2010.02.23

Version at BMCR home site
Bernhard Zimmermann, Spurensuche: Studien zur Rezeption antiker Literatur. Rombach Wissenschaften. Reihe Paradeigmata ; Bd. 5. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag, 2009. Pp. 202. ISBN 9783793095576. €58.00 (pb).
Reviewed by Joshua Billings, Merton College, Oxford University

Table of Contents

Bernhard Zimmermann is one of the great explainers in the sphere of Classics. Though his research centers on Greek drama, his capacious learning and lucid writing make his work valuable to scholarship on Roman drama, ancient philosophy, the novel, and a wide swath of reception studies. Spurensuche: Studien zur Rezeption antiker Literatur collects thirteen articles, some new but most originally published elsewhere, that amply demonstrate Zimmermann's extraordinary breadth and enthusiasm. Subjects range from receptions in the ancient world to the twentieth century, and treat works in the classical languages, German, English, French, and Italian. The title gives an indication of the principle lying behind Zimmermann's investigations (which are far more successful than those of his Sophoclean forebears!): the traces (Spuren) of antiquity are all around us, and the task of the scholar is to seek them out (Suchen) and bring them to light. The strength of the book lies in the clarity and precision with which Zimmermann elucidates a vast diversity of such traces. However, while one can only admire the essays individually and on their own terms, the volume as a whole fails to cohere. This is due largely to differences of method: some of the essays are essentially Spurensuchen, tracking the afterlife of antiquity in western literature, while some go further towards elucidating a more dialogic understanding of the process of reception in which ancient works transform and are transformed by their modern traces.

I see three (overlapping) approaches. Some studies are thematic: the first two essays of the book, focusing on the figure of Odysseus and Stoic attitudes towards suicide, begin with ancient treatments of their central topic and then give a roughly chronological overview of modern receptions. Two other studies, both centering on exile, similarly follow a theme of ancient literature as it is transformed heterogeneously in the modern world. A second major starting-point is the Goethezeit, the classic phase of German letters. These essays begin with well-known texts (Goethe's Roman Elegies, "the tragic" in Schiller's works) and trace backwards, to find the ancient sources informing them. Finally a third group of essays is concerned with a single nexus between an ancient text and a modern work -- Proust's reading of Homer and Pasolini's Medea, for example. The breadth and flexibility of Zimmermann's method are formidable, but the essays seem aimed at different readerships. The first group are excellent introductions, useful to undergraduates or those with little knowledge of modern receptions; the second group will be valuable mainly to specialists in German literature and reception; and the third, most eclectic group might interest scholars of reception, who will find in them treatments of modern texts they may not be aware of. Though Zimmermann is far more authoritative on classical texts, his engagement with modern ones is always insightful (if occasionally derivative). Consistent throughout the volume is Zimmermann's gift for explanation; each essay suggests illuminating connections between the ancient and modern worlds. It may be churlish to expect more.

"Odysseus - Metamorphosen eines griechischen Helden" describes ancient literature's diverse portrayals of Homer's hero. Zimmermann draws out the ambivalence of Odysseus's polytropia as it is transformed by Pindar, Attic tragedians, and Ovid, and shows how some of these ancient receptions form the background for the lyrics of D'Annunzio, Ugo Foscolo, and Heinrich Heine. The essay closes with something of a laundry list of others (Dante, Pascoli, Kazantzakis, Bloch, Adorno) that points to possibilities for further thought. Similarly, "Imitatio Socratis. Der Philosophentod in Literatur, Kunst und Musik" gives an overview of the ancient variations on the theme of Stoic suicide, before a sprint through modernity. Zimmermann moves fluidly between ancient sources and shows how the death of the philosopher becomes a proof of the effectiveness of the philosophy. Both essays cover a great deal of material in very little space, without losing thematic coherence; as introductions and reading lists, they could hardly be bettered.

Two essays on the poetry of exile (touched on briefly in the Odysseus essay) also focus on transformations of an ancient theme. "Abschied von Rom," though placed in the middle of the book, should be read before "Poeta exul. Zur Bewältigung des Exils in der griechisch-römischen und deutschen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts." The former gives an eloquent reading of the first book of the Tristia before an all-too-brief look at farewells to Rome in modern works from Vida to Freud. "Poeta exul" is, despite its intimidating title, one of the most compelling essays in the book. It looks in depth at a narrow, though immensely significant moment in reception, concentrating on exile in the works of German exiles during the Second World War, particularly Bertholt Brecht and the Mann family. This allows for a more thorough discussion than many of the other essays, and brings out the commonalities of experience that bind ancient and modern authors. The essay is further distinguished by its genuinely dialogical construction: rather than moving chronologically, Zimmermann moves back and forth between antiquity and modernity to argue that the pathos of exile is an anthropological constant. It is an eloquent essay and an example of the ways that the study of reception can illuminate ancient and modern works reciprocally.

A group of essays consider the importance of antiquity in the classic phase of German letters, and particularly the works of Goethe. "Aischylos-Rezeption im 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. und im 18./19. Jahrhundert n. Chr." begins, like the first essays, with an extensive discussion of the ancient world, tracing Aeschylus's canonization as a classic with clarity and incision. Then, in an effective juxtaposition, Zimmermann jumps to the moment of Aeschylus's rediscovery by popular culture in the late eighteenth century. He shows how Aristophanes's reduction of the poet to a cipher is repeated in the works of the Stürmer und Dränger Goethe and Herder, as in the Romantic reception in Nietzsche and Wagner. Though it is hard to argue with the basic contour of this account, one wishes for more context on the evolution of Aeschylus reception in the period, and not simply a few (all German) highlights. Three quite focused studies follow, all examining links between the works of Goethe and antiquity. "Euripides' und Goethes Iphigenie" points again to the extraordinary influence of the Frogs upon modern readings of ancient tragedy. Zimmermann shows how Aristophanes's image of the enlightened, skeptical Euripides appealed to the young Goethe (unlike the far more dismissive Romantics), and influenced his attempt at creating a reflective tragedy in the Iphigenie auf Tauris. Common to both works is a "humanization of theology," which Goethe interprets in an optimistic sense, rendering Euripides's inscrutable gods absent from the plot and effectively laying consciousness of divinity in the characters themselves. Though all Zimmermann writes is perceptive, this is a well-trodden area of German literary studies (works by Karl Reinhardt, Uwe Petersen, and Jochen Schmidt are cited, and many more could be added to the list); Zimmermann's main contribution is to link Goethe's Euripides explicitly to Aristophanes's and to suggest connections between the text and ancient philosophy. This would have benefited from a more detailed exposition, which might also have taken more account of the string of important Euripides adaptations of the 1770s.

The next two Goethe studies are more satisfying. Zimmermann's essays on the Römische Elegien and the little-read Novelle are paradigms of source studies. "Goethes Novelle und der Hirtenroman des Longos" notes the modern aversion to the ancient novel before offering a lucid account of Goethe's (to many inexplicable) sympathy for the genre. Goethe was, Zimmermann shows, strongly influenced by Daphnis and Chloe in his own late Novelle, which enters into Longus's world in its pantheism and ekphrastic style, at the same time as it imaginatively refutes the posited hierarchy of art over nature. What distinguishes the study, beyond its authoritative treatment of relatively marginal texts, is that it demonstrates the way modern receptions can revive and increase the power of ancient works. Goethe's engagement with the ancient novel shows a path to appreciating his works and the ancient texts better; it brings out what made Longus's work important to one great reader of the past and in the process makes both Daphnis and Chloe and Novelle newly compelling. Similarly, "Sprechende Antike: Goethes Römische Elegien" makes the canonical lyric cycle newly fascinating by placing them in the context of the understanding of ancient elegy at the time. Zimmermann points out some echoes of ancient works, but no single pre-text or texts; rather, the Elegies reflect an "elegiac Koine" that Goethe uses to represent some of the formative romantic experiences of his time in Rome. Goethe's engagement with the classics appears as dynamic and intuitive, ultimately deeper than that of some authors who more obviously "receive" ancient works. Zimmermann's eclecticism -- necessary in studying so capacious a subject -- here bears greatest fruit, as he shows how the great poet fashions the idiosyncratic and utterly modern unity of the Elegies from heterogeneous ancient material.

A final Goethezeit study turns to tragedy and the tragic, as they are theorized and manifested in the works of Goethe's friend Schiller. Zimmermann is rightly cautious both of uncritical applications of the modern concept of "the tragic" to ancient works, and of the strain of intellectual history that sees the concept as qualitatively different from anything in ancient poetics. He shows the roots of Schiller's description of the "pleasure from tragic objects" in both Kant and Aristotle and offers a superb, concise explanation of the theory. He then takes a step that often eludes scholars of aesthetics, and shows how theoretical reflections inform a practice that seeks, with Aeschylean and Euripidean tragedy as important influences, to actualize the effect of tragedy. Schiller's practice in the 1803 choral drama Die Braut von Messina, Zimmermann argues, seeks to establish a tragic dialectic that begins in suffering and ends in knowledge for both character and audience. His perceptive discussion of this difficult work may help to point scholars of classical reception towards Weimar drama for further study.

Four short, pregnant studies close the book, each investigating a single modern work in its relation to antiquity. The first, "Präsenz der Antike in Marcel Prousts A la recherche du temps perdu" takes on the intimidating subject of Proust's reception of antiquity, and shows fascinating connections with the Metamorphoses and Odyssey. Zimmermann is, as ever, circumspect in pointing out these links, and resists the temptation to overstate the case. His tracking of echoes and references is convincing, as is his broader conclusion, which suggests an affinity between the two works based on their shared fin-de-siècle consciousness: both the Recherche and Odyssey witness the end of an aristocratic world and its replacement with more individual, bourgeois values, and memorialize this transition through the recollections of their central figures. Zimmermann mediates between minute observation and perceptive generalization with skill and style. One wishes, though, for more detail in the four-page "Ezra Pounds Homage to Sextus Propertius," which points out the similarity between Pound's and Propertius's projects of reviving an older genre, but leaves the application of this insight largely to the reader.

The final studies turn to the second half of the twentieth century and treat two distinctly anti-classical receptions of ancient Greece. Erich Kästner's 1953 travel narrative Ölberge, Weinberge and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1969 film Medea both emphasize the wildness of ancient Greece. "Das Land der Griechen mit der Seele suchend" elucidates the constant opposition of real present and mythical past that informs Kästner's text. Zimmermann shows how modern Greece becomes a "place of memory" for Kästner, growing in significance through its ancient associations, even as impressions of the country constantly undermine idealizing images. "Fremde Antike?" shows how Pasolini's Medea goes even further against the grain. Where Greek tragedy (or our modern understanding of it) is based on the logos, Pasolini's work tells its story primarily through images, and exhibits a "mistrust of speech." It juxtaposes Jason's world of western words and civilization against Medea's non-verbal connection to eastern magic and primal ritual. The film thus takes part in the Nietzschean fascination for origins and the Dionysiac that has been so powerful an impulse throughout the century, and has come to be one of the major questions surrounding Greek tragedy both in scholarship and performance. These two essays, though short, are trenchant and enjoyable. A testament of their success is that they sent this reader to the library for Kästner's book and Pasolini's film.

Readers who have followed this summary of the essays collected in Spurensuche will appreciate the breadth of Zimmermann's knowledge both of ancient texts and their receptions. Even where one wishes for more depth, Zimmermann is never less than perceptive, and his explanations are lively and readable. Most readers will find something of value in the collection. If they do not find it consistently interesting, this will be due not to a variation in quality, but to the diversity of approaches and ostensible aims. Personally I wished for more sustained considerations of many of the topics and a clearer sense of connection between them. Further, with the increasing interest in the Classics for reception theory, I wanted to learn where Zimmermann (who studied in Constance, the epicenter of Rezeptionsästhetik) stands on issues of methodology. One looks forward hopefully to the time when Zimmermann will give us a more sustained contribution to reception studies.

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2010.02.22

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Lena Sjögren, Fragments of Archaic Crete. Archaeological Studies on Time and Space. Boreas. Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 31. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2008. Pp. 255. ISBN 9789155473730. (pb).
Reviewed by Nicola Cucuzza, Università degli studi di Genova

If it is true that archaeological research on Crete still largely focuses on the various phases of the Bronze Age, it is also undoubtedly the case that in the last few decades there has been an increased number of studies and investigations into more recent periods. Fortunately, it is now a long time since Demargne wrote that archaeological research had dedicated "peu d'argent et peu de temps" to Crete in the period after the Bronze Age.¹ Lena Sjögren had already made a contribution to this renewed interest in post-Minoan archaeology on Crete in 2003 with a book which brought together the documentation on the settlements, cemeteries and sanctuaries with traces of occupation in the period between 800 and 500 B.C.;² that work serves, as it were, as the precursor to the study that has now been published. The reader will understand from the title that Fragments of Archaic Crete is not a handbook or a systematic treatise on Archaic Crete, but rather a work that seeks to explore the issues surrounding archaeological research on the subject on the basis of the existing documentation. Essentially it is an interpretation of the data collated in the 2003 volume, to which this work makes frequent reference.

