Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Mabel Lang, Thucydidean Narrative and Discourse. Ann Arbor: Michigan Classical Press, 2011. Pp. xxiii, 219. ISBN 9780979971341. $65.00. Contributors: Edited by Jeffrey S. Rusten and Richard Hamilton.

Reviewed by Timothy Doran, University of California at Berkeley (doran@berkeley.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

[The Table of Contents appears at the end of the review.]

Mabel Lang died in 2010 after 53 years of publishing a dozen books and over four dozen articles on Greek history, archaeology, epigraphy, and literature on topics varying from the Greek abacus to Homeric prayers. At Bryn Mawr she was Paul Shorey Professor of Greek, receiving this title in 1971 after Richmond Lattimore. This edition of her works on Thucydides, collected and edited by Rusten and Hamilton, contains a brief foreword by Mary Patterson McPherson giving the reader an impression of Lang's character and personal style; an essay by Rusten; Lang's essays themselves, which number fifteen, most previously published; an absorbing biographical sketch by her student Eleanor Dickey explaining Lang's cult status at Bryn Mawr and manifest gifts as teacher and scholar; a list of Lang's publications; and a bibliography. Rusten's essay describes Lang's modes of analysis, explains how the volume is organized, and discusses each essay within, alerting readers to others' works which have picked up where Lang left off, or have productively disagreed with Lang's views.

This volume overall contributes to the growing body of studies of Thucydidean narratology and to many historical events and issues in Thucydides' text. It will thus not alienate those scholars to whom some narratological analysis may seem overly contrived. Its essays can be profitably read alongside Hornblower's three-volume Commentary on Thucydides and particularly his 1994 essay "Narratology and Thucydides," Rood's Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation, even very historical and non-narratological works on Thucydides like Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover Historical Commentary on Thucydides, as well as more speech-focused recent works such as Carolyn Dewald's Thucydides' War Narrative: a Structural Study, Paula Debnar's Speaking the Same Language: Speech and Audience in Thucydides' Spartan Debates, Jeffrey Rusten (ed.), Thucydides (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies), and many essays in the recent Brill's Companion to Thucydides, especially those by Rood, Morrison, Stahl, and Bakker. Although focused on form and structure, Lang neither blocks out the exterior world of other types of evidence and authors, nor radically reconceptualizes Thucydides' work as a sort of Hartogian or Fehlingesque "Thucydidean imaginary." All the same, her primary criterion for her judgment of Thucydides in most essays here is his authorial effectiveness, not his accuracy as might be controlled from other evidence. This balance works very well, with some exceptions. Rather than skimming too briefly over each essay in this book, many of which, again, have been published already, I here explore those I consider particularly relevant or representative.

The essays published as Chapters 2 through 9, all previously published from 1948 to 1996, focus more on historical events than on Thucydides' text. "A Note on Ithome," originally published in 1967, discusses Thucydides' account of the Spartan promise to the Thasians to invade Attike in order to prevent the Athenians from taking Thasos. Lang's interpretation does not entirely convince. Most see the Spartans' failure to invade Attike as resulting from Sparta's horrific earthquake of the 460s. Lang instead sees the Spartans summoning the Athenians into the Peloponnese in order to divert them from taking Thasos, thus keeping their promise to the Thasians, and then dismissing them since upon Thasos' capture there was no point in diverting the Athenians any longer. Yet de Ste. Croix' explanation for the Spartan dismissal of the Athenian forces meshes better with Thucydides' own: namely, that the Spartans were afraid that the Athenians might have sympathy for the helots, and distrusted the Athenians on ethno-racial grounds.¹ And if the earthquake was even a small fraction as damaging as is suggested by the tradition preserved in Diodorus Siculus 11.63.4 and Plutarch's Kimon 16, perhaps Sparta was too pressed by Spartiate deaths and massive joint helot-perioikic revolt to engage in subtle diplomacy of the kind Lang reconstructs.

"Scapegoat Pausanias," also originally published in 1967 and presented here as chapter 4, questions Thucydides' narration of the Spartan regent Pausanias' degeneration in the Hellespont after the Persian Wars and Sparta's subsequent punishment of him (Thuc. 1.128-134). Many details in Thucydides' account indeed seem implausible, such as how precisely the letter from Pausanias to Xerxes could have been discovered (Thuc. 1.128.6). But as Lang notes, many cruces in the passage have been used by different scholars both to support and to undermine Thucydides' historical accuracy, such as the Persian locutions in Xerxes' letter in 1.129.3; these can support its accuracy or tell against it since they might seem planted. Moreover, some of Lang's suspicions may not convince all readers. She distrusts Thucydides' account of Sparta's failure to protest Pausanias' demotion and eviction from Byzantion. However, this might instead evidence a rather panhellenist Spartan horror at Pausanias' stylistic Medism, as Thucydides described in 1.130—that is, at Pausanias' going native like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Lang argues that the Spartan government authorized Pausanias' Persian parleys and, upon these being made public, branded him a rogue agent. Her reconstruction is ingenious, but highly hypothetical—as she herself admits.

Analysis of patterns in Thucydides' writing predominates in the essays published as chapters 1 and 10—15; these all date from the 1990s and later. "Participial Motivation in Thucydides," first published in 1995 and printed here as chapter 1, analyzes how Thucydides attributes motivation to his individuals with participles conveying knowing, perceiving, thinking, willing, expecting, or trusting. Lang notes that most of the individuals whose motivations Thucydides describes, such as Cleon, were probably not among his circle of informants: this implies, naturally, that he took liberties in assessing motivation. The essay ends with two appendices: one listing men by name and the participles used to motivate their actions, and another organized by participle with the names of the persons upon whom they were used and their connected actions. This should prove a fine tool for further analysis of persons in Thucydides.

Chapter 11, "Thucydides as Speech-Writer," reconstructed from Lang's notes by Hamilton and Rusten, compares two speeches from Thucydides 4: that by Brasidas to the Akanthians, and that by Hermocrates to the Sicilians. Lang plausibly argues that Thucydides never heard these, but had to invent them along his usual lines. These speeches both feature ring composition and unity of theme expressed through recurring catchphrases. Here Lang argues that the repetitiveness of Brasidas' notorious invocations of freedom alongside his threats may display Thucydides' delight in the curt, reusable effectiveness of his own rhetorical creation. Lang convincingly argues that the formulaic nature of these speeches differs from speeches Thucydides gives to the two men elsewhere because these speeches perforce involved less reportage and more creative effort on Thucydides' part. A similar difference in rhetorical texture appears in a speech Alcibiades gave to the Spartans at 6.89-92, which differs from Thucydides' other speech of Alcibiades at 6.16-18: Lang argues from this fact and from the speech's circularity that it nicely represents the Thucydidean τὰ δέοντα.

"Thucydides, First Person," also never published, appears as Chapter 12. It first foregrounds the difference between the Herodotean historei and the Thucydidean sungraphei—to Lang, these are respectively acts of compiling versus interpretation. This distinction helps to inform the other ways by which Thucydides separates himself from Herodotus. This leads to a brilliant, hilarious reinterpretation of Thucydides' opening words in which the anxiety of (Herodotean) influence lies behind almost every phrase, then a careful listing of distinctions among the patterns of Thucydides' usages of first-person pronouns and verbs, finding some usages to be interpretive or explanatory and others to be argumentative. Chapter 15, "Necessary for whom? Direct vs. Indirect Speeches in Thucydides," another previously unpublished essay, is the longest and most involved piece in the volume. In it Lang argues that Thucydides uses direct discourse to interpret and explain, and indirect discourse to show motivation and the creation of incentives for desired behavior. She then builds on this to create an increasingly complex series of distinctions. For example, in structured pairs of direct and indirect speeches, direct speeches occur when the speaker needs to make a more difficult argument so that rhetorical flourishes may help it, whereas indirect speeches suffice for more obvious arguments. Her detection of these elaborate, hidden structures of paired and tripled speeches—some chiastic, some in the order of thesis- antithesis-synthesis—in many places in Thucydides' account enables her to argue (unsurprisingly) that the structure and function of some sets of speeches in his text is too contrived to represent an unembellished account of the actual proceedings (e.g. the Plataian-Theban debate in Thucydides Book 3) and concludes that Thucydides has resorted to writing "τὰ δέοντα with a vengeance" (p. 173). This will not be very surprising to most readers in the 21^st century. The essay ends with a chart over nine pages long compiled by Lang and Rusten which codes each speech in Thucydides 2-5.25, 6, and 7 according to whether it is written in direct or indirect discourse, what its type is (proposal, interchange, advice, excuse, command, anecdote, etc.), and its response (negative, no response, or positive). This sort of tabular format, with its abbreviations, looks intimidating and may leave chartophobic classicists cold, but that is beside the point; it is a real feat of analysis allowing us to see how Thucydides used words, and can enable scholars to discover further patterns. Admittedly Lang's discovery of such highly elaborated speech patterns may strike some readers as an overly imaginative, overly schematic quasi- numerology at first. And not everyone will be convinced that these structures exist, or carry the meanings she sees. One is reminded of Gordon Shrimpton's caveat in his review of her methodologically similar 1984 work Herodotean Narrative and Discourse: "is so varied a 'pattern' really one at all, and not a mere reflection of the multiformity of reality?"² Even if not everyone is entirely convinced, many will find Lang's schema helpful for teaching and reading Thucydides at an advanced level; and the lengths she has gone to support her schema exhibit the rigorous analysis for which she was famous.

The editors deserve credit for their publication of this coda to a great scholar's life. While it is true that many of these essays can be obtained (for those affiliated with subscribing institutions) through JSTOR, the new material in the book (74 pages of unpublished material from Lang, 25 pages from other scholars in the personal essays and such, and a complete bibliography) justifies its modest expense. I am unconvinced by some of Lang's arguments, but they are ingenious and well-wrought nevertheless, and I may be on the skeptical end of the spectrum of these sorts of things. Aside from this, overall this collection of Lang's writings should complement any bookshelf devoted to Thucydides or to narratological approaches to ancient literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements (Jeffrey Rusten and Richard Hamilton) ix
Foreword (Mary Patterson McPherson) xi
Mabel Lang on Thucydides (Jeffrey Rusten) xiii
Part One: Narrative
1 Participial Motivation in Thucydides (1995) 1
Narrative Inconsistencies Internal and External: 17
2 A Note on Ithome (1967) 19
3 Kylonian Conspiracy (1967) 27
4 Scapegoat Pausanias (1967) 37
5 The Murder of Hipparchus (1955) 49
6 Alcibiades vs. Phrynicus (1996) 63
Narrative Structure and Historical Interpretation: 71
7 Thucydides and the Epidamnian Affair (1968) 73
8 The Revolution of the 400 (1948) 79
9 Revolution of the 400: Chronology and Constitutions (1967) 97
Part Two: Discourse
Thucydidean Thought-Patterns 111
10 Thucydidean Thought (2002) 113
11 Thucydides as Speech-Writer (previously unpublished) 117
Herodotean Inheritances and Adaptations 127
12 Thucydides, First Person (previously unpublished) 129
13 The Thucydidean Tetralogy (1.67-88) (1999) 139
14 The Paired Speeches of the Corinthians (1.120-24) and Pericles (1.140-44) and the Stories They Enclose (previously unpublished) 145
15 Necessary for Whom? Direct vs. Indirect Speeches in Thucydides 151
Biographical Sketch (Eleanor Dickey) 197
Publications by Mabel Lang 209
Bibliography 213

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Notes:

1.   De Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972), 179-80.
2.   Shrimpton, Gordon S. Review of Herodotean Narrative and Discourse by Mabel Lang (Cambridge and London, 1984). Phoenix vol. 39, No. 1, Spring 1985, 80-83.

