Ovid in Modern Translation.")⁵ I am also uncertain as to why Volk left the volume edited by Herbert-Brown out of the Fasti bibliography; surely it is no less "a group of renowned scholars" (p.132) who have contributed to that volume than those who contributed to Arethusa 25 —indeed, several contributors (Miller, Newlands, Fantham) are the same.⁶ Volk suggests no Latin text of the Ibis; the best available is probably La Penna.⁷

Finally, let me briefly address those issues of production which have nothing to do with Volk. The copyediting is excellent; I discovered one typo (a missing comma after "not" at the bottom of p.60) and one anchorless reference in the index (purportedly, Medea is discussed on p.79). The only real problem is the reproduction of Correggio's Jupiter and Io (Figure 2, p.119): Volk spends a good deal of time discussing the animal's head visible in the lower right corner of the painting—but the relevant animal is almost entirely invisible in the printed image, especially before one knows exactly what one is looking for. (It is somewhat more visible in the eBook edition when viewed on a backlit computer screen.) Since Volk spends so much time discussing this head (half of p.120), it seems unfortunate for the reader not to be able to make a judgment for himself, the presumable availability of the internet and Google Image Search notwithstanding.

In conclusion, I must reiterate that the book is truly first-class. It will, I believe, become invaluable for any course in which Ovid is a central component, even at the graduate level. Those of the book's intended audience who pick up the book will come away knowing as much, if not more, about Ovid than the general classicist. And those classicists who pick up the book will at the very least find their knowledge incisively refreshed, and quite possibly significantly augmented.

Notes:

1.   S.E. Hinds, "Generalising about Ovid," Ramus 16 (1987), 4-31.
2.   Understandable, given K. Volk, "Ille Ego: (Mis)Reading Ovid's Elegiac Persona," A and A 51 (2005), 83-96.
3.   Despite this, Volk's choice of debates may sometimes have the unintended effect of skewing a reader's perception of what the major critical arguments in Ovidian scholarship are. For instance, although Volk briefly mentions the disputed authorship of the Epistula Sapphus at pp.8-9, she essentially sweeps aside the heavy uncertainty that still surrounds Sappho's letter. (For arguments of inauthenticity, see especially R.J. Tarrant, "The Authenticity of the Letter from Sappho to Phaon (Heroides XV)," HSCP 85 (1981), 133-53; for arguments of authenticity, see G. Rosati, "Sabinus, the Heroides, and the Poet-Nightingale. Some Observations on the Authenticity of the Epistula Sapphus," CQ 46 (1996), 207-216 and J.P. Hallett, "Catullan Voices in Heroides 15: How Sappho Became a Man," Dictynna 2 (2005) [online].) As a result, the non-Ovidian reader would be forgiven in thinking there to be less current scholarly furor over this issue than over whether or not Ovid was really exiled.
4.   Volumes 1, 3, and 6: A. Barchiesi, P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum 1-3 (1992); S. Casali, P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum epistula IX: Deianira Herculi (1995); F. Bessone, P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum Epistula XII: Medea Iasoni (1997).
5.   In B.W. Boyd and C. Fox (eds.), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ovid and the Ovidian Tradition. New York, 2010. (BMCR 2011.05.11) This book, handy for numerous reasons and well worth noting for much of Volk's intended audience, was presumably not yet available when Volk's book went to press.
6.   G. Herbert-Brown (ed.), Ovid's Fasti: Historical Readings at its Bimillennium. Oxford, 2002. (BMCR 2003.09.34)
7.   A. La Penna, Publi Ovidi Nasonis Ibis. Florence, 1957.

2012.02.08

2012-02-05T20:35:00.001-05:00

Stuart Gillespie, English Translation and Classical Reception: Towards a New Literary History. Classical receptions. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Pp. ix, 208. ISBN 9781405199018. $109.95.

Reviewed by Stephen Harrison, Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Stephen.harrison@ccc.ox.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

Stuart Gillespie is the leading UK figure in the study of English literary translations of Latin and Greek texts, from his anthology The Poets on the Classics (1988) to his current series co-editorship of the Oxford History of Literary Translation in English (four volumes since 2005, one to come) and his editorship of the journal Translation and Literature. This rewarding volume links together a series of studies of poetic translations of classical texts from Chaucer to Ted Hughes, arguing the unassailable proposition that the significance of these texts has been underrated if not ignored in modern versions of English literary history.

The opening chapter, 'Making the Classics Belong', sets out a rapid sketch of the history of classical translation in Britain; it got off to a slower start than in France or Italy, and sometimes indeed translated French versions of Latin texts (one might add here that the text often seen as the earliest English translation of Vergil, Caxton's 1490 Eneydos, is of course a version of the French Roman d'Énéas). Eighteenth-century classics such as Pope's Homer and Dryden's Virgil achieved a long life, one reason why the nineteenth century was relatively poor in translations; another issue for the Victorians was archaism (here the much–used Homeric prose versions of Lang, Leaf and Myers (Iliad, 1882) and Butcher and Lang (Odyssey, 1879), cast in a language close to that of the 1611 King James Bible, might be worth mention). The impact of Ezra Pound's very individual approach is rightly emphasised, as is the modern explosion of literary versions (partly due to shrinking Latin and Greek).

The second chapter looks at creative translation, considering the liberated Modernist enterprises of the Zukofskys' famous Catullus, H.D.'s Greek versions and Pound's Propertius and the ways in which translation contributes to fashion in English literature. Strong new versions such as Creech's 1683 Lucretius and Pope's Homer stimulated other, lesser-known translations, while the experimental aspect of translation could lead to historic innovations (the revolutionary blank verse of Surrey's Virgilian translations is rightly cited). The influence of classical translation on English literary history as well as vice versa is clearly established.

The third chapter considers Renaissance poets and the sixteenth-century beginnings of classical translation. Here the complaints of early translators that the resources of English were insufficient for the task (rightly noted) might be allusive as well as practical, echoing the similar complaints of Roman poets attempting to make versions of Greek material (above all Lucretius – cf. De rerum natura1.139, 1.832, 3.260). There is excellent discussion here of the poetry of retirement (following Horace Epode 2) and of Renaissance English Ovidianism, though the claim that Ovid is the only classical author named by Shakespeare (p.37) is interestingly inaccurate (Plautus and Seneca, two equally important models for the dramatist, are also named by Polonius in Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2). There is important stress on the permeability in Renaissance versions of the boundaries between original verse and translation and on the combination of different classical authors in literary versions: again these are both features which would have been recognisable to Roman poets in their reworking of Greek texts, and were thus classically licensed.

The fourth chapter looks at Shakespeare and Plutarch, arguing attractively that Shakespeare shows an intuitive understanding of Plutarch's depiction of character and biographical plot, and can sometimes interpret him better than his learned translators (Amyot and North). Good use is made here of the recent boom in Plutarch studies in classics, especially of the work of Chris Pelling; the connection now often traced by classicists between Plutarch and Greek tragedy is mentioned late in the chapter, and might have come earlier since it clearly constitutes a major explanation of Plutarch's suitability for Shakespearean drama.

The fifth chapter offers an extended analysis of one lengthy poetic version, Dryden's 1685 version of Horace Odes 3.29, nicely showing how it incorporates Dryden's own appreciation of the poet's 'briskness … Jollity, and … Good Humour', and how it glosses and teases out key features of the original. Here it is rightly argued that a version like that of Dryden 'can change our sense of the Latin work' (60); when the claim is made that it is 'hard for a Latin professor to believe that a seventeenth-century poet could possibly show him anything about a Latin poem' (72), the reviewer is at least one of the species who finds it very easy : all translation is interpretation as well as reception, all translations have some critical value and the interpretation of one great poet by another is especially interesting.

The sixth chapter looks at Statius in the 17^th/18^th century, showing that his popularity then in translation interestingly matches his rehabilitation in scholarship now, and making an important point that fashions are significant in classical reception. Statius was 'an honorary Augustan poet' (76), criticised by Dryden but translated by Pope (Book 1 of the Thebaid, 1712), attracted by his congenial fluent style of composition. Here it may be that translation influences scholarship as in the case of Munro's Lucretius (see below); it is perhaps not coincidental that the greatest work of historic British Statian scholarship, the edition of the Silvae by Jeremiah Markland (1728), also belongs to this period.

The seventh chapter rightly stresses that classical translations played a larger role in the formation of the English literary canon at the end of the early modern period than has been previously acknowledged: Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779-81) and the various collected editions of English poets of the period allow a high profile to translation work. Here (the chapter convincingly argues) the towering figure of Dryden is crucial (as elsewhere in this volume: Pope, though less of a scholar, might get a little more acknowledgement here).

The eighth chapter looks at (then) unpublished works of the long eighteenth century and their interesting relationships to published translations: Creech's 1683 Lucretius can be shown to use the manuscript versions of both John Evelyn and Lucy Hutchinson, extra handwritten lines by Dryden himself rendering the obscene description of Messalina's sex-contest in Juvenal's sixth satire are to be found added to a printed edition of his translation, and successful printed translations often stimulate unpublished emulations of some interest, e.g. William Popple's 1750s versions of Horace and Juvenal which are in the same league as their models Dryden and Pope. This is fascinating and well-researched material.

The ninth chapter examines the early (1795-7) version of Juvenal's eighth satire co-authored by Wordsworth with Francis Wrangham, not fully published until 1997, and makes the important point that the traditional pre- conceptions of the Romantic poet as solitary self-inspired genius has led to the downplaying of Wordsworth's classical versions, for example his incomplete translation of the Aeneid of which only a section was published in his lifetime; one might add Byron's version of the Nisus and Euryalus story from the Aeneid and Shelley's version of Euripides' Cyclops. In the case of Wordsworth, there is clearly some image management by the poet himself here, not least because these suppressed versions are highly influenced by Dryden, Pope and Johnson and do not automatically fit the style-reforming co-author of Lyrical Ballads. Here we find some scepticism expressed on historicism, especially New Historicism; the reviewer can only go some of the way here. Though one can agree that attempts to view Wordsworth's poetry as the output of a secret government spy might be excessive, one could counter that a 1790s version of Juvenal 8, the ancient world's most famous satire on ineffectual aristocracy, is hard to disconnect from Wordsworth's early liberal views on the French Revolution, and form the fact that it was in 1795 that he first met Coleridge whose communistic Pantisocracy scheme had not long collapsed.

The tenth chapter looks at the persistence of strong translations in later English literature, an important argument, using the example of Lucretius in the nineteenth century (here the useful chapter on the author in Norman Vance's The Victorians and Ancient Rome (1997) might have been cited). Dryden's versions of famous sections of Lucretius are persuasively shown to domesticate this author for English literature and to influence Wordsworth, Arnold and (fascinatingly) the commentary on Lucretius of the scholar H. A. J.Munro. This crossover between literary versions of classical authors and contemporary classical scholarship is a valuable nexus of reception studies which needs further investigation.

The eleventh chapter considers the Homeric version of Ted Hughes (Odyssey 5 .382-493), written for radio in 1960 but not fully published until his posthumous collected poems (2002). Hughes (like Pope) had no real Greek, and it would have been interesting to have some more discussion of the increasingly familiar modern situation where the poet works from existing translations or with the advice of a classical scholar. Perhaps predictably, Hughes' account of Homer's storm (well analysed here) centres on struggle and violence, characteristic Hughes themes; as ever, English poets mould classical versions to fit their own concerns, or, as the author well puts it, 'successful translations have the character of a meeting or dialogue between writers' (176).

The brief afterword sums up the book's purpose – to foreground and rehabilitate the undoubtedly important role played by classical versions in the history of English literature, and to argue that this changes its landscape: 'how does English literature look after classical translation is accorded its due in the record?' (182). Classics (it is argued) also needs more nudging to consider the importance of creative translations; this is happening now in the sphere of reception studies, and this classicist is more than happy to echo the idea that 'The disciplines of Classics and English can come together in translation because it presents us with a transformative moment involving more than one culture' (181). There is a clear parallel here with the work of leading theorists of classical reception such as Lorna Hardwick.

Overall, this volume will be a key resource for the study of creative translation of classical texts in English, and thoroughly succeeds in emphasising its importance in the history of English literature. Its author's unmatched grasp of the range of the source material is a great benefit: minor and unpublished texts are one of the highlights here, as well as the giant figures of Dryden and Pope. Its focus on verse rather than prose and Latin rather than Greek (apart from Hughes and a little of Pope's Homer) is understandable, and indeed makes room for a parallel volume on the Greek material. It clearly and laudably believes that translation is a significant form of literary reception and criticism, although it does not engage as much as it might with recent theoretical discussions of either translation or reception; its scepticism about historicism might strike some as overstated, especially for more modern versions (for example, it would be hard to disassociate the classical work of Seamus Heaney from its historical context in the history of Ireland). But the author of this fine study deserves the rich thanks of all those who study and teach the literary translation and reception of classical texts in English.

2012.02.07

2012-02-05T20:03:00.001-05:00

Christopher Ratté, Lydian Architecture: Ashlar Masonry Structures at Sardis, Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Report 5. Cambridge, MA; London: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, 2011. Pp. xvii, 292. ISBN 9780674060609. $85.00.

Reviewed by Gloria R. Hunt, Syracuse University (grhunt@syr.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

In this volume Christopher Ratté presents the evidence for the distinctive Lydian tradition of ashlar masonry at Sardis and nearby sites, beginning with its first appearance during the reign of Alyattes in the 1^st quarter of the 6^th century B.C. and ending several generations after the Persian invasion of Lydia in 547. Originally Ratté's dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley (1989), this volume is the fifth in the series Reports on the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis.

Ratté's narrow focus on the production and use of squared and carefully fitted stone blocks allows him to scrutinize a hallmark of the city's cultural legacy, one born from the imperial ambitions of the Mermnad dynasty in the 6^th century, when architectural canons were formed and cemented in western Asia Minor as well as in Greece.¹ In cataloging the typological distribution and techniques of stone architecture in Lydia, this volume sheds much light on the introduction of stone working—and of monumentality itself—into the building traditions of the ancient Mediterranean.

Following an introduction that briefly recounts the history of archaeological exploration at Sardis, the volume is divided into two parts: text and catalogue.

The first chapter of the text, "Survey of the Monuments," gives a brief account of the structures that inform this study. They are limited to those investigated by the Harvard-Cornell Expedition at Sardis and include built tombs and associated crepis walls (both within Sardis and at Bin Tepe), terrace walls, architectural foundations, stretches of the fortification systems, and architectural fragments, all of which are fully described later in the catalogue in Part II. These monuments give the appearance of "typical" Lydian ashlar masonry, that is, large quadrangular blocks laid in regular courses with tightly-fitted joints. With the exception of tomb interiors, which were smoothly dressed, Lydian ashlar masonry is perhaps best known for its exterior rustication, in which the exterior block faces display an intentionally roughly-dressed central panel surrounded by finely-dressed drafted margins. In many examples, a fine beveled edge appears along the vertical joints.

Ample illustrations of each monument include sharply-focused photographs and drawn plans, elevations, sections, and isometric views, as well as two helpful reconstruction sketches of the fortification gate in sector MMS/N and of the Pyramid Tomb at Sardis. The drawn illustrations recreate for the viewer the appearance of tool marks and other cuttings, evidence which informs some of Ratté's most insightful observations in Chapter 3.

In Chapter 2, "Materials," Ratté describes the kinds of stone used in Lydian architecture, including limestone, and, less frequently, sandstone and marble. Using the results of a geological study undertaken by Michael Ramage and Robert Tykot (presented fully in Appendix 4), Ratté concludes that all stones were likely locally available and therefore transported over short distances, though the specific marble and standstone quarries used in Lydian architecture have yet to be identified.

Chapter 3, "Techniques of Construction," provides an outstanding example of the observation and analysis of stone architecture. In a meticulous and well-illustrated exposition of tool marks, masons' marks, and other cuttings, Ratté discusses the likely types and sizes of tools used in squaring and finishing ashlar blocks and, using evidence from unfinished blocks, suggests a plausible sequence for each step.

Among the fruits of Ratté's careful observations is the recognition that Lydian rustication, a "style" that would come to be standard for some types of Lydian architecture, was a by-product of the quarrying process and therefore born largely from economy rather than aesthetics. Drafted margins would have helped to square the stone at the quarry site without having to laboriously finish the central panels. Similarly, thin bevels that often appear on the vertical joints would have helped mask masked any chipping that might occur during shifting and positioning of the block.

Ratté's careful study of the orientation of lifting holes, pry holes, and joint bevels in a given course indicates how and in what order the blocks might have been laid, suggesting a likely division of labor among masons. Distinctive "starting" blocks could be placed in the middle of the course, for example, and two teams of masons might work outward from there. The distribution of masons' marks seems to corroborate this model.

In Chapter 4 "Chronology" Ratté places the securely-identified Tomb of Alyattes (whose death c. 560 gives a terminus ante quem) among the first datable examples of ashlar masonry in Lydia. As in Greek architecture, a typology of clamps proves useful in establishing a relative chronological sequence in Lydian masonry techniques, with the butterfly, or dove-tail, clamp appearing first. Other features that help to establish relative chronology among the monuments are the appearance of Greek-style anathyrosis and the use of the claw-chisel, apparently also adopted from Greece after the middle of the 6^th century. Ratté concludes that the use of ashlar masonry began with the Alyattes' reign and continued, albeit on a smaller scale, after Persian rule, when more distinctively Greek methods replaced earlier Lydian ones.

Ashlar masonry therefore appeared somewhat suddenly in Lydia in the first half of the 6^th century BC.

In Chapter 5, "History of the Lydian Building Tradition," Ratté explores the extent to which Lydian affinities with Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Greek architectural traditions further suggest that ashlar masonry was not an indigenous Lydian invention. Here Ratté attempts to identify the cultural influences that led to the adoption, adaptation, and transmission of ashlar masonry and investigates the possible origins and meaning of this style of construction.

Although a full treatment of "influences" upon Lydian culture that might have shaped the trajectory of architectural developments is quite beyond the scope of this short chapter, Ratté addresses key points arising from his presentation of the ashlar monuments. He notes first that the kinds of structures built with ashlars have closest parallels in Anatolia and the Near East. Tomb chambers buried deep within earthen tumuli have Phrygian and Cypriot precedents, while terrace walls and fortifications may recall Assyrian building types. Also pointing to Anatolia and the Near East is the fact that ashlar masonry in Lydia typically supports a core or superstructure of mudbrick and rubble, quite unlike the freestanding stone temples of Greece and Egypt.

