Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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

Epictetus, a former slave who lived in Rome during Nero's reign but was exiled(along with all those who practiced philosophy in Rome) to Greece by Domitian's decree in 93 CE, espoused an austere ethical philosophy which aimed at happiness (eudaimonia), or tranquility (ataraxia), through the delimitation of valuation to things within one's control. Although Epictetus never set to writing his beliefs, his disciple Arrian recorded eight books of his sayings (entitled Discourses [διατριβαί] of which only four books survive) and edited a compendium entitled the Handbook (Ἐγχειρίδιον). In his preface to the volume under review, editor Theodore Scaltsas writes that "there is no message that would be of greater value in the face of today's threats to society than Epictetus' 'bear and forbear.'" (1) Although Epictetus' "forbearance" is not exactly the philosophy of hope much in vogue in contemporary politics, there is no doubt that Epictetus offers a perennial source of strength and self-reliance.

The present volume derives from a conference held in 2001 devoted to the further understanding of Epictetus and his philosophy. Although the contributors are major scholars in ancient philosophy, most of the contributions are relatively brief examinations of select problems within Epictetus' philosophy. (The papers by Algra and Dragona-Monachou are each over twenty-five pages long, but all the remaining papers are under sixteen pages long and five of the papers are twelve pages long or shorter.) Although quantity obviously does not determine quality, at times it felt as though the length of the papers delimited their scope and argumentation. Although the essays are accessible to non-specialists, the volume lacks a general introduction to the philosophy of Epictetus, and Andrew Mason's eight page introduction to the volume is primarily concerned with summarizing the individual papers in the volume. The conference at which the papers were delivered antedated the publication of A.A. Long's Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford, 2002), which stands as the most important and best general introduction to the philosophy of Epictetus; most (but not all) of the authors situate their theses against the claims of Long's volume since the edited collection now postdates it. The volume includes a bibliography of works cited by the individual essays and a short index, but no index locorum.

Several of the essays naturally fit together. As Mason's introduction notes, the essays by Cooper and Crivelli address the question of the overall methodology of Epictetus, including its relationship to the study of logic; the essays by Algra, Ierodiakonou, and Schofield address aspects of Epicurus' theology; the essays by Sorabji, Erler, and Dragona-Monachou examine questions related to Epictetus' notion of the self; and the essays by Annas and Frede take up the relationship between personhood, the "roles" or "offices" which humans play, and the duties or obligations which derive from such roles. Let me survey the problems in each of these four clusters.

A glance at Epictetus' writings shows that his philosophical interests were predominantly in ethical or practical questions. Whereas one finds in the imperial Stoicism of Seneca or Marcus Aurelius rhetorical appeals to moral improvement, in classical and Hellenistic Stoicism of Zeno and Chrysippus, one finds logic and physics as foundations of ethical theorizing. When one turns to Epictetus, there appears by contrast a profound concern with moral practice in a non-rhetorical fashion yet without a detailed elaboration of its relationship to more theoretical foundations. Cooper's essay addresses the relationship between moral theory and practice in Epictetus and Crivelli takes up the place of logic within Epictetus' general philosophy. Following Jonathan Barnes' Logic and the Imperial Stoa (Brill, 1997), Crivelli argues, through the explication of several passages in the Discourses concerning the role of logic, that Epictetus' ambivalence is misleading and that he had a positive if ultimately ancillary role for logic within his overall philosophy. Cooper argues that determining Epictetus' overall methodology--including the relationship of moral theory to moral practice--is complicated by the nature of the evidence, since the Discourses consist largely of admonitions and protreptics addressed to students rather than the formal course of instruction in Epictetus' school. Cooper concludes that what Epictetus seeks in a student is "one who will read Chrysippus' treatises with care and retention, and will put into effect in their daily lives the lessons Chrysippus has to teach" (15).

The question of theology in Epictetus' writings arises at several levels. Often Epictetus invokes the will of god in his writings, but what is the nature of that god? Like Socrates in the Apology, Epictetus speaks of philosophy as a divine mission, but in what sense does he see the life of philosophy as a divine command? Is Epictetus' god -- which is often described in quasi personal terms, including as an object of prayer -- consistent with the god of earlier Stoicism? The essays by Algra, Ierodiakonou, and Schofield touch upon facets of these questions. Algra's essay is the most expansive and helpfully situates the question of Epictetus' theology within scholarly debates of the last century. Algra argues that determining whether Epictetus' theology is heterodox within Stoicism first requires clarification of the contested concepts of pantheism and theism. The overall thrust of her argument is "that early Stoicism was not as exclusively pantheistic as it is often supposed to be, whereas on the other hand the kind of personalistic theism that we may attribute to Epictetus does not appear to have been all that radical or unheard of after all" (36). As Algra points out, the relationship between god and man in early Stoicism is like that between sages -- with the qualification that such a god, as perfect rationality, is an ideal or limit to which humans can aspire. The remainder of Algra's essay shows how Epictetus' "personalized" concept of god is more a difference in emphasis than a departure from Stoic orthodoxy; moreover, the literary style of the Discourses and Epictetus' Socratic spirit can account for such differences.

Ierodiakonou's and Schofield's essays help unpack Epictetus' idiosyncratic spirit concerning his claim that the role of the philosopher is one assigned by God as a divine mission. The trope occurs in several places in the Discourses (which Ierodiakonou aptly surveys), including Discourses III.22 (which is the focus of Schofield's essay), wherein Epictetus claims that the true philosopher (in the case under discussion, a Cynic) has been sent by Zeus as a messenger (ἄγγελος) and scout (κατάσκοπος) for humanity. For Ierodiakonou, Discourses III.22 (with several other passages) illustrates how Epictetus generally conceives of the philosopher as one who is to scout out the enemies of humanity (namely, those things which really harm humans) and to announce the god's will in everyday life, both in discourses and by means of example. At the same time -- echoing details in Algra's essay -- she shows how such a messenger (and his announcements about conversion and salvation) is solely secular and different from the "messengers" (or angels) of Christianity. For Schofield, Discourses III.22 serves as a rare text for unpacking Diogenes the Cynic's actual practice as philosophy. Whereas Ierodiakonou sheds light on how Epictetus views philosophy as a divine vocation, Schofield sheds light on how a philosopher who had pondered the paradoxes and practices of Diogenes interpreted that lifestyle. The two essays together thus illume the broader and more narrow nuances of Discourses III.22.

The third cluster of essays--those by Sorabji, Erler, and Dragona-Monachou--are loosely united insofar as they touch upon topics related to the notion of "self" in Epictetus' philosophy. All three essays are also comparative: Sorabji juxtaposes Epictetus' account of proairesis with that found in Aristotle (and to a lesser degree, Neoplatonic philosophy); Erler juxtaposes Epictetus' account of how to respond to the fear of death with that given by Socrates in the Phaedo; and Dragona-Monachou traces parallels she finds between Epictetus and Wittgenstein on the notion of freedom. Sorabji's eleven page essay lays out the terrain of the problem by showing that Epictetus makes use of several different senses of "self" in his writings (including one sense in which he identifies the self with a sense of proairesis or "rational decision). Erler's essay argues that the metaphor of "the child in man" -- the irrational element within the self that wrongly fears death, even though it is beyond one's control -- which Epictetus uses in Discourses II.1 likely derives from the Socratic metaphor used in the Phaedo (77e; see also Crito 46c) and illustrates the preparatory training Epictetus directs towards the young men who seek to follow him. Finally, Dragona-Morgana situates Epictetus within the scholarly debate concerning the origins of the "free will problem" in classical philosophy and argues that Epictetus' notion of freedom is one based primarily on autonomy or self-mastery (or in Suzanne Bobzien's words--with which Dragona-Morgana concurs--"freedom through self-restriction" ¹).

The fourth cluster of papers--those by Annas and the late Michael Frede--strike me as the richest contributions of the volume, and thus fittingly its conclusion. Both are concerned with the ways in which Epictetus views ethical obligations as situational--for instance, that my obligations are determined by the roles that I play, such as whether I am a parent, an employer, a spouse, etc.--and yet nonetheless derived from a single unified rational "person" who is more than just the sum of his roles. Annas addresses the relationship between our situational roles and personhood by juxtaposing Epictetus' account with modern ways around the problem. From a modern perspective, there appears to be at least potentially a conflict between one's obligations as a rational being and those related to a person's embeddedness in specific roles: what reason commands me to do impartially seems quite likely to conflict with the loyalty a sibling might require of me. But the practical nature of Epictetus' (and, for Annas, most ancient ethical theory) obviates this conflict. As Annas puts it at one point, "given that our aim as Stoics is to achieve the good by becoming virtuous, this is to be found not in running away from our commitments, or by abstracting from our socially embedded roles and relationships. Rather, we seek the good from within those relationships, in a way best captured by what can be called aspiring to the Stoic ideal in our everyday life" (148). Annas considers criticisms against such a view but sets it out as a plausible, defensible ethical theory.

Whereas Annas goes at the question in a sense from the side of our embedded commitments, Frede explores the question from the perspective of the unified "person" (or for Epictetus, πρόσωπον). Frede unpacks the notion of "person" in Epictetus' writings, separating it both from modern, post Lockean notions of a person (for instance, the sense that a person is "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection" [Essay on Human Understanding, II.27.11]) and from the different senses of person in Cicero, Seneca, and Panaetius. (As Frede intriguingly notes, "It is an obvious fact, but one little attention has been paid to, that down to the end of the fourth century BC nobody in extant Greek literature talks of human beings as 'humans.' Neither Plato nor Aristotle in their voluminous works ever speaks of human beings as 'persons' in any sense of the word" (157).) Epictetus' distinctive contribution to the notion of person comes out most clearly in his reflection on the Roman senator Helvidius Priscus who faced persecution from Emperor Vespasian (Discourses I.2.19-21). Given that Helvidius Priscus is "the person who he is, " as long as he is on the rolls of the senate he has an obligation to attend the Senate regardless of whether he is threatened; but, were he removed from the rolls, no longer does his "person" include duties towards the senate (at least qua senator). Thus, for Epictetus, person means "the sort of person somebody is," that is, personhood integrates the various roles--senator, parent, sibling, spouse--one "plays." (Theatrical language is appropriate in part because this notion of πρόσωπον picks up on a secondary meaning of the term as "mask.") With respect to moral obligations, Frede's analysis explains one of the more challenging issues in Epictetus' ethical thought concerning the place of moral rules. Since every "person" is different (common characteristics like reason notwithstanding), it follows that "living a good life, acting as you ought to act, does not amount to the same thing for everybody. It is relative to the sort of person you are. There is not a single set of rules which define, let along decide, how one should act, which hold for everybody." (163)

As noted at the outset, evaluation of the volume is complicated because of the brevity of some of its offerings. Frede's essay stands out as one which will be of interest not only to scholars of ancient philosophy, but also to those interested in the idea of personhood and that concept's history. Specialists in ancient Greek philosophy will find the essays by Algra and Annas especially worthy of examination independent of interest in Stoic ethics or theology. The pieces by Schofield and Sorabji display the erudition and insight one expects from their authors, although the brevity of their pieces limits the scope of their contributions. The remaining essays are all carefully crafted pieces which will be of interest primarily to scholars working within the philosophy of Stoicism.

1. The Relevance of Moral Theory to Moral Improvement in Epictetus (John M. Cooper) 2. Epictetus and Logic (Paolo Crivelli) 3. Epictetus and Stoic Theology (Keimpe Algra) 4. The Philosopher as God's Messenger (Katerina Ierodiakonou) 5. Epictetus on Cynicism (Malcolm Schofield) 6. Epictetus on proairesis and Self (Richard Sorabji) 7. Death is a Bugbear: Socratic 'Epode' and Epictetus' Philosophy of the Self (Michael Erler) 8. Epictetus on Freedom: Parallels between Epictetus and Wittgenstein (Myrto Dragona-Monachou) 9. Epictetus on Moral Perspectives (Julia Annas) 10. A Notion of a Person in Epictetus (Michael Frede)

NOTES

1. See S. Bobzien, "Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and their Relaton to Ethics," in R. Sorabji, ed., Aristotle and After. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 68 (1997): 79. (read complete article)

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

The present valuable volume contains papers delivered (with two absences and one accretion) at the 'Britannia Latina' conference sponsored by the Fondazione Cassamarca and held at the British Academy and the Warburg Institute in 2003; it is dedicated to the memory of the Institute's former President J. B. Trapp. As the editors state, it was never intended 'to provide a comprehensive chronological account of Latin in Great Britain'; to the admitted lacunae, Roman Britain and the twelfth century (even William of Malmesbury achieves no more than a single passing mention), may be added the influence of Latin on the vernacular tongues, at its most extreme in the aureate style of Middle Scots. A paper on Scottish Latin was delivered but not published; indeed Scotland furnishes only one chapter against Wales's two. Irish Latinity has been excluded, geography trumping history.

