2010.09.03

Version at BMCR home site
Alfons Fürst, Therese Fuhrer, Folker Siegert, Peter Walter (ed.), Der apokryphe Briefwechsel zwischen Seneca und Paulus: zusammen mit dem Brief des Mordechai an Alexander und dem Brief des Annaeus Seneca über Hochmut und Götterbilder. Sapere Bd. 11. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. Pp. x, 215. ISBN 9783161491306. €24.00 (pb).
Reviewed by Carole Fry, Université de Genève

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La très mince correspondance croisée de Sénèque et de l'apôtre Paul (12 lettres/ 142 lignes) appartient moins à la littérature apocryphe qu'à l'histoire la plus violemment contrefactuelle. Que serait-il en effet advenu si l'apôtre du stoïcisme avait réellement échangé de la correspondance avec le créateur du christianisme ? Telle est la question que se pose d'emblée Alfons Fürst dans le Vorwort (p. VII) qu'il place en exergue de ce volume de structure étrange mais parfaitement justifiée. On le trouvera en effet composé d'objets inhabituellement associés : une édition--non critique--des lettres, introduites, traduites et commentées cum testimoniis par Alfons Fürst (p. 3-82) ; trois Essays (p. 85-146), l'un intitulé Seneca--Ein Monotheist ? Ein neuer Blick auf eine alte Debatte dû à Alfons Fürst, un autre intitulé Stoa und Christentum, dû à Therese Fuhrer, et un troisième, intitulé Senecabild und Senecarezeption vom späteren Mittelalter bis in die frühe Neuzeit, dû à Peter Walter ; une édition traduite et commentée de la Lettre de Mordechaï à Alexandre, par Folker Siegert, que l'on trouvera à son tour suivie d'un essai du même (p. 147-175) ; une édition elle aussi non critique mais commentée de la lettre de superbia et idolis, l'apocryphe d'un pseudo-Sénèque, par Alfons Fürst, également suivie d'un essai du même (p. 176-197). De la bibliographie et des index closent ce volume et le ramènent à un classicisme de forme attendu (p. 201-215). On aura compris que l'ambition commune aux auteurs est d'investiguer cette correspondance dans sa totalité synchronique et diachronique, d'en dégager les éléments constitutifs et de la replacer tant dans son histoire propre que dans son contexte. Il s'agira donc moins de Philologie que de Kultur- und Rezeptionsgeschichte, en application d'une doctrina typiquement germanique où nos collègues allemands excellent. Il reste que ce livre aurait mérité le titre un peu plus généreusement explicite qui aurait mis en meilleure valeur une entreprise collective qui n'a certes pas la cohérence que confère une signature unique, mais qu'une forte unité de propositum sauve de l'hétéroclite qu'auraient eu des actes de colloque.

Dans son Einführung (p. 3-22), Alphons Fürst expose en détail tout ce qui peut être dit sur la vraisemblance d'une rencontre romaine de l'apôtre et du philosophe. Il procède à l'examen des raisons de croire à l'homogénéité d'un recueil que tout prouve comme un exercice rhétorique publié antérieurement à sa citation, en 392/392, dans la notice 12 du De uiris illustribus de Jérôme. L'absence complète de contenu informatif qui dénote cet échange épistolaire a beaucoup dérouté--certains y ont vu même le résultat d'un caviardage opéré par je ne sais quel censeur qui en aurait retiré les sujets de fâcherie théologique. En réalité, une lecture honnête de cet ensemble de lettres le montre bien clairement comme un simple lieu d'exercice de la topique de l'amitié épistolaire, et les arguments avancés en ce sens par Alphons Fürst sont convaincants. On peut ajouter que le vide informatif est en soi-même constitutif du genre épistolaire. Il suffit de jeter un coup d'œil à la correspondance de Symmaque pour constater que l'épître de l'aristocrate du temps vaut d'abord pour sa fonction phatique, et très secondairement pour sa fonction référentielle. Alphons Fürst justifie l'existence de ce recueil par une proximité du christianisme toujours reconnue à Sénèque. Ce qu'il omet d'examiner est la cause de la célébrité de ce recueil qui, malgré sa médiocrité, mérite d'être cité, vers 423/424, par Augustin (epist. 153,14) et surtout d'être incorporé dans sa notice par Jérôme. Car, après tout, si ces bons Pères avaient cru un seul instant à l'authenticité de ce recueil, ils en auraient assurément fait bien du bruit. Comme le fait d'ailleurs valoir Alphons Fürst : imagine-t-on la réaction d'un Père de l'Eglise découvrant des épîtres de Paul inédites !!! Or, il se trouve que le De uiris illustribus, dans lequel Jérôme incorpore si benoîtement Sénèque en s'appuyant sur cette correspondance qu'il sait apocryphe, date de ces mêmes années 391/394 qui voient la promulgation des lois théodosiennes interdisant le paganisme. Il n'est dès lors pas interdit de penser que, de glisser Sénèque parmi les auteurs chrétiens, procède d'une volonté d'annuler le paganisme en allant jusqu'à lui retirer son moraliste le plus éminent. Ainsi, tandis que Théodose dépouille les païens de leur existence sociale et politique, Jérôme les dépouille de leur existence intellectuelle. Il faut en effet se souvenir que le De uiris illustribus est tout entier revendiqué comme un moyen de supplanter et le Cicéron du Brutus et le Suétone du De uiris illustribus, tous deux auteurs d'un Who's who du meilleur de la culture intellectuelle païenne. Ainsi, lorsque Jérôme tente de prouver la supériorité de la littérature ecclésiastique, il lui rattache en douce le meilleur de l'équivalent païen, à savoir l'œuvre philosophique de Sénèque. Cette tentation de l'accaparement n'a certainement pas dû animer que le seul Jérôme ; l'existence même de ce recueil de lettres apocryphes témoigne de la popularité de ce rattachement. On peut enfin se demander si, lorsque Jérôme évoque ces lettres (uir. ill. 12,1), il ne délivre pas indirectement quelque information sur leur date de rédaction. En effet, il leur prête une popularité (epistulae … quae leguntur a plurimis) qui devrait amener à les croire d'une actualité brûlante et à les dater des temps immédiatement antérieurs à la constitution par Jérôme de sa notice sur Sénèque. Quoi qu'il en soit, on ne peut qu'admirer l'extraordinaire mauvaise foi de Jérôme qui, pour réussir son hold-up intellectuel, n'hésite pas un instant à mentir par omission et à feindre de croire à l'authenticité de lettres dont personne, et lui moins que tout autre, n'avait jamais été la dupe.

En 234 notes, Alfons Fürst porte au texte un commentaire qui omet des problèmes de langue et de texte qu'il considère comme réglés par les études de C. W Barlow et de L. Bocciolini Palagi, ses prédécesseurs. Il en résulte une explication bien documentée portant sur l'élucidation de l'immédiatement indispensable à la compréhension du texte. Considérant, à juste titre, celui-ci comme un exercice d'école, Alfons Fürst s'attache à en faire ressortir tout ce qui, dans sa phraséologie, renvoie aux traités de rhétorique existants. Ses résultats sont convaincants, mais amènent à se poser la question de la métricité du texte. On ne peut en effet qu'être surpris de se trouver devant un exercice d'école dépourvu et de clausules et de cursus. Or, et les déclamateurs le montrent à l'envi, la pratique scolaire de la rythmique colométrique reste une obligation absolument impérieuse. Il est en outre difficile de trouver de la correspondance contemporaine, ecclésiastique ou profane, qui soit dépourvue de cursus accentuels qui, bien souvent, fonctionnent également comme clausules métriques.

Alfons Fürst (Seneca –Ein Monotheist ? Ein neuer Blick auf eine alte Debatte, p. 85-107) retrace l'historique des tentatives qui ont été faites depuis l'antiquité jusqu'au XIXe siècle de trouver une influence chrétienne sur l'œuvre du stoïcien. Une étude de la conception que Sénèque se faisait de la personne divine, comparée à celle que s'en sont faite les philosophes païens antérieurs à lui-même, montre que la conception unitariste non-personnelle du paganisme antérieur au néo-platonisme n'a que peu à voir avec le monothéisme du dieu personnel tel que l'ont conçu le judaïsme puis le christianisme. Il s'agit dans ce cas plus d'une concomitance relevant du parallélisme que d'une convergence.

Therese Fuhrer (Stoa und Christentum, p. 108-125) dresse la liste de ce que la théologie chrétienne doit au stoïcisme. Il y a certes une communauté de pensée dans la conception d'un monde conduit par une prouidentia, mais, au delà d'une éthique et d'une théorie de la connaissance, c'est sans doute par sa vision immanentiste de la divinité que le stoïcisme a le plus profondément influencé la théologie chrétienne, en lui fournissant un moyen de penser l'incarnation selon des voies que le platonisme n'offrait pas.

Peter Walter (Senecabild und Seneca Rezeption vom späten Mittelalter bis in die frühe Neuzeit, p. 126-146) fait valoir le rôle de la redécouverte des Annales de Tacite dans l'importance qui a été accordée à Sénèque dès le XIVe s. et les débats qui ont aussitôt surgi à propos de sa prétendue appartenance au christianisme. Le fil du temps a toutefois rapidement rendu Sénèque à son image de toujours qui n'a cessé d'être celle d'un moraliste de haute portée. Son rôle de philosophe politique prendra cependant une place de plus en plus importante, ainsi qu'en témoigne le commentaire encore assez scolaire que Calvin apportera en 1532 au De clementia.

Folker Siegert (Der Brief des Mordechai an Alexander, Zur jüdischen Öffentlichkeitsarbeit in der Antike, p. 147-175) propose le texte commenté d'un apocryphe mettant en relation des individus qui ne sont pas des contemporains. Produit par un juriste d'expression grecque et sans doute juif, le texte se trouve en annexe d'une des filières du Roman d'Alexandreet dans une traduction latine effectuée par un lettré de l'antiquité tardive. Le contenu en est incomparablement plus relevé que celui des lettres croisées de Paul et de Sénèque puisqu'il s'y traite du stoïcisme à une hauteur véritablement philosophique. L'absence de références au gnosticisme et au néo-platonisme laisse toutefois penser que l'original doit dater du haut empire et peut-être même de ses débuts.

