Bryn Mawr Classical Review

The editors' (hereafter JD and PF) modest hope that The World of Pompeii will serve as an updated variation on the themes of August Mau's Pompeii: Its Life and Art (p. xxvii) is no preparation for the wealth of information presented here, not to mention access to the thoughts and work of many leading Pompeii scholars from the eighteenth century onwards. This is primarily a book about architecture, urban design, and society: those of us who are interested in the entire Bay of Naples region, in its art, or in the rediscovery of the ancient sites will be disappointed, but there are some notable exceptions, such as chapters on houses not in Pompeii but in Herculaneum (J.-A. Dickmann), on the suburban villas in the region (E. M. Moormann), and on the evidence provided by the casts and the 1,450 skeletal remains from Pompeii and Herculaneum (E. Lazer).

August Mau's Pompeii: Its Life and Art (trans. Francis W. Kelsey [1899]) has 8 sections and 59 chapters that Mau himself wrote. JD and PF have assembled essays by 40 different authors, half of whom are well known for their fieldwork and publications on various aspects of ancient Pompeii, but only five of whom are Italians. Many of the essays here refer directly to Mau's work, revealing its importance in the development of Pompeian studies, particularly to students of architecture. Indeed, the second edition of Mau (1907) is accessible through this book's website: http://homepage.mac.com/pfoss/Pompeii/WorldOfPompeii/index.html. Also frequently cited is J. H. D'Arms's Romans on the Bay of Naples, which, since its production in 1970, continues to be indispensable for the range of topics that he illuminated, guided of course by the evidence provided by the ancient literary testimonia.¹

The editors faced all the problems regarding length, coverage, organization, and format that can be expected in a project involving many authors. The essays generally range in length from 10 to 20 pages, with a few longer ones. Those that have sub-headings and conclusions are easier to follow than those without. Five of the essays have no illustrations, and many of the others have fewer than ten: all are black and white and of poor quality. In today's world of archaeological publishing, it is simply not acceptable for a recitation of the four styles of Pompeian wall-painting (V. M. Strocka) to be printed without color illustrations (ch. 20). This is also a drawback in ch. 21, a far more readable overview of mosaics and stuccoes (J.R. Clarke).² Indeed both of these essays stand in need of references to monographs on particular Pompeian houses and their décor, particularly those more recently published.³

Although there is much new information in this volume, it is difficult to locate, and many recent publications are of course not included, particularly those in Italian which have been appearing at an extraordinarily rapid rate. Two essays have no footnotes, and twenty-five have no bibliography. The lack of a comprehensive bibliography limits the book's value, and may encourage academics to choose only a few chapters for their students to read. It would have been useful for students and non-specialists to be given lists of surveys and of the catalogues of the many exhibitions about Pompeian subjects that have rekindled public interest in the region around the Bay of Naples during recent years.

The plans of Pompeii and Herculaneum (maps 2, 3, 4) are too small to read without magnification. Although there is a cd at the back of the book and each plan is given in pdf, tif, and jpeg formats, one has to load the plan, orient oneself, and enlarge the relevant portion. Larger plans printed on heavy stock in a pocket would have been far easier to handle and to consult while reading those chapters that require them or while visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum. Maps 1 and 2 benefit from the color provided on the cd. Fig 3.1, showing the different phases of Pompeii's excavation (p. 30), is also easier to read in the color image. Pompeii's districts, shown on fig. 10.1 (p. 130), are perfectly legible in black and white, and need not be viewed in color as presented on the cd.

That this book should serve as "an introduction to Pompeian studies" (p. xxvii) is only true up to a point, owing to the uneven character of the essays, and to the fact that the contents are limited for the most part to architectural and urban studies. The question was also not resolved of how closely to focus the book on Pompeii alone, given that the sites on the Bay of Naples are all so closely related to one another in many ways, not least of which is their location. The intention that each essay should be "a self-contained unit" (p. xxviii) is an excellent one but is very difficult to carry out in a work of this size, particularly because of the frequent cross-references to essays and illustrations elsewhere in the volume, as in R. Ling's ch. 9 on the forum and public buildings in Pompeii.

The World of Pompeii has 4 parts: Beginnings (I); The Community (II); Housing (III); and Society and Economy (IV). The book covers pre-79-AD Pompeii, as Mau of course did not, in chapters by P.G. Guzzo, P. Carafa, S. De Caro, and H. Geertman. The current work combines Mau's separate sections on Trades and Occupations, Tombs, Art, and Inscriptions within Part IV (Society and Economy). Topics of many of the chapters follow Mau as well, but the essays that adhere to Mau most closely are perhaps the least successful. F. Pirson, for instance, in an apparent attempt to adhere to Mau's chapters 47 and 48, deals with conditions of work for bakers and fullers (ch. 29) rather than with the wide range of Pompeian industries for which there is both direct and indirect evidence. Mention should have been made of at least some of them--painters, marble-carvers, plasterers, lamp-makers, woodworkers, and jewelers, along with selected references to individuals who have worked on these topics, such as T. Budetta, M. Pagano, C. Landwehr, A. d'Ambrosio, and E. De Carolis. J. DeFelice's brief account of inns and taverns (ch. 30) also follows Mau's ch. 49 too closely for comfort.