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Laurianne Martinez-Sève, Atlas du monde hellénistique (336-31 av. J.-C.): pouvoirs et territoires après Alexandre le Grand. Atlas. Mémoires. Paris: Autrement, 2011. Pp. 80. ISBN 9782746714908. €17.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Pierre Fröhlich, Université de Paris-1-Panthéon-Sorbonne (pierre.frohlich@univ-paris1.fr)

Version at BMCR home site

Cet atlas appartient à une série de petits ouvrages de qualité, destinés au grand public cultivé et aux étudiants. Les cartes, de format relativement petit, sont accompagnées de textes de présentation, de tableaux, de schémas et de brefs extraits de documents écrits. Il s'agit en fait d'une véritable introduction à l'histoire du monde hellénistique.

Après une brève présentation des sources disponibles et des débats historiographiques, puis un tableau du monde grec en 336, l'auteur aborde une série de chapitres d'abord chronologiques. Le règne d'Alexandre bénéficie d'une partie à part, les cartes retraçant les phases successives de son règne avant de s'achever sur les structures de l'Empire. Cette partie du livre est moins originale que les suivantes, dans la mesure où la conquête d'Alexandre a déjà été abondamment cartographiée. On notera cependant l'intérêt des cartes consacrées aux années 229-224, soutenues par la connaissance qu'a l'auteur des régions alors parcourues par l'armée d'Alexandre, et qui sont plus précises qu'à l'ordinaire. La partie suivante, « un monde en mouvement », obéit à un découpage chronologique. Les cartes, à petite échelle, sont nombreuses et offrent soit des vues d'ensemble à des dates-clef (301, 281, vers 246, etc.), soit des vues sur telle partie du monde hellénistique (p.ex. l'Orient en 130 et 67). Les quatre parties suivantes sont consacrées à une aire géographique (et politique): "Les Séleucides et leurs voisins", "Les Lagides", "Le monde égéen" et "Le monde occidental". C'est la partie du livre la plus dense et la plus intéressante. L'ouvrage se termine par des tableaux généalogiques, une chronologie, un bref glossaire et une bibliographie succincte.

L'auteur a donc écrit un ouvrage qui s'apparente à un manuel d'enseignement supérieur, mais d'une grande qualité comme d'une originalité certaine. L'atout principal en est naturellement l'illustration. Si nombre de cartes s'appuient sur une cartographie scientifique relativement fournie et bien diffusée (ainsi pour le royaume séleucide), leur abondance et leur variété permettent un regard neuf, car la représentation cartographique est également porteuse d'une synthèse d'un genre un peu différent. Le livre permet ainsi de visualiser, certes de façon très simplifiée, des situations rarement montrées de la sorte, comme, pour ne donner que quelques exemples, la Grèce entre 301 et 287 (p. 23), le monde hellénistique vers 145 (p. 27), les phases de la désintégration du royaume séleucide (p. 42-43), la domination lagide en Égée (p. 48-49), les opérations de Philippe V de Macédoine (p. 59), le rayonnement des concours de Magnésie du Méandre (p. 65), ou l'Adriatique au III^e et au II^e siècle (p. 72- 73). Mais les compétences de l'auteur l'ont également conduite à insérer une série de cartes sur l'Asie centrale, en dépit des difficultés dues aux très sérieuses lacunes documentaires. D'où la relative imprécision de la carte de l'Asie centrale séleucide (p. 34), néanmoins utile. On saluera la présence de celles consacrées à "l'Extrême-Orient grec" (p. 44-45), rarement offertes dans des ouvrages généraux, qui bénéficient des acquis les plus récents de la recherche en ce domaine. Elles ont l'avantage de prolonger la représentation au-delà de la Bactriane, jusqu'au I^er siècle de notre ère.

Tel quel, l'ouvrage s'inscrit dans un genre bien déterminé – le manuel ou le livre d'initiation – et dans une tradition cartographique particulière. On ne s'y reportera pas pour localiser un lieu, une cité, une région donnée : pour cela, on dispose d'instruments infiniment plus précis, comme le Barrington Atlas, voire le vieux mais non remplacé Westermann Atlas zur Weltgeschichte, dont la partie antique garde encore de la valeur.¹ Les cartes de cet atlas, réalisées par M. Benoit-Guyot, ont pour but de donner à voir et à comprendre des phénomènes, des évolutions, des dynamiques, selon une approche que l'on pourrait rapidement qualifier de française. Les brefs textes qui les accompagnent ne sont jamais redondants. S'ils sont par la force des choses très synthétiques et procèdent à bien des simplifications, ils ne sont pas simplistes. En définitive, cet atlas procure, par les cartes et le texte, malgré sa brièveté apparente, une remarquable densité d'informations. Si l'on considère la vaste et complexe matière sur laquelle cette synthèse est édifiée, il y a là un tour de force qu'il faut saluer.

L'atlas s'éloigne souvent de l'histoire événementielle pour permettre de visualiser des structures, comme l'intéressante carte sur "Les formes d'organisation politique dans le royaume séleucide" (p. 39), où on a tenté de distinguer à la fois les zones où le modèle de la cité domine de celles où l'organisation du peuplement est villageoise, tout en faisant voir les zones où le contrôle séleucide paraît plus faible. On trouvera également une carte de l'organisation de l'Égypte lagide, moins originale, comme une tentative de cartographie des "ressources et revenus du royaume lagide", donc des échanges (p. 50 et 52). Certes, toutes les cartes ne sont pas convaincantes² et l'on peut trouver, dans le détail, matière à bien des discussions.³ Mais c'est le corollaire de toute entreprise de synthèse. Même limitée à un aspect que traduit le sous-titre du livre ("pouvoirs et territoires"), elle demeure vaste.⁴

Les ambitions cartographiques sont donc assez grandes. C'est à la fois la force et la faiblesse de l'ouvrage. Nos connaissances sont parfois si faibles que l'on doute de la pertinence de certaines cartes: ainsi p. 12 celle des tentatives de reconquête perse en Asie Mineure, qui se limite à un vague et contestable liseré orangé pour matérialiser la zone côtière censée avoir été reconquise, et à quatre grosses flèches indiquant de vagues directions des offensives terrestres. La carte – on devrait plutôt parler de croquis – ne donne en fait rien à voir et n'apporte guère à la compréhension de la période: était-elle utile? Les mêmes remarques peuvent s'appliquer à celle p. 18, où la "contre attaque macédonienne" face à la révolte d'Agis III est signalée par une flèche reliant en ligne directe Pella à la Grèce centrale, en s'affranchissant de toute contrainte de relief comme des trajets possibles. L'approche cartographique trouve ici ses limites. On peut également s'interroger sur la réussite de certaines tentatives de cartographie, comme celle qui porte sur la typologie de sources disponibles (p. 4-5), où l'on a distingué des zones en fonction de la quantité de documents disponible (forte, moyenne, faible, absence de document). L'intention est louable, qui devait être de donner à voir l'hétérogénéité de nos connaissances en fonction des régions, comme celle de la répartition des types de documents. Mais la typologie est trop simpliste pour ne pas paraître arbitraire. Il en va de même pour la carte de la p. 38, qui entend distinguer les densités humaines dans le royaume séleucide, entre trois zones. L'image d'ensemble n'est peut-être pas fausse, mais, en toute rigueur, l'établissement d'une telle carte est-elle réellement possible, lorsqu'une simple estimation démographique est impossible même dans les zones qui pouvaient avoir été les plus densément peuplées? Sur ce point, la carte donne l'illusion de la certitude, alors qu'elle n'est qu'une grossière approximation. On ne peut certes faire autrement, mais, sans avertissement sur son caractère hautement conjectural, cette carte est trompeuse.⁵ Très séduisant de prime abord, l'ouvrage cède ainsi parfois à l'illusion cartographique. Dans l'état de nos connaissances, il n'est peut-être pas possible de tout cartographier. Bien plus, la carte conduit à figer des réalités complexes et mouvantes. S'agissant de territoires, elle utilise des aplats et donne l'illusion de l'uniformité comme de l'existence de frontières. Les auteurs ont sans doute été conscients de cet obstacle en ne dessinant précisément pas de frontière. Mais la représentation des territoires des grands royaumes (voire du royaume attalide) n'est-elle pas malgré tout trompeuse ? Pour le royaume séleucide, on serait presque porté à se représenter la domination royale comme une sorte de peau de léopard dont on ne saurait trop comment en dresser une carte.

Cela dit, il n'entrait peut-être pas dans la nature de l'ouvrage de poser ces problèmes méthodologiques. Il aurait néanmoins été souhaitable de signaler aux lecteurs les incertitudes qui pèsent sur la plupart de ces cartes.⁶ Ces réserves paraissent malgré tout minimes en regard du profit qu'auront les lecteurs de cet atlas dont le grand intérêt dépasse ce que le titre laisserait entendre. Il s'agit d'une excellente et originale introduction à l'histoire du monde hellénistique.