In the Prologue (pp. 11-31) Sjögren illustrates the genesis and structure of the book; she also explains her decision not to take into account the literary and epigraphic sources in dealing with Archaic Crete. She privileges the direct relationship that can be provided by an archaeological analysis. Although the written sources available are often fragmentary or have been transmitted by more recent authors than the chronological period analysed, the decision not to use them at all is definitely open to criticism, as the author herself recognises (p. 14). In the opening pages Sjögren paints a brief overall picture of the documentation relevant to the Cretan settlements noted in the period in question, emphasising the existing interpretative difficulties (for example, is Smari a sanctuary or a settlement?). The rest of the book is made up of two parts separated by an Intermission (pp. 119-132) and followed by a brief conclusion (pp. 219-223). In the first part, on the history of research (Chapters 1-4, pp. 33-117), the author analyses the state of archaeological investigations on Crete. She gives a history of studies and the main lines of research thus far developed. Sjögren points out the lesser degree of attention generally paid to Archaic as opposed to Minoan Crete and sheds light on the positivistic and processual approach of archaeological studies thus far conducted. The interest in Archaic Crete, which had its origin in historical and antiquarian research (that is, mainly epigraphic research), has often concentrated on forms of continuity with the previous period (in the historical and artistic fields, but also with regard to ethnic and cultural aspects and the occupation of settlements) and on the analysis of external influences, especially from the Near East. Sjögren rightly points out how the assumed centrality of Knossos in the archaeology of Crete ultimately became a handicap for research, leading to a "one-dimensional view on Archaic Crete". What emerges is the lesser degree of focus on the understanding of Archaic Crete and the cultural phenomena which affected it: for example, if and how the arrival of externally produced objects led to cultural modifications on the island.

In the Intermission, after mentioning the post-processual approach to classical archaeology, the author briefly presents the three fields of investigation which she then goes on to elaborate in the second part (Chapters 5-7, pp. 133-215): the use of private, community and public space in Archaic Crete; the creation of memory; the manifestation of local identities in two areas of the island (the Mesara plain and the Mirabello Bay).

In her discussion of towns, sanctuaries and cemeteries (pp. 135-157), Sjögren deals with space in the domestic, religious and funerary spheres. She convincingly makes the point that it is possible to examine space not from a strictly functional point of view, but as a place of social interaction: the dichotomy would thus be between private and community use of space, in her three spheres of analysis.

The chapter on memory (pp. 158-194) is probably the one which fits into a series of studies (from S. Alcock to M. Prent) which has recently also analysed the situation in post-Minoan Crete in the context of a growing interest in archaeological studies into memory (helped by a good knowledge of M. Halbwachs's works on the Cadres sociaux de la memoire). Sjögren rightly observes how the religious use of structures in the Bronze Age may indicate not so much a continuity of religious practice as the deliberate desire to create memory. She is right to observe the absence of uniform practice on the island and to note analogies between the palatial sites of Knossos and Phaistos (and perhaps also Chania), where some religious structures were built on the ruins of Minoan palaces. However, it is perhaps not as easy to agree with the idea that also the temple of Athena erected on the hill of the acropolis at Gortyn corresponds to the same act of commemoration and thus of worship of the past. Sjögren underlines how few Bronze Age tombs were places of religious activity in later periods; this situation, unlike that found on the Greek mainland, is explained by arguing that the religious use of the tombs reflects individual devotion on Crete, while the frequentation of the palatial sites (seen as "mediators of memories") bears witness to collective memory. In the course of her discussion, the author points out the dynamism implicit in the formation of memory (archaeology of perception): building on previous remains indicates the desire to forget.

The last chapter (pp. 195-215) offers an analysis of two of the areas on Crete in which archaeological research paints a sufficiently broad picture, thanks to more than a hundred years of more or less continuous investigations: the area of the Mirabello Bay (with the sites of Gournia, Vrokastro and the various settlements around Kavousi) and the Mesara plain, where, close to the sites of the "great Minoan triangle" (Phaistos, Aghia Triada and Kommos), lies Gortyn - a particularly important centre in the Archaic period. The two areas are chosen because they represent a cross-section of two different situations: in the Mesara the presence of ancient poleis, and rural organization in the area of Mirabello Bay. The two areas also present different geographical situations: the largest plain on the island (Mesara) versus a much more varied region, with hilly and mountainous areas, beside a small level area. In this chapter Sjögren uses an approach which is "more socially oriented" than ecological; in the Mesara the vast plain created a regional identity, while in the Mirabello Bay the geographical divisions led to the creation of "local manifestations of identity". One result of this difference is the varying number of rural places of worship (mostly attested in the area of Mirabello), to which particular attention is rightly paid.

In her concluding notes (pp. 219-223) the author underlines the need to identify new perspectives of study with respect to the "master-narratives of Archaic Crete" (the investigations into the continuity of the Bronze Age and into eastern cultural influence).

As the title indicates, perhaps the book's most important contribution consists in Sjögren's reflections on the concept of space and time, which archaeological studies (and perhaps not only in relation to Crete) generally treat in an excessively modernistic way: time generally equals the working out of chronological grids, based essentially on the study of pottery. Likewise, landscape studies generally aim for a modern and objective evaluation of the territory. Ancient peoples necessarily had a different perception of space and time and thus the evaluation of the archaeological documentation on Archaic Crete starting from a non-modern point of view could also be different. It is, moreover, certainly correct to invert the theme of continuity, underlining the importance of creating a connection with the past "as a way of confirming local identities" (p. 222).³ What is more debateable, however, is, as we said, the decision to make no use of the epigraphic and literary sources available.

From an editorial point of view, the conclusions at the end of the individual chapters make it easier for the reader to follow the development of the author's argument. While limited, the number of illustrations is sufficient for the presentation of the theses the book puts forward. However, it would perhaps have been better (despite the observations made on p. 127) also to give a map of the whole of Crete pointing out the contour-lines, so as to give an idea of the way the island's imposing mountains divide it up into regions (the only map of Crete, map 1 on p. 24, simply shows the location of the places mentioned in the text). The absence of indications of altitude along the contour-lines on the detailed maps of the Mesara plain (map 3, p. 199) and the Mirabello region (map 4, p. 208) could cause some confusion in readers less familiar with these places.

Undoubtedly of merit is the impressive bibliography, even though at times, obviously for the sake of simplification, the author cites her own 2003 work, which contains more detailed references to the archaeological documentation on specific sites. Unfortunately there is a rather irritating failure to distinguish between V and W in the bibliography, with the result that, for instance, Vernant follows Werlen and Viviers comes after Willetts!

In conclusion, the book constitutes a point of reference, which justly invites the reader to reflect on Archaic Crete in a renewed critical spirit. One can be certain that, together with the data that has emerged from the most recent publications and ongoing research projects on important Cretan sites,⁴ it will bring new energy to studies on Archaic Crete.

---

Notes:

1.   P. Demargne, "Recherches sur le site de l'Anavlochos", BCH 55, 1931, p. 407.
2.   L. Sjögren, Cretan Locations. Discerning site variations in Iron Age and Archaic Crete (800-500 B.C.), BAR-IS 1185, 2003; among the most significant scientific initiatives of the last few years is the Conference on Crete in Geometric and Archaic Periods (Athens, January 2006), forthcoming.
3.   Cf. J. Boardman, The Archaeology of Nostalgia. How the Greeks re-created their mythical past, London 2002.
4.   Cf., for example, recent works by G. Rizza, Priniàs 1. La città arcaica sulla Patela. Scavi condotti negli anni 1969-2000, Catania 2008 and A. Kotsonas, The Archaeology of Tomb A1K1 of Orthi Petra in Eleutherna. The Early Iron Age Pottery, Heraklion 2008; not only are there ongoing important explorations at Prinias and Eleutherna, Azoria and Itanos, but work has also resumed at Dreros (summer 2009). Important data on the period are also awaited from new investigations that have been carried out in the last few years at Gortyn and Phaistos by the Italian Archaeological School at Athens.

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2010.02.21

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Alberto Camerotto, Fare gli eroi. Le storie, le emprese, le virtù: composizione e racconto nell'epica greca arcaica. Ricerche / Facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell'Università di Venezia; 54. Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2009. Pp. 260. ISBN 9788871156378. €23.00 (pb).
Reviewed by André Malta, University of S. Paulo, Brazil

Alberto Camerotto's book, Fare gli eroi, is a welcome contribution to Homeric studies. As the title points out, by means of a reference contained in the Italian expression "fare gli eroi" ("to play the heroes, or to make the heroes") to Milman Parry's The making of Homeric verse (1971), Camerotto wants to reassess the traditional instruments responsible for the constitution of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The result is a detailed and extremely helpful exposition of some aspects concerning the composition and performance of both poems, although Camerotto tends to refrain from taking many of his conclusions further--especially when the meaning of the oral phraseology is involved.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first three constitute the bulk of the work. Chapter 1, "La tradizione delle storie e i canti", is introductory and proceeds to a classification of the instruments tradition provides the singer with: a. those related to content (klea andron and oimai), and to performance or singing (aoide) -- as they are indicated by the poems themselves; b. those related to thematic composition, which are called "themes" and "motives"; and finally, c. those related to formulaic epic diction. This first chapter concentrates on the relation between heroic legend, specific narrative "paths" and their execution, leaving topics b. and c. to the following chapters (2 and 3).

Camerotto begins by observing that "premeditation" ("premeditazione"), through which the singer prepares himself to sing but at the same time rethinks his performance, could have resulted, by means of a process of progressive perfectioning, in a fixing of the poems, giving birth to a latent and passive memorization. This process, Camerotto argues, could explain the creation of such long and elaborated epics as the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the formation of texts. This hypothesis, unfortunately, remains a brief speculation, not developed by the author, who discusses in sequence the distinction between saga in general (klea andron) and the specific arguments chosen to be sung (oimai). The first one, he explains, is a large repository that can comprehend all poetic (or even non poetic) stories figuring heroic deeds, and it is from this repository that an articulated narrative must be selected. Camerotto gives two examples taken from within the Homeric poetry: Il. 9.524s., where the klea andron mentioned by Phoenix are narrowed towards the cholos of Meleager, and Od. 8.72s., where the narrator, after saying that the Muse compelled Demodocus to sing klea andron, tells us that he proceeded to present the neikos between Odysseus and Achilles. It is precisely this specific articulated narrative that is called oime, whose choice, as Camerotto points out (supported by examples from the Odyssey), depends on the occasion of performance and its audience, and is seen as divinely inspired. The traditional and conventional aspects of these oimai are revealed by their repetitive central topics, which Camerotto indicates as basically four: wrath (menis/cholos); strife (neikos/eris); capture, destruction (halosis/persis); and return (nostos). Finally, the aoide is, as the author puts it, "la realizzazione concreta di una oime nell'ambito di una singola esecuzione" (p. 31), and changes from performance to performance, with the possibility of having a relevant influence over the oime and transforming it.

In Chapter 2, "La composizione per temi. L'Aristeia", Camerotto remarks that themes and motives are structural instruments that helped the traditional singer to compose his song. He suggests the following distinction between theme and motif, acknowledging that it is in part arbitrary: "il tema è una unità di significato che introduce nel racconto un'azione fondamentale, determinando la progressione della vicenda e del racconto... Il tema è una unità articolata, cioè constituita di più motivi o unità di significato minori. La dimensione è variabile in base all'articulazione dei motivi e alla ricchezza dell'ornamentazione" (p. 40); "Il motivo è l'unità significativa minore ed è componente del tema, ovvero i motivi rappresentano la sequenza degli elementi narrativi minimi, che vanno a costituire lo sviluppo della più ampia struttura tematica" (p. 41 ). As examples of the first, he mentions scenes where we find assemblies, battles, divine interventions or sacrifices, and of the second, descriptions of arriving, leaving, arming and banqueting. He proceeds then to the study of the aristeia as "a complex narrative theme", which he divides into three moments [[sections?]]: I. Preparation of the aristeuon; II. Action during the battle (mache); and III. The duel (monomachia) -- all of them subdivided into specific motives. This scheme is then employed in the analysis of the Diomedes aristeia (Books 5 and 6 of the Iliad) and the interrupted narration of Agamemnon's excellence in Book 11.

Chapter 3, "Epiteti eroici: i significati e le azione", deals with the relations between the fixed adjective and the context in which it appears. Camerotto briefly explains Parry's theory and his definitions of ornamental, particular, generic and distinctive epithet, and shows the difficulties of considering these adjectives as having an aesthetical meaning. For him, we should not look for contextual meanings, but "macrotextual" ones, as if the epithet were a "reduced motif" or a "reduced theme". He gives as an example the epithet boen agathos, "good at war cry": as Camerotto argues, it represents a hero in his "quintessential identity", no matter the context or the circumstances where it appears, and is meaningful as long as it is connected to the traditional motif of the "war cry" within a thematic and larger narrative. From this "metonymical perspective" ("prospettiva metonimica"), and making use of John M. Foley's concept of "traditional referentiality", Camerotto discusses Hector's epithets, to reach the conclusion that adjectives like androphonos, koruthaiolos, obrimos and pelorios bring "una serie di significati riconducibili alla costruzione tematica dell'Aristeia" (p. 129).

