Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Paolo d'Alessandro, Varrone e la tradizione metrica antica. Spudasmata, Bd. 143. Hildesheim; Zürich; New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2012. Pp. 299. ISBN 9783487147901. €49.80 (pb).

Reviewed by David Butterfield, Queens' College, University of Cambridge (djb89@cam.ac.uk)

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[The Table of contents is listed below.]

How did the greatest intellectual of the Roman world conceive of Latin and Greek metre? For such a πολυγραφώτατος scholar, whose magpie-minded researches ranged across almost the entire terrain of Universal Knowledge, the form in which ancient and contemporary poetic literature stood could only have been a subject of the utmost interest. And yet, despite the numerous works of Varro Reatinus (116-27 B.C.) on poems and poetry, on dramatic form, on literary history and authorial authenticity, and on the Latin language, d'Alessandro can politely remind us that '[n]on esiste alcuna prova – e non sarebbe verisimile – che Varrone abbia pubblicato un trattato di metrica' (§88, p.262). For all of the innumerabiles libri issuing from his historical, antiquarian and literary-critical exertions, there is no sign that he ever produced a didactic manual on metrics, such as would bear comparison with any extant Greco-Roman treatise on the subject: Varro, being no Orbilius or Gradgrind, fails to appear in Suetonius' De grammaticis, save for his libellous cameo as Palaemon's pig (23.4). As a result, with no metre-specific work being known, and with no detailed account of metre being found in any extant work, Varro's metrical doctrines can be reconstructed only by the most laborious and yet most tentative processes.

The vast resources of Keil's Grammatici Latini do not inspire the prospective researcher with confidence. These grammarians rarely cite Varro on matters pertaining to metre, and in the sixth volume (Scriptores Artis Metricae, 1874) his presence amidst such tracts, which often suffer from internal inconsistency, confound various strata from diverse sources and report authors at third hand (or worse), is disconcertingly uncommon: the paraphrase of a Menippean verse in Caesius Bassus' De metris, two brief Varronian definitions in Aphthonius' Ars grammatica, two passing mentions in Terentianus Maurus' De syllabis, and three puzzlingly arranged citations from Varro's De lingua Latina ad Marcellum in Rufinus' Commentaria in metra Terentiana. The broader scope of Funaioli's Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta (1907) supplies a little more colour, particularly via Gellius and Augustine, but the relevant pickings remain decidedly slim. Since such testimonia provide unequivocal evidence of Varro's intense interest, and influence, in the subject of Greco-Roman metre, the debate lies wide open as to what his contributions to the field were and in which work(s) they were made. Faced with such bewildering opacity, the scholar of ancient metre will welcome d'Alessandro's book with both relief and delight: it is the most important contribution to the study of Varronian metre of the 150 years in which the subject has been tackled in any earnest.

In 1889 Friedrich Leo, building upon the pioneering observations of Rudolph Westphal, crystallised in print the bifurcation of metrical theory that emerged in the Hellenistic period, between so-called metra deriuata, and μέτρα πρωτότυπα;¹ one hundred years later Jürgen Leonhardt reworked Leo's contentions, arguing that the latter theory was a subsequent development from the former.² The system of μέτρα πρωτότυπα (originating from the school of Alexandria and represented by, inter alios, Philoxenus, Heliodorus and Hephaestion in Greek, and Juba, Plotius Sacerdos and Apthonius in Latin) supposed that a fixed number (28) of fundamental feet underlie all metrical forms, which can be classified by their basic units, or χρόνοι, and can, within certain parameters, be repeated, united and modified through catalexis and analogous processes. By contrast, the system of metra deriuata (originating from the school of Pergamon but first attested among Latin authors, particularly Caesius Bassus and Terentianus Maurus) posited that all metrical forms, whether whole verses or cola, ultimately derive from the dactylic hexameter or the iambic trimeter – the two metra principalia – by various processes of addition and subtraction (adiectio, detractio), compilation and alteration (concinnatio, permutatio).

D'Alessandro's learned and lucid monograph shows conclusively how Varro's own adherence to the derivationist school pointed the way for Roman metricians.[[3] He does not overstep the mark of factual objectivity, carefully grounding his arguments at all stages in written testimony and readily highlighting all cases where aporia is safer than doxasma. The text contains throughout long extracts of Greek and Latin metricians, both in the main text and in footnotes, in which significant points of philological and/or textual interest are given due focus. Ample citations of secondary literature, particularly of Hellfried Dahlman and Francesco Della Corte, intersperse the work; given how little Anglophone scholars have brought to this particular table, English is understandably rare.

Chapter 1 ('Varrone e i due sistemi metrici dell'antichità') sets out the ancient context of the two metrical schools, as well as weighing up theories about their chronology and interrelationship. D'Alessandro sets himself apart from a number of scholars, especially Leonhardt, in treating the two schools as enduring in tandem throughout antiquity, and suggesting that Varro's own metrical doctrines importantly foreshadowed developments and refinements of the Augustan age and beyond. For the rest of the book d'Alessandro attempts a clarification and, insofar as is possible, a reconstruction of Varro's metrical theories through the various lenses that subsequent testimonia present.

Chapter 2 ('Cesio Basso, l'endecasillabo falecio e il verso saturnino') focuses upon two particular verse forms, the Phalaecian hendecasyllable and the Saturnian. Twentieth-century scholars placed great weight upon a curious reference by the Neronian metrician Caesius Bassus (recently edited by Giuseppe Morelli, who first prompted d'Alessandro to work on Varro's metrical fragments) to the Cynodidascalus (s.u.l.), in which Varro phalaecion metron ionicum trimetrum appellat (GLK VI 261,18-19); interpretation of this curious remark has been complicated by both the textual uncertainty of Bassus' subsequent assertion quidam ionicum minorem (which suggests an alternative view, but the conjectured et quidem [Westphal] would introduce a further Varronian specificity) and the evidence of the beguiling metrician Terentianus Maurus (2845-8, 2882-4). D'Alessandro shows that Bassus' comment can scarcely be taken as evidence of anything other than a passing Varronian labelling (a protracted metrical survey hardly suiting the satirical context); furthermore, he demonstrates that Terentianus drew only upon Bassus and therefore cannot serve as an independent witness. In the case of the Saturnian, despite Varro's direct treatment of Fauni and their Saturnii in his De lingua Latina (VII.36), prompted in part by Ennius' famous claim (Ann. 207 Sk.), d'Alessandro argues convincingly that he could not have advanced in any location a clear theory of the form and origins of the Saturnian, owing to his acceptance of its native Italian origin, thus rendering a derivationist analysis impossible.

Chapter 3 ('Gellio e i Disciplinarum libri') investigates Varro's treatment of metre in the Disciplinarum libri. Gellius provides the most significant evidence that metrical issues were broached in this polymathic work, although certainty about where such a treatment occurred, and in what detail, is unattainable. The available evidence suggests either a geometric or a musical context: d'Alessandro argues that there is much more reason to associate Varro's metrical doctrines with the sphere of geometry than of music (reconstructed with particular help from Augustine's De musica). He points especially to the division of the hexameter by its regular penthemimeral caesura: d'Alessandro advances the interesting case that Varro rationalised the resultant inequality of 5 and 7 elements in each half by dividing 7 into 4 and 3, such that 5² = 4² + 3². Although such material may indeed be more germane to a book on geometry, d'Alessandro prudently acknowledges that the precise location and extent of the metrical discussion in the Disciplinarum libri is ultimately unknowable.

Chapter 4 ('Rufino e il De sermone latino') moves to the third and final source that points to Varro's treatment of metre, Rufinus of Antioch (s.V), whose Commentaria d'Alessandro edited in 2004. Drawing upon the famous claim of the so-called Anecdoton Parisinum (Paris BN lat. 7530, f.28^r, s.VIII^4/4) about the use of critical signs, and Varro's use of the term clausulae in De sermone Latino to refer to metrical cola in the context of early scenic drama (GLK VI 556,7-13), it is shown that Varro did engage with elements of lyric verse in this largely linguistic work. D'Alessandro chooses to correct Rufinus' reference to the seventh book of a work de lingua Latina ad Marcellum, since Marcellus and such cited material are absent from the extant seventh book of Varro's De lingua Latina; the testimony of Gellius (XII.6.3, 10.4; notwithstanding XVIII.12.8), who records that De sermone Latino was dedicated to Marcellus, suggests that the work's name suffered banalisation in Rufinus, his transmission or his source. Omelettes require broken eggs, and Jerome's record of five books for De sermone Latino must therefore be chalked up as an error for seven or more. In considering the likely range of De sermone Latino, d'Alessandro argues that as part of his survey of Latinitas Varro must have incorporated reflections on metrical practice and propriety, at least with a view to early scenic poetry. Rufinus' citations from the pell-mell of Varro, Charisius and Diomedes appear to prove Varro's belief that the iambic septenarius derived from the senarius (as befits a derivationist), that breuis in longo stood in the eighth element of the septenarius, and that / (the nota transuersa) should be deployed to signify elementa indifferentia (particularly at verse end). Furthermore, d'Alessandro plausibly suggests that both semipes and sesquipes were Varronian technical terms, as well as comicus and tragicus quadratus.

Chapter 5 ('Diomede e i metra archilochia') opens with a repetition of the same extracts of Varro, Charisius and Diomedes on iambic senarii and septenarii. Building upon this case, d'Alessandro mines Diomedes' discussions for other Varronian deriuationes to which the scholar's name is not explicitly attached: analogously to Archilochus' alleged creation of the trochaic tetrameter by adding a cretic to the beginning of an iambic trimeter (so Terentianus and Aphthonius), Varro derived the octonarius from the trimeter by adiectio of two iambic feet at the beginning; by contrast, the iambic catalectic dimeter emerges from the iambic trimeter by detractio (see p.197 for a complete list). Although examples are cited from Virgil and Horace amidst Diomedes' account of [Varro] on metra archilochia, d'Alessandro supposes that the original discussion could stem from De sermone Latino after the deriuatio of the septenarius (for which later metricians offered Augustan examples). The chapter closes with a discussion of the possible location of Varro's metrical fragments in the work: d'Alessandro follows Ritschl in assigning them to Book 7, rather than 4 (Wilmanns), various sedes incertae (Funaioli), or to an entirely different treatise (Dahlmann).

Chapter 6 ('Aftonio, Diomede e i Fragmenta incertae sedis') treats various definitions of rhythm and verse, including Varro's own cited by Aphthonius (GLK VI 55,11-12, published under the name of Aphthonius' textual bedfellow Marius Victorinus). After a detailed discussion, d'Alessandro makes the probable suggestion that Varro regarded division into commata as a prerequisite of verse. Despite Varro's being cited only once by Aphthonius, careful analysis is offered of a number of other possible fragments, although judgment is suspended as to how Varronian they may actually be.