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Notes:

1.   R.J.A. Talbert (dir.), Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, Princeton 2000. E. Kirsten et H. E. Stier, Westermann großer Altlas zur Weltgeschichte, Braunschweig, 1965.
2.   Celles de l'Égypte lagide ne sont pas particulièrement claires. La multiplication des cercles de couleurs sur les villes les rend malaisément lisibles (ainsi p. 50-51). Celle de la p. 52, consacrée aux échanges, combinant peut-être trop d'informations, ne semble pas non plus très lisible. Le croquis de la bataille de Gaugamèles (p. 14) n'est pas non plus des plus lumineux. On pourra également regretter le parti-pris consistant à avoir reproduit le tracé moderne des côtés (ainsi en Asie Mineure).
3.   Par exemple, les limites septentrionales de la domination des successeurs d'Alexandre et surtout des Séleucides paraissent régulièrement surestimées. Il en va de même pour les limites de la zone placée sous l'emprise rhodienne (p. 40 et 64). Sur cette dernière page, on s'interroge sur la notion de "cité cliente de Rhodes" appliquée aux cités de Carie libres en 188, dans lesquelles on a inclus Milet. P. 41, on pourrait aussi regretter que l'on ne tienne pas compte du fait que Pergame était une cité avec un véritable centre urbain (même modeste) avant les Attalides.
4.   On a donc des scrupules à exprimer quelques regrets : pourquoi offrir une carte des aspects économiques limitée aux Lagides ? Pourquoi ne pas avoir donné une carte actualisée des fondations de cités ? Si les aspects culturels du monde hellénistique sont exclus, ils ne le sont pas complètement, comme en témoigne la carte du rayonnement des concours de Magnésie du Méandre. On aurait pu effectuer une comparaison avec, par exemple, ceux de Cos. Mais on regrette que n'ait pas été tentée la cartographie, là encore actualisée, de la diffusion du gymnase (comme institution et comme monument), celle du théâtre, voire de la langue grecque.
5.   La carte de la p. suivante, sur les structures du royaume, déjà évoquée, pourrait encourir le même reproche.
6.   De même, si l'on voit bien l'intérêt de ces brefs extraits de documents insérés à chaque double page, on se demande comment le public visé pourra en tirer profit: en dehors des auteurs anciens, les références aux sources, tablettes, inscriptions et papyrus, ne sont données que par le biais d'abréviations compréhensibles du seul public savant. Une liste des abréviations et une indication sur la nature de la source manquent.

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Marie-Joséphine Werlings, Le dèmos avant la démocratie: mots, concepts, réalités historiques. Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris ouest, 2010. Pp. 379. ISBN 9782840160755. €25.00 (pb).

Reviewed by James Kierstead, Stanford University (jamesk2@stanford.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

[Table of Contents is listed at the end of the review.]

This book is a revised version of Werlings's doctoral thesis, which was submitted to the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense in 2008 and was awarded the Prix René Rémond in 2010. It offers an exhaustive analysis of the instances of the word δῆμος in archaic literature and epigraphy, from Mycenaean times to the reforms of Solon. Although her decision to limit the scope of her investigation to texts produced in archaic and earlier times means that the picture of the pre-democratic dēmos her book produces is incomplete, her analysis is wide-ranging in both time and space, her discussions of individual texts are on the whole judicious and stimulating, and the apparently narrow philological task she has set herself has nonetheless some important implications for the political history of the archaic Greek city-states and for the history of democracy.

The work has three goals. First, it seeks to detach the word δῆμος from its classical usage, not only showing the richness of its significations in the archaic period, but also distinguishing it from other terms designating the people, for example λαός and οἱ κακοί. Second, it attempts to understand the relationship between the two fundamental meanings of δῆμος, the totality of inhabitants of a given territory and a sub-group of those inhabitants, the poor; and to use this understanding to attain a fresh perspective on the rise of the polis. Finally, it aims to utilize this new perspective to write a new political history of the archaic city-states, or at least to set the contours within which such a novel account might be written (16-7).

Werlings's methodology is to consider one by one every instance of the word δῆμος (in its various forms, along with a few other related words) in the archaic literary and epigraphic sources. (It is partly in making full use of inscriptions that Werlings considers her book an advance upon the earlier works of Forti-Messina and Donlan, 17). She believes that this approach will enable her to avoid imposing on archaic realities the potentially misleading categories of analysis of political theories drawn from another age, whether the twenty-first century of the common era or the fourth century preceding it (19). But her intention is not simply to write the history of a word or words; instead, 'il s'agit, à travers les mots, d'atteindre la réalité politique et sociale qu'ils désignent et de la définir dans les contextes dans lesquelles elle apparaît.' (20)

For Werlings, the Mycenaean damos as it emerges from the study of the relevant tablets has three salient features: it is rural and anchored in a particular territory; it has a complex internal structure; and it is self-subsistent, though at the same time linked to the palace through various functionaries (29). Previous studies drew a distinction between the damos and the laos (or *rawo), the class of producers and the class of warriors, and imagined that they were overseen by a wanax (political ruler) and rawaketa (military leader) respectively (40-1). For Werlings, all that can reliably be said is that the damos is a collectivity that is almost never found in association with a particular leader, while the existence of the *rawo, by contrast, is deduced purely from the existence of a functionary called the rawaketa. This dependence of the *rawo upon the rawaketa contrasts with the position of the damo, which appears to have its own dependent labourers, slave and free (45).

In the next chapter, Werlings provides a detailed analysis of the usage of λαός and δῆμος in the Homeric epics. Against those scholars who see the laos as an essentially military group, Werlings agrees with Benveniste that a laos is simply any group of men under the authority of some leader (51-2). A dēmos, by contrast, is in the first instance a region or territory, and then the population inhabiting that territory (65). She concludes that the two terms represent two different but complementary ways of thinking about a human group: insofar as it follows a leader, it is a laos; insofar as it inhabits a certain territory, it is a dēmos (87).

The chapter on archaic city-states outside Sparta and Athens is arranged geographically by region, and ranges from the Ionian islands to Asia Minor; the evidence analyzed is mainly epigraphic, with the exception of the sections on Boeotia, Megara, and Mytilene (144-58), which consist of readings of relevant passages in the poetry of Hesiod, Theognis, and Alcaeus respectively. Werlings's survey reminds us of the abundant evidence for democratic practices outside of Athens in the late archaic period; the best example is perhaps Elis, where inscriptions suggest the dēmos already had considerable powers by the end of the sixth century (133).

The chapter on Sparta begins with discussions of a few key fragments of Tyrtaeus and Alcman (4 and 12 West and 3.3 and 17 Davies, 184-204), and continues with a narrative of the progressive delimitation of the Sparta damos through colonization and warfare (205-10). The second half of the chapter is devoted to a detailed discussion of the Spartan rhetra (210-21), whose importance lies (for Werlings) in its institutionalization of the already existing practice of mass assemblies through the stipulation that they should take place regularly or periodically, ὥρας ἐξ ὥρας (217).

Werlings's approach to Solon's reforms is again marked by an awareness that mass assemblies were by this time already a longstanding practice in Greek city-states. So for example she interprets Solon's claim ἐγὼ δὲ τῶν μὲν οὑνεκα ξυνήγαγον/ δῆμον in fragment 36 West to mean, not that he formed a 'popular party', or that he reconciled rich and poor, but that he called an assembly before enacting his reforms (229-30). For Werlings, Solon did not so much reform institutions as recognize and codify already existing practices. Solon's chief contribution was in fact to render possible the more thoroughgoing institutional reforms later carried out by Cleisthenes (263).

The Conclusion returns to issues of the dēmos and territoriality (268-72), the dēmos and the collective voice (272-82), and finally to the inherent ambiguity in the term dēmos between the whole of a population and to the poor within it, an ambiguity, the author concludes, which has not ceased to haunt democratic communities to the present day (282-9).

Comments

The payoffs of Werlings's philological method for the understanding of the development of archaic politics are often evident in the implications she draws from the pattern of a word's usage in a particular context. So for example after observing that the word λαός – used of groups with leaders, remember – gradually disappears at the end of the archaic period, she suggests that this pattern is related to a decline in structures of hierarchy associated with the rise of the classical polis (88). And after noting how sparingly the word δῆμος is employed in Theognis' denunciations of οἱ κακοί, she draws the implication that δῆμος could not easily be applied to a subset of the populace rather than the populace as a whole (120).

If Werlings's interpretations of the textual evidence are usually sound, she occasionally underestimates the difficulties involved in deducing historical realities from literary works, whose narratives are pursuing literary agendas of their own. So for example Aigyptios's claim in Odyssey Book 2 (26-7) that this is the first time the assembly on Ithaca has met since Odysseus sailed for Troy cannot be taken straightforwardly as evidence that Homeric assemblies met, as a rule, only when the need arose; the lines are surely motivated partly by a narrative need to emphasize the importance of Odysseus to Ithaca and the collapse of its sense of community since his departure.

On one occasion at least she fails sufficiently to interrogate a word that is not among her chosen few but is crucial to the overall meaning of a phrase: in contending that the rider appended to the Spartan rhetra (Plut., Lyc. 6.4- 5), does not change the fact that the final decision appears to rest with the citizen assembly (221), Werlings fails to consider the possible force of the word ἀποστατῆρας, which may well imply that the kings and elders could reject, and not simply delay, decisions of the people. One route available to those who believe that the Spartan assembly was in fact sovereign in the classical period is to follow the proposal made by Ogden ¹ in an article not cited by Werlings that the rider is in fact older than the body of the rhetra and was thus at some point overruled by it.

Since Werlings's declared aims include putting forward – or at least preparing the way for – a new understanding of the politics of the archaic Greek city-states (of 'réalités' as well as 'mots' and 'concepts', to quote her sub-title), it should not be considered unfair to comment briefly on the limitations of her methodology in providing anything approaching a complete picture of the political developments of the age. There are two major limitations in focusing on texts of the archaic period: it excludes all texts of later periods that might provide accurate information about earlier times; and it excludes all non-textual evidence from the archaic period, notably the evidence of archaeology.

Because of the first omission in particular, Werlings's book is best read in conjunction with Eric Robinson's 1997 volume, The First Democracies², which she surprisingly fails to cite, and which makes extensive use of post-archaic sources, especially Aristotle, in reconstructing democratic institutions in sixteen archaic city-states outside Athens. In many instances, having recourse to classical sources would have strengthened Werlings's case; for example, she bases her contention that the Spartan assembly did not simply confirm or reject motions put to it, but engaged in full deliberation, entirely on Tyrtaeus fragment 4 West, when the fact at issue emerges quite clearly from the classical narrative historians³.

The archaeological evidence would also have strengthened Werlings's central case – that the demos was already a central force even in the archaic city-states – while giving it greater content, by for example drawing attention to the apparently simultaneous increase in the power of the δῆμος in a number of city-states and in the number of undifferentiated adult male burial plots – suggesting a developing egalitarianism – across mainland Greece⁴. In any case, Werlings's decision to focus her account of Solon's reforms on the fragments of his poetry contrasts strikingly with other recent accounts of sixth-century Athens that make an effort to move away from familiar texts and the perennial controversies surrounding them⁵.

Werlings's concentration on the word δῆμος unsurprisingly results in a narrative of the origins of democracy that presents the process as led gradually forward by a collectivity, rather than periodically spurred into movement by individual statesmen. At times, though, she may understate the extent to which the development of democratic institutions were dependent upon institutional design as well as to the mere existence of a unified dēmos. For instance, she declares that Arist. Pol. 2.12, 1274a, 15-9 shows that Solon's reforms were concerned with 'la question de l'existence du demos' (243); but what the passage seems more concerned with are concrete institutions (such as euthunai) through which the dēmos might effect its will.