Alfons Fürst (Der Brief des Annaeus Seneca über Hochmut und Götterbilder, Ein angeblicher Brief des Hohenpriesters Annas an Seneca, p. 176-197) lui ajoute le texte commenté d'un autre document d'origine judaïque que l'on trouvera plus nettement dénoté comme apologétique. Découvert et publié par Bernhard Bischoff en 1984, son origine juive a très rapidement été contestée pour être créditée au christianisme. La présence de clausules quantitatives concomitantes à des cursus rythmiques devrait amener à dater ce texte antérieurement au milieu du Ve s. Par son contenu, il évoque toutefois des polémiques que l'on trouve bien vives dans les débuts du IVe s, chez un Lactance ou un Arnobe. Sa lecture donne une impression de déclamation que conforte le tour scolairement léché d'une inuentio, d'une dispositio et surtout d'une elocutio qui sentent le bon élève. En revanche, l'hétéroclite d'un contenu doctrinal qui sollicite durement nos modernes catégories, devrait sans doute nous amener à accepter le fait qu'hors des nettetés chrétiennes, judaïques et païennes ont dûexister des zones de contacts et de mélanges dont les témoignages ont disparu du fait même d'une hétérogénéité qui n'était plus dans l'air des temps postérieurs.

On quitte ce livre riche d'informations inattendues et surtout porteur de textes quasiment inconnus avec le sentiment d'avoir pénétré dans l'underground d'une culture tardive qui ne nous a laissé en héritage que les traces de ses dominances. Le plus étonnant sans doute est de constater que ces textes, où se mêlent le judaïsme, le christianisme et de la philosophie païenne, proviennent très vraisemblablement du monde de l'école. En effet, par leur forme et la structure de leur argumentation, ces textes, pour variés qu'ils soient, s'avèrent bien plus proches de l'univers des déclamateurs, voire des romanciers, que de celui de la philosophie ou de la théologie. Ils sont le lieu d'exercice de la topique plus que de l'idée et l'on doit se demander s'ils ne témoignent pas tout simplement de l'existence d'une autre source d'inuentio offerte à l'exercice de l'argumentation rhétorique. La philosophie prendrait alors place aux côtés du roman dont Danielle van Mal-Maeder a récemment montré la place prépondérante dans l'imaginaire déclamatoire (BMCR 2009.02.31.)

On verra enfin dans ces textes le certificat de décès du paganisme. Les Pères de l'Eglise du IVe s., à l'instar des statuaires, poètes et iconographes chrétiens, s'étaient déjà emparés de l'héritage littéraire classique pour en tirer de la matière décorative. Doit-on dès lors s'étonner de constater qu'aux yeux d'un Jérôme, le paganisme de Sénèque et le stoïcisme en général sont désormais suffisamment dévitalisés pour fournir bénignement de la matière à penser et servir sans dommage ad maiorem Dei gloriam ?

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2010.09.02

Version at BMCR home site
Mariarosa Cortesi, Silvia Fiaschi (ed.), Repertorio delle traduzioni umanistiche a stampa: secoli XV – XVI. (2 vols.) Edizione nazionale delle traduzioni dei testi greci in età umanistica e rinascimentale 5. Firenze: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008. Pp. lxxviii, 1846. ISBN 9788884503237. €240.00.
Reviewed by Ioannis Deligiannis, Research Centre for Greek and Latin Literature of the Academy of Athens, Greece

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

This Repertorio, produced within the framework of the project "Edizione Nazionale delle Traduzioni dei testi Greci in età umanistica e rinascimentale" (ENTG), itself part of a broader one, "Ritorno dei classici nell' Umanesimo", is a monumental work addressed to those working on the Latin translations of Greek texts, classical and patristic, on the reception of the Greek literature in the West, and even on the editorial activity of the time; it is also a valuable bibliographic tool for libraries possessing incunabula and early editions. It is the second publication in the series of "Strumenti" of ENTG,¹ and a stupendous attempt of the authors, not only to collect the immense material included in the catalogue, but to organize it in an effective and reader-friendly way and to overcome obstacles related to the nature of their material. The result is a two-volume catalogue that includes bibliographic references to the printed editions of 766 Latin translations of 127 Greek authors, 560 authentic or spurious texts, and 178 translators, plus much other significant information.

In the first part of the introduction, Fiaschi explains the process of collecting, organizing, and composing the material into the form of a research tool. She starts with justifying the need for a complete and functional catalogue of this kind, and recommends its use in parallel with the online record of manuscripts preserving the Latin translations of Greek texts, as provided by ENTG.² In the style of a totally reasonable and justified praemunitio, Fiaschi records all the difficulties (with examples) the two authors encountered in compiling, sorting out and arranging their material: e.g., selection of translations to be included in the catalogue, overlapping or partial Latin versions of the same text, abundance or scarcity of editions, transfusion of translations into the manuscript tradition, translations produced within the pre-defined time period (1300-1525) but printed later than the end point, and thus not included in the Repertorio, cultural factors (moral, linguistic, etc.) leading to partial or selective editions, editorial preferences for translators of greater or lesser reputation, editions of translations of texts of the same author by various translators, or on the other side, translators arranging editions of their own versions of various Greek texts, editions of special interest translations (rhetoric, pedagogy, epistolography, biography, natural sciences, medicine), etc. To all these should be added limitations deriving from inadequate modern bibliographic and cataloguing records, practical difficulties in physically checking every single edition, problems in authorship attribution due to the anonymity of many editions, erroneous attributions in the manuscript tradition repeated also in the editions or copied from older editions to newer ones, and mistakes in modern catalogues. In every case Fiaschi describes how the authors overcame these obstacles and stresses the significance of the Repertorio in providing a research tool as accurate, consistent, and comprehensive as possible, which illustrates editorial activity within and outside Italy and the need of the scholars of the time to familiarize themselves with Greek literature.

In the second part (2.1 and 2.2) of the introduction, Cortesi describes in detail and with examples the editorial criteria and principles for the Repertorio. In 2.1 ("Contenuti") we get an idea of the Latin translations of Greek texts included in it (those produced from late 1300 to 1525 and printed by 1600, translations of classical works produced by the 4th cent. and of patristic texts produced by the 7th cent., complete and partial translations, free paraphrases) or excluded from it (epitomes of translations, and some epigrams), and why 1525 was set as the end point of the editions included in the Repertorio: a) for historic and political reasons related to the Italian Wars of 1521-26 and their aftermath, and b) for cultural reasons related to the influence of Italian Humanism on European culture for the first two decades of the 16th cent. This limit did not allow the inclusion of translations produced after it, especially by transalpine scholars, and left out important versions produced in the 16th cent. (reserved for another promised catalogue, the "traduzioni dal greco nel Rinascimento"). The system and the layout of the entries in the Repertorio is described in detail in 2.2 ("Struttura"): Greek authors and their text(s), authentic and spurious, arranged alphabetically, are followed by translators also in alphabetical order (anonymous or doubtful translations are clearly indicated), the editions of each translation in chronological order (or other criteria, if sine notis), accompanied by any available information on the editions. Translation entries also include dedicatee(s), incipit and explicit of dedicatory epistles, argumenta, prefaces, and of the actual translation. The edition entries contain information on their place of production, printer(s), year, some elements of physical description, but no page numbers; they also include all the texts included in each edition, while in the "Note" the authors have included any information related to the edition of the translation under consideration. Under the sections "Fonti" and "Esemplari esaminati" are included the sources consulted for each edition and the location of the exemplars actually examined by Fiaschi and Cortesi.

The introduction is supplemented with a bibliography list (comprising and expanding all the abbreviated bibliographic references in the Repertorio, as well as some useful web sites accompanied by a few informative comments on their content), and two tables: a) of the translations included in the Repertorio, and b) of the places of publication of the editions (followed by a map of Europe indicating the major printing locations, and two histograms on the numbers of printers per city and the cities with the highest number of printers). The Repertorio is completed (in vol. II) with seven Indices, as indicated in the Table of Contents, and a number of illustrations from editions included in it.

It must be stressed that one should NOT expect to find in it ALL the Latin versions of Greek texts produced between late 1300 and 1525, i.e. those preserved still in manuscripts and never printed; the Repertorio contains only those translations that somehow reached at least one printing house.

A selective but thorough reading and checking of entries (Anaximenes, Diogenes Laertius, Euclides, Homer, Lucian, Marcellinus, Pausanias, Plutarch, and Xenophon) and indices was sufficient for me to confirm the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the catalogue. The erroneous attribution of a Latin version of Lucian's Calumniae non temere credendum to Guarino Veronese, though, is something that the authors should take into consideration in the future (quoting from p. 862):

c. Guarino Veronese: ded.: Giovanni Quirini; inc. dedica: Animadverti saepe mecum, Quirine pater, et magna quidem mentis consternatione; expl. dedica: ea quoque plane licebit ex legendis intueri; inc. testo: Gravis ac molesta res est ignorantia et multorum malorum hominibus; expl. testo: nullum habens locum profugeret illustratis rebus a veritate (--> no. 1) 1. Venetiis, per Simonem Bevilaquam, 1494; cur. Benedetto Bordon. In quarto; lat. Contenuto: Lucianus, Verae historiae (tr. Lilio Tifernate), … Muscae encomium (tr. Guarino Veronese), etc. etc.

I consulted my transcription of De calumnia from a copy of Bevilaqua's 1494 edition from the British Library and, to be more certain, another copy of the same edition, available online.³ Here are a few lines of the opening and closing paragraphs of the text in Bevilaqua's edition, followed by the corresponding ones from Guarino's translation, as published by the reviewer:⁴

Gravis ac molesta res est ignorantia et multorum malorum hominibus causa tanquam caliginem quandam infundens rebus et veritatem obscurans et uniuscuiusque vitam obumbrans. … quod si Deus velamen auferret ex occulis hominum abiret statim calumnia in barat<h>rumque nullum habens locum profugeret illustratis rebus a veritate.