The conclusion ('Le opere e la teoria', 263-91), plainly written and finely cross-referenced, is the part of the book that best repays quick consultation for those who seek a swift summary of the status quaestionis of Varrone metricista. The book closes with two brief indexes of concepts and technical terms (Italian, Latin, Greek), and of passages discussed.

Although much of the book is of an unavoidably technical nature, and is often aimed for the cognoscenti (the frontispiece portrait of Varro on page 5 from Thévet's Vrais Pourtraits is not even identified ), d'Alessandro's argumentation is clear and well-paced; the numeration of sections across chapters (up to §99) makes for easy consultation and reference in future. Typographical errors are very rare (e.g., 129 'Varrous'[for 'Varro'], 165 n.65 Accademica, 237 incertae operis) and the typefaces admirable. That is all well and good, for this is scholarship that will endure.

Table of Contents

Introduction and list of abbreviations: 7-23.
1: 'Varrone e i due sistemi metrici dell'antichità', 25-51.
2: 'Cesio Basso, l'endecasillabo falecio e il verso saturnino', 53-99.
3: 'Gellio e i Disciplinarum libri', 101-46.
4: 'Rufino e il De sermone latino', 147-82.
5: 'Diomede e i metra archilochia', 183-220.
6: 'Aftonio, Diomede e i Fragmenta incertae sedis', 221-62.
Conclusione, Le opere e la teoria: 263-91.
Indexes: 293-9.

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Notes:

1.   F. Leo, 'Die beiden metrischen Systeme des Altertums', Hermes 24 (1889) 289-301.
2.   J. Leonhart, 'Die beiden metrischen Systeme des Altertums', Hermes 117 (1989) 43-62.
3.   A number of the contentions offered in the book had been touched upon in his earlier article, 'Di manuale in manuale: un'interpretazione metrica varroniana da Cesio Basso a Rufino', in M. Silvano Celentano (ed.), Ars/techne: il manuale tecnico nelle civiltà greca e romana (Alexandria, 2003) 115-25.

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Jean MacIntosh Turfa, Divining the Etruscan World: the Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. xiii, 408; 8 p. of figures. ISBN 9781107009073. $99.00.

Reviewed by Alex Nice, Université Libre de Bruxelles (alexnice@ulb.ac.be)

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During the first century BC Cicero's contemporary, the intellectual and sometime praetor, Nigidius Figulus, transcribed a brontoscopic calendar attributed to the legendary Etruscan prophet Tages.¹ The text of the calendar owes its survival to its later transmission and translation into Greek by the Byzantine antiquarian John Lydus (de Ost. 27-38). The calendar is remarkable among Etrusco-Roman divination documents for its completeness. It covers a full 12-month lunar cycle of 30 days beginning in June. Each entry consists of the date followed by a protasis (ἐὰν or εἰ βροντήσῃ) and apodosis returning the meaning of thunder on that day. In this attractively presented volume Jean Macintosh Turfa sets out to contextualise, translate, and analyse the calendar.

The opening chapters: 'The Brontoscopic Calendar and its Transmission' (pp. 3-18); 'Etruscan Religion in the Classical World' (pp. 19-36); and 'An Ominous Time: Thunder, Lightning, Weather, and Divination' (pp. 37-69), establish the historical, social, and cultural contexts for the calendar. The text and translation of the calendar (pp. 71-101) is followed by a general analysis of the calendar's format, contents, and style (pp. 105-135) and three thematic analyses: the weather, fauna, agriculture, animals, and pests (pp. 136-163); health and disease (pp. 164-203); society (women, slaves, rulers) (pp. 204-237). The final chapters consider the calendar's Mesopotamian influences and Near Eastern predecessors (pp. 241-277); its relationship to other brontoscopia in the Classical tradition (pp. 278-303); and a conclusion which assesses Lydus' brontoscopia and its heritage (pp. 304-313). Three appendices offer English translations of the relevant textual material (Appendix A: Texts Relating to the Study of Etruscan Religion [pp. 315-325]; Appendix B: Sample Mesopotamian Documents and Additional Data [pp. 326-338]; Appendix C: Other Brontoscopia in the Classical Tradition: Sample Texts with English Translation [pp. 339-349]).

Turfa's essential conclusions are:

• Nigidius Figulus and Lydus have preserved untampered an authentic and unique Etruscan document (pp. 19-36).

• Diplomatic and trading links between the Near East and Etruria facilitated the transmission of divination literature from East to West. She speculates that this might have been possible via 'a single Assyrian or Levantine diplomat-translator or priest' (p. 4).

• This transmission occurred as early as the 9th to 8th centuries to coincide with the growth of the Etruscan city states in this period. The calendar may have been committed to writing c. 680 BC (p. 43).

• It is not necessary to suppose a large coterie of experts in its creation or multiple sites and parallel evolutionary patterns (p. 308). The brontoscopion may have been crafted by the creative genius of a single anonymous Etruscan priest or scholar (p. 308, 313).

• The text was adapted for the climatic and societal conditions of 9thto 8th century Etruria. There is nothing to suggest that this calendar was derived from a later Hellenistic (Ptolemaic or Seleucid) version of the Mesopotamian divination texts (p. 312).

• The text of the calendar, when compared with the available archaeological evidence, and Etruscan, Roman and Greek sources, reflects the concerns of the founders of the Etruscan cities of the Late Villanovan period who often turned to the Near East to borrow symbols and solutions for their growing urban society rather than the social unrest associated with the 4th or even 1st centuries BC (p. 312-313).

• The tradition conveyed by the Etruscan brontoscopic calendar may have exerted a greater influence on Roman and Western society than previously acknowledged (p. 312).

In coming to these conclusions, Turfa musters an imposing array of data. Her approach combines modern science (the science of thunder and lightning pp. 37-39; evidence for health and disease – malnutrition, anemia, enteric diseases, parasitic infections, tuberculosis, skin lesions, cutaneous anthrax, smallpox, typhus, chicken pox, the plague, brucellosis, polio or typhoid, malaria, zoonoses [pp.184-200]) with environmental archaeology (the climatic history [pp. 37-43] and the agriculture, diet, crops, and animals of Iron Age Italy [pp. 139 ff.]). This information is supplemented with profiles of specific archaeological sites (the Riserva del Ferrone necropolis [p. 141], Verucchio, Nola-Croce del Papa; Poggiomarino; Sorgenti della Nova [pp. 155-9]). A variety of sites including San Paolo Belsito, Sant'Abbondio, Pithekoussai, Chiusi, and Pontecagnano [pp. 174-180] offer clues to the quality of health and impact of disease; social status and class is elucidated with reference to the sites at Terremare, Palafitte [pp. 206-8], and Tarquinia Pian di Civita [pp. 231-2]).

No less impressive is the range of literary sources deployed. The Calendar's debt and its dissimilarities to Mesopotamia divination texts is ably demonstrated with reference to the Enūma Anu Enlil omen series, the Mul.Apin astronomical text: the Šumma Ālu Ina Mēlȇ Šakin, the Summa Izbu teratological omen series and other relevant texts (pp. 241-77 and Appendix B). The priestly traditions and scholarly exegesis associated with these texts and the tractability of the divination literature allows Turfa to posit that the intellectual ideas from which the Calendar sprung could be easily transmitted beyond the borders of Mesopotamia to Etruria just as easily as the material goods, technology, and regalia which reflected Etruria's Near Eastern ties. Close reference to authors contemporary with Nigidius Figulus: Aulus Caecina, Tarquitius Priscus, Fonteius Capito, Claudius (Clodius?) Tuscus, Cornelius Labeo (pp. 278-92 with Appendix A) and later Classical and Byzantine texts (pp. 292-303) demonstrates how far Figulus' brontoscopion is from adopting a Roman calendrical format or having an astrological and zodiacal inclination, lending weight to its uniqueness and claim to be a genuine Etruscan religious text.

There are occasional frustrations. Although each chapter is subdivided into manageable sound bites (rarely more than a page or two in length) marked by sub-headings, the connections between these sections are not always made explicit, leading at times to a rather fragmented reading experience. A closer look at the Greek and Roman literary sources would have allowed Turfa to strengthen her arguments vis à vis the transmission of knowledge from East to West. Burkert explored the eastern contexts of Greek culture and argued that the Sibyl of Delphi (hence, also, the Sibyl of Cumae) had much in common with the 'raving women' of Babylon and Assyria.² The interconnected stories of Calchas (a presence in Etruscan divination), Amphiaraus and Mopsus offer another East to West association.³ There was also a Roman tradition for the transmission of augury from Persia to Italy via Cybele's favourite silenus, the Phrygian Marsyas, and his envoy Megales. He taught it to the Sabines and that knowledge was passed on to King Numa. ⁴ Furthermore, in his Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, Varro suggested that hydromantia and necromantia were brought to Rome by the Persians, and that hydromantia, taught to Numa by Egeria, was how Numa learnt the secrets contained in the pontifical books.⁵

Lack of nuance sometimes affects Turfa's understanding of the Roman sources. Romulus is 'historical' (p. 233) and the stories surrounding his reign are regarded as 'evidence' for divination in the 8th century BC. Lucan's Pharsalia, cited for the 'mystique of Etruscan divination', sits uneasily beside the "prophecies of Marcius" preserved by Livy (p. 26- 7). Here Turfa fails to recognise fully the significance of the gens Marcia in Rome's religious history. Its members included pontiffs, augurs, and a rex sacrorum—pace Klingshirn—it seems unlikely that Marcius the prophet was a 'shadowy' figure from Rome's past. At all events the tradition is confused, for Cicero says that there were two Marcian vates.⁶ The possibility that "the production of prophetic texts was actively pursued" in Rome during the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC could have been elucidated with the help of relevant bibliography. ⁷ A more careful reading of Cicero the New Academician, with the appropriate bibliography, would have avoided statements such as his 'scathing criticism' (p. 8) or his 'scorn' (p. 31) of divination. The search for a definitive authorial voice emerging from the De Divinatione and the extent to which Marcus Cicero's philosophical position in the dialogue is compatible with his political position has vexed modern scholars.⁸

On the whole this volume remains free of factual and typographical error. However, the table on p. 168-9 is unfortunate. Obsequens 1 is given as the year 738. As Turfa remarks on p. 35, n. 63, the text of the liber prodigiorum begins in the year 190. All succeeding references to Obsequens in this table are, therefore, inaccurate. It seems as though there has been confusion and conflation with Lycosthenes 1552 edition of Obsequens which traced Roman prodigies ab urbe condita.