An unresolved issue of historical causation stemming from Ober's characterization of the Cleisthenic revolution as dēmos-led⁶ is that it appears to raise the question of where that dēmos came from, in other words, how and when it emerged as a collective agent. Werlings's careful study goes some way to providing an answer to the second part of that question: far from being a classical invention, the dēmos was a ancient social unit with roots in Mycenaean times. It leaves unanswered the first part of the question – what forces, active in archaic Greece but apparently in few other periods of world history – shaped the dēmos into a collectivity with enough agency to make dēmokratia viable. But it remains, within the limits its author set it, a reliable, useful, and stimulating book.

Table of Contents

Introduction: 11-20
Autour du dēmos dans les royaumes mycéniens: 21-46
Λαός et δῆμος dans les épopées homériques: 47-108
Le dèmos dans les cités grecques archaïques – à l'exception de Sparte et Athènes: 109-78
Le damos spartiate et son rôle politique dans la Sparte archaïque: 179-222
Le dèmos athénien à l'époque de Solon (début du VI^e siècle): 223-266
Conclusion: 267-290
Annexes: 291-348
Bibliographie: 349-79

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Notes:

1.  D. Ogden, (1994), 'Crooked speech: the genesis of the Spartan rhetra,' JHS 114, 85-102
2.  E.W. Robinson (1997), The First Democracies: Early Popular Government Outside Athens, Stuttgart: Steiner
3.   See e.g. A. Andrewes (1966), 'The Government of Classical Sparta', in Badian (ed.), Ancient Society and Institutions: Essays in Honour of Victor Ehrenberg, Oxford: OUP, 1-20
4.   I. Morris (1996), 'The Strong Principle of Equality and the Archaic Origins of Greek Democracy', in Ober and Hedrick (eds.), Dēmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, Princeton: PUP, 19-48.
5.   See e.g. G. Anderson (2003), The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 BC, Ann Arbor: UMP
6.   J. Ober (1993), 'The Athenian Revolution of 508/7 BCE', in Dougherty and Kurke (eds.), Cultural Poetics in Ancient Greece, Cambridge, CUP, 215-32

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S. L. McGowen, Sacred and Civic Stone Monuments of the Northwest Roman Provinces. BAR international series 2109. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2010. Pp. vii, 159. ISBN 9781407306506. £35.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Margaret L. Laird, University of Washington, Seattle (mlaird@uw.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

When, by the late first century A.D, the indigenous inhabitants of northwestern Europe and Britain were incorporated into the Roman empire, large-scale sculpture in stone was among the practices they adopted. McGowen seeks to understand the stylistic, formal, and iconographic choices that patrons made as they negotiated this new medium. In Chapter One, she proposes a case-study approach that focuses on sixteen "core sites" whose preserved monuments include varying combinations of architectural and relief sculpture as well as free-standing statuary. These well-preserved sacred and civic sites are geographically and chronologically scattered and are distinguished by their density of preserved sculpture in sufficiently documented archaeological and social contexts. The sacred sites include the sanctuary of Sulis Minerva at Bath and the Mithraeum in London (both in Britannia); the sanctuaries of Hercules at Deneuvre, Apollo and Sirona at Hochscheid, and an unknown deity at Champlieu (Gallia Belgica); the sanctuaries of Mercury and Rosmerta (?) at Genainville, and Mars (?) at Montmarte (Gallia Lugdunensis); and the sanctuary of the Matronae Aufaniae at Nettersheim (Germania Inferior). The corpus of civic monuments is limited to arches found at Londinium (Britannia); Reims (Gallia Belgica); Mainz and Besançon (Germania Superior); Carpentras, Orange, and ancient Glanum (Gallia Narbonensis); and Susa (Alpes Cottiae).

Chapter Two introduces each core site and its monuments in three chronological groups. Much of this chapter is description, although McGowen clarifies some contested details. Site plans, particularly of the sanctuaries, and reconstruction drawings of the arches would have added detail and specificity to each core site.

Chapter Three examines how patrons, artists, and the material from which a sculpture was carved impacted its style. The client kings who commissioned the arch at Susa and, perhaps, the initial phase of the sanctuary at Bath may have been inspired by personal experiences of Italian monuments to create Roman-style works that underscored their allegiance to the capital. For local magistrates and priests, carved stone monuments could project loyalty, status, and piety. Most commissioners, however, were ordinary people, although wealthy enough to afford stone monuments. The otherwise unknown individuals who dedicated over fifty stelae in the sanctuary of Hercules at Deneuvre may have selected a style that they deemed appropriate for that sanctuary's particular cultic focus.

McGowen's survey of inscriptions naming sculptores, marmorarii, and lapidarii illuminates the identity of stone carvers. Marmorarii, specialists in marble work, clustered near the quarries in the southern Gallic provinces. Some stone sculptors bore indigenous names, while others had Roman or even Greek names (though here, an inscribed name does not necessarily reflect an individual's cultural background, especially given the caché of a Greek name for an artist). Most importantly, McGowen's survey highlights the transient nature of sculptors, several of whom, she demonstrates, traveled for work.

Materials also impacted a monument's cost and style. Locally sourced limestone predominates, minimizing expense and facilitating construction. Imported stone (from the region or abroad) added significant cost to large projects like the arch at London, built from Lincolnshire limestone. McGowen calculates the quantities of material required to construct the monuments at each core site and examines the logistics and cost of transport (in wagon- or boat-loads and work days). This type of analysis makes sense for the better-preserved arches, discrete monuments built in a single campaign by a patron or patrons. Less satisfying are the calculations for the sanctuaries, whose precincts included temples and other buildings that are now in extremely fragmentary states. Ensembles of votive stelae and sculptures gradually accumulated over time, the gifts of multiple donors. McGowen estimates that the largest of these statues would have been carved from a block weighing 1.2 tonnes, an impressive amount of stone but one that cannot be effectively compared to the quantity of material necessary to construct even the smallest arch (Carpentras, 431 tonnes).

McGowen concludes the chapter by considering how patron, artist, and material together influenced sculptural style. This is not regional style, as the geographic and temporal spread of the core sites defy such an analysis. Rather, McGowen focuses on the dichotomy between "high-quality, naturalistic, traditionally Hellenic" pieces and those that are "less naturalistic and of a lower quality." (66-67) Reliefs on the arches at Glanum, Carpentras, and Orange, along with fragmentary sculptures from the sanctuary at Montmarte, conform to the Hellenizing style prevalent in southern France. Several imported pieces from the Mithraeum at London, like other imports found in Britain, are similarly classicizing. But much of the sculpture from the core site uses a more schematic style to render Greco-Roman and indigenous iconography. This choice may have ensured visual legibility (as on the arch at Susa) or reflected the limitations of material or artists' skill (the sandstone votive reliefs from Deneuvre) or signaled a reliance on local workshops (reliefs from the Mithraeum at London). McGowen makes an insightful point about stylistic plurality: low customer demand for sculpted monuments in the northwest provinces led to fewer sculptors overall and a less competitive market. Patrons, she suggests, did not desire a particular artistic style, but a sculpture's symbolic value as a gift to the gods or the community.

Chapter Four considers the imagery of sculpted monuments, their design and iconography. Drawing on present-day graphic design techniques, McGowen examines how the various monuments appealed to passersby. The earlier monuments (arches at Susa, Carpentras, and Glanum; the reliefs from the sanctuary at Deneuvre) utilize a "direct approach" characterized by simple, pared-down imagery. Repetition also made a monument memorable: multiple groups of captives recur on the arches at Glanum and Carpentras; the sanctuary at Deneuvre featured more than fifty nearly identical stelae. The panoply of votives must have been visually impressive, but such an agglutinative assemblage cannot be considered the product of a single design process, as with an arch. Other designers opted to use a "visual barrage" technique, covering a monument with a skin of relief (the sanctuary façade at Genaineville and the arch at Besançon). Because these monuments date to the second century, McGowen postulates a shift in viewer preference that reflects a period style found elsewhere in the empire. The Tiberian arch at Orange, however, furnishes an important early example of this trend. Moreover, had McGowen expanded her corpus, she could have included other early examples of visual barrage found on the mausoleum of the Julii at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and on the Jupiter column at Mainz.

McGowen's examination of iconography yields interesting insights. Architectural sculptures from the sanctuary at Bath and the sanctuaries at Champlieu and Genainville demonstrate that monuments commissioned over time could include imagery that created cohesive iconographic programs appropriate to the cultic nature of each sanctuary and their rituals. On the arches, imagery expressed key messages about the emperor and the empire that shifted over time. Early arches (as at Carpentras, Glanum, and Orange) emphasize military victory and the emperor's personal virtus and felicitas. This broadens to a focus on felicitas temporum brought by the emperor and an expanded cosmic virtus (on the late second-century arches at Besançon and Reims) to a cosmic felicitas temporum (the late second-/early third-century arches at London and Mainz). McGowen supports this convincing reading with well-selected comparison monuments and literary testimonia. She concludes by emphasizing the agency of patrons, best illustrated on the arch at Susa. There, the lack of military imagery suggests that the client-king Cottius selected motifs that expressed the peaceful integration of the Alpes Cottiae. While Cottius shaped the overall program of the arch, it is also clear that he (or his designer) also adapted standard Roman iconographies to express his novel message. For example, to depict the treaty signing on the west façade (otherwise unattested in Roman art), the artist reworked the conventional image of the single magistrate seated on a curule chair, arm outstretched,¹ by placing its mirror reverse across the low table or altar. A deeper engagement with specific iconographies on this and other monuments might have revealed how such customizations nuanced and particularized the messages of the sculpture.

The final two chapters place sacred and civic stone monuments in their broader contexts alongside sculpted stone funerary monuments from the northwest provinces and among arches and sacred stone monuments from North Africa and the eastern provinces. These chapters are rather short (nine and seven pages, respectively) and McGowen has been selective rather than comprehensive. Stone funerary monuments, virtually nonexistent in the northwest provinces prior to the Romans' arrival, find many parallels with their sacred and civic counterparts. Their use spread slowly and, in some areas, was exclusive to military sites. Their patrons, few of whom ranked among the political or military elite, may have chosen to commemorate in stone to display their Roman status and citizenship. Although some sepulchral monuments (notably the third-century monument of the Secundinii at Igel) rely on "visual barrage," most funerary stelae position a single, frontal figure of the deceased in the center of the monument, a "direct approach" composition that resembles many votive stelae. The repeated use of motifs by particular social groups (for instance, images of riders on tombstones commissioned almost exclusively to commemorate auxiliary cavalry members) integrated the deceased into certain communities, just as, McGowen argues, the identical votive figures of Hercules or the Matronae Aufaniae emphasized ritual participation. Style or carving quality varies widely among funerary reliefs, suggesting that it was a secondary consideration. More complex funerary monuments and smaller stelae feature carefully composed visual programs, much like their civic counterparts. McGowen notes that funerary, sacred, and civic monuments often stood in close proximity to one another and their imagery and designs must have reinforced one another. The chapter raises interesting questions about the ways in which images and the objects they adorned functioned in various contexts, but McGowen's analysis of civic, votive, and funerary sculptures largely focuses on formal qualities. Further, a more detailed examination of funerary objects from the core sites and surrounding areas might have yielded insight into regional workshops or iconographic conventions.