Following his chronological conclusions in Chapter 4, Ratté posits that the adoption of ashlar masonry in these kinds of structures served to heighten prestige among the early Mermnad kings by following "royal" building types, especially monumental tombs and stone-faced fortification walls. The role of patronage in Lydian early stone architecture is a critical point of inquiry in understanding not only how, but why ashlar masonry enjoyed a period of flowering in 6^th-century Lydia (as well as in the Aegean), a consideration that has not received due attention in phenomenological studies of architecture. Ratté's brief consideration of the role of architectural patronage here is therefore most welcome and invites further study.

While ashlar masonry appears in monuments designed to express Lydia's growing imperial authority within the context of Near Eastern kingship, the technical details of Lydian stone construction are very closely related to eastern Greek masonry. The use of large blocks with drafted margins, point-dressed central panels, beveled edges, smoothed band anathyrosis, and (in tomb chambers) smoothly-faced walls all appear in the (better-established) building tradition of east Greece.

Ratté reminds us of the closeness of east Greek and Lydian cultures during the archaic period, although, as he makes clear, they were far from identical, especially in the kinds of buildings constructed. Still, the relationship between Lydia and east Greece no doubt played a vital role in the developing monumental stone architecture in western Asia Minor. Ratté suggests that the more outward-looking Greeks may have been responsible for the introduction of masonry techniques to Lydia rather than the other way around, citing Greek nodes of interaction with the eastern Mediterranean, at Naukratis, Al Mina, and Phoenician settlements in the Aegean.

Whatever its origins, Ratté concludes that ashlar masonry in Lydia became firmly established under the Mermnad dynasty, and adopted kingly associations that assured its continued use, though on a lesser scale, after the Persian invasion of western Asia Minor. This prestigious method of building, both at Sardis and in east Greek cities, demonstrably influenced Persian monuments at Persepolis, Pasargadae, and Susa, where Darius's Foundation Charter declared that both Sardian and Ionian masons were employed.

In Part II, "Catalogue of Monuments," Ratté presents a brief history of exploration for each monument along with a thorough description, a list of associated finds, proposed date, and bibliography.

There are four appendices. Appendix 1 is a discussion of architectural membra disiecta of possible Lydian date that were reused in later structures. Appendix 2 is a discussion of the crepis, or "base of large stones" identified by Herodotus (1.93) around the tumulus of Alyattes (already discussed in Chapter 1 and in the Catalogue). Appendix 3 discusses the so-called altar of Artemis which, though built with ashlars, is anomalous among other Lydian structures in both technique and material. Appendix 4, written by Michael Ramage and Robert Tykot, includes a geological survey of the area, the distilled results of which are presented in Chapter 3.

Overall, Ratté's clear and well-illustrated presentation of Lydian ashlar masonry and insightful analysis of its features are significant contributions to architectural studies well beyond the physical and temporal limits of the Lydian kingdom. One leaves this volume wishing for an expanded consideration of the historical context of Lydian stone architecture (only very briefly laid out in Chapter 5), especially where and how it intersects with the east Greek tradition.² Any such future study, however, will surely rely heavily on the evidence and conclusions laid out in this important monograph.

Notes:

1. Rubble and mudbrick construction are discussed elsewhere in the series.
2. Noticeably absent in the bibliography are Walter Burkert's many influential studies concerning the transmission of Near Eastern culture. Other, more recent sources might include: G. Kopcke, 1992. "What Role for the Phoenicians?" In Kopcke, G. and I. Tokumaru, eds., Greece between East and West 10^th-8^th Centuries BC: Papers of the Meeting at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, March 15-16th, 1990, 103-13. Mainz: P. von Zabern and G. Hoffman, 1997. Imports and Immigrants: Near Eastern Contacts with Iron Age Crete. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (especially Chapter 3).

2012.02.06

2012-02-03T22:18:00.001-05:00

Aram Topchyan (ed.), David the Invincible, Commentary on Aristotle's Prior Analytics: Critical Old Armenian Text with an English Translation, Introduction and Notes. Philosophia antiqua, 122. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010. Pp. x, 221. ISBN 9789004187191. $138.00.

Reviewed by Daniel King, Cardiff University (kingdh@cf.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

The history of philosophy in late antiquity has been wonderfully served in recent years by an explosion of translations and studies of the great commentators on Aristotle and Plato from the Athenian and Alexandrian schools. But the form of the tradition that emerged from the fifth century onwards within the scholastic communities of the Armenian, Syriac, and later Arabic borderlands of the empire remains a field of enquiry darkened by a chronic lack of basic editions, a problem that bedevils even such an apparently well-covered topic as classical Arabic philosophy. What appears to many as an intellectual dark age, somewhere between Philoponus and Avicenna, remains dark only to the extent that western eyes have not fallen on the pertinent manuscripts or bothered to grapple with the barriers of learning the languages. Indeed the whole field suffers from being labelled as 'reception' - this is unfortunate, for late antique philosophy conducted through the medium of Armenian or Syriac was still late antique philosophy and should be treated as an equal and contemporary partner to the work of Philoponus et al. Topchyan's edition and translation of this commentary on the Prior Analytics thus makes those 'dark' regions just that little bit less gloomy. The philological work is excellently done; the translation eminently readable and illuminating; the general discussion solid without, however, fulfilling all it might have.

This volume is part of a larger research project that aims at eventually producing re-editions and translations of all the works ascribed in antiquity to the philosopher known to posterity as 'David the Invincible Philosopher (!)'. David's oeuvre includes commentaries on the Isagoge and Categories , David's general Prolegomena to philosophy, and the current text (though, as we shall see, there is considerable controversy about the authorship of our text). An introductory volume of essays relating both to David and the background to his work and influence was published in the series already in 2009, although unfortunately not reviewed in BMCR.¹ It would be worth here quoting the five aims of the series as they are here laid out; they are:

a) To identify the relation between the Armenian texts and the original Greek versions of David's works;
b) To assess the value of the Armenian translations for the constitution of the Greek text;
c) To analyze the differences between the Armenian versions and the Greek, and to examine the ways in which the Armenian translators adapted the texts to suit their new readership;
d) To give a close examination of the language of the Armenian versions and of their techniques of translation;
e) To consider, more generally, the ways in which Greek thought was transmitted to Armenia, and the circulation of ideas and the cultural exchanges between East and West in late antiquity.

Aims a) and d) are in fact the truly fundamental ones as they are prerequisite for the successful accomplishment of b) and c). I shall return to e) presently since this is clearly the most important point for many classicists who may come across this volume.

To begin with a more general consideration of the achievements of the edition: The first of the aims of the series is the subject of the majority of Topchyan's introduction, which reproduces material published in the introductory volume. On the thorny question of authorship (David or Elias, which takes on rather more significance than might otherwise have been the case given that the series is meant to be a collection specifically of David's works), Topchyan presents four passages which he believes confirms that the present text is not merely an adaptation or abbreviation of Elias' Commentary on the Prior Analytics (edited by Westerink in 1967). This debate was the subject of three separate chapters within the aforementioned edited volume, each arguing along rather different lines. Uncertainty still hangs over this question even after the present edition. The very close parallels adduced by Sweeting cannot be ignored, and the ascription to David should be held only loosely. In any case, the amount of original material seems to fade away as one follows the line of succession within the Alexandrian school and the problem of authorship seems less pointed.

On the subject of the interrelationship of the commentators, Topchyan 's first appendix is a mine of useful parallels to every part of the Armenian text from other sources. By far the most frequently cited are Philoponus and Elias, as might be expected. Themistius' paraphrase also crops up a handful of times. The opportunity seems to have been missed, however, to elucidate more exactly the relationship between David's work and that of these other commentators, to assess how much is derivative and how much novel. Instead the reader is presented with a glut of parallels and left to draw his/her own conclusions, which would in any case require a decent grasp of Armenian. This reviewer, at least, felt that the best placed scholar to summarise the material is the editor himself and it is to be hoped that in the future we might be presented with a more systematic analysis of the significance and contribution of this text to late antique logic.

This is symptomatic of the overall impression with which the reader comes away from the volume as a whole, for it seems not quite to meet the aims of the series, at least for the general reader interested in the reception history of ancient philosophy. The amount of interesting material encased within the text and appendices is more than sufficient, one would have thought, for some general conclusions to be drawn. What was the translator trying to achieve by translating the text the way he did? How might the text have been received and understood by an Armenian audience in late antiquity? What does the text, and indeed the corpus, add to our knowledge about Armenian philosophy and ideas in the period? I am sure that the author could supply fascinating answers to some of these questions.

To take some specific points that could have been raised and perhaps still will be at a later stage of research: it appears that there is no known translation into Armenian of the Prior Analytics itself (in contradistinction to the Categories and Isagoge, for which there are also translations of David's commentaries). So were readers of the text meant to read the commentary in the absence of a version of Aristotle's text, or in place of it, or were they expected to be able to read Greek and not need a translation? Furthermore, as Topchyan points out, the level of hellenisation of the Armenian lexicon and grammar means that the text is hardly comprehensible save as a crib against the original – so one wonders how was this meant to work and for whom was such a text written. For students who could understand some Greek but not enough to read Aristotle or David without the help of the crib? In what sort of cultural or social setting might such people have been studying? It reminds one of the law students in Beirut who made Greek versions of the Justinianic law books because their Latin was not quite good enough to deal with them independently at the required level of precision.

This question of social or scholastic milieu raises the further question of the commentary genre itself, its literary or pedagogical function, its role within transmitted notions of authority and canon, and so forth. Is this text, in fact, a commentary at all, as stated on the cover? After all, in terms of dealing with Aristotle's text, it never progresses beyond the second chapter, albeit that it discusses in extenso the so-called prolegomena issues (as an aside the discussion of the prefatory material could have benefited from the recent literature on this subject by, among others, I. Hadot, Westerink, and Mansfeld). Although the editor starts out (p.1) by asserting that "it is composed in compliance with certain rules established by earlier commentators of Aristotle and according to a generally accepted pattern referred to in a number of texts," this is not actually particularly obvious when one looks through the text for the usual lemmata that characterise the commentaries of Philoponus and Ammonius, or for the pattern of theoria and lexis that was used so extensively by Olympiodorus. Is this text itself in fact just the first part of something much longer? Is this a commentary (like Philoponus'), a paraphrase (like Themistius') or something else, perhaps for a different sort of audience? Barnes offered a few thoughts about David's works in the first chapter of the introduction to the series (see footnote below), but these are insufficiently taken up here.

Finally, to highlight a few areas of particular interest:

1. With reference to aim d) of the series as a whole (to give a close examination of the language of the Armenian versions and of their techniques of translation), great praise should be directed to Topchyan's appendices, in which he provides the data that underpins his translation of the very difficult and unnatural 'hellenised' Armenian text, viz. a list of parallel texts from the Armenian translations of David's other works, for which Greek Vorlagen are extant; examples of 'grecisms' at both the morphological and syntactic levels; and a list of lexical grecisms. The study of 'loan translation' has tended to focus exclusively on the lexical level, and so it is very much to be welcomed that we have here a good study at the syntactical level, which truly enables one to see the workings of a translator and how a text has been re-presented in a new guise. The upshot of this work should be a thorough and very interesting discussion corresponding to aim c) of the series. Such a discussion, however, has not been made in the present volume, though snippets may be gained from certain comments in footnotes etc.

2. It is interesting to note the different attempts to translate sullogismos into Armenian encountered both within the current text and across David's other works; here we see an instance of a translator struggling both to understand the technical meaning of a Greek term and exploring how to go about coining an equivalent in the target language, e.g. whether or not to break up the Greek term into its component morphemes first. This procedure is directly paralleled in both the Syriac and the Arabic experiences of translating Aristotle and the commentators.

3. The discussion and reassessment of the ms tradition (p.17-27) is obviously crucial for the grounding of the text and for future critical scholarship. The most interesting point of more general concern is the spread of the extant mss. None predate the fourteenth century and yet in total 28 are known. This contrasts noticeably with the Syriac tradition of comparable material, in which the oldest mss are often half a millennium and more older (the oldest being from the seventh century and containing translations and commentaries on Aristotle), but whose transmission dies out in the middle ages, resulting in far fewer extant copies today. The Armenians appear to have maintained their interest in this type of material throughout their rich cultural history.

All in all this is an excellent achievement well executed. In view, however, of the sorts of general issues mentioned earlier and the questions that have not been discussed within the volume, one feels ultimately a bit short-changed in respect of aim e) above, general consideration of Greek thought in Armenia, which would naturally be of most interest to the non-specialist or to historians of philosophy. Barnes has already asserted that David is of real significance only because he stands at the genesis of Armenian philosophy. It seems that this should be the focus for the remaining volumes of the series. The required data is here effectively laid out before us. It is to be hoped that the broader conclusions will follow.

The Commentaria in Aristotelem Armeniaca Project
Introduction
Armenian text and translation
Appendix I : parallels from relevant texts
Appendix II : a concise description and typical examples of morphological and syntactical Grecisms
Appendix III : lexical Grecisms having Greek equivalents in David's other treatises
Greek-Armenian-English glossary
English-Armenian-Greek glossary
Armenian-Greek-English glossary
Abbreviations and Literature
Index of Personal Names

Notes:

1. Valentina Calzolari and Jonathan Barnes, L'œuvre de David l'Invincible et la transmission de la pensée grecque dans la tradition arménienne et syriaque (Philosophia Antiqua 116; Leiden, 2009). See also the review by John Watt.

2012.02.05

2012-02-03T22:04:00.002-05:00

Michael Gagarin (ed.), Speeches from Athenian Law. The oratory of classical Greece 16. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Pp. x, 396. ISBN 9780292726383. $24.95 (pb).

Andrew Wolpert, Konstantinos Kapparis (ed.), Legal Speeches of Democratic Athens: Sources for Athenian History. Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011. Pp. xxxi, 299. ISBN 9780872209275. $16.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Edmund M. Burke, Coe College (eburke@coe.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

The last few decades have witnessed a good deal of scholarly work on the complex fabric of Greek social history, along with a revitalized interest in Greek, particularly Athenian, law. In both enterprises the speeches of the Attic orators have been an essential resource, as somewhat more than a hundred forensic addresses have survived from the last century of the democracy (i.e., from roughly the 420s until the 320s BCE). Michael Gagarin designates his primary audience as "teachers of Athenian law and students and scholars wishing to learn about Athenian law" (vii). The principal audience for Andrew Wolpert and Konstantinos Kapparis is more explicitly the traditional undergraduate or graduate student interested in Athenian history (vi-vii). But with certain caveats, both volumes, as their editors/translators note, could be of use to students and teachers whether of law or history, not least as six of the fourteen speeches translated by Wolpert and Kapparis also appear in Gagarin's volume of twenty-two.

In Speeches from Athenian Law, Gagarin has made selection from orations previously translated for the Oratory of Classical Greece series, for which he served as Series Editor, and has arranged these along with the original introductions and notes under four headings: I. Homicide and Assault (eight speeches), II. Status and Citizenship (four speeches), III. Family and Property (five speeches), and IV. Commerce and the Economy (five speeches).¹ The selection presents a fair cross section of the broad range of legal issues with which many individuals of means, whether living or doing business in Athens, might be concerned at one time or another in their lives, though students of Athenian law and society should also recognize that the poor who comprised nearly half the city's citizen population are virtually absent from the extant corpus, so that any selection can provide us only with a fractional view of the workings of the law within Athenian society.²

As his selection is meant primarily for those interested in Athenian law, Gagarin has done some editing of the original introductions and notes in order "to provide a sharper focus on law by reducing or eliminating material that is purely historical or otherwise non-legal" (vii). The introductions are informative and to the point, and the notes are helpful particularly in elucidating ambiguities in the Greek or providing brief explanation of an Athenian institution or practice noted in the text. In almost all instances, the translations themselves are the same as they were originally; the handful of changes are quite minor, corrections in matters of detail or to achieve consistency in style. At the same time, there are, as Gagarin observes, some inconsistencies among the translations, with different translators preferring one or another legitimate phrasing alternative for the original Greek. So, to use Gagarin's example (vii), dikastai is by some translated as 'judges', by others 'jurors', and still others 'dicasts'. For most readers—especially in light of Gagarin's caveat —these inconsistencies will not impede understanding of any of the texts, though in the example chosen a fuller elaboration in the Introduction (on Trials) might have enriched understanding for the non-specialist of such distinctively Athenian issues as the manner in which juries were selected or the limited boundaries on juror demeanor during trial.

As for the overall organization of the volume, the Introduction follows generally the format for the volumes in the Oratory of Classical Greece series, though here the issues of Government and Athenian Law are treated separately, and the section on Law is more sharply articulated. The analysis remains a model of succinctness and clarity. Thus, the thirteen pages are divided into six sections: I. Oratory, II. The Speeches (focusing on the preservation of the corpus), III. The Orators (with comment limited to the eight who appear in the volume), IV. Government (including sub-sections on Officials, The People, and The Liturgy System), V. Athenian Law (with sections on History, Judicial Organization, The Trial, Witnesses, Types of Procedure, and Laws), and the Conclusion (VI). Each of the four categories under which the twenty-two speeches are grouped has a brief introduction, a page or a bit more, summarizing the distinctive features of the Athenian norms and practices in question and how the speeches selected serve to illustrate these. Consistent generally with the volumes in the series, the Bibliography is quite select, and virtually all titles are in English. There is a general Index, but no Glossary (though Greek words and technical terms are glossed throughout the text).

One measure of the appropriateness of Gagarin's selection is that roughly three-quarters of the speeches in the volume have appeared in other collections of Athenian forensic oratory in recent years. Thus, beyond the overlap with Wolpert and Kapparis noted above, ten of the fifteen speeches in Kathleen Freeman's The Murder of Herodes and Other Trials from the Athenian Law Courts (first published in 1946, but reissued by Hackett in 1994) are repeated in Gagarin, as are a dozen of the seventeen speeches in Christopher Carey's Trials from Classical Athens (London and New York 1997).