Gravis profecto res ignorantia est et multorum malorum hominibus causa utpote quae nonnullam rebus caliginem infundat ipsamque veritatem offuscet et cuiusque vitam involvat umbris. ... quod si quis deorum vitae nostrae velamina demeret, ipsa calumnia, nullum iam habens domicilium, ad barathrum fugitiva discederet, rebus ex ipsa veritate lustratis.

Despite the similarities in the vocabulary and phraseology between the two texts, it is more than obvious that they are two different versions. In the bibliography, the text in Bevilaqua's edition is referred to as anonymous, and I believe it should remain so, unless there are secure indications for its authorship attribution. Furthermore, from the entry in the Repertorio one gets the impression that Guarino's dedicatory epistle to G. Quirini (which indeed has the incipit and explicit mentioned in the Repertorio) is printed along with the translation text; yet in the two copies I consulted this is not the case. Guarino's Latin version of Lucian's De calumnia was never printed in the 15th or 16th cents.⁵

This error does not reduce or weaken the invaluable significance of the Repertorio. It is and will remain a reference work and a study and research tool of insuperable value, the final product of an attempt to collect, organize and portray in an effective way material scattered and/or inconsistently presented before. It is also illustrative of the humanistic culture as formed, developed and spread in Italy and beyond in the 15th cent. and later, of the scholarly interest in the Greek literature as well as the literary production of humanists, and of the editorial activity in Europe of the time. All these and many more make this work useful to a variety of professionals.

Contents

VOLUME I
INTRODUZIONE
1. Percorsi del testo e inganni del libro: finalità di uno strumento di ricerca (xi-xxxi)
2. Il censimento: cronologia e criteri editoriali (xxxi-xl)
3. Strumenti bibliografici (xl-xlvii)
4. Tavola delle traduzioni censite (xlvii-lxiv)
5. Tavola dei luoghi di stampa (lxiv-lxxviii)
REPERTORIO DELLE TRADUZIONI UMANISTICHE A STAMPA: SECOLI XV - XVI
Aelianus Tacticus - Libanius (3-846)

VOLUME II
Lucianus - Xenophon (849-1718)
INDICI
Initia translationum (1721-37)
Initia praefationum et aliorum textuum (1738-52)
Indice dei manoscritti e delle edizioni antiche (1753-66)
Indice dei traduttori (1767-73)
Indice dei tipografi e degli editori (1774-95)
Indice dei nomi propri di persona e di luogo (1796-1844)
Indice delle tavole (1845-46)

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Notes:

1.   Tradurre dal greco in età umanistica. Metodi e strumenti. Atti del seminario tenutosi a Firenze, 9 Settembre 2005, ed. M. Cortesi, Firenze, SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007.
2.   ENTG.
3. University of Valencia TROBES Library Catalogue.
4. Fifteenth-century Latin translations of Lucian's essay on Slander, Pisa-Roma, 2006, pp. 115 and 136-37.
5. The authors should also check the attribution of the Latin translation of Lucian's Muscae encomium to Guarino (p. 978). I am afraid I cannot be absolutely certain about it, but it is worth checking, because in Kristeller's Iter Italicum (Vol. III; Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Manuscripta Latina, ms. Lat. qu. 226) we read: Musce collaudatio vel explicatio, Lucianus scripsit, Guarinus ludens convertit, inc. Musca quidem adeo inter volucres, with a preface to Scipio Mainentes ep. Mutinensis (7-7v, inc. Animum superioribus diebus averti), while in the Repertorio the incipit and explicit of the translation are: Musca est sic minima volucrum ut posit cum muscellis et culicibus … ne videar secundum proverbium ex musca elephantem facere. Check also I. Fabii, "Calumnia e Musca: due versioni inedite di Guarino Veronese", Interpres, 20 (2001), pp. 7-40. (read complete article)

2010.09.01

Version at BMCR home site
Books Received (August, 2010).

This is a list of books received by BMCR during the previous month; it does not include books on offer for review or books still available for review. You will find the updated list of books available for review at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.html.

Arvanitis, Nikolaos (ed.). Il santuario di Vesta. La casa delle vestali e il tempio di Vesta, VIII sec. a.C.-64 d.C. Rapporto preliminare. Workshop di archeologia classica 3. Pisa; Roma: Fabrizio Serra editore, 2010. 110 p. € 38.00 (pb). ISBN 9788862272803.

Aubert, Jean-Jacques and Philippe Blanchard (edd.). Droit, religion et société dans le Code Théodosien. Recueil de travaux publiés par la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, Université de Neuchâtel 55. Genève: Université de Neuchâtel, 2009. xviii, 445 p. $40.00 (pb). ISBN 9782839905657.

Bakker, Egbert J. (ed.). A companion to the ancient Greek language. Blackwell companions to the ancient world. Literature and culture. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. xxxix, 657 p. $199.95. ISBN 9781405153263.

Barchiesi, Alessandro and Walter Scheidel (edd.). The Oxford handbook of Roman studies. [Oxford handbooks]. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xvii, 947 p. $150.00. ISBN 9780199211524.

Breed, Brian W., Cynthia Damon and Andreola Rossi (edd.). Citizens of discord: Rome and its civil wars. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xiv, 333 p. $85.00. ISBN 9780195389579.

Bremmer, Jan N. and Andrew Erskine (edd.). The gods of ancient Greece: identities and transformations. Edinburgh Leventis studies 5. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. xxi, 528 p. £ 95.00. ISBN 9780748637980.

Calvelli, Lorenzo. Cipro e la memoria dell'antico fra Medioevo e Rinascimento: la percezione del passato romano dell'isola nel mondo occidentale. Memorie 133. Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, 2009. xix, 409 p. € 45.00 (pb). ISBN 9788895996158.

Christian, Kathleen Wren. Empire without end: antiquities collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350-1527. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2010. ix, 440 p. $70.00. ISBN 9780300154214.

Clauss, James J. and Martine Cuypers (edd.). A companion to Hellenistic literature. Blackwell companions to the ancient world. Literature and culture. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. xxv, 550 p. $199.95. ISBN 9781405136792.

Csapo, Eric. Actors and icons of the ancient theater. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. xiv, 233 p. $119.95. ISBN 9781405135368.

Curnow, Trevor. Wisdom in the ancient world. London: Duckworth, 2010. xxi, 201 p. $29.95 (pb). ISBN 9780715635049.

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Davison, Claire Cullen, Birte Lundgreen and Geoffrey B. Waywell. Pheidias: the sculptures & ancient sources 3. BICS supplement 105.3. London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2009. xix, 396 p. £ 160.00 (3 vol. set). ISBN 9781905670239.

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2010.08.74

Version at BMCR home site
Stephen M. Trzaskoma (trans.), Two Novels from Ancient Greece: Chariton's Callirhoe and Xenophon of Ephesos' An Ephesian Story: Anthia and Habrocomes. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2010. Pp. xxxvii, 195. ISBN 9781603841924. $13.95 (pb).
Reviewed by Stephen A. Nimis, Miami University

Preview

Stephen Trzaskoma has produced accurate and fresh translations of the two earliest Greek novels, Chariton's Callirhoe and Xenophon's An Ephesian Tale, in a single volume, based on two new editions of the novels in Greek by B. Reardon ( Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 2004) and J. O'Sullivan (Bibliotheca Teubneriana , 2005). A keen textual critic himself, Trzaskoma has published a number of contributions on the novels, offering improvements to the text and identifying additional allusions to classical authors.¹ He includes endnotes to both translations detailing his own conjectures and differences with Reardon and Sullivan, all of which bespeaks a complete reexamination of the texts in preparation for his translations. Although no doubt designed for undergraduate courses where these novels will be read by Greekless students, every effort has been made to provide as much information about difficulties in the texts as possible, so these translations will be useful to those interested in the Greek text as well.

An unpretentious introduction that will be very appropriate and useful to students reading ancient novels for the first time covers judiciously the major issues relevant to getting started with these stories: genre, audience, context, date, along with some special problems (the epitome theory for Xenophon), historicity, and intertextuality. Differing views are presented fairly and in a manner that suggests the validity of numerous points of view rather than arguing for a correct one. Trzaskoma makes a case for a higher appreciation of these two "pre-sophistic" novels, based on the literary texture of Chariton and the action-packed simplicity of Xenophon. Brief footnotes with cultural information averaging two per page for Chariton, less for Xenophon, provide plenty of background information. These notes are much more numerous than those that accompany previous translations in the Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Of special interest to Trzaskoma are allusions to classical poetry and prose, and he identifies a number of new ones in Chariton, especially to Xenophon the Athenian. A good bibliography and two maps round out the supplementary material.

Trzaskoma's translation takes its place among a number of recent new editions and translations, beginning with the publication of Reardon's collection in 1987 (Collected Ancient Greek Novels), in which Reardon himself translated Callirhoe and Graham Anderson An Ephesian Tale. For instructors who are teaching a survey of ancient fiction where several novels will be assigned, this remains the standard choice. Bilingual editions of Chariton (ed. and tr. G. P. Goold, 2005) and Xenophon (ed. and tr. J. Henderson, 2009) have also appeared in the Loeb series.² Unlike Henderson's Loeb, which combines Xenophon with Longus, the two most dissimilar of the five extant novels , Trzaskoma's combination of Callirhoe and An Ephesian Tale presents the two novels most like each other, sufficiently similar in some details to indicate direct borrowing. This will make the stand-alone volume more valuable for courses where just a sample of the genre is to be assigned. Trzaskoma's translation can be best compared to those of Reardon and Anderson, since they are meant for the same audience (as opposed to bilingual editions where English and Greek are meant to be used together).