In the first chapter Michael Lapidge searches for 'linguistic criteria which would help to identify an anonymous Latin text as "English"', and finds none despite trying f for Latin v, h treated as a consonant in quantitative verse, volo as an auxiliary of the future, and the hermeneutic style. As to the first, the substitution of /f/ is also found in Irish and continental Germanic (p. 5).¹ Lapidge strangely writes (p. 4) 'Old English did not have a voiced sound which corresponded precisely to the Latin semi-vowel /w/', i.e. the initial sound of modern English wet; how else was the Old English wynn pronounced? The second he also finds in Walahfrid Strabo and Hrabanus Maurus; ² indeed, it goes back to late-antique misinterpretation of caesural lengthening at Verg. Aen. 9. 610. Bede knew better, but justified the usage out of Christian poets. On the examples of volo paraphrasing the future Lapidge is a mite over-cautious; they are all in the first person singular, representing Old English 'ic wille' used of what the speaker will do by choice, not merely what he wishes to do: 'I will' not 'ich will'. ³ On the other hand, a thorough search of other Latinities is needed to find whether the use (which after all gave rise to the Romanian future, and can be found elsewhere in Romance) really is confined to English in the relevant period. Lapidge cites parallels for the strange words in the hermeneutic style from Continental authors, notably Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés; but the point is less to track down individual words like arcisterium (Abbo's corruption of asceterium) than to compare the bloated ampullosity of the Bella Parisiacae urbis with that of (say) late-tenth-century English charters.

Unfortunately, Lapidge appears to have taken too literally the exclusion of Irish Latinity. Even if 'the first Latin teaching in England was done by the Roman [and Frankish?] monks who accompanied Augustine to England' (p. 3), they were swiftly followed by the Irish monks from Iona, whose mission was far more successful; it was certainly they and not Romans (or Franks) who imparted the Latin alphabet as the Anglo-Saxons wrote it. Had they really no influence on the way in which the language was used, even in the earliest years? After all, Lapidge himself in an earlier essay implicitly allowed Hibernian influence on the syllabic verse of Aldhelm, ⁴ before Theodore introduced a different model; and the Hisperica famina (distributed from even if not concocted in Ireland) made their contribution to the hermeneutic style, even if its scraps were stolen from other feasts of languages as well.

Peter Dronke writes on 'Arbor eterna: A Ninth-Century Welsh Latin Sequence', which he regards as older than Notker's productions, being written in a late-ninth-century hand and exhibiting more than one level of corruption; most startling is sensiaes for centies, taken down uncomprehendingly from a French-speaker who rendered both c and t as /ts/ in a word that a Welsh scribe would pronounce almost in classical fashion. Despite its difficulties of text and diction, Dronke extracts from it a sense in praise of Ecclesia, like that of the more disciplined Winchester sequence Gloria resonante cimbalarum. He also takes issue with an assertion of Erich Auerbach's, exhaled from the grave of Romanticism, that Carolingian Latin was a dead language written according to ancient models; that is not necessarily a bad thing to be, as the best achievements of Renaissance Latin show, but it simply does not apply to these sequences.

Maria Amalia D'Aronco examines the Latin background to the Old English vernacular medical treatises collectively known as the Leechbook. They represent the same practical dissemination of ancient knowledge (or what passed for knowledge) as may be found in contemporary Continental texts, from which however they differ in the use of the vernacular; they also sometimes derive from better texts of their Latin sources than we possess. Particular praise is lavished on the compiler's 'extraordinary competence in the subject matter', his 'lucid capacity for synthesis', and above all the 'strong awareness of [his] own national identity' visible in his aim of enlightening the non-Latinate. (Others, no less romantically, would speak of oneness with the people; perhaps rather he was loyally obeying instructions that in all likelihood came ultimately from King Alfred.) One would still like to know, however, how many of the remedies were likely to do the patient any good, and how much of the materia medica was identifiable despite scribal corruptions ('se monian' for 'scamonian', p. 29 n. 15) or indeed available.

David Luscombe considers Roger Bacon's approach to language. In order to understand both Christianity and the beliefs and intellectual achievements of those who were to be converted, it was necessary to know the languages in which they had been expressed--and not merely to speak those languages but to know their grammar. For his time, he shows an impressive command of biblical languages, knowing for instance that Jer. 10: 11 is in Aramaic (which like Jerome he calls Chaldee); ⁵ indeed, despite his desire, shared with others, for a more correct text of the Vulgate, and his interest in expository semiotics, his interest in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish exegesis was distinctly less than that in the Hebrew language. Was Bacon, whatever he might profess, really one of those who (in Jakob Grimm's dichotomy) studied the things for the words' sake rather than vice versa? or was he even more bent on demonstrating his superiority? ⁶

John Marenbon re-examines the account of Robert Holcot's views on virtuous pagans propagated by Middle English scholars: so far from holding that they had been allowed to attain the knowledge needful for salvation by natural reason, he maintained that no-one, Christian or pagan, had ever attained that knowledge by natural reason, that such pagans as had attained it had done so through learning of its revelation, and that most even of those had failed to act on it. The consequences for Chaucer and Langland are left for others to draw; but at least Holcot allows that some pagans went to heaven.

David Rundle considers the complexity of English reactions to fifteenth-century humanism, which were not confined to acceptance or rejection of Italian development in style; to be sure he seems to confuse the genus humanistic classicism with the species Ciceronianism, for by no means all humanists felt called upon to eschew words and constructions found in other ancient authors but not in Cicero, fashionable as that firm basis for composition became in the decades around 1500, but nevertheless there was a clear distinction between even the most liberal humanistic Latin and the florid style of medieval England, which took time to recede before it. Thomas Chaundler (who styled himself M.T.C.) fused matter from Leonardo Bruni and Pier Candido Decembrio into his Libellus de laudibus civitatum; others collected texts and compiled (not always accurate) glossaries. Moreover, even if for Henry VII, like other princes, humanists were prestigious collectables like 'Burgundian tapestries, Venetian glass, and exotic animals', ⁷ they were recognized to be purveying worthwhile values as well as stylistic change.

Richard Sharpe, in by far the longest chapter, examines the motivation and achievement of four English bibliographers, Henry of Kirkestede in the fourteenth century, John Leland and John Bale in the sixteenth, and Thomas Tanner in the eighteenth. Whereas the high proportion of works by or ascribed to British authors in Henry's Catalogus was due to compilation from English monastic libraries, above all that of Bury, the other three all produced consciously national bibliographies such as only Trithemius had attempted on the Continent; Leland and Bale, despite their talk of Britain, primarily focused on the manuscripts revealed and endangered by the dissolution of the English monasteries and moved by the English patriotism of the age, Tanner, in the early years of Great Britain, incorporating not only their work but that of their seventeenth-century successors in England, Ireland, and Scotland and of Edward Lhuyd on Wales. Particularly interesting is Sharpe's study of the relationship between Leland and Bale, with particular reference to Alberic of London (anonymized by Cardinal Mai as the Third Vatican Mythographer); notable too are his concluding pages on the difference between Insular and Continental bibliography.

Ceri Davies studies the Latin works of two Welsh cultural patriots, John Prise, nephew by marriage to Thomas Cromwell, and John Davies, reviser of the Bible and Prayer Book. The former in his Historiae Brytannicae defensio sought to vindicate Geoffrey of Monmouth's fables with the aid of old Welsh poetry, which he paraphrased in Latin verse, elegant like his prose despite occasional false quantities, ⁸ the latter wrote a Welsh grammar in Latin notable for its attention to the language as actually used by the poets, ⁹ and a dictionary of the two tongues, to each of which he prefixed a learned preface, in the grammar magnificently defending not only his own work but the Welsh language with particular reference to its value for preaching the Word of God.

Philip Ford examines the outburst of Scottish patriotism in a writer who had elsewhere bestowed his praises on France, George Buchanan, apparently in riposte to the preening tone of French epithalamia for the Dauphin with Mary Stuart; in his own poem on that theme, not content with celebrating the Scottish contribution on the field to the Auld Alliance, he will have it that the Scots thwarted the advance of Roman arms and helped Charlemagne bring culture to the Franks. (Alas, from his Latin history of Scotland it appears that he took for Scots not only the Irish monks known by that name, but--misled by 'Alba' and 'Albany'--the king's teacher Albinus, the Englishman Alcuin of York.) Although he wrote one work in Scots, and was conversant with Spanish as well as French, Ford suggests that his real homeland was not Scotland or even France but the Latin language itself.

Stella P. Revard considers the political messages of Latin poems addressed to Elizabeth I and Mary II, mostly by university poets from Oxford and Cambridge, but beginning with two rather more accomplished authors, Paulus Melissus and Janus Dousa. Melissus, praising Elizabeth for her love of peace, ¹⁰purchased enough goodwill to permit the inclusion of an ode to Gregory XIII, who was even less her friend than Revard observes, ¹¹ having given support in word and deed to the Geraldine rebellion in Ireland and encouraged plots against her life; Dousa urges her to support the Dutch rebellion against Philip II, which she reluctantly did. As to domestic eulogists, whatever their poetic demerits the bards of Academe were true heirs of Horace in their vicarious zeal for war: when Elizabeth died, many in their lamentations besought her successor James I to continue the struggle with Spain, which he did not; on the other hand those who, somewhat imaginatively, likened Mary II to her were pushing at an open door when they bade William III fight the French.

There follow three articles on the decline in the status of Latin amongst the educated. First, James Binns surveys its course from the early eighteenth century, when it was still the natural language not only of learning, but of polite letters intended to be read in other countries, to the later decades (the turning-point is placed about 1750), when its use provokes self-consciousness in authors, and when the canon of Latin writers becomes more strictly classical; Binns looks ahead to the reborn Ciceronianism that persisted even into my schooldays, when I was told that et did not mean etiam and nec did not mean ne...quidem. However, I miss a comparison with the comparable contests and outcomes between Latin and the vernacular in France and Germany; contests and outcomes taken too much for granted when compared with the long persistence of Byzantine Greek, literary Arabic, classical Chinese, and Sanskrit.

E. J. Kenney, whose title refers to the special place of Horace in English hearts, devotes the first part of his chapter to the narrow grammatical education and the thrashings by which it was imparted; again I long for more comparisons than with the Canadian school of p. 181 n. 14 to which these practices had been exported. ¹² But we may relish the account of Horace as remade by the English in their own image, lovable and clubbable (though in which clubs was a matter of dispute), his interest in the ladies discreetly overlooked, and regret the decline in the ability to quote him from memory once displayed even by men (the correct word) of practical life, as not only Latin but the gentleman scholar retreated. Has any other ancient author been so widely loved in any country where the Greek and Roman classics are studied?

Christopher Stray also examines the schoolroom, though his outrages are committed by boys not masters, and the decline of the amateur, symbolically silenced when the dreadful English pronunciation of Latin, which surpassed even the French for unintelligibility to alien ears, was finally suppressed; but he also traces the dissolution of the authority the language had enjoyed, not merely as a mark of superior education, but as a test of mental health, ¹³ and (even in non-Latinists' eyes) a guarantor of level-headed self-control. In addition, he considers the standing of Latin in relation to Greek, of which little is said in other chapters, ¹⁴ and recent attempts to teach the language in relation to Roman life, which indeed are showing promise of making it a thing one wishes to learn now that no other motivation will preserve it. ¹⁵

In one matter, however, I must take issue with Stray, namely his description of Housman's famous death-notice for the great English age of scholarship (borrowed with improvements from Wilamowitz) ¹⁶ as 'a grotesque travesty of the truth'. His reason is that the Classical Museum was edited by a naturalized immigrant and that Continental scholarship was published in translation; but what does that tell us about the native production? We may admire Grote the historian and Smith the lexicographer; but what, between the fatal year of 1825 and Munro's Lucretius, did Britain produce to compare, I will not say with the exact scholarship of the great Germans, of Cobet and van Herwerden the Dutchmen, of Madvig the Dane, but with the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve's Étude sur Virgile? What, in short, should we go back and read?

The book ends with a view from across the Channel, Jean-Noël Guinot's account of the political, spiritual, and intellectual impact made on the wider world by Latinate churchmen from Britain down to 'le haut Moyen-Âge', which evidently extends to das Hochmittelalter: his earliest case is St Patrick in Ireland, his latest Baldwin of Forde. His definition of Britannia Latina is broad enough to include the Irishman John the Scot; but the only Scot in the modern sense mentioned is King David I, at whose court Aelred of Rievaulx had been a page. Observing that clerical exchanges between England and France were not all one-way, he notes (212) that two eleventh-century archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, though both of Italian origin, came by way of France; he might have remarked Lanfranc's predecessor but one was Robert of Jumièges, ingloriously as he departed.