The fourteen speeches translated by Wolpert and Kapparis are arranged not by topic, but by ancient author in chronological order. Thus, there is a single speech by Antiphon, five from the Lysianic corpus, one by Isaeus, four by Demosthenes, two by Apollodoros, and a final one by Aeschines.³ Six of the fourteen are unavailable in other recent collections.

The somewhat lengthier Introduction in Wolpert and Kapparis (ix-xxix) is devoted mostly to the law, the courts and the orators (sections 1, 3, 4, and 5), with a summary overview of Athenian politics and society (section 2). There is a brief but balanced list of recommended readings at the end of the Introduction, standard book-length studies or edited volumes. Each of the fourteen translations has a detailed introduction, with notes and a useful checklist of Key Information (providing, as the evidence permits, the name of the speaker, his opponent, the type of action, the court, the penalty, the verdict and the date when the speech was delivered), along with citation of the appropriate ancient sources as well as more recent secondary scholarship. There are ample notes to each of the translations, both elucidating ambiguities in the Greek and providing detailed information on Athenian institutions and practices, again with citation of appropriate scholarly literature. There is a useful Glossary, a rather more substantial Bibliography, and an Index.

The thirty-six translations of the two volumes are the work of ten different hands, so that comment on their character and quality necessarily will be broad. With Gagarin's selection, a stated objective was that the translations be "up-to-date… and readable," and despite the eight different hands at work in the volume, the translations consistently are lucid and contemporary, comporting with English idiom and usage. As they intended, Wolpert and Kapparis have in their translations remained "true to the Greek while making the speeches accessible to an English-speaking reader" (viii), and in this they have provided translations that generally are more literally faithful to the Greek and thus more attuned to the culturally embedded nuances of the language, but that can consequently strike the ear at times with a certain awkwardness. Thus, as illustration: in addressing the jurors of certain courts, the speaker would use the Greek word andres literally meaning 'men'. And it is this literal translation that Wolpert and Kapparis elect, as in Lysias 1.1: "I would greatly appreciate it, men, for you to judge me in this trial, etc." Stephen Todd, in Gagarin's volume, translates andres as 'gentlemen', rendering the same phrase: "I should be very glad, gentlemen, if in this case, etc." To readers accustomed to the American English commonplace "(ladies and) gentlemen of jury" Todd's rendering of andres may sound more natural. But in a note, Wolpert justifies his literal rendering not only because 'gentlemen' may still possess a latent suggestion of class which the Greek andres does not, but more critically because the word 'men'…"does draw attention to the importance of masculinity in Athenian ideology," and then cites appropriate secondary literature (21, note 8). For the student of Greek social history especially, this literalness with its explanatory note enriches cultural nuance in fair trade against any awkwardness to the ear. Apart from these intended differences, the translations in both volumes are accurate, with ambiguities in the Greek regularly observed in the notes of each.

While Wolpert and Kapparis do not organize the speeches they have translated into categories, their fourteen translations do cover the same broad four areas of law and society as Gagarin, though in both volumes the legal and social issues explored extend significantly beyond these categories. But for students of law, particularly comparative law, there is benefit in the greater exposure provided by Gagarin to the varied manner in which litigants looked to persuade juries in the law's application, in courtrooms where there were neither lawyers to make objection nor judges to direct from the bench. And for those students concerned with day-to-day law, matters of family and property are central, and here Gagarin provides five speeches, while Wolpert and Kapparis offer us one. For the undergraduate or graduate student of Greek history, on the other hand, nuance in the art of persuasion may be less immediately important than the ways in which a particular trial was a reflection of distinctively Athenian social values or political circumstance. And here, Wolpert and Kapparis in the somewhat fuller introductions to their translations, but especially in the detail of the notes throughout provide richer background information, not only in setting the context, but in summarizing the salient arguments, and commenting in detail on the important legal and historical phenomena exposed by the speech.

With both volumes there are some points about which to cavil. In Gagarin's volume, there are, beyond the occasional inconsistency in translation noted earlier, some differences among the translators on matters of interpretation of Athenian law. Gagarin, as editor, has elected not to attempt resolution of these, "preferring to let the reader see that some features of Athenian law (indeed of any legal system) can be understood in different, even opposed ways" (viii). This editorial decision and justification have a cogency, though for the novice student of Athenian law or for the non-specialist scholar uninitiated in the law's ambiguities, an editor's specific comment and direction where such differences exist could prove helpful. So, e.g., in his translation of Antiphon 2.1.4, Gagarin observes in a note elaborating on the word kakourgos—literally an evil doer or criminal—that "The most serious street crime in Athens was lõpodusia or the theft of a cloak, a cloak being normally the most valuable possession a man had with him in public" (my italics). Victor Bers, on the other hand, in the note to his translation at Demosthenes 54.3, observes that the stealing of a cloak "…would have been understood as a crime committed not to acquire a valuable object but to humiliate the victim" (again, my italics). To Bers' note, Gagarin, as editor, adds a cross reference to his own note at Antiphon 2.1.4. Thus, for the reader following the cross reference, the differences between the two translators are observed, but for the student of Athenian law there is no explanation for these differences in interpretation. Citation here of, e.g., David Cohen, Theft in Athenian Law (Munich 1983) 79-84 would have sent the interested student or non-specialist scholar in a right direction. Throughout, Gagarin has elected to keep editorial direction and documentation quite lean, a decision that valorizes the primacy of the text, but also one that has the potential periodically to frustrate the inquisitive non-specialist.

With Wolpert and Kapparis, there are a couple of points of minor complaint, somewhat related. Because their volume is intended primarily for students interested in Athenian history, the overview of politics and society in the Introduction might well have been developed separately and in greater detail, locating the reader more securely in the narrative of political events from the first decade of the Peloponnesian War to the wrangling over the city's posture vis à vis Philip of Macedon. The circumstances that spawn litigation, though not invariably an immediate reflection of the historical narrative, often can acquire richer nuance when seen against the backdrop of that narrative. Also, as the translations are not organized by topic, the Preface might provide a somewhat fuller summary of the salient issues raised by the individual speeches (see vi- vii), allowing the reader lacking specific direction to decide more easily which speeches to read and in what order.

Both of these volumes succeed in their stated primary objectives. Despite grumblings over detail, and despite the overlap, each possesses merits that distinguish it from the other. For this reviewer, the decision by Gagarin to edit the historical and non-legal materials that were in the original translations makes his volume somewhat less useful to students of history than is Wolpert and Kapparis's volume to their secondary audience of students of law, though it is the case that for students of law there is less in Wolpert and Kapparis on matters of family and property. Nonetheless, for teachers and students of Athenian law and Athenian social history, there is virtue in having available in English translation different resources of quality from which to make selection.

Notes:

1.   For Homicide and Assault, the speeches are Antiphon 2: First Tetralogy; Antiphon 6: On the Chorus Boy; Antiphon 1: Against the Stepmother; Antiphon 5: On the Murder of Herodes; Lysias 1: On the Death of Eratosthenes; Demosthenes 54: Against Conon; Lysias 3: Against Simon; and Isocrates 20: Against Lochites. On Status and Citizenship they are Demosthenes 57: Appeal against Eubulides; Lysias 23: Against Pancleon; Demosthenes 59: Against Neaera; and Aeschines 1: Against Timarchus. On Family and Property include Isaeus 1: On the Estate of Cleonymus; Iseaus 7: On the Estate of Apollodoros; Isaeus 8: On the Estate of Ciron; Lysias 32: Against Diogeiton; and Demosthenes 27: Against Aphobos I. And on Commerce and the Economy the speeches are Demosthenes 55: Against Callicles; Hypereides 3: Against Athenogenes; Lysias 24: For the Disabled Man; Isocrates 17: Trapeziticus; and Demosthenes 35: Against Lacritus.
2.   A noteworthy exception is Lysias 24, included in both Gagarin and Wolpert and Kapparis, where a poor man argues to preserve his disability pension, though how this man was able to secure the services of a professional speechwriter such as Lysias remains a puzzle.
3.   These are Antiphon 6: On the Chorister; Lysias 1: On the Murder of Eratosthenes; 12: Against Eratosthenes; 16: For Mantitheus; 23: Against Pancleon; and 24: On the Suspension of the Benefit of the Disabled Man; Isaeus 12: On Behalf of Euphiletus; Demosthenes 21: Against Meidias; 32: Against Zenothemis; 41: Against Spudias; and 54: Against Conon; [Demosthenes] 53: Against Nicostratus; and [Demosthenes] 59: Against Neaera; and Aeschines 1: Against Timarchus.

2012.02.04

2012-02-02T21:40:00.001-05:00

Achim Lichtenberger, Severus Pius Augustus: Studien zur sakralen Repräsentation und Rezeption der Herrschaft des Septimius Severus und seiner Familie (193-211 n. chr.). Impact of empire, 14. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. x, 478; 96 p. of plates. ISBN 9789004201927. $238.00.

Reviewed by Clare Rowan, Goethe University (rowan@em.uni-frankfurt.de)

Version at BMCR home site

This monograph, which represents the author's Habilitationsschrift, explores the sacral image of Septimius Severus and his family, as well as its ancient reception. Lichtenberger asks to what extent Severus' non-Roman origins influenced his reign, to what extent Severus' reign saw a tension between 'Roman' and 'non-Roman' values, and to what extent the emperor's sacral ideology was adopted in the provinces. Lichtenberger remains cautious throughout this exploration, providing a welcome voice of reason on many of the rather overenthusiastic interpretations of Severan material and ideology (e.g. pp. 245-6). Ultimately Lichtenberger concludes that the emperor's North African origins cannot be hidden, but this aspect of Severus' reign did not conflict with traditional Roman values. In this sense, we find in Lichtenberger's work a tempered presentation of Severus as an 'African' emperor.

Lichtenberger begins with a summary of scholarship to date and an overview of the ancient evidence. His introduction to the relevant ancient texts is cursory at best, but a more detailed overview of the coinage and other materials (e.g. gems) is provided. Lichtenberger then identifies the different ways a member of the imperial family may be connected with the divine: he/she might be shown to be under the protection of a particular deity, compared with a god, or assimilated to one. The last two categories are not easy to separate, but Lichtenberger emphasises the importance of studying imperial titulature, and argues that when a member of the imperial family is shown with a god's attribute, we should consider him/her assimilated to the god in question (p. 25).

Then comes easily the longest chapter in the book, Di Patrii, where Lichtenberger explores the role of Liber Pater, Hercules and other 'African' deities in the reign of Severus. Lichtenberger demonstrates that the Punic antecedents of Liber Pater and Hercules were still acknowledged in the Severan period, and then goes on to detail the evidence regarding the role these two gods played in Severus' rule. The evidence is set out according to genre (e.g. coin evidence, followed by epigraphic evidence, followed by gems, etc). This has the unfortunate consequence of reading much like a catalogue, and a reader who wishes to know about , for example, the role of 'African' deities in the Saecular Games, will be forced to consult several different sections (e.g. pp. 51, 66-9, 80), and the author himself is often forced to refer back to evidence presented much earlier. A thematic discussion of the evidence may have been better than the catalogue-style format. But the willing reader is rewarded. To the impressive list of material collected this reviewer can make only two small comments. One issue of Nicaea might be added to the list of provincial coinage: the coin shows a goddess standing between Hercules and Liber Pater (Lindgren Collection I, 143) and is an obvious response to imperial ideology. And in his discussion of the epigraphic evidence from Petra (p. 69), the author might have mentioned that the governor responsible (Q. Aiacus Modestus) was an officiating priest at the saecular games, adding a further nuance to this particular "reception" of imperial ideology.

Lichtenberger sees an 'African' slant on coinage at the beginning of Severus' reign, which he suggests may have been aimed at securing the support of an 'African' party (p. 172). The existence of such a party remains, as Lichtenberger himself admits, controversial. The author provides a context for this discussion by considering the sacral image and building programme of every non-Roman emperor from Nero to Galerian. This overview identifies two distinct phases: those emperors before Elagabalus, who integrate their home deities into the Roman pantheon and whose hometown building programmes might be interpreted as public displays of pietas, and those rulers who come after. The activities of Elagabalus meant that the introduction of a new god into the Roman pantheon was discredited, and so emperors restricted themselves to traditional Roman deities. But building programmes in imperial hometowns continued, taking on a more imperial aspect (with the construction of palaces and other official imperial buildings), which Lichtenberger links with the growing importance of the Illyrian soldier base as a source of power, and a sense of 'regionality'. Lichtenberger places Severus somewhere between these two phases: though his embellishment of Lepcis Magna might be interpreted as an act of pietas, his coinage appears to target an 'African' home region, similar to what occurs later under the Illyrian emperors.

Lichtenberger notes that Hercules and Liber Pater (Dionysus) also had 'Roman' associations: he argues that the presentation of the gods individually on coinage, rather than together, is connected to Severus' adoption into the Antonine dynasty, which saw a toning down of 'African' associations.¹ In general Lichtenberger might have done more to address the multiple associations these and other deities may have had, and the extent to which the viewer would have seen them (and other initiatives of Severus, like the Septizodium) as 'African'. Much of the contextualisation of material as 'African' is done with the use of later Latin sources, which are not necessarily the most reliable.Within the same lengthy chapter Lichtenberger examines the evidence for the imperial family's association with Dea Caelestis, Aesculapius-Eshmun, and Sarapis. Here the assessment of the evidence is mainly negative (and rightly so), but Lichtenberger notes that the Severan restoration of the Serapeum in Rome means the idea that Severus' portrait consciously recalled that of Sarapis cannot be ruled out (p. 120).²

In the third chapter Conservator Augusti Lichtenberger explores the role of Jupiter and Juno. Again a full catalogue of evidence is presented, with Lichtenberger concluding that there is not much evidence to suggest that Severus was assimilated to Jupiter during his reign, or that he used Jupiter differently to preceding emperors. The representation of the emperor with the aegis of Jupiter is interpreted as a sign of the god's protection.

In chapter 4, Aeternitas Imperii, Lichtenberger explores the assimilation of the imperial family to Sol and Luna. Here, Lichtenberger argues, there was a direct assimilation to the gods. This is clear enough from the numismatic evidence. The author's assertion that Severus is represented as Sol on the reverse of one imperial issue (RIC 102) is let down by the poor reproduction of the coin in question: the coin, represented 1:1, is too small to allow the reader to see if the god really is shown with Severus' trademark divided beard (p. 223). Overall the book would have benefited from larger reproductions where there were particular points of iconography in question, or where the original is very small (e.g. image 65. Overall the quality of the plates is mixed, since many images are taken directly from other published works). In contrast to previous chapters, Lichtenberger finds significant amounts of provincial evidence to support his theme here, particularly provincial coinage. Radiate and lunar crowns appear to have been used by cities that were particularly favoured by Severus (p. 240), and might be seen as a panegyric-style honour for the emperor. A lengthy discussion of the Septizodium in Rome is also presented: Lichtenberger suggests that a surviving sculptural fragment may represent a lion, and hence Africa (p. 259). He suggests the Septizodium may have come from a 'North African milieu', but notes that, in view of the paucity of evidence, the surviving piece of sculpture may also reference the Tigris and the Parthian War.

In the following chapter, Restitutor Urbis, Lichtenberger explores the possible associations created by the Severan building programme in Rome. Though variations on the restitutor theme are known under earlier emperors, Lichtenberger argues that under Severus the message became more personalised and connected with the person of the emperor. The author only explores cultic buildings in detail, but a list of all Severan building activity in Rome is provided at the end of the book. Lichtenberger sees in Severus' building programme a mixture of 'North African' and 'Roman'. Particular focus is given to the rebuilding of the temple of Pax after the fire of AD 192, and the resulting Forma Urbis. Lichtenberger speculates as to whether some of Severus' coinage with Pax referred to the rebuilding of this area of Rome, but the evidence ultimately remains uncertain, since Pax could also refer to the cessation of war, as Lichtenberger notes (p. 300). A coin of Domna is used to demonstrate an assimilation of the empress to Pax (RIC 588). In view of the legend on this coin (which refers to Domna's role as mother of the empire and in no way references Pax), one wonders whether or not a more generic reference to the divinity of the empress was meant. The image, combined with the legend, may have held multiple associations for the viewer.

The final chapter examines familial representations of the dynasty. Here there is a large amount of evidence, with provincial numismatic representations of the family listed at the back as an appendix. Spoerri Butcher suggested that for Asia Minor under Gordian III different denominations were given different portraits of the imperial family;³ this may explain the variety of representations on provincial coinage under the Severans, but Lichtenberger provides only a brief overview of the evidence (p. 342), meaning that more detailed interpretations must be left for future research. Lichtenberger identifies instances of the assimilation of members of the imperial family to a variety of gods and goddesses in the provinces (notably in the Peloponnese), noting that most of these instances stem from local contexts and concern the imperial women, Domna and Plautilla. Lichtenberger admits that the liberty taken by eastern cities in assimilating the imperial women to the divine is not easy to explain, but suggests that the image of Domna as mater castrorum was not as specific as the emperor's public image and might have led to a variety of interpretations in the east of the Empire (p. 378).

In his conclusion Lichtenberger emphasises the stark regionality of local representations of the imperial house, and notes that although Jupiter, Liber Pater and Hercules acted as tutelary deities in Severus' reign, the emperor was really assimilated only with Sol (p 382). He argues that Severus presented a mixture of both the Roman and the African in his reign. In his exploration Lichtenberger brings together an astounding amount of evidence (including seals, gems, cameos, coins, inscriptions and sculpture), meaning that his book will be a central reference work in the field for a long time to come. I have presented some small quibbles here, but overall Lichtenberger takes a considered approach to the evidence and presents varied images of the Severan dynasty, in which the variations in and between official and local representations is clearly displayed.