The last three chapters, dealing with the traditional representation of the boar in relation to heroes (Chapter 4), with the narrative possibilities for a nostos-story (Chapter 5), and with the presence of semata (like Zeus' teras, Odysseus' scar, the heroic grave, and writing) within the poems (Chapter 6), seem loosely connected to the rest of the book, inasmuch as they do not concentrate on the technical aspects of composition, and contain only brief discussions (this is specially true of 5 and 6) of these complex topics.

One can easily see, going through Camerotto's work, the enormous amount of research that is involved in each of his discussions. His bibliography is quite thorough, and all the passages of the Iliad and the Odyssey related to the topics he deals with are mentioned. His exposition is neat and clear, revealing a great gift for didactic writing, and, given this ability, it is a pity that Camerotto's book is written for the scholar or advanced student. If all his Greek quotations were translated (only a few are), and the footnotes reduced, it could be an excellent introduction--with very good examples--to Homeric oral compositional dynamics.

At the same time, his inclination for collecting and organizing information seems to indicate a kind of discomfort regarding interpretation, as if Camerotto sided with old "Parryism" when he has to deal with the meaning oral instruments can acquire in each text and context. His idea that the epithet is a metonymical presentation of themes or motives is an interesting one, but it seems to me just a reworking of Parry's theory, not enough to account for specific meanings that are created within the poems when viewed as dramatic unities. Furthermore, Camerotto inexplicably leaves aside the discussion of the aesthetical function that can be ascribed also to themes and motives, restricting himself to a brief footnote (p. 42, n. 17).

Another problem is the lack of a real dialogue with the modern authors he mentions in the footnotes. They show up most of the time only as references, and very seldom are brought to the main text to enlarge and enrich the topic that is being discussed. An example of this is the way Bernard Fenik's book Typical Battle Scenes (1968), although mentioned several times, is scarcely discussed (in Chapter 2), something unexpected from a work that deals with the aristeia theme and Diomedes' excellence and wants to explore the oral composition mode. One knows that Fenik's book, along with his Studies in the Odyssey (1974), is full of clarifying approaches, from which Camerotto would have profited if he had effectively brought them to his analysis. The same can be said, for example, about those works which try to read the epithet in another way (as R. Sacks' book, mentioned in p. 108, n. 84, and in p. 111, n. 92): they are relegated to footnotes, instead of figuring in the main text, where, if fully discussed, they could even make Camerotto's point of view stronger.

To sum up, this is an excellent book, which reassesses the old discussion between tradition and invention in Homeric poetry. Camerotto proves to be an attentive and competent reader of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is capable of making a very good exposition of important topics concerning the instruments of oral narrative.

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2010.02.20

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Pia Carolla (ed.), Priscus Panita, Excerpta et fragmenta. Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, 2000. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Pp. xlviii, 140. ISBN 9783110201383. $81.00.
Reviewed by Jan Prostko-Prostynski, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan

[A Table of Contents is provided at the end of the review.]

Priscus of Panion (Thrace) was an Eastern Roman diplomat, lawyer and historian. He has been characterized by modern scholars as an archaizing Atticist. He was most likely born in the first quarter of the fifth century (more precise dates for his birth have been suggested: ca. 405/410, 415, 410/420 and others, but are not based on any solid argumentation). He died sometime after 472. Manuscripts of epitomators of his historical work and other historical sources define him as an 'orator' or a 'sophist,' which may indicate that he received a sound classical education. At the end of the reign of Theodosius II (408 - 450), Priscus accompanied Maximinus, a high official of the emperor on a diplomatic mission to the court of Attila (ca. 448/449), though the text does not reveal whether Priscus travelled in the capacity of Maximinus' secretary, as is generally assumed. The historical work of Priscus--The History of Byzantium and the Period of Attila (the title is provided only in the Suda)--is preserved in fragments, mainly through Constantine Porphyrogenetus' Excerpta de legationibus. It was originally composed of eight books and possibly covered the years up to 472.

Priscus' History was published for the first time in 1603 by David Hoeschel, in Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), who used only a partial manuscript tradition (i.e. Excerpta de legationibus Romanos ad gentes, hereafter cited as ELR and Excerpta de legationibus gentes ad Romanos, hereafter cited as ELG). In later editions clear progress was represented by the work of C. Mueller,¹ who was able to collect and to edit a number of fragments from the indirect textual tradition as well. Here, then, one can find passages of Priscus' work that were preserved in Jordanes, Theophanes, the Chronicon Paschale and the Suda. Subsequently, L. Dindorf² undertook a new collation of the manuscripts (M1 and M2), and also carefully reviewed the text, making numerous emendations. However, only C. de Boor³ prepared an entirely fresh critical edition based on nearly all of the manuscripts of Excerpta de legationibus (hereafter cited as EL). Only manuscript C (Cantabrigiensis O.3.23) is unaccounted for in de Boor, since it was discovered only in 1913 by M. N. Kraseninnikov.⁴

After many years Fritz Bornmann⁵ collated the all available manuscripts and prepared a new edition with an Italian translation. The latest edition of Priscus's text was prepared by Roger C. Blockley, with his translation into English.⁶ He did not personally collate the EL manuscripts, but he found and added into his edition a large amount of material from other Byzantine authors.

As to de Boor's edition one can object that the editor did not produce his own cognatio codicum (p. VII, and note 3), and neither did Kraseninnikow, Bornnman or Blockley, although Bornmann, did intend 'to revise' (renovare) his 1979 edition. This revision was prevented by his premature death in 1997. The task of improving Priscus's text was undertaken by one of Bornmann's students, Pia Carolla, who now brings forward a new critical edition after ten years of work.

Carolla collated again very carefully all the manuscripts of EL and, not surprisingly De obsidionibus. She established many new readings and eventually developed a much surer text of Priscus, not always, however, emending it. For instance, she believes that certain grammatical defects of the text may originate with Priscus himself (p. xxxii). Many erroneous readings are also treated in apparatibus. In her opinion, all manuscripts ofPriscus are derived from one archetype, which is called 'π', after the name of Juan Páez de Castro, who was its first owner. This does not differ from the results achieved by students of the activity of the well-known scribe Andrea Darmarios (on him, see below).

After Páez de Castro's death, the manuscript was transferred to the Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, which subsequently burned down during the fire of 1571. Still, the library possessed codex 'α', now lost, but no doubt one of the first copies of 'π'. Currently the oldest extant manuscript of the EL is a copy made by Andrea Darmarios in the year 1574, from which, according to Carolla, all other copies originate (Stemma codicum, p. XVII ). Pages VII-XXVIII offer a very accurate description and classification of the manuscripts of Priscus.

Textual fragments which she believes do not originate with Priscus are always marked litteris inclinatis. Some fragments of the text are identified by the editor as "fragmenta dubia" (pp. 83-111)--i. e. as non-Priscan text. But her identifications may be occasionally debatable, or even doubtful.

Carolla's edition retains the numbering of Priscus's fragments in excerptis found in Mueller. But next to Mueller's numerations she also supplies a numbering system for the fragments (her first apparatus) according to other publishers, 'ad maiorem studiorum utilitatem'. This will greatly facilitate the work of researchers. The fact that there has not been a discussion of the order of all surviving fragments is understandable, but not obvious. Her edition is accompanied by: a section of testimonia, lists of sigla and abbreviations, a full bibliography, indices and tabulae (on these tabulae, see pp. XIX-XX).

Carolla's opus is the best ever edition of Priscus's text, and, considering the current state of manuscripts, probably the best that could be achieved. Individual readings or emendations adopted into the text can and will of course be discussed, but this does not change this reviewer's opinion that her Priscus stands at the highest level of philological Kunst. Everywhere her Akribie is visible, as well as the immensity of her labors. Misprints, such as 'greichischen' (p. XXIII, n. 53), appear to be extremely rare.

Contents
Praefatio VII
De Prisci traditione VII
Stemma codicum XVII
De Prisci manuscriptorum descriptione
I. ELG XVIII
II. ELR XXIII
III. Excerpta de obsidionibus codicis Parisini suppl. Gr. 607 XXVII
IV. Athous Batopediou 407 XXVII
De editionibus XXVIII
De huius editionis ratione XXXI

Librorum conspectus XXXV
Sigla atque breviata XLVI
Testimonia de Prisco XLVIII

Excerpta de legationibus 1
Excerpta de obsidionibus 4
Excerpta de legationibus (sequuntur) 5
Excerpta incertae sedis 81
Fragmenta dubia 83

Index nominum 112
Index locorum 126
Index fontium fragmentorum dubiorum 132

Tabulae 139

---

Notes:

1.   Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, edd. C. et. Th. Mueller, IV-V, Parisiis, vol. IV (1851), pp. 69-110; vol. V (1870), pp. 24-26.
2.   Historici Graeci minores, ed. L. Dindorf, 1, Lipsiae 1870, pp. 276-349.
3.   Excerpta de legationibus, ed. C. de Boor, Pars I. Excerpta de legationibus Romanorum ad gentes. Pars II. Excerpta de legationibus gentes ad Romanos (= Excerpta historica iussu imp. Constantini Porphyrogeniti confecta, edd. U. Ph. Boissevain, C. de Boor, Th. Buettner-Wobst, vol. I), Berolini 1903, pp. 121-155 (ELR); pp. 575-591 (ELG).
4.   Vizantijski Vremennik 21 (1914), pp. 45-170.
5.   Prisci Panitae fragmenta, a cura di F. Bornmann, Firenze 1979.
6.   R. C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire. Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus. II. Text, Translation and Historiographical Notes, Liverpool 1983, pp. 223-376.

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2010.02.19

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Deepa Majumdar, Plotinus on the Appearance of Time and the World of Sense: A Pantomime. Aldershot/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Pp. vi, 237. ISBN 9780754655237. $99.95.
Reviewed by Giannis Stamatellos, University of Copenhagen

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Table of Contents

Majumdar's book is a sophisticated, insightful and engaging exploration of Plotinus' philosophy of time. The focus of the book is Plotinus' treatise Ennead III.7 [45], the major Plotinian inquiry on the concepts of eternity and time, in which the Neoplatonist refutes Aristotle's account of time as 'number [or measure] of motion' in Physics (IV.10-14.217b-224a) and denies the Pythagorean, Stoic and Epicurean associations of time with physical motion. For Plotinus, time cannot be described by property or quantifying measure of the corporeals; time is associated with the intelligible life of the soul and not the physical or perceptible change. Plotinus defines eternity as the timeless life of Intellect by synthesizing Plato's account of eternity in the Timaeus (37d), Parmenides atemporality of being (fr. 8) and Aristotle's etymological analysis of aiôn in De Caelo (279a25-28).

The author divides the book into three parts. After a short introduction on the place of Ennead III.7 in Plotinus' philosophy of time, the first part of the book sets out "The Hermeneutic Scene" demonstrating Plotinus' contemplative and experiential method of philosophy (chapter 2) and the hermeneutics of his heritage and legacy, (chapter 3). Ennead III.7 is important both for its discussion of the ancient theories of eternity and time and for its influence in later philosophical and theological traditions of Islam, Byzantium and the Latin West. Plotinus' most important contribution to the philosophy of time, then, "is not so much his modified vision of Plato's view as his inference that time is evanescent -- an opaque iconostasis to be left behind in the soaring flight of the self" (5). Thus Plotinus' psychology of time is echoed in later thinkers, such as St. Augustine's psychological treatment of time in the Confessions, Bergson's durée and the continuous flow of evolving consciousness in Time and Free Will, Heidegger's ectases of temporality in Being and Time, the existential lyricism of Jorge Luis Borges' magical realism in Historia de la eternidad.

The second part of the book, "The Architecture Scene", is divided into four chapters. In chapter 4, Majumdar argues that the edifice of the soul is a "complex prismatic array of consubstantial souls" descending to the depths of individuation and multiplicity by retaining their unity and identity with each other through their soul-genus relationship (60). In chapter 5, Majumdar argues that a canonized concept of the self is not present in the Enneads: the Plotinian self is "an expression and vehicle of epistrophic freedom" (75), the soul's inspiration beyond the boundaries of the corporeals. In chapter 6, Majumdar presents Plotinus' monistic concept of the One and explains logos and contemplation as two divergent facets of the One's emanative poiesis of time and the cosmos. Consequently, in chapter 7, Majumdar focuses on Plotinus' philosophy of nature and matter as related to time and the perceptible world generated by a quasi-demiurgic soul, dependent on the silent self-contained contemplation of Intellect. The Plotinian conception of matter as "decorate corpse" should not be taken literally in the dialectic of the Enneads, "a work so nuanced and subtle, it ought not to be caught in a net of superficial and simplistic cogency". (114).