Four of the eight chapters in Part I could serve well as background reading for a college course on Pompeii: they cover the region (ch. 1, P. G. Guzzo); the ancient history and testimonia about Pompeii (ch. 2, J.-P. Descoeudres); the history and impact of the 18th- and 19th-century rediscoveries (ch. 3, P. W. Foss); and recent investigations of the early town of Pompeii (ch. 5, P. Carafa). To those four should be added A. Laidlaw's fine guide (ch. 39) to the early excavators of Pompeii.⁴

Two chapters on historiography in Part IV--on the economy and on inscriptions - are more difficult for general readers. In ch. 32 W. M. Jongman observes that whereas early studies of Pompeii's economy "provided optimistic images of a world hardly different from our own" (p. 503), we should instead recognize that Pompeii "was not a happy little town, hardly different from our own world" (p. 513). J. Franklin's overview of the scholarship on inscriptions, graffiti, and wax tablets and their evidence for the nature of Pompeian society and public offices (ch. 33) can be augmented by hundreds of actual texts that are now available with translations.⁵ Being primary sources, these may appeal to students in a way that an historiographical summary of the scholarship does not.

H. Sigurdsson's dense chapter (4) on volcanic activity is difficult reading, and terms like "arcuate," "paleosoils," "fluviatile," and "phreatic," that may baffle non-volcanologists, do not appear in the 11-page glossary, which is in general very thorough. Some editing is needed here, and this essay would have benefited as well from citations of locally published books and articles about the Vesuvian region.⁶

J.-P. Adam's ch. (8) on building materials, construction, and chronology with J. J. Dobbins's appendix on concrete are clear and workmanlike overviews for newcomers to the field. In contrast, S. De Caro's case study of archaic sanctuaries (ch. 6) and H. Geertman's survey of the growth of pre-Roman Pompeii (ch. 7) are better suited to architectural and urban specialists and do not fit very well within the stated intentions of this work.

In Part II, C. Chiaramonte's description of the walls and gates and their history (ch. 11) is fascinating, and ties in neatly with the chapters by Westfall (10) and Dobbins (12). In C. W. Westfall's (illustrated) essay on Pompeian districts, readers can see clearly "the linkages between the forum and the city's districts" (p. 138). And the results of new work carried out through the Pompeii Forum Project in Dobbins's lengthy chapter provide succinct overviews of the history and significance of these buildings and this region of the city, making another valuable chapter for readers interested in the big picture.

In Part II, A.M. Small's chapter 13 on religion in the region of Mt. Vesuvius, particularly in Pompeii and Herculaneum, might be read alongside De Caro's ch. 6 in Part I on early sanctuaries.⁷ C. Parslow's excellent chapter 14 on public entertainment--the buildings and the entertainments carried out therein--can be paired with A. O. Koloski-Ostrow's new study in ch. 15 of bathing facilities--both the architecture and uses of these complexes, and the history of scholarship from Mau onwards, with concluding sections on "New Research" and "New Directions for Bath Research." In a short chapter (16) on wells, cisterns, pipes, sanitation, and waste disposal, G. Jansen provides brief answers to some but not all frequently asked questions, such as the nature and functions of the water features that became common in Pompeian gardens after the introduction of the aqueduct.⁸

Part III, on Housing, covers architectural topics ranging from the uses of space to house types to the design of insulae to what is known about coastal villas. P.A. Allison (ch. 17) focuses on the design of the atrium house and the evidence for the uses of various rooms provided by the material remains from thirty Pompeian houses. A. Wallace-Hadrill (ch. 18) surveys house types and construction materials with Vitruvius in hand, using the archaeological evidence to link houses in Pompeii to domestic architecture elsewhere in Italy, tracing Hellenization, and seeing the atrium house as 'not a single model of construction, but a set of paradigms that allowed many different expressions' (p. 288). J. C. Fant (ch. 22) considers real and faux marble décor, the origins of the marbles either actually used or depicted as used, providing testimony to the relationship between "house owners' aspirations" (p. 341) and courtly tastes in exotic marbles, piquing our interest in the foreign marble trade to Roman Italy. These chapters are followed by four specialized case studies: of insulae and changing house plans in Regions I and II (S.C. Nappo, ch. 23); of early house plans in Regions V and IX (K. Peterse, ch. 24); of housing developments in Insula VI.1 (R. Jones and D. Robinson, ch. 25); and of multi-level homes along the southern and western walls of Pompeii (R.A.Tybout, ch. 26).