Ultimately, the conclusions regarding the transmission and reception of Near Eastern divination literature in Etruria and Italy or for the dating of this significant document must remain speculative until firmer evidence has been uncovered. Nonetheless this book is an important contribution to our understanding of divination literature in the Etrusco-Roman world. As an academic exercise it is instructive in its use of evidence from a wide variety of disciplines: modern science, environmental archaeology, geography, medicine, literary analysis. The English translation of Lydus' text is long overdue and hopefully it will encourage other scholars to undertake a wholehearted translation and commentary of De Ostentis. However, Turfa's major contribution is that she reveals the Brontoscopic Calendar to be a treasure trove of information regarding the religion, culture and society of early Etruria.

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Notes:

1.   P. Swoboda, (ed.) (1964) P. Nigidii Figuli Opera, Amsterdam fr. 83, pp. 93-106.
2.   W. Burkert (1982) in R. Hägg (ed.) The Greek Renaissance of the 8^th Century B.C., 115-19; (1992) The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Cambridge, Mass.; (2004) Babylon. Memphis. Persepolis. Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture. Cambridge, Mass.
3.   R. Stoneman (2011). The Ancient Oracles. Making the Gods Speak, New Haven and London, 77-80.
4.   Sil. Ital. Pun. 8.502-504 for the arrival of Marsyas in Italy; Cn. Gellius apud Pliny, NH 3.12 for Megales imparting augury to the Sabines. In general on Marsyas, his role in augury, and his significance at Rome, see J. P. Small (1982) Cacus and Marsyas in Etrusco-Roman Legend. Princeton; M. Torelli (1982) Typology and Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs . Ann Arbor, 99-106; F. Coarelli (1992), Il Foro Romano,. 2 vols. Rome, 91-123; P. Schertz 2005 Seer or Victim? The Figure of Marsyas in Roman Art, Religion, and Politics. Unpublished Ph.D. USC; Los Angeles. .
5.   B. Cardauns (1976) Varro Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum. 2 vols. Mainz, 36 = Varro, 1 app. iv.
6.   For the importance of the Marcii see J. P. Small (1982) Cacus and Marsyas in Etrusco-Roman Legend. Princeton; M. Torelli (1982) Typology and Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs . Ann Arbor, 99-106; D. Wardle (2006) Cicero on Divination. De Divinatione Book 1 Oxford, 320. On the tradition of two Marcian prophets (Publius and …) see Cicero De Div. 1.89; 2.113 cf. Serv. Aen. 6.70, 72, Symm. Ep.4.34.3.
7.   Notably J. North (2000) 'Prophet and text in the third century BC' in E. Bispham and C. Smith (eds.) Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy, Edinburgh, 92-107.
8.   On this question see J. Linderski (1982) 'Cicero and Roman divination' La Parola del Passato 37, 12-38 and A. Momigliano (1984) (1984) 'The theological efforts of the Roman upper classes in the first century B.C.' CPh 79, 199-211 M. Beard (1986) 'Cicero and divination: the formation of a Latin discourse' JRS 76, 33-46; M. Schofield (1986) 'Cicero for and against divination' JRS 76, 46-65; D. Wardle (2006) Cicero on Divination. De Divinatione Book 1 Oxford, 10-14.

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Nikos Giannakopoulos, Θεσμοί και λειτουργία των πόλεων της Εύβοιας: κατά τους ελληνιστικούς και τους αυτοκρατορικούς χρόνους. Πηγές και Μελέτες Ιστορίας Ελληνικού και Ρωμαϊκού Δικαίου, 7. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2012. Pp. xviii, 430. ISBN 9789601220772. €27.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Paraskevi Martzavou, Oxford University (Paraskevi.martzavou@ccc.ox.ac.uk)

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The volume under review is a study of the four cities of Euboia (Histiaia, Karystos, Chalcis and Eretria), during the Hellenistic period and the Roman empire. It appears as the seventh in the series "Sources and studies in the history of Greek and Roman Law" directed by Georgios Nakos. Hence the emphasis on written sources, notably inscriptions and papyri. The book includes a short introduction, eight chapters dedicated to the institutions of the Euboian cities—each city receiving one for the Hellenistic and one for the Roman period—, a conclusion, an 18-page summary in English, an annex with 21 inscriptions and a series of indices (index locorum, geographical names, divinities and heroes, persons, and a rather short thematic index). The lack of maps is sorely felt in this careful and rigorous study.

In the context of the recent revival in the exploration of the historiography, the history and the nature of the postclassical Greek polis as a complex institution,¹ this volume acquires a particularly topical value. Giannakopoulos manages to bring forward the particularities of each one of the four Euboian cities and to analyse its specific features. Each city offers a particularly interesting case-study, and hence an addition to the great variety that characterized the Greek cities in the Hellenistic and Imperial times. However, the four major cities of Euboia present enough common features to justify their integration in a coherent ensemble, with a regional, Euboian, character. The double geographical character of Euboia, its insularity and at the same time its peninsularity, excludes the island from its full integration into geographically neighbouring Central Greece or into the geographical entity of the Aegean island. But geographical, economic and religious features contributed to integrate the cities of Euboia into broader commercial, religious and political networks, which reflect and shape the dynamic relationship between local elements and broader geographical and political systems. Throughout this volume, the four Euboian cities can be positioned, individually and as an ensemble, in different perspectives as part of networks, within the larger context of the world of the Hellenistic kingdoms and of the Roman empire.

The book starts out with a brief but dense general introduction (p. 1-13), offering a general historical framework of the period between roughly the late fourth century BCE and the early third century CE. This summary of political event- driven history provides the chronological background for the study of the institutions and helps to make even clearer² the significant difference between political history (narrative which focuses on the succession of political regimes or the development of "events") and history of the institutions (the study of, and a reflection on, institutions as established systems of action). The book is structured to move from less well known material (the cities of Histiaia and Karystos) towards more well-studied areas, notably evidence concerning the great cities of Chalcis and Eretria. The fact that each of the Euboian cities is granted two chapters, one for the Hellenistic and one for the Roman imperial period respectively, helps us to perceive the continuities between the Hellenistic and the Roman periods, more often than not seen as discontinuous.

The first and second chapters focus on the city of Histiaia, situated in the northern part of the island. The dynamics of the relationship between the Boule and the Assembly of the people, the magistrates (eponymous archons, treasurers, strategoi, astynomoi, hierothytes, sitones), the composition of the population, with an emphasis on the new and active elements such as the freedmen and the Romans, are analysed for the Hellenistic period. A special discussion is dedicated to the public contribution (epidosis), related to the restoration of the temple and of the statue of Artemis Proseoa, where a statistical analysis combined with critical remarks on the geo-political context and the sociopolitical local profile gives interesting results. For the Imperial period, the same theme is revisited and the function and role of the Boule and the Assembly of the people is reassessed; the emphasis is on the activity of the local notables and on honorific practices. The members of the civic elite in Roman Imperial period constitute a notable category, characterized by a complex social profile and a common educational and cultural background, combined with a common lifestyle privileging luxury and leisure. The resort town of Aidepsos, closely related to Histiaia, exemplifies this lifestyle. It is not accidental, of course, that Aidepsos serves as a backdrop for some of the Sympotic Questions by Plutarch, constituting thus one of the ideal settings of the Second Sophistic. Local institutions appear under pressure from local elite but it is also obvious that they represent a necessary source of prestige and, probably, a real source of authority and power, since their ratification by these institutions was necessary for the actions of the local members of the elite. Relations with the emperor, of one institutional official form or another, are very well represented in the epigraphical and material landscape of Histiaia. The existence of a logistes, as an intermediary between intervention from above (notably the emperor) and the competition between members of the local elite, suggests the form of negotiations between local and trans-local pressures. Control of the magistrates, attested already in the Hellenistic period, is a usage that seems to continue well into the imperial period.

The third and fourth chapters are dedicated to Hellenistic and Roman Karystos, the harbour city of southern Euboia, with its famous quarries. As with Histiaia, the same emphasis is given here to the study to the function of the Boule and the Assembly of the people, to magistrates and to the activities of various families of notables and benefactors. One of the highlights of the book is the long development on a source that has not received so far the attention it notably deserves, the palimpsest De eligendis magistratibus by Theophrastos. Giannakopoulos in his exploration of the nature of the constitution of Karystos in the Hellenistic period discusses the voting procedures concerning the constituent elements of the institution of strategoi and, moreover, the importance of that information for our understanding of the tensions in the political and, in general, public life in Karystos. Specifically, the discussion on the voting procedures and the composition of the body of strategoi betrays an effort by the political community to secure the appropriate training and education of the highest military officers of the city; whoever undertook the office of strategos for the first time had the obligation to serve under a more experienced strategos and there was even a fixed proportion between new and old strategoi (40%/60%). The determination to maintain a fixed relation between experienced and non-experienced strategoi reflects the more general debate on the relationship of generations in the political arena. Giannakopoulos further examines the functions of a limenophylax and of a sitones, both characteristic institutions of the Hellenistic times and operating in the shared environment of the harbor of Geraistos. For imperial Karystos, the Boule and the Assembly continue to function, at least till the reign of Hadrian. The functions of strategos, sitones, elaiones, agoranomos are analysed for this period too. The phenomenon of euergetism, in relation to the emergence of big families as networks, is discussed on the basis of painstaking prosopographical work and sociological analysis. One of the particularities of southern Euboia in imperial times is the important development of a system for the extraction and trade of the local green marble of the region of Karystos; the realities related with this activity are discussed in relation to Dio Chrysostom (Or. 7). The tension between Dio's rhetorically coloured account and a possible narrative of selective prosperity, based on the archaeology, is gestured at by Giannakopoulos; the theme deserves further exploration.

The fifth and sixth chapters are dedicated to Chalcis, where again a number of recurrent themes are discussed and revisited throughout the Hellenistic and Imperial times, notably the institutions of the Boule and the Assembly of the people. Interestingly, in imperial times, a synedrion appears in the place previously occupied by the Boule. The public life of Chalcis in the late Hellenistic period seems characterized by tension and competition between different political groups. Giannakopoulos devotes particular care to the analysis of judicial institutions. As in the case of the two previous cities, the phenomenon of euergetism is studied within the local context and its institutional aspects, especially in relation to the presence of the families of the local civic elite. Of special interest is the section dedicated to the gymnasion, full of interesting details and very well contextualized.