Notes:

1.   In the discussion of these individual representations Lichtenberger might have noted the work of Desnier, who argued that the single representation of Liber Pater on Severus' coinage drew on the god's traditional associations with the East, and was used for Severus' war against Niger, while the single representation of Hercules, civiliser of the West, was used in Severus' war against Albinus in this region. J.-L. Desnier (1994) 'Septime Sévère, rassembleur de l'Orbis Romanus', in L'Afrique, la Gaule, la Religion à l'époque romaine. Mélanges à la mémoire de Marcel Le Glay, ed. Y. L. Bohec. Bruxelles: 752-66.
2.   I see no reason why the Severan restoration of a sanctuary should trump the very sensible work of earlier scholars, who have dismissed the Severus-Sarapis idea and instead emphasised a reference to Antonine portraiture. See for example, D. Baharal (1989) 'Portraits of the Emperor L. Septimius Severus (193-211 A.D.) as an Expression of his Propaganda', Latomus 48: 566-80.
3.   M. Spoerri-Butcher, (2006) Roman Provincial Coinage VII.1. London: 71

2012.02.03

2012-02-02T21:31:00.002-05:00

Suzanne Saïd, Homer and the Odyssey (originally published 1998). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. vi, 420. ISBN 9780199542857. $45.00 (pb). Contributors: Translated by Ruth Webb.

Reviewed by Christos Tsagalis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (christos.tsagalis@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

A book with so broad a title may give the impression that it is simply an introduction to the Odyssey aimed at the general reader. This is only part of the truth. Suzanne Saïd gives us a sophisticated presentation of the entire panorama of Odyssean studies and admirably succeeds in exploring multiple aspects of this truly multilayered epic.

The book consists of eleven chapters, the first three devoted to the notion of Homer and the other eight to various themes permeating the Odyssey. The material is presented in a lucid and straightforward manner. Τhe author divides each chapter into smaller, thematically organized, sections that help the reader follow the arguments presented. Clarity of thought and effective presentation of material are two of the merits of this long book.

In chapter one ("From 'Homer' to the Homeric Poems", pp. 7-45), Saïd examines the history of the controversy concerning the existence and biography of the poet Homer and shifting notions concerning his authorship of the Homeric poems. The chapter is further divided into six sections: in the first section (pp. 7-20), the author studies the various etymologies given to the name Homēros in ancient sources and by modern scholars, his family, place of origin, date, the corpus of poems ascribed to him, and the obsession of antiquity with his life on the basis of the various Lives of Homer and other ancient evidence. Throughout this entire section and without pressing her point too much, Saïd carefully reminds the reader that shifting notions of Homer reflect shifting views about authorship and changing contexts in the course of time. In the next three sections (pp. 20-39), Saïd offers a concise presentation of the Homeric Question from antiquity to modern times. She rightly draws attention on the groundbreaking observations of Wolf and then explores the 'four seasons' of scholarly debate about this thorny issue: the 'great divide' between Analysts and Unitarians that was centered on the authorship of the Homeric poems, with special emphasis on the Odyssey (pp. 24-28), the rise of Neoanalysis focusing on Motiv- and Quellenforschung (pp. 28-31), the emergence of a theory studying Homer as oral poetry that marked a shift of interest from authorship to song-culture and from writing to performance (pp. 31-39), and last the gradual surfacing of a more sober approach to both Neoanalysis and Oral Poetry by critics endorsing the notion of an "oral- derived poet" or a "transitional text" or even varying degrees of orality.

Despite its title ("The Art of Homer: Between Tradition and Innovation", pp. 46-74), chapter two is devoted only to topics falling within the range of interests of oral poetry: definition of formulas, formulaic modification, dating of formulas, type-scenes. Only the similes do not conform to the abovementioned statement. I would like to have seen some examples of Homer's artistic manipulation of traditional material with respect to certain motifs, which are also traditional but are partly recast by Homer so as to promote his own view of the heroic world. That said, Saïd's analysis of the similes and the type-scenes is exemplary, as well as the clarity with which she examines the limitations and problems concerning the definition of what is formulaic and what is not.

Chapter three ("Homer and History", pp. 75-94) is dedicated to the historical background of the Homeric epics. The author takes us on a fascinating journey stretching from second-millennium Asia Minor and Greece, through the Dark Ages to the Geometric Period and beyond. Saïd beautifully combines the balanced presentation of the opposing views of scholars concerning various matters (e.g. the historicity of the Trojan War) with her own interpretive take. Of particular interest is the last section of this chapter devoted to the crucial role Homeric poetry had in the invention and development of ancient historiography. In particular, her observations about Herodotus and Thucydides are illuminating. ¹

Chapter four ("The Odyssey: Narrations, Narrators and Poets", pp. 95-131) is one of the landmarks of this book. Saïd argues extensively on the unity of the Odyssey and offers illuminating insights on the use of place and time in the development of the plot. Her section on space is a welcome contribution, the more so since she highlights various Odyssean techniques employed for spatial transition, i.e. from passing from one place to another: next to simple devices (the conjunction dé, the sequential presentation of actions occurring in different places), Homer makes ample use of complex techniques (sound, the movement of a character or the respective movements of two characters, a shared element). The last two sections present with clarity and precision the sophisticated narrative devices employed in the Odyssey and the epic's stress on matters of poetics.

The next three chapters explore the Odyssean plot by using a tripartite schema: chapter five ("The Adventures of Telemachus", pp. 132-149) aims at drawing attention to various threads linking the different parts of the so-called Telemachy together and creating associations between the beginning and end of the poem. The retelling of the plot by the author is carried out in such a way so as to show to the reader how well integrated are the first four books to the whole epic. To use a representative example: the episode of Helen is presented in such a way so as to create a link with the episode of Eurycleia and Odysseus that will be dealt with much later in the plot. Helen's analeptic narrative about Odysseus' secret entrance to Troy bears striking similarities with his secret entrance in his palace in the second half of the poem. Chapter six ("Odysseus Travels", pp. 150-188) gives a rounded presentation of the Apologoi. Saïd examines the complex picture created by the mixture of narrative and temporal order and rightly emphasizes the gain from having the epic's principal hero become the main storyteller of most of his adventures to an ideal internal audience, the Phaeacians. The author gives the outline of each story, focusing her attention on the main motifs and themes which characterize Odysseus' various travels and argues convincingly that the poem embeds in its plot a number of alternative and often rival versions of the hero's return from Troy, in the guise of the false tales. What I missed in this chapter were references to the Near-Eastern and Argonautic background of some of Odysseus’ adventures, a deficiency which is partly remedied later in the book: Near Eastern associations are left to later chapters dealing with specific figures of the plot (as is the case with Calypso and Circe, see pp. 259-262). Chapter seven ("Odysseus on Ithaca", pp. 189-222) is devoted to Odysseus' arrival at Ithaca, his planning of the killing of the suitors, and his reunification with his family (Penelope and Laertes). Saïd follows the unraveling of the epic's plot by highlighting for her readers topics that create links between different parts of the poem. The greatest advantage of this part of her book is precisely her ability to show the process of cross-fertilization of each and every bit of the plot by certain themes that give the Odyssey its cohesion and unity.

Chapters eight ("The Human World", pp. 223-257), nine ("Women in the Odyssey", 258-314), and ten ("The World of the Gods", 315-354) explore the function of human and divine agents in the plot. Human agents are further divided between men (Odysseus and his companions, Telemachus, Laertes, the servants, the suitors and their supporters) and women, each given a separate chapter. This classification of mortals works well methodologically, the more so since the Odyssey is heavily preoccupied with women figures who function as filters through which the audience is invited to reevaluate Odysseus' personality. Such female pairs as Calypso and Circe, Nausicaa and Arete, Helen and Clytemnestra, constitute the backdrop against which Penelope, the preeminent female figure of the epic standing on a par with Odysseus, is portrayed. The chapter on gods is especially informative. The author organizes her material into two sections of unequal length: the former is devoted to the relations between the immortals themselves, while the latter explores all varieties of divine intervention (epiphanies, transformations, miracles, the interaction between divine activity and the natural world, divine commands and signs), as well as their motivation.

Chapter eleven ("The Ideology of the Odyssey", pp. 355-372) together with the conclusion ("The Odyssey: An Epilogue to the Iliad?", pp. 373-379) round out this book with a sensitive presentation of the ideology of the epic. Saïd gives the reader a detailed and clear idea of how this poem allows us to glimpse into social stratification, both external (household-city) and internal (masters and servants, elite and simple folk) and a world in flux (as the age of heroes approaches its end). In the epilogue, the author briefly dwells on the relation between the two Homeric epics. Building on an expression used by the author of On the Sublime (9.12) that she puts in her title, Saïd summarizes some of the findings of Homeric research with respect to the palimpsestic nature of the Odyssey and its intertextual cross-fertilization with its Iliadic rival. This is perhaps the best way to conclude this book, i.e. by reminding the reader that this great epic of return should always be read next to the other great epic of war. ²

Saïd should be praised for writing an admirably balanced, informative, and thought-provoking introduction to the Odyssey. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that this book marks a step ahead from other relevant attempts, since it masterfully avoids extreme positions that would trouble the inexperienced reader, without at the same time becoming simplistic and unsophisticated. All in all, I highly recommend it to all those who are now sailing out on the high seas of Homeric epic.³

Notes:

1.   I missed a reference to the work of Antonios Rengakos on the very same topic ("Epic Narrative Technique in Herodotus' Histories", Seminari Romani di Cultura Greca 4, 2001, 253-270, and "Homer and the Historians: The Influence of Epic Narrative Technique on Herodotus and Thucydides", in: F. Montanari and A. Rengakos (eds.), La poésie épique grecque: métamorphoses d'un genre littéraire, Fondation Hardt, Entretiens, vol. 52, Vandoeuvres-Genève 2006, 183-214).
2.   Given that the author gives a list of some studies concerned with the intertextual reading of the two Homeric epics and claims that "the Odyssey could be called the first palimpsest text in Western literature" (p. 375), I missed a reference to my own book (The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics, HUP, Washington DC – Cambridge MA, 2008) that builds exactly on the very notion of a palimpsest without recourse to composition by writing (a view with which Saïd seems to concur; see p. 375) and is specifically devoted to Homeric intertextuality.
3.   I have noticed some errors, which in no way diminish the overall high quality of the book. Most of them concern typos in the Greek. I give a selection: p. 11: Thamyras should be changed to Thamyris, who is not mentioned in Book 2 of the Odyssey (as the author claims) but of the Iliad; p. 49: instead of χεῖρας ἀαπτους, read χεῖρας ἀάπτους; p. 51: instead of ἄφθίτον, read ἄφθιτον; p. 54: instead of ἤλθέν and ἦλθέν, read ἦλθεν (twice); p. 54: instead of φαέ, read φάε; p. 148: instead of θέος, θέοι, read θεός, θεοί.

2012.02.02

2012-02-02T21:21:00.001-05:00

Fabio Berdozzo, Götter, Mythen, Philosophen: Lukian und die paganen Göttervorstellungen seiner Zeit. Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Bd 106. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2011. Pp. x, 332. ISBN 9783110254594. $165.00.

Reviewed by James Jope (jamesjope@jamesjope.ca)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Taking M. Caster's Lucien et la pensée religieuse de son temps (1937) as a point of departure, Berdozzo aims to reach a better understanding of Lucian's attitude toward religion and philosophical theology by close reading and comparisons with contemporary figures like Pausanias and Galen. In particular, he seeks an understanding based on Lucian's own personality and subjective beliefs, rather than, as some earlier scholars proposed, his sources.

Berdozzo's findings are—as perhaps they must be—largely negative: Lucian, he argues persuasively, had no spiritual feelings and was simply not interested in theology.

Part One reviews Lucianic works relating to religion. Lucian's real interest in On Funerals is not the afterlife but the theatricality of his presentation. On Sacrifices expresses pessimism about reforming public opinion, but offers no alternatives. The debate between a Stoic and an Epicurean in Zeus Rants is only a rhetorical display, offering no theological critique. Prometheus, likewise, is an ironic rhetorical courtroom performance. Every work examined is eliminated in this way. Lucian, Berdozzo concludes, fails to engage in religious thought, not because it is not in his sources, but because his own personality and interests were strictly "sublunar", down-to-earth.

Turning to philosophy (Part Two), Berdozzo partially accepts the view that Lucian's knowledge of philosophy was superficial, but sees an exception in the case of Plato, whose dialogues Lucian read. As Berdozzo sees it, Lucian's satire of Plato is bitter, hateful, and personal, and a radical rejection of his entire philosophy; but even in this case, Lucian was not interested in metaphysical issues. The Nigrinus might have been expected to reveal Lucian's attitude toward philosophy, but its real purpose is only to praise Athens and Hellenism, so it is not a reliable source on religion and philosophy. Lucian hated Stoics especially because of their association with the rich and powerful and with social climbers; his sparse attention to Stoic theology shows his lack of interest.

In closing, Berdozzo illuminates Lucian's attitude to religion through a lengthy comparison of Galen. Both were agnostic and eclectic, but Galen, who respected at least some aspects of Platonism, developed a positive spirituality and openness to religion. The comparison is sensitive and instructive regarding both ancient authors.

The above, albeit an accurate summary of the findings, does not adequately describe this book, which is replete with digressions and supplementary material, as the author strives to update the scholarly background for each work studied.

Some of these sections are very interesting: For example, Berdozzo examines the school exercises of Theon, a typical rhetorician, and shows how this kind of training—which Lucian also experienced—encouraged students to revise and re-invent myths freely and creatively for their own ends. This casts light on Lucian's literary innovations by showing how they can be understood as evolving from his own rhetorical training.

However, in other cases Berdozzo's priorities seem strange and his argumentation seems to ramble. The chapter on the Assembly of the Gods (Part one, chapter 5) may serve as an example. It opens with some tantalizing leads for interpretation: the evident hellenocentric bias of the satire (is Lucian, a hellenized Syrian, in sympathy with this, or satirizing it?), and the character of the protagonist Momos, here a sharp critic with reasoned arguments frankly expressed (παρρησία; does he represent Lucian?) However, instead of following these leads, Berdozzo turns to a detailed rebuttal of Householder's (1940) ¹ thesis that the Assembly follows Magnesian procedures and must have been delivered at Magnesia, even though, as Berdozzo points out, it offers nothing toward interpreting the work and would find few advocates today (105). The chapter closes rather abruptly by suggesting that because Sleep moves the adoption of the assembly's decree, the entire scene is a dream. Later, however, in the summary of Part One, we are told that the Assembly of the Gods shows that Lucian did believe in the existence of the gods and their ability to communicate with men.

Berdozzo's preface reveals that this is a dissertation, which was only "geringfügig űberbearbeitet" for publication (v). Perhaps it should have been revised more assiduously, tightening the focus on the central theme and leaving some of the intriguing digressions to be published as separate papers.

Another shortcoming is the surprising omission of works so seemingly relevant for religious criticism as Alexander the False Prophet, The Passing of Peregrinus, and The Syrian Goddess, as well as any discussion of Epicurean philosophy. Berdozzo offers excuses for this in his conclusion, but I do not find them satisfactory. The Epicureans, he says, had little to offer regarding theology. But Lucian evidently did like them more than Stoics, and there are traces of their influence in his work. When Berdozzo describes Lucian's implicit belief in On Funerals that man's condition after death is one in which "der Schmerz und die Not, welche dem Leben anhaften, nicht mehr existieren" (70), he is skirting an important example. And a reading of Alexander might have shown what real Lucianic hatred looks like, possibly modifying Berdozzo's slightly exaggerated estimate of Lucian's (admitted) dislike of Plato.

I caught only one or two trivial typographical errors (such as "gen" for 'gegen' 114). The production is excellent—as it should be given the price.

The detailed table of contents (shown in the Preview) will make it easy to find useful material on topics of interest; but one may find reading this book from cover to cover a little exasperating.

Notes:

1. Householder, F.W. Jr., Mock Decrees in Lucian in TAPhA 71 (1940) 199-216

2012.02.01

2012-02-01T15:07:00.001-05:00

Books Received January 2012.

Version at BMCR home site

This is a list of books received by BMCR during the previous month. Books on offer for review from the press are marked with two asterisks. Some books listed have already been assigned. Full details can be found on the updated list of books available for review at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.html.

**Die Artemis von Pompeji und die Entdeckung der Farbigkeit griechischer Plastik. Katalog einer Ausstellung im Winckelmann-Museum vom 2. Dezember 2011 bis 18. März 2012. Ruhpolding; Wiesbaden: Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen; Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011. 96 p. € 28.00. ISBN 9783447066648.

Ambrosini, Laura. Le gemme etrusche con iscrizioni. Mediterranea supplementi, 6. Pisa; Roma: Fabrizio Serra editore, 2011. 137 p. € 265.00 (pb). ISBN 9788862272292.

Andreau, Jean and Raymond Descat. The slave in Greece and Rome (originally published in French 2006; translated by Marion Leopold). Wisconsin studies in classics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. 198 p. $26.95 (pb). ISBN 9780299283742.

Andreu, Javier, David Espinosa and Simone Pastor (edd.). Mors omnibus instat: aspectos arqueológicos, epigráficos y rituales de la muerte en el Occidente Romano. Colección Estudios. Madrid: Ediciones Liceus, 2011. 607 p. € 40.00 (pb). ISBN 9788498229332.

Angeli Bertinelli, Maria Gabriella and Angela Donati (edd.). Città e territorio: la Liguria e il mondo antico. Atti del IV Incontro internazionale di storia antica (Genova, 19-20 febbraio 2009). Serta antiqua et mediaevalia, 12. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider editore, 2010. xvi, 304 p., xix p. of plates. € 160.00 (pb). ISBN 9788876892387.

Apolloni, David. The self-predication assumption in Plato. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011. xxviii, 261 p. $75.00. ISBN 9780739144848.

**Arruzza, Cinzia. Les mesaventures de la theodicee: Plotin, Origene, Gregoire de Nysse. Nutrix, 6. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011. 320 p. € 70.00 (pb). ISBN 9782503534220.

Azoulay, Vincent and Paulin Ismard (edd.). Clisthène et Lycurgue d'Athènes: autour du politique dans la cité classique. Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 109. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011. 406 p. € 30.00 (pb). ISBN 9782859446826.

Barrett, Caitlín E. Egyptianizing figurines from Delos: a study in Hellenistic religion. Columbia studies in the classical tradition, 36. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. xix, 731 p., [80] p. of plates. $241.00. ISBN 9789004207974.