As for other sites on the Bay of Naples, J.-A. Dickmann's welcome chapter on the houses of Herculaneum (ch. 27) provides interesting general information regarding the size of Herculaneum (about one-third the size of Pompeii at ca. 320 x 350 m), the amount of the city excavated to date (one-fourth), and the greater depth of the site in contrast to Pompeii (for his '10 m' [p. 421] substitute '20--30 m').⁹ E. M. Moormann's review of suburban villas, with sections on the chronology for villa construction, ownership and management, includes villas at Stabiae, Boscoreale, and Herculaneum, images of villas (unillustrated), and, unusually for this book, he includes references up to 2005.

The late W. Jashemski's summary of her work on gardens (ch. 31) is an impressive reminder of the impetus her work has given to the study of Vesuvian flora. Indeed, the Antiquarium at Boscoreale contains a good deal of material relating to this subject.¹⁰ A chapter on garden décor would be welcome at this point in the volume.¹¹ A. O. Koloski-Ostrow and C. L. Lyons edited a very useful book about women in antiquity,¹² not mentioned by F. Bernstein in ch. 34, which is based instead upon the author's own Ph.D. thesis of 1987. Although in ch. 35 we learn something about the roles and habitats of slaves in Pompeii, and about how these are easier to determine than how many slaves there were (M. George), there are no chapters devoted to children or education.¹³

For readers interested in material remains, the study of artifacts is introduced in ch. 19, in which there is a case study of a well-to-do household (the House of the Beautiful Impluvium, I.9.1-2) whose artifacts point to "dining and dicing, toilet activities and personal adornment" (p. 299). But this is all there is about the contents of Pompeian homes. K. Welch considers three types of Pompeian portraits (ch. 36) - public, domestic, and funerary. That Vesuvian sites provide contextual evidence adds to the value of this chapter. And finally, the importance of multiple approaches to ancient Pompeii is nicely demonstrated by the two complementary chapters on death--E. Lazer on the human remains (ch. 38), and S. Cormack on Pompeiian tombs, covering location, typology, chronology, décor, and texts (ch. 37).

Notes

1. See now J. H. D'Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples and Other Essays on Roman Campania, ed. Fausto Zevi (2003).

2. On mosaics, for example, see C. Cicirelli and M. P. Guidobaldi, Pavimenti e mosaici nella Villa dei Misteri di Pompei (2000), and S. De Caro I mosaici: La Casa del Fauno (2001).

3. For brief and well-illustrated overviews of these and of many other general topics, as well as for illustrated descriptions of individual structures, readers might consult S. C. Nappo, Pompeii: Guide to the Lost City (1998).

4. An indispensable resource for all the sites around the Bay of Naples, the finds, the archaeologists and scholars, politicians and travelers, and the region itself, is, of course, I.C. McIlwaine's Herculaneum: A Guide to Printed Sources (1988), which Laidlaw does not cite.

5. A.E. Cooley and M.G.L. Cooley, Pompeii: A Sourcebook (2004 pb.).

6. See, for example, N. di Fusco and E. Di Caterina, Il Vesuvio (1998).

7. The bibliography for ch. 13 might now include S. De Caro's booklet, Il santuario di Iside (2006).

8. This essay should have made reference to recent publications like V. Marchis and G. Scalva, "The Science and Technology of Water," and their references to Italian sources (Pompeii: Life in a Roman Town ed. A. Ciarallo and E. De Carolis [1999], 291-293).

9. Dickmann notes that he submitted his essay in 1998.

10. See G. Stefani, Uomo e ambiente nel territorio vesuviano: Guida all'Antiquarium di Boscoreale (2003?).

11. Among the many recent works on Vesuvian gardens that readers might wish to consult are three paperbacks by A. Ciarallo, Il Giardino Pompeiano: Le piante, l'orto, I segreti della cucina (2002), Pompei verde (2006), and Flora pompeiana antica (2007). For garden paintings, see Il Giardino dipinto nella Casa del Bracciale d'Oro a Pompei (exh. cat. 1991). Also of interest is a recent exhibition in Florence: Il giardino antico da Babilonia a Roma: Scienza, arte e natura, eds. G. di Pasquale and F. Paolucci (2007). And, on a related topic, see V. E. Pagán, Rome and the Literature of Gardens (2006).

12. Naked Truths, ed. A. O. Koloski-Ostrow and C. L. Lyons (1997).

13. For a study of this topic, see now L. Garcia y Garcia, Pupils, Teachers and Schools in Pompeii: Childhood, Youth and Culture in the Roman Era (2005). (read complete article)