Translator's introductions are notorious for clichés, but I found Trzaskoma's note on texts and translations to be refreshingly useful. He characterizes Chariton's Greek as a version of koine that is highly literary, but not excessively fussy or above occasional everyday expressions or occasional esoteric words. This suggests an author who, in English, would "end sentences with a preposition," "split infinitives when it sounded more natural", and "not be overly concerned about every whom or who, but would never use whom incorrectly when he chose to use it." I think that is a fair characterization of Chariton and is made in terms that really specify an English register. Using who for whom, splitting infinitives and ending sentences with a preposition are things that most of us do in speech, and even from time to time in formal writing; but we all know people who will jump all over such "errors." On the other hand, using whom incorrectly for who is a different kind of affectation, and unnatural transformations of normal sentence structure to avoid a final preposition occur now mostly for humorous effect (I am sure you know about what I am talking). I found Trzaskoma's explanation very much to the point and observed particular examples of just this kind of looseness in diction from time to time in his translation of Chariton. But it is not the details in this or that passage, but the overall effect that is important, and in general this translation reads better than Reardon's. A rather simple formatting change that makes reading this translation easier is the way Trzaskoma has broken up the text into shorter paragraphs, perhaps a concession to the web-browsing generation. And speaking of small favors, thanks for indicating the book numbers at the top of each page. It is so annoying to search for a particular passage by book and chapter in Collected Ancient Greek Novels.

Graham Anderson recommends Xenophon's novel as "a specimen of penny dreadful literature in antiquity." Trzaskoma more kindly characterizes it as the ancient equivalent of a "rip-roaring action film." He describes Xenophon's style with the single word "blunt." Despite occasional ornamentation in laments, according to Trzaskoma , Xenophon rarely strives for unusual effects in language, more like New Testament prose with its short sentences strung together with καὶ. Trzaskoma identifies the key pitfall in rendering both Chariton and Xenophon to be "creeping irony," treating the originals "as if they were beneath the translations." Anyone who has taught these novels knows what he is talking about. For example, students don't know how they are supposed to take the multiple knee-jerk suicidal laments, finding them ridiculous and improbable, and immediately suspect some kind of authorial condescension. The trick, as Trzaskoma notes, is to produce something readable and yet give a sense of how these authors came across in antiquity, and in this I think he has succeeded admirably. Here is a short example.

In An Ephesian Tale 5.1 we are treated to the story of the poor Spartan Aigialeus and his common-law wife Thelxinoe. The latter has died and her body is kept by Aigialeus, embalmed Egyptian-style. "I speak to her as though she is alive," he says, and συγκατάκειμαι καὶ συνευωχοῦμαι. Anderson translates "I lie down beside her and have my meals with her," and suggests a reminiscence of Alcestis 348-53, where Admetus promises to keep a likeness of his dying wife in his bedroom. Trzaskoma translates "I get on the couch with her and we eat together," citing the comment of Diodorus Siculus (1.92.6) that poorer Egyptians would keep mummies in their homes rather than placing them in tombs. Henderson translates "I can lay with her and dine with her," by this non-standard use of the verb "lay" perhaps trying to insinuate an answer to the question most students have about this passage. The Egyptian connection is surely more to the point than Euripides' Alcestis, but I think it is the Egyptian custom of celebrating and feasting at tombs that is the background for this, and the belief that the dead could enjoy physical pleasures such as food and drink, not the keeping of mummies at home, if that ever happened. The hint in this passage of necrophilia, a charge against Egyptians that had some currency perhaps because of their attention to dead bodies (cf. Herodotus 2.89), is minimized in Trzaskoma's translation of this passage, correctly in my view. A few sentences earlier, Aigialeus says of Thelxinoe's corpse, καὶ ἀεὶ φιλῶ καὶ σύνειμι. Trzaskoma translates "I'm always kissing her and spending time with her." Anderson sanitizes slightly: "I always have her company and adore her." Henderson is again just a tiny little bit more salacious: "I am always kissing her and being with her." In both cases, I think Trzaskoma has hit the right note. It is supposed to be weird, but not too weird. The hero Habrocomes, after all, finds this story downright inspiring.

I stumbled on a couple of apparent oversights: in one (Callirhoe 4.7.1) a short clause inexplicably drops out ("fearing the slanders and wrath of the king"); in another (Callirhoe 6.8.6) the expression τὸ ... ἐν Βαβυλῶνι κατειλῆφθαι is translated as "(that this) had happened in Babylon" when the sense requires something like "this had been reported to the king while in Babylon," or "that the king had been found = happened to be in Babylon."

It is interesting to me that my students who read these two novels back to back (first Xenophon, then Chariton) almost always prefer Xenophon in informal polls that I take each term. They are perhaps conditioned to be more interested in the ancient equivalent of a rip-roaring action film than they are by a text with learned allusions. In any case, it is valuable to read them together, and this new text will make that easy and inexpensive to do.

---

Notes:

1.   "Chariton and Tragedy: Reconsiderations and New Evidence," American Journal of Philology 131.2 (2010) 219–231; "Aristophanes in Chariton (Plu. 744, Eq. 1244, Eq. 670)," Philologus 153.2 (2009) 351–353; "Echoes of Thucydides' Sicilian Expedition in Three Greek Novels," Classical Philology (forthcoming). "Callirhoe, Concubinage, and a Corruption in Chariton 2.11.5," Exemplaria Classica (forthcoming); "Why Miletus? Chariton's Choice of Setting and Xenophon's Anabasis," Mnemosyne (forthcoming). "Citations of Xenophon in Chariton," in K. Chew and J. R. Morgan, eds., The Greek Novel and the Second Sophistic, Ancient Narrative Supplementum (forthcoming).
2.   There are also stand-alone translations of Achilles Tatius (tr. Tim Whitmarsh, 2001) and Longus (tr. R. McCail, 2002) in the Oxford World Classics Series. A new Loeb of Achilles Tatius is forthcoming, edited and translated by S. Trzaskoma as well. There is also a school text of Chariton, Book 1, by C. K. Prince (2009), with an incredibly ugly Greek font in the Bryn Mawr series; there is an excellent school text for Longus, edited by E. Cueva and S. Byrne (Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005); and there is another bilingual edition of Longus with literary commentary by J. Morgan (Aris and Phillips, 2004).

(read complete article)

2010.08.73

Version at BMCR home site
Ivan Garofalo, Alessandro Lami, Amneris Roselli (ed.), Sulla tradizione indiretta dei testi medici greci: Atti del II Seminario Internazionale di Siena, Certosa di Pontignano, 19-20 settembre 2008. Biblioteca di "Galenos" 2. Pisa/Roma: Fabrizio Serra editore, 2009. Pp. 238. ISBN 9788862271387. €78.00 (pb).
Reviewed by Anna Toscano, Università degli Studi di Milano

La "storia storica della scienza" è un'acquisizione metodologica ormai consolidata da anni che ha permesso di ridisegnare negli ultimi tre decenni il panorama tradizionale di questa disciplina, avendo come esclusiva metodologia ricostruttiva il ricorso a reperti, fonti primarie, inedite, d'archivio come necessario apparato documentario per una corretta definizione dell'effettivo percorso seguito dalla riflessione tecnica e scientifica. In questo contesto, il volume curato da Ivan Garofalo, Alessandro Lami e Amneris Rosselli che qui si recensisce costituisce un prezioso strumento per la ricostruzione della storia della medicina di impianto europeo.

Il volume raccoglie infatti gli atti del II Seminario Internazionale di Studi dedicati alla tradizione indiretta degli antichi testi medici greci, latini ed arabi, tenutosi a Siena nel settembre del 2008. La diffusione diretta ed indiretta della medicina greca nella cultura scientifica tardo antica, medievale e rinascimentale, costituisce il nucleo della ricerca PRIN 2006 "La medicina greca: tradizioni ed influenza" che ha visto coinvolti giovani ed esperti studiosi del settore. Gli sviluppi di questa ricerca, illustrati in tre importanti Seminari Internazionali di Studi,¹ offrono importantissime indicazioni agli storici della medicina, non solo antica.

In particolare gli Atti del Secondo Seminario in esame ricostruiscono gli aspetti legati alla tradizione indiretta dei testi medici greci, latini, arabi, che, come scrive Amneris Roselli nel suo saggio 'Testi medici greci. Tradizione indiretta e pratiche editoriali' (pp. 219-34), sono considerevoli e costituiscono un fenomeno peculiare rispetto alla tradizione dei testi tecnici in generale e letterari in particolare. E proprio la ricostruzione della varietà delle tipologie di tradizione dei testi medici permette alla storia della medicina di riscrivere il filum del suo sviluppo.

Nel saggio di Nicoletta Palmieri 'L'Ippocrate latino tardoantico: qualche esempio di bilinguismo imperfetto' (pp. 11-26) si affronta lo studio delle traduzioni latine del VI sec., ponendo l'attenzione sulle tecniche di traduzione adottate per tre importanti testi ippocratici ( De victus ratione, De aëre aquis locis e Prognosticon). Palmieri nota bene come nell'Impero del VI sec., sede di presenze multietniche, il bilinguismo fosse sempre più raro, tanto che lo studioso Guglielmo Cavallo conia l'espressione di "bilinguismo imperfetto", termine con il quale, oltre ad indicare i cittadini latini con ormai sempre più fragili conoscenze di greco, si affiancano abitanti dell'impero di origine greca ed orientale che parlano il latino, ma lo trascrivono utilizzando l'alfabeto ellenico. Secondo Palmieri, un'attenta analisi delle analogie o differenze riscontrate nel metodo di traduzione adottato permette di porre in chiara luce il problema cruciale di identificare le finalità del traduttore e la destinazione d'uso del suo lavoro, ossia il pubblico cui era destinato il prodotto librario. Il De victus ratione ed il De aëre aquis locis sono contenuti nel manoscritto italiano Parisinus 7027 (X sec.), mentre nel manoscritto Ambrosiano G 108 inf. (IX sec.) è presente il Prognosticon. Si tratterebbe, secondo Palmieri, di versioni esasperatamente letterali, concepite come ausilio alla lettura dei testi medici in un contesto di studio: redatte direttamente sul modello greco, erano destinate a facilitare la comprensione di opere divenute troppo difficili per le conoscenze linguistiche dell'occidente tardo antico, tanto da poter essere considerate in origine come vere e proprie traduzioni interlineari. Nei centri come Ravenna, Napoli, Roma, sedi di scuole alle prese con il "bilinguismo imperfetto", queste traduzioni, certamente non destinate ad intellettuali, avevano la funzione più semplicemente di "glossari", utili per decifrare i testi medici, per capirne il senso e forse per commentarli.