The seventh and eighth chapters are dedicated to Eretria, where (unsurprisingly) the institutions of the Boule and the Assembly of the people are examined in detail. Giannakopoulos devotes particular attention to the institutional procedures of decree enactment, but also to local political competitions, the latter on the basis of the information provided by the life of the philosopher Menedemos, known from Diogenes Laertius. The system of civic honours is precisely evaluated, as are judicial institutions, the gymnasion and the ephebate. Though the epigraphical sources falter during the imperial period, it seems that civic life continued, since the workings of the gymnasion are attested. The imperial cult was clearly present; dekaprotoi appear in the Roman Imperial period; their relationship with the probouloi of the Hellenistic period is not clear however.

Judicial institutions, throughout this book, are examined in relation to social changes, especially concerning the relations of foreigners with justice. In all of these contexts, the vigour of civic institutions is a constant theme: it is the local institutions that, throughout the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods, provide the structures for the functioning of the local societies. This study clearly shows that institutions are not a block of century-old systems but dynamic structures that evolve and adapt to changes, sometimes during very brief periods of time and within particular circumstances. They are negotiated at the level of the local community, they serve as mechanisms of integration of new societal forces, and are established forms of authority and power that regenerate authority and help with the negotiations with sources of power from above and from abroad.

Giannakopoulos offers a new and absorbing regional case-study. But further, this book renews the range of themes for the study of ancient political philosophy, and its importance cannot be overstated. The themes that are treated present an impressive variety and it is a pity that the rather short general index does not fully do justice to the thematic richness of the volume. The volume offers a regional model, and also gives us a glimpse of a dynamic: the north and south part of the island, with the spa town of Aidepsos, a place of leisure and pleasure, in the north, and the quarries of Karystos, in the south, offering material for a study between northern and southern dynamics. Giannakopoulos offers a regional study which facilitates enormously the integration of Euboia within a general larger and wider picture of the Hellenistic and Roman world. The field now lies wide open.

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Notes:

1.   See recently P. Fröhlich, Chr. Müller (ed.), Citoyenneté et participation à la basse époque hellénistique Genève, 2005, see BMCR 2006.10.06; Albrecht Matthaei, Martin Zimmermann (ed.), Stadtbilder im Hellenismus. Die hellenistische Polis als Lebensform Bd.1.Berlin, 2008, see BMCR 2010.02.30; Onno van Nijf, Richard Alston, Political culture in the Greek city after the Classical Age, Leuven, 2011, see BMCR 2010.02.30; D. Rousset (ed.), Philippe Gauthier, Études d'histoire et d'institutions grecques: choix d'écrits, Genève 2011, see BMCR 2012.09.31.
2.   This point is brought out by Gauthier. See D. Rousset, op.cit., p. 32-33.

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Luc Brisson (ed.), Platon. Oeuvres completes (nouvelle édition revue; first published 2008). Paris: Éditions Flammarion, 2011. Pp. xxi, 2198. ISBN 9782081249370. €39.00 (pb).

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

Version at BMCR home site

This 2011 edition of the French translation of Plato's works published under the general editorship of Luc Brisson exhibits few alterations compared to the 2008 edition. Since the first edition was not reviewed for BMCR, I will provide a succinct description of the work and then make some observations on the alterations to be found in the second edition. ¹

Both editions handily gather together all forty-five works ascribed to Plato, be they genuine, spurious, or dubious. Flammarion had published separately the twenty-nine dialogues of Plato which are usually considered genuine, and also all the letters, between 1987 and 2006: these translations were compiled for this book, with the addition of sixteen spurious and dubious works. All translations are preceded by short introductions and receive a very modest number of narrowly-focused notes. Since the chronology of Plato's works is a matter of some disagreement, Brisson arranges them in alphabetical order, instead of chronologically or according to the Stephanus pagination.

In its thirteen pages, the general introduction briefly surveys Plato's life and writings, modern editions of his work, the apocryphal and dubious dialogues, the chronology of his works and the doctrine they set out. Thirty annexes (genealogical trees, maps, Athens' political and economic organization, etc.), an index of concepts and names, an index of passages containing quotations from ancient authors, and finally an index of the authors quoted complete the volume.

Thirteen scholars were involved in this project,² but Luc Brisson's name is most prominent. He has translated twenty- six works and written both the general and the individual introductions (with the exception of that for the Phaedo, which was written by Monique Dixsaut).

In the 2011 edition I was able to identify only two alterations from the 2008 one. The first is the transference of the four pages with photographic reproductions³ from the middle of the translation of the First Alcibiades to the end of the introduction. However, the pages with the reproductions remain unnumbered, so that when Brisson refers to them in the introduction (p. XI-XII) he has to refer to p. XXIV, which is actually a blank page. The second alteration is the substitution of the title page and that of some of the annexes, which seemed to be enlarged photocopies and were of poor quality.

As Dufour already complained in his review of the 2008 edition, one misses, among the many annexes, a chronology of Plato's life, which was regularly printed in the individual Flammarion translations.

Some remarks regarding details of translation could be made,⁴ but they would not be numerous, grave or significant enough to cast a shadow over the magnitude of this work.

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Notes:

1.   For a proper review of the first edition, see Richard Dufour, Laval théologique et philosophique, 65 (2009), 562-4 (available at: Érudit).
2.   Besides Brisson, the translators are: M. Canto-Sperber, N. L. Cordero, C. Dalimier, M. Dixsaut, L.-A. Dorion, F. Fronterotta, F. Ildefonse, G. Leroux, D. Loayza, C. Marboeuf, M. Narcy, and J.-F. Pradeau.
3.   They show images of a second-century BC wooden tablet, a first or second-century AD papyrus, the ninth-century AD codex Parisinus Graecus 1807, and Stephanus' sixteenth-century edition of Plato's works.
4.   I have the (possibly mistaken) impression that the translations published individually by Flammarion were reprinted in this single volume without revision, so that errors that occurred there persist here. Deviations from the Greek text of standard editions of Plato made by the translators are not noted here as they were noted there; consequently one has to return to the individual editions in order to know what they are (as Brisson himself advises us to do, p. XXIII). However, it is impossible to know where there are deviations in the translations of apocryphal and dubious works. As an example of an uncorrected error, or rather slip, we could note Monique Canto-Sperber's translation of the Gorgias: both her 1987 and 2008/2011 translations leave aside from text, without any warning, the καὶ μάχης of the dialogue's first sentence (πολέμου καὶ μάχης φασὶ χρῆναι, ὦ Σώκρατες, οὕτω μεταλαγχάνειν: "C'est le bon moment, Socrate, pour rejoindre le combat, à en croire la diction!"), although καὶ μάχης is in the texts of Burnet (OCT), Croiset (Belles Lettres), and Dodds (Oxford).

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Christian Zgoll, Römische Prosodie und Metrik: Ein Studienbuch mit Audiodateien. Darmstadt: WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 2012. Pp. 215; MP3-Dateien. ISBN 9783236886. €39.90.

Reviewed by Wilfried H. Lingenberg, Universität des Saarlandes (W.Lingenberg@mx.uni-saarland.de)

Version at BMCR home site

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Nachdem deutschsprachigen Metrikstudenten bis zum Ende des vergangenen Jahrhunderts nur drei jeweils nicht völlig befriedigende Einführungen zur Verfügung standen,¹ haben die letzten Jahre in kurzer Folge gleich mehrere neue Darstellungen hervorgebracht; ² dem sehr fortschrittlichen, aber etwas unübersichtlichen Werk von Boldrini stellt sich nun Zgolls „Studienbuch" zur Seite. Diese Bezeichnung erhebt den Anspruch, dem Einsteiger ein selbsterklärendes Arbeitsmittel an die Hand zu geben; und Zgoll ist dem zunächst einmal mit bewundernswertem pädagogischen Geschick gerecht geworden.

Erläuterungen und Definitionen sind über weite Strecken von beispielhafter Klarheit und Kürze. Alle Begriffe werden auch in ihrer Herkunft erklärt und mit Betonungs-, teils sogar Ausspracheangaben versehen (149 „Pherekratéus … nach dem griechischen Komödiendichter Pherekrates …"). Eine Kurzeinführung in die lateinische Aussprache (37f) und die geschickt aufgebaute Übersicht über Vokallängen in Flexionsendungen (53–56) beschränken sich treffsicher auf genau den Umfang, den es sich als Metrikschüler im Kopf zu behalten lohnt. In der Darstellung der Füße, Kola und Metren schmeicheln Quantitätensymbole von luxuriöser Größe dem Auge. Häufig schließt sich einer anfängergerecht formulierten Information unmittelbar eine differenziertere Betrachtung „für Spezialisten" in kleinerer Type an, was sich selbst dann als sinnvoll erweist, wenn dabei eine zunächst vereinfachende Ausdrucksweise gleich wieder korrigiert werden muß; als leicht zu merkende Orientierung kann die nämlich auch dem Fortgeschrittenen noch von Nutzen sein. Zgoll unterscheidet 57 mit Anm. 131 dankenswert sauber zwischen elementum anceps und indifferens und führt 119 Anm. 316 mit „Polyklise" (als verbaler Entsprechung zum nominalen Polyptoton) sogar einen sinnvollen neuen Begriff ein. Die zugrundegelegte Sekundärliteratur ist durchgehend in Fußnoten aufgeschlüsselt; für den Anfänger dann eine große Hilfe, wenn die Anmerkungen so zielsicher und ökonomisch wie hier zumeist an die richtigen Stellen verweisen. 175f erhält der Leser eine Übersicht über die wichtigen antiken Quellen. In besonders charakteristischer und gelungener Weise geht Zgoll über die traditionellen Aufgaben eines Metrikhandbuches hinaus, wenn er immer wieder auf die hinter der Wahl der metrischen Mittel liegenden dichterischen Darstellungsabsichten zu sprechen kommt. Dafür werden auch längere Abschnitte oder ganze Gedichte durchanalysiert; besonders Horazens Oden mit ihrer so vollendet abgezirkelten Wortstellung sind ein ergiebiger Untersuchungsgegenstand.³

Wurde also dem deutschen Sprachraum endlich das langersehnte, rundherum empfehlenswerte Metrikhandbuch geschenkt? Leider nein; denn Zgoll hat sein Werk mit mehreren Hypotheken belastet, die dessen Wert deutlich beeinträchtigen.

1. Die Beispiele sind zu häufig ungünstig oder sogar falsch gewählt. So gehört etwa aberāt (Verg. ecl. 1, 38) nicht unter die Überschrift „Diastole: Dehnung von kurzen Vokalen" (49), sondern zu brevis in longo ante caesuram (92). 75f stammen die Beispiele für Hemiepes und Enhoplion ausschließlich aus daktylischen Hexametern; interessant werden diese Kola aber erst im asynartetischen Verbund. Überhaupt halten immer wieder Teilverse (allzuoft nicht durch „a"/„b" als solche markiert) als Beispiele her; 76 soll Plautus Rud. 668b einen Adoneus darstellen (bei Questa⁴ 356 spondeische Dipodie), und Capt. 507a exemplifiziert 113 gleich zwei verschiedene Versmaße, wobei die letzte Silbe auch noch einmal kurz und das zweite Mal lang gemessen wird.