The final chapter compares the core site monuments with their counterparts from two other multi-province regions, the Greek east and North Africa. In both regions, the tradition of stone sculpture was more robust, due to their population, wealth, urban development, and ready supplies of hard, high-quality stones. Comparing arches, McGowen notes a strong preference for architectural façades over relief sculpture in both areas. Arches that feature sculpture, however, (at Oea, Volubilis, and Pisidian Antioch) provide significant parallels to the core site arches, particularly in regards to the social status of their patrons, their application of the theme of felicitas temporum, and their reliance upon the imagery of victory and conquest. Turning to sacred stone monuments, McGowen adduces the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, whose imperial cult function injected the imagery of imperial victory into a religious precinct. Some of the Sebasteion's themes and iconography closely parallel the messages and imagery on the Gallic arches. Although North African votive stelae were almost unanimously dedicated to Baal/Saturn and render the worshiper rather than the deity, they compositionally resemble the sacred sculptures from the core sites.

The study concludes with a catalog of the core sites that provides deeper historical context and thoroughly describes the monuments' sculptures, reliefs, and inscriptions.

While McGowen introduces other monuments as points of comparison, the book's conclusions rest firmly on the core site material. Consequently, McGowen's selection of the core sites has implications for the conclusions that follow. Most notably, the largely extra-urban sanctuaries do not easily compare to single arches. And, restricting the corpus of civic monuments to arches excludes monuments like the Jupiter Column at Mainz or the richly decorated tombs of the elite at Glanum and elsewhere. Nonetheless, McGowen's study commendably brings together a group of stone monuments and illuminates the formal and practical patterns that went into their creation.

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Notes:

1.   See, for instance, T. Schäfer, Imperii Insignia. Sella Curulis und Fasces (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 1989), pl. 31.

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Louise H. Pratt, Eros at the Banquet: Reviewing Greek with Plato's Symposium. Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture, 40. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. Pp. xxiii, 407. ISBN 9780806141428. $29.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Derek Smith Keyser, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (dereksh@email.unc.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

As one of the most well-known and beloved dialogues of Plato, the Symposium is an enticing selection for teachers of intermediate language courses. Unfortunately, it is generally not considered to be an ideal text for third- semester students: its length (roughly twice that of the Apology), its complexity in both language and thought, and its wealth of cultural details requiring explanation seem to make it more fitting for upper-level classes than for students first dipping their toes into the sea of Greek literature. There are several excellent commentaries on the dialogue, including the Bryn Mawr edition by Rose and the Cambridge edition by Dover,¹ but these either refrain from commenting on the intellectual and cultural material within the dialogue (Bryn Mawr) or lack the meticulous grammatical and syntactical explanations that intermediate students often need (Cambridge). Louise Pratt's Eros at the Banquet successfully addresses both these concerns in a lucidly written, thoroughly researched, and engaging edition of the dialogue. Teachers should be aware, however, that the first five readings of the book contain a moderately altered Greek text that has been simplified for intermediate readers; I discuss the nature of these alterations below.

Like other commentaries in the Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture, Pratt's edition provides students and teachers with almost everything they will need to study the Symposium, including text, running commentary below each passage, and glossary in the back. The opening sections contain: an outline of the book's format and helpful suggestions on using it in the classroom; a key for grammatical abbreviations found in the commentary; and a brief but detailed introduction divided into several topics relevant to the dialogue, including religion, history, sexuality, and literary themes. Students will appreciate the clear and succinct writing in these sections, and teachers will find many helpful references to primary and secondary sources at the end of each discussion. Pratt's three-page bibliography is not meant to be exhaustive, but she consistently cites reliable sources that are appropriate for intermediate-level classes. For example, rather than overwhelm readers with a comprehensive list of scholarship on Diotima's speech, Pratt directs them to the sound, though cautious, analysis found in Allen's The Dialogues of Plato.²

The text itself is divided into eleven groups of readings based on the structure of the dialogue. Each group, in turn, contains a number of distinct sections, ranging in length from 20-60 lines of Greek (the sections grow as the book continues). The first five groups (from the beginning of the dialogue until the end of Eryximachus's speech) contain an altered version of the text simplified for intermediate students. Although many teachers (including myself) are not fond of altered Greek in intermediate texts, I believe that in this case the rewards outweigh the liabilities. The changes are relatively minor, generally limited to excising difficult, often extraneous material and converting indirect speech to direct speech. Otherwise, Pratt keeps very close to the vocabulary and syntax of Plato. There are only a few instances where I would direct students to the original text, including the end of Pausanias' speech (his praise of Athenian customs from 183e6-185c3, which Pratt omits) and Aristodemus' acceptance of Socrates' invitation at 174b2 (Pratt inserts deliberative subjunctives into her text to show hesitation on Aristodemus' part, though her comment for the line rightly notes the "alacrity" of Aristodemus in the original text). From the sixth group to the end, however, Pratt provides the unaltered Oxford Classical Text of Burnet (1901) with a few emendations based on other editions. Pratt uses her own numbering system for the line numbers throughout the book, though in the first five groupings she identifies the Stephanus pagination on which each section is based; thereafter the Stephanus pages and sections are written beside her own line numbers.

Each group of readings and most individual sections begin with an introduction of relevant themes and contextual details. As with the general introduction, these discussions contain clear and engaging analysis, as well as citations of important primary and secondary sources. Each section opens with a suggested review of grammar pertaining to the section and a vocabulary list ranging from three to thirty words (as the passages increase in length, so the vocabulary lists begin to shrink).

The strongest feature of this edition is Pratt's meticulous attention to grammar and syntax in her comments. Her explanations of tricky constructions are accessible for students at this level (her comment at 5A18-21 – "...it looks more complicated than it really is" – reflects the voice of a seasoned and sympathetic teacher addressing her class). She not only identifies important grammatical constructions but also discusses their rhetorical significance (her discussion of an objective vs. partitive genitive at 9A.13/201e5 raises an interesting question concerning Diotima's argument). I was particularly impressed with comments containing prompting questions (asking students to identify genitive absolutes, contrafactual conditions, etc.), though I wish these were more frequent. Earlier sections occasionally provide too much hand holding for students (e.g., three purpose clauses are explicitly identified in section 2A). As the book progresses, however, the explicitness of the comments fits the expected progress of the students. I noted only a few examples where I disagreed with Pratt's analysis (her translation of -τός verbal adjectives as -τέος ones at 7C.11-12/197d5-6; her contention that the μή, rather than the οὐ, is redundant in the construction πάνυ ἀνόητον...μὴ οὐ...χαρίζεσθαι at 10F.10/218c9;³ her odd assertion at 9G.1/207c8 that ἐκείνου = τοῦ γεννησέως, which I assume is a typo).⁴ Pratt frequently cites her own grammar text, Essentials of Greek Grammar. Though I could follow most of her identifications without this reference, I would highly recommend that teachers purchase it as an accompanying text.

The feature of the book I found most troubling was its handling of vocabulary, though my feelings are based primarily on an ideological difference rather than on any obvious deficiency. I typically use Bryn Mawr Commentaries in my classes on the grounds that it is a worthwhile exercise for students to look up words in the dictionary. This often leads to student frustration (especially when they confront longer entries such as χράομαι), but it often leads to fruitful discussions of word meaning and development in the classroom. Pratt employs a system of introducing key words at the beginning of each section, glossing other words in the comments below, and placing an asterisk beside those glossed terms that are important outside of the Symposium; the glossary includes all these terms as well as those not identified in the sections themselves. This will no doubt save students time and allow them to develop a large vocabulary, and for the most part Pratt provides concise definitions that are representative of Greek prose usage. Occasionally, however, her specificity clouds the full scope of the word (e.g., at 6D.31/193b6 she defines ὑπολαμβάνω as "undercut, diminish" without noting it can mean "to interrupt"; at the beginning of 9I she provides only the demonstrative sense of ἔνθα without mentioning its relative use; at 10A.6/212d1 she provides the definition of the masculine substantive ὁ ἐπιτήδειος as "intimate friend" without discussing the wider meaning of the adjective). This specificity will not hurt students trying to understand the Symposium, but in the future they will likely have to relearn such words with fuller attention to their different shades of meaning.

The final portion of the book contains review exercises keyed to the sections in the first six readings, helpful appendices on the dialogue's key figures, relevant dates, and even seating arrangement of the Symposium's guests, and a glossary. The review exercises are mostly short translation pieces focusing on particular grammatical concepts (indirect statement, uses of ὡς, etc.) that appear in the corresponding section, but there are also some verb drills and identification exercises. Pratt includes a nice selection of relevant "challenge passages" (i.e., quoted – and sometimes adapted – passages from Greek literature) for ambitious classes. Teachers will have fun showing students some of Agathon's poetry as well as amusing bits on excessive drinking.

It would be an impossible task to cover the entirety of Eros at the Banquet – text, review exercises, and all – in one third-semester course, as Pratt herself admits in her opening suggestions for using the book. But she has provided instructors with a wealth of material from which they can construct an engaging course designed to fit their interests and their students' needs. The commentary succeeds in providing students with clear and generous guidance for understanding Greek language, literature, and thought.

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Notes:

1.   Rose, G. R. 1985. Plato's Symposium. 2^nd ed. Bryn Mawr; Dover, K. J. 1980. Plato: Symposium. Cambridge.
2.   Allen, R. E. 1991. The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. 2: The Symposium. New Haven and London.
3.   Cf. Smyth 2746, who cites this passage of the Symposium. Pratt cites a larger section of Smyth (2739-49) without noting the distinction.
4.   I agree with Dover (1980) ad loc. that the pronoun refers generally to earlier comments about desire at 206e4 (the desire to give birth in presence of beautiful) and 207a3-4 (the longing for immortality).

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Eugenio Amato, Xenophontis imitator fidelissimus: studi su tradizione e fortuna erudite di Dione Crisostomo tra XVI e XIX secolo. Hellenica, 40. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2011. Pp. viii, 235. ISBN 9788862742979. €20.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Thierry Grandjean, UMR 7044 / Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse (thierry.grandjean@laposte.net)

Version at BMCR home site

L'ouvrage d'E. Amato, consacré à la tradition et à la fortune des discours de Dion Chrysostome dans les milieux érudits de la Renaissance à la fin du XIXe siècle, explore des chemins ignorés des chercheurs modernes. Fondé sur une riche documentation en grande partie inédite, il renouvelle en profondeur notre connaissance des œuvres du sophiste et philosophe de Pruse. Selon une perspective chronologique, les sept chapitres de cette vaste enquête philologique conduisent le lecteur de l'editio princeps de 1550 à l'édition savante de Hans von Arnim,¹ qui sert de référence pour les citations.