Sempre dedicato alla diffusione indiretta dei testi medici greci attraverso opere latine è il saggio di Franco Giorgianni 'Tradizione e selezione del corpus hippocraticum nel De corporis humani fabrica di Teofilo' (pp. 43-77), dedicato alla trasmissione di un'opera che costituisce un vero e proprio manuale enciclopedico di anatomia umana in cinque libri con finalità didattiche. Spunto principale di quest'opera sono i XVII libri del De usu partium di Galeno: galenismo, aristotelismo e scolastica alessandrina si fondono nel progetto di Teofilo di redigere un'immagine del mondo umano ed animale in cui ogni suo componente ha una collocazione ed una composizione perfetta. Tuttavia il Corpus hippocraticum è presente nell'opera teofilea a tal punto che Giorgianni può ben ritenere il Teofilo del De corporis humani fabrica un testimone indiretto della trasmissione di testi ippocratici. Nel suo saggio Giorgianni infatti esamina con particolare attenzione tutti quei passi, relativamente numerosi, del De corporis nei quali Teofilo cita Ippocrate in maniera sia diretta e completa sia indiretta. Gli estratti ippocratici che Giorgianni riscontra nell'opera di Teofilo provengono in larga parte dai trattati pseudo-ippocratici De genitura e De natura pueri, e parzialmente dal De morbo sacro, mentre le citazioni indirette sono tratte dagli Aphorismi e dal Prognosticon. Tutti questi estratti, insieme ai rimandi ricorrenti, sostiene Giorgianni, testimoniano quanto la tradizione diretta ippocratica fosse viva al tempo di Teofilo e come Ippocrate fosse a quel tempo considerato non una mera autorità da citare per soli fini eruditi, ma un esempio di letteratura scientifica sulla quale costruire la professione medica.

Allo studio dei manoscritti medici latini come fonti cui attingere informazioni fondamentali su ampi squarci di sapere scientifico andati perduti è dedicato il contributo di Klaus-Dietrich Fischer 'De auxilio librorum latinorum in memoria scriptorum graecorum de medicina adhibendo' (pp. 11-42), che riporta alla luce opere di medici greci dei quali si era persa memoria, recuperando citazioni dirette alle loro opere ad oggi ancora sconosciute, per esempio nell'Oribasio Latino, Codices Laud. 424 e Par. Lat. 10233.

Le traduzioni latine di Galeno costituiscono il tema centrale dei saggi delle studiose Stefania Fortuna e Anna Maria Urso ('Burgundio da Pisa traduttore di Galeno: nuovi contributi e prospettive', con un'appendice di Paola Annese, 'La traduzione di Burgundio da Pisa del De naturalibus facultatibus di Galeno', pp. 139-75), di Chiara Savino ('Dare ordine a Galeno: l'edizione di Giovanni Battista Rasario (1562-1563)', pp. 187-99) e di Ivan Garofalo ('Il falso commento di Galeno al De humoribus e un saggio di edizione del vero', pp. 201-218). In particolare Garofalo, ricostruendo la storia del falso commento di Galeno agli Umori di Ippocrate, realizzato nel 1562 da G. B. Rasario, presenta un saggio di edizione degli autentici frammenti del commento di Galeno,² contenuti principalmente in Oribasio e in Razes.

Nel saggio 'Galeno e lo Ps. Alessandro di Afrodisia in due Lyseis di Giovanni Argiropulo' (pp. 177-86), Anna Maria Ieraci Bio esamina un'opera medica poco nota dell'umanista bizantino Giovanni Argiropulo, Le soluzioni delle aporie d'un filosofo-medico cipriota, individuandone due eminenti fonti: l'Ars medica di Galeno, citata esplicitamente nel testo, rimasta inedito fino al 1910,³ ed il De febribus dello Ps. Alessandro di Afrodisia.

Alla presenza di tradizioni greche nella medicina araba sono dedicati i contributi di Oliver Overwien ('Die Bedeutung der orientalischen Tradition für die antike Überlieferung des hippokratischen Eides', pp. 79-103) e di Peter E. Pormann ('Al Kaskari (10th cent.) and the Quotations of Classical Authors: A Philological Study', pp. 105-38). Il saggio di Overwien analizza la tradizione araba del Giuramento di Ippocrate, mentre il lavoro di Pormann ricostruisce la presenza di citazioni di medici greci nell'opera di al-Kaskari, medico attivo a Baghdad nella prima metà del X secolo.

Un indice dei manoscritti citati conclude opportunamente questa interessante raccolta di Atti.

---

Notes:

1.   Il primo Seminario risale al 2002, con atti pubblicati in I. Garofalo e A. Roselli (edd.), Galenismo e medicina tardo antica: fonti greche, latine e arabe: Atti del Seminario Internazionale, Siena 9-10 settembre 2002, Napoli 2003; il più recente ha avuto luogo nel 2009: 'Terzo Seminario Internazionale sulla tradizione indiretta dei testi medici greci: le traduzioni', Siena, 18-19 settembre 2009.
2.   La ricostruzione del commento di Galeno agli Umori di Ippocrate è parte di un progetto di raccolta di tutti i frammenti di Galeno, greci ed in traduzione, al quale Garofalo lavora. Composto da Galeno nel 176, nel IV sec. Oribasio ne ricavò diversi estratti. Nella metà del IX sec. fu tradotto in siriaco da Hunain ed in arabo da 'Isa. La traduzione araba non si è conservata, così come l'originale greco. L'opera stampata per la prima volta da Kühn (1828) è un falso come la presunta traduzione latina di Giovanni Battista Rasario, considerata per tre secoli realizzata su un originale autentico.
3.   L'opera fu pubblicata da S. Lampros ad Atene nel 1910, senza apparato delle fonti, sulla base di due manoscritti del XV secolo: il cod. Scor. Φ III 15 e il Par. gr. 958, ai quali si deve aggiungere il Vat. gr. 285 (sec. XV-XVI), vergato da Agallone Mosco, allievo di Argiropulo alla scuola di Kral a Costantinopoli.

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2010.08.72

Version at BMCR home site
John Taylor, Latin beyond GCSE. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2009. Pp. xvi, 256. ISBN 9781853997204. £14.99 (pb).
Reviewed by John Barsby, University of Otago

This book, written by John Taylor, an experienced English schoolmaster and Head of Classics at Tonbridge School, is closely tied to the Latin syllabus prescribed by OCR, a leading examination board for the top two forms of English secondary schools. Its suitability for its purpose would be best assessed by a current teacher in the English system, but BMCR received no offers of review from this quarter. What is presented here is a more distant view, written by one who taught in an English school at this level for a decade forty years ago and has since been involved in the development of Latin language teaching at school and university level in New Zealand. One question which may interest BMCR readers is to what extent the teaching of Latin in the upper forms of English schools has changed over this period, and in particular how the predominance of reading-based introductory course books (following the example of the Cambridge Latin Course) has affected the rigor with which the subject (and particularly the grammar) is taught at the higher levels.

For those not familiar with the English system, GCSE is the General Certificate of Secondary Education, previously known as O Level; it is based on an examination taken at the end of the last year of general education, known variously as the Fifth Form or Year 11, in practice normally at age sixteen. This is followed by a more specialized two-year advanced course in a limited number of subjects; this course involves an examination at the end of the first year (Lower Sixth or Year 12), called AS or Advanced Subsidiary, and another at the end of the second (Upper Sixth or Year 13), called A2 or Advanced, which corresponds to what used to be known as A Level. OCR is one of the biggest English examination boards (the only one still offering a full set of public examinations in Latin and Greek), an expanded version of the old Oxford and Cambridge Board: its own website fails to explain the acronym, though a determined search reveals that the R stands for RSA (which would need an even more determined search to decode).

According to the first sentence of the Preface (p. viii), the book covers all the language requirements for the OCR AS-level in Latin, and the grammar for A2. It is important to note that it is concerned only with language requirements; the prescription at both AS and A2 level also includes the study of prose and verse set texts. What these language requirements are can be gleaned from the content of the book (or from the OCR website). The prescribed list of accidence and syntax is in fact the same at both levels, though A2 "requires understanding of more complex structures". The A2 prescription also includes continuous prose composition as an option, which the book does not attempt to cover.

The first three chapters (pp. 1-54) cover the whole gamut of syntax, beginning with the use of cases and tenses and ending with conditional clauses in indirect speech. Each point is carefully explained and followed by five Latin sentences to be translated into English and five English sentences to be put into Latin (except at the very end, where remote/closed conditions in indirect statement are evidently judged too difficult for the latter exercise). The explanations are well thought out, thorough and comprehensive, with a series of bullet points in smaller type adding further observations.

Taylor tries conscientiously to explain both the terminology, which is not always easy (why is the supine so called?: p. 21), and the logic behind the various rules (why does dum take the present indicative in unlikely places?: p. 31).His language is largely the conventional language of grammatical description, but he does also make good use of more conversational language to make a point (an indirect command "need not be a bossy order": p. 8). A rare flight of fancy is induced by the complexities of gerundival attraction ("a sort of conjuring trick"); the apparently unobjectionable ars epistulam scribendi "is like an unstable chemical compound or something a spell-check automatically corrects; the gerundive muscles in, changing it to ars epistulae scribendae" (p. 45).

Chapter 4 (pp. 55-85) is entitled "AS practice passages and sentences". , Following the examination prescription, it falls into three parts: "Unseen translation passages for Section A" (15 passages); "Unseen translation from Cicero for Section B", Cicero being the currently prescribed author for this section (15 passages); and English to Latin Sentences for Section B (20 sets of 5). The Section A passages, which are 10-15 lines in length, come from a variety of authors. Livy and Nepos predominate; the others are Cicero, Suetonius, Curtius and Gellius. The Section B (Cicero) passages, divided into (i) lightly adapted passages (5) and (ii) shorter unadapted extracts (10), have only 5-7 lines of Latin. An interesting feature here is that in the "lightly adapted" passages the Latin text is preceded by an English translation of the immediately previous lines to give students a clear idea of the context. Words not in the official OCR vocabulary list are glossed for all passages.