In the third part of the book, Majumdar sets up the "The Cosmological Scene" with an informative discussion of the multi-divergent involvement of soul and the self in the generation of time and the world of the senses with special reference to Ennead III.7.11-13 (chapters 8-10). The book is strongest in the association of time with the polupragmatic nature of the soul in chapters 11 and 12. In Ennead III.7, Plotinus contrasts the perfect stability and quietness of eternal life in Intellect's non-discursive operations with the restless unquiet and officious temporal life of Soul's discursive thinking. Soul's transitory activity is due to its 'officious nature'; its 'unquiet power', which continually wishes to produce something more than it possesses (III.7.11.15-20). For Plotinus, soul is logos unfolding itself from the quiet seed of Intellect (III.7.11.25-26; V.3.6), and, as it advances into plurality and magnitude, it diminishes its internal unity and grows weaker as it extends and multiplies in temporality. Soul becomes a "slave of time" by making the whole of itself and its processes within time (11.31-34). On this basis, Majumdar associates time and the temporal world with the tolmatic descent of the world-soul. However, as Majumdar maintains, time does not fall from eternity; it is "exteriorized" in a noetic self-extraction of Intellect: "the cacophony of tolma resounds mainly in the post-cosmic worldly world below the realm of real being" (223). The soul undergoes a tolmatic restless activity that "incites the desire of autonomy" and, as Majumdar concludes, "soul's tolmatic motion reverberates through the edifice of soul as the hypostasis soul launches into a sempiternal discursion, followed imitatively by the World Soul and the "we" qua particular species souls. "We" then lengthen our journey through discursion, draw time out of its logoic fore-life and construct time as an image of eternity". For Majumdar, the narrative of time in Ennead III.7 is a cryptogram of a larger play "one with many more dramatis personae than meets the eye" (225).

In conclusion, Majumdar justifies with evidence and precision the association of time and soul in the Ennead III.7 and signifies the uniqueness of Plotinus' conception of time. Majumdar's language is that of a philosophical poiesis resembling Plotinus' spontaneous philosophical inquiry and giving us a paradigm of how Plotinus should be studied today.

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2010.02.18

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Tanja S. Scheer (ed.), Tempelprostitution im Altertum: Fakten und Fiktionen. Oikumene Studien zur antiken Weltgeschichte Bd. 6. Berlin: Verlag Antike, 2009. Pp. 415. ISBN 9783938032268. €59.90.
Reviewed by Kathrin Kleibl

Dieser Band versammelt fokussierte Studien aus den Bereichen Alte Geschichte, Altphilologie, Assyriologie, Ägyptologie, Theologie und Indologie; Anlass dazu war eine Konferenz an der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg im Juli 2007. Der Untertitel "Fakten und Fiktionen " gibt die Problematik des Themas vor. Bislang war das Thema Kult und Prostitution im Altertum von der kaum je reflektierten Vorstellung von Hierodulen als Liebesdienerinnen im Tempeldienst getragen. Der interdisziplinäre Rahmen der Tagung rückt diese Problematik in ein völlig neues, kritisches Licht. Er stellt die Missdeutungen und Zirkelschlüsse der bisherigen Forschung heraus, die nicht zuletzt durch die fehlende Abgleichung zwischen den Erkenntnissen der einzelnen Disziplinen befördert wurden. Klares Fazit der dreizehn Beiträge ist, dass es keine Belege für Tempelprostitution in der Antike gab, ja nicht einmal implizite Hinweise darauf.

Julia Assante kann zeigen, dass die Idee der Heiligen Hochzeit zwischen Mensch und Gott und eines sexualisierten Ischtar-Kultes samt Transvestiten, Eunuchen, Hermaphroditen, Homosexuellen und Prostituierten eine akademische Fabrikation des 19. Jahrhunderts ist, die unhinterfragt übernommen wurde. Wurde beispielsweise im Gilgamesch-Epos schamhat folglich stets mit Hure übersetzt, verbirgt sich dahinter nur der Status einer unverheirateten Frau, die ausserhalb des patriarchalischen Gesellschaftsgefüges steht. Und statt der sexuellen Ambivalenz unterschiedlichster Liebesdiener und Liebesdienerinnen sind hier die einzelnen Ränge des Kultpersonals für eine Göttin zu sehen, deren Komplexität bis dato zu wenig gewürdigt wurde. Marie-Theres Wacker und Wolfgang Weiss arbeiten heraus, dass der Mythos der Tempelprostitution dann auch die Auslegung des Alten wie des Neuen Testaments beeinflusst hat, ohne dass diese archäologisch oder quellenkritisch nachweisbar wäre. Maria Brosius macht deutlich, dass Strabons Bericht (16, 1, 20) über Tempelprostitution in Babylon ebenfalls historisch nicht belegbar ist, sondern allein auf eine vielzitierte Herodot-Stelle zurückgeht. Als literarisches Motiv hat Strabon sie auf eine andere Region übertragen, mit derselben diffamierenden Absicht: nämlich fremde Völker über ihre vermeintlichen Sexualpraktiken als minderwertig darzustellen. Was die Ägyptologie betrifft, hat die Behandlung dieses Themas nie eine zentrale Rolle gespielt; Joachim F. Quack stellt zwar mehrere interessante Stellen orgiastischer Elemente im Ritus zur Diskussion, um danach jedoch ebenfalls zum Schluss zu kommen, dass sich im Alten Ägypten kein Fall von Kultprostitution konstruieren lässt. Diese Bilanz unterstreicht auch Reinhold Scholl für das griechisch-römische Ägypten, indem er aufzeigt, dass dieses Bild auf der Fehlinterpretation einiger weniger ambivalenter Quellen beruht. Stephanie Budin arbeitet das Bedeutungsfeld des Begriffes Hierodoule für Ägypten, Anatolien, Korinth und das sizilische Eryx heraus, um zu demonstrieren, dass er sich auf eine privilegierte Kaste von Tempelsklaven bezieht, die ausserhalb der staatlichen Hierarchie stand; in Korinth zählten dazu auch freigelassene Prostituierte, die der Liebesgöttin unterstellt wurden, ohne dass es sich dabei jedoch um Prostitution im sakralen Bereich gehandelt habe. Die Herausgeberin des Bandes, Tanja S. Scheer, konzentriert sich in ihrem Aufsatz auf Korinth, um auch hier die Vorstellungen von sakraler Defloration, Mitgiftprostitution und Heiligen Huren - für die der Tempel als "Anbahnungsdistrikt" gedient habe - als Mythos zu entlarven. Sie räumt einzig die spekulative These ein, der Aphroditekult dort könnte durch Einkünfte mitfinanziert worden sein, die durch Prostituierte im Sklavenstatus erwirtschaftet wurden. Joachim Losehand führt den Verweis auf sakrale Prostitution im epizephyrischen Lokroi auf einen möglichen Initiationsritus "preisgegebener Jungfrauen" im opuntischen Lokroi zurück: aufgrund der Namensgleichheit seien die Orte verwechselt und dann mit einer Nachricht über ein Venusfest vermengt worden, um so eine Legende zu begründen, die jeder historischen Wirklichkeit widerspricht. Durch seine Textarbeit kann Martin Lindner deutlich machen, dass die Auffassung, es habe in Eryx 'Heilige Huren' gegeben, im selben Mass auf überinterpretierten modernen Übersetzungen beruht, wie sie wahrscheinlich schon in der Antike eine reine Projektion darstellte--ohne je Teil kultischer Praxis gewesen zu sein. Annette Hupfloher zeigt sodann, dass die Interpretation des von Eryx ausgehenden Aphroditekults im arkadischen Psophis derselben Art von Missdeutungen unterlag, um den eigentlichen Kontext dahinter zu präsentieren. Daniel Ogden wirft ein anderes Schlaglicht auf den Mythos, indem er einen realen Konnex zwischen Tempel und Prostituierten anbietet: nämlich die Weihung von Heiligtümern an die Kurtisanen der hellenistischen Könige. Wo für Ptolemaios Philadelphos' Geliebte Bilistiche und Demetrios Poliorketes' Lamia noch klare Zeugnisse für die Heiligsprechung ihrer Hetären vorliegen, werden diese jedoch immer paradoxaler, je weiter man in der Zeit zurückgeht; sie setzen schliesslich ganz aus, ohne dass sich für eine solche Übung antike Präzedenzfälle oder gar eine Tradition ausmachen liessen.

Diese von den Tagungsteilnehmern erlangten Ergebnisse spiegeln sich auch im zyprischen Aphroditekult (Kypris) wider, der ebenfalls mit Tempelprostitution in Verbindung gebracht wurde (ausgehend wiederum von Herodot Historien I 199,5 und der engen Verbindung zwischen Kypris und Ishtar bzw. Astarte; erneut ein Fall von Zirkelschlüssen!). Die für Zypern stets herangezogenen Belege sind die auf das 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. datierten Tempeltarife A und B des Astarte-Tempels in Kition -- einer phönizischen Stadtgründung --, in denen weibliche und männliche klbm unter dem Personal erwähnt werden, die für ihre Dienste bei einem Tempelfest entlohnt wurden; doch auch die Übersetzung von klbm ist unklar: es wurde als Alternative zu qdsh gelesen (abgeleitet vom hebräischen qadesh, was so viel wie "Mann des Heiligtums" bedeutet), und mit "Hund" oder eben auch "Prostituierte" übersetzt. Zudem ist völlig unklar für welche Dienste die klbm bezahlt wurden. Ein Blick nach Zypern ist aber auch insofern lohnenswert, als das multikulturelle Zypern als Drehscheibe und Mittlerrolle für den Austausch zwischen Ost und West angesehen werden kann und die Insel der Entstehungsort der griechischen Aphrodite ist, deren zyprisch geprägter Kult von hier weiter nach Westen gewandert ist; und das ohne organisierte Tempelprostitution, wie die Untersuchungen zeigen.

Renate Syeds Studie erlaubt es am Ende des Bandes, diese vielfältigen Trugbilder mit dem "Tempelmätressentum" in Indien zu vergleichen, das vom 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr. an bis in die Gegenwart greifbar ist. Dieser Brauch hat seinen Ursprung in der Armut von Eltern, die es sich nicht leisten konnten, ihre Kinder zu verheiraten, und diese stattdessen einer Gottheit weihten, für die sie Tempeldienste verrichteten. Die Frauen darunter wurden zu Devadasi, Konkubinen von Priestern und Sponsoren des Heiligtums; Sex mit den Mädchen galt als ein Privileg für jene Männer: sie wurden hofiert, man versuchte ihre Gunst durch Geschenke zu erhalten. All dies war vom Ritualdienst streng getrennt, denn Sex im Tempel war strikt verboten--sodass nach Syed von "Tempelprostitution" im Grunde hier nicht die Rede sein sollte. In den Augen der Briten, die mit diesem sozial komplexen System im 19. Jahrhundert in Berührung kamen, waren diese auserwählten Gottesdienerinnen jedoch Sklavinnen, die Priester Mädchenschänder und Zuhälter. Jedoch sollte man wohl auch festhalten, dass--obwohl heutzutage gesetzlich verboten - etwa im indischen Bundesstaat Andhra Pradesh schätzungsweise 25.000 junge Frauen der Göttin Mathamma geweiht sind, wohl gemerkt als Sühneopfer: mit 6 Jahren werden sie dem Tempel übergeben, im Alter von 9 müssen sie vor Männern tanzen, um ab dem 13. Lebensjahr fremden Männern sexuell zu Diensten zu sein. Auf der anderen Seite ist diese noch immerwährende Tradition ein Paradigma dafür, dass Prostitution und Tempeldienst getrennt voneinander gesehen werden könnten. Vergleichbares könnte man nun auch für das Altertum annehmen, was erklären würde, weshalb man bereits in der Antike vergleichbaren Traditionen kritisch gegenüber stand und sich kaum Belege finden.

Was sich damit wiederholt, ist ein Projektionsmechanismus, der quer durch die Zeiten wirksam wird. Der antike Topos der Tempelprostitution geht auf Herodots Behauptung über die für seinen Blickwinkel dekadenten Verhältnisse in Babylon zurück: Porneia etablierte sich so in seiner Doppeldeutigkeit von Hurerei und Götzendienst--ein kulturbedingter Reflex, der alles Fremde und Andersartige als abartig abwertet. Einmal in einem orientalisierten Osten verankert, wurde dieses Stereotyp immer wieder aufs Neue aufgegriffen, um zum Mythos zu werden--wobei Strabons Berichte besonderes Gewicht erhielten. Im 19. Jahrhundert erfuhr dieser Topos durch Johann J. Bachofens "Mutterrecht" (1861) und vor allem James G. Frazers "Golden Bough" (1890) eine neue Ausformung. Frazer griff die coniunctio spiritualis der Mystik, die chymische Hochzeit der Rosenkreuzer und damit verbundene Ideen christlicher Esoterik auf, die sich im Zeitalter des Kolonialismus mit einer pseudo-darwinistischen Auslegung von Kultur verband. Hochkultur wurde auf diese Weise mit dem christlichen Monotheismus gleichgestellt und als Überwindung heidnischer Kultpraktiken angesehen, die auf Fruchtbarkeitsriten und der Verehrung von Muttergöttinnen wie Ishtar beruhte. Der von Frazer aufgebrachte Begriff von der 'Heiligen Hochzeit' erfuhr so eine weite Verbreitung und wurde--obwohl kaum fundiert und letztlich nur aus obskuren Quellen kollationiert--als kulturelle Universalie aufgefasst.