L'introduction formant le premier chapitre présente l'objet du livre, le status quaestionis et quelques perspectives nouvelles pour la recherche dionéenne. Chargé de rédiger l'introduction générale pour l'édition des œuvres complètes de Dion Chrysostome dans la C.U.F., Amato s'est rendu compte que d'importants travaux philologiques datant du XVIe au XIXe siècle avaient échappé à l'attention des spécialistes contemporains. Etant donné l'ampleur de l'enquête, la découverte de plusieurs inédits et la richesse des matériaux, il était nécessaire de publier à part les résultats de cette recherche. La citation qui donne son nom à l'ouvrage, Xenophontis imitator fidelissimus, est un judicieux emprunt à un opuscule, jusqu'alors inédit, de L. C. Valckenaer sur Dion Chrysostome, où le philologue néerlandais recense et analyse les passages de Dion imitant Xénophon. Ensuite, Amato présente l'ensemble de la documentation inédite qu'il a découverte, mais aussi de nouvelles pistes pour mieux établir le texte dionéen. La prise en compte de l'histoire érudite des œuvres de Dion s'impose d'autant plus que le texte a été médiocrement conservé, comme le prouvent les trois familles de manuscrits du stemma; en outre, on ne possède qu'un seul papyrus antique des œuvres de Dion.² Ainsi on doit beaucoup compter sur la tradition indirecte et sur la contribution des érudits, ce qui justifie l'importance du présent livre.

Dans le chapitre II, Amato démontre d'une manière irréfutable que l'editio princeps des œuvres complètes de Dion n'est pas celle de Dionysius Paravisinus à Milan en 1476, mais celle de Federico Torresani à Venise en 1550. En tenant compte des observations de Cataldi Palau sur la typographie, de la chronologie déduite par l'examen de l'exemplaire dionéen que possédait Pierre Duchâtel, mais aussi du recueil bibliographique (Elenchus) de Conrad Lycosthenes et d'une lettre de Roger Ascham à John Cheke, l'auteur parvient à établir avec certitude l'année 1550 pour l'édition de Torresani,³ corrigeant ainsi la date de 1551 que Gessner avait déduite à tort, et que Fabricius avait reprise sans la modifier.

Le chapitre III est consacré à la version latine d'Arnaud de Ferron, retrouvée par Amato, et à un codex, aujourd'hui perdu, de Jean de Pins. Cette traduction latine de cinq discours dionéens (orr. 75-76 et 63-65) a été établie par Arnaud de Ferron, érudit bordelais, et publiée en 1557. Elle était jusqu'alors considérée comme disparue, mais l'auteur en a découvert une copie à Limoges et a prouvé de façon irréfutable que, pour traduire ces discours, Ferron a collationné un manuscrit dionéen pour nous disparu.

Le chapitre IV analyse la pratique des livres de classe (aussi appelés feuilles classiques) en France et en Allemagne au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle. Amato a identifié un exemplaire, totalement méconnu par les spécialistes, du discours 30 (Charidèmos), édité à Paris en 1626, manifestement un support pédagogique. Cet exemplaire revêt une grande importance pour l'histoire de la fortune des écrits dionéens à l'Université, d'autant qu'Amato a retrouvé deux autres livres de classe édités à Paris, l'un, en 1582, contenant le discours 74 et le second, en 1553, les discours 75-76 et 63-65. En Allemagne aussi, plusieurs livres de classe sont parus sans retenir l'attention des spécialistes: Johann Potinius publie le texte grec des discours 70-71, ainsi que le texte grec avec traduction latine des discours 70-71, 69, 16 et 18: les variantes textuelles prouvent que Potinius a révisé le texte grec et doivent figurer désormais dans l'apparat critique de toute nouvelle édition dionéenne. Quant à Johannes Caselius, il a édité les discours 1-5 et 18, en corrigeant lui aussi le texte grec. Enfin, un autre livre de classe, contenant les discours 75-76, a été édité par Johann Havichorst (1558), avec une traduction latine originale.

Le chapitre V est centré sur la fortune érudite du Prusien à l'école hollandaise de Hemsterhuis (« Schola Hemsterhusiana ») au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle. Tandis que l'édition parisienne de Fédéric Morel (1604) s'imposa comme le texte de référence pendant environ deux siècles, plusieurs autres publications prévues n'ont pas abouti : témoin celle qu'avait projetée William Piers dès 1706: en menant des recherches dans le cercle de Piers, on peut espérer des découvertes fructueuses. De même, à Leyde, Tiberius Hemsterhuis et son école, notamment ses deux fameux élèves, L.C Valckenaer et David Ruhnken, s'intéressaient aux textes dionéens, sans réussir à les publier. Néanmoins, ils ont favorisé la recherche à Leyde, où paraît la première vraie édition critique d'un discours dionéen (celle de Jacob Geel en 1840). A Amsterdam, Jacques Philippe D'Orville a annoté et corrigé le texte dionéen de l'édition Morel (vers 1730): Amato est le premier à exploiter ses notes et à montrer que ses corrections améliorent l'établissement du texte des discours 5, 7, 31, 32, 79. L'auteur insiste surtout sur la triade hollandaise Hemsterhuis, Valckenaer et Ruhnken : tous trois ont comparé la prose dionéenne avec la prose attique, surtout celle de Xénophon, d'où la formule de Valckenaer: « Dion Xenophontis imitator fidelissimus ». Amato montre l'importance des corrections apportées par Valckenaer dans plusieurs notes de ses ouvrages publiés. Hemsterhuis et Ruhnken ont annoté in margine leurs exemplaires de l'édition Morel: celles de Hemsterhuis sont exploitées depuis longtemps, mais pas celles de Ruhnken, qui méritent une étude. Quant à Valckenaer, il a également annoté l'édition Morel et rédigé tout un fascicule de conjectures dionéennes, intitulé In Dionem Chrysostomum, encore inédit et inexploité. Ce fascicule revêt une importance exceptionnelle : Valckenaer y discute environ 150 passages dionéens, avec une parfaite connaissance du corpus complet et de l'usus scribendi. Il indique les incohérences textuelles, les dissographoumena (doubles rédactions ajoutées par un éditeur anonyme). Soulignant les qualités stylistiques du texte dionéen, Valckenaer fournit une liste de passages où Dion aurait imité Xénophon. Ces animaduersiones inédites (de 1777 environ), offrent d'excellentes conjectures : Amato les a éditées en annexe.

Le chapitre VI concerne les commentaires inédits d'Adolf Emperius : avant lui, Geel, pour son édition critique du Discours olympique (1840), exploita habilement sept manuscrits. Cet ouvrage suscita des critiques de Robert Unger visant Geel et Emperius, qui répondirent à leur détracteur: de leurs échanges, il reste de précieuses discussions sur plusieurs centaines de passages dionéens. Ensuite, Emperius collationna jusqu'à quarante codices pour son édition des œuvres complètes de Dion (1844). Il distingua les manuscrits, d'après l'importance de leurs variantes, en trois classes: les meliores (VMCP), les medii (dont le B) et les deteriores (dont UADET). A sa mort, Emperius laissa inédit un ample manuscrit, qu'Amato est le premier à exploiter. Ce document autographe est composé de 26 fascicules (678 folios), répartis dans cinq dossiers ainsi conçus: le commentaire des discours 1-36, 43, 47 ; une liste d'addenda et de corrigenda à la première édition dionéenne (1844); des extraits d'auteurs variés sur la géographie, les coutumes des populations gètes et thraces; enfin deux dissertationes sur la vie et sur les écrits de Dion. Amato présente ensuite la structure du commentaire sur les discours, précédé à chaque fois d'une notice sur la datation et sur le sujet (argumentum), puis le plan du discours. Dans le commentaire lui-même, Emperius formule trois types de remarques: des éclaircissements sur les realia; des explications des choix textuels adoptés ; la mention d'errata. Ce commentaire peut rendre les plus grands services pour l'établissement et l'interprétation du texte dionéen. Ensuite, Amato transcrit intégralement et commente les dissertationes d'Emperius sur la vie et les écrits de Dion.

Enfin, le chapitre VII analyse quelques lettres inédites rédigées par des érudits de la fin du XIXe siècle. Amato a retrouvé six lettres de Wilamowitz-Moellendorff à Hans von Arnim, qui édita les œuvres complètes de Dion (1893- 1896): ces lettres inédites, datant des années 1893-1895 et portant sur le texte dionéen qui devait être édité dans le second volume (1896), doivent retenir l'attention car von Arnim n'a pas eu le temps de tenir compte de toutes les améliorations suggérées par son maître. En outre, la correspondance inédite entre von Arnim et Franz Cumont intéresse les spécialistes de Dion, parce que, dans les années 1893-1896, les érudits échangent leurs avis sur le mythe du Discours borysthénitique, sur la collation de manuscrits et sur des variantes du même discours 36.

En appendice, l'auteur ajoute une « Bibliographie dionéenne » centrée sur la critique textuelle et l'histoire érudite de Dion: sont mentionnés les éditions complètes et partielles, les traductions complètes et partielles, les études sur la tradition manuscrite et sur la formation du corpus, la recension de notes de critiques textuelles, les travaux sur la tradition indirecte, la fortune et la réception.

Suivent deux index fort utiles, établis par Gianluca Ventrella, sur les passages dionéens cités et sur les noms d'auteurs de la Renaissance à nos jours.

Enfin, une série de 17 photographies permet d'apprécier la richesse de plusieurs documents inédits étudiés dans l'ouvrage.

Ainsi cet ouvrage fondamental analyse la plus vaste collection de documents philologiques jamais réunis pour une édition savante des œuvres de Dion. L'argumentation, toujours convaincante, s'appuie sur une parfaite connaissance de l'ecdotique. Les travaux d'Amato apportent tellement aux études dionéennes qu'il conviendrait de réévaluer les conclusions de S. Swain sur la réception de Dion.⁴ Les bibliographies fournies par Desideri et Harris,⁵ doivent désormais être complétées par celle d'Amato.

Toutefois, dans la « bibliografia dionea », il convient de rectifier quelques titres : la dissertation de Baguet, mentionnée trois fois (p. 132, 145 et 178), s'intitule en fait Specimen literarium inaugurale, exhibens Dionis Chrysostomi orat. VIII animaduersionibus illustratam. L'important fascicule de Valckenaer, intitulé In Dionem Chrysostomum, forme plus précisément une section d'un ouvrage plus étendu, recensé dans les Codices manuscripti III de la Bibliothèque universitaire de Leyde (p. 118) sous le titre Observationes in uarios scriptores Graecos.

Etant donné l'importance du modèle de Xénophon pour Dion, qui justifie pleinement le titre de son livre, l'auteur aurait pu exploiter d'autres ouvrages de la même période mettant en parallèle ces deux écrivains, notamment la Paravolê Diônos tou Khrysostomou pros Platôna, Xenophônta, Dêmosthenê kai Aiskhinên de Dionysios Pylarinos, Galazion, 1887.