The English-Latin sentences, which are an alternative to the Cicero unseens, are of the type already met in the previous chapters. An interesting introduction (p. 81) urges "close attention to detail in getting the form and ending of every word correct" and recommends the looking up and rechecking of every word except the most common. It also gives some guidelines on Latin word order, which has so far been ignored in the book. Taylor is a firm believer in the value of English-Latin translation: "Translating into Latin may seem difficult at first, but it is the best way to get to know the language properly and to test your understanding of it. It is worth practising even if you do not plan to offer this option for examination. It is also a very satisfying intellectual exercise."

Chapter 5 (pp. 86-135), entitled "A2 practice passages", contains passages for unseen translation and comprehension (both in the same passage). There are four parts: Ovid elegiacs, Ovid hexameters, Caesar and Livy (the first and third of these are prescribed for this purpose in 2010-12 and the second and fourth in 2013-2015). The passages (5 in each part) are typically 18-20 lines long. The first ten or so lines of each are for translation (30 marks) ;the rest becomes the basis for comprehension questions on matters of content, style and tone; For the verse passages this includes two lines for scansion and for the prose passages a grammatical question, typically involving explanation of cases or moods (20 marks). Unfamiliar words are again glossed; since there is no official OCR vocabulary list for A2, the criterion now for glossing is that the word does not appear in the vocabulary list in the back of the book.

The verse section begins with instructions on how to scan hexameters and elegiacs and provides an additional vocabulary list of 250 words which are judged useful for verse unseens ; these again are not glossed in the excerpts. This is the one part of the book where the reviewer has reservations about the treatment. The advice given for scanning verse is basically to bracket all the elisions, mark any syllables you know to be long from the "two-consonant" rule and fill in the rest by applying the scheme of the particular meter as best you can. This is the old crossword-puzzle approach and can be made to work as a pencil-and-paper exercise: in addition students can be told to identify as short a vowel followed by another vowel in the same word and not forming a diphthong. But the goal must be for students to start at the beginning of the line and do the scansion (in their heads, eventually) as they proceed, which is entirely possible if they (i) know the scheme of the meter, (ii) are able to distinguish open and closed syllables and are aware that the latter are long, and (iii) can trust their pronunciation (most of the time) to identify vowels in open syllables as long or short. The book's discussion of syllable division (which is the key to the "two-consonant" rule) is a little muddled: it is surely not true that pulchrum must divide pulch-rum rather than pul-chrum (p. 86). With regard to the pronunciation of vowels, it is interesting that the book does not contain a single macron, even though introductory text books now mark long vowels as a matter of course. It also seems a pity (though this is a criticism of the prescription rather than of the author) that students are asked to scan a couple of lines without commenting on some metrical effect that they have uncovered, such as a spondaic line or an effectively delayed main caesura.

Chapter 6 (pp. 136-60) is a series of five longer Readings, the longest amounting to 81 lines: Nepos on Alcibiades, Curtius on Alexander and Porus, Livy on Horatius and Scaevola (two separate shorter passages), Cicero"s Tusculans on the fear of death, and Tacitus on the fire of Rome. The purpose of these is presumably to provide extra reading for students in addition to the set books that they are studying. The passages are all well chosen for their interest, as are most of the other passages in the book; the difficulty of choosing passages (especially unseens) that combine interest with an appropriate level of linguistic difficulty should not be underestimated.

The six chapters are followed by a substantial reference section, which contains summaries of syntax, a reference grammar, seven useful brief appendices, an English to Latin vocabulary, a Latin to English vocabulary and an index . In addition the preliminary pages include a glossary of grammar terms (pp. x-xvi).

The book represents a considerable achievement. It offers a comprehensive survey of Latin grammar in a more engaging way than the traditional grammar book, and it provides plenty of exercises to reinforce the grammar that has been learned and give practice in applying it. It also offers a good selection of passages for unseen translation and comprehension. Taylor is clearly fascinated with Latin grammar and its various subtleties, and one might deduce that he is used to teaching bright classes who share his enthusiasm. In some of the detail the book must go well beyond the immediate needs of students at this level, but this is hardly a fault.

The book is well produced and attractively set out. The reviewer noticed only two typographical errors: quid respondam? on p. 9, which may mislead, and "sujunctive" on p. 167, which will not. Inevitably in a book of this coverage there are minor quibbles which could be raised. P. xi: Aspect is defined as "the expression of type of time": it is, rather, an aspect of the action of the verb, unrelated to time. P. xii: Complement is defined as "another nominative word or phrase describing the subject": this needs some reference to the verb "to be" and to the idea of completing. P. xii: Elision is defined as the "process by which the final vowel or syllable of a word is in effect knocked off": in fact it is only the vowel which is knocked off (together with nasalizing m) leaving any preceding consonant intact. P. 41: Would the Romans really have said amo currere for "I like running", given as an example of an infinitive as direct object? P. 163: "the ablative is ... a bit of a ragbag": it might be helpful to point out that it is an amalgamation of three Indo-European cases.

If we return to the question posed at the beginning of this review, there is no evidence here of a decline in the thoroughness of the teaching of Latin grammar in English schools, rather the reverse. Students who work their way through this book will be very well equipped linguistically to go on to university study in the subject. If there is a decline, it is in the numbers of students who take Latin to this level, to the extent that even Oxford and Cambridge now offer beginners courses. But that is another story.

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2010.08.71

Version at BMCR home site
Joannis Mylonopoulos (ed.), Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 170. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010. Pp. xvi, 437. ISBN 9789004179301. $200.00.
Reviewed by Irene Bald Romano, American School of Classical Studies at Athens

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

This volume consists of thirteen papers originally delivered at a 2007 international conference entitled "Images of Gods — Images for Gods" ("Götterbilder Bilder für die Götter") at the University of Erfurt, exploring issues relating to divine images from various perspectives, although with more focus on Greek than Roman. The editor of the volume, Mylonopoulos, organized the conference and contributed a paper, as well as an excellent introduction on the ancient and modern terms used to describe divine images, theories, and methodological approaches. He reminds us that there was no single word to define "cult image" in ancient Greek or Latin, that the distinction between votive and cult image was often blurred, and that one image could sometimes fulfill both requirements. There have been several recent studies of Greek cult images, by Donohue (1997), Scheer (2000, 8-34) and Bettinetti (2001, 25-63), that include an examination of terminology , and in this volume, Estienne offers an analysis of Latin terms for statue and cult statue (simulacrum, statua, signum, effigies) and discusses the implications of the distinction between images of the gods (simulacrum deorum) and temple ornaments (ornamenta aedium).

Setting aside terminology, these papers and other studies have made clear that the identification of an object as a "cult image" arises from various possible factors, including the use of the object in cult activity or within local religious traditions; the honors it was afforded; oftentimes its purported magical properties and complicated etiology that imbued it with greater interest and sanctity; its prominent position within a sanctuary or shrine (but not necessarily within a temple); and its attributes and other aspects of its appearance, whether anthropomorphic, zoomorphic or aniconic.

Despite these general parameters, there is still lack of certainty over the identification of cult images or specific divinities in Aegean Bronze Age cult, perhaps owing to our lack of complete understanding of visual clues and artistic vocabulary in the absence of literary texts. Blakolmer delves into this issue to try to understand why we fail to recognize specific deities in the complexity of the Minoan and Mycenaean pantheons. This is a situation that is markedly different from the earliest Iron Age cult images, for example, where visible attributes (or other aspects of their physical appearance) were important for the identification of a divinity. These attributes were employed especially intensively from the early 5th century onwards, as Mylonopoulos discusses in his essay on the use of attributes. In the end, Blakolmer justifiably concludes that the evidence for the existence of anthropomorphic cult statues in Minoan Crete or on the mainland in the Mycenaean period is highly speculative, with very little proof that cult images played an essential role in Aegean Bronze Age ritual. A revolution must have occurred sometime early in the 1st millennium B.C. in the way the Greeks conceived of their deities, the way in which they were represented, and in an important aspect of cult practice — the worship of a god through a sacred cult image. For an excellent essay on early Greek religion that suggests some methodological approaches see Pakkanen 2000-2001.

Aniconism has often been discussed as an early stage in the evolution to anthropomorphic images, but it is clear from the existing evidence that non-anthropomorphic objects were used as symbols of the presence of a divinity in various periods. Gaifman uses a historiographical approach to explore this theme and shows that Winckelmannn's reading of the ancient sources, especially of Clement of Alexandria, and his evolutionary schema has colored interpretations from the 18th century to the modern day. It is also Pausanias' fascination with the tales he was told about images from Greece's distant past that has influenced our (mis)understanding of the worship of stones and other non-anthropomorphic objects as a primitive act. The life-story of the wooden and magical aniconic (or semi-iconic) image of the Hermes Perpheraios at Thracian Ainos that is told by Kallimachus' in his seventh iambos provides a case in point, as Petrovic discusses.

In a provocative essay, Keesling shows that despite literary and epigraphical texts that should aid our understanding of religious iconography in the Archaic and Classical periods, there is still ambiguity about how we should interpret the reception of the Greeks to one category of votive image—korai. Keesling attempts to answer what or whom these statues represented, and if these statues that were clearly made for the gods are, in fact, images of the gods, using the Acropolis korai and Archaic-style Cypriot korai for her study. Keesling convincingly suggests that korai took their meaning from their context, their specific placement, the local religious traditions, or historical circumstances, but she generally rejects the notion that korai were perpetual stand-ins for human votaries. Keesling concludes that the ancient viewer would expect to see a divinity in the image, unless the context or some iconographical clues told them otherwise.

Hölscher analyzes Attic vase painting scenes that purport to show cult images in which archaism is used as a formula to denote "statue" and shows how the formula changed over time. She concludes that whereas in the 6th and earlier in the 5th century, statue and god were more often recognizably distinct and both were sometimes depicted on the same vase, the picture changes in the course of the 5th century. On some vases of around the 440s the representation of the god or of a statue of the god may have been left intentionally vague by the painter. Are we, therefore, to suppose that this signals some shift in religious beliefs in this period? Hölscher leaves the question open to some extent, but the subject is an important one that could be explored further. It is also worth pointing out that this is also the period of the creation of the colossal chryselephantine Athena Parthenos, which seems to have served less as an important object of veneration than as a spectacular and ostentatious symbol of Athens.