**Barta, Heinz. "Graeca non leguntur?": zu den Ursprüngen des europäischen Rechts im antiken Griechenland. Band II: Archaische Grundlagen (2 vols.). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2012. xxxiv, 1288 p. € 58.00. ISBN 9783447062787.

Beale, Alan. Greek athletics and the Olympics. Greece and Rome: texts and contexts. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. iv, 196 p. $26.00 (pb). ISBN 9780521138208.

Beck, Hans, Antonio Dupl, Martin Jehne and Francisco Pina Polo (edd.). Consuls and res publica: holding high office in the Roman Republic. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. x, 376 p. $110.00. ISBN 9781107001541.

Bessone, Federica. La Tebaide di Stazio: epica e potere. Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, 24. Pisa; Roma: Fabrizio Serra editore, 2011. 272 p. € 72.00 (pb). ISBN 9788862274180.

Blanshard, Alastair J. L. and Kim Shahabudin. Classics on screen: ancient Greece and Rome on film. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011. viii, 264 p. $29.95 (pb). ISBN 9780715637241.

Brodd, Jeffrey and Jonathan L. Reed (edd.). Rome and religion: a cross-disciplinary dialogue on the imperial cult. Writings from the Greco-Roman world supplement series, 5. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. xiv, 261 p. $37.95 (pb). ISBN 9781589836129.

Burgersdijk, Diederik and Willemijn Waal (edd.). Constantinopel: een mozaïek van de Byzantijnse metropool. Mededelingen en verhandelingen van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap "Ex Oriente Lux", 36. Leiden: Ex Oriente Lux, 2011. 259 p. € 24.50 (pb). ISBN 9789072690005.

Burns, Tony. Aristotle and natural law. Continuum studies in ancient philosophy. London; New York: Continuum, 2011. vi, 217 p. $120.00. ISBN 9781847065551.

Chambers, P. L. The Natural histories of Pliny the Elder: an advanced reader and grammar review. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. xiv, 156 p. $24.95 (pb). ISBN 9780806142159.

Chankowski, Andrzej S. L'Éphébie hellénistique: Étude d'une institution civique dans les cités grecques des îles de la Mer Égée et de l'Asie Mineure. Culture et cité, 4. Paris: De Boccard, 2010. 621 p. € 85.00 (pb). ISBN 2701803050.

Cirio, Amalia Margherita. Gli Epigrammi di Giulia Balbilla (ricordi di una dama di corte) e altri testi al femminile sul Colosso di Memnone. Satura, 9. Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia, 2011. 177 p. € 18.00 (pb). ISBN 9788882328863.

Clackson, James (ed.). A companion to the Latin language. Blackwell companions to the ancient world. Malden, MA; Oxford; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. xxvi, 634 p. $199.95. ISBN 9781405186056.

Cordero, Néstor-Luis (ed.). Parmenides, venerable and awesome (Plato, Theaetetus 183e). Proceedings of the international symposium, Buenos Aires, October 29-November 2, 2007. Las Vegas; Zurich; Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2011. xvi, 414 p. $65.00 (pb). ISBN 9781930972339.

Couvenhes, Jean-Christophe, Sandrine Crouzet and et Sandra Péré-Noguès (edd.). Pratiques et identités culturelles des armées hellénistiques du monde méditerranéen. Hellenistic warfare 3. Scripta antiqua, 38. Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions, 2011. 423 p. € 25.00 (pb). ISBN 9782356130587.

Cremoux, Anne de. La cité parodique: études sur les Acharniens d'Aristophane. Supplementi di Lexis, 36. Amsterdam: AdolfM. Hakkert Editore, 2011. 423 p. € 96.00 (pb). ISBN 9789025612627.

D'Angour, Armand. The Greeks and the new: novelty in ancient Greek imagination and experience. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. x, 264 p. $33.99 (pb). ISBN 9780521616485.

Dräger, Paul (ed., trans.). Sophokles: Philoktet. Reclams Universal-Bibliothek, 18973. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2012. 142 p. € 3.80 (pb). ISBN 9783150189733.

**Dupraz, Emmanuel. Sabellian demonstratives: forms and functions. Brill's studies in Indo-European languages & linguistics, 6. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. viii, 372 p. $176.00. ISBN 9789004215405.

**Efthymiadis, Stephanos (ed.). Ashgate research companion to Byzantine hagiography. Volume I: Periods and places. Ashgate research companions. Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. xix, 440 p. $149.95. ISBN 9780754650331.

Ehrenkrook, Jason von. Sculpting idolatry in Flavian Rome: (an)iconic rhetoric in the writings of Flavius Josephus. Early Judaism and its literature, 33. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. xiv, 226 p. $29.95 (pb). ISBN 9781589836228.

Fattal, Michel. Paroles et actes chez Héraclite: sur les fondements théoriques de l'action morale. Ouverture philosophique. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2011. 71 p. € 11.50 (pb). ISBN 9782296556669.

Frakes, Robert M. Compiling the Collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum in late antiquity. Oxford studies in Roman society and law. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xiv, 368 p. $150.00. ISBN 9780199589401.

Fuhrmann, Christopher J. Policing the Roman Empire: soldiers, administration, and public order. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xxiii, 330 p. $74.00. ISBN 9780199737840.

Garbugino, Giovanni (ed., trans., comm.). Darete Frigio. La storia della distruzione di Troia. Introduzione, testo, traduzione e note. Studi e Ricerche, 98. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2011. 135 p. € 16.00 (pb). ISBN 9788862743235.

*Garrison, Daniel H. The student's Catullus. Fourth edition (first edition published 1989). Oklahoma series in classical culture, 5. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. xxv, 236 p. $26.95 (pb). ISBN 9780806142326.

Gauß, Walter, Michael Lindblom, R. Angus K. Smith and James C. Wright (edd.). Our cups are full: pottery and society in the Aegean Bronze Age. Papers presented to Jeremy B. Rutter on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011. xxvii, 392 p. $70.00 (pb). ISBN 9781905739394.

Genz, Hermann and Dirk Paul Mielke (edd.). Insights into Hittite history and archaeology. Colloquia antiqua, 2. Leuven; Paris; Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2011. xxi, 340 p. € 70.00. ISBN 9789042921368.

**Georgoudi, Stella, Renée Koch Piettre and Francis Schmidt (edd.). La raison des signes: présages, rites, destin dans les sociétés de la méditerranée ancienne. Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, 174. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. xviii, 626 p. $243.00. ISBN 9789004209459.

**Giannouli, Antonia and Elisabeth Schiffer (edd.). From manuscripts to books / Vom Codex zur Edition. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Textual Criticism and Editorial Practice for Byzantine Texts (Vienna, 10-11 December 2009). Denkschriften der philosophisch-historischen Klasse, Bd. 431. Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung, Bd. 29. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011. 216 p. € 73,40. ISBN 9783700171324.

**González, Julián and José Carlos Saquete (edd.). Colonias de César y Augusto en la Andalucía romana. Hispania antigua. Serie historica, 6. Roma: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2011. 342 p. € 150.00 (pb). ISBN 9788882657147.

Grand-Clément, Adeline. La fabrique des couleurs: histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens (VIIIe-début du Ve s. av. n. è.). De l'archéologie à l'histoire. Paris: De Boccard, 2011. 564 p., xxxii p. of plates. € 80.00 (pb). ISBN 9782701803036.

Gurd, Sean Alexander. Work in progress: literary revision as social performance in ancient Rome. American Philological Association. American classical studies, 57. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 167 p. $74.00. ISBN 9780199837519.

Hales, Shelley and Joanna Paul (edd.). Pompeii in the public imagination from its rediscovery to today. Classical presences. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xix, 417 p. $160.00. ISBN 9780199569366.

**Hofeneder, Andreas (ed., trans., comm.). Die Religion der Kelten in den antiken literarischen Zeugnissen, Band III: Von Arrianos bis zum Ausklang der Antike. Sammlung, Übersetzung und Kommentierung. Mitteilungen der Prähistorischen Kommission, 75. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011. 640 p. € 91.00. ISBN 9783700169970.

Ianziti, Gary. Writing history in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the uses of the past. I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2012. xiii, 418 p. $49.95. ISBN 9780674061521.

Intrieri, Maria and Sergio Ribichini (edd.). Fenici e italici, Cartagine e la Magna Grecia: popoli a contatto, culture a confronto. Atti del convegno internazionale, Cosenza, 27-28 maggio 2008 (2 vols.). Rivista di studi Fenici, XXXVI, 1-2 2008. Pisa; Roma: Fabrizio Serra editore, 2011. 259; 241 p. € 590.00 (pb). ISBN 9788862274463.

**Iossif, P. P., A. S. Chankowski and C. C. Lorber (edd.). More than men, less than gods: Studies on royal cult and imperial worship. Proceedings of the international colloquium organized by the Belgian school at Athens (November 1-2, 2007). Studia Hellenistica, 51. Leuven: Peeters, 2011. 728 p. € 97.00. ISBN 9789042924703.

James, Simon. Rome and the sword: how warriors and weapons shaped Roman history. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2011. 328 p. $29.95. ISBN 9780500251829.

Johansson, Karin. The birds in the Iliad: identities, interactions and functions. Gothenburg studies in history, 2. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2012. 277 p., [17] p. of photos. SEK 222.00 (pb). ISBN 9789173467124.

Johnson, Timothy S. Horace's iambic criticism: casting blame (iambikê poiêsis). Mnemosyne supplements. Monographs on Greek and Latin language and literature, 334. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. xii, 314 p. $163.00. ISBN 9789004215238.

Johnston, Patricia A. (trans.). The Aeneid of Vergil. Oklahoma series in classical culture, 43. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. xvii, 318 p. $24.95 (pb). ISBN 9780806142050.

Juster, A. M. (trans.). Tibullus. Elegies, with parallel Latin text (with an introduction and notes by Robert Maltby). Oxford world's classics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xxxiii, 129 p. $14.95 (pb). ISBN 9780199603312.

Kaster, Robert A. (ed.). Macrobii Ambrosii Theodosii Saturnalia. Oxford classical texts. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. lvi, 540 p. $99.00. ISBN 9780199571192.

Kechagia, Eleni. Plutarch Against Colotes: a lesson in history of philosphy. Oxford classical monographs. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi, 359 p. $135.00. ISBN 9780199597239.

**Lefèvre, Eckard. Plautus' Bacchides. ScriptOralia, 138. Reihe A: Altertumswissenschaftliche Reihe, Bd 40. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2011. 205 p. € 68.00. ISBN 9783823366812.

Mac Sweeney, Naoise. Community identity and archaeology: dynamic communities at Aphrodisias and Beycesultan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. viii, 266 p. $75.00. ISBN 9780472117864.

Marroni, Elisa. I culti dell'Esquilino. Archaeologica, 158. Archaeologia perusina, 17. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider editore, 2010. x, 338 p., xxx p. of plates. € 210.00 (pb). ISBN 9788876892455.

Massa-Pairault, Françoise-Hélène. Pergamo e la filosofia. Archaeologica, 159. Archaeologia perusina, 18. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider editore, 2010. ix, 155 p., xxiv p. of plates. € 140.00 (pb). ISBN 9788876892561.

McLean, B. H. New Testament Greek: an introduction. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. x, 266 p. $32.99 (pb). ISBN 9780521177023.

Mihailescu-Bîrliba, Lucreţiu. Ex toto orbe Romano: immigration into Roman Dacia; with prosopographical observations on the population of Dacia. Colloquia antica, 5. Leuven; Paris; Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2011. xiv, 166 p. € 65.00. ISBN 9789042924000.

**Müller, Gernot Michael. Lectiones Claudianeae: Studien zu Poetik und Funktion der politisch- zeitgeschichtlichen Dichtungen Claudians. Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften, Bd 133. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011. 495 p. € 58.00. ISBN 9783825358174.

Orrells, Daniel, Gurminder K. Bhambra and Tessa Roynon (edd.). African Athena: new agendas. Classical presences. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xiv, 469 p. $160.00. ISBN 9780199595006.

Pàmias, Jordi (ed.). Parua Mythographica. Oberhaid: Utopica Verlag, 2011. viii, 261 p. ISBN 9783938083161.

Papazarkadas, Nikolaos. Sacred and public land in ancient Athens. Oxford classical monographs. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xii, 395 p. $125.00. ISBN 9780199694006.

Quijada Sagredo, Milagros (ed.). Estudios sobre Tragedia Griega: Eurípides, el teatro griego de finales del siglo V a.C. y su influencia posterior. Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2011. 274 p. (pb). ISBN 9788478827312.

Raeburn, David and Oliver Thomas (edd., comm.). The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: a commentary for students. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. lxxiv, 289 p. $55.00 (pb). ISBN 9780199595617.

Ratti, Stéphane. Polémiques entre païens et chrétiens. Histoire. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012. 304. € 25.00 (pb). ISBN 9782251381121.

Rindge, Matthew S. Jesus' parable of the rich fool: Luke 12:13-34 among ancient conversations on death and possessions. Early Christianity and its literature, 6. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. xix, 299 p. $36.95 (pb). ISBN 9781589836143.

Roberto, Umberto. Le Chronographiae di Sesto Giulio Africano: storiografia, politica e cristianesimo nell'età dei Severi. Collana dell'Ambito di Storia dell'Università Europea di Roma. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2011. 288 p. € 24.00 (pb). ISBN 9788849830804.

Robinson, Eric W. Democracy beyond Athens: popular government in Greek classical age. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ix, 275 p. $99.00. ISBN 9780521843317.

Rodighiero, Andrea and Paolo Scattolin (edd.). "... un enorme individuo, dotato di polmoni soprannaturali". Funzioni, interpretazioni e rinascite del coro drammatico greco. κατοπτρον / kátoptron, 3. Verona: Edizioni Fiorini, 2011. xi, 399 p. € 38.00 (pb). ISBN 9788896419274.

Roma, Giuseppe (ed.). I Longobardi del Sud. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider editore, 2010. 491 p. € 140.00 (pb). ISBN 9788876892523.

Roscino, Carmela. Polignoto di Taso. Maestri dell'arte classica, 3. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider editore, 2010. xii, 188 p. , 24 p. of plates. € 50.00 (pb). ISBN 9788876892363.

Salzman, Michele Renee and Michael Roberts (trans., comm.). The Letters of Symmachus: Book 1. Writings from the Greco-Roman world, 30. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. lxxii, 215 p. $34.95 (pb). ISBN 9781589835979.

**Schorsch, Franz. Das commentum Monacense zu den Komödien des Terenz. Leipziger Studien zur Klassischen Philologie 8. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2011. 200 p. € 58.00. ISBN 9783823366638.

Sessa, Kristina. The formation of papal authority in late antique Italy: Roman bishops and the domestic sphere. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xv, 323 p. $99.00. ISBN 9781107001060.

Shields, Christopher. Ancient philosophy: a contemporary introduction. Second edition (first edition published 2003). Routledge contemporary introductions to philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2011. xiii, 245 p. $36.95 (pb). ISBN 9780415896603.

Shipley, Graham (ed., trans., comm.). Pseudo-Skylax's Periplous: the circumnavigation of the inhabited world. Text, translation and commentary. Exeter: Bristol Phoenix Press, 2011. xii, 244 p. $30.00 (pb). ISBN 9781904675839.

**Smith, Andrew. Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus: philosophy and religion in Neoplatonism. Variorum collected studies series, CS979. Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. 336 p. $165.00. ISBN 9781409421689.

Smith, Amy C. Polis and personification in classical Athenian art. Monumenta Graeca et Romana, 19. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. xlv, 202 p., [32] p. of plates. $173.00. ISBN 9789004194175.

Smith, Richard Upsher. A glossary of terms in grammar, rhetoric, and prosody for readers of Greek and Latin: a vade mecum. Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc., 2011. xi, 140 p. $19.00 (pb). ISBN 9780865167599.

Soles, Jeffrey S. and Costis Davaras (edd.). Mochlos IIC: Period IV, the Mycenaean settlement and cemetery: the human remains and other finds. Prehistory monographs, 32. Philadelphia, PA: INSTAP Academic Press, 2011. xxvi, 243 p., 60, 35 p. of plates. $80.00. ISBN 9781931534604.

Soleti, Vita M. La scultura ideale romana nella Regio Secunda (Apulia et Calabria). Archaeologica, 161. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider editore, 2010. xv, 195 p., xciii p. of plates. € 120.00 (pb). ISBN 9788876892486.

Spanu, Marcello. The theatre of Diokaisareia. Diokaisareia in Kilikien: ergebnisse des Surveys 2001-2006, Bd 2. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2011. x, 134 p., 58 p. of plates. $180.00. ISBN 9783110222210.

Stuttard, David. Power games: ritual and rivalry at the ancient Greek Olympics. London: British Museum, 2011. 240 p. £ 9.99 (pb). ISBN 9780714122724.

Summerer, Lâtife (ed.). Pompeiopolis I: eine Zwischenbilanz nach fünf Kampagnen (2006-2010). Schriften des Zentrums für Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte des Schwarzmeeraums, Bd 21. Langeweißbach: Beier & Beran, 2011. 245 p. € 67.00. ISBN 9783941171633.

Tatum, W. Jeffrey. A Caesar reader: selections from Bellum Gallicum and Bellum civile, and from Caesar's letters, speeches, and poetry. BC Latin readers. Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers Inc., 2011. xl, 206 p. $19.00 (pb). ISBN 9780865166967.

Tellegen-Couperus, O. E. (ed.). Law and religion in the Roman Republic. Mnemosyne supplements. History and archaeology of classical antiquity, 336. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. 229 p. $136.00. ISBN 9789004218505.

Thomas, Richard F. (ed., comm.). Horace: Odes Book IV and Carmen Saeculare. Cambridge Greek and Latin classics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011. xiii, 297 p. $99.00. ISBN 9780521582797.

Thonemann, Peter. The Maeander Valley: a historical geography from antiquity to Byzantium. Greek culture in the Roman world. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xxiii, 386 p. $110.00. ISBN 9781107006881.

Trimble, Jennifer. Women and visual replication in Roman imperial art and culture. Greek culture in the Roman world. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xi, 486 p. $125.00. ISBN 9780521825153.

Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. (ed.). The Black Sea, Greece, Anatolia and Europe in the first millennium BC. Colloquia antiqua, 1. Leuven; Paris; Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2011. xxiv, 448 p. € 80.00. ISBN 9789042923249.

**Ulrich, Jörg, Anders-Christian Jacobsen and David Brakke (edd.). Invention, rewriting, usurpation discursive fights over religious traditions in Antiquity. Early Christianity in the context of antiquity, 11. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. xvi, 322 p. $83.95. ISBN 9783631635384.

Volpe Cacciatore, Paola (ed.). Seminario di studi su Richard Porson. Università degli studi di Salerno, 5-6 dicembre 2008. Collectanea, 28. Napoli: M. D'Auria editore, 2011. 189 p. € 60.00 (pb). ISBN 9788870923223.

Wedekind, Katja. Religiöse Experten im lokalen Kontext: Kommunikationsmodelle in christlichen Quellen des 1.-3 Jhs. n. Chr.. Pietas, Bd 4. Gutenberg: Computus Druck Satz & Verlag, 2012. 189 p. € 68.00. ISBN 9783940598110.

Wesselmann, Katharina. Mythische Erzählstrukturen in Herodots Historien. MythosEikonPoiesis, Bd 3. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2011. xi, 450 p. $165.00. ISBN 9783110239119.

West, M. L. Hellenica: selected papers on Greek literature and thought. Volume I: epic. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xii, 451 p. $150.00. ISBN 9780199605019.

Worthington, Ian (ed.). Alexander the Great: a reader. Second edition (first edition published 2003). London; New York: Routledge, 2011. xxviii, 420 p. $44.95 (pb). ISBN 9780415667432.

Zeppezauer, Dorothea. Bühnenmord und Botenbericht: zur Darstellung des Schrecklichen in der griechischen Tragödie. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, Bd 295. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2011. ix, 295 p. $120.00. ISBN 9783110257045.

2012.01.52

2012-01-30T22:58:00.001-05:00

Michael F. Wagner, The Enigmatic Reality of Time: Aristotle, Plotinus, and Today. Ancient Mediterranean and medieval texts and contexts. Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic Tradition v. 7. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008. Pp. viii, 384. ISBN 9789004170254. $182.00.

Reviewed by José Baracat, Jr., Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (baracatjr@hotmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview: Preview

[I wish to apologize to the author and to BMCR editors and readers for the tardiness of this review.]

As its title announces, Wagner's book comprises three large parts: "Dimensions of Time's Enigma", "Aristotle's Real Account of Time", and "Plotinus' Vitalistic Platonism and the Real Origins of Time". The avalanche of themes discussed can in outline be described as follows.

In the first part, roughly the "today" of time's enigma, Wagner considers the possibility of time's reality, exploring the meanings of two primary senses in which time may be said to be unreal, and the consequences they may bring to the investigation of time's reality. The first is that the concept "time" would not actually denote anything; the second, that what the term "time" denotes would not be in fact time. Through the three chapters of this part, Wagner discusses (not only, but mainly) contemporary approaches to time, especially approaches based on internalization of time and approaches based on the Theory of Relativity; also discussed is McTaggart's contribution to the philosophy of time, which has been rendered fallaciously until now as a denial of time's reality, according to Wagner (6).

Wagner boldly avers his conception of time right from the outset: there are two epigraphs to the book, one by Saint Augustine and the other by Wagner himself, in which he states: "time is the feature of existence in virtue of which, as its contents and constituents proceed and change, what was no longer is and what will be is not yet" (v). With such conception of time, one can foresee that Wagner will refute internalization approaches (since they "either in fact constitute denials of time's reality or else they simply do not address the question", 4), and also "static conceptions" of time (e.g. Relativity's space-time, which, being "static conceptions of time in fact are not conceptions of time's real nature but rather constitute denials of its reality", 5).

It is impossible to fairly reproduce Wagner's long discussions, but I am afraid that other readers will feel the same as I did: the elements of Wagner's conception of time, by which he measures, analyses, and refutes other conceptions, are not philosophically clear and defined: what is "a feature of existence"? Whose existence? Is there a difference between "contents" and "constituents"? Even the distinction between "static" and "dynamic" conceptions of time requires more elaboration than that given in the book (60-2): the classification of Einstein's conception of time (or "contemporary scientific Eleaticism") as a "static" one, suggesting that it cannot account for the change implied by time, is a petitio principii, for its fundamental argument is the vague and instinctive assertion that time's nature is "dynamic", and that discussing the question otherwise is not addressing the question or failing to see time's "real" nature (cf. 62-3).

The second part is a study of Aristotle's investigation of time in Physics IV and VI. To Wagner, "contemporary scholarship has treated Aristotle's investigation superficially and piecemeal", failing to see that, for him, "time is real in some intermediate sort of way" (p. 8), being neither entirely real nor entirely unreal. As with part one, this second part comprises dozens of interrelated investigations.

Part three focuses on Plotinus, to which Wagner also claims to take "a novel approach", "positing that Plotinus' account of time is most properly and accurately understood by locating it firmly in the Classical tradition of Greek naturalism, wherein time is real if and only if the natural universe is in reality a (the) temporal universe. This aspect of Plotinus' account is typically overlooked owing…to an inadequate understanding of and attention to his philosophical methodology" (12).

I cannot understand why Wagner overlooks many complexities of Plotinus' treatise "On Eternity and Time" (III.7 [45]). One single example: the striking first person plural eirgasmetha, in III.7.11.20 ("we have constructed time as an image of eternity"), is not even mentioned by Wagner, who seems to take for granted that the World Soul is responsible for the production of time.

Having so crudely summarized the book's content, I must state my admiration for Wagner before presenting features of this book which I find difficult to assess and sometimes even unacceptable.

The bibliography does not contain a single work not written in English. There are important studies of Aristotle and Plotinus written in other languages. Since they are neglected by Wagner, the reader may doubt whether he can so openly claim to be presenting innovative interpretations, or the "real" account of a philosopher.¹

As a matter of fact, the bibliography is decorative: few titles are cited in the book. The chapters on Aristotle and on Plotinus does not refer to any Aristotelian or Plotinian scholar, despite important authors (such as Michael Inwood and Andrew Smith) being included in the bibliography.

The absence of discussion of secondary literature raises suspicion that the book is aimed at non-specialists. And there are other signs. See for example the characterization of philosophers ("an extraordinary classical Greek thinker named Parmenides", 8; see 276) and loose assertions like this: "Like all classical Greek philosophers, Aristotle uses 'nature' [physis] in a general way to designate our cosmos (universe) as a whole" (151), which, if not wholly false, is nonetheless far from being wholly true, for in Plato and Aristotle physis denotes more often the intrinsic form or constitution of a thing, nearer to "ousia" than to kosmos. But I think that neither Brill nor Wagner intended this book to be in the hands of laymen.

There is no conclusion to the investigations pursued in the book. More importantly, it is not always clear whose translations Wagner is quoting; for Husserl or Bergson, e.g., the translations seem to be those listed in the bibliography; but, for Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, and for Plotinus' Enneads, information is confusing or lacking: the bibliography mentions only Ross' and Jaeger's Oxford editions of Aristotle, so we deduce that Wagner is responsible for the translations. For Plotinus's Enneads, Wagner employs Armstrong's Loeb translation for longer quotations in chapter 9, but for short quotations in that chapter and for all quotations in chapters 10-12 the translations are his own, without warning. As for the Greek text of Plotinus, one infers that Wagner uses that printed by Armstrong, which is the text edited by H.-R. Schwyzer and P. Henry. There is no problem in this, except for the fact that line numeration of prose texts in Loeb editions are imprecise and, as Wagner quotes line numbers precisely, one suspects he is not using (only) it.

Errors of typography and transliteration of Greek words are abundant: Dodds for Dobbs (138); Steele for Steel (110, 111); to-ti-ein-einai (which Wagner translates "the-what-it-is-to-be") for to-ti-en-einai (the-what-it-was-to-be) (149); pantaxou for pantachou or pantakhou (180, 362); megista genera for megista gene (285); aeion for aion (291); ex hypothesis (262); and many more.

There are many problems in the translation and quotation of Greek texts that do not seem to be typographic slips but are simply wrong. E.g.: 275 (quoting Plotinus, III.7.1.2): "what exists eternally (ton aidion einai)" – transliteration is wrong (it should be ten), and the English text does not correspond to it; the phrase is: [legontes] peri ten aidion einai physin ("saying [that eternity] is around the perpetual nature", einai being complement of the participle legontes). The same occurs in 287: he ousia einai as the equivalent for "substantial existence", when in fact einai is the complement of another verb and he ousia is the subject of the sentence. In 276: "to noeton ousia" (instead of the correct text of III.7.2.2: ten noeten ousian) and "to aistheton ousia" (which is not in Plotinus' text, but should be he aisthete ousia). In 322-3 (translating III.7.8.34ff.): we find to polu translated as "plenitude" (instead of "multiplicity"); ennoia as "impression" (instead of "idea" or "notion"); a causal dative as a concessive clause; and the causal "on account of" for a simple en. The latter imprecision is recurrent (cf. 354, 345, 323) and affects Wagner's investigations: he translates "in time" as "in virtue of time" or "on account of time", thus implying a causative relation where there is none (i.e. motion happens in time, not in virtue of time, since its cause may be, say, my hand).

Wagner translates (344) the crucial passage of Enn. III.7.11.30-31 as follows: "in asserting itself independently from eternity, it [soul] produced time…" (there are more problems in the sequence, but I will limit myself to these lines) – the first phrase does not exist in the Greek text, which reads: "having produced this [probably the sensible cosmos] instead of eternity, first it [soul] temporalized itself…". Wagner understands that "it [i.e. soul] produced time", simply ignoring Plotinus's intriguing neologism, the verb khronoun, and its complement, the reflexive pronoun heauten: "soul temporalized itself". But what does it mean for soul to have temporalized itself if it is eternal (as Plotinus states in IV.4.15)? Wagner does not even mention this.

He complains about Plotinus' "syntactically and semantically ambiguous" Greek (323) when he is to interpret III.7.8.49-52; after translating it, keeping the word athroa not translated, he makes a philological incursion into the meanings of that word in order to show that the passage in question has not been correctly understood until now. The first sentence, in Wagner's translation: "motion which is not athroa is distinguishable from motion which is athroa by virtue of time". According to Wagner (324), athroa can mean both "all-at-once", "instantaneous", or "continuous", "ongoing" – and he is right. Though all translations and studies in the world have preferred the first meaning – so that the difference is one between a movement that happens instantaneously and one that requires time to occur–, Wagner chooses the second meaning: for him "it is more reasonable to understand Plotinus' contrast between motion which is not athroa and motion which is athroa to distinguish motion which is not ongoing or unceasing...from motion which is ongoing or unceasing" (325). Having in mind that, in the context, Plotinus is precisely refuting the hypothesis that time is, or is related to, physical movement, Wagner's "novel approach" is difficult to sustain: surely both motions are distinguished in time (one may take 10 seconds, the other may proceed infinitely and so last for an infinite amount of time). But this is not the case: both motions occur in time, be they short or endless. Plotinus is stating that time cannot be movement, because there are movements that can happen instantaneously, and these do not occur in time.

Throughout the book we read imprecise statements, as if Wagner did not expect his reader to be another scholar. For example, Wagner says that "it is patently absurd…to suppose ¬ as contemporary commentaries on Plotinus' account of time typically do suppose (and assert) – that the regular or standard rhythm, for example, of Soul's activity as it 'rouses' a human heart to beat and the regular or standard rhythm of Soul's activity as it 'prods and pushes' the outermost Heavenly sphere in its repeating circular motion are somehow the same" (356). It is patently absurd, indeed! But which commentaries typically do it? Wagner does not say. I've read a good number of studies on Plotinus' theory of time, but I've never met anything slightly similar to it.

Wagner is not an ordinary scholar: he is a provocative thinker who always deserves to be read. But with caution, this time.

Notes:

1. See e.g. the excellent studies of Fernando Rey Puente (Os Sentidos do Tempo em Aristóteles, Loyola: São Paulo, 2001) and Alessandro Trotta (Il Problema del Tempo in Plotino, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1997), and their generous bibliography.

2012.01.51

2012-01-30T19:22:00.001-05:00

Nicolini on Hunink on Nicolini, Ad (L)usum lectoris: etimologia e giochi di parole in Apuleio. Response to 2012.01.03

Response by Lara Nicolini, Pisa (l.nicolini@sns.it)

Version at BMCR home site

Responding to a review may seem unnecessary and unpleasant, and has often seemed so to me. But circumstantial criticism of specific matters is one thing, specious remarks quite another – especially if such remarks, stemming from a personal and biased reading, call into question the author's whole philological method, and on occasion come close to insult. May I therefore call upon Ovid's words, turpe quidem contendere erat, sed cedere visum / turpius.

Hunink is certainly correct in the most emphatic of his substantial claims, that there are typos in the index locorum. I suspect that an attentive reading will reveal an even greater number of inaccuracies, which is unfortunate and a regrettable oversight on my part. (I do take some consolation from my experience as a reader, since I got used to finding this kind of error in those long series of numbers that usually form the indexes: I presume it is sort of a natural characteristic of such treacherous appendices ...). I hope this problem will be sorted out in the next printing of the book.¹

However, I simply fail to see why this error, that in the end is so common and widespread, should be considered a real crimen to be laid against this book. Unless, of course, one accepts Hunink's premise, that readers will only consult it rather than read it from cover to cover: on the contrary, I think that a selective reading based on index entries is not an appropriate way to approach the book (even less so by a reviewer I should add). This approach inevitably results in some misunderstandings. Indexes are extremely useful tools but, if I may use a metaphor, they are also 'blind'. This is perhaps even more true of the index locorum, which puts together disjointed passages, sampled from different chapters of a book and only connected by their proximity in the text.

Were this work a lexicographical one, Hunink would be right in considering the numerical typos in its index a gross negligence rather than a venial sin. However, this book is neither a lexicon nor a catalogue. It is a new study of Apuleius' style which aims to offer an original key to the interpretation of his work as a whole. Examples are used as supporting evidence for my argument: they are not the argument. I have started from a hypothesis, tested my idea through a close scrutiny of the Latin text, and finally reached a conclusion about what I believe to be a crucial aspect of Apuleius' writing. A reader who wants to evaluate this book fairly is actually expected to read it from cover to cover. Then again, the book can certainly be consulted as a repertoire of remarks on individual passages, and this option is offered and made easier by the presence of indexes. Yet, it remains a monograph on an extremely important aspect of Apuleius' linguistic experimentalism and is by no means a collection of stylistic oddities. It is any reviewer's right, of course, to agree or disagree with an author; but it is not fair to describe the book under review as something different than what it is.

I feel bound to clarify at least the major points where misunderstandings seem to arise from such a reading.

The first problem with relying on the index locorum as a guide through the book is that one finds listed there all kinds of word play (etymological puns, as well as phonic word plays, puns of great effect, and those already noticed by commentators), not to mention all the passages that do not actually include any word play. It is therefore ungenerous, to say the least, to repeatedly point out that "even a beginning reader [sic] of the Latin" would have picked up some of them. In many cases, moreover, the point is not the original discovery of a new word play. For example, it may well be true that even a dilettante would spot the enallage at Met. 11,5,2 fluctuantes Cyprii. This is not a momentous discovery, I agree. Nevertheless, a more extensive reading of the relevant chapter would have revealed the significance of my argument: that the frequent occurrence of enallages like this one, which cause a semantic shift of adjectives (sometimes such a strong shift that it challenges comprehension), should be considered before adopting emendations of such passages as met. 5,23,6 detectae fidei, 6,28,5 compta diligentia, and 8,7,7 adfixo servitio. In all these cases the text is evidently beyond the interpretative abilities of an amateurish reader of Latin, so much so that several talented philologists have tried to emend it. Listing a series of instances serves therefore a purpose in its own right, independent of the significance of every individual passage quoted.

A second consequence of such a 'desultory' reading style is that one might expect to find an instance of word play where there is none, and feel disappointed as a result. This is exactly what happens to Hunink in the case of Met. 11,1,1 (analyzed on p. 55 of my book), where he rightly remarks that "there is no pun involved". No pun is involved, indeed, nor do I see why there should be one. The passage at met. 11,1,1 is brought into the argument for a different reason: it serves only as a parallel to another passage, met. 1,2,1, where the same verb emergo occurs. In this case, the reviewer has another and more serious objection to my method: he clearly does not approve my use of the adjective 'normal' (inverted commas by Hunink) with reference to the usage of emergo in 11,1,1, to support the necessity of an emendation at 1,2,1, where the transmitted text is unproblematic for Hunink (I quote: "The 'normal' use of emergo with separative ablative is adduced ... as evidence against F's reading, emersi me, transitive with accusative"). I cannot understand how one can consider it "outrageous" or simply methodologically wrong that an author's usus scribendi (which, incidentally, is perfectly consistent with classical standards) is used as an argument against a text that appears grammatically unsound. The passage at 11,1,1 (emergentem... fluctibus) is only one of the several passages used as evidence for the consistent Apuleian usage of intransitive emergo, construed either absolutely or with the ablative of origin. The phrase emersi me looks simply impossible to me, and so it has to such distinguished predecessors as Leo, Helm, Robertson, and more recently Keulen, who have emended the transmitted text in different ways. I only add that the simple expunction of me does not solve the problem: notwithstanding the validity of Keulen's arguments (see his comm. ad loc.), I have a serious problem with the transitive usage of emersi, governing the previous accusatives ardua montium et lubrica vallium et roscida cespitum et glebosa camporum. I respect of course position of Hunink, who sees no problem in this. I merely pointed out that Vallette's elegant conjecture, «emensus» emersi, which provides a good solution to the syntactical peculiarity of the phrase, is also supported by Apuleius' propensity to this type of paronomasia, with which I specifically deal in this section of the book (the paleographic explanation of the error is self-evident).

Last but not least, a third consequence of such a casual approach to the book is a gross (and, I have to say, definitely insulting) misunderstanding of my philological method. Hunink repeatedly states that I support more or less recent conjectures against the transmitted reading "because they fit a specific category of puns"; he declares himself "disturbed" by this. He implies that my textual choices are whimsical and arising from a stubborn wish to demonstrate my hypothesis. Perhaps it is true that I do not stand in much awe of the Codex Laurentianus (F), but I do have a great respect for philology, its methods and its principles.