Interestingly, given the stultifying assumptions of monoglottia so often imposed by Anglophonic publishers, this chapter is suffered to remain in French, whereas D'Aronco's Italian is translated. Moreover, as if to emphasize the loss of Latin, most contributors who quote it feel obliged to append English versions, which indeed in the case of Dronke's sequences may not be unwelcome even to the learned; some give both Latin and English in the main text, but Luscombe and Marenbon relegate the original to the notes, whereas D'Aronco adopts the inverse scheme for both Latin and Old English. Lapidge translates most but not all, but Rundle only his first quotation; Davies and Ford translate the shorter passages but not the long, Davies not even the medieval Welsh citations embedded in Prise's Defensio. It is impossible not to be amused.

Authors and titles:

1. Michael Lapidge, 'How "English" is Pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin?', 1-13.

2. Peter Dronke, Arbor eterna: A Ninth-Century Welsh Latin Sequence', 14-26.

3. Maria Amalia D'Aronco, 'How "English" is Anglo-Saxon Medicine? The Latin Sources for Anglo-Saxon Medical Texts', 27-41.

4. David Luscombe, 'Roger Bacon and Language', 42-54.

5. John Marenbon, 'Robert Holcot and the Pagan Philosophers', 55-67.

6. David Rundle, 'Humanist Eloquence among the Barbarians in Fifteenth-Century England', 68-85.

7. Richard Sharpe, 'The English Bibliographical Tradition from Kirkestede to Tanner', 86-128.

8. Ceri Davies, 'Two Welsh Renaissance Latinists: Sir John Prise of Brecon and Dr John David of Mallwyd', 129-44.

9. Philip Ford, 'Scottish Nationalism in the Poetry of George Buchanan', 145-55.

10. Stella P. Revard, 'The Latin Ode from Elizabeth I to Mary II: Political Approaches to Encomia', 156-69.

11. James Binns, 'The Decline of Latin in Eighteenth-Century England', 170-7.

12. E. J. Kenney, '"A little bit of it sticks": The Englishman's Horace', 178-93.

13. Christopher Stray, 'Scholars, Gentlemen and Schoolboys: The Authority of Latin in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century England', 194-208.

14. Jean-Noël Guinot, 'Importance culturelle et politique de la Britannia Latina dans l'antiquité tardive et le haut Moyen-Âge', 209-22.

Notes

1. Long before the English learnt Latin, classical /w/ had been spirantized to /β/, as is shown both by epigraphic confusion with <b> and by Greek transliterations with /β/ instead of /ου/; this sound was in turn converted to /v/ by the Franks and to /f/ by the Irish, who had already substituted it for Celtic /w/ (which in Welsh became /gw/) in such words as fer 'man' (modern fear, Welsh gw^r) and fi/r 'true' (modern fi/or, Welsh gwir). The Germanic and Celtic peoples had learnt of wine while the Romans still called it /wi:num/; accordingly the name was adopted as /wi:n/ in Germanic, and became gwin in Welsh and fi/n (now fi/on) in Irish. But, having their own poetic traditions, they felt no need to borrow versus till they engaged more seriously with Latin culture, by which time the initial consonant was no longer /w/ but a sound that did not exist word-initially in Germanic and only by lenition in Irish; the nearest equivalent in both Irish and Germanic was /f/, which in Old Irish fers perpetuated the graphic correspondence of Latin initial <u> and Irish <f>. Hence, if Old English fers does not come from Old Irish as it well may, it comes from Gallo-Roman like fann or fon (modern English fan with changed sense) from */vans/ (= French van), itself from Latin vannus, the substitution of /f/ for /v/ being further commended by the allophonic relationship of e.g. hrof [hro:f] ~ hrofas [hro:vas].

2. Cf. too the numerous examples in Waltharius, above all in barbarous names (e.g. et Hunos 5, primatum Heriricus 35, nomine Hiltgunt 36) but in Latin words too (e.g. sed haud 107, stantem hinc 406, ensem hac 1160).

3. In the Old English Genesis, line 1296, God says to Noah 'Ic wille mid flode folc acwellan' ('I will kill people with a flood'), representing Vulg. Gen. 6. 17 adducam diluvii aquas . . . ut interficiam, for God does everything by choice. In none of Lapidge's examples is volo an appropriate translation.

4. Michael Lapidge, 'Theodore and Anglo-Latin Octosyllabic Verse', in id. (ed.), Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence (Cambridge, 1995), 260-80 at 262-4.

5. Luscombe states (47 n. 26) that 'This passage', sc. Jerome's prologue to Daniel, 'is not in the Vulgate'; it is in (for instance) Weber's edition.

6. His sneers at Willem van Moerbeke ('Willielmus Flemingus, qui nihil novit dignum neque in scientiis neque in linguis', Opus maius, ed. Bridges iii. 472) were not endorsed by others then or later, though we no longer look to Willem's translations for Aristotle's meaning, but for the exact text that they reveal; but what possessed him to claim (ibid. 473) 'Quinquaginta enim libros fecit [sc. Aristoteles] de animalibus praeclaros, ut Plinius dicit octavo Naturalium [8. 44], et vidi in Graeco; sed Latini non habent nisi decem nouem libellos misere imperfectos'? As well he did not know that Antigonus of Carystos had stated the number as seventy (fr. 60b Giannini).

7. Whether or not they could understand them (for which see p. 79); cf. Trajan to Dio of Prusa: 'I do not know what you are saying, but I love you as myself' (Philostratus, VS 1. 7, 479).

8. Twice in two lines he scans navium with short a (unless he allowed himself a synizesis typical of early medieval Celtic Latinity), in another passage he makes the first syllable of Brytonum short and makes cui a postclassical iambus.

9. Of this grammar Sir John Morris Jones was to say in his own Welsh Grammar (itself made a pleasure to read by the poetical illustrations): 'the author's analysis of the Modern literary language is final; he has left to his successors only the correction and amplification of detail' (p. v).

10. And even professing himself her slave, an abjection she declined in an epigram more elegant than that which it answered; the reference is given by Revard at p. 158 n. 5.

11. Nor, in her comments on Melissus' use of the swans on the Thames to praise the Queen, does she remark that, as royal birds, they belonged to Elizabeth literally and legally.

12. The sadism reported of certain Christian Brothers schools would appear to leave the English birching academy looking almost humane, but I speak without experience of either.

13. Dr Johnson's writing of Latin verses after a mild stroke is mentioned, but also a delightful story about F. W. Schneidewin, for Stray is not narrowly Anglocentric.

14. It was in the nineteenth century, even as Latin was slipping down (both Oxford and Cambridge found it necessary to appoint a professor of the language), the educated Englishman, and indeed Englishwoman, was likeliest to read and draw sustenance from Greek authors in the original.

15. In his Conclusion, Stray offers the aphorism 'As Constantine saw the sign of victory in the heavens, so did classicists see the sign of Latin's decline when Sputnik passed overhead in 1958' (sic for 1957) and states that 'even in the law courts, Latin is officially prohibited in favour of the everyday simplicity of the vernacular'. Not all will allow that legal English is characterized by everyday simplicity; but let that pass, for he ends with the approving remark of a journalist: 'Res ipsa loquitur.'

16. Euripides: Herakles, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1889), i. 227: 'von Bentleys brief an Mill bis zu dem unseligen jahre 1825, wo Peter Dobree in das grab sank, das sich kaum über Peter Elmsley geschliessen hatte'. (read complete article)

Table of Contents

Kathryn Gutzwiller, the author of a number of important studies on Hellenistic poetry such as Studies in the Hellenistic Epyllion (1981), Theocritus' Pastoral Analogies: The Formation of a Genre (1991), Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context (1998) (winner of the APA's prestigious Goodwin Award of Merit), and most recently the editor of The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic Poetry Book (2005), has produced in her Guide to Hellenistic Literature an up-to-date handbook on the literature of the period from the death of Alexander to the Roman conquest of Egypt -- something long needed in the field of Classics. As one of the leading scholars of Hellenistic poetry in North America, Gutzwiller has helped to shape the discourse of the critical issues in that field, and her presentation of poets and poetry in this guide is always well-informed and interesting. But what makes this guide so valuable to the classical community as a whole is the broad scope of the literature it presents: entire sections are devoted to Hellenistic philosophical and scholarly literature, as well as to authors seldom paired with the Alexandrian poets such as Menander and Polybius. And in addition to this inclusive and wide-ranging survey of Hellenistic writing, Gutzwiller situates the literature against a background of dynastic cultural pretensions, history, art and aesthetics. Students of Greek literature, from undergraduates to specialists, will find interesting observations and connections throughout the guide. No Classicist should be without it.

The first of the book's four parts is a broad overview of the "History and Culture" of the Hellenistic period with an emphasis on what each of the four dynasties that arose in the wake of Alexander's untimely death contributed to the world of art. In the section on Macedonia and mainland Greece, Gutzwiller discusses the flourishing Macedonian court of Antigonus Gonatas and the importance of the philosophical schools operating in Athens. Gutzwiller presents the Seleucids, heirs to the largest division of Alexander's empire, as having little time for or interest in literary pursuits except when these "supported dynastic interests" (9). The more enlightened Attalids succeeded not only in the building plan of Pergamum, a city to rival Alexandria, but also in constructing an individualized identity in their art, scholarship and literature that presented an alternative to the cultural achievements of Alexandria. Unsurprisingly the Ptolemies receive more attention than the other dynasties combined. Gutzwiller considers Soter's support for the cult of Serapis and the brother-sister marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II as an appeal to the "dual Greek and Egyptian audiences" of Ptolemaic Egypt (17). The discussion here of Hellenistic literary scholarship skirts contentious and unsettled issues (e.g., the origins of the Alexandrian text of Homer, the nature of scholarly "commentaries"). Those approaching Hellenistic literature for the first time will be especially interested to read Gutzwiller's summary of the astonishing achievements of the Alexandrian scientists, doctors and mathematicians. The decline of the Ptolemies concludes with Cleopatra VII, whom Gutzwiller celebrates as a "brilliant woman, who reportedly spoke nine languages and was the only Ptolemaic monarch to learn Egyptian" (24), who as a figure that mediates between Egyptian, Greek and Roman spheres, endowed with knowledge attainable only in Hellenistic Alexandria, embodies all that is fascinating about the Hellenistic world.

The book's second part is a short but perceptive excursus into the "Aesthetics and Style" of Hellenistic literature, with subsections on general aesthetic principles, the language of poetry and the materiality of the written word. Some of these areas are covered in greater depth later in the guide's fourth part, "Topics in Hellenistic Literature." Given what little remains of Hellenistic prose it is hardly surprising that Gutzwiller's focus throughout this section is primarily on poetry. As one of the key hallmarks of third-century literary sensibilities, Gutzwiller points to the rise of and experimentation with new "generic forms" in Hellenistic poetry, especially mime, bucolic poetry, "epyllia," didactic poems closely aligned to prose scientific treatises, and literary epigram. Gutzwiller also calls attention to a shift in poetry's focus from gods and heroes to common individuals, as well as to poets who perceive of their craft as the result of study rather than as being divinely inspired. Another important development in literature of the third century which Gutzwiller outlines is the turning away from composing poetry for performance in favor of an increased focus on the poetry book as literary artifact. ¹ Hellenistic exposition of literary styles, and especially of Callimachus as the champion of a poetic style defined as leptos, is treated in detail. In relationship to the 'slender' style Gutzwiller also offers a reading of Callimachus' programmatic opening to book one of the Aetia, which she labels the "the single most important passage in Hellenistic poetry" (33) -- an identification few would challenge. A compact subsection on meter, dialect and diction surveys the verbal dexterity of Hellenistic poets without giving in to aridness, and through clear description and well-chosen examples Gutzwiller presents this material in a way that even the Greekless reader can understand and appreciate. I should add here that the clarity of Gutzwiller's description of these subtleties and nuances of the Greek language, which sometimes go unnoticed even by those who can read Greek, is representative of the author's fearlessness in taking on difficult topics. This part concludes with a discussion of the materiality of literature. Here Gutzwiller presents some basic information about the physical nature of papyrus rolls and writing in the ancient world as well as an overview of the direct (e.g., papyri and medieval manuscripts) and indirect (e.g., later citation, palimpsest and cartonnage) routes Hellenistic literature has reached us. By describing the physical nature of ancient texts Gutzwiller tries to recreate for her readers the aesthetic experience of ancient readers. Gutzwiller's interest in the realia of the book can be detected in her discussion of individual authors in the next part of the guide, and surely stems from her recent work on inscribed epigrams and on the New Posidippus papyrus. One takes away from this section on aesthetics and style a sense of what is 'Hellenistic' about Hellenistic literature, ready to appreciate the specific contributions of individual authors in the next part.

The guide's third part is the longest in the book and is devoted to specific Hellenistic "Authors and Genres." As there is no larger narrative arc for this part, my review will address each section individually.