2. Die grundlegend wichtige Boldrini-Syzygie (so bezeichnet von Hermann Walter im Gnomon 74, 2002, 497) bleibt bei Zgoll unerwähnt, zu seinem Nachteil: Die erste und dritte „Spezialisten"-Regel 114f beschreiben ja (ebenso wie Fraenkel-Thierfelder- Skutsch 179!) lediglich Sonderfälle der Boldrini-Regel, und zumal wären mehrere Versehen vermeidbar gewesen, da sie auf offenkundige Verstöße gegen Boldrini hinauslaufen. So ist der zitierte Vers Plaut. Rud. 166 in der überlieferten Form metrisch unmöglich (wie auch bei Questa 2007, 224 nachzulesen); und 115: „Normalerweise erscheinen prokeleusmatische Wörter … mit der Hebung auf dem 2. Element (facílius)", hätte es statt „normalerweise" „niemals" (und statt „Element" „Silbe") heißen müssen, was sich durch genaue Lektüre von Crusius-Rubenbauer 68 auch unabhängig bestätigen läßt.

3. Glatt widersprüchlich sind Zgolls Ausführungen zum Iktus. Auf der einen Seite referiert er die Untersuchungen, die in den letzten Jahrzehnten erreicht haben, daß dieses Thema als erledigt zu den Akten gelegt werden konnte,⁵ auf der anderen liest man dann aber 26ff von „starken Taktzeiten",⁶ „Versbetonung", „Versakzent" und schließlich einem „rhythmischen Akzent": Wenigstens die letzten drei Begriffe bezeichnen so, wie sie hier benutzt werden, nichts anderes als eben das, was seinerzeit einmal als „Iktus" geschätzt wurde. Man solle diesen Versakzent neben der melodisch zu realisierenden Wortbetonung „gleichermaßen berücksichtigen" (29; melodischer Wortakzent wird dabei ohne weiteres postuliert, erst 38 mit Anm. 74 folgt der Hinweis auf die diesbezügliche wissenschaftliche Kontroverse): Solche Ideen sind nicht erst seit Stroh 1990, 92f obsolet (von Zgoll 27 Anm. 47 ausdrücklich zitiert). ⁷ Zgoll scheint 28 sogar ausgerechnet Stroh und Leonhardt Restsympathien für den Iktus unterstellen zu wollen.

4. Zgoll ist sich sowohl der Gemeinsamkeiten als auch der Unterschiede seiner Muttersprache einerseits und des Lateinischen andererseits nicht immer ausreichend bewußt; er zieht zuweilen Parallelen, die nicht aufgehen, und konstruiert Gegensätze, wo sich Verwandtes finden ließe. Die Aussprache des deutschen Wortes „Interesse" mit vier Kürzen zu symbolisieren (25) ist mehr als ungenau. Die erste Silbe würde man am ehesten als lang klassifizieren (vgl. unten Anm. 11), zumal der Vokal der zweiten regelmäßig verschluckt wird („Intresse"); dann ergibt sich ein daktylischer Rhythmus. Daß das Deutsche keine sinntragenden Quantitätsunterschiede kenne (wie 30 vom Beispiel Lŏgik/Lōgik suggeriert), ist gerade falsch, einschlägig wären Wortpaare wie Wall/Wal, deren Bedeutung sich dem Hörer allein über die Vokalquantität erschließt — eine deutsch-lateinische Gemeinsamkeit, die doch eigentlich dazu einlädt, sie für die Metrikausbildung fruchtbar zu machen. Umgekehrt sind Elisionen der Art „hab' ich" (68) mit dem Lateinischen nicht genau vergleichbar, da es wegen des sogenannten Knacklauts im Deutschen keine echt vokalischen Wortanfänge und demzufolge auch nicht Hiat oder Synalöphe gibt; „hab' ich" ist nicht wesentlich von „hab' dich" unterschieden. Mit Parallelen wie der 89 Anm. 224 bemühten läuft Zgolls (an sich begrüßenswertes) Bemühen um lebendige Veranschaulichung aus dem Ruder: Daß der Hexameterrhythmus für das akzentuierende Sprachempfinden an einen Walzertakt erinnere, mag für den deutschen Hexameter, zumal Goethescher (also triolischer) Prägung, zutreffen; im Lateinischen müßte man dafür aber rücksichtslos über sämtliche Quantitäten hinwegwalzen. Der folgende Vergleich mit dem Jive-Grundschritt erschließt sich mir überhaupt nicht mehr.

5. Über das schon Gesagte hinaus finden sich kleine Fehler und Ungenauigkeiten in nicht geringer Zahl. Neben den Begriffen „Element" und „Silbe" (mehrmals) sind auch gelegentlich Vokal- und Silbenlänge verwechselt oder Quantitäten an prominenter Stelle falsch angegeben.⁸ 47f wird bei der Behandlung der Muta cum Liquida nicht erwähnt, daß sich fl und fr ebenso verhalten; trotzdem hatte 45 schon einmal freta als Beispiel gedient — wiederum nicht ganz korrekt, da f keine Muta ist. 178 formuliert Zgoll eine unmögliche Ausnahme zur Ritschlschen Regel und erweitert 185 den Begriff „Aphärese" singulär um die Abstoßung ganzer Silben; mit der (zutreffend) als Zweck angegebenen „Vermeidung eines Hiats" hat das angeführte Beispiel, temnere statt contemnere in Aen. 6, 620, dann auch nichts mehr zu tun.⁹

6. Da Zgoll ausdrücklich (11) am Zusammenhang zwischen Form und Funktion interessiert ist, könnte man fragen, ob in einer modernen Metrik nicht auch der kunstvollen Anordnung der Wortakzente im Vers gewisse Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden sollte. Fruchtbare Untersuchungen dazu haben ja nicht erst mit Zelenys Dissertation begonnen;¹⁰ bei der Behandlung des Aeneis-Proöms (97f mit Anm. 262) hätte sich beispielsweise ein Hinweis auf die Akzentstruktur des released movement gut eingefügt (dazu W. F. Jackson Knight, Accentual Symmetry in Vergil, Oxford 1950, 49).

Im Anhang finden sich einige zum Lesegebrauch „transkribierte" Texte; ausgewählte Quantitäten und Wortakzente sowie die Synalöphen sind markiert und sollen den Vom-Blatt-Vortrag erleichtern. Eine hübsche, jedoch in der Ausführung nicht recht überzeugende Idee war es, Rezitationen des Autors und die anspruchslosen, aber ansprechenden Vertonungen von Katharina Kimm (Gesang und Harfe) zum freien Abruf auf der Verlagsseite (→ Service, → Downloads) zur Verfügung zu stellen. Anders als im Vorwort 11f angekündigt, orientieren sich letztere gerade nicht konsequent am Wortakzent, wenn nämlich schwere Taktzeiten doch wieder den Iktus reanimieren: Vívamús, mea Lésbia, … Damit wird genau der gleiche Abweg, der um 1600 zur Entwicklung des iktierenden Vortrags führte, ein weiteres Mal eingeschlagen: Das Ziel, lateinische Dichtung wieder als rhythmische Kunst erlebbar zu machen, wird statt durch Restitution des quantitätengenauen Vortrags dadurch erreicht, daß man sie in ein System regelmäßiger Takte preßt, was zwangsläufig zur Verdrängung des Wortakzents durch eine Iktusbetonung führt. Andere Gesänge Kimms lehnen sich, befreit von regelmäßigem Takt, enger am originalen Rhythmus an; doch führen solches die (musikalisch hochwertigen) Vertonungen des tschechischen Komponisten Jan Novák ja auch schon seit Jahrzehnten vor.

In Zgolls Rezitationen sind die Kürzen nicht selten so stark übertrieben, daß das notorische Zeitverhältnis der brevis zur longa von 1:2 (Zgoll 25) in weite Ferne rückt. Germanismen bleiben nicht aus: Unterschlagene Doppelkonsonanz (atendimus statt attendimus Cic. orat. 189), -gn- statt -ngn- (gegen Zgoll 38), fehlende Synalöphen in der Prosa, hörbares Schluß-m bei Synalöphe in der Dichtung, sinnwidrige Schlußvokallängung (Catull 5, 6 klingt wie nox est … dormiendā), Trennung von Vokalen durch Knacklaut (hi'emes Hor. carm. 1, 11, 4) und dergleichen mehr. Verfehlt scheint mir der Ansatz, nach dem Vorgang von Stroh den ersten Konsonanten einer positionsbildenden Kombination zu dehnen („lennntamennnte", dazu 25f). Das ist nicht nur gerade das Gegenteil der hier in den Zeugenstand gerufenen italienischen Aussprache (wo solche n's auffallend tonschwach sind), sondern versucht vor allem auch eine Frage zu beantworten, die sich gar nicht stellt, nämlich die nach der Ursache des Phänomens der Positionslänge; doch ist der Zeitaufwand für die Aussprache zweier Konsonanten zwangsläufig und naturgemäß höher als für die eines einzelnen¹¹ (mit der bekannten Ausnahme der Kombination von Muta und Liquida, denn das Vorantreten eines Verschlußlauts ändert nur den Ansatz des Gleitlauts, ohne Auswirkungen auf die Aussprachedauer). — Beides, Rezitation und Vertonung, findet man freilich mittlerweile vielerorts im Netz, teils hingebungsvoll zu hoher Vollendung gebracht;¹² der Sache dienlicher wäre also vielleicht gewesen, wenn Zgoll statt eigener Produktionen Verweise auf die verborgenen Schätze der Schwarmintelligenz gesammelt hätte.¹³

In der vorliegenden Form ist das Buch im einzelnen noch nicht so zuverlässig, daß man es dem Anfänger guten Gewissens und uneingeschränkt empfehlen möchte; vieles könnte aber eine überarbeitete Neuauflage zurechtrücken. Das glückliche Konzept hätte es in jedem Fall verdient.