In an important paper, Pirenne-Delforge summarizes the essential role and position of Greek priests and priestesses and defines the relationship between these servants of the gods and cult images. As we know, neither priests nor cult images were necessary or central to the worship of a deity in ancient Greece, but both were mediators, in a sense, between the divine realm and the human, e.g., in the ritual feeding of the gods and in standing in for the divinity in various rituals, as the priest or, more often, the priestess did—in a mimesis between the servant of the god and the god. In much the same way, cult images stood in place of the divinity.

Pirenne-Delforge also discuss hidrysis, a term defined as the installation of a deity in the human realm. This act involved not only setting up an altar and a cult image, but also "setting up with pots," as Aristophanes (Peace 922-924) describes it—the preparation of a suitable sacrificial feast; the act of hidrysis is thus another way of defining the difference between a divine statue and a cult image. Moede shows that in artistic representations of the Augustan period, the physical transfer of the cult image into the area of an altar is symbolic of the installation of the signum and the founding of a cult, i.e., in Greek terms, the hidrysis.

We have long understood that, in Greek cult practice cult, images were not as important as the act of sacrifice. Ekroth has in recent years published several important articles on Greek sacrifice (see the bibliography in this volume), including an excellent essay in a recent catalogue of the exhibition on heroes at the Walters Art Museum (2009). In the volume under review, she focuses on an early 4th century B.C. Athenian votive relief in the Louvre depicting Theseus and two worshippers with a low mound between them. Ekroth provides a valuable discussion of the characteristics of various kinds of altars, bomos, eschara, as well as simple fieldstone and rock altars, reminding us that various divinities in various locales were given offerings on a range of altars from the simplest to the most monumental structures. In the case of this relief, Ekroth suggests that the mound represents a stone altar, and she speculates that it might be the Horkomosion, a stone mythically connected to Theseus and the place in the Athenian Agora where oaths and treaties were sworn. (For the lithos in front of the 6th century Stoa Basileios, see Camp 1992, 53–57, 100–105.) Ekroth's argument is fascinating and complicated, but since the cult of Theseus is little documented in Greek sources, her hypothesis is speculative.

Scheer discusses how cult images sometimes served not only religious, but also political, purposes. The statue of Athena Alea from Tegea was removed by Augustus to a secular context in Rome, as a punishment to the Tegeans for taking the wrong side in the Battle of Aktion. The Tegeans resorted to appropriating a statue of Athena Hippia from the neighboring town of Manthourea to serve as the image in the temple in Tegea, although it seems by Pausanias' time to have been thought of as Athena Alea. Scheer concludes that the removal of the old cult image did not cause the demise of the sanctuary. Another conclusion might be that the sanctuary, as a place of cult activity may already have been in decline, and the absence of the original cult images had little impact on its functioning.

Steurnagel interprets "temple-sharing" in which images of the deified Roman emperors shared temples with traditional gods (synnaoi theoi). An examination of specific examples shows that the divine emperors were, through "temple-sharing," integrated into the traditional pantheon. This close association of the emperor and his cult with the higher powers brought greater esteem (and financial resources) to the cities where the special status of "cult partnership" was granted. The careful placement of the statue of the divine emperor and the cult image of the god made it clear that the new gods of the imperial cult were not competing with the traditional gods in their temples. Rather, "temple-sharing" was a reinforcement or identifier of the divine status of the ruler.

In the final contribution to this volume, Bravi sheds light on the reception, use and adaptation of pagan statues in Byzantine Constantinople where the aristocratic, cultivated class kept the flame burning for ancient Greece and Greek identity. These Greek and Roman divine images were situated in new public contexts and, at the same time, were used as ideological underpinnings for an imperial city seeking to emphasize its classical roots. Bravi traces the changing reception of Classical images of the gods, depending on the cultural context, from the period of the founding of Constantinople to the looting of the Crusaders in 1203. This is a very fitting conclusion to this volume where so much emphasis has rightly been put on context — temporal, physical, and cultural — and its importance in identifying the meaning of images of the divine.

It is not easy to produce a volume of conference proceedings with such uniformly high scholarly standards in a single language (that is not the native language of all of the contributors). The bibliography is of great value as a compendium of the most recent and relevant references on Greek and Roman divine imagery, and, as is usual for this Brill series on Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, the indices of ancient authors and subjects are excellent. The illustrations are judiciously chosen, and one never feels the need to search through other resources for missing photographs. The editor and the authors are to be congratulated on their very valuable contributions to scholarship on Greek and Roman religion, cult practices, and divine images.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

J. Mylonopoulos, "Introduction: Divine Images versus cult images. An endless story about theories, methods, and terminologies," 1-19.
F. Blakolmer, "A pantheon without attributes? Goddesses and gods in Minoan and Mycenaean iconography," 21-61.
M. Gaifman, "Aniconism and the notion of "primitive" in Greek antiquity," 63-86.
C. M. Keesling, "Finding the gods: Greek and Cypriot votive korai revisited," 87-103.
F. Hölscher, "Gods and statues—An approach to archaistic images in the fifth century BCE," 105-120.
V. Pirenne-Delforge, "Greek priests and "cult statues": In how far are they necessary?," 121-141.
G. Ekroth, "Theseus and the stone. The iconographic and ritual contexts of a Greek votive relief in the Louvre," 143-169.
J. Mylonopoulos, "Odysseus with a trident? The use of attributes in ancient Greek imagery," 171-203.
I. Petrovic, "The life story of a cult statue as an allegory: Kallimachus' Hermes Perpheraios," 205-224.
T. Scheer, "Arcadian cult images between religion and politics," 225-239.
D. Steuernagel, "Synnaos theos. Images of Roman emperors in Greek temples," 241-255.
S. Estienne, "Simulacra deorum versus ornamenta aedium. The status of divine images in the temples of Rome," 257-271.
K. Moede, "The dedication of cult statues at the altar. A Roman pictorial formula for the introduction of new cults," 273-287.
A. Bravi, "Ornamenta, monumenta, exempla. Greek images of gods in the public spaces of Constantinople," 289-301.
Bibliography, 303-359.
Index of passages cited, 361-366.
Subject Index, 367-386.
Figures, 387-437.

REFERENCES CITED

Bettinetti 2001 = S. Bettinetti, La statua di culto nella pratica rituale greca. Bari.
Camp 1992 = Camp, J. M. 1992. The Athenian Agora: Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens. London.
Donohue 1997 = A. Donohue, "The Greek Images of the Gods: Considerations on Terminology and Methodology," Hephaistos 15, 31-45.
Ekroth 2009 = G. Ekroth, "The Cult of Heroes" in S. Albersmeier, ed. Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece. New Haven, 120-143.
Pakkanen 2000-2001 = P. Pakkanen, "The Relationship Between Continuity and Change in Dark Age Greek Religion: A Methodological Study," Opuscula Atheniensia 25-26, 71-88.
Scheer 2000 = T. S. Scheer, Die Gottheit und ihr Bild. Untersuchungen zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder in Religion und Politik, Zetemata 10, Munich.

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2010.08.70

Version at BMCR home site
Giuseppe Agosta, Ricerche sui Cynegetica di Oppiano. Supplementi di Lexis 41. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert Editore, 2009. Pp. 166. ISBN 9789025612498. €40.00 (pb).
Reviewed by Sebastián Martínez García, Institut Can Vilumara, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain

Los Cynegetica, poema didáctico griego escrito a principios del siglo III d. C. por un supuesto Opiano, natural de Apamea en Siria, no han merecido gran atención por parte de los estudiosos; en efecto, la crítica no ha sido pródiga en ediciones, traducciones o estudios. El libro de G. Agosta viene a sumarse a otros escasos volúmenes bastante recientes, como son los de A. N. Bartley,¹ L. L'Allier,² M. Papathomopoulos³ y T. Silva Sánchez,⁴ así como las publicaciones algo más antiguas de C. Calvo Delcán,⁵ de A. W. James,⁶ de F. M. Pontani⁷ y de W. Schmitt,⁸ aparte de unos pocos artículos de diversos autores, que, por razones de espacio no se mencionarán aquí, pero cuyas referencias se pueden encontrar en los repertorios habituales o en las bibliografías de los libros de G. Agosta, de A. N. Bartley o de T. Silva Sánchez. El volumen que nos ocupa trata de algunos aspectos del poema, en particular su carácter didáctico y su valor de ofrenda al emperador, centrándose sobre todo en el estudio del comienzo del canto II.

La introducción (p. 1-2) recuerda la bibliografía más importante a propósito de los Cynegetica y anuncia las intenciones del autor, el análisis de algunos aspectos del poema que ya mencionamos, en particular en torno a los versos II 1-175, cuyo texto publica con aparato crítico y traducción al italiano. Sigue una escueta presentación (p. 3-5) de la biografía del poeta, donde Agosta, teniendo en cuenta las pruebas que aportan los textos de los propios poemas, se alinea con la tradicional distinción entre un Opiano, cilicio de nación, autor de los Halieutica a finales del II d. C. y otro autor, nacido en Apamea (Siria), autor de los Cynegetica. Hace también hincapié en que las biografías bizantinas, en la medida en que contradicen los testimonios de los propios poemas, no son de fiar. Aporta además un punto de vista nuevo (aunque, siendo un argumento ex silentio, no parece conveniente usarlo): el hecho de que el autor de los Cynegetica evita presentarse como la misma persona que escribió los Halieutica (p. 5).