Timothy Howe's Pastoral Politics: Animals, Agriculture and Society in Ancient Greece is a welcome contribution to the long-neglected study of animals as important constituents of ancient Greek history and culture. The main purpose of the book is to analyze the practice of animal husbandry in relation to sociopolitical and economic causes that informed and shaped this practice in ancient Greece during the Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic periods. Howe stresses that the book is meant for "ancient historians who ha[ve] little or no knowledge of the subject" (ix), yet his main intention is to make it appealing to non-specialists, and thus incorporate it into the mainstream of scholarly research on ancient Greek history. Howe approaches the topic of large-scale animal production in ancient Greece by focusing on the use of land for agricultural and pastoral purposes, while addressing three central questions: "(1) why did wealthy (and also non-wealthy) people prioritize the production of animals to such a degree that they removed some of the best land from cereal or other food cultivation; (2) how did these people justify taking much needed land away from subsistence food production in order to raise non-food animals such as horses; and (3) how did these animal production choices affect those individuals directly and not directly involved in animal production?" (ix). It is through these questions that Howe attempts to disentangle the intricate connections among land use, animals, agriculture, and politics in ancient Greece, a challenging task, which he succinctly refers to as "pastoral politics" (2).

The book consists of five chapters. The first chapter, "Understanding Pastoral Politics," outlines the scope of the book and offers a critical review of existing theories regarding agricultural and pastoral practices in ancient Greece. Howe discusses, first, the agricultural systems of Classical Athens as analyzed by Louis Gernet (1909) and Auguste Jardé (1925);¹ Moses Finley's model of ancient Mediterranean economy as being centered on agricultural practice that was, in turn, dependent upon subsistence food production and surplus market production (1985);² and Peter Garnsey's (1988) and Robin Osborne's (1985;1987) unifying model of city and countryside and its emphasis on elite political and personal choices shaping agricultural production in Classical Greece.³ He moves, next, to Robert Sallares's study of ecology and subsistence food production (1991);⁴ the environmental model of specialized transhumance proposed by Ellen Semple (1922; 1932), embraced by Stella Georgoudi (1974), and revived later by Jens Skydsgaard (1988);⁵ the agro-pastoralist model favored by Paul Halstead (1987) and Stephen Hodkinson (1988);⁶ the substantiation of these two competing models by epigraphical evidence regarding livestock rearing in the eastern Mediterranean (fifth century B.C. to first century A.D.) as discussed by Christophe Chandezon (2003);⁷ and, finally, Hamish Forbes' study of the role of animals as wealth-generating entities for the ruling elite in ancient Greece (1995).⁸ Howe acknowledges the intellectual debt of his study to Forbes, while underlining the need to take into account variables such as the regional and temporal complexity of animal husbandry in ancient Greece and the specific sociopolitical and economic contexts that sustained this practice.

In the second chapter, "Animals as Gentlemanly Wealth," Howe considers the ancient Greek, specifically elite, conception of animals as sources of wealth, thus suggesting their use as markers of elevated social class and status. On the basis of literary evidence ranging from Homer and Hesiod to Pindar, Aristotle, and Demosthenes, Howe demonstrates that large and impressive animals such as cattle and horses were signifiers of wealth, prestige, and familial identity throughout pre-Classical and Classical Greece. There was a continuum, he argues, to the conception of animals as such that extended from Homeric to fifth- and fourth-century B.C. Greece and remained little affected by societal phenomena such as the development of the polis that occurred within this stretch of time. Furthermore, by placing his argument against a critical review of offered theories concerning the evolution (or not) of Early Iron Age pastoralism (e.g., those of Anthony Snodgrass, John Cherry, Lin Foxhall, and Victor Hanson),⁹ Howe underscores the importance of surviving literary evidence for gaining a useful insight into the ancient Greek attitude toward animal husbandry as a well-established and thus defining resource of the well-to-do ruling elite.

The third chapter, "Tending the Herds: Animal Management Strategies," considers the geographical diversity of animal production (sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and horses) in Classical Greece by examining and contrasting the strategies adopted by four different communities, Athens, Sparta, Thessaly, and Arcadia. As manifested in the literary and archaeological records, each of these communities, Howe asserts, had its own unique approach to managing animal production, an approach not fully divorced from local, sociopolitical, economic, and environmental circumstances.

In Athens, for example, social and environmental factors had a profound effect on limiting the types of animals that Athenians could normally raise to smaller species such as sheep and goats; the local system of land ownership represented a patchwork of small individually owned plots, each of which could only sustain a restricted number of grazing animals, and the distinct lack of wetland pastures precluded raising cattle and horses. Additionally, the Athenian demand for animals to be used in state-sponsored sacrifices during the Classical period created a market from which the individuals involved benefited greatly as their raising and selling of sacrificial animals enabled them to engage in and compete for public services such as liturgies. Despite the apparent prominence of sheep, goats, and also pigs among the species of animals produced and managed in Classical Athens, animals such as cattle and horses were also present, albeit in smaller numbers, Howe notes. Oxen, for example, are mentioned in the Attic sacrificial calendars and the homonymous stelai, and, in the literary sources, men of the Athenian cavalry keep horses on their own land and have expenses related to the maintenance of these animals paid to them by the state. In this way, the management of animal production in Classical Athens emerges as the direct outcome, Howe says, of local contemporary social and environmental conditions.