For the benefit of readers who are less familiar with the textual tradition of Apuleius' works it may be useful to recall that F is, in all likelihood, the progenitor of all the available Apuleian manuscripts, and that F was written more or less nine centuries after Apuleius' time. Is it really absurd to question the readings of F, not only when they are clearly corrupt, but also when the rules and conventions of the Latin language are apparently above suspicion? There must be, of course, good grounds for emendation: whenever I support or suggest an emendation, I am always motivated by some inconsistency (be it linguistic or logical) in the transmitted text.

This is particularly evident in the case of the passage pointed out by Hunink. The reading of F in 11,30,4 deserviebat is certainly corrupt: an enormous number of emendations have been put forward to restore the passage, and among them I support one (ibidem serebat) that implies a word play which is also attested elsewhere in the novel. This perfectly reasonable proposal by Oudendorp, already suggested by Beroaldus, is far from being hazardous; indeed, it is clearly better than many other conjectures, as a glance at Helm's or Robertson's apparatus will confirm.

But there is more in the book that suggests that the text of F should perhaps be challenged where it has never been – and this is precisely what displeases Hunink, who protests: "it struck me that the author puts perfectly acceptable manuscript readings into question". This is absolutely true. And I hope this can be regarded as one of the original aspects of my book: it is certainly one that I am proud of.

I shall mention only a couple of cases in which the text of F is not usually called into question: the conjectures conserentes for the transmitted conferentes at Met. 5,15,3, and polentarium for polentacium at Met. 6,19,2 (pp. 128-129, 137-141 in my book) should at least be mentioned in the critical apparatus. I have never emended F to adapt Apuleius' text to my reading and to an aprioristic classification of puns. On the contrary, I devised my classification a posteriori, in order to catalogue the different kinds of etymological puns (real variations on a theme) that Apuleius uses so frequently. This peculiar stylistic feature, Apuleius's penchant for etymology, is the object of my book: I hope I succeeded in showing the continuous presence of it and how it works in the text. This peculiar trait of style can be used – such was my original aim – like any other trait of Apuleius' usus scribendi: it can help us restore and interpret difficult parts of the text, and can guide us towards a correct evaluation of scholarly contributions. This is my method, which I very much regret escaped Professor Hunink.

In my opinion, much can still be done to improve the text of the Metamorphoses and of the other Apuleian works; much is to be expected of M. Zimmerman's forthcoming Oxford edition. I also think that much can be done on the grounds of our always improving knowledge of Apuleius' language and style. We should not let ourselves be caught in a dilemma between a prudently conservative and a boldly innovative stance. Whenever the text of our codex unicus is suspect for reasons of grammar and language, or when doubts exist about its meaning, respect for the paradosis should not prevent us from supporting a good conjecture, if it is based on Apuleius' idiolect and style, finds good parallels, and is paleographically easy to explain.²

Unless one wants to consider the codex Laurentianus 68,2 a unique exception among classical texts, or to think that the philologist's trade is completely pointless.

Notes:

1. Typos in the indexes are admittedly bothersome, but surely there are worse mistakes. One example: the misprinted Latin text humani generi (sospitatrix) (p. 143 in the book – not far from one of the numeric typos mentioned by Hunink) is a linguistic monstrum that escaped not only my attention, and the editor's, but also that of the reviewer, who quotes the phrase exactly as he finds it on the page.
2. It is a really democratic method, if one thinks about it. The very same consideration of the usus scribendi can in fact conversely support the readings of F against unnecessary conjectures, or contribute to the correct interpretation of uncertain passages. Several instances of both cases can be found in my Index rerum.

2012.01.50

2012-01-29T21:43:00.001-05:00

Perrine Galand-Hallyn, Fernand Hallyn, Carlos Lévy, Wim Verbaal (ed.), Quintilien: ancien et moderne études réunies. Latinitates, 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Pp. 576. ISBN 9782503528656. €95.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Andrea Balbo, Università di Torino (andrea.balbo@unito.it)

Version at BMCR home site

«Modèle pour les pedagogues, les grammairiens, les philologues, les orateurs, comme les poètes et même pour les theoriciens des arts»:¹ it would be difficult to give a more exact appreciation of Quintilian's role in the history of Western culture and literature. This excellent collection of 24 essays, proceedings of a conference held in Gand from 30th November to 3rd December 2005, focuses on the interpretation and exegesis of Quintilian from Antiquity to the Modern age

The first relevant, positive element about this book is its ample scope; if we look at the most recent bibliographical additions to the Quintilian dossier (in the Année Philologique or in the Neue Pauly), we find very few books published in the last 30 years covering the same or similar ground.² The book dwells above all on the interest in Quintilian's works after Antiquity, following a research trend (the Fortleben) that is more and more important in Classical studies. So, the book will be useful not only for classicists or historians of rhetoric, but also for historians of the medieval and modern periods, as well as scholars interested in Medieval and Renaissance literature, researchers who are interested in the history of editing Classical texts and in Church history and Christianity .

The book is divided into three main sections. The first concerns some problems of interpretation of Quintilian's text, the subjects he discusses and Quintilian's role as a source for later declamation and the oratory of the later years of the first century AD. The second section is a detailed survey of Quintilian's influence on medieval and Renaissance authors. Finally, papers in the third section examine the role of Quintilian in the "Classical age" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The six chapters of the first part explore first the relationship of Quintilian with the oratorical context of his times. Gualtiero Calboli and Ida Gilda Mastrorosa deal respectively with Quintilian's judgments about the declamatores and some aspects of judicial oratory in the second part of the first century AD, concentrating mainly on Pliny the Younger, who provides excellent information about some of the trials of his age and was himself, at some point, a pupil of Quintilian. The two articles aptly highlight the centrality of Quintilian as evidence for 'real' oratory in a period usually described as a moment of decadence for this literary genre. The next two papers cover the role of the Greek and Roman sources of the Institutio oratoria, with a particular attention, on the one hand, to the connections between Quintilian and the Greek rhetoricians (Chiron), and, on the other, to Cicero as source for knowledge of ancient philosophy (Lévy). The two papers are very important and innovative. Chiron deals with Quintilian's Greek vocabulary in a very subtle way, even if he does not cite the old, but still valuable, works of J. Cousin;³ Lévy dwells on Quintilian's clever use of quotations from Sceptic and Stoic philosophers in the Institutio, drawing an enlightening and detailed picture of Quintilian's philosophical background, and showing him as an intellectual interested in philosophy but in many respects very distant from his main model, Cicero. The final section consists of two papers; the first concerns the written composition, one of the most important elements of the "continuing education" canvassed in Institutio oratoria (M. S. Celentano).The second paper is about the tools and strategies used by the orator in order to reinforce his performance by the means of visible elements, such as imagines, and with a peculiar attention to objects produced expressly for oratorical aims, as the depicted image of Manius Curius prisoner in Quint. Inst. 6.3.72 (Moretti). The two chapters are very successful in stressing the centrality both of the continuous writing practice and of the communicative approach as important elements in Quintilian's rhetorical pedagogy.

The ten papers of the second section analyse Quintilian's influence between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, focusing especially on Italian and French authors, although two good papers are devoted to John of Salisbury and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Medieval and Renaissance authors see Quintilian as a rhetorician (Lecointe), a theorist of oratorical art, as an important source of declamatory materials (van der Poel). Other papers stress Quintilian's importance as an authority in the context of Medieval literature (Verbaal, Rouillé), in the development of poetical theories (Galand, Leroux) and in pedagogical questions (Nassichuk). Quintilian remained basic reading for all the cultivated people, even if they did not agree with his ideas, as in the case of Pierre de la Ramée, studied by Jean Lecointe. Among the above-mentioned papers I would single out Mariangela Regoliosi's chapter on the influence of Quintilian on Lorenzo Valla. Regoliosi does not limit herself to the well-known commentary in cod. Par. Lat. 7723, but highlights several different facets of Quintilian's influence on Valla (rhetorical and philosophical idioms, use of Greek, and even Valla's own understanding of the rhetorical tradition), describing effectively how Quintilian was the real magister eloquentiae of the Italian humanist.

The third section, made up of eight papers, tells a history of the "republic of letters" from the point of view of the Quintilian reception. Thanks to these studies, the reader understands the great importance of Quintilian's works in the religious world (Jesuits, post-Tridentine preachers, studied respectively by Baffetti and Conte), painters (Hallyn) and the authors of poetical treatises (Bury, Gutbub). The most original among the papers of this section concern authors or problems that have not been deeply studied yet with reference to Quintilian. They provide tangible proof of the great potential for research in the fields of classical survival and reception of the Quintilian tradition. This book offers engaging, wide-ranging discussions ofsome of the most relevant themes of Quintilian's influence and it will be a reference work of great value for many years. The editing of the book has been accurate and there are very few mistakes.⁴ Inclusion of indexes, for instance of ancient and modern passages and namesm, would have been helpful. Also, a final general bibliography instead of separate, short bibliographies at the end of every chapter would have been better.⁵

P. Galand, F. Hallyn †, C. Lévy et W. Verbaal, «Avant-propos», p. 5
Première partie
Quintilien dans l'antiquité: ses lectures et ses lecteurs
G. Calboli, Quintilien et les déclamateurs, p. 11
P. Chiron, L'héritage grec de Quintilien: le cas de l'exorde (IO, IV, 1), p. 29
M. S. Celentano, L'oratore impara a scrivere. Principi di scrittura professionale nell'Institutio oratoria di Quintiliano, p. 47
G. Moretti, Quintiliano e il 'visibile parlare': strumenti visuali per l'oratoria latina, p. 67
C. Lévy, Note sur un aspect de Quintilien lecteur de Cicéron: sceptiques et stoïciens dans l'Institution oratoire, p. 109
I.G. Mastrorosa, La pratica dell'oratoria giudiziaria nell'alto impero: Quintiliano e Plinio il Giovane, p. 125

Deuxième partie
Quintilien du Moyen-Âge à la Renaissance
W. Verbaal, Teste Quintiliano. Jean de Salisbury et Quintilien: un exemple de la crise des autorités au XIIe siècle, p. 155
F. Rouillé, Sur trois vers de l'Anticlaudianus d'Alain de Lille mentionnant Quintilien, p. 171
L. Hermand-Schebat, Pétrarque et Quintilien, p. 191
J. Nassichuk, Quintilien dans les traités pédagogiques du Quattrocento, p. 207
M. Regoliosi, Valla e Quintiliano, p. 233
M. van der Poel, Observations sur la déclamation chez Quintilien et chez Erasme, p. 279
J. Céard, Josse Bade, éditeur de Quintilien à la Rénaissance, p. 291
P. Galand, Quelques aspects de l'influence de Quintilien sur les premières poétiques latines de la Renaissance (Fonzio, Vadian, Vida), p. 303
V. Leroux, Quintilianus censor in litteris acerrimus: posterité des jugements de Quintilien sur les poètes antiques dans les poétiques latines de la Renaissance (1486-1561), p. 351
J. Lecointe, La nouvelle Babylone. Quintilien et le statut de l'èthos dans la rhétorique ramiste, p. 383

Troisième partie
Quintilien à l'Âge Classique
G. Baffetti, Quintiliano e i gesuiti, p. 399
E. Bury, Quintilien et le discours critique classique: Vaugelas, Guez de Balzac, Bouhours, p. 413
S. Conte, Presence de Quintilien dans les rhétoriques sacrées post-tridentines: le vir bonus, p. 433
C. Gutbub, Invention et imitation chez Quintilien: d'une invention à l'autre en passant par Pierre de Deimier, p. 471
A. Roose, Les bottines de François de la Mothe le Vayer, p. 501
F. Hallyn, Quintilien et le débat sur la peinture à l'âge classique: l'expression des passions, p. 515
F. Goyet, Les figures de pensée comme grands blocs, unités minimales pour construire un discours, p. 527
V. Kapp, Le rôle de Quintilien dans les débats sur la clarté, p. 559

Notes:

1.   Avant-propos p. 8.
2.   The contributions with a general perspective are few. See the two important issues of Rhetorica 13, 2-3, 1995, about TheInstitutio oratoriaafter 1900 Years, 103-358 (with contributions also, for instance, about Goethe and Quintilian in Czech thought) and the proceedings of Tomas Albaladejo, Emilio del Río, José Antonio Caballero (eds.) Quintiliano: historia y actualidad de la retórica. Actas del Congreso internacional, Calahorra: Ayuntamiento de Calahorra, 1998.
3.   See Études sur Quintilien, Paris 1936 reprint Amsterdam 1967.
4.   Read téchne for techné (p. 110), Aeneas for Aeneus (p. 208), nobilium for nobiliorum (p. 209) ; eloquentia for eloquintia (p. 276). At the page 209 the discovery of Quintilian's manuscript by Poggio is dated in 1416, at page 211 at 1417: about this matter see also Furio Murru, Poggio Bracciolini e la riscoperta dell'Institutio oratoria di Quintiliano (1416), Critica storica 20, 1983, 621-626, that is not quoted in bibliography; in the index of contents the article of Florent Rouillé is printed without « d'Alain de Lille ».
5.   To Celentano's paper add Lonni Bahmer, Schreiben in der Ausbildung des Redners. Die « Institutio oratoria » als Grundriss für den Schreibunterricht heute, Rhetorik 17, 1998, 35-53; to Céard's, Jorge Fernández López, J. Bade acerca de M. F. Quintiliano en 1498 y 1516, Latomus 62, 2003, 902-910; in Lecointe's article, Juan María Núñez González, La doctrina del « oratorius numerus » en Cicerón, Quintiliano y Pierre de la Ramée in Quintiliano: historia y actualidad de la retórica. Actas del Congreso internacional, 1447-1456.

2012.01.49

2012-01-29T20:34:00.001-05:00

Marie Verdoner, Narrated Reality: the Historia ecclesiastica of Eusebius of Caesarea. Early Christianity in the context of antiquity, 9. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. Pp. vi, 208. ISBN 9783631605882. €42.80; $66.95.

Reviewed by David J. DeVore, University of California (djdevore@berkeley.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

The oeuvre of Eusebius of Caesarea – bishop, book collector and editor, theologian, polemicist, chronicler, propagandist, and, to some in his lifetime, "heretic" – has not always been appreciated. Yet since the late 1990s his early works from before Constantine became sole Roman emperor in 324 have drawn a groundswell of scholarly of attention from historians, classicists and theologians. Eusebius' subtlety and comprehensiveness as a polemicist against non-Christian ethnic groups (Ulrich, Kofsky, A. Johnson, Schott, Morlet), his manipulation of previous written texts and innovative use of the technology of books (Carriker, Inowlocki, Grafton and Williams, Morlet), his skill in adapting Christian theology in dialogue with Platonist metaphysics and various theological critiques (Strutwolf, Kofsky, Johnson, Morlet, Schott, Zamagni), and even his vision of Christian society (Hollerich, Johnson, Morlet) have become the subjects of a number of recent volumes.¹ Yet this renaissance has covered Eusebius's various authorial themes and aims unevenly, devoting relatively little attention to Eusebian historiography, and particularly to his most-read (or, better, most-cited) work, the Ecclesiastical History.² The lag in attention to the History is understandable for at least two reasons. For one, the History's multifaceted intertextuality – between 40 and 50 percent of the text consists of direct quotations of varying correspondence to their Vorlagen – demands wide knowledge of both Eusebius and his sources and frustrates attempts to identify where sources' voices end and Eusebius' begins. For another, the History's complex and disputed compositional history has hindered scholars from mapping out the discursive contexts that it addresses.³

As fresh probing of the History is overdue, Marie Verdoner's new book, a translated revision of her 2007 Danish dissertation at the University of Aarhus, is a welcome study. Verdoner aims "to map the historical space implied in historia ecclesiastica" (1), by "regard[ing] text as a construction of meaning, drawing upon the surrounding cultural system, and thus becoming more than a by-word for the unique creation of the narrator- author" (2). Thereby Verdoner will explain "the cultural negotiations attending the turn into a post-Constantinian Christianity" (2): situating her reading within the new historicism, she dispenses explicitly with the older (to adapt a term from Herodotean and Thucydidean studies) "Eusebian questions" of compositional sequence and historical accuracy to focus instead on the History as an ideological document.

The book proceeds in five chapters. To establish the text's significance, Verdoner's introduction sketches the History's wide reception from late Roman to modern times (4-17). She then draws from poststructuralist theorists her study's guiding principle that historical narrative's combination of internal causal chains and coherence with perceived external realities serve to model power relationships for their audiences and retroject them into a plausible past (17-30).

Verdoner's second chapter sketches Eusebius's life and works briefly before discussing the composition, structure, and narrative techniques of the History. Marginalizing Eusebius the author to tackle the text's narratorial voice, Verdoner contrasts the History's annalistic and therefore discontinuous structure in books 1-7 (concerning events before Diocletian's persecutions) with the involved and passionate narration of recent persecutions in books 8-9, narration that (I concur) transforms reader into spectator. She also notes that the Eusebian narrator's famous use of quotations confirms the "external coherence" discussed in her introduction and edifies readers (65f.).

Chapter 3 moves on to the History's genre, which Verdoner introduces as the key to its authority. A discussion of "Hellenistic" and "Judeo-Christian history writing" (on which, see below) leads her to pronounce that the History "must be placed within the frames of the traditional Hellenistic-Roman history writing…regarding time,…subject, form and style" (84), though the text articulates apologetic arguments too.⁴ The strongest part of the book comes next (89-107), as Verdoner untangles Eusebius's carefully inflected self-descriptions as "I" or "we" (the latter sometimes including Christians from centuries before Eusebius, sometimes including Eusebius's readers ) and as an exceptionally book-smart savant. The narrator presents a narrative that is "out there" in texts and waiting for its teller, and its coalescence elevates the book that carries it into a sacred monument.⁵

The fourth chapter outlines how Eusebius constructs an ideal Christian community, unifying and arranging bishops, martyrs, and scholars across time, space, and rank within a Christian ethnos while systematically excluding "heretics," Judeans, and pagans (109-147).⁶ While Eusebius's stereotyped presentation of both insiders and outsiders creates a unified, pious Christian nation, Verdoner shows that certain groups and individuals threatened the stability of Eusebius's sharp hierarchies and divisions, such as "heresy's" status as an inversion of Christianity, the problematic border between Hebrews, Judeans, and Christians, and the narrator's praise of "heretical" and Judean scholars like Tatian, Philo and Josephus.