A dense section on Menander may come as a surprise to some readers, because, as Gutzwiller notes, it is debatable if Menander can even be called a "Hellenistic" author. Yet he fits in chronologically (his early Dyskolos won first prize in 316 B.C.E.) and his "thematic focus on intimate family drama and erotic complications" (50) accords with other trends in the period's literature. Amid Gutzwiller's plot summaries and her discussion of Menander's dramatic technique we learn also about the continuing recovery of Menander in the modern era -- announcement of the "New" Menander even made it into the guide -- and the lasting impact his comedies had on the Western theatrical tradition through their adaptations by Plautus and Terence. Gutzwiller briefly points out the connection between Menander's Dis Exapaton and Plautus' Bacchides, but perhaps could have said a bit more about the fascinating and unique overlap between these two plays that allows us to see a few different ways in which Plautus adapted Menander's comedies for the Roman stage.

Gutzwiller's presentation of the difficult and divisive Callimachus follows the order that his poetic works took as they circulated in antiquity, an arrangement that treats the reader to a sense of the materiality of his poems. Just as Callimachus' works point to the past and the future, as well as to his contemporary world, in this section Gutzwiller brings Hesiod, Antimachus of Colophon, Horace, Ovid, the Suda, and a host of others all to bear on the poetry of Callimachus. Callimachus' many such ties again underscore one of the Gutzwiller's larger themes in this guide: Hellenistic poetry is poised between the Greek and Roman worlds, being both poetry of the past and of the future. Most of the familiar facts about Callimachus are trotted out (he did not become chief librarian, there was friction between him and his colleagues), as is necessary in such a guide, but there is much refreshing and perceptive in Gutzwiller's discussion of the Callimachus' Hymns, especially about their overarching and internal structures, as well as the narrative voices.

Ptolemaic politics and avenues of literary representation new to the Hellenistic period underscores much of what Gutzwiller has to say about Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica. Written into that unusual poem (as Gutzwiller reminds her reader, the only epic poem to survive from a seven or eight hundred year span) are Ptolemaic political interests in the intermingling of Greek and Egyptian cultures, the foundation of new cults and establishment of city centers, as well as the rise of powerful Hellenistic queens. Gutzwiller delves also into Apollonius' novel psychological presentation of the heroic deed-challenged Jason and the besotted indecisiveness of the teenaged Medea. By considering Apollonius' poetry in its political context, Gutzwiller presents Jason as a character whose "problematic moral choices. . . reflect those of contemporary monarchs" (79), especially those who in the manner of Jason would marry more for self-interested political expediency than love (apparently Arsinoe's reasons for marrying both her half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos and her full-brother Ptolemy II Philadelphus), or who like Medea would do away with their own family members (Arsinoe II and Ptolemy Keraunos again come to mind).

A section on "Theocritus and Other Bucolic Poets" devotes twelve or so pages to the former and only a longish paragraph to Moschus and Bion, which some may feel is a little out of balance. One of the repeated themes in this section relates to the old scholarly chestnut of which poetic genre Theocritus composed in -- bucolic or pastoral. Gutzwiller's Theocritus comes across as an originator and poet of both genres². Gutzwiller goes through some of the unclear evidence for the ancient edition(s) of Theocritus, pursuing again the theme of ancient poetry books and collections that runs throughout this guide. Welcome is the brief discussion of Theocritus' epigrams, as well as the sometimes neglected pseudo-Theocritean Idylls -- all precious evidence for the ancient delight in the escapist bucolic-pastoral genre and its association with Theocritus.

Hellenistic didactic poetry has not really stood up to the test of time, and the guide's section on this genre necessarily focuses on the extant poems of Aratus and Nicander. Gutzwiller situates both authors as working within a tradition of didactic literature extending from Hesiod's poems to technical prose treatises of the fourth and third centuries by Eudoxus, Theophrastus and Apollodorus, and continuing down into the literature of Rome. As Gutzwiller notes, the popularity of Hellenistic didactic poetry, especially Aratus' Phaenomena, does strike many today as "odd" (98) and she attempts to explain its vogue. Since so little survives of Hellenistic didactic poetry, we have a difficult time understanding its appeal and tracing its influence, yet Gutzwiller reminds us that standing somewhere behind works such as Vergil's Georgics and Ovid's Metamorphoses is an influential, though lost, genre of literature.

Although Gutzwiller has published widely on Hellenistic literature, the majority of her past and present work has been on Hellenistic epigram, and the guide's section on this material -- "the only poetic genre originally written to be read, rather than orally performed" (107) -- is rich and useful. A brief history of the genre and a typology of epigrams serve to remind the reader that we are here dealing with the only form of Greek literature whose production has abated but never really ceased. (Thus Gutzwiller, among others, have treated the Alexandrian Cavafy as an heir to Hellenistic epigrammatists ³.) Posidippus, Callimachus and Meleager all loom large in this section, as do the guide's recurrent themes of author-crafted epigram collections and anthologizing tendencies, as well as the relationship between inscribed and literary epigram. Gutzwiller's work on the "New" Posidippus from the past decade underscores much in this section, and points to what we can expect in her forthcoming edition of Meleager.

A section on dramatic literature presents a grab-bag of various poets and their poems, some of which need never have actually been acted out on a stage. The tenuous thread that links them together here is performance or its conceit. Gutzwiller begins with a list of the best-known practitioners of Hellenistic tragedy and comedy, which reminds us how much we have lost in the near-total disappearance of this poetry. On the other hand, we are reasonably well-informed about the occasions or contexts for the performance of these poems, and throughout the section Gutzwiller notes who would have been in the audience for, say, Ezechiel's Exagoge (123). Besides a description of and excerpt from this unique and fascinating Judaeo-pagan drama, Gutzwiller offers summary and analysis of Lycophron's enigmatic Alexandra, the Mimiambi of Herodas, as well as the broad category of "mime." The mysterious nature of the Alexandra casts its shadow even over its author, and Gutzwiller briefly lays out the evidence for dating him to either the third or second centuries, noting also that the poet seems to have worked somewhere besides Alexandria. Pergamum is suggested, but Gutzwiller might also have noted the attractive theory that places him in southern Italy, which (to my mind) neatly explains the looming inevitable specter of Roman domination. ⁴ A "Hellenistic" poet at work in southern Italy would, moreover, underscore the fact that Greek literature in the Hellenistic period is a Mediterranean-wide phenomenon.

A parade of poets, some obscure even by Hellenistic standards, and perhaps better-known philosophers fill a section on "Parodic and Philosophical Literature." The guide situates Hellenistic parodic literature in a tradition stretching back to the fifth-century B.C.E., although the Homeric Margites does not appear alongside the works of Hegemon, Euboeus, or Archestratus as a possible model. Gutzwiller does an excellent job in demonstrating how parodic literature takes part in the broader literary dialogue of Hellenistic aesthetics: moralizing themes, animal stories, sexual jokes, and the "exaltation of the 'low' over the 'high'" (135) place authors such as Cercidas, Machon, and Phoenix of Colophon in favorable comparison with sophisticates like Callimachus and other Alexandrians. In regard to Hellenistic philosophy, in three and a half pages Gutzwiller offers little more than brief summary -- not least because philosophical writing from the period is "now mostly reduced to tatters" (141). The strength of this section then, reflected elsewhere throughout this guide, lies in the contextualization of both parodic and philosophical writers within larger literary and political trends and the broadening of geographical horizons of Greek literature in the Hellenistic period. Thus, the Gadaran Philodemus filters Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience, Callimachus "tangled" with the Peripatetic Praxiphanes (142 -- no better verb than this!), and Sotades wholly overestimated his familiarity with Ptolemy II.

A section on the aristocratic exile Polybius underscores again the breadth of Gutzwiller's guide. Discussion here covers the events in the life of Polybius which made possible the composition of his history, his mediation between the Greek and Roman spheres of influence, and the tenor of his writings. What emerges is an engaging portrait of the macrobiotic Polybius, who traced the footsteps of Hannibal through the Alps to disprove divine intervention, was an eye-witness to the fall of Carthage and an explorer of the Atlantic seacoast. Gutzwiller concludes by charting the influence of Polybius, through later Greek and Roman historians, down to Machiavelli and the American Constitution.

Technical prose writing is treated in a rich section -- part description, part biography, part anecdote -- and concludes this part of the book. Given the highly specialized nature of most of the material covered here, Gutzwiller wisely opts for a discussion of the "manner of presenting technical material in textual form, rather than the content" of the works (154). Despite her focus on the style and presentation of this literature (e.g., in prose, accompanying illustrations, organization following a catalogue format, etc.), Gutzwiller still offers many details about the methods and writings of Euclid, Aristarchus of Samos, Philo of Byzantium, Eratosthenes and a number of less well-known scholars and scientists.

Summary doesn't trump analysis in this third part of the guide: Gutzwiller liberates Menander's plots from Peripatetic doctrines, elevates parodic literature by showing how poets engaged broader literary trends, and has interesting things to say about how the character of Jason in Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica may reflect the moral preoccupations of the reigning monarchs. What these summaries all have in common is a near-seamless interweaving of these many genres of literature, written across the span of three centuries for Greek and foreign audiences, into a larger fabric of "Hellenistic" literature.

The final part in the guide treats "Topics in Hellenistic Literature" in sections dealing with erudition and novel forms of poetry, readership, the cultural background of literature and the reception of Hellenistic literature in Rome. A section entitled "Learning and Innovation" starts off with an eloquent elaboration of Hellenistic poets' anxiety that they were latecomers in the history of Greek literature, and a defense of the use of allusion in Hellenistic poetry by showing how it can be artful in its own right. Genre is another preoccupation in this section, and Gutzwiller describes how new forms of poetry arose, how pre-existing ones were merged (the oft-mentioned "Kreuzung der Gattungen"), and further how poets used prose sources in order to elaborate their own creations or produce "innovative generic hybrids" (176). Missing here is a discussion of the importance of epistles as a subgenre of literature. Gutzwiller elsewhere brings up the importance of the letter of Aristeas (194-95) and the letters of Epicurus (143), but in connection with these she might have mentioned the twenty-four pseudepigraphic letters of Hippocrates, some of which are probably early Hellenistic in date. ⁵ The section "Book Culture and Performance" ranges widely over certain and possible contexts for the recitation of poetry, the "writtenness" of Hellenistic poetry (whether through the mention of poetic craft within poems or the visuality of technopaegnia), and the importance of author-organized collections or the anthologizing tendencies of later collectors. Gutzwiller's earlier work on the craft of collecting and publishing is apparent once again. In the section "Social and Political Background" Gutzwiller presents an overview of some of the most productive recent trends in the study of Hellenistic poetry. Multicultural elements assuredly exist in Greek literature transplanted onto alien shores -- especially in literature composed in Ptolemaic Egypt -- but Gutzwiller notes that tracing them and understanding who their audience was remain difficult and controversial topics. More productive have been the trends which study the political and ideological dimensions of Hellenistic poetry, as well as the increased appreciation of the roles women played as poets and as characters within poems written by men. This part of the guide concludes with two additional sections: one a brief foray into theories of literary and artistic criticism, the other a glance ahead at the ways in which Hellenistic literature influenced the literature of Rome. Gutzwiller shows how considerations of mimêsis continued throughout and after the Hellenistic period, as well as the ways in which new avenues of literary critical inquiry opened up in the areas of euphony and allegory. Just as Philodemus preserves for us knowledge about earlier Hellenistic critics, so he was also an important mediating figure of Hellenistic literature in first-century B.C.E. Rome. In the section on the reception of Hellenistic literature in Rome, Gutzwiller describes how Ennius, Catullus, Vergil and a host of other poets pursue literary projects little different from the Greek authors who worked in previous centuries. Again, breadth and depth characterize this section and the guide as a whole.

Brief notes, a chronological list of Hellenistic monarchs, bibliography and an index round out the volume. A section on suggested readings will prove particularly valuable for students and non-specialists.

The study of Hellenistic literature, and especially poetry, has undergone a renaissance in the last two decades. This guide consistently offers elegant proof of how modern discoveries and the application of critical theories have enriched our knowledge and appreciation of Hellenistic literature. Gutzwiller's guide expertly summarizes what we know about this period's literature, charts scholarly approaches to it, and should -- I hope -- help to plot the path for future research. ⁶

Notes

1. Gutzwiller explores this issue further on pp. 178-88, with due attention paid to Alan Cameron's views.

2. N. Krevans offers a clear description of the problem in "Is there Urban Pastoral?: The Case of Theocritus, Id. 15" in M. Fantuzzi & T. Papanghelis, eds., Brill's Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 126-29

3. K. Gutzwiller, "Visual Aesthetics in Meleager and Cavafy," Classical and Modern Literature, 23 (2003), pp. 67-87.

4. An Italian location is suggested by A. Erskine, Troy between Greece and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 155-56; the city of Rhegium is specified by G. Lambin, L'Alexandra de Lycophron - Etude et traduction. (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), pp. 16-29.

5. See the introduction (pp. 1-44) in W. D. Smith's Hippocrates' Pseudepigraphic Writings: Letters, Embassy, Speech from the Altar, Decree. Studies in Ancient Medicine 2. (Leiden: Brill, 1990).