Die stringenten Beiträge dieses Bandes korrigieren diese beiden Blickwinkel, um die darin verborgenen Klischees deutlich zu machen und den realen Hintergrund auszuleuchten. Die für einen Sammelband erstaunlich konzise Argumentation auf durchgehend hohem Niveau dekonstruiert nicht nur einen überalterten Mythos--in Assantes Text mit einigem sarkastischen Nachdruck--, sie öffnet zudem ebenso detailreiche wie differenzierte Perspektiven auf die sozio-religiösen Verhältnisse in der Antike. Einziges Manko ist, dass Herodots notorische Passagen, die den Ursprung der Prostitutionsgeschichte darstellen, zwar vielfach tangiert, jedoch nicht in einem eigenen Referat thematisiert werden. Was er sah, was er hätte sehen können und wovor er lieber die Augen verschloss, als er die für ihn "hässlichste Sitte der Babylonier" schilderte, bleibt in diesem Buch leider eine Leerstelle.

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2010.02.17

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Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, Plotinus on Number. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xii, 176. ISBN 9780195377194. $74.00.
Reviewed by Sarah Klitenic Wear, Franciscan University of Steubenville

[Table of contents is provided at the end of the review.]

Svetla Slaveva-Griffin's book, Plotinus on Number, is an investigation into the complicated world of Ennead VI.6. This short but dense book is remarkably enjoyable; Slaveva-Griffin works through the major issues in the treatise systematically and yet the book is not a commentary on the work. Instead, using Enn. VI.6 as a reference point, the book explains Plotinus' contribution to the Platonic conception of number, particularly with respect to how Plotinus differs from Aristotle's interpretation of Plato's concept of number. The approach of the book allows the author to place Plotinus in the history of late antique mathematics, the scholarship for which has been heavy on Proclus and the Neopythagoreans to the neglect of Plotinus. In addition, this book provides insight into issues in Plotinian metaphysics, but one word of caution: Slaveva-Griffin does lay out some basic principles of Neoplatonism in her introduction, but the book assumes a certain level of understanding, especially of terms like "indefinite dyad" or "monad". With this in mind, it would be best for the novice Platonist or historian of mathematics to start with a more general book on Neoplatonism or Plotinus first. Still, the book is certainly not overly-technical and it uses minimal Greek quotations, so it could be of use in an upper-level undergraduate seminar on Neoplatonism, but only after basic tenets of Platonic metaphysics had been thoroughly established. With that said, the book is truly interesting and very well-written; without doubt, it is a notable contribution to the field.

In the introduction, Slaveva-Griffin establishes that Plotinus, unlike Aristotle, distinguishes between intelligible number and arithmetical number. Slaveva-Griffin argues that Plotinus was "the first Post-Platonic philosopher who develops a theory of numbers"(p.12), which is interesting in light of Neopythagorean figures such as Nichomachus of Gerasa likening the monad to God or Middle Platonists such as Moderatus, who Slaveva-Griffin includes in her discussion of the topic (p.13). The main point which Slaveva-Griffin sets out in the introduction is that Plotinus views multiplicity as number, an argument which is supported by her systematic look at Enn. VI.6.

In Chapter One, "Platonic Cosmology on Plotinian Terms", Slaveva-Griffin argues that Enn. VI.6 converts the systasis of the Timaeus into apostasis so that the Plotinian cosmology describes emanation from the One rather than a composition of the world by the demiurge. The author links this apostasis with creation of multiplicity from the One, which proceeds mathematically from the One. In Chapter Two, "Multiplicity as Number", Slaveva-Griffin shows how the mathematical hierarchy of multiplicity from the One stems from a Neoplythagorean tradition of multiplicity and number. Here, she argues, I think most rightly, that Plotinus relies upon Moderatus' definition of the One, or three Ones, in this case. While for Moderatus the first One is absolute stability, the second One acts as the principle of creation, and the third One is the principle of material reality and the principle which enumerates individual things. In these first two chapters, Slaveva-Griffin does a fine job of showing how Plotinus manipulates a Neopythagorean tradition to explain how the multiplicity comes from the One at the time of the creation of the universe. By probing into the historical sources of Plotinus' understanding of number, this book offers a nice historical-philosophical approach to the question of number.

Next, the issue of infinity is taken up, starting with Plotinus' critique of Aristotle's Ph. 208a15 in Enn.VI.6.2. In Chapter Three, "The Number of Infinity", Slaveva-Griffin first discusses the Platonic view of the generation of numbers and the distinction between Ideal numbers and arithmetical numbers, the former of which is left out in Aristotle's understanding of number. Here, Slaveva-Griffin addresses the question of whether number is incidental to the Forms by looking at the discussion of time and movement in Enn. III.7.12.

Chapter Five, "Number and the Universe" is a joy to read. The discussion here centers on the difference between monadic number, which gives quantity, and substantial number, which, like the One, does not participate in quantity; rather, it acts as a holding place for being. In terms of a diagram of the universe, the One stands at the head of the universe, with substantial number between it and monadic number. Substantial number, thus, is ontologically important; as an intermediary figure, it shortens the distance between the One and number which enumerates physical reality. The remainder of this chapter outlines the various functions of substantial number. Slaveva-Griffin discusses how Being cannot function without substantial number because Being is unified substantial number. Substantial number is also an expression of Intellect insofar as Intellect is number moving in itself. This chapter describes how substantial number generates Being, Intellect, beings and complete Living Being because they are pure intelligible entities. The whole universe, thus, is a single living being which encompasses all living beings within it.

Chapter Six, "Unity of Thought and Writing" is more of an appendix, as the bulk of the argument is completed at the end of Chapter Five. Here, Slaveva-Griffin describes how Porphyry arranged Plotinus' work in relation to Plotinus' concepts of multiplicity and number, as well as late Neopythagean thought. Thus, just as the cosmos is a multiplicity ordered by number, so is the Enneads an outfolding into multiplicity. Most of the ideas in this chapter were covered in previous chapters; still, this is a fine chapter and the topic is of interest to many who read the Enneads.

Slaveva-Griffin's Plotinus on Number is scholarly and challenging.

Table of Contents

Introduction: One by Number

1. Platonic Cosmology on Plotinian Terms
Ennead VI.6 and the Timaeus
Origin of Multiplicity in Plotinus
Plotinus' Apostasis and Numenius' Stasis
The Universe as Degrees of Separation from the One

2. Multiplicity as Number
Surfacing from the 'Neopythagorean Underground'
Outward and Inward Direction of Multiplicity in Ennead VI.6
Multiplicity as Effluence and Unity

3. The Number of Infinity
Plato's Position
Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Platonists
Plotinus' Answer

4. Number and Substance
Plotinus' Three Hypotheses about Number in the Intelligible Realm
Is Substantial Number Discrete and Incidental?
The Whole Number of Beings
Substantial and Monadic Number

5. Number and the Universe
Substantial Number and the One
Substantial Number and Absolute Being
Substantial Number and Intellect
Substantial Number and Beings
Substantial Number and the Complete
Living Being
Soul and Number
The Unfigured Figure of Soul's Dance

6. Unity of Thought and Writing
Porphyry and the Enneads
Ennead VI.6
"Six Along with the Nines"

Conclusion: In Defense of Plato

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2010.02.16

Version at BMCR home site
Catalin Partenie, Plato's Myths. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi, 255. ISBN 9780521887908. $99.00.
Reviewed by Emily A. Austin, Wake Forest University

[Authors and titles are listed at end of the review.]

Plato's myths resist a unified account. Some myths occur at the end of the dialogue, others quite early. Some are creation stories, while others include an eschatology. Though a few seem to be for entertainment purposes only, many illustrate philosophical content and may serve as arguments in their own right. Almost all of Plato's myths, however, have been under-explored by contemporary scholarship in the analytic philosophical tradition, which prefers to stay soundly on the logos side of the myth and argument divide.¹ Plato's Myths, an excellent collection of ten papers edited by Catalin Partenie, demonstrates that the myths can inform the study of Plato's more rigorous philosophical projects and suggests that those who neglect the myths risk compromising their understanding of Plato as a philosopher.

Partenie's written contribution to the collection is a general overview of Plato's myths and the most popular interpretations of their philosophical role in the dialogues. His map of the intellectual terrain is quite helpful, though the reader might note two assumptions that seem to guide his survey. First, he assumes that Plato only aims the myths at the philosophically unsophisticated; neither Socrates nor Plato require myths. Second, he claims that, with the possible exception of the cosmological myth of the Timaeus, Plato knows the matter at hand. The myths, then, do not signal any self-avowed psychological or epistemic limitations of their author. Both of these claims can be defended, but Partenie devotes little or no space to their consideration. This small worry aside, Partenie's big-picture treatment of the myths contributes significantly to the volume, especially since most of the collection's authors avoid a generalist approach.

In "Plato's eschatological myths," Michael Inwood defies the standard strategy of his fellow contributors. Rather than addressing the role of one myth within the context of the single dialogue in which it occurs, Inwood raises a series of puzzles about moral responsibility and punishment that arise from the eschatological myths that close the Gorgias and the Republic. He aims to discover, in short, whether Plato has any moral justification for postmortem punishment. Inwood worries that an individual should not be punished for injustices committed by her soul's previous instantiation and that tyrants who had opportunities to act unjustly might not deserve more punishment than individuals who would have acted unjustly given the opportunity. Also, if one's physical body is a significant part of one's personal identity, then the disembodied individual undergoing postmortem judgment may not be the same recently deceased individual. While all of Inwood's puzzles are creative and compelling, some of his key claims depend on interpretations of numerous Platonic doctrines. These include recollection, reincarnation, personal identity, and the nature of the soul in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Meno, Timaeus, and Laws. Since these concepts do not cut across the two eschatological myths upon which Inwood focuses, much less across the other myths and dialogues he references, things get increasingly muddy. One might get the impression that this very clever paper tries to do too much.

David Sedley's article, "Myth, punishment, and politics in the Gorgias," addresses the chief objection to Plato's eschatological myths: they undercut Plato's moral message by encouraging people to act justly from fear of hellfire rather than from the recognition that just action is good in itself. Sedley argues that the closing myth, like the earlier allegory of the jars (493dff), illustrates "moral truths about this life" (53). Zeus' solution to the mistrial of the wealthy and popular in the afterlife offers a commentary on the broken Athenian judicial system. The solution itself--the judgment and punishment of the naked souls--shows how Socratic dialectic reveals the true state of the soul through painful refutation. The afterlife's "incurables" may signal that Callicles is beyond reformation, since he refuses to reign in his appetites. Sedley concludes by considering two disjuncts. First, the myth's political commentary recommends either a call for philosophical reform of the existing political structure or the complete rejection of politics in favor of philosophy. In the Republic,Sedley notes, Plato opts for the latter, but the Gorgias leaves the question open. Second, it remains unclear whether Plato takes the myth's eschatological elements seriously. Sedley's circumspect response that the matter is "underdetermined" may seem a bit troubling, since it allows some yardage for the objection he seeks to surmount--that Plato encourages some agents to choose justice from fear of postmortem retribution. Nevertheless, Sedley offers a viable alternative for those queasy about the motivational role of the Gorgias' eschatology.

In "Tale, theology and teleology in the Phaedo," Gabor Betegh also considers Zeus' problem-solving talents, this time with respect to the irresolvable disagreement between pleasure and pain. Betegh argues that Socrates' commendation of Aesop's fables (Phaedo 60b-61c) sheds light on Socratic expectations about how stories should represent divine agents. In particular, Socrates seeks 1) teleological explanations of current states of affairs that 2) explain the benevolent creator's practical reasoning, given the limitations of his starting material. Betegh argues that Anaxagoras' failure to offer a teleological explanation of this sort motivates Socrates' famous rejection of his account of Mind. Since Socrates consistently denies his own ability to offer such explanations, it may seem to undercut Betegh's case that Socrates offers a lengthy cosmological account at the close of the Phaedo. However, Betegh contends that Socrates' account only satisfies the first of his criteria, since he explains the current state of affairs without an account of why and how the divine creator made things as they are. Plato does not offer this complete account until the Timaeus. Betegh's article complements Burnyeat's contribution to the volume, as Burnyeat considers the epistemic weight of Timaeus' representation of the Demiurge. Given that Betegh thinks one can offer a commendable but false representation of the god's practical reasoning in the course of arguing for a false claim, there must be some criteria by which one can judge that a cosmological account approximates the truth.

Malcolm Schofield focuses on the Myth of Metals (Republic 414b-415d) in "Fraternité, inégalité, la parole de Dieu: Plato's authoritarian myth of political legitimation." Schofield claims that the myth has two purposes. The first part should convince the rulers to care [kedesthai] for the city. Since care is much more difficult to motivate than self-interest, Schofield thinks that ideology is the only way to generate the ruler's emotional attachment to the city. If caring is contingent on believing the myth, however, Schofield worries that the first rulers will fail to care for the city, since the myth's arbitrary and instrumental creation will leave them unable to believe it. Schofield suggests that the first rulers' emotional attachment to the city and endorsement of the myth might arise from the care they have for their future children, who will genuinely believe the myth. The myth's second aim is to provide a "myth of succession and survival" (111). The use of Hesiodic metals, Schofield argues, serves to theologically justify and preserve the social hierarchy. This is surely right. The contentiousness of Schofield's paper seems packed into his "final question" (113-115). He cautiously argues that the motivation for the philosopher-ruler's decision to rule depends on whether the foundation myth has long ago convinced her to care for the city. For, Schofield claims, her knowledge of the Good will prove insufficient and even distract her from civil service. The Myth of Metals, not the knowledge of the Good, is the sine qua non of the philosopher's return.