Amato a su montrer le rayonnement européen de la fortune érudite de Dion, en distinguant plusieurs foyers (Venise, Paris, Rostock). Mais concernant le Rhin Supérieur, il était possible d'approfondir la recherche sur Potinius et Andreas Mylius. En particulier, les nombreuses rééditions du discours 53 (Sur Homère), qui ont tellement contribué à faire connaître Dion dans l'Europe humaniste, méritaient un plus ample développement: sur la traduction latine de ce discours, on lira avec profit l'épître dédicatoire de Conrad Gessner à Jérôme Frikker (1544).⁶ A propos de Bartholomaeus Amantius, éditeur et traducteur des discours 62 et 66, auquel nous consacrons un article (à paraître), nous avons consulté le manuscrit Stutgard. hist. qu. lat. 60 pour vérifier le texte de sa traduction latine des discours dionéens Sur la Royauté (mentionnée p. 181, note 9): en fait, comme le conjecturait De Nicola, cette traduction n'est pas originale.

Au demeurant, fondée sur une documentation beaucoup plus riche et inédite, l'édition d'Amato s'annonce déjà comme une somme d'une exceptionnelle qualité et à nulle autre pareille.

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Notes:

1.   Hans von Arnim, Dionis Prusaensis quem uocant Chrysostomum quae exstant omnia, Berlin, 1893-1896.
2.   Il s'agit du PBrLibr inv. 2823.
3.   B.F. Harris, « Dio of Prusa: A Survey of Recent Work », ANRW.II.33.5, 3854, proposait déjà l'année 1550, sans la démontrer.
4.   S. Swain, « Reception and Interpretation », in: Swain, Dio Chrysostom, Oxford, 2000, 13-50.
5.   P. Desideri, Dione di Prusa, Messina-Firenze, 1978; Harris, cf. n.3.
6.   Lettre éditée dans Heraclidis Pontici […] Allegoriae in Homeri fabulas, Basileae, 1544.

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Roy K. Gibson, Ruth Morello (ed.), Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts. Mnemosyne supplements. Monographs on Greek and Roman Language and Literature, 329. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. xiv, 248. ISBN 9789004202344. $141.00.

Reviewed by Harry Hine, University of St Andrews (hmh@st-andrews.ac.uk)

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Table of Contents

This volume of papers grew out of a conference on the Elder Pliny held at the University of Manchester in 2006. The first few papers are on different aspects of Pliny and imperialism. Rhiannon Ash, 'Pliny the Elder's attitude to warfare' (1-19), looks at the various ways in which warfare features in the Natural History: events are regularly dated during a specific war; warfare, and the spare time that goes with army life, enable military men to be 'cutting-edge researchers' (7), discovering new information, and bringing their discoveries back to Rome; Pliny also acknowledges the costs of war; yet war is not just a human aberration, for he sees it in the physical and animal worlds; ultimately the Pax Romana has been achieved by war, and can only be maintained by military vigilance.

Andrew Fear, 'The Roman's burden' (21-34), asks what light Pliny can shed on the motivations of Roman imperialism. He argues against post-colonial approaches that hold that 'at best, Rome was indifferent to the nature of her subjects' lives and that often Roman rule was actively harmful to provincials and knowingly so' (22). Pliny, by contrast, sees the empire as bringing civilisation and humanitas to the provinces (in HN 27.2-3 the Romans, by bringing peace, are a gift of the gods to mankind). Pliny has a real horror of barbarism, which is partly based on his military experience: his negative view of the primitive living conditions of the Chauci (HN 16.3- 4) contrasts tellingly with Tacitus's description of them as populus inter Germanos nobilissimus (Germ. 35). Fear argues that, since Pliny's comments about empire are all made in passing, they are likely to be representative of his time, and they cohere with evidence that the Flavians were concerned for the interests of the provincials.

Eugenia Lao, 'Luxury and the creation of a good consumer' (35-56), looks first at the metaphorical economy of knowledge and intellectual activity in the Natural History: knowledge is a commodity, Pliny's work is a publicly available storehouse full of it, and he acknowledges the sources of his information; by contrast he criticises those who hoard knowledge for themselves, or steal ideas without acknowledgement, and he laments the decline in intellectual trade. The second part of the paper looks at the information Pliny provides for producers and consumers of material goods and commodities, information that enables purchasers to be wiser and more discerning; but the risk for Pliny is that in encouraging connoisseurship he also encourages the love of excessive luxury that he deplores.

The next two contributions take different approaches to the mirabilia that are so prominent in the Natural History. Valérie Naas, 'Imperialism, mirabilia and knowledge: some paradoxes in the Naturalis Historia (57-70), draws attention to some of the paradoxes in Pliny's handling of mirabilia. Traditionally marvels were associated with the periphery of the known world, and the expansion of the Roman empire enables the discovery of new marvels; but these marvels are often brought back to Rome to be displayed there, and as a consequence Rome itself has become the greatest marvel (HN 36.101). Sometimes Pliny wants to give a rational explanation for marvels, sometimes he is content to let them remain beyond the reach of explanation. The concentration on marvels, Naas argues, risked contributing to the decline in scientific progress, and in Pliny's view the empire itself endangers the advance of knowledge, for both peace and loss of freedom are obstacles to its progress (but Naas acknowledges that the theme of loss of freedom leaves few traces in the Natural History).

Mary Beagon, 'The curious eye of the Elder Pliny' (71-88), also discusses Pliny's use of mirabilia, and arrives at a more positive evaluation than Naas. She contrasts Pliny with Seneca, who is constantly trying to draw the reader's attention from the terrestrial to the celestial, and from what is visible to the eyes to what is discerned with the mind; whereas Pliny places a higher value on the terrestrial. Whereas Naas thinks that understanding removes the need for wonder, and that the pursuit of marvels is a factor in the decline of scientific investigation, Beagon, while acknowledging that explanation can destroy wonder, argues that for Pliny new wonders are constantly appearing with changes in the environment, and 'wonder and explanation can knit together in a never-ending circle of intellectual curiosity, rather than presenting the inquirer with a simple and finite one-way journey from wonder to explanation' (86).

Ernesto Paparazzo, 'Philosophy and science in the Elder Pliny's Naturalis Historia' (89-111), argues that Pliny is acquainted with Stoic ideas about the elements, nature, mixture, and other aspects of physics, and that he operates with the Posidonian conception of the clear demarcation between philosophy and science, with science in an ancillary role. Paparazzo offers attractive explanations of a number of puzzling passages, and shows that some of the much-repeated arguments that Pliny is a low-grade popular scientist, or that his ethical drive is inconsistent with a scientific approach, are founded on modern notions rather than the Stoic notions with which Pliny operated. Finally he suggests that Pliny's Stoicism is most likely mediated via Antiochus and Varro. Paparazzo acknowledges that Pliny had only a general acquaintance with Stoicism ('I am not maintaining that he was an adept, scholarly competent follower of Stoicism' (106)), which maybe disarms objections that some things in Pliny are incompatible with Stoicism. But occasionally he seems to be straining too hard to find a Stoic basis for Pliny's utterances: for instance, the stark contrast between ratio and uoluntas (sc. numinum) at HN 37.60 (numinum profecto talis inuentio est et hoc munus omne, nec quaerenda ratio in ulla parte naturae, sed uoluntas) seems scarcely compatible with Stoicism; for SVF 2.933, which Paparazzo quotes (100), says that the divine will is a series of causes (compare Seneca Ep. 65.4, quoted on p. 101).

Aude Doody, 'The science and aesthetics of names in the Natural History' (113-29), surveys the functions of names in Pliny, and the various problems they could pose. The needs of the specialist who wished to be able to identify things in the real world were rather different from those of the generalist looking for a pleasurable read, and it was a problem for Pliny himself to identify all the plants, for instance, whose names he gives: similar names could be confused, the same species could have more than one name or no name, the same name was sometimes used for more than one species, and so on. On a literary level, the series of names can give structure to the exposition (things with similar sorts of names could be grouped together), and there are patriotic and aesthetic issues if too many Greek or barbarian names clutter up the text. Pliny has to negotiate a way between the potential of names either to impress or to bore the reader.

The next three papers look closely at particular passages of the Natural History. Cynthia Damon, 'Pliny on Apion' (131-45), is principally concerned with a textual problem in a passage of the preface concerning Apion the grammaticus. He was a notorious self-publicist, given to frivolous and even fraudulent displays of learning, so it is not surprising that he, with his bold claim to confer immortality on his dedicatees, appears in the preface (25) as a foil to Pliny; but what is surprising is that he appears in the context of Pliny's discussion of the exotic titles that earlier writers have given to their works, but in Apion's case the transmitted text contains no title. Editors have seemingly been content with the incoherence – deeming Pliny to be a poor writer - but Damon argues persuasively that the text must be corrupt, and that aliqua conceals the missing title (... immortalitate donari a se scripsit ad quos aliqua componebat). Her tentative suggestion is Ἀλήθεια, which she offers as a shortened version of something such as 'True History', a suitably pretentious title; though she readily acknowledges that no solution can be certain.

Ruth Morello, 'Pliny and the encyclopaedic addressee' (147-65), takes a close look at the preface of the Natural History, where the frivolous tone of the opening, with its Catullan (mis)quotation, is surprising given that the preface is addressed to Titus and introduces a work that is scarcely frivolous. Morello's argument is that the preface should 'be read as a sophisticated exercise in defining a problematic addressee and then turning him into the reader Pliny wants him to be' (151); as the preface continues, Titus is presented as 'a totalising polymath' (159), prima facie well suited to be recipient of the Natural History, but at the same time he is a connoisseur of Catullan poetry, so not certain to be enamoured of this heavyweight encyclopaedic work, whose real audience is farmers and artisans. But there is a novel twist at the end: Pliny has provided an index, and neither Titus nor anyone else is expected to read the work all through. 'Pliny's only real nugae are his playful prefatory thoughts, but even in them he means business' (165).

Clemence Schultze, 'Encyclopaedic exemplarity in Pliny the Elder' (167-86), suggests that the historical exempla in Pliny provide him with a means of engaging with the history of humankind, even though this is not a formal part of his natural history. She examines in detail two exempla, the story of Chresimus (HN 18.41-3), and L. Licinius Crassus and his trees (HN 17.1-6), and argues that they show how Pliny's exempla require attentive reading, and it is sometimes hard to tell whether they exemplify something good or bad. (Schultze doubts the authenticity of the story of Chresimus, because it comes from the annalist Piso Frugi, and 'the terms chresimos and frugi are linked by Cicero (Tusc. 3.16-17) as possible translations of each other' (175), which she finds too good to be true. But the argument seems tenuous; what Cicero says of frugalitas is: angustius apud Graecos ualet, qui frugi hominesχρησίμουςappellant, id est, tantum modo utiles; which is not really saying that the Greek word is a possible translation of the Latin.)