The fifth and final chapter situates Eusebius's imagined church vis-à-vis three contexts: space and time, the Roman imperial state, and the divine. The first two collapse into one as Verdoner shows that, "Chronologically, geographically, and politically, the Roman Empire appears as the borders of the church and as the entire world" (160). She also rightly reaffirms that for Eusebius historical agency lies ultimately with God, whose victory in a cosmic struggle with the devil is a foregone conclusion, but whose Providence, manifested in Christ's teaching, binds the church into continuity with God's people in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Verdoner's reading of the History as a unified ideological presentation is a suggestive experiment and an important corrective to studies that divide the text according to one or another compositional hypothesis or that emphasize Eusebius's sources to the exclusion of his authorial agenda. The book's most brilliant moments come when Verdoner probes the Eusebian narrator's voice, sequencing, rhythm, and intertextual devices, particularly in the second and third chapters.⁷ Verdoner's questions yield numerous provocative observations about Eusebius's narrative techniques that, while not all will agree with every point, should be foundational for understanding the History's success.

Alongside these suggestive readings, however, a tension develops between the book's aims and the path adopted to reach those aims: whereas Verdoner purports to explain the History's success in forming Christian collective memory and identity in the milieu in which Christianity gained power, her transtemporal orientation vis-à-vis what history does (chapter 1) marginalizes the particular habitus of the History's elite Roman audiences, running the danger of dehistoricizing the text (cf. her tributes to the New Historicism, 2, 21, 29). Neglect of the particular culture for which Eusebius wrote (as well as contemporary debates in which he participated) obscures Eusebius' contributions to "the larger renegotiation of Christianity's position within the Roman Empire" (187).

Rather than being grounded from the start in Eusebius's late Roman milieu, the book sketches Eusebius's literary culture only in its third chapter. But here Verdoner presupposes a distinction between "Hellenistic" and "Judeo- Christian" historiographies, even though she is at pains to delineate differences between these two traditions.⁸ Indeed, it is unclear how, in early fourth century Greek literary culture, an narrator-author's ethnicity conditioned readers' expectations about the blending of form, content, and rhetoric – in short, the genre – of a historiographical text. Educated hellenophones in Eusebius's day did not distinguish genres of historia simply by their respective authors' ethnicity: rather, any Greek historian had numerous subgenres from an 800-year tradition of historical writing available to emulate, so that Greek and non-Greek narrator-authors alike produced lengthy national histories, shorter war monographs, geographies and ethnographies, local histories, chronographies, and biographies, and combinations of several genres, each presuming different respective interests and education in audiences. And each genre (or combination of genres) implicated a text's narrator-author into a different relationship between subject matter, the narrator's voice, and readers (both implied and actual) – a nexus that represented a major concern for Eusebius (see esp. History 5.pref.3f.). A careful consideration of the History's genre(s) would bring into sharper relief the particular audiences targeted by Eusebius and help explain the History's resonance.

Nevertheless, Verdoner's discussion of Eusebius's narrative tactics and construct of Christianity will be fundamental in coming studies of the Ecclesiastical History. Her perceptive readings and fresh approach make this book a necessary acquisition for any scholar working on Eusebius and profitable for students of late Roman historical writing.

It must be noted that the book is marred by numerous grammatical errors, typos, colloquialisms, and awkward phrasings.¹⁰

Notes:

1.   See also the recent collections of A.-C. Jacobsen, and J. Ulrich (eds.) Three Greek Apologists. Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius (Frankfurt, 2007) and S. Inowlocki and C. Zamagni (eds.), Reconsidering Eusebius (Leiden, 2011), as well as the forthcoming A. Johnson and J. Schott (eds.), Eusebius and the Making of Late Antique Literary Culture (Washington DC, 2012). Credit for laying the historical foundation for recent Eusebian scholarship goes largely to T. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA, 1981).
2.   Indeed, Inowlocki and Zamagni excluded studies of the Ecclesiastical History from their recent volume (previous note; see their "Preface," pp. ixf.). Some of the best recent work on the History has treated circumscribed topics within the text, such as its quotational practice (E. Carotenuto, Tradizione e innovazione nella Historia Ecclesiastica di Eusebio di Cesarea (Bologna, 2001)), and portrayal of "heretics" (M. Willing, Eusebius von Cäsarea als Häresiograph (Berlin, 2008)). Recent assessments of the History include D. Mendels, The Media Revolution of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, 1999), T. Morgan, "Eusebius of Caesarea and Christian Historiography," Athenaeum 93 (2005), Morlet, "Écrire l'Histoire selon Eusèbe de Césarée," L'Information Litteraire 57 (2005), and Ulrich, "Eusebius als Kirchengeschichtsschreiber," in E.-M. Becker (ed.), Die antike Historiographie und die Anfänge der christlichen Geschichtsschreibung (Berlin, 2005). A commentary on the History is also in the works: for a prospectus, see L. Perrone, "Eusèbe de Césarée face à l'essor de la littérature chrétienne," Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 11 (2007).
3.   The History was published in at least three editions between Constantine's and Licinius' securing joint rule in 313 and Constantine's deposing Licinius in 325, as R. Burgess has shown in "The Dates and Editions of Eusebius' Chronici Canones and Historia Ecclesiastica," Journal of Theological Studies 48 (1997) (but cf. Barnes, "Eusebius of Caesarea," Expository Times 120 (2009), 6f.).
4.   On non-Greeks writing "apologetic histories" in Greek in the Hellenistic and early Roman period, see G. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, Luke-Acts, and Apologetic Historiography (Leiden, 1991), an important study of which Verdoner appears unaware.
5.   Verdoner already maps the History's apologetic strategies and targets in "Transgeneric Crosses. Apologetics in the Church History of Eusebius," in Jacobsen and Ulrich (eds.), Three Greek Apologists (2007); she also discusses the Eusebian narrator's relationship with his audience trenchantly in "Überlegungen zum Adressaten von Eusebs Historia ecclesiastica," Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 14 (2010).
6.   On Christianity as a nation in Eusebius's writings, see esp. A. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica (2006).
7.   It may cause some confusion that Verdoner nowhere introduces readers to the technical narratological terms that she employs throughout the monograph, except where at 89 n. 121 she explains why she uses "narrator" instead of "Eusebius": so confusion may result around such technical terms as "focalize," "focalizer" and "focalization" (passim), or "internal analepses" and "prolepses" (150). It is recommended that readers unfamiliar with narratology consult an introductory guide to the field, such as M. Bal, Narratology (Toronto, 2009).
8.   Verdoner points to (1) the agency of God and the teleology of his plan and (2) the Judean and Christian historians' direct quotation of texts. However, attributions of agency alone constitute no sound basis for a generic distinction, and Verdoner herself concedes in a footnote that Greek and Roman historians quoted texts too, and in ways similar to Judean and Christian historians (71 n. 17).
9.   On genre in ancient historiography, see the important essay of J. Marincola, "Genre, Convention, and Innovation in Greco-Roman Historiography," in C. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography (Leiden, 1999). Verdoner's discussion of the History's authority, which she links to its genre, would have benefited from consultation of Marincola's classic Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997).
10.   A few examples: the repeated use of "quote" as a noun; "the taxing style…resulting in the text getting an alluding character" (52); "although the lack of descriptions [sic] may be typical for the work as a whole, it is not consequent" (53); "…catching the room of communication with the reader…" (89 n. 121); "…the non-episcopal learned receiving the most attention is Origen." (113); "there is no consistent discern between schismatics and heretics" (145).

2012.01.48

2012-01-28T21:47:00.001-05:00

Claudia Bolgia, Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne (ed.), Rome across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c. 500-1400. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xx, 351. ISBN 9780521192170. $99.00.

Reviewed by Réka Forrai, Central European University (rekaforrai@yahoo.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Trying to map nine hundred years from the life of a city like Rome is a gigantic enterprise. However, this is the ambition of this compact little book of less than 400 pages. It discusses cultural transmission and the exchange of ideas centered on medieval Rome: Rome, the idea, and Rome, the place. With its clearly defined questions, and its innovative papers it proves to be an extremely useful compass that will help you navigate whether you are going towards or coming from Rome.

Framed by a list of illustrations (all black and white), of tables and maps at the beginning, and a general and a manuscript index at the end, the volume is divided in six subsections: Roman texts and Roman history; The translation of the Roman liturgy north of the Alps; Architectural inspiration and sculptural models within and without Rome; Cultural exchanges; Patrons, artists, and ideas on the move; Roman and papal jurisdictions. These chapter headings provide the focal points around which the contributors organize their ideas. The volume is not exhaustive of the theme, and some centuries are more present than others: the early middle ages dominate. Within the narrow foci of the different sections, however, the papers are engaging, informative and enter in a lively dialogue with each other.

The justification for these divisions is provided in the introduction of Claudia Bolgia. Her prefatory essay is a very strong and clear formulation of the organizing ideas, placing the book within current scholarly trends, showing how this collection is embedded in contemporary methodological debates or ongoing research projects. The essays collected here are derived from papers presented at a Cambridge conference in 2008. The main purpose was to explore Rome as place, horizontally, in space and as an idea, vertically, in time. Cultural transmission and exchange, the key concepts from the title of the book, serve as umbrella terms for diverse phenomena of adaptation, transformation, reinterpretation, and translation. The editors' intention was to work with these methodological concepts in a frame which is pregnant with different treatments of the idea of Rome. The book is thus the result of an interdisciplinary enterprise, where objects, ideas, and their human agents were all intended to be taken into account. However, the result displays a slight preference for the physical over the ideal: art historical studies make up the bulk of the volume. The focus continuously shifts not only between disciplines and centuries, but also from within Rome to outside, giving the reader a strong impression about how heavy the two-way traffic was on all those roads leading to Rome.

I Roman texts and Roman history

Rosamond McKitterick's "Roman texts and Roman history in the early Middle Ages" argues for the Liber Pontificalis as "alternative history." By looking at possible sources, she concludes that this serial biography follows Roman emperors' lives rather than martyrologies, in an attempt to change Rome's history from pagan into Christian by creating a competitive Christian historiographical tradition.

"Monuments and histories: ideas and images of Antiquity in some descriptions of Rome " by Maurizio Campanelli analyses of series of contemporary descriptions of Rome, and observing how Rome as a sacred, eternal place gradually turns into Rome as history book. The sources discussed are mainly the Mirabilia urbis Romae (12th century), Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae by Master Gregory (13th century), Giovanni Cavallini's Polistoria (14th century), concluding with the humanists Pier Paolo Vergerio, Poggio Bracciolini and Flavio Biondo.

Michael D. Reeve's "Rome, reservoir of ancient texts? " is a bibliographical survey, an up to date review of literature about the question of ancient Latin literature preserved in medieval Rome. The question mark at the end of the title refers to the one major setback of all such investigations: the lack of sources about the early history of Roman libraries.

II The translation of the 'Roman' liturgy north of the Alps

Éamonn ó Carragáin's "The periphery rethinks the centre: inculturation, 'Roman' liturgy and the Ruthwell Cross" analyses a famous early medieval Anglo-Saxon artefact, the Ruthwell Cross. This methodologically very creative piece of writing, starting from the difficulty of accounting for the uniqueness of certain cultural phenomena, argues against a "disintegrative approach" that only emphasizes Roman references, without noticing the innovative combination of the motifs into a "local theology". "The liturgy of the 'Roman' Office in England from the Conversion to the Conquest" by Jesse D. Billet is similar to the previous paper in that the author here argues for a "flexible idea of Romanness", which the Anglo-Saxons developed, a certain freedom in using the Roman liturgy, where the main idea was to be in harmony with the universal catholic church, while at the same time being open to eclecticism. This attitude turned to its reverse after the Conquest, when liturgical practice lost it's flexibility in an attempt to preserve its uniqueness, perceived as romanitas, as a way of opposing Carolingian customs.

"The Romanization of the Frankish liturgy: ideal, reality, and the rhetoric of reform" by Yitzhak Hen joins the previous liturgy studies setting out to further nuance pieces of mainstream received wisdom. In this case, the reality of the Romanness of the Frankish liturgy is under scrutiny. The author presents liturgy as a tool for political ideology and religious identity. These concepts, along with the use of Rome as a symbol of authority would explain the coexistence of a propaganda of uniform Romanization with a reality that was quite the contrary.

III Architectural inspiration and sculptural models within and without Rome

Judson J. Emeric in his "Building more romano in Francia during the third quarter of the eighth century: the abbey church of Saint-Denis and its model" presents Saint Denis also as both place and idea, like Rome. This makes its relation to Rome even more crucial. Here again we find a revision of an old line of inquiry, namely, what exactly was abbot Fulrad copying, when he modeled Saint Denis upon the basilica of Saint Peter? The author argues that Fulrad had in mind not the imperial Constantinian basilica, but the basilica of the popes, trying to relate to contemporary, rather than past architectural and political entities.

Sible de Blaauw in her "Reception and renovation of Early Christian churches in Rome, c. 1050–1300" discusses two types of strategies of renovation that are very different in method but similar in aim: the conservative (demonstrated in the cases of Saint Peter's and San Paolo fuori le mura) and the interventionist (exemplified by San Lorenzo fuori le mura and the Basilica of St. John Lateran). The first wants to renovate while keeping everything unaltered, conserving thus Early Christianity in its monuments; the other alters edifices, but based on Early Christian models, which will have the effect of making them look older than they are. Both strategies idealize early Christianity and its architecture.

John Mitchell's "Giudizio sul Mille: Rome, Montecassino, S. Vincenzo al Volturno, and the beginnings of the Romanesque" is a convincing attack on another piece of received wisdom. Mitchell, instead of attaching the myth of the beginning to a single name, Montecassino, proceeds to contextualize the phenomenon and to show how elements of a revival of Classical motives were occurring at different places in Italy at the same time: in Rome, at S. Vincenzo al Volturno, and only later at Montecassino.

"The discourse of columns" by Dale Kinney has as its subject columns (the cylindrical monolithic Roman type), or rather, the medieval discourse about them, both secular and exegetical, showing how they can be invoked as integral parts of a rhetoric of romanitas.

IV Cultural exchanges

The title of Jane Hawkes' "Design and decoration: re-visualizing Rome in Anglo-Saxon sculpture" again implies a cultural transmission in which the recipient territory is fertile, and the appropriation transformative. She suggests new paths for studying the Roman and Anglo-Saxon sculptural interconnections, focusing on the neglected non- figurative elements.

John Osborne's "Rome and Constantinople in the ninth century" depicts ninth-century Rome as a hub, the connecting point between East and West, especially from 843, the end of iconoclasm, when renewed connections between the emperor, patriarch and pope result in a revival of cultural communication. William R. Day, Jr's "Antiquity, Rome, and Florence: coinage and transmissions across time and space" is the only numismatic paper in the collection, but a very exhaustive one indeed. We are presented with the complex relationship between Roman and Florentine coinage and minting over the centuries: how they mutually inspire each other, and how they draw both on Antiquity, and the idea of romanitas.

V Patrons, artists, and ideas on the move

Julian Gardner's "French patrons abroad and at home: 1260–1300" provides us with a short series of portraits of French cardinals (Guillaume de Bray, Ancher Pantaléon, Guillaume Durand, Pierre de Montbrun, Hugues Aycelin), and the tomb sculpture of their burial sites in Italy and in France.

Paul Binski's "Art-historical reflections on the fall of the Colonna, 1297" discusses how, why and when the new Italian painting style of the Duecento reaches France. He argues for a quite early date (around1297) and emphasizes the political and religious driving forces behind this cultural translation.

Louise Bourdua's "Exports to Padua Trecento style: Altichiero's Roman legacy" discusses the Roman borrowings of a fourteenth-century Veronese artist, Altichiero. The author hypothesizes that Altichiero was exposed to classical Roman models personally, when travelling to Rome. The paper concludes with reflections on the possible reactions of Altichiero's contemporary audience to the classical allusions.

VI Roman and papal jurisdictions

Brenda Bolton's "A new Rome in a small place? Imitation and re-creation in the Patrimony of St Peter" is a vivid presentation of Viterbo's rise as a papal residence at the time of Innocent III, as a sort of pre-Avignon, and the use of the idea of Rome in the process. To move out of such a symbolic place, the papacy had to disentangle the idea of the papacy and the idea of Rome, but at the same time they were shaping Viterbo as a "new Rome". George Dameron's "Appealing to Rome (and Avignon) before the Black Death: ecclesiastical disputes and church patronage in medieval Tuscany" addresses the image of Rome from the point of view of canon law. He describes twelfth- to fourteenth-century ecclesiastical disputes where Tuscan cases end up in front of Rome or Avignon, and strategies of the locals to manipulate the possibilities of such appeals to the papal authority.

What I find extremely valuable in this book is that it diversifies and refreshes our understanding of the idea(s) of Rome prevailing in the Middle Ages. It does this by exemplifying with strong case studies a clear theoretical and methodological frame: cultural transmission and exchange of ideas are viewed in terms of appropriation and imitation rather than influence or impact. When treating Rome's relationship with contemporary cultural and political entities the book emphasizes the selectiveness with which ideas of Rome were treated, and the hybrid nature of the attempts at imitation. Roman institutions' own approach to their past traditions is also shown to have betrayed a great deal of elasticity and creativity. This collection thus achieves what conference proceedings often aim at, but rarely achieve: to produce a volume worthwhile reading both for its individual papers and for the overarching concept.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

2012.02.20

2012.02.19

2012.02.18

2012.02.17

2012.02.16

2012.02.15

2012.02.14

2012.02.13

2012.02.12

2012.02.11

2012.02.10

2012.02.09

2012.02.08

2012.02.07

2012.02.06

Table of Contents

2012.02.05

2012.02.04

2012.02.03

2012.02.02

2012.02.01

2012.01.52

2012.01.51

2012.01.50

Table of contents

2012.01.49

2012.01.48