6. Missteps are inevitable in a book with as broad a scope as this guide. Gutzwiller oddly places Cyrene "just to the east of Egypt" (61), though it's really almost five hundred miles to the west. Scholarly consensus seems now to prefer the titles Epitaph for Adonis for Bion 1 and Epitaph for Bion for pseudo-Moschus 3, literally translating the Greek title ἐπιτάφιος, yet Gutzwiller refers to both as "Laments" (97). Neither poem, for instance, is called a "Lament" in Brill's Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral (note 2), though this may be a sign of editorial fiat. One also wonders why Gutzwiller says that Arsinoe erected a building to the Dioscuri "at their cult site on Samothrace" (191), as though the Dioscuri were equivalent to the Megaloi Theoi who were worshipped there (they were not). I'm also puzzled why Gutzwiller calls the famous oyster riddle (983-84 Lloyd-Jones and Parsons) an "epigram found on a potsherd" (210) which, as she correctly observes in a footnote, is actually preserved on a papyrus. Happily these quibbles add up to little and in no way detract from the value of this guide. (read complete article)

Religion of the Romans: the title in itself indicates the author's intention to offer an 'inner' look on the way in which the ancient Romans supposedly lived and experienced their religion(s). In all, we have found Rüpke's to be a fruitful contribution to the understanding of how both elite and lower class Roman citizens behaved in a religious context. The book's highly original approach is based on a variety of source materials, apart from which the author also displays a thorough knowledge of the relevant secondary literature, which he uses, when necessary, in a critical, sensible manner. In other words, this is a very solid treatment of Roman religion, or rather of 'religion of the Romans'. In the following, we will provide a brief summary of the book's contents.

The introductory part, which consists of two chapters (pp. 1-61), initially offers some general reflections on the concept of religion, and on the limits attached to the latter term's application to antiquity. From the outset, the very existence of ancient 'religion', or at least its scarce resemblance to what it nowadays is commonly considered to be, is questioned. Apart from this aspect, the reader is also warned against the anachronistic dangers contained by the study of religion in ancient Rome. In this way, important issues such as ancient religion's public versus its private face, polytheism versus monotheism, elite versus popular religion, as well as the issue of controlling religious practice, are treated in a very deliberate manner, reconstructing as much as possible the viewpoint of ancient Romans. The second part of the prolegomena focuses on problems such as, first and foremost, the use and often difficult interpretation of source material (cf. supra). As in the study of history in general, the latter indeed is a particularly fundamental aspect in scholarship on religion in antiquity, and Rüpke seems to be very well aware of this. Furthermore, he also points out how historical research is not only determined by the scholar's own ideology, but also by the very nature of the available source material. Indeed, not without reason, he states that every "society creates an image of its own history. This image is configured by certain current or contemporary pre-occupations and interests, and is directed far more towards these than by a concern for how things really were." (p. 43) The prolegomena are concluded by a discussion of the possible periodizations of the religion of the Romans.

Part 1, entitled Structures (p. 63-134), starts with a philosophical discussion of the concept of religion, after which we get a treatment of various aspects related to people's relationship to the dead, as well as to gods, most importantly in the shape of cult-images, as well as their respective, and evolving, attributes. This is followed by a discussion of the polytheistic nature of the Romans' religion, and, more importantly, by an elaborate illustration of the various conceptions of divinity which one would have been able to observe in ancient Rome. All this is connected to an already mentioned aspect, namely the fact that the religion of the Romans is not only a quite heterogeneous object of study, but that it is also something which should best be taken on its own terms, a situation which inevitably leads to considerable distance between the researcher and the object of his study. In so far as possible Rüpke tries to bridge this distance, mainly through a discussion of various rituals performed by ancient Romans and of their possible interpretations. Pointing at the fact that the nature and original intention of most rituals was not even clear in antiquity itself, the author points at the difficulty of interpreting them, both in themselves and in relationship to one another, in other words 'semantically' as well as 'syntactically'. This part of the book finishes with a closer look at the possibilities and limitations of conceptualizing religion, a discussion which is all the more interesting as it can apply both to ancient and present religious traditions.

The second part, Religion in Action (p. 135-201), first of all presents a discussion of the social function of sacrifice and feasting, in which the author analyzes, among other things, the various ways in which rituals, i.e. sacrificial rituals, create, reproduce and produce hierarchy, hierarchy between man and god, but also, on a lower level, between human and animal. Rüpke proceeds with an illustration of the various ways in which sacrifices could be interpreted ('gifts: do ut des'), which types of sacrifice were needed for different intentions and different contexts ('system'), and how the practice of sacrifice could also be manipulated according to specific needs. Finally, and most interestingly, the economic factor is taken into account, as well as the influence it could have had on the act of sacrifice itself. Subsequently, the subject of votives is introduced. Paying special attention to animal votives, Rüpke here points at the difficulty in interpreting these objects, especially anatomic ones, to conclude with an extensive treatment of the role and importance of vow pledging, as well as of the place of the concepts of 'space' and 'time' in the Romans' religious life.

The most interesting section of the third part of the book, entitled Social Reality (pp. 203-57), can be found at the beginning, where Rüpke comments on the existence, organization and role of the so-called collegia, as well as their specific religious functions. From this analysis, it once again emerges that the 'religion of the Romans' was both a private and a public activity, with specific social functions which can only to a very limited extent be compared to Christian religious patterns. The book then contains a treatment of religious personnel, in which we particularly appreciated the long, systematic list provided on pages 223-8, as well as some additional considerations, which in a way serve as conclusion. Here the author makes some final remarks on the way in which he has analyzed religion in ancient Rome, i.e. through basically an 'inner approach', which, as we have highlighted, tries to grasp the 'otherness' of the ancient past, and of its religion, viewpoints which do not only count for the study of ancient religion, but for the whole of antiquity and its culture. Therefore, we would like to end this brief summary with a short citation (p. 257): "That [the complexity of urban society during the Principate] is what makes the models, conclusions, hypotheses and questions that arise out of an engagement with the ancient world so interesting for the present day. At the same time, these contemporary implications are bound also to call attention to the otherness of ancient society: if we want to use the ancient world in order to draw lessons for today, we must also accept that otherness. The inverse is also true: even if we are interested in the otherness of antiquity, in its exoticism, we cannot avoid seeing its contemporary relevance. We would do well not to relinquish our grasp of either term of the paradox."

Religion of the Romans is without a doubt a very valuable source for the study of ancient religion, both for a specialized and for a student public. Combined with the continuous and consistent use of primary source material, the specific approach makes this study a very lively and well sustained analytical treatment of a subject whose 'otherness' can easily lead to simplistic, and anachronistic, interpretation. This is nowhere the case in Rüpke, and for this reason alone his book is highly recommendable. The only, minor, flaws are the quite numerous typographical errors, which we hope will disappear in future reprints. (read complete article)

"One imposing requirement for interpreting the past is to forget the future" (9), writes historian Raymond Van Dam in his latest book on the later Roman empire. This requirement is perhaps nowhere more challenging than in a study of Constantine the Great, who has long captivated the popular imagination and consumed scholarly discourse. From his ancient biographer, Eusebius of Caesarea, to a host of eminent modern historians (Norman Baynes (1931), Andrew Alföldi (1948), A. H. M. Jones (1962), Timothy Barnes (1981), and most recently H. A. Drake (2000)), scholars have not ceased to fashion new images and pose fresh interpretations of this first Christian Roman emperor. For his part Van Dam has attempted to restore Constantine to the world of fourth-century Roman politics and culture. He begins with a description of Ronald Syme's approach to Augustus in his compelling and immensely influential study, The Roman Revolution (1939). Van Dam argues that Constantine's reign was as revolutionary for the Empire as that of Augustus three centuries earlier and that the idea of a "Christian emperor" was no less contradictory than the notion of a "Republican emperor" had been. Studies of Constantine have typically emphasized the emperor's conversion or religious preferences, making his involvement with Christianity "the defining characteristic of his long reign," (10) even when focusing on seemingly non-religious elements of his policies. In keeping with the approach of his trilogy on Roman Cappadocia, however, Van Dam proposes to study Constantine's career from a variety of different perspectives. "Before Constantine was a Christian emperor, he was a typical emperor," he explains, and "in many situations Christianity was not Constantine's primary concern" (11).¹

In his introduction, Van Dam warns that a focus on any one man's biography can distort our understanding of broad historical developments. Alternatively, the three main sections of Van Dam's book consider larger trends during Constantine's reign over which the emperor himself had little control: "a Roman empire that no longer had to include Rome, a Greek empire in the eastern provinces that still used Latin, a Christian empire that was consistently at odds about defining orthodox Christianity." (16) Examining in turn a geographical shift, a cultural transition, and a debate over the nature and substance of Christian orthodoxy, Van Dam begins each section with an ambiguous text that has generated conflicting interpretations: an imperial rescript, a petition, and an inscription. He provides the Latin text and an English translation of the rescript, the petition, and Constantine's responses to the petition in two Appendices at the end of the book.

Section One, "The Roman Empire without Rome" traces the history of two important and interrelated developments in Constantine's reign which are often eclipsed by studies that focus on the emperor's religion. The section opens with a letter from Hispellum and several other cities in central Italy requesting autonomy from the dominant city of the neighboring region of Tuscia. Chapters 1 and 2 consider the immediate background to this petition and the broader context which shaped Constantine's response. Van Dam focuses on a series of demographic reversals taking place in the early fourth century: between capital and frontier, cities and provinces, Romans and barbarians, center and periphery. He particularly highlights the shift from a civilian, Latin, pagan capital to a military, Greek, and Christian one as "Rome" became "Old Rome" with the accession of Constantinople. Indicative of these transitions was the foundation of several new imperial capitals on the frontiers (e.g., Trier and Serdica) making it increasingly evident that "'Rome' could be made elsewhere than at Rome." (52) Chapters 3 and 4 build on Van Dam's analysis of these requests highlighting concerns that preoccupied Constantine's thinking through much of his reign -- imperial legitimacy in the early years and imperial succession in the latter decades. He carefully traces Constantine's creation of a new Flavian dynasty, distinct from the Valerian dynasty of the Tetrarchs, and his successful efforts to ensure dynastic succession through his sons. Returning to the request from Hispellum, Van Dam effectively captures the city's ambiguous stance toward religion. The proposal to construct a new temple to the Flavian dynasty, despite the emperor's longstanding public support of Christianity, reflected the reality of Constantine's reign: "his political needs repeatedly took priority over any religious preferences." (126)

Section Two, "A Greek Roman Empire," focuses on the linguistic and cultural transitions that marked the Constantinian era. Despite the insistence of Eusebius and many modern interpreters on discontinuity between the reign of Constantine and his predecessors, Van Dam portrays the emperor as "the scrupulous heir of Diocletian and his fellow Tetrarchic emperors" (144). Here he points to three factors that had become defining characteristics of Romanness: increased political centralization, correct religion, and the use of the Latin language. A petition to the emperor set in motion a dialogue between Constantine and the town of Orcistus in central Asia Minor that provides the vehicle for Van Dam's exploration of these themes (chapter 5). The ambiguity of Orcistus with regard to religion mirrored the emperor's fluctuating religious views (chapter 6) while its choice of Latin over Greek reflected Constantine's own preferences and the realities of imperial administration in the fourth century despite the shift to Constantinople and the eastern empire. After posing Julian as a counterpoint to Constantine in cultural as well as religious preferences, in Chapter 7 Van Dam describes how Julian's "support for Greekness" and Constantine's promotion of Christianity gradually won the day in the eastern empire. Although Orcistus was wrong on both counts in the long run, the citizens' successful petition for independence reflects the ambivalence that marked this period. As imperial authority was gradually linked with religion and culture, petitioners tried to be sensitive to the emperor's vacillating preferences. Orcistus was right about viewing Constantine's reign as more of a cultural than a religious revolution, and it is in this cultural framework that the expansion of Christianity in the eastern empire should be interpreted. (215)

The most intriguing if not provocative part of the book is Section Three, entitled "Emperor and God." Once again Van Dam starts out with an ambiguous text, a dedication inscribed in the apse of the church of St. Peter in Rome. Open to conflicting theological and political interpretations, the inscription points to overlapping dialogues concerning the political philosophy of Christian emperorship and the Trinitarian theology of the Christian God. Chapter 9 examines the formation of a tetrarchic theology of imperial rule illustrating how "a debate about doctrines was simultaneously a debate about Christian emperorship." (249) Chapter 10 analyzes the Arian controversy from the standpoint of political philosophy. Here Van Dam critiques the confessional, pietistic approach of many learned surveys of the development of doctrine which fail to take account of "ancient criteria" and neglect to connect their narratives "to the society and culture of the later Roman empire." To be fair, he also takes to task recent ahistorical postmodern readings of early Christian theology noting that "the use of critical theory has become our new postmodern confessional history." (265-266 and n.19) Van Dam himself opts for a symbolic reading of the varieties of early Christianity, à la Geertz, examining all versions of the faith, both orthodox and heterodox, as "legitimate cultural systems." (267)

In Chapter 11 Van Dam expands his discussion of religion and politics as he examines the role of Eusebius of Caesarea, who spent the latter years of his life creating an image of Constantine that undergirded his non-Nicene doctrinal position. His Life of Constantine expressed a new theology of Christian emperorship, Van Dam argues, presenting Constantine as an analogue of Jesus Christ while at the same time supporting Eusebius's own subordinationist theology. In contrast, Chapter 12 considers a Nicene construction of the Christian emperor shaped by bishops and church historians. Athanasius's Life of Antony became an "inverted reflection" of Eusebius's Life of Constantine promoting Nicene theological views about the relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son as well s a new model for a Christian ruler. For later Nicene theologians and historians Theodosius the Great embodied the new ideal of Christian emperorship, not an analogue of Christ but of an Old Testament king, and they reinterpreted and reshaped Constantine in light of this Theodosian paradigm. With the reign of Theodosius the longstanding discourse about the emperor and religion fundamentally changed as rival models of emperorship were overturned and Augustus' Roman revolution came to an end. While Augustus had co-opted traditional Republican titles to describe his reign, Christian writers "now subverted the same terminology to define Theodosius' standing as a Christian emperor." (350) In the Epilogue Van Dam reiterates his contention that religion was only one of many strategies available to Constantine and others for "imagining the emperor" and uses the reign of Julian to summarize the themes examined throughout the book.