In "Glaucon's reward, philosophy's debt: the myth of Er," G. R. F. Ferrari argues that the closing myth of the Republic is tailored specifically for Glaucon, who cannot help but desire rewards and honors for choosing justice. The myth rewards those who act justly with what is "owed" to them--a debt for just action is repaid. Ferrari also contends, though, that the myth is decidedly tragic, even for the philosopher. The choice of one's next life is more punishment than a reward, since human life impedes the exercise of reason. The philosopher knows that from the perspective of divinity, even the best of human lives is ugly, and choosing another life requires descending once again into imperfection. The choice is required, however, as repayment for a debt incurred by being human rather than divine. Worse, it might not even turn out terribly well for the philosopher. Her philosophical life enables her to choose the best life available when her lot comes up, but her options might not include another philosophical life. Ferrari rightly notes that the Phaedo and Phaedrus express more optimism, since Plato suggests that the philosopher may eventually escape reincarnation and join the divine. He might make a strong case for a broader claim, though, that Plato thinks renewed embodiment should never be relished, even for the best of humans.

In "The charioteer and his horses: an example of Platonic myth-making," Christopher Rowe argues that the elaborate myth of the Phaedrus does not indicate that Plato lacks knowledge of the nature of the soul, nor does it target what is inferior in us--the irrational part. Instead, Plato uses myth as a substitute for argument, a substitute which can be usefully employed for audiences with less philosophical talent and interest. The more sophisticated the audience, the more rigorous the arguments; an audience with a "variegated" (poikilos) soul requires a mix of argument and story. Even in this latter case, though, the target of the method is not the irrational parts of the soul, as, Rowe notes, he himself once argued. One chief impediment to Rowe's current claim is the passage at Phdr. 246a4-7, in which Socrates suggests that the myth is a stand-in for something more divine that is beyond the reach of rational argument. Nevertheless, Rowe contends that one can have knowledge that falls short of divine knowledge, that Plato possesses this approximate knowledge, and that Plato's knowledge is sufficient to produce a good argument. Rowe also devotes a portion of his article to a new interpretation of the relationship between Socrates' two speeches and between the Phaedrus and other "erotic dialogues." At the close of his paper, Rowe argues that the irrational part of the soul does not contain the emotions, but houses only brute necessary desires, such as for food and drink. It is not the sort of thing with which one can reason, even if one should want to do so. Rowe notes that some of his arguments are promissory notes for a longer defense, and the further development of this last claim will be of interest to many scholars working on the capacities of the lower parts of the soul (among the most recent, Hendrick Lorenz, Jessica Moss, and their critics).

In "The myth of the Statesman," Charles Kahn wonders why the dialogue begins with a failed definition of the statesman as shepherd of the "human herd," which is summarily refuted by means of a myth. Since a shepherd is superior to his sheep, only something superior to humans could shepherd the human herd. The divine shepherd, the myth tells us, ruled the human herd before there was strife, labor, and laws. Since the statesman the discussants seek is human rather than divine, and humans now need laws and suffer strife, the statesman cannot be a shepherd of the human herd. Kahn argues that Plato introduces and abandons the divine shepherd in order to signal that he has left behind the ideal city of the Republic and its philosopher-rulers. Plato recognizes that he must instead construct a second-best city and describe its fallible rulers. Kahn's argument turns on two claims: that the divine shepherd represents the philosopher-ruler who rules Kallipolis, and that the human statesman rules the second-best city--Magnesia of the Laws. Since the inferiority of Magnesia has been recently contested by Chris Bobonich, Kahn spends the final part of his paper offering textual evidence in support of this second claim. Though I find Kahn's evidence convincing on this front, I worry a bit about the first claim. If Kahn is right that the myth of the Statesman refers to Kallipolis, then it suggests that Kallipolis is not a city at all, that there were actually no technai in Kallipolis, no farmers, and no army (since humans would not war with one another). The political element of the comparison, then, must be somewhat loose.

Timaeus, the namesake of the dialogue in which he appears, consistently refers to his cosmology as an "eikos muthos," the Greek phrase from which M. F. Burnyeat's excellent article takes its name. Burnyeat argues that the standard translation of "eikos" as "probable" or "likely" mistakes Timaeus' epistemic hedge as a worry about the limitations of scientific empiricism or as another manifestation of Plato's commitment to the impossibility of knowledge of the sensory world. Instead, Burnyeat claims that Timaeus hopes to offer an "appropriate myth," which piously befits the divinity of the Demiurge and the perfect practical reason that guided his creation of the best world (given the limitations of his starting material). Far from denigrating the sensory world, Timaeus challenges his audience to see the divine order surrounding them. Since something divine crafted the world, the end-product must have some genuine value. Burnyeat seems to complicate matters, though, by subsequently embracing the standard translation of "eikos"--probable. There need be nothing particularly tricky about this, though, since he thinks that any account which satisfies the "appropriate" criterion will also be "probable." I have only one small worry. One might wonder about Burnyeat's closing claim that offering a cosmology is analogous to engaging in political discourse. He claims that Timaeus' account of the divine practical creation of the world is mirrored in Socrates' construction of the ideal city, which happened the previous day. However, Timaeus aims to explain a current state of affairs, while Socrates, one might argue, prefers to construct a city that exceeds the limitations of the political starting material.

Richard Stalley's article, "Myth and eschatology in the Laws," contests Trevor Saunders' reading of the eschatological myth in Book X, which clears ground for Stalley's competing interpretation. The myth is directed at a young man who has renounced his childhood religious beliefs in favor of materialism. After a series of theological arguments to the effect that god(s) exist and care for humans, the Athenian adds a myth for good measure, as a "charm" [Laws 903b]. The myth's eschatology, though, seems positively dull when compared to the elaborate myths of the Gorgias, Phaedo, and Republic. (Boredom seems to be a general point of comparison between the Laws and other dialogues). Saunders argues that Plato renounces flowery myths for mechanical, scientific myths of reincarnation, a shift he initiated in the Timaeus and that depends in part on the Laws' new theory of punishment. Stalley argues quite rightly that there is nothing terribly new about punishment as moral improvement and notes some differences between the myths of the Timaeus and Laws. Stalley then turns to his positive argument, which is that the novelty of the Laws' myth is primarily one of audience and intent. In the earlier myths, Plato aims to convince a select group of elite young men to become philosophers. The Laws' myth, though, targets non-philosophers, to whom Plato is notably more generous than in his previous political work. Thus, Stalley's argument depends on the intellectual and moral promise of the young man, who Stalley claims cannot become a philosopher. However, one might note that Plato offers similar "charms" to Cebes and Simmias in the Phaedo (77e, 114d), both of whom are philosophically talented and under the spell of materialists. Adeimantus asks Socrates to prove that that the gods exist and benefit the just [Republic 365d-366b], and he is also offered a myth for good measure.

The concluding essay of the collection, Elizabeth McGrath's "Platonic myth in Renaissance iconography," is a change of pace. It has pictures. McGrath collects and examines Renaissance depictions of Plato's myths and allegories, as viewed through the lens of the Christian and neo-Platonist traditions and the influence of Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation of Plato's dialogues. Among the popular topics for representation were the Phaedrus myth of the charioteer and his horses, the androgynes from the Symposium, and the Allegory of the Cave. McGrath concludes by drawing attention to the connections between Plato's Timaeus and Kepler's models of the planets. Though she devotes some attention to a discussion of Renaissance thought about the philosophical role of the myths, McGrath notes that any claim must be highly speculative due to a substantial lack of primary evidence. McGrath's article is fascinating and informative, though the quality and clarity of the reproductions are understandingly limited by the medium, and it seems a bit out of place in a collection concerned with the interplay between philosophy and myth.

Anyone with a philosophical interest in Plato's myths will find Partenie's collection rewarding, and it is necessary reading for those interested in publishing on the topic. All of the articles are of high-quality, and many of them are truly excellent. The book itself is attractive and well-edited. I found only two errors. In the introduction, Partenie twice refers to "the Demiurge" without his definite article (15, 16), while otherwise affording it to him.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Catalin Partenie
1. Plato's Eschatological Myths, Michael Inwood
2. Myth, punishment and politics in the Gorgias, David Sedley
3. Tale, theology, and teleology in the Phaedo, Gabor Betegh
4. Fraternité, inégalité, la parole de Dieu: Plato's authoritarian myth of political legitimation, Malcolm Schofield
5. Glaucon's reward, philosophy's debt : the myth of Er, G. R. F. Ferrari
6. The charioteer and his horses: an example of Platonic myth-making, Christopher Rowe
7. The myth of the Statesman, Charles Kahn
8. Eikos Muthos, M. F. Burnyeat
9. Myth and eschatology in the Laws, Richard Stalley
10. Platonic myth in Renaissance iconography, Elizabeth McGrath

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Notes:

1.   There are, of course, exceptions. Partenie offers a useful list of recent work on the myths in the "Suggested Further Reading" section at the end of the text (239). My only additional recommendations is: R. G. Edmonds (2004), Myths of the Underworld Journey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Among other things, Edmonds offers a concise summary of competing interpretations of Plato's distinction between muthos and logos. Not only is it difficult to determine what the myths do, it is difficult to determine which instances are myths.

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2010.02.15

Version at BMCR home site
Paula Gottlieb, The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xx, 241. ISBN 9780521761765. $85.00.
Reviewed by Peter C. Meilaender, Houghton College

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

Paula Gottlieb has written a well-argued study of Aristotle's ethical theory, focusing on his often maligned doctrine of the mean. She argues that this doctrine is defensible in its own right and important for understanding Aristotle's ethical thought as a whole. To make her case, she first explains the doctrine and then traces its relevance for a range of Aristotelian topics, such as the nameless virtues, moral motivation, and the practical syllogism. Gottlieb repeatedly seeks to distinguish Aristotelian virtue ethics from modern Kantian or utilitarian theories, and she draws attention to characteristic strengths of Aristotle's approach. She is careful throughout to situate her own readings in relation to those of other scholars.

Gottlieb argues that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean has three important features. First, it is a theory of equilibrium, not of moderation. Virtue is not a matter of having too much or too little of some good or bad quality; rather, it is a state or condition of equilibrium, like health, that allows one to respond rightly to situations. Second, virtue is a mean "relative to us." It must thus account for situation-specific features, including our own qualities, abilities, and circumstances, those of others, indeed any relevant circumstances at all. Yet what counts as relevant in determining the mean "relative to us" is itself variable; the relevant factors in one situation may not be the relevant factors in another. Third, Aristotle's virtues come in sets of triads, in which each virtue is the mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. Gottlieb argues further that this triadic structure, despite its apparent initial oddity, reflects an underlying logic grounded in human psychology. Drawing upon a disputed passage from the Eudemian Ethics, she suggests that Aristotle is providing a set of psychological profiles. One type of person has practical wisdom, possesses a correct estimate of his own abilities and worth, and thus takes proper advantage of the right opportunities; a second (the "unscrupulous" person) has the vices of excess, overestimates his abilities and worth, and seeks more than his fair share of goods; while a third (the "unworldly") has the vices of deficiency, underestimates his own abilities and worth, and seeks less than his fair share of goods. While I see little in the Nicomachean Ethics to suggest that Aristotle is deliberately portraying a trio of human types, Gottlieb's argument suggests an inner, structural logic to the triadic framework of his theory.

Gottlieb takes pains--at times excessive ones--to point out how her account of the mean informs the various topics she discusses. The book is, however, less a sustained discussion of the role that the doctrine of the mean plays in Aristotle's theory than a series of explorations into various aspects of his ethics, with that doctrine putting in repeated cameo appearances as a recurring leitmotif. A reader interested only in particular topics could profitably read selected chapters standing alone. I shall focus my attention here on several of Gottlieb's more interesting chapters.

In Chapter Three ("The Non-remedial Nature of the Virtues"), Gottlieb takes issue with prominent interpretations, especially those of Philippa Foot and Christine Korsgaard, who claim that Aristotle regards the virtues as remedial, intended to correct defects in human nature or the world. These interpretations, she argues, neglect Aristotle's explicit claim that humans are not naturally vicious; although our emotions require training, this need not entail that they were originally defective or bad. Furthermore, because we are not gods but humans--political creatures who need one another's company--some virtues, like the nameless social ones, would be desirable even in a perfect world. Even if the gods do not need the virtues, it need not follow that they are remedial for human beings. On this point, Gottlieb seems to me correct. To her arguments, I would add a consideration that she adduces in her later discussion of politics. Because Aristotle considers humans political animals, the virtues must be understood in connection with the ideal of full human flourishing in a just political community where their role is not to counteract vice or crime. In this regard, one might ponder the claim of Aristotle's greatest Christian interpreter, Aquinas, that politics would have existed even in the Garden of Paradise and even had humans not fallen: "In the state of innocence man could have been a master of men [in the sense of governing and directing free subjects].... Such a kind of mastership would have existed in the state of innocence between man and man...because man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life" (ST I, Q. 96, a. 4). One might contrast this with Augustine's post-lapsarian understanding of political life, which includes a remedial interpretation of the virtues. (Gottlieb, citing the De trinitate, suggests that Augustine, like Aquinas, holds a non-remedial view; but City of God XIX.4 is as powerful a statement of the remedial interpretation as one could wish.)