In Sparta, strategies regarding the management of animal production differed greatly from those implemented in Athens mostly because of a marked divergence in the sociopolitical organization and environmental and climatic conditions. As Howe remarks, in Classical Sparta, all property and resources were controlled by a small elite body of citizens, whereas the well-watered plains and mild climate of Laconia and Messenia allowed this relatively small land-owning class to maintain animals such as horses, cattle, pigs, and goats in large herds and within large estates--a situation far removed from that in contemporary Athens. To substantiate further his analysis of the regional and temporal components of animal production in ancient Sparta, Howe presents literary evidence that attests to the fame of the Spartans in antiquity as continuous winners of Olympic horse races (e.g., seven out of eight times between 448 and 420 B.C.) and also as skillful connoisseurs of raising, maintaining, and also supplying fine horses to foreign kingdoms such as that of Ptolemaic Egypt. In addition to horses, the texts also mention Sparta as famous for cattle raising. At the same time, the Spartan institution of public mess, Howe notes, provided the opportunity for wealthy individuals to display their means and status through significant contributions of meat and dairy products to such a public venue. On the basis of this evidence, the specific sociopolitical and environmental characteristics of Sparta were instrumental, Howe argues, in dictating its equally specific approach to managing animal production -- a situation not dissimilar in essence from that in Athens. Like the poleis of Athens and Sparta, the ethne of Thessaly, Arcadia and Central Greece developed, according to Howe, their own methods of managing animal production; and like those of Athens and Sparta, these methods were closely connected to both the environment and social reality that shaped each of these ethne. In Thessaly, for example, the existence of a ruling elite that controlled large parts of well-watered lowlands suitable for grazing enabled the raising of animals (e.g., cattle, horses, and sheep) on a grand scale, and to such a degree that the inhabitants of Thessaly could not have been renowned simply for their possession of large herds of cattle and horses, as attested by textual evidence, but rather for their specialization in the practice of pastoralism. Similarly, the highland communities of Arcadia and Central Greece (Phocis, Locris) were engaged in a specialized form of pastoralism that was directly dependent upon local environmental conditions. More specifically, the system of animal production followed by these communities involved -- as attested in both ancient literature and modern archaeological survey -- the breeding of sheep and goats that was, in turn, sustained by the availability of mountain pastures, usually a source of contention among competing communities. Since such a terrain could not support the production of arable crops, the shepherding clans of Arcadia and Central Greece, Howe suggests, used both their animals and resulting products as a medium of exchange for acquiring agricultural goods produced by their lowland neighbors.

In the fourth chapter, "The Pressure for Pasture: Animal Husbandry and War," Howe explores the idea that acquiring grazing lands was the pretext for many noted conflicts, both secular and sacred, in Archaic and Classical Greece. Drawing primarily from literary and epigraphical evidence, Howe suggests that the need of wealthy pastoralists, communities, and even states to ensure access to and control over scarce pasturelands can be seen as the primary motivation behind conflicts such as the Lelantine War, the Corinthian War, the four Sacred Wars, and even the Peloponnesian War. While involvement in the aggressive acquisition of grazing lands and resources provided the opportunity for pastoralists to express and affirm their distinguished social identity, the disrupting effects of such a behavior on the lives of ordinary citizens is an aspect of ancient Greek animal husbandry to which current scholarship, Howe argues, has not given thoughtful consideration.

The fifth chapter, "The Politics of Display: Animals, Identity and Power," examines the role of animals in the creation and promotion of elite sociopolitical status and identity in ancient Greek society. Howe traces from Homer to classical Greek literature the centrality and development of the concept of conspicuous display and consumption of animals in the expression of personal excellence and, therefore, of public honor, prestige, and political power of the wealthy elite in ancient Greece. By identifying this behavior as part of the wider ancient Greek concept of conspicuous consumption (megaloprepeia) within a community, Howe argues that possession and maintenance of animals, as exemplified by their use in pan-Hellenic athletic competitions, sacrificial dedications, or as pure symbols of wealth (e.g., horses), enabled privileged individuals to participate into a system of public competitive expenditure that not only advertised their prominence in Greek society but also accentuated their links to their communities and gods and therefore bestowed upon them long-lasting public honor and prestige.