There is little to criticize and much to praise in this reassessment of the reign of Constantine and the later Roman Empire as a whole. Van Dam's masterful reading of evidence -- literary, documentary, and material -- is matched by an admirable sensitivity to linguistic and theological nuance. To be sure, in his critique of theological developments he is more deft at deconstructing than constructing. Van Dam gives many examples in Chapter 9 of how imperial political discourse drew upon religious, and increasingly Trinitarian concepts, about God; yet his discussions of the development of Trinitarian theology in Chapter 10 rarely go beyond the writings of Arius, Alexander, and Eusebius of Nicomedia, or Eusebius of Caesarea and Marcellus of Ancyra in Chapter 11. What seems oddly lacking, since Van Dam certainly knows the sources well, is any discussion of the three Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa), major Nicene theologians and primary shapers of the doctrine of the Trinity. Granted their careers come a generation after the reign of Constantine, but since Van Dam deals extensively with Julian's "neo-tetrarchic theology" (357-362) as well as his reign as emperor, some attention to his famous compatriots seems warranted, especially as they were no strangers to imperial and ecclesiastical politics. While ignoring the Cappadocians, presumably because their trinitarian theology has been well studied elsewhere, Van Dam continues his fixation on Constantine's nephew, Julian. The pagan emperor is also the subject of his Epilogue, "A Fourth Cappadocian Father," in his Families and Friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (2003). In the present work he associates Julian with Constantine arguing that the two together "should be credited as co-founders of Byzantine society."(216) As Van Dam notes that his theological ideas have been overlooked and deserve further consideration (360-361, n.8), one wonders whether a more substantial study of Julian's life and thought may be within his purview.

Whether or not one agrees with all the arguments in this study, Van Dam has succeeded in dispelling the myth of the inevitability of Constantine's conversion and the consequent transition to a Christian empire. Studiously avoiding retrospection, he repeatedly exposes the contingency of the emperor's religious choices. Van Dam's illuminating insights and careful scholarship are matched by playful interpretations of ambiguous evidence and an eminently readable prose. The details of scholarly disputes are left to dense but invaluable footnotes making the work accessible to advanced undergraduates as well as scholars. The approach of the book is particularly refreshing as it brings together at least two fields of study which have far too often been separated in late Roman and early Byzantine scholarship: political philosophy and the development of Christian theology. Van Dam's analysis of each in light of the other enriches our understanding of both and exposes the complex internal dynamics of late Roman society and culture that are obscured by a narrower focus on Constantine's biography or conversion. For this reason the book is important for patristic theologians and scholars of early Christianity as well as for Roman, late antique, and Byzantine historians.

Like Syme's work on Augustus, Van Dam's study of Emperor Constantine constitutes a major reappraisal of this pivotal figure for Roman history and western civilization as a whole. Despite its importance, however, the book will surely not be the final word for either popular or scholarly discussions of the famous Christian emperor. New generations will feel compelled to evaluate him afresh in light of their own interpretive stances. Indeed Van Dam has intimated as much in his Introduction, suggesting that "as we repeatedly construct Constantine, we are Eusebius' true heirs." (15)

Notes:

1. Similarly, in Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 4, Van Dam describes his aim to study the rise of Christianity in the region while the book "essentially ignores doctrines, asceticism, monasticism, and spirituality." (read complete article)

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

"Wine, Worship and Sacrifice", a publication presented in the frame of the homonymous temporary exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, is much more than an exhibition catalogue. It is the long awaited publication of the archaeology of ancient "rich in gold" Colchis and the extraordinary finds of the city of Vani, a most important centre with a life span from the 8th to the 1st centuries BC. The catalogue is the first comprehensive English-language publication about ancient Colchis and Vani. Beautifully illustrated, it succeeds in giving a complete picture of the archaeology of a culture in which we can trace the roots of ancient jewellery techniques and viticulture. The authors themselves, Kacharava and Kvirkvelia, are senior researchers at the National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, and the rest of the contributors are all experts in Black Sea archaeology.

The book starts with introductory letters by the Directors of the organizing institutes. The main core is divided into seven chapters, focusing on the history of ancient Colchis and especially the city of Vani, as well as the importance of metalwork and wine-making, as two of the major driving forces contributing to its development.

The first chapter deals with the myth of the Argonauts and seeks its traces in history. The tale of Jason's voyage with the Argonauts from Iolcus in Thessaly in search of the Golden Fleece finds its historical base in the importance of ancient Colchis' mines of gold, silver, iron and copper. Mines and metallurgical centres have indeed come to light in Georgia, dated from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, contemporary with the Mycenaean period when the importance of the Black Sea to the Greeks is first recorded. Discoveries at Troy support the hypothesis that the Trojan War itself took place for the control of the Black Sea. After all, the participants of the Trojan war were the sons of the Argonauts as mentioned in Homer: they were the first to overcome the obstacle of the Clashing Rocks (Odyssey, Book 12) and open the way to the Black Sea.

Next comes a discussion of the identity of the Colchian people. Their country is mentioned in Near Eastern sources from as early as the 13th cent. BC, under the name of "Upper Sea". There is a brief mention to the Proto-Colchian culture, of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages (second half of 2nd millennium- beginning of the 1st millennium BC) that revealed bronze items, among which are the so-called Colchian axes, decorated with geometric ornaments, astral signs and representations of animals. The chapter concludes by mentioning the continuous contacts between Classical Greece and Colchis, attested archaeologically through Greek finds in Colchis and through Colchian objects in Samos (miniature bells, plaques and the statue of a female rider with a child).

The second chapter is a presentation of Vani and the history of the site's excavations. The settlement, located in the foothills of the Lesser Caucasus, to the south of the river Rioni, was probably called Leukothea in antiquity. Some scholars believe that Vani was a sanctuary city between the 3rd and 1st cent. BC, when according to the Roman geographer Strabo, it came to an end. This is the first extended presentation of these remarkable finds to the Western public, as all bibliography known so far was written in Georgian (sometimes with a summary in Russian).

The chapter continues by presenting all scholars who contributed to the development of research at Vani, like Alexander Stoianov who in 1889 conducted excavations there on behalf of the Archaeological Society of Moscow and found tombs of the ancient Greek period with gold objects, the Georgian scholar Ekvtime Takaishvili who in 1896 began excavations and soon came across unique finds, and of course Otar Lordkipanidze; thanks to his efforts and his expeditions the Vani Archaeological Museum was built in 1985. It is also due to his initiative that scholars of Black Sea archaeology from all over the world gather every three or four years since 1977.

The remains of Vani provide evidence for strong influences between ancient Colchis and Greece both in religion (i.e. cult of Apollo and of Dionysos and his company) and in the Hellenistic metalwork, influenced by Greek aesthetic rules. The presence of Dionysos' cult in particular gives the author the opportunity to talk about the origin of wine making and support the theory that wine was first made in Georgia, as shown by archaeological evidence. Grape pips of cultivated vines have been found in Georgia from as early as 7000-5000 BC, while a recent analysis made by the University of Pennsylvania Museum on the inner surface of some 8,000 year-old ceramic storage jars has shown that they contained resinated red wine from an area close to Tbilisi.

Next comes a brief presentation of the rich tombs at Vani during the 5th and 4th cent. BC (their contents formed the core of the exhibition). The dead were furnished with an abundance of gold and silver jewellery and their shroud was sewn with gold beads. It is interesting how the element of human and animal sacrifice is testified archaeologically, as it seems that the wives, the servants and horses of the nobles were sacrificed and buried along with them, a practice with parallels in the Scythian civilisation of the Greater Caucasus.

The chapter further presents the finds unearthed at Vani from 1947 to the present. After a brief introduction to the history of the site, which inevitably repeats some information from the previous chapters, there is a presentation of the four main phases, first identified by Otar Lordkipanidze, each of them characterised by certain economic activities, burial rites and external influences. An extended presentation of the architectural types, artefacts and innovations of each phase is given. The text is accompanied by comprehensive site plans as well as illustrations of typical artefacts for each phase.

Although emphasis is given to the local character of Vani, which it retained throughout its history, Greek imports are also discussed, especially the pottery of Phase II (end of 7th cent. BC- first half of 4th cent. BC) consisting of amphorae of Chios, Lesvos and Thasos and examples of painted Attic pottery, as well as Attic bronzes, archaic gems of Ionian manufacture and signet rings of Attic and West Greek origin. During Phase III which lasts to the first half of the 3rd cent. BC, new contacts are evident with places like Mende, Sinope, Thasos and Heraklea and a major Greek influence is seen on both building techniques and grave practises.

The next chapter is an essay on the exquisite Colchian goldwork, an art developed in the classical land of gold. Again, the author shows us how the local artistic metalwork melds? the traditions of the Near East and the Hellenic world: there is wide use of filigree and granulation on necklaces and pendants, along with the traditional forms of Colchian earrings that were used as offerings in temples, with fixed globular or bipyramidal pendants. The images of animals and birds adorning most pieces relate to the cult of the predominant Colchian goddess, the Great Mother. It seems that Vani jewellery attests to the existence of a local goldsmithing school in opposition to the Hellenistic koine. The theory is supported by the remains of a goldsmith's workshop that came to light with tools, unfinished jewellery pieces, slag and fragments of charred wood, together with a cult place functioning at the workshop.

As eye-capturing as the goldwork of Vani is, there is hardly anything more interesting and unique than the six odd-looking figures (three of iron, three of bronze) - together with a standard Hellenistic type of a Satyr- and the way they were buried with extra care, implying their ritual role. The presentation of that group is the subject of the next essay. The idols represent naked male figures with abnormally elongated bodies, adorned with a lot of jewellery attached to them, namely headdresses, spiral torques, earrings, pendants and bracelets, by which they are dated to the 3rd cent. BC. There are many theories for their use as part of a cult of the dead -as their presence is connected with cult buildings-, the most interesting being their use as substitutes for priests who in previous periods were sacrificed in unknown religious rituals.

The next chapter focuses again on the importance of Dionysus' presence in connection to the wine production in ancient Colchis and its role in social and religious life. Numerous objects connected with consumption of wine, like amphorae, as well as objects connected to Dionysus like masks of the deity himself, a terracotta mold of Silenos, all unearthed in an architectural complex on the central terrace of the site of religious character, imply the worship of Dionysus in late Hellenistic Vani. Among the finds there is evidence for furniture used in the preparation of food and drink.

The final chapter is the analytical presentation of four of the graves, the contents of which were displayed in the exhibition. They form part of a group of 28 "golden graves", dated from 450 to 250 BC, that contained large quantities of jewellery and other precious items. A brief presentation of grave construction (use of wood) and burial practises (evidence for human and animal sacrifice, death coins in the mouth of the deceased) is also made for each tomb separately.

A checklist of additional finds of the tombs giving their dimensions and the relevant bibliography concludes this valuable publication. All in all, it is a useful library addition, a necessary tool to the scholar of Classical and Hellenistic antiquity, as well as to all those who are interested in learning more about a culture so far unknown to the West, but with a significant role in metal and wine production from early antiquity. It is certain that this will stimulate scholars' interest and will gather many more attendees to the 2010 Vani Symposium that will focus on the graves presented here.

Chapters:
Medea's Colchis by Nino Lordkipanidze
Vani, Rich in Gold by Michael Vickers
The Archaeology of Vani
Religious ritual: Bronze and Iron figurines from Vani
Viticulture and Dionysos in Hellenistic Vani
The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani (read complete article)

In his monograph on Bacchylides ("the first ... in English in over twenty years") Fearn presents his own approach as "original and wide-ranging" and describes his book as "a significant and timely contribution" to an ongoing debate (p. v). There is no doubt that very few monographs have been devoted to Bacchylides, in English or in other languages for that matter, and Fearn's work, based on a 2003 Oxford dissertation, is thoroughly researched, wide-ranging and stimulating. The book comprises an introduction, on "Tradition and Contextualization", and two parts, one on "Praise", and the other on Bacchylides' 'Dithyrambs'. It is on points of detail that the book's strength can be more easily recognized, and the second part, on the so-called Dithyrambs, seems to me to be the most successful one.