Gottlieb intriguingly buttresses her non-remedial interpretation of the virtues by suggesting (pp. 66-70) that Aristotle's famous function argument at Nicomachean Ethics I.7 is intended to reject an important premise from a different function argument, that advanced by Thrasymachus in Republic I. Thrasymachus collapses the distinction--which Aristotle maintains--between performing a function and performing it well. In his (dyadic, not triadic) view, a virtue is simply that which enables something to perform its function at all, as sight enables the eye to see. This might indeed suggest that the virtues merely remedy defects, as sight corrects blindness. Aristotle's rejection of this version of the function argument, with his claim that virtue is precisely that which allows something to perform its function well, thus reflects his rejection of a merely remedial account of virtue.

Gottlieb tackles another disputed topic in Chapter Five, "Uniting the Virtues," where she takes up Aristotle's thesis of the unity of the virtues. This thesis, she argues, requires a proper understanding of Aristotle's distinction between activity "according to the correct reason" (kata ton orthon logon) and activity "involving the correct reason" (meta tou orthou logou). Taking issue with various other scholars, Gottlieb argues that the latter of these, activity "involving the correct reason," expresses a more demanding ethical standard than does the former, activity that is merely "according to the correct reason." The enkratic person, she suggests, who overcomes recalcitrant desires in order to bring them in line with reason, is not yet virtuous but nevertheless succeeds in acting "in accordance with the correct reason." His actions, however, do not yet "involve the correct reason." Activity "involving" the correct reason must be activity in which the soul's emotional and rational capacities are fully integrated not only in terms of the actions we take in response to emotions, but also in the way we experience emotions in the first place (so that we feel the correct pleasures and pains in the right way, at the right time, etc.). A failure to feel any of the emotions correctly will infect the workings of reason, just as a failure to reason correctly in any sphere of human activity will bring the emotions out of kilter. In illustration, Gottlieb appeals to her explanation of the mean as a kind of equilibrium, like a wheel, all of whose spokes must be properly aligned in order to spin smoothly. In this way, Aristotle's thesis of the unity of the virtues supports the common-sense view that the virtuous person leads what we might call a life of integrity.

Gottlieb's analysis of "Moral Dilemmas" in Chapter Six illustrates her view of Aristotle's distance from contemporary moral theory. Modern ethical theorists often discuss cases of "dirty hands," or "tragic dilemmas," in which an agent faces only bad choices and is compelled to do something wrong in itself, which he would otherwise not choose to do. As a result he feels regret, suffers a stain on his character, or is even permanently marred by the experience. Although Aristotle would recognize situations such as these--for example, he contemplates the possibility of being required to do something shameful by a tyrant in order to save one's family--Gottlieb suggests that his understanding of voluntary action would prevent his describing them as cases of dirty hands or tragic dilemmas. For Aristotle, the moral agent always confronts the question of what to do in some particular situation, asking himself which, of the available options, he should choose in light of all the circumstances. Even actions that are bad in themselves, without qualification, may be correct in a given situation. If I do them in that situation, I have chosen rightly. Conceivably I may feel some regret about my decision, but if so, it will be regret at the circumstances, not at my own action, and thus will not involve regret about or a perceived stain upon my character. Unfavorable circumstances may make it difficult or even impossible for me to achieve complete happiness through my actions, but again this is a reflection, not upon my character, but upon the nature of human existence. Gottlieb concludes by suggesting that this account of Aristotle offers a more humane vision of moral life than does a modern account of dirty hands. It recognizes the reality of hard choices but praises people for choosing well and spares them the pain of permanent guilt for having done what they ought to have done in difficult circumstances.

In Chapter Ten ("A Polis for Aristotle's Virtues"), Gottlieb considers how Aristotle's ethical theory contributes to his vision of politics. She reiterates her claim that the virtues are not remedial, contrasting Hobbes's contractual view of political society as an artificial creation counteracting our defects with Aristotle's understanding of it as natural, bringing us to self-sufficiency and enabling us to develop virtue. She also suggests that despite the difficulty of sorting out Aristotle's comparison of the political and contemplative lives, some of his conclusions--that peace is better than war, leisure than work, and ruling free men than ruling slaves--indicate the importance of the legislator's educating citizens in the virtues, including the nameless, peaceful social virtues. Finally, she argues that Aristotle's assessments of different regimes provide a stronger argument for what we call democracy (and Aristotle called "polity") than is often acknowledged. Though Aristotle sometimes claims that monarchy is best, he also argues for the advantages of rule by the many, whose various good qualities, when pooled together, can collectively produce something like practical wisdom. Gottlieb suggests that this argument dovetails nicely with certain aspects of Aristotle's ethical theory. In particular, she suggests that Aristotle's argument for the cumulation of the many's good qualities in order to approximate practical wisdom draws upon his belief in the unity of the virtues, because whereas vices are diverse (involving both excesses and deficiencies), virtue is unified and coherent, and therefore it is more likely to emerge as the consensus of a collective deliberative procedure. Gottlieb's point here is reminiscent of James Madison's comment in Federalist 51: "In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects, which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place upon any other principles, than those of justice and the general good...."

I consider Aristotle less ambiguous on this score than Gottlieb suggests and would press the case for polity even more strongly. In Politics III.13-17 Aristotle argues that kingship, given a ruler of sufficient wisdom and virtue, would be preferable to rule by the many. (Though he also suggests, in III.15, that because it would be better to have several such rulers than only one, aristocracy is even more desirable than kingship.) But this argument holds only when there really is one ruler or ruling family that is superior to other citizens in wisdom and virtue. Otherwise, it is not only inappropriate but also unjust--because it involves treating equals unequally--to have one person or family always ruling over all the rest, and never being ruled in turn. Aristotle also indicates in III.15 that as political communities increase in size, it becomes less likely that one or a few people will be clearly preeminent in virtue, so that rule by the many increasingly becomes the only plausible option for most peoples. It therefore comes as no surprise when Aristotle argues in Politics IV.8-11 that the best regime achievable for most actual peoples will be polity, which attempts to balance different interests and competing claims to rule. In a world of very large political communities, such as our own, this argument holds with even greater force.

One disappointing chapter is Chapter Four, on "Listing the Virtues." Here Gottlieb attempts to explain how Aristotle generates his particular list of virtues, and especially why that list does not contain various other qualities we might entertain as possible virtues, such as perseverance, piety, sympathy, or benevolence. Her goal is to show the substantive importance of Aristotle's doctrine of the mean by demonstrating its role in generating his list of virtues. At this general level, the chapter is at times helpful in considering why Aristotle might or might not include a specific quality within his list. Nevertheless, the individual discussions of possible virtues are for the most part short and perfunctory, rarely extending beyond a couple of paragraphs. Moreover, Gottlieb's focus seems to vacillate between, on the one hand, why Aristotle himself elects to include (or not) a certain virtue on the list, and, on the other, whether his decision is in fact the right one, that is, whether we can offer good reasons in support of it. Thus it is sometimes unclear whether she is arguing simply that the doctrine of the mean helps explain why Aristotle reaches his own decisions, or that it also helps us to reach the correct decisions about possible virtues ourselves. Gottlieb closes the chapter by suggesting two candidates of her own for Aristotelian virtues: "green" virtues, and tolerance. The suggestion of "green" virtues seems whimsical, if not merely faddish. Surely the qualities desired under this label can be described in terms of more familiar virtues such as justice, temperance, and generosity, especially if we think of justice and generosity towards future generations. We might similarly describe tolerance as some combination of justice and the social virtues, or even--perhaps a better place to look--friendship (in particular civic friendship).

Despite questions such as these, The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics is a well-written, clearly argued, and consistently interesting contribution to the literature on Aristotle's ethics. It sheds useful light on a wide range of important topics, charitably engages the work of other scholars, and capably defends the viability of Aristotle's ethical theory. Whether they are looking only for discussions of specific topics, or for a fuller defense of the doctrine of the mean, scholars of Aristotle's ethical and political thought will find Gottlieb's book worthwhile.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. The General Theme and the Main Argument of the Book
2. Interlocking Themes and Theses
3. Aristotle and Virtue Ethics
4. Philosophical Method and Solving Puzzles
5. Synopsis of Chapters

Part I. Ethical Virtue
Chapter 1: Virtue in the Mean
1.1 A Medical Analogy and Three Aspects of the Doctrine of the Mean
1.2 The First Aspect: Equilibrium Instead of Moderation
1.3 The Second Aspect: The Mean is "Relative to Us"
1.3.1 Particular Virtues and Particular Factors
1.3.2 A New Approach to the Debate about Relativity
1.4 The Third Aspect: Aristotelian Triads
1.5 Reassessing the Doctrine of the Mean

Chapter 2: Nameless Virtues
2.1 The Namelessness of the Nameless Virtues
2.2 The Virtue Concerning Small Honours and the Doctrine of the Mean
2.3 The "Questionable Mean-Dispositions"
2.4 Including the Nameless Virtues
2.5 Taking the Nameless Virtues Seriously

Chapter 3: The Non-remedial Nature of the Virtues
3.1 Corrective Virtues versus the Doctrine of the Mean
3.2 Conditional Value and Nameless Virtues
3.3 Gods and Humans
3.4 The Isles of the Blessed
3.5 The Function Argument
3.6 Rejecting Remedial Views

Chapter 4: Listing the Virtues
4.1 Generating the Virtues on Aristotle's List
4.2 Candidates for Virtue, Ancient and Modern
4.3 Extending the Virtues
4.4 More Nameless Virtues and the Doctrine of the Mean

Chapter 5: Uniting the Virtues
5.1 Socrates, Aristotle, and the Division of the Soul
5.2 The Distinction between "Involving the Correct Reason" and Being Merely "In Accordance with the Correct Reason"
5.3 Ethical Virtue "Involves the Correct Reason"
5.4 Integrating the Soul
5.5 Responding to the Objections
5.6 Integrity
Chart of Aristotle's Particular Ethical Virtues

Part II. Ethical Reasoning
Chapter 6: Moral Dilemmas
6.1 The Example of the Tyrant
6.2 Two Types of Dilemmas: A Preliminary Discussion
6.3 Aristotle's Account of Voluntary Action: Is There a Special Type of Regret?
6.4 The Problem of Mixed Actions
6.5 Mixed Actions and Moral Dilemmas
6.5.1 Regret
6.5.2 The Structure of Aristotelian Decision-making
6.5.3 Factors in the Decision about the Tyrant
6.6 A Tragic Dilemma
6.7 Aristotle's Humane View and the Doctrine of the Mean

Chapter 7: Fine Motivation
7.1 Aristotle and Plato
7.2 Kantian and Utilitarian Readings
7.3 Taking Aristotle's Distinctions at Face Value
7.4 The Fine and the Brave
7.5 The Fine and the Good
7.6 Caring for a Friend for the Friend's Sake

Chapter 8: The Practical Syllogism
8.1 The Problem of Distinguishing Practical Wisdom and Technical Skill
8.2 A Solution Involving Truthfulness and the Doctrine of the Mean, and a New Puzzle
8.3 The Analogy between the Theoretical and Practical Syllogism, and the Importance of the Middle Term
8.3.1 Formulating the Practical Syllogism and the Analogous Middle Term
8.3.2 The Middle Term and the Ethical Agent
8.3.3 The Middle Term, Ethical Virtue, and Deliberation
8.4 From a First-person Point of View
8.5 The Enkratic, the Akratic, and the Learner
8.6 Advantages of Aristotle's Account

Chapter 9: What the Good Person Has to Know
9.1 The Good Person and the Healthy Person
9.2 The Good Person and the Physician
9.3 The Good Person and Psychology
9.4 The Good Person and Metaphysics
9.5 The Good Person and the Good Student
9.5.1 The Ethically Virtuous Person versus the Person with Practical Wisdom?
9.5.2 A More Sophisticated Two-stage Account
9.5.3 The Good Person versus the Ruler
9.6 Reading the Nicomachean Ethics: The Good Person and the Immoralist
9.7 Aristotelian Knowledge

Chapter 10: A Polis for Aristotle's Virtues
10.1 The Need for a Polis: A Non-remedial View
10.2 A Political Ranking of Happy Lives, and the Nameless Virtues
10.3 Justice in the Polis
10.4 A Polis for the Aristotelian Virtues
10.5 Democracy and Polity
10.6 Collective Virtue and Practical Wisdom: An Argument from the Unity of Virtue and the Doctrine of the Mean

Conclusion
1. Aristotle's Ethic of Virtue
2. The Puzzles Revisited
3. Alternative Approaches
4. Foreword to Aristotle

Appendix: Uniting the "Large-scale" Virtues

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2010.02.14

Version at BMCR home site
Holger Thesleff, Platonic Patterns: A Collection of Studies by Holger Thesleff. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2009. Pp. xviii, 626. ISBN 9781930972292. $68.00.
Reviewed by J. J. Mulhern, University of Pennsylvania

[Contents and their correspondence with original publications are listed at the end of the review. Page numbers cited in square brackets are those of the original publications which the current publisher has included in the margins.]