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Notes:

1.   Crusius-Rubenbauer, Römische Metrik, München ⁸1967 (= ³1958); Hans Drexler, Einführung in die römische Metrik, Darmstadt 1967; Halporn-Ostwald, Lateinische Metrik, Göttingen ⁵2004 (= ²1980).
2.   Sandro Boldrini, Prosodie und Metrik der Römer (übersetzt von Bruno W. Häuptli), Stuttgart–Leipzig 1999. Zu den Versuchen von Flaucher und Glücklich hat Häuptli im Bulletin SAV 72, 2008, 29–31, alles Nötige gesagt (Stephan Flaucher, Lateinische Metrik, Stuttgart 2008; Hans-Joachim Glücklich, Compendium zur lateinischen Metrik , Göttingen ²2009).
3.   Einer der wenigen didaktischen Mißgriffe ist, die Skansion unter statt über den Versen anzugeben. Zgoll 13 zufolge soll dies eigene Gehversuche durch Abdecken der Auflösung möglich machen, doch erscheint mir diese Verquickung von Beispiel- und Übungsmaterial praxisfern. Die Zuordnung der Quantitäten zu den Silben ist optisch mühsam (106f werden sogar Vers und Skansion durch Seitenumbruch auseinandergerissen), Verschleifungen werden überhaupt nur am Rand oder in Fußnoten notiert.
4.   Cesare Questa, La metrica di Plauto e di Terenzio, Urbino 2007. Merkwürdigerweise benutzt Zgoll ausschließlich das Vorgängerwerk von 1967.
5.   Die wichtigste Abhandlung dazu, Wilfried Stroh, Der deutsche Vers und die Lateinschule, AandA 25, 1979, 1–19, bleibt aber auch hier wieder ungenannt.
6.   Zgoll schreckt auch nicht vor den problematischen Begriffen „Hebung" und „Senkung" zurück; dazu zuletzt Marcus Deufert, Philologus 156, 2012, 78 Anm. 7.
7.   Wilfried Stroh, Arsis und Thesis – oder: Wie hat man lateinische Verse gesprochen?, in: M. v. Albrecht, W. Schubert (Hrsgg.), Musik und Dichtung, Frankfurt a. M. u. a. 1990, 87–116 (= Apocrypha, Stuttgart 2000, 193–216).
8.   Beispielsweise betrifft 51 die Jambenkürzung in senectutem die Silbe, nicht den Vokal; 42 dient der Imperativ von dare als Beispiel für kurzen Vokal in offener Silbe.
9.   Redaktionelle Versehen sind erfreulich selten. Als einzige ernstzunehmende Verschreibung fielen mir „Divergenzen zwischen Wortakzent und Wortakzent" (27) auf. Im Literaturverzeichnis sind die Arbeiten von Hagel (15 Anm. 1) und Moreno (175 Anm. 493) nicht zu finden; Stroh 2007a und 2007b werden unterschiedslos als „Stroh 2007" zitiert. Außer Stroh 1979 und Questa 2007 hätte an geeigneter Stelle noch Maurice Platnauer, Latin Elegiac Verse, Cambridge 1951, Erwähnung finden dürfen.
10.   Karin Zeleny, Itali modi. Akzentrhythmen in der lateinischen Dichtung der augusteischen Zeit, Wien 2008.
11.   Diese Tatsache ist nicht an bestimmte Sprachen gebunden; auch einer deutschen Zunge steht eine zugleich klar artikulierte sowie eindeutig kurze Aussprache der Lautfolge „Int-" (bzw. sogar „Intr-") nicht zu Gebote.
12.   Hörenswerte Rezitationen haben etwa Vojin Nedeljković, Johan Winge oder Robert P. Sonkowsky (in Electronic Antiquity 8 Nr. 2, 2005) aufgenommen. Die beste mir bekannte Prosaausprache, eindrucksvoll gerade in der zwanglos genauen Beachtung der Quantitäten, pflegt Luke Amadeus Ranieri.
13.   Zgoll hat 201 eine Liste veröffentlichter CDs zusammengestellt, doch verliert dieses Medium ja gegenwärtig rasant an Bedeutung.

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Norbert Eschbach, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Archäologisches Institut der Universität Göttingen, 4, Attisch rotfigurige Keramik, Deutschland, Bd 92. München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2012. Pp. 159; 30 p. of figures; 67 p. of plates. ISBN 9783406635953. €98.00.

Reviewed by Thomas Mannack, Beazley Archive, University of Oxford (thomas.mannack@beazley.ox.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

The fourth Göttingen fascicule of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum deals with the 164 Athenian red-figure pots, fragment groups and fragments housed in the museum of the archaeological institute of the University of Göttingen and includes loans by the Antikensammlung in Berlin. It follows the well-established traditions of the Corpus Vasorum, but also benefits from a change of policy, which permits the plates of German fascicules to be printed in colour. The volume has four main text sections: introduction, abbreviations, the main catalogue, and extensive indexes and registers. The illustrations, 41 figures in the text, Beilagen and plates, include detailed drawings of vase-profiles with cross-sections of handles and indications of reserved parts, black-and-white and colour photographs of restorations, joining vases and fragments, and the main body of colour plates.

The introduction, apart from giving due thanks, sets the scene, contains instructions of use for the volume and provides a key for the profile drawings, and information on the layout. The generous support of the Bavarian Academy has— amongst other benefits—enabled the author to travel widely in order to make certain that fragments in the Göttingen collection join shards in numerous other museums. Where necessary, vases have been restored and cleaned before being photographed.

The section 'Abbreviations' provides an extensive and exhaustive list of books and journals cited, and gratifyingly also includes the Beazley Archive's pottery database.

The catalogue forms the main body of the text and continues the well-established tradition of recent CVAs; written by experts and giving the fullest possible information on every piece : find-place, full bibliography, and a wealth of accurate and precise measurements, including the volume where possible. It is arranged by shape, but where less imaginative authors would have dealt with shapes one by one, Eschbach has grouped some of them, beginning with closed forms or pots, amphorae, one loutrophoros and pelikai. Pyxides and epinetra have been combined, presumably because they were made for women. The CVA is most useful when dealing with a single shape or fabric like the Göttingen fascicule. The collection holds a wide range of shapes and a fair range of painters. The early phase of red- figure vase-painting is somewhat underrepresented; four rather pitiful cup fragments have been attributed to a painter working in the manner of Euphronios. Beazley's great three, the Kleophrades, Berlin and Pan painters are attested by one fragment each. Cups are well-represented, and there are good and goodish examples of works by Onesimos, Oltos and the Penthesilea Painter's workshop. There is also a fair number of white-ground lekythoi—not grouped with the red-figure examples but placed at the end—which benefit particularly from the use of colour. Numerous specimens are published here for the first time, some appear to have languished in deserved obscurity. It is one of the great strengths of the CVA that all objects in a collection are made accessible thus adding to the knowledge of numbers of vases made in a workshop—Eschbach's attributions are reliable— and scenes chosen by painters.

Eschbach's indexes are most useful. He provides concordances of inventory numbers and plates, painters and workshops, inscriptions, provenances, previous collections, joins with objects in other collections, technical observations, and subjects. A large number of items has been bought from Hartwig. The index of joins and photomontages in the Beilagen and main body of plates confirm Eschbach's observation, made here and elsewhere (Beiheft, 2007) that Hartwig appears to have broken vases in order to maximise his profit.

The only slight and common problem is posed by the plates: the use of polarising filters takes away much of the typical and beautiful gloss of Athenian pottery. Moreover, the colouring of the vases appears to be somewhat uniform. In summary, however, this is an excellent example of the series and a worthwhile addition to any library on Athenian pottery.

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Evan Hayes, Stephen Nimis, Lucian's 'On the Syrian Goddess': An Intermediate Greek Reader. Oxford, OH: Faenum Publishing, 2012. Pp. xix, 114. ISBN 9780983222880. $12.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Patrick Paul Hogan (Patrick.Paul.Hogan@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Hayes and Nimis' recent intermediate Greek reader on Lucian's De Syria Dea joins two others by the same authors on Lucian's Ass and A True Story, as well as one on Plutarch's Dialogue on Love. As a scholar of the Second Sophistic, I am delighted with the idea of undergraduates reading these important works alongside their Classical predecessors.

As with their other volumes in this series, the authors aim to provide extensive grammatical and vocabulary help for the intermediate Greek student who has only recently left the comfortable environs of his or her introductory textbook. This time they have chosen a fascinating and sometimes difficult text, the De Syria Dea ascribed to Lucian. It is a difficult text for students for two principal reasons: it describes Near Eastern cults that may strike intermediate students as quite foreign from the kind of Greek cults that they may have encountered in earlier readings, and the prose, though straightforward, is also written in an archaizing Ionic dialect. Students at this point in their acquisition of Greek have almost certainly been exposed to very few extended passages of Ionic Greek, Classical or otherwise, but the authors provide a convenient four-page summary of the unusual forms and conventions of Ionic Greek before the main text, and they also frequently point out such forms in the notes until e.g. the substitution of ὦν for οὖν and the use of the article for the relative pronoun no longer seem jarring to the reader. In fact, this commentary will have the added benefit that once a student finishes the De Syria Dea, he or she will be ready to tackle Herodotus. The stories of Stratonice, Antiochus, and Combabus, which occupy the center of the treatise, will also be sure to hold the attention of young readers.

The text itself, which the authors take from the old Loeb edition by Harmon, is divided into clearly marked sections, reflecting the long outline provided beforehand (p.2). Each page has the text of the De Syria Dea on the top third of the page; in the middle lie glosses for all the vocabulary words pertinent to the portion of the text immediately at hand; and at the bottom the reader finds brief grammatical notes that aid smooth translation. In addition, the authors spread throughout the book a half-dozen boxes that review important differences between Attic and Ionic Greek, e.g. common words (p.4) and third declension nouns (p.35), as well as topics important for proper translation, e.g. the different meanings of αὐτός (p.14) and the role of time and aspect in verb forms (p.19). A list of irregular verbs and their principal parts (pp.91-97) and a full glossary (pp.101-114) follow the commentary, but as the authors themselves hope, a student will rarely need to use them, except perhaps for review. In fact, the vocabulary and grammatical help is extensive enough that the teacher who employs this book would be justified in having his students sight-read portions of the text in class.

I will add, however, that this reader would be improved if the authors provided some references to Smyth or another Greek grammar, so that students could more easily find further information about topics not covered in the review boxes, e.g. case uses or types of subordinate clauses. As students progress farther from their textbook, they will have a growing need for another anchor like Smyth especially as they encounter Greek "in the wild."

Some grammatical notes on the bottom of the page are at variance with the vocabulary glosses given just above. For instance, on p.3 the student encounters the word ὁκόσα in the text, then reads the vocabulary entry "ὁκόσος, -η, -ον: how many, how great" and finally at the bottom of the page finds that the word introduces an indirect question and should be translated "what sort of things are in it," as though the adjective were instead ὁκοῖος, -η, -ον, which the glossary in the back of the book gives as "of what sort, what kind" (p.109). Intermediate Greek students need practice translating Greek as literally as possible (without falling into "translationese") before they can gain some independence in their renditions.