In his introduction, after the usual brief preamble about Bacchylides' neglect in comparison to Pindar and other contemporary poets, Fearn devotes twenty pages to the interpretation of fragment 5, a short quotation from one of Bacchylides' Paeans about the importance of tradition and the difficulty of innovation for the sophoi (i.e., the poets) in finding the gates of not-yet-said words. Fearn finds fault not only with the view that these words may have anything to do with a personal polemic between Bacchylides and Pindar (somewhat of a straw-man, since very few scholars would share this view nowadays), but even that they may simply (Fearn's emphasis) relate "to Bacchylides' poetic agenda" (p. 4). It may well be argued that "poetic agenda" is too vague an expression, but it can hardly be denied that Bacchylides' lines are indeed a statement about poetic expression. Fearn draws attention to the different way in which these lines have been read by early Christian authors. Clement of Alexandria who, according to Fearn, plausibly "had knowledge of the wider context of the Bacchylidean lines", quotes them "to illustrate the point that even the Greeks had some inkling about the divinity of God and the Gnostic life". The wider relevance of Clement's reading of the fragment for our understanding of Bacchylides' attitude toward issues of tradition and innovation in poetic expression is more than doubtful. It certainly is an interesting case of Christian interpretation of Greek classical poetry, but even if we assume that Clement had not read the lines in an anthology of quotations on the importance of sophia (by far the likeliest possibility), a comparison with one of the other passages he quotes in the same context, Callimachus epigr. 46.4 Pfeiffer, could easily show how misleading a guide Clement would be for reconstructing the line's "wider context". According to Callimachus "poetry (sophia) is indeed a remedy against all diseases". Clement understands this as an example of how the Greeks acknowledged the divine status of 'Gnostic life'. In Callimachus it introduces the example of the lovesick Cyclops, who finds consolation in singing about his love. I think that most of us would agree that in fifth century Greek lyric poetry sophia and cognate words potentially evoke a semantic sphere that could be broadly defined as 'religious'. I doubt that many would say the same for Callimachus' epigram. In both cases, Clement's reading of these lines as a foreshadowing of 'gnostic' sophia is more interesting as an example of the ways in which quotations acquire a life of their own, once separated from their original contexts. It is difficult to share Fearn's view, however, that this has a methodological lesson to offer for our reading of these lines. Fearn then moves to the issue of the interpretation of the poetic voice in Bacchylides' paean, via a long digression on Pindar's paean 7b, where the poetic voice emphasizes its own originality using one of the same images of Bacchylides' fragments, that of the gates of words. This is useful enough in itself though perhaps not very illuminating for our understanding of Bacchylides' fragment. Fearn next suggests that in our fragment the words to which the gates lead are not (only) "unuttered" but (also) "unutterable", referring to secret lore connected to mystery cults. This sounds unlikely given that the quotation comes from a paean, not a typical song for a mystery-cult context, that the topos of the sophos who has to struggle for novelty of expression and subject is a common one in archaic poetry, and that the verb used by Bacchylides, exeurein, "to invent, discover", is typically used of the task of poetic composition rather than for transmission of hidden lore, as Fearn himself acknowledges (19, n. 65). In conclusion, Fearn comes back to the well established idea that "Bacchylides' narrative technique tends to flaunt its indebtedness to pre-existing ... narrative, in a way that the Pindaric narrator appears generally to have eschewed" (20). The assessment of Bacchylides' different attitude toward poetic tradition, however, is neither the only nor perhaps even the most important subject Fearn explores in the bulk of the book.

The introduction is followed by two parts, the first one dealing with praise poetry, the second one with the 'dithyrambs'. While the second part also covers some more general issues about the lyric genre, the first comprises only a close reading of two poems, fr. 20 B, a short sympotic poem for Alexander, a prince and later king of Macedon, and Epinician 13, a long victory ode for an Aeginetan victor. Fearn's reading of the ode for Alexander, a fairly neglected fragmentary poem, probably among the earliest ones by Bacchylides, is rich in subtle and perceptive comments. Too often, however, Fearn seems to me to read far too much into this text. Only the first half of the poem is well preserved: it is one of the earliest variations on the topos of the delusion and fantasies experienced by intoxicated symposiasts. These include sex (for the young ones, neoi, l. 6), and, for more mature men (andres, l. 10), military achievements, absolute rule over all other men, material luxury and wealth. A sympotic poem by Pindar for a member of the Sicilian family of the Emmenidai (fr. 124 ab S.-M.) offers a slightly different treatment of the same topos. In Fearn's view, Bacchylides' use of this topos is driven by a somewhat hidden agenda. Pindar, in a poem in honour of this same Alexander, exploits his homonymy with the Trojan hero ("homonymous with the prosperous descendants of Dardanos" fr. 120 S.-M.). Fearn makes very much out of this, and sees this address as "an instance of parainesis" (48), which would allude, inter alia, to a passage in the Iliad where Priam is said once to have been "prosperous" (24.543). By addressing Alexander in this way, Fearn argues, Pindar warns him "about the stakes involved in warfare". Bacchylides, on the other hand, says nothing about Alexander's Trojan connections, but, according to Fearn, his use of the expression "undoing the veils of cities" at line 11 (a variation on an epic formula, not unnaturally used of Troy in the Homeric poems) suggests that the audiences of the ode are invited "to consider analogies" between the two Alexanders "as destroyers of their own cities" (Fearn's italics). By such associative processes Fearn transforms a topical sympotic poem into a covert criticism of the praised dedicatee. This is a technique well familiar to readers of Augustan poetry but Fearn's attempt to apply it to Bacchylides' relationship with his Macedonian addressee, in a context where the circumstances of patronage and the political background were very different, fails to carry conviction. Equally unconvincing is his idea that one of the crucial themes of the ode is the construction of Alexander's "Hellenicity". There is no explicit allusion to this in the preserved portion: Fearn speculatively imagines that this might have been an important theme in its largely fragmentary second half, but his evidence is very thin at best. Equally absent in the ode is the issue of Alexander's philopersian or philhellenic attitude. According to Fearn (p. 78), however, "the question that Bacchylides asks is with whom should Alexander be associating himself as a king: should it be with panhellenic Greek poets like Bacchylides himself, or should it be with others who make submissions at the Macedonian court, people like the Persians", and inviting the conclusion that (p. 81) "for pan-hellenic poets, Macedonians are difficult to work with". There is a good deal of fiction in all of this, and Fearn's view that Alexander would have been viewed as "alien or even hostile to the interests of Greek elites or poleis, because of allegations of, and outright evidence for, Macedonian Medism" is based, in my opinion, on a simplistic view of what the interests of "Greek elites" (far from unified) would have been in the early 490s. One only has to think of the Aeginetans, who, arguably, were not difficult to work with for panhellenic poets, and who (among many other Greek poleis) made act of submission to the Persian empire as late as 491 (Hdt. 6.49.1). Fearn quotes this passage in his next chapter on Bacchylides' Aeginetan patrons (p. 93), stating that Herodotus "suggests (emphasis mine) that Aigina submitted", and suggesting himself that "such accusations had much to do with Athenian propaganda". Herodotus in fact plainly says that they did (together with other Greek islands), and the fact that later on they changed their allegiances does not contradict his unambiguous statement.[[1]] The idea that a few years earlier Bacchylides should have acted as a member of a board of "panhellenic" poets in awarding (or refusing) his patrons patents of Hellenicity, scrutinising their attitudes toward the Persians, sounds very unlikely to me, and certainly not supported by the remains of fr. 20 Bacchylides.

Fearn's next chapter is a reading of one of Bacchylides' longest preserved poems, to be dated around 485, his Epinician 13, for Pytheas of Aegina, Lampon's son, the dedicatee of Nemean 5, an ode by Pindar, who also composed Isthmian 6 for him and his brother Phylakidas and another lost Isthmian ode for another member of his family (Fearn has a long appendix on the dates of some of these poems, on pp. 342-350). The bibliography on this ode is much richer than that on fr. 20B and Fearn is well informed and up-to-date.[[2]] Fearn first provides a useful introduction to the ode's historical and archaeological background dealing with a wide range of relevant issues and putting into context Aegina's mythological traditions, and its choral performances.[[3]] The next section explores, largely drawing (with some qualifications) upon a 2000 article by T. Power, the issue of the interaction between the female choral performances evoked in Bacchylides' ode (ll. 83-99) and its own performance, to which the text refers in ll. 190 ff. It is not quite correct to say, however, that the projected chorus of virgins "sing and catalogue the female line of the Aiakidai", while the male chorus sing "of their sons", as the former song includes Aiakos himself: the division in the subject matter has to do more with generations than with gender. The bulk of the chapter is taken by a detailed reading of the ode's mythical section, exploring its narrative technique, its use of imagery and its intertextual relation with the Iliad.

On the whole, Fearn's reading of Bacchylides 13 and of Victory Odes in general stresses the possible elitist implications of the texts in contrast to other current interpretations that privilege their function as a means for re-integrating a member of the aristocratic elite within the broader political community. The situation, as Fearn acknowledges, might have been different in different contexts (see e.g. p. 150 n. 169), and I am not sure that Bacchylides 13 is the best example to make a strong statement about this issue, as I suspect that most readers (Fearn included) would agree that Bacchylides does represent the celebration of Pytheas' victory through mechanisms (such as the blurring mention of the chorus of parthenoi: in particular ll. 84 ff.) that assimilate it to a celebration of the whole community. To what extent such a representation did match with the actual dynamics taking place at the time of the performance is a matter of conjectural reconstruction. I think Fearn is probably right in stating that the situation might have been complex. Concepts such as "community" and "integration" should not be used too loosely. The definition itself of "political community" needs to be refined, and if we should be wary of talking about it as if it necessarily were a homogeneous body, we should equally avoid the same pitfall when talking about local elites (e.g. p. 152, 160).[[4]]

On a point of detail: on p. 155 Fearn argues that the use of the epithet χρυσάρματος for Athena might have conveyed a particularly aristocratic connotation. Among the evidence he adduces in favour of this interpretation is the ancient grammarian Dionysios of Phaselis, quoted in the ancient commentary on Pind. Pyth. 2. Fearn mistranslates the passage as: "[Dionysios says to] compare how Pindar addresses Athens as 'shining' etc." A more accurate translation would be "[he says that] Pindar has a certain tendency to address Athens as 'shining', Thebes as 'golden-charioted' etc." By the way, the problem is exactly that in Pyth. 2 Pindar uses the 'Athenian' epithet when apparently speaking of Thebes, and Dionysios emended the text on this ground. I am not really sure this tells us anything about the aristocratic connotation of the adjective. And, though the idea of an aristocratic nuance is appealing, we should also bear in mind that Athena was often represented as mounting a chariot in Athenian vases (LIMC s.v. a9, and cf. e.g. also E. Ion 1528-9). In an appendix at the end of his book Fearn has an extremely detailed discussion of the text of Bacchylides 13.155-167, based on his own inspection of the papyrus. Maehler's text of these lines is heavily indebted to an important paper of W.S. Barrett, dated to 1975 but not published until 2007.[[5]] Not all of Fearn's changes seem to be improvements to me (I am thinking specially of the ones on ll. 155-7), but a few are interesting. I do find χορὸν in v. 162 attractive, but cannot help noticing that in Fearn's own drawing of the supplement (p. 352) the contrast between the widely spaced letters of this word and the preceding one, and the cramped ones of the following word raise some doubts. Fearn's ἰθεῖαν in v. 156 had already been anticipated by Barrett among the alternatives he had discarded as "in various ways inadequate or inappropriate" and I do not find Fearn' defence of Blass's δύσφρονες in 157 persuasive. Against the integration of a nominative participle in v. 160 f. (ἐκπέρσαντες Blass, Barrett) Fearn quotes Jebb's objection that this "would ... imply that they (i.e. the Trojans) actually destroyed the ships" (Jebb as quoted by Fearn p. 357, with Fearn's omission). This is not correct, as in similar cases the nominative is regularly felt as belonging to the infinitive rather than to the main clause (cf. e.g. Il. 8.498, Alc. Fr. 129.13-20 etc.). Jebb's objection applied (and applies) only to the hypothesis that the subject of the main verb and that of the infinitive were not the same one, i.e. only to Fearn's option (i), with πόλιν as the subject of both infinitives, while Fearn uses the argument to rule out exactly his option (ii), with the Trojans as the subject of the first infinitive.