In conclusion, Howe's book raises many interesting points regarding animal husbandry and its multifaceted connections with agriculture and society in ancient Greece. Although one may argue that this is a topic that deserves a more extensive treatment, the strength of the book lies in removing animals from the margins of scholarly discussions of ancient Greek social and cultural history. Unfortunately, the text is not free of typographical errors: "agriculure" (spine), "Husbantry" (Contents), "Bibliograpy" (Contents), "Berekeley" (5, n. 2, 130), "arborial" (31, 34, 39), "Agrariansim" (38, n. 22, 132), "agues" (38, n. 24), "an individuals public reputation" (47, n. 47), "argo-pastoralism" (51), "Ancient Greek Agriculture. And Introduction" (59, n. 33), "collateral damaged caused" (88), "vicitims" (91), "explains nature of this talismanic power" (110). In addition, inconsistencies, such as "eighth-century elite" (29, n. 7), but "8th century prototype" (28), "well-pastured mountains" (61), but "well established social evolutionary model" (25), "Oxyrhynchos" (17, 85), but "Oxyrhynkhos" (72), L. Foxhall (36, n. 20), but F. Foxhall (132), as well as the lack of a consistent format for documenting primary and secondary sources (e.g., Xenophon Athenaion Politeia 1.10 (108, n. 25), but Xen.Hell. 2.4.8-10 (116, n. 55), and Kurke, Traffic in Praise, 180 (112, n. 41), but Kurke, Traffic in Praise, 1991: 177ff (115, n. 53), and for crediting (or not) translations of ancient authors (e.g., Homer, Odyssey 14.99-104 (27, n. 1), but not for Plato, Republic, 373d-e (77)) weaken the quality of presentation. Lastly, the correct title of the volume edited by C. R. Whittaker is Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity, and not Pastoral Economies of Ancient Greece and Rome (16, n. 32; 22, n. 48; 34-35, n. 17). Notwithstanding these points, the book is a valuable contribution to the study of animal husbandry in ancient Greece that goes well beyond the old debate on pastoralism and transhumance.

Notes

1. L. Gernet, L' approvisionnement d' Athènes en blé au V et au VI siècle (Université de Paris, bibliothèque de la faculté des letters 25. Mélanges d' histoire ancienne; Paris, 1909); A. Jardé, Les céreales dans l'antiquité greque (Paris, 1925).

2. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (second ed.; Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985).

3. P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis (Cambridge and New York, 1988); R. Osborne, Demos: The Discovery of Classical Attika (Cambridge and New York, 1985) and Classical Landscape with Figures: The Ancient Greek City and Its Countryside (London, 1987).

4. R. Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (Ithaca, 1991).

5. E. C. Semple, "The Influence of Geographic Conditions upon Ancient Mediterranean Stock-Raising," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 12 (1922) 3-38 and The Geography of the Mediterranean Region and Its Relation to Ancient History (New York, 1932); S. Georgoudi, "Quelque problèmes de la transhumance dans la Grèce ancienne," REG 87 (1974) 155-185; J. E. Skydsgaard, "Transhumance in Ancient Greece," in C. R. Whittaker, ed., Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity, (Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume no. 41; Cambridge, 1988) 75-86.

6. P. Halstead, "Traditional and Ancient Rural Economy in Mediterranean Europe: Plus ça Change?" JHS 107 (1987) 77-87; S. Hodkinson, "Animal Husbandry in the Greek Polis," in C. R. Whittaker, ed., Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume no. 41; Cambridge, 1988) 35-74.

7. C. Chandezon, L' élevage en Grèce (fin V-fin I s. a.C.). L' apport des sources épigraphiques (Bordeaux, 2003).

8. H. A. Forbes, "The Identification of Pastoralist Sites within the Context of Estate-Based Agriculture in Ancient Greece: Beyond the Transhumance versus Agro-Pastoralism Debate," ABSA 90 (1995) 325-338.

9. A. M. Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece: The Present State and Future Scope of a Discipline (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987) 207, The Dark Age of Greece: An Archaeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries B.C. (Edinburgh, 1971) 180-181, and Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980); J. F. Cherry, "Pastoralism and the Role of Animals in the Pre- and Protohistoric Economies of the Aegean," in C. R. Whittaker, ed., Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume no. 41; Cambridge, 1988) 196-209; L. Foxhall, "Bronze to Iron: Agricultural Systems and Political Structures in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greece," ABSA 90 (1995) 239-250; V. D. Hanson, The Other Greeks. The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999). (read complete article)

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

Staging of Classical Drama Around 2000 is the published findings of a 2005 symposium on classical drama hosted by the Institute of Philosophy-Institute for Classical Studies, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The symposium was a call to scholars of classical reception and performance anthropology to convene in Prague for the estimable purpose of identifying and sharing, "contemporary trends in staging of ancient drama and different approaches to the theme in different countries" (xi). To that end, presenters and respondents from a panoply of regions (Great Britain, Scandinavia, Eastern and Central Europe, Japan, Oceania) gathered field research and data on myriad aspects of classical adaptation and production; the sum-total of this gathering is sixteen provocative chapters on classical performance deriving from a specifically ethnic, native or regional point of view.