The authors also frequently abbreviate their explanations of verb forms, but I think it would be helpful for students at this level to find the full identification of all the verb forms referred to in the notes, since their teachers will have drilled them in identifying verb forms according to tense, voice, mood, person, and number. This will be invaluable for students when they encounter difficult forms. For instance, on p.4 the form ἐδάην is identified in the notes as the "ao. of δάω" and translated as "I learned." Both the gloss above on the page and the full glossary in the back of the book only give "δάω to learn." Since the verb does not appear in the list of irregular verbs, the reader will not know that it is in fact the defective Homeric verb *δάω and that this form in particular is a 2^nd aorist passive indicative 1^st sg., which the author employed instead of the reduplicated 2^nd aorist active because that form has the causal force "to teach," like its kin verb διδάσκω. The student may recognize the aorist passive ending and become momentarily confused, but then he or she is likely to submit to the authors' gloss without understanding the matter fully. Since the same verb form (and same treatment) appear again on p.8, giving a little added explanation would both relieve the student of any lingering confusion and alert him to the unusual nature of this verb. Another I noticed was the gloss: "ᾖον: impf. of ἔρχομαι" on p.47 (and a similar one on p.44); here the authors should note that this is not the usual Ionic form and should remind the students that for the imperfect and future of ἔρχομαι, the corresponding tenses of εἶμι are customarily used, but only the future tense of εἶμι is reflected in the principal parts of ἔρχομαι in the list of irregular verbs (p.93). As students move from the curated zoo of textbook readings to the jungle of "real Greek," identifying the more exotic fauna more fully the first time they appear will give lasting benefits for the reader who is sure to encounter them again.

Students may be confused (as this reader was) by the Ionic perfect middle/passive indicative 3^rd pl. forms for verbs with consonantal stems, i.e. –αται instead of –νται, which the authors do not cover in their overview of Ionic forms and only translate without explanation in their commentary, e.g. ἀποδεδέχαται (p.72); the same can be said for the present form ἵσταται (p.8). The authors also do not draw to the reader's notice the fact that Lucian uses both πολλόν (Ionic) and πολύ (Attic) forms for the neut. sg. nom. and acc. of πολύς. Misspellings are very rare; I caught only ἔπχομαι instead of ἔρχομαι in a footnote on p.87. There are very few omissions: e.g. the contracted form ἤν for εἰ + ἄν is absent from both the list of glosses in the text and in main glossary; it is translated without a comment on the contraction in a note on p.48.

A number of illustrations of coins, statues, and reliefs are included throughout the text, which do help the reader visualize the gods and objects involved, especially the striking Semeion (pp.63-64). This is especially advantageous, since the reader here is passing beyond the familiar practices of Greco-Roman religious observances; although the names of the gods, thanks to syncretism, remain familiar, marvels like sacred roosters, ritual castration, and monumental phalluses will greet the students intermittently. Furthermore, the addition of a small map would help orient readers geographically.

My other main criticism of this book centers on the very brief introduction, in which the authors discuss the controversy over the authorship of the book, summarizing the theories of Lightfoot and Polanski (pp.ix-x), and provide a short bibliography that will lead enterprising students and their instructors on profitable paths of further reading. But the introduction does not do much to place the book in context. For example, the authors say very little about Lucian himself except that he is "one of antiquity's cleverest authors and a frequent critic of religious hypocrisy" (p.ix), and they speak only generally of trends in his work. They also provide no overview of the rest of his works or of literary trends of the Second Sophistic, e.g. the renewed interest in Herodotus that would lead to the composition of such an unusual work over a half millennium after his death. An extra page or two discussing these issues would enhance the student's understanding and appreciation of the text. Lightfoot's text and commentary on the work would be an excellent place to start (BMCR 2003.11.16), as the authors themselves admit, but undergraduate students are not able to tackle that work easily by themselves.

At the end of the introduction the authors include an important disclaimer that this book is a self-published "Print-On- Demand" work not vetted or edited as books usually are by established publishing houses. As a result, the book itself has a low price, which is no small enticement to teachers and students alike, and the authors can easily correct errors, fill omissions, and generally revise the work at will.¹

Despite the reservations I made above, I believe that books like this and in general POD publishing are poised to do our field a service in bringing less mainstream works into the classroom, so that Classics students may be exposed to a wider spectrum of Greek and Latin literature at an earlier level in their language acquisition. Furthermore, the format of Hayes and Nimis' book and its tight focus on vocabulary and grammar provides enough assistance to the intermediate student that he or she may wander through the sanctuary of Atagartis in the trail of the curious narrator without any fear of getting lost.

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Notes:

1.   This can, however, encourage hasty errors, e.g. the repetition of an entire paragraph word for word on p.x and xii.

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Richard Evans, A History of Pergamum: Beyond Hellenistic Kingship. London: Continuum, 2012. Pp. xiii, 224. ISBN 9781441124142. $84.00.

Reviewed by Jens Jakobsson (jens.jakobsson@pub.malmo.se)

Version at BMCR home site

[The Table of contents is listed at the end of the review.]

In this monograph, Richard Evans describes the history of the city of Pergamum (Pergamon) in western Asia Minor, once the capital of the Attalid kings. The Attalids were initially minor dynasts from an obscure, almost tribal corner of the Greek world and their founder, Philetaerus, was probably a eunuch, who became a vassal to the Seleucid Empire at the end of the complicated wars of the Diadochi in the early 3^rd century BC. Evans' monograph updates such earlier works as The Attalid Kingdom: a constitutional history by R.E. Allen (Clarendon Press, 1983).

A central theme of Evans' book is how the Attalids managed to transform their less than auspicious background into a magnificent display of Hellenistic kingship. Increasing their independence during civil wars in the Seleucid Empire, the Attalids were hailed as saviours of the Greeks (from the terror of the Galatian tribes) and patrons of Hellenistic culture. Pergamum became renowned for its library, second only to Alexandria's, and for its impressive architecture from the royal period, as displayed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

King Eumenes II sided with Rome against the Seleucid invasion of Greece in the 190s BC, and was rewarded with vast territories in Asia Minor after Rome's decisive victory at Magnesia. But as Roman vassals, the late Attalids did much to further weaken the Seleucid Empire and other Hellenistic states, and so were partly responsible for the gradual subjugation of the Greeks to Rome. Pergamum was not always a loyal ally; Evans analyses the devious diplomatic contacts with the last Macedonian kings, enemies of Rome. This diminished Roman trust in the dynasty, but in the long run that would have happened anyway: the Senate was generally wary of kings and eventually disposed of all their Hellenistic vassal-rulers. In 133 BC, king Attalus III bequeathed Pergamum to Rome, and after a series of rebellions were crushed, western Asia Minor became a Roman province.

Even though this province (Asia) suffered from heavy Roman taxation and anti-Roman outbursts were sometimes brutally quelled (for instance during the Mithradatic wars of the 1^st century BC), Pergamum retained a certain prosperity. Throughout the Roman period the city remained a prominent cultural hub, which housed leading physicians such as Galen and several philosophers as late as the Neo-Platonists in late antiquity. The account of Pergamum's later history ends with an overview of Roman administration and activities of the emperors in Asia Minor, until the late 4^th century AD. Finally, Evans describes the city's geography and architecture, the characters and images of the rulers, and some prominent citizens.

As evident from this synopsis, A History of Pergamum spans almost all of Classical Antiquity. (The first chapter includes Pergamum's earliest history, which stretches back to Homeric times and the city's mythical – if somewhat dull – founder Pergamus, grandson of Achilles. The "real" story begins with Xenophon's visit to the region c.400 BC, as related in the Anabasis.) Such a long stretch of history calls for several competences, some quite specialized. Evans uses literature studies (classical and modern), as well as epigraphic, archaeological and some numismatic evidence to build his theses.

As Evans is an expert on Roman history, it comes as no surprise that the chapters that deal with Roman affairs are well researched, seamlessly weaving minutiae such as the status and dates of Roman envoys into a wider history about the general policies of the Roman takeover of Asia Minor, which was a long and complicated process. Most other themes, including the city's architecture and temples, Hellenistic kingship and the ruler cults of the Roman Emperors in Asia Minor, are also well treated.

The only problematic section is Evans' analysis of Pergamum's early relations to the Hellenistic states (in chapter 1), which focuses too much on the direct Seleucid-Pergamene relationship. In the 3^rd century BC, Asia Minor was a complicated patchwork with several smaller, semi-independent cities and regions. The Seleucids were the strongest power, but the Ptolemies, with their naval supremacy, held bases all along the coast. There were several conflicts, the chronologies of which are not well established. For instance, Strabo, Geography 13.4.1-2 briefly relates how Eumenes I defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus I in battle. Evans dismisses this as a conflation with some later battle (pp. 14-16), as he points out that the Seleucid main army counted several tens of thousands of troops, while Eumenes was at the time only a minor dynast who also was a loyal Seleucid vassal. However, the Seleucids only assembled such massive armies in times of utmost emergency, and Strabo may have omitted that Eumenes fought at the head of a coalition, perhaps including the Ptolemies. Other rulers in the region, such as the Bithynian kings, successfully fought Seleucid armies. Given this background, the battle against Antiochus I does not necessarily seem unrealistic.

Evans' account of the crisis in the Seleucid Empire after 246 BC, when Antiochus II was probably poisoned by his older queen Laodice,¹ may also have benefitted from a wider analysis of the balance of power. Antiochus' younger queen was a Ptolemaic princess, and when she was assassinated, her brother Ptolemy III invaded the Seleucid Empire, nearly destroying it, and conquered key cities in Asia Minor (which Evans does not mention, p.20). The new king, Seleucus II, also lost Asia Minor to his rebelling brother, Antiochus Hierax, but Hierax and his Galatian allies were in their turn defeated by Attalus I.

This chapter may suffer from a structural problem: Pergamum's route to independence from the Seleucid Empire is difficult to understand without first going into more detail about the nature and extent of Seleucid hegemony in Asia Minor in general, especially as the written sources are quite incomplete ‒ which Evans points out. A more in-depth approach could have been to study the decline of Seleucid coinage in Asia Minor, based on the new standard work Seleucid Coins,² which could have been matched against the output of early Attalid coins, or other civic coins in Pergamum's vicinity. That may have given a deeper understanding of the resources of the kingdom, and its enemies such as Hierax.

But these are the author's priorities; this is a monograph, not an encyclopedia. A majority of readers is probably more interested in the Roman period and Hellenistic cultural history in general, and A History of Pergamum is recommended as an informative and well-written work.