El capítulo I (p. 7-18) estudia los proemios de los Cynegetica como manifestación de la conciencia poética, en tanto que adscriben el poema a un género poético, y como elemento estructurador de la materia zoológica y venatoria. Agosta considera que los argumentos zoológicos son necesarios para ilustrar la virtus animal con la que rivaliza el cazador, y que dichos argumentos además siguen la tradición de los escritos sobre caza y responden a las demandas culturales de sus contemporáneos. El contraste que observa Agosta (p. 12-13) entre el relato de la hazaña acometida por Hércules contada en el canto II y el desarrollo mítico sobre el origen dionisíaco de los leopardos en el canto IV resulta interesante, puesto que dichas narraciones simétricas sobre Hércules y Dioniso, las dos divinidades más apreciadas por Caracalla, marcarían el principio y el final de la composición.

En el capítulo II (p. 19-31), que lleva por título "(Θέατρα) κυνηγετικὰ", Agosta explica que el poema puede verse como un munus ofrecido al emperador (p. 22) y destaca las diferencias entre los Cynegetica y sus antecesores (p. 28-29). Hay algunas opiniones un tanto injustificadas, como la de que Opiano habría viajado a África (p. 24), siguiendo a R. Keydell,⁹ que se apoya en III 46-47, pero el hecho de que el poeta declare haber visto un animal africano, cuando fue transportado para servir de espectáculo en presencia del emperador, no parece motivo suficiente para creer que haya visitado África. Asimismo parece bastante gratuito decir que el poeta encontró inspiración constante en el culto imperial (p. 25-26), cuando de él sólo se conoce esta obra.

El capítulo III (p. 33-60), titulado "Τόποι" está consagrado al estudio del proemio del canto II del poema, concretamente de los versos 1-42. El análisis es exhaustivo y concienzudo, aunque se pueda discrepar de algún detalle, como el hecho de que la expresión δίδυμον γένος de II 2 podría implicar una participación de Apolo en el don de la caza a los mortales (p. 37). Sin embargo, contiene algún acierto muy valioso en mi opinión, como su propuesta acerca de ἐπιδόρπιον, que conduce a una valiente interpretación del pasaje a propósito de los cazadores míticos: considera que ἐπιδόρπιον tiene el sentido de "alimenticio" y que caracteriza a los Centauros frente a los cazadores nobles (p. 39-40). También resulta interesante la interpretación en el sentido de que el Pseudo-Opiano retrata a Perseo como un representante de los cazadores a la carrera (p. 46-47) en una clasificación donde los personajes mitológicos que han recibido este don de Ártemis representan los distintos tipos de caza, descendiendo desde los más nobles a los más humildes: desde Perseo el corredor hasta Orión, que practica la caza nocturna, condenada por Platón (Leg. 824a). La conclusión de este capítulo incide en la variada mezcla de tópicos literarios que informan los proemios de los poemas didácticos, procedentes, en el caso que nos ocupa, de las tradiciones cinegética, didáctica, bucólica y épica, principalmente.

El capítulo IV (p. 61-72), que lleva por título "Ἔπη (la lotta dei tori: 2.43-82)", estudia la estructura y fuentes del pasaje dedicado al enfrentamiento entre los toros para emparentarlo con la épica. Es innegable el carácter homerizante del pasaje (cabe preguntarse si un pasaje de lucha, al menos en hexámetros dactílicos griegos, podía evitar el referente homérico), pero lo que no parece tan evidente son algunas afirmaciones de Agosta (p. 69), en el sentido de que la disputa entre los dos toros aluda de alguna manera al enfrentamiento entre Aquiles y Agamenón presentado al comienzo de la Ilíada: la confrontación entre Aquiles y Agamenón tiene carácter único e irrepetible frente a las luchas de los toros que se repiten anualmente en cada vacada entre machos dominantes y aspirantes. No parece que este pasaje anule la distinción entre poema épico y poema didáctico (p. 70), tanto más cuanto que se contradice con la afirmación de que "i poemi che si suole definiri didattici appartenevano semplicemente, o prima di tutto, all'epica" (p. 69). Tampoco podemos estar completamente de acuerdo con una frase muy poco matizada: "non sarà difficile intendere la praeteritio applicata agli animali βαιοί e οὐτιδανοί (2.570 ss.) anche come rifiuto, imposto dai canoni dell'epos, di assumere a protagonisti soggetti umili, inferiori" (p. 71). Y es que la poca atención que presta el poeta a estos animales se debe a su escaso interés cinegético.

En el capítulo V, "Εὐρέα κάλλη (2.100-58)", que ocupa las p. 73-86, Agosta analiza el pasaje etiológico sobre los toros de Siria siguiendo principalmente a A. S. Hollis,¹⁰ a P. Bernard¹¹ y, en menor medida, a T. Silva Sánchez.¹² El autor considera que estos versos serían una presentación de la ciudad de Apamea ante el emperador Caracalla, una especie de xenion que acompañaría el homenaje (p. 80). La conclusión del capítulo (p. 84-86), que relaciona el pasaje con el excurso mitológico del canto IV acerca de la transformación de las bacantes en leopardos, no parece tan clara, puesto que se apoya en la seguridad de que el texto del poema está completo, lo cual parece, por lo menos, discutible.

"La nature organisée", expresión tomada de un artículo de M. Riffaterre¹³ es el título del capítulo VI (p. 87-95), que trata de la estructura del poema. Para Agosta la descripción de la confrontación hombre-animal (canto IV) está precedida por dos partes dedicadas a los respectivos instrumentos, medios de defensa o armas (el canto I está consagrado a los humanos y los cantos II-III a los recursos de los animales). Está claro que la estructura del canto II se basa en la alternancia entre animales grandes y pequeños, aunque no sucede así en el canto III. Agosta también subraya la organización paralela de los cantos II y III, comenzando por el animal más importante de las respectivas categorías (canto II: toro; canto III: león), acabando con animales ajenos a la materia del libro y ordenando a menudo los animales por parejas (toro-bisonte, lobo-hiena, jabalí-puercoespín, etc.).

El último capítulo del libro, "Formaler Typ" (p. 97-105), estudia la clasificación de los Cynegetica como formaler Typ de poema didáctico en la tipología de B. Effe;¹⁴ los rasgos que motivarían esta clasificación serían el desinterés por el tema por parte del autor y su inclinación hacia una forma agradable. El estudio del poema, según Agosta, en particular la realización de una función didáctica efectiva, permite, no obstante, considerar que más bien tendría que pertenecer al tipo transparente, como su modelo principal, los Halieutica de Opiano de Cilicia, si es que esta categoría no es (en palabras de Agosta) un "miraggio critico".

En las páginas finales del trabajo (p. 107-129) se recoge el texto de II 1-175 (precedido de un prefacio sobre la tradición manuscrita), texto que no presenta erratas, según hemos comprobado; va acompañado de aparato crítico y de una traducción italiana verso a verso. Siguen (p. 131-152) unas notas críticas que tratan algo menos de una treintena de lectiones; entre ellas hay tres aportaciones de Agosta; para el verso II 59 (p. 136-138) sugiere la posibilidad de que la lectura original fuera σάλπιγξεν, pero, con buen criterio, no edita esta corrección, superflua a nuestro entender. Por contra, en el v. 89 (p. 142-144), un lugar bastante complicado, la elección de Agosta (ἐνέπουσιν, ἐννηέες εἰσανέχονται) parece acertada y defendible. En cambio, la corrección ἀλλήλῃσι propuesta para el v. 168 (p. 151-152) es desafortunada y resulta extraño que Agosta no se haga eco del excelente análisis del pasaje que hace T. Silva Sánchez.¹⁵ El volumen acaba con una recopilación bibliográfica muy completa (p. 153-165).

En suma, Agosta realiza un análisis completo del pasaje II 1-175 de los Cynegetica, en el que se conjugan observaciones atinadas, opiniones difíciles de demostrar y aportaciones valiosas. El libro constituye un avance en el conocimiento del contenido y el sentido de la obra del poeta de Apamea.

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Notes:

1.   Stories from the Mountains. Stories from the Sea. The Digressions and Similes of Oppian's Halieutica and the Cynegetica, Göttingen, 2003.
2.   Arrien & Oppien d'Apamée. L'Art de la Chasse. Cinegétiques, París, 2009.
3.   Oppiani Apamensis Cynegeticorum Concordantia, Hildesheim-Zurich-New York, 1997; y Oppianus Apameensis, Cynegetica. Eutecnius sophistes, Paraphrasis metro soluta, Munich-Leipzig, 2003.
4.   El hexámetro de Opiano de Anazarbo y Opiano de Apamea, tesis doctoral, Cádiz, 1998 (edición en microfichas, Cádiz, 1999); y Sobre el texto de los Cynegetica de Opiano de Apamea, Cádiz, 2002.
5.   Opiano, De la caza, De la pesca. Anónimo, Lapidario órfico, Madrid, 1990.
6.   Index in Halieutica Oppiani Cilicis et in Cynegetica poetae Apameensis, Hildesheim, 1970.
7.   Nos referimos a la traducción publicada en I. Furlan, Codici greci illustrati della Biblioteca Marciana, V, Padua, 1988, p. 49-79, y VI, Padua, 1997, p. 55-80; también se puede encontrar en Tratado de Caza. Oppiano. Cynegetica, Valencia, 2002, p. 401-448.
8.   Komentar zum ersten Buch von Pseudo-Oppians Kynegetica, diss. Münster, 1969.
9.   "Oppianos", RE 18-1, 1939, c. 704.
10.   "[Oppian], Cyn. 2, 100-158 and the mythical Past of Apamea-on-the-Orontes", ZPE 102, 1994, 153-166.
11.   "I. Une légende de fondation hellénistique: Apamée sur l'Oronte d'après les 'Cynégétiques' du pseudo-Oppien. II Paysages et toponymie dans le Proche Orient hellénisé", Topoi 5, 1995, 353-408.
12.   "Kaiserkult y creación poética. Algunas reflexiones sobre las Vitae Oppiani y la composición de los Cynegetica", ExcPhil 4-5, 1994-1995, 107-122.
13.   "Système d'un genre descriptif", Poétique 3, 1972, p. 25.
14.   Dichtung und Lehre. Untersuchungen zur Typologie des antiken Lehrgedicht, Munich, 1977.
15.   Sobre el texto de los Cynegetica de Opiano de Apamea, Cádiz, 2002, p. 134-137.

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