The last two papers deal with early reception. Roy Gibson, 'Elder and better: the Naturalis Historia and the Letters of the Younger Pliny' (187-205), argues first that the younger Pliny knew his uncle's work well and expected his readers to know it too. The argument that the Younger's treatment of Catullus in Ep. 1.16.3-6 echoes and responds to the Elder's remarks on Catullus in his preface is persuasive, but Gibson seems to acknowledge that some of the other claimed allusions are more recherché. The second half of the paper argues that in Ep. 3.5, listing the Elder's writings, Pliny deliberately follows the order of composition rather than publication, so that the list culminates with the Natural History rather than the posthumously published history, even though the Elder had treated the latter as the more important work (Pref. 18-20); this ordering, together with the Vesuvius letter 6.16, which casts the Elder as dying in the cause of science, has served to boost the reputation of the Natural History as the Elder's crowning achievement.

Finally, Michael Reeve, 'The Vita Plinii' (207-22), traces the fortunes of the brief life of Pliny, generally thought to be Suetonian, in the manuscripts and early printed editions of Pliny, and produces a fresh edition and translation of the text. Reeve shows that the attribution to Suetonius is not securely transmitted in the manuscripts, but he finds a couple of tell-tale Suetonian fingerprints in the language of the life.

These papers, as varied in subject matter and approach as the Natural History itself, together form a valuable addition to the ever-growing bibliography on Pliny. There is a General Index and Index of Passages at the end.

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Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xiv, 611. ISBN 9780521198615. $140.00.

Reviewed by Juan P. Lewis, The University of Edinburgh (juanplewis@googlemail.com)

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This study of Roman slavery spans the period roughly from Diocletian until the end of the reign of Honorius. Nonetheless, it would be of great interest to both the specialist on Roman slavery in the classical period and the early medievalist. The central thesis of the book is that during the long fourth century, the Roman Empire was still a slave society. The last three decades of research have undermined the theory that slavery decayed and was replaced by other forms of unfree labour after the third-century crisis. However, no alternative explanatory model has been proposed. Harper aims to construct that model "from the ground up" (p. 21). His main argument is that slavery was an integral component of the Roman imperial system, an exceptionally complex and integrated world-economy not seen anywhere else in pre-modern times.¹ Harper rejects the idea of transition to serfdom and feudalism. Instead, he replaces it with a simpler model in which the key variables are supply and (most importantly) demand. Accordingly, when the empire collapsed in the west, both demand for slaves and the supply chain that provided them were disrupted. Slavery then gradually vanished and "became less prominent in precisely the two sectors that made Roman slavery exceptional" (p. 66), namely the lower echelons of the elite and agriculture. Between the fifth and seventh century, the slave society of the late unified empire was replaced by more primitive and less integrated independent kingdoms where slavery persisted, but in which slavery no longer held the central position in the economy, culture, and law that it had in the past.

The book is divided into three parts of four chapters each. Part I deals with the economic organization of slavery. Its aim is to challenge the prevailing narrative of conquest and transition that has cemented the idea that late Antiquity was a time of crisis plagued by the contradictions of a declining slave mode of production. Drawing upon Scheidel's "bottom-up" approach, Harper identifies the social groups that owned slaves and calculates a "plausible range of slaves an owner could have owned" (p. 39). He subsequently discusses the mechanisms that kept the slave supply constant during the whole period, such as breeding, self-sale, child exposure, abduction, and slave imports. He digs up the literary record to show how important slave labour still was in the household, the basic economic unit in ancient society. The discussion centres on not only menial domestic tasks performed by unskilled slaves, but also administrative jobs and business activities in which literate slaves played a major part and textile production in which female slave labour was pervasive. Finally, he closes with a long discussion of the conditions for and advantages of using slave labour in agriculture in both the eastern and the western part of the empire. He rejects the idea of a dominant mode of production and instead focuses on the interaction of a series of variables such as the differentiated costs of free and slave labour, the role of legal institutions, the variegated nature of ancient agriculture, and the dynamics of estate management.

Part II is directed towards the social facets of slavery. The target narrative is the amelioration thesis, which claims that Christianity improved master-slave relations. Instead, Harper shows that the Church accommodated to the slave system and "Christian and Roman ideologies became enmeshed" (p. 212). First discussed are masters' strategies to secure their slaves' submission by the combination of the permanent threat of violence and incentives such as promotion, the granting of a peculium (a fund slaves controlled independently), and manumission. Then, the focus turns towards the active role played by slaves in their everyday experience of exploitation. Individual reactions such as shirking and disruption of work, theft, physical violence against masters, and flight are profusely attested in late antique sources of all types. More difficult to unearth is the family life of slaves, which is seen by Harper as "a way to repudiate the dehumanizing force of slavery" (p. 265). Slave unions, however, were fragile and at the total mercy of masters during the whole period. Harper successfully dispels the view that Christianity promoted a more stable family life among slaves, and instead shows how little the Church innovated in that respect. The discussion of slave responses to exploitation closes with a survey of the power dynamics created by the existence of both horizontal and vertical loyalties within the slave community and how the segmentation of slave labour prevented the consolidation of class solidarity between slaves. Another central theme of Part II is the sexual exploitation of dishonoured women, i.e. slaves and prostitutes, which was intrinsic to the organization of Roman slavery. The sexual freedom enjoyed by young men shaped Roman gender relationships and secured the preservation of free women's purity and honour. Traditional Roman sexual mores were still prevalent in the fourth century, but they gradually started to collude with Christian insistence on sexual exclusivity and monogamy. The last chapter of Part II is dedicated to the experience of mastery, both for the pater and the mater familias.

Part III focuses on the legal fabric of status and slavery. Its aim is to undermine the "merger" of the lower classes narrative, which insinuates that slaves and the free poor became almost undistinguishable after the third century AD. Harper also disputes that the late antique emperors' feverish legislative work on status reflects the impending collapse of the slave system. Apart from a series of inscriptions from Leukopetra, which attest the new geographical reach Roman private law acquired after AD 212, the bulk of the discussion deals with imperial rescripts on status, adultery laws and manumission. Diocletian's numerous legal pronouncements on slave status are reinterpreted as "the apogee of legal classicism" (p. 389) and as part of a process of consolidation of the Roman state and slave system. Constantine's laws sanctioning the enslavement of free-born foundlings are regarded as a pragmatic innovation, an attempt to solve the contradictions created by the expansion of Roman citizenship and the slave system's need to maintain the slave supply with internal sources. Study of imperial constitutions on marriage, adultery and inheritance shows how late Roman laws "reflect old rather than new sexual values" (p. 430). The analysis of the laws of manumission and the new powers granted to the Church to free slaves close the discussion and show that Christianity failed to serve as an effective liberating force.

The conclusion is in fact a postscript. It briefly summarises the changing socioeconomic conditions of the fifth and sixth centuries that precipitated the gradual retraction and eventual demise of the slave system, both in the west and the east. Two appendices follow. One discusses the word oiketes, which Harper argues meant "nothing other than slaves" (p. 516). The other gives a list of passages from the Codex Hermogenianus that mention slaves.

Nothing illustrates better how necessary this book was than the secondary literature on ancient slavery Harper mostly draws upon and debates with. For the most part, they are either specialists on the classical period of Roman slavery, like Roth or Scheidel, or mediaevalists, like Wickham. It is only when he discusses more specific issues such as the slave body or the technicalities of legal sources that the experts in late Antiquity come to the fore. It is as if fourth- century slavery had been of little interest to scholars. This is not for lack of material. Aided by computer databases, Harper has collected an impressive body of evidence, most of it unknown by the majority of slavery scholars. He makes extensive use of the writings of Church fathers, particularly John Chrysostom and Augustine, pagan authors like Libanius, Egyptian papyri, some key inscriptions, and late antique law compilations. Harper rightly warns the reader about the limits of the extant evidence. Nonetheless, careful examination shows that, despite being impressionistic and insufficient, late antique sources on slavery are as good as, and sometimes even better than, anything that has survived from the high empire, which nobody would hesitate to call a slave society.

When evidence is too fragmentary or lacking, Harper makes good use of models. One example is the parametric model that shows that the demographic structure of the slave population ensured that the system could reproduce itself through breeding (p. 69-74). Another one is when he discusses the dynamics of agricultural slavery and the variables that made the use of slave labour in agriculture desirable. Likewise, when he uses the concept of 'community of honour' to explain varied but interrelated phenomena such as the preservation of free women's respectability through the sexual exploitation of slaves, the role of the pater and the mater familias in the household, and the evolution of adultery and status laws.

Harper moves with ease in the realm of traditional source-based historical research, but he is also a competent social and cultural historian who discusses Roman law with insight and expertise. He is an accomplished translator as well. He manages to render ancient texts into fluid contemporary English whilst capturing the nuances and style of the original (I particularly liked his rendering of adultera meretrix as "slutty prostitute" on p. 310).

I have some minor quibbles. In his zeal to be thorough, Harper sometimes tries to cover too much. I have found some paragraphs that interrupted the flow of the argument without adding much to the main thesis, as when he touches on the idea that the "race-based justification for slavery [of black people] existed already in the late Roman empire" (p. 91). The claim is unsatisfactorily supported and not explored any further, even though it contradicts everything known about the colour-blindness that characterised Roman slavery and Harper's own attestation that the slave trade was supplied with people of every race and origin during the whole period his book covers. Occasionally, he can overdo a point and repeat phrases unnecessarily. There are also some debatable claims, as when he states that "in late Roman art [...] the simple tunic was a clear advertisement of slave status" (p. 334); or his suggestion that slaves were useful in harvest work because of the risk of hiring seasonal labour (p. 137), although Roman agricultural writers like Varro recommended the employment of free peasants during the harvest (RR 1.17). I do not understand how he justified the use of the Babylonian Talmud as a source for the history of Roman slavery either, unless he was doing it for comparative purposes (pp. 264, 266, 287 n. 36, 293, 335). Finally, the organization of the section on slaves' individual responses to exploitation (pp. 252-261) owes much to Bradley's discussion of slave resistance.² I find it somewhat bizarre that Harper did not acknowledge it, as he clearly knows Bradley's work well and quotes him profusely in the rest of the book.

Notwithstanding these minor flaws, Harper makes his case successfully. He has established solid grounds to open a whole new area of research into a subject, late antique slavery, that has been barely studied, if not neglected. He has also built new bridges for interdisciplinary collaboration between experts on two periods that do not usually converse with each other. From now on, there will be no excuse to keep treating fourth-century Roman society as substantially distinct from that of the previous centuries. Slavery in the Late Roman World is certainly poised to become not only the main scholarly introduction to a specific topic, but also a milestone in slavery studies and Roman history in general.

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Notes:

1.   Maybe with the exception of China, which was not strictly speaking a slave society.
2.   Bradley, K. (1994) Slavery and Society at Rome. Cambridge, chapter 6.

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