Appendices include chronologies and lists of Roman officials, black and white photographs, comprehensive notes, references and index.

Table of Contents

1: A Beginning and an End.
2: The Ally of Rome.
3: Old and New Horizons.
4: Ruler Cults and Physicians.
5: The Journey East and a New World.
6: Images of a City.
Appendices.

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Notes:

1.   Evan dismisses this, (p.170, n. 51), claiming that Antiochus II was in his sixties and died of old age. But he was only about 40, probably born in the 280s BC to Antiochus I and Stratonice, daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes.
2.   Seleucid Coins pt I, Arthur Houghton and Catherine Lorber, New York: ANS/CNG, 2002. References to Antiochus Hierax, loss of Seleucid cities in Asia Minor etc. under Seleucus II are based on this encyclopedia.

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Christoph Helmig, Forms and Concepts: Concept Formation in the Platonic Tradition. Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina, Bd 5. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2012. Pp. xii, 395. ISBN 9783110266313. $154.00.

Reviewed by Lloyd Gerson, University of Toronto (lloyd.gerson@utoronto.ca)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Plato in his Parmenides has Parmenides himself reject rather emphatically the ingenuous suggestion of the young Socrates that Forms are concepts (noēmata) in souls (132B3-C11). But neither in this dialogue nor anywhere else does Plato say clearly what exactly he thinks concepts actually are. And yet some presumed account of concepts and concept formation is clearly just offstage in numerous places. For example, in Timaeus the Demiurge looks to the 'Living Animal' and fashions a cosmos according to it out of the pre-cosmic receptacle of becoming (30C2-31A1). One naturally surmises that the Demiurge is intended to provide a 'conceptualizing link' between Forms and their sensible images. How are we to understand the thoughts in the intellect of the Demiurge? Or again, Socrates is famously dedicated to attaining true logoi of Forms and relentlessly skewers his interlocutors both for their inability to express such logoi and for their willingness to make momentous moral decisions without them. Presumably, these logoi are or include concepts. What, after all, would an accurate or true concept of a Form amount to whether this is expressed in ordinary Attic Greek or in some rather more exotic 'mentalese'? Consider the various accounts of recollection we find in the dialogues. Should we not expect that some sort of theory of concepts will be deployed to explain the process of recollecting the innate knowledge in us? Finally, the so-called method of collection and division found in Phaedrus, Sophist, and Statesman seems to at least involve something like what we typically call 'conceptual analysis'. But how exactly are these putative concepts related to eternal Forms? This list of issues crying out for clarification could easily be greatly extended. The more one thinks about it, the more one is inclined to the view that a theory of concepts and of concept formation should have been thematized explicitly by Plato. But, alas, it is apparently not so.

Christoph Helmig in this learned, original, and wide-ranging work, sets out to survey and analyze the contributions of the entire ancient Platonic tradition to the formulation of a theory of concepts and of concept formation. In the first chapter (13-37), he attempts to answer the question 'what is a concept in ancient Greek philosophy generally?' The question is not obviously answerable, for as Helmig notes, the various terms that are most frequently used for what we sometimes translate by the single English word 'concept'—ennoia, logos, noēma, katholou—are not obviously synonymous. Helmig argues, though, that these terms are sufficiently alike in their meaning that general criteria for their use can be set forth covering them all (16-23). These are: (1) concepts are (fairly) stable mental entities; (2) concepts are universal and shareable; (3) concepts must link up with reality; (4) concepts can be incomplete and possess more idiosyncratic than objective features; (5) there are degrees of the mastery of concepts, measurable by their proximity to the grasp of essences; (6) concept formation is susceptible to error; (7) concepts can be classified according to their origin (whether empirical or innate) but also according to their content and function. Focusing just on the first criterion, one can see, as does Helmig, the looming complexities within complexities facing the exegete and the philosopher. What, after all, is a mental entity, especially for a Platonist? Is it individuated by its content? But if that is the case, how does it differ from the extramental entity that is a Form? If, on the other hand, it is individuated by its having a relational property to a subject, for example, as an intentional object, then how is the concept's shareability accounted for? Is it by there being an identical content, which, once again, would need to be distinguished from the Form? These puzzles are really only the tip of the iceberg, and then when one adds the remaining criteria, things go from bad to worse. As I say, Helmig is very much aware of these puzzles. In the remainder of the book, he assembles almost all the central texts from Plato to Proclus relevant to his theme, trying to interpret them in a way that leads to a coherent picture. In my view, he does not completely succeed primarily because there is not a coherent picture to be found. I will return to this point toward the end of this review.

The second chapter (39-86) is devoted to Plato, specifically those passages in Parmenides, Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Timaeus, Theaetetus, and Sophist wherein Plato seems to be assuming an account of concepts and concept formation in his arguments about knowledge (epistēmē), belief (doxa, recollection, and language. Somewhat surprisingly, Republic is barely touched on and Cratylus is not mentioned at all. The main conclusion that emerges from this chapter is that for Plato the process or activity of concept attainment is always to be understood in relation to eternal Forms and to the innate knowledge of these. Thus, concepts come from—ek would be the correct Greek word here—the pathos in the soul that is the knowledge of Forms. They are always images of the content of each Form, although the different ways in which words and concepts are images is never clearly stated. Nor is there a clear distinction between images and symbols. The primacy of innatism for Plato does not, of course, preclude what we would naturally call concept formation from empirical experience. But this innatism provides the authoritative justification for criticism of empirically derived concepts, whatever these may be.

The third chapter (87-140), titled 'Aristotle's Reaction to Plato' is aimed at setting forth what Helmig takes to be the fundamental differences between Aristotle and Plato in the matter of concept formation and the acquisition of knowledge. Helmig focuses on Posterior Analytics II 19 and the account of induction and then, somewhat more surprisingly, on Aristotle's account of mathematical abstraction. He argues that the key to understanding Aristotle's view of concepts is his rejection of innatism. Indeed, insofar as empirical concept formation is concerned, this would seem to be obviously true, though one wonders if it could have possibly been otherwise for Plato. And yet, as Helmig mentions only in passing (34), later Aristotelian commentators, both Peripatetic and Platonist, thought that this could hardly be the whole story, given what Aristotle says about the active intellect in De Anima III 5 and elsewhere. If the active intellect, when separated from the embodied person 'is what it is', that is, manifests its true nature by, presumably, thinking all that is thinkable, then it is not at all absurd to insist that there is a sort of innatism underlying our capacity for empirical concept formation, much as Plato himself was interpreted to hold. As much can be said for Helmig's lucid discussion of mathematical abstraction, where the central issue is how 'perfect' mathematical figures and numbers can be abstracted from natural bodies. Helmig's view is that for Aristotle, mathematicals inhere in bodies without qualification (107). But he adds, 'it is undecided whether or not mathematicals are perfectly instantiated (his emphasis).' I am not quite sure I understand what imperfect instantiation would be in this case, but if it is imperfect in any sense, then the same considerations that led Aristotle to posit an active intellect would seem to come into play in the transition from sense-perception to mathematical conceptualization.

The fourth chapter (141-204) addresses three 'case studies' in the later tradition's reflection on Plato and Aristotle on concepts. The three cases are Alcinous, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Porphyry (treated as one on the topic of universals), and Plotinus. Alcinous, in his Didaskalikos produced the only extent handbook of Platonic philosophy in the period known as Middle Platonism. In chapter four, he tries to summarize his understanding of Plato's epistemology. The criterion of truth for sensibles is called doxastic logos, evidently a gloss on Sophist 263E-264A (not mentioned by Helmig) where doxa that arises from sense-perception is distinguished from doxa that arises from thought alone. As Helmig interprets Alcinous, doxastic logos is available to us owing to our innate knowledge. I find this interpretation persuasive in that it serves as a sort of systematization of the insight offered by Plato in the so-called recollection argument in Phaedo to the effect that our ability to judge (i.e., have doxa of) sensibles is dependent on our prior knowledge of Forms. The section on Alexander and Porphyry is full of interest but, alas, too brief, given the cascading confusions introduced the substantializing of the Greek adverb katholou and it apparent use as a synonym for concept. For this move invites us to think of Forms as universals as opposed to what I take to be the more accurate historical approach according to which Forms can be considered universally in thinking, but can also be particularized in individuals since Forms are in themselves neither universals nor particulars. The section on Plotinus is also too brief, as indicated by Helmig's treatment of Plotinus merely as 'Wegbereiter' of Syrianus and Proclus. Although Helmig has some useful things to say about recollection and its role in the formation of empirical concepts, there is almost no discussion of the extensive treatment of memory in Ennead IV 3, 24 - IV 4, 12, a treatise in itself, highly relevant, I would think, to Helmig's theme.

The fifth chapter is really an introduction to the sixth and seventh chapters, by far the longest section of the book (ch.5, 205-221; chs. 6-7, 223-333) on Syrianus, the teacher of Proclus, and on Proclus himself. The principal thesis advanced in these chapters is that Syrianus, followed by Proclus, have a theory of concept formation that is 'a systematization and elaboration of Plato's theory of recollection (208)'. On this theory, the acquisition of universal concepts through sense experience is not exactly rejected but definitely made subordinate to the reflection in the intellect or in some cases projection of innate Forms. What is especially interesting and original in the later Neoplatonic accounts of Platonic epistemology is the apparent shift—perhaps beginning in Iamblichus—from the Platonic insistence that epistēmē and doxa have distinct or discontinuous objects to the view that it is possible to have both modes of cognition of Forms, though it is not clear that these philosophers took it to be possible to have both modes of cognition of sensibles. Helmig's two chapters on Proclus serve as the first detailed study of doxa in Proclus and in other Neoplatonists, although Helmig generously acknowledges many previous studies of particular texts and problems. I cannot here in a limited space do justice to the detailed analysis Helmig provides of Proclus' account of the stages of concept formation, especially on how error arises and the delicate problem of how we acquire concepts of things of which there are no Forms. A brief concluding chapter argues that at least in the matter of concept formation, the Neoplatonic assumption of the harmony of Plato and Aristotle is to be resisted.

This book serves to open numerous channels for debate and further research. It is particularly successful in demonstrating the fruitfulness of the study of later Greek philosophy for better understanding both Plato and Aristotle. I would be pleased to have Helmig and Proclus persuade me that they have not just misunderstood Plato in supposing that it is possible to have doxa of Forms. From Alcinous to Proclus (and, I would add, even before the one and after the other), there is a wealth of material discussing in a way that is both sympathetic and critical the problems any careful reader of Plato will encounter. It is books like this one that are, in my opinion, revitalizing the study of the major works of the canon of ancient philosophy.

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