Let me begin with my one reservation, which concerns translation and suggests the press, "aiming to promote knowledge and learning through the production and distribution of valuable academic works" (from the press website), has a problem to consider. A passage from "Chapter Eight: Different Answers to the Same Questions: Staging Oresteia In Greek On The Turn Of A Century" is indicative of the problem: "In Agamemnon, Kassandra's omen is written in red letters on a black wall and in vice-versa as a sign of death, while ancient frictoria is presented with the help of common lighters and with the announcement of the ancient sites followed by their nowadays adaptation in modern Greek (133)." That account is contained in an essay that in spite of its rocky translation offers valuable insight into the reclamation of Greece's national classical ethos: "The story that leads to Lignadis' Oresteia actually goes back to a century ago to the very first Oresteia of the National Theatre of Greece (then called Royal Greek Theatre), in November of 1903. This was meant to be the first Ancient Greek production of the Royal Theatre ever; and unfortunately, it was also meant to be the very first theatrical scandal ever made, regarding productions of Ancient Drama in modern Greece." This reservation aside, the prodigious output of the Prague summit, Staging of Classical Drama Around 2000 has much to offer.

Although the Preface is thin, the Introduction by theater historian and reception scholar Lorne Hardwick is expansive and salutary, and provides an overview of themes specific to the sixteen essays and denotes the synergy and vitality of the "Around 2000" conferees: "Each of the essays has a specialized contribution to make. However, the total impact of the whole section will be even greater than the sum of its parts because the authors not only intersect in their discussions of common concerns in modern performance of Greek drama but also provide case studies that will add to the knowledge base and critical acumen of everyone working in the field" (7). Although this multifarious collection would be challenging for undergraduates, reception scholars and M.F.A. candidates in performance will need this book. I would specifically cite Akiko Tomatsuri's, "The Use of Silence in Tadashi Suzuki's Electra ," and Angeliki Zachou's, "The Use of Music in Greek Performances of Ancient Greek Drama in the 20th Century" as critical resources in the application of music, sound, and silence in classical renewal. I would also cite Paul Monaghan's, "Greek Tragedy in Australia: 1984-2005 ," and Hesham Hassan's, "The Influences of Ancient Greek Drama on Modern Egyptian Theatre" as exemplary histories on the development of classical dramatic art in "settlement" and "invaded" settings (38, 102). The supposition of author Hassan that Napoleon transported combat infantry and classically trained actors to the Saharan continent to occupy and (collaterally) acculturate the Egyptians is intriguing: "The Arab world got acquainted with theatre when Napoleon invaded Egypt (1798-1810), as some actors came along with his [sic] soldiery to entertain the soldiers" (102).

In addition, I would cite Andreja Inkret's essay, "Protagonist and Protagonistes: Doubling in Modern and Ancient Theatre" (Chapter 10), as essential reading for theater artists committed to serious experimentation with the classical milieu. In her argumentative essay, Inkret identifies the 2005 Slovak National Theater production of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus as case study in the efficacy of non-traditional, cross-gender, and double casting (the reassigning or "doubling up" of the major roles in a play). According to Inkret, for both the ancient and modern audience, the convention of "doubling" -- a form of adaptation in its own right -- is a "plausible effect" that pushes performers and audience to their limits: "an actor has to cast a spell upon a spectator every time he comes on stage representing a different character" (149). To bolster her observations on the history and process of "doubling" Inkret defers to the ancients: "Was the Greek stage convention of three speaking actors a restriction imposed on playwrights or "an ultimate state of perfection ," as Diogenes Laertius implied in the first half of the third century AD, or perhaps both?" (156).

Chapter One, "Tragedy Metatheatre and the Question of Representation ," by Eleutheria Ioannidou, will be of particular interest to theater practitioners. In a short segment entitled "Reconciliation with the Tragic Text in The Island, by [Athol] Fugard ," Ioannidou touts Fugard's blistering anti-apartheid prisoner-play as, "the personification of a lifer's state," and an existential model of "repetition," "imposed task[s] (rehearsal)," and "forced labours" (24, 25). For Ioannidou the 19th and 20th century models of classical reinvention (Hofmannsthal, Anouilh, Giraudoux) have been eclipsed by the "rewriting" and "refiguration[s]" of Fugard, Dario Fo, Franca Rame, Andreas Staikos ("the modern Greek playwright"); and (unexpectedly) "Ireland's leading dramatist, Brian Friel" (12). Perhaps a return to the ancients by such a disparate group of authors is the aftershock of apartheid, internment, the colonels, and imbedded Mafioso corruption in their respective homelands, but as author Ionnidou notes, "the classics are central to their literary historical past" (12 n17).

Three of the sixteen essays in Staging of Classical Drama Around 2000 provide disquieting black and white photographs (e.g., tableaux in psychiatric ward, a prisoner-of-war camp, a murky tavern) of recent classical productions. These include Divadlo U Stolu's (Theater at the Table),King Oedipus (Fig. 13-1,2,3); Valmet Theater's, Electra, (Fig 14,1-5); Oedipus Tyrannus at the Slovak National Theater,(15-1); and Divadlo's, Trojan Women(Fig. 15-2). All of the photographs are representative of the prevailing experimental logic of the Prague conference call to mind the lean auteur productions of Joe Chaikin, Richard Schechner, Julian Beck and Judith Malina (to name a few).