This collection, which includes three monographs, four articles, and an introduction by the author along with a consolidated bibliography and index, documents the shift in Professor Thesleff's focus away from the chronological emphasis that has provided the dominant pattern in traditional Platonic studies. The second and third monographs already have been reviewed separately in BMCR.¹ Inclusion of the first monograph and the articles in this volume offers new readers a convenient opportunity to appreciate the main lines of Thesleff's overall contribution to Platonic scholarship.

Two cardinal assumptions of Platonic scholarship from the eighteenth century forward have been that the dialogues show the style of a single author, Plato, and that the dialogues can be dated by analysis of features of Plato's style in them. Styles (1967) continues this tradition, referencing the usual points of interest, including hiatus avoidance, rhythm, and period (55 [67-68]). Within what he sees as the overall pedimental character of many dialogues (their tendency to be composed with a central turning point "which is often combined with a culmination of the course of the argument," 28 [34]), Thesleff distinguishes five types of exposition, identified by the letters A through E (elenchus, conversation, reported dialogue, dialogue tending to monologue, and monologue, 29 [35]), and ten classes of style (colloquial, semi-literary conversational, rhetorical, pathetic or affected, intellectual, mythic narrative, historical, ceremonious, legal, and onkos or "impressiveness of style," as Roberts rendered onkos in the Oxford translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric 1407b26, 51 [63]). Thesleff cautions, though, that this classification of styles is "vague" and "only indicates tendencies." He puts these classes of style to use in analyzing the Republic section by section and then in analyzing what he distinguishes here as other authentic works along with the dubia and spuria. In a concluding chapter, Thesleff draws together his observations on the relation of style to structure, offering BABAB (conversation, elenchus, conversation, elenchus, conversation) as the basic structure of the dialogues (131 [159]); and he addresses the place of style in characterizing the speakers where he finds such characterization, especially in the case of Socrates and his interlocutors (133 [161]). At the end, he concludes that Plato "constantly and deliberately changes his style from passage to passage and from work to work (141 [172])." Since this change already has been explained in part by the use of style to characterize the speakers, the sense apparently is that Plato constantly and deliberately changes the style to fit his interlocutors from passage to passage and from work to work, at least where the works have been brought to completion or close to it, that is, where the interlocutors have been characterized fairly fully. (Characterization may be an advanced stage in writing dialogues, coming after the arguments have been selected and the parts, such as questioner and answerer, have been assigned. In dialogues that are least finished, on this view, characterization would be most lacking.)

Chronology (1982) includes a critical section and an hypothetical section. Thesleff begins the critical section by tracing attempts to link dates of composition, stylistic changes, and doctrinal changes that led to the two-part Lutoslawski-Raeder-Ritter thesis, which is that the dialogues reflect development in Plato's thought and that Plato's style and linguistic practice offer independent evidence for the order of composition of the dialogues (150 [4]). Asserting development in Plato's thought is a step beyond assuming that the dialogues can be dated, since dating by itself is compatible with unitarian approaches such as Shorey's (151 [5]). Thesleff then presents a conspectus of 132 chronologies, some partial and some comprehensive, from Tenemann (1792) through Kahn (1981). His next step is to consider six criteria for establishing the Platonic chronology (external, content, literary and technical, linguistic, those associated with revision, and those associated with authenticity). Given these criteria and considerable analysis, Thesleff finds that the Platonic corpus "represents in fact a varying degree of authenticity (242 [94])." The works that he views at this stage as semi-authentic represent a large part of the corpus and derive from Plato, according to Thesleff, but possibly were not "written down by Plato exactly as we have them." In the hypothetical section, he offers yet another chronology of his own, which reflects his view that dialogues were revised and edited over an extended period (381-382 [236-238]).

Thesleff's later program is directed toward identifying "the different situations and contexts in which the [Platonic] texts were originally meant to be presented" (xvi). Thesleff finds ultimately that revision (Plato's and others' reworkings) and cooperative authorship (by Plato and his associates) have contributed to producing a text that provides little basis for the theories about chronological development that have dominated Platonic scholarship.

Two-Level Model (1999) marks a further and decisive step since, as Thesleff here says, "I take it for granted that little or nothing can be said with certainty about the relative and absolute chronology of the 'early,' 'middle,' and 'semi-authentic' dialogues (399 [13-14])." Again, "I am a non-believer in conventional 'developmentalism' (recently associated with G. Vlastos in particular) (413 [28])." Thus "Chronology is not in the focus in this work (503 [121])," though Thesleff continues to maintain that the traditional late dialogues are late. He goes on to argue that different purposes and audiences are "more relevant as explanations of the different approaches and degrees of explicitness than is any alleged line of development of doctrines or methods (503 [122])." A feature of this work is Thesleff's unwillingness to recognize the theory of ideas or forms as central to the dialogues. This unwillingness is supported by his argument that the theory "is nowhere in the dialogues subject to a really thematic or systematic treatment (437 [53])." He nonetheless does propose a reconstruction in which ideas are upper and forms are lower (453 [70]), though both may be viewed as upper with respect to particulars (501 [119]). This model is not the familiar two-world contrast of being and becoming or of forms and sensibles but rather, in Thesleff's mind, Plato's disposition toward approaching everything in terms of relations of higher and lower, "an intuitive pattern only, a crude form for what Plato felt and wanted to say" and "not a set of doctrinal or aesthetic rules (500 [118])."

Thesleff's earlier work in chronology is redeployed as he moves on to consider Plato's purposes and audiences and as his six "criteria for establishing the Platonic chronology" are reflected in a list of eleven issues that suggest the "two-level vision," as Thesleff sometimes calls it. Two-Level Model attempts to reorient Platonic scholarship by putting the reader in Plato's position to see how what the dialogues present might have reflected Plato's own orientation. This approach is quite different from putting oneself in the position of an observer with an interest in theory construction and seeing how the material in the dialogues might be incorporated into a theory of ideas or forms or the world or whatever, which has been the more usual program.

Thesleff's progress suggests that the traditional account of the dialogues calls for considerable modification. Instead of the two-world ontology and the imagined independent author whose development through published works can be traced to construct an intellectual biography which fits with this ontology (a very difficult enterprise, as the scholarship has shown), we have a complex figure who interacts with his students, who shares authorship with them, who revises his works or has his students revise them, who introduces thought experiments, and so on. The dialogues of Plato as we have them appear finally as a communal product, including texts "revised or rewritten in the Academy (xvi)."

The four articles in this collection offer further examples of Thesleff's later approach. The 1990 article "Theaitetos and Theodorus" is an examination of the evidence for Theaetetus's achievement. After making some statements on method, Thesleff turns to the mathematical or Theodorus section of the Theaetetus, 147C-148C; he argues that Theodorus was not trying to prove anything but rather giving directions for drawing an helix of 16 right triangles, beginning with the one whose hypotenuse is radical 2. Thesleff presents a drawing of the helix. In the rest of the article, he takes issue with the tradition about Theaetetus which dates from Eva Sachs in 1914 and which attributes to Theaetetus an important place in the theory of incommensurables and surds and in stereometry, concluding that "the explicitness of his [Theaetetus's] discoveries has been exaggerated by modern interpreters (518 [159])." 730;2. Thesleff presents a drawing of the helix. In the rest of the article, he takes issue with the tradition about Theaetetus which dates from Eva Sachs in 1914 and which attributes to Theaetetus an important place in the theory of incommensurables and surds and in stereometry, concluding that "the explicitness of his [Theaetetus's] discoveries has been exaggerated by modern interpreters (518 [159])."

"The Early Version of Plato's Republic" (1997) attempts to confirm the view that the Republic as we have it was not originally one work . According to Thesleff, Gellius's report that Xenophon was provoked to write the Cyropaedia by reading approximately two books of the Republic suggests that the Republic became available only piece by piece. He then examines the possibility that the Timaeus, the Ecclesiazusae, and other works, were similarly published in installments. As the article unfolds, Thesleff commits himself provisionally to the authenticity of the Seventh Letter (532 [165]). Once having committed himself so far, he slips into saying what "Plato thought," which is notoriously difficult to know, and into identifying the Younger Socrates of the Theaetetus with Plato (534 [168]). These hypotheses seem to go beyond the evidence, as does his use of the term "Ideal City" (536 [170]), for which there is no unequivocal linguistic correlate in the text, as von Fritz and Kapp pointed out almost 60 years ago. Ultimately, he comes to the question of the author's intended audience, which is taken up in the next article, as a decisive point for interpretation.

"Plato and His Public" (2002) suggests that the material that we have as the Platonic dialogues was intended for a small audience. Drawing on his pedimental principle, Thesleff suggests that the same dialogue might serve a narrower and a wider, but still small, audience by concentrating the intellectually most challenging material in the middle of the work. Thesleff's overall position in this paper (and elsewhere, xvi), that the dialogues originally were mostly scripts intended to be read aloud by the author or someone close to him rather than being published in the modern sense (549 [297]), is plausible. Additional evidence is offered in the next paper.

In "A Symptomatic Text Corruption: Plato, Gorgias 448a5" (2003), Thesleff investigates what might follow for our understanding of the dialogues if we received them without character sigla to identify who was speaking. If, as Thesleff suggests, there originally were no character sigla in the dialogue scripts, there is a case to be made that identification must have been taken care of by using narrated dialogue as opposed to dramatic dialogue, since, in a narrated dialogue, the narrator can give the required direction ('I said', 'he said'). Suppose, for example, that the Gorgias "was originally a narrated dialogue, later revised and expanded and rewritten in dramatic form" (552 [252]). When it was converted into dramatic form (inserting sigla), there might well have been a question about attribution, and Thesleff suggests that there was a question at 448a5, where the line is given traditionally to Gorgias, which Thesleff thinks poses difficulties which are removed by giving this line to Socrates (554 [255]). Thesleff concludes that the suggested misattribution of Gorgias 448a5 is symptomatic of "the slide in Plato's dialogue technique from narrative [reported] to dramatic form; the preference for oral presentation in Plato's environment; and Plato's deliberate withdrawal from publicity" (556 [257]). The slide, the preference, and the withdrawal all are plausible features of Platonic behavior and might well be exemplified at 448a5.

Over many years, as this collection shows, Thesleff explored chronology as a source of enlightenment for readers of the dialogues. His catalogue of 132 chronologies perhaps was the turning point. Where so many scholars derive different results from the same evidence, which they all acknowledge, there must be some complicating factor at work, perhaps some mistaken common assumption or set of assumptions. Thesleff in fact has proposed a set of such assumptions. These include the assumption that a single author gave us our present text and that the text was published once for all. Further, Plato never speaks in his own voice in the dialogues, and the language they contain belongs to different people from different parts of the Greek world who have been educated differently and who have different purposes in speaking at different dramatic dates, and so on. To the extent that Plato the author and, as Thesleff thinks, his authorial and editorial coterie carried off their effort well, the stylometric project in the main collapses, since there is no single author's style to trace, and with it go the traditional Platonic chronologies so far as they are based on stylometry. Thesleff could make this point even more forcefully than he does.

Had Thesleff's work been more widely known when it first appeared, it might have done more to redirect Plato interpretation in the later decades of the twentieth century, which still was preoccupied with chronology. The preoccupation with Platonic chronology may be seen even today. Thus some readers may find this collection unsettling because it challenges assumptions of the traditional mainstream of Platonic scholarship. It suggests that, while there is a Plato out there, he is accessible not as he often has been thought to be, as a developing celebrity, but rather as a somewhat reticent teacher who deliberately only partly controls the enterprise in which he is engaged, an enterprise in which others participate as well. Those who continue to advocate the traditional developmental approach will be challenged as they try to come to grips with Thesleff.

Contents:

Introduction

Studies in the Styles of Plato (Acta Philosophica Fennica 20). Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica, 1967.

Studies in Platonic Chronology (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 70). Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1982.

Studies in Plato's Two-Level Model (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 113). Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1999.

"Theaitetos and Theodoros," ARCTOS, Acta Philosophica Fennica xxiv (1990), 147-159.

"The Early Version of Plato's Republic," ARCTOS, Acta Philosophica Fennica xxxi (1997), 149-174.

"Plato and His Public," 289-301 in Noctes Atticae: Studies Presented to Jergen Meyer on his Sixtieth Birthday, March 18, 2002, Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen (2002) .

"A Symptomatic Text Corruption: Plato, Gorgias 448a5," ARCTOS, Acta Philosophica Fennica xxxvii (2003), 251-257.

Bibliography

Index

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Notes:

1.   Studies in Platonic Chronology Helsink, 1982). BMCR 1992.03.04.17; Studies in Plato's Two-Level Model (Helsinki, 1999). BMCR 2000.08.22.

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