As far as new alternative interpretations of the traces are concerned, the reader has now two extremely detailed and partly independent descriptions of these lines, that of Barrett and that of Fearn In most cases, reassuringly, they do corroborate each other. A few divergences are involved, e.g. in lines 159 and 162. In both instances I found Barrett's description closer to what I saw on the original. For the trace in line 159, which Barrett read as part of an ypsilon , and Fearn as the "small extension to the upper left (...) at the apex of delta" (p. 354), I would concur with Barrett that, once the small portion of papyrus is notionally "twisted back to its original position", the trace would rather look as "a stroke rising gently to the right" (Barrett, p. 273). It is equally my impression that the traces above the line, interpreted by Fearn as a chi supra lineam, belong in the same category as the "smudgy ink" traces preceding it, and are rather different from the traces of the text itself (so Barrett). In l. 162, Barrett's interpretation of the first trace ("foot of an upright or stroke slanting upwards or perhaps most readily (with an upright left edge and slanting right) from the left angle of α" (p. 276 n. 132) looks more convincing than Fearn's alternative chi. As for the next trace, Fearn rules out Barrett's iota in favour of his rho, describing the trace as the "lowest of three" (p. 355): but the trace is very much at the same level of the other two, and certainly not the lowest one.

The second half of Fearn's book deals with Bacchylides' Dithyrambs: a long section on the definition of the genre is followed by a survey of the contexts and a closer reading of Bacchylides 15. In the first section Fearn argues that the poems gathered under the heading Dithyrambs in Bacchylides' Alexandrian editions belong to the wider category of the kuklioi khoroi. This label was used already in classical times to describe a large group of choral poems according to their mode of performance, the dithyrambs being in fact its most conspicuous sub-category. The partial overlap between the two classificatory terms has produced considerable confusion in modern discussion on the dithyramb, particularly (but by no means only) when discussing the lack of Dionysiac connotations of several of Bacchylides' Dithyrambs. One of the most important contributions to the clarification of the issue is due to L. Käppel.[[6]] This line of inquiry has been subsequently pursued by other scholars, particularly at a conference on the "Contexts of the Dithyramb", which was held at Oxford in July 2004, including P. Ceccarelli, and myself (in a paper where I discuss in detail the implications of the partial semantic overlap of the generic terms dithyrambos, nomos, and kuklios khoros).[[7]] Fearn's general introduction to the 'dithyrambs' follows the same interpretative approach, but expands its horizon considerably, and explores important implications about the contexts of the kuklioi khoroi and their later reception(s). Fearn also examines some aspects of the criticism of the 'New Music' from this perspective. The relevance of this latter section to the interpretation of Bacchylides' poems is somewhat debatable: the discussion, though, is very useful and stimulating. In some cases, however, this leads to a potentially misleading confusion between two only partly overlapping issues. For example, Plato's criticism of modern musical decline and confusion of forms is linked by Fearn to the problem of "the applicability of the kuklios khoros to a wider range of Athenian festivals than simply the City Dionysia" (p. 188, cf. also pp. 200 f.). But this does not ever seem to be an issue per se for Plato.[[8]] Fearn's treatment of the way in which Plato's Laws deal with Dionysiac music is also less than satisfactory. In the Laws in fact Plato attributes the greatest importance to Dionysiac influence in musical performances, and the "Dionysiac khoreia" far from being "relegated to third place" and "left as patronizing pick-me-up for old men" (Fearn, p. 199, n. 113, emphasis mine) is presented as the most authoritative and persuasive form of choral performance in the whole city (cf. e.g. 2.665d), and Plato attributes to the third chorus a function close to, if not identical with, that of the Nocturnal Council.[[9]] I am also sceptical about the idea (derived from Käppel) that the Alexandrian classification of the kuklioi khoroi under the label of 'dithyrambs' might be due to the influence of Plato. The overlapping confusion which involves kuklioi khoroi,'dithyrambs' and even 'nomoi' is attested earlier than Plato, and it is unlikely that the two passages quoted by Fearn on p. 211, one defining the 'dithyramb' in terms of content, the other focussing on its narratological features, might have exerted such a pervasive (and diverging) influence on later scholarly practice. Fearn argues that "later sources crediting Arion with the invention of the kuklios khoros may be simply misremembering Herodotos", with reference to Procl. ap. Phot. Bibl. 5.320a.32, but this is not possible as the earliest testimony is Hellanicus 4 F 86 FGrHist, Herodotus' contemporary (curiously quoted by Fearn himself in a different context, p. 230 n. 9, without any expression of doubt). The passage on the classification of Xenocritus' poems as 'dithyrambs' based on their heroic narrative content in Ps. Plutarch On Music 1134e has been attributed to a source drawing upon Glaucus of Rhegion, 5th century BCE. The issue has been debated, but it is noteworthy that Glaucus is quoted immediately before and after this passage, which, in any case is often supposed to go back to Heracleides of Pontus.[[10]] It is more likely that 'dithyramb' was used as a shorthand label, mainly due to the enormous importance of Dionysiac choral festivals at Athens (and elsewhere at a later date).

In the next chapter Fearn deals with the contexts of Bacchylides' 'Dithyrambs'. In the first section, on Sparta, he examines Bacchylides 20, where the song actually performed is said in the text to have been "such as" the one performed in mythical times by the "blonde maidens of the Lakedaimonians", and argues that it was a kuklios khoros performed by men rather than by women. This is hardly convincing, and overlooks, among other issues, the fact that another (almost surely) Spartan poem that was very probably part of the collection of Bacchylides' 'Dithyrambs', fr. 61 S.-M., equally begins with the evocation of the performance of a group of female singers and dancers. Performances of kuklioi khoroi by maidens are frequently mentioned in various sorts of texts, and it is much more likely that these two Spartan songs belong in this group. The rest of the chapter is devoted to Athens, where Bacchylides 15 and 18-19 are usually said to have been performed (though only in the last case is explicit evidence provided by the title in the papyrus), and to Delos (Bacchylides 17, the most famous among Bacchylides' 'Dithyrambs', on whose political and ideological background Fearn has some perceptive comments to offer), while no section covers Delphi (Bacchylides 16, which has also been read as a poem for an Athenian performance, is briefly discussed in another section, p. 171 f.).

The last chapter is a close reading of Bacchylides 15, which Fearn, as most modern scholars starting from the early '70s, sees as a poem originally performed at the Panathenaia. This is a reasonable assumption, but an entirely conjectural one. Fearn tries to project this text against the background of the wider, intriguingly complex background of Athenian democratic ritual performances, which most famously included also dramatic performances. Given the conjectural nature of the starting point (i.e. the attribution of this poem to a performance at the Panathenaia), the inevitable danger of circular reasoning in this case should perhaps have been stressed in a more explicit way. Among the issues explored by Fearn in this densely argued chapter are the cultural and ideological implications of the poem's intertextual relation with Homer and Solon. In some instances Fearn's subtle intertextual reading entails assumptions that might be not to everybody's taste. For example, in Bacchylides 15 the speech addressed by Menelaos to the Trojans is preceded by an invocation to the Muse (47-49) introducing a question about priority ("who was the first ..."?). This device is found thrice in the Iliad, and in its first occurrence, in Book 11, it introduces a catalogue of heroes killed by Agamemnon, the first one being Iphidamas, one of the sons of Antenor. The sons of Antenor were mentioned in Bacchylides' dithyramb and gave it (perhaps at a later stage) one of the titles it now bears in the papyrus. As we know from other epic sources (the Cypria), Antenor pleaded in favour of Menelaos' proposal before the Trojan assembly. On an earlier occasion in the same book Agamemnon had killed another two Trojan heroes, the sons of Antimachus, saying that this was an apt reward for the fact that, after Menelaos' and Odysseus' embassy, their father had plotted to kill them in an ambush. According to Fearn, Bacchylides' audience should have picked up in their memory exactly this Iliadic occurrence of the "who first" motif, should have connected it to the previous Homeric episode, and given extra meaning to the text of Bacchylides, who does not mention Iphidamas, Antimachus, his plot, nor, for that matter, the outcome of the embassy at all. In another instance, Fearn argues that the use of the two words μῦθον Ἀχαιῶν in Bacchylides 15.39 should have evoked the only occurrence of the word-group in Homer in Il. 7.406. It is perhaps not impossible that Bacchylides might have had that particular passage in mind (though I would be less ready than Fearn is in ruling out the importance of other lost epic sources, such as the Cypria), but it is certainly less than likely that this allusion was meant to be easily picked up by an audience who had no access to concordances or electronic data-bases. Fearn, however, goes even further, and suggests that it was exactly thanks to this somewhat cryptic intertextual reference to a (failed) killing plot (that Bacchylides does not mention) that this poem (allegedly performed in the Athenian Agora) would have also evoked the tradition of the murder committed by the tyrannicides during the Panathenaic procession in 514 BCE.

Fearn also develops some more general considerations on this poem as an example of the kind of poetry (other than the dramatic one) the Athenians performed and enjoyed in their public ritual contests. Some of the points he makes on Bacchylides' style in this very stimulating section are certainly sound and useful. I am not sure, however, that one should indulge too much in such generalizations. Enargeia is one of the most outstanding features of Bacchylides' poetry, and Fearn argues that, in the case of Bacchylides 15, this has very much to do with the performance context and with its interplay with the Rhapsodic performances which took place during the same festival. Enargeia, however, is a feature of Bacchylides' poems in general, not only of Bacchylides 15, nor, even, of his kuklioi khoroi. Fearn establishes an intriguing connection between the 'open closure' of Bacchylides 15 and its (conjectural, I would stress, once again) Athenian, democratic context of performance (p. 314). This is a very interesting insight: one should be cautious, however, about the possibility of such simple ideological explanations especially as so few kyklioi poems from any context are reasonably well preserved, and as Bacchylides shows a preference for similar narrative effects in other poems as well: what about the 'open' ending of the mythical narration of Bacchylides 5, a poem for a 'tyrant', and the closures of Bacchylides 16 and of fr. 60 (though I suppose one might always assume an 'Athenian' background for the former)?

After a brief conclusion, the book is rounded off by two appendices (on Bacchylides 13, discussed above), a 38-page bibliography, and two indexes. It is generally well produced: I have found a mere handful of slips and typos.

All in all, this is an extremely stimulating and thorough reading of some of Bacchylides' poems, which leaves very few stones unturned, and should be consulted by everyone interested not only in archaic Greek poetry, but also in Athenian performance culture (and even in later transformations of lyric narrative techniques in Latin poetry). It is also because of its wide-ranging and searching exploration of the subject that it is bound to raise questions (and occasional criticism) such as the ones I have voiced in this review.

Notes

1. Evidence that Aegina might have submitted to Persia at an even earlier date, based on the presence of an Aeginetan silver stater in the Apadana foundation deposit, is much more uncertain: cf. M. Cool Root in Numismatic Chronicle 148 (1988), 1-12, and A. R. Meadows, Numismatic Chronicle 163 (2003), 342-4.

2. The omission of a relevant article by J. B. Fenno published in Hermes 133 (2005), 294-311 (cf. Fearn pp. 113-5, and his appendix on the date of the odes) is easy to understand, though quite a few other 2005 (and even 2006) items are included in the bibliography.

3. Callimachus' Iamb 8 and A. R. 4.1765 f. should be added to Fearn's references on cultic performances by the so-called "Asopian water" (p. 104 n. 66): Ch. M. Dawson in YCS 11 (1950), 88 f. had already provided the correct explanation of the scholia on Pind. Nem. 3.4 using this material.

4. For a recent contribution to debate on the ideological interpretation of Greek Lyric, not discussed by Fearn, see D. Hammer, "Ideology, the Symposium, and Archaic Politics", AJPh 125 (2004), 479-512.

5. Cf. W.S. Barrett, Greek Lyric, Tragedy and Textual Criticism. Collected papers assembled and edited by M.L. West, Oxford 2007, 232-284. Fearn knows Barrett's arguments only thanks to Maehler's references to the unpublished paper.

6. "Bakchylides und das System der chorlyrischen Gattungen im 5. Jh. v. Chr.", in A. Bagordo and B. Zimmermann (eds), Bakchylides. 100 Jahre nach seiner Wiederentdeckung, München 2000, 11-27.

7. There is no mention of this conference in Fearn. The debt to Käppel 2000 "on questions of Alexandrian classification" is acknowledged in the first footnote of this section, on p. 163.

8. Cf. also p. 174, where Fearn suggests that the issue was debated in classical Athens, without, however, providing satisfactory evidence.

9. On the whole issue of Dionysus in the Laws see, at least, E. Belfiore, "Wine and Catharsis of the Emotions in Plato's Laws", CQ n. s. 36 (1986), 421-437 and, most recently, G. Panno, Dionisiaco e Alterità nelle "Leggi" di Platone. Ordine del corpo e automovimento dell'anima nella città-tragedia, Milan 2007, with previous bibliography.

10. Incidentally, the classification of Pindar's dithyrambs is not at all likely to go back to Aristarchus, as stated by Fearn on p. 212. (read complete article)