The 16th and capstone essay in this collection, "The Open University Reception of Classical texts: Research Project Data Base," by Prof. Lorne Harwick, expounds on the "integration" of scholarly databases with the standards and practices of worldwide electronic technologies. As Prof. Hardwick notes, this "integration" is central to the credibility and sustainability of reception studies: "The data base and other material had to be prepared to the standards required by the Arts and Humanities Data Service in the UK in order to ensure its continued public availability after the completion of the work of the project" (213). The premium of this essay is Hardwick's announcement of the launching of an electronic journal of reception studies: "Because international use of the data base and critical essays has been so extensive, the website has been expanded to include a refereed electronic journal for new researchers New Voices in Classical Reception Research and a section for publication by practitioners is also being developed (214)." Staging of Classical Drama Around 2000 is devoted to the posterity of reception studies. In her contribution to this collection Hardwick talks of "cultural historians fifty years hence" and of cultural memory being "irretrievably lost (213)." These are essential observations from the de facto leader of a very accomplished classical think tank; and, setting aside the presentation problems in this book, Staging of Classical Drama Around 2000 is a remarkable document.

Contributors:

Pavlína Sípová and Alena Sarkissian: Preface

Lorna Hardwick: Introduction

Eleutheria Ioannidou: Tragedy, Metatheatre and the Question of Representation

Paul Monaghan: Greek Tragedy in Australia: 1984-2005

Linnea Stara: Performing the Raging Other. Medea and the Refugee Woman in Finland, 1999

Akiko Tomatsuri: The Use of Silence in Tadashi Suzuki'sElectra

Conor Hanratty: What Ninagawa Did Next: Notes on Productions Following the End of Medea in 1999

Hesham M. Hassan: The Influences of Ancient Greek Drama on Modern Egyptian Theatre

Dikmen Gürün: Sophocles Interpretations in Turkish Theatre

Gregory Ioannides: Different Answers to the same questions: Staging Orestia in Greek on the Turn of a Century

Angeliki Zachou: The Use of music in Greek Performances of Ancient Drama in the 20th Century

Andreja Inkret: Protagonist and Protagonistes: Doubling in Modern and Ancient Theatre

Daniela Cadková: Contemporary Czech Adaptations of Classical Drama

David Drozd: The Detritus of Antigone by Roman Sikora

Paval Klein: Antiquity, or Symbolism? King Oedipus in Symbolic Attire

Alena Sarkissian: Translating Greek Drama: Three Czech Electras

Dása Ciripová: Staging of Classical Drama around 2000: Ancient Greek Drama on Slovak Theatre Stages

Lorna Hardwick: The Open University Reception of Classical Texts Research Project Data Base (read complete article)

Il libro di Waldemar Heckel sulle conquiste di Alessandro Magno si inserisce nella collana di studi Key conflicts of classical antiquity di taglio divulgativo edita dalla Cambridge University Press e finalizzata a chiarire cause e dinamiche dei principali conflitti dell'antichità. Se le tante cartine relative alle battaglie, le tre appendici (sui principali personaggi che affiancarono Alessandro nel corso della sua impresa, sulle truppe che parteciparono alle tappe della spedizione, sull'amministrazione dell'impero), il glossario finale, la bibliografia essenziale, le schede disposte lungo il volume, il linguaggio assai semplice seguono un taglio mediamente divulgativo, la precisione con la quale lo studioso, autore di tanti studi su Alessandro e recentemente di una pregevole prosopografia che integra e in taluni casi corregge quella del Berve,¹ si sofferma sulle tappe della spedizione e su alcuni problemi oggetto di dibattito fanno di questo volume uno strumento che consente, anche ai non addetti ai lavori, non solo di formarsi un'idea generale su Alessandro e la sua spedizione, ma anche di capire attraverso quali strumenti, strategici e ideologici, il re macedone realizzò la sua straordinaria spedizione asiatica.

Lo studio si articola in nove capitoli, il primo dei quali fa da introduzione, seguiti, come detto, da tre appendici. In essi l'A. segue le tappe dell'impresa di Alessandro dalla presa del potere nel 336 a seguito dell'assassinio del padre Filippo II, alla morte a Babilonia nel 323.

Il primo problema che, giustamente, Heckel pone in evidenza perché comune a tutte le ricerche su Alessandro riguarda la tradizione costituita da fonti tarde quali Diodoro, Curzio Rufo, Arriano, Plutarco, Trogo-Giustino.² Pur attingendo in molti casi a fonti contemporanee al re macedone (Arriano, ad esempio, nell'incipit della sua Anabasi indica gli storici Tolomeo e Aristobulo come sue fonti guida), tuttavia in molti casi esse mescolavano il dato di partenza a personali convinzioni, talora alterando il senso della notizia. In molte occasioni, rileva Heckel (pp. 11-12), risulta dunque difficile separare il vero dal falso, il dato di partenza dalla sua interpretazione tarda. Si rivela essenziale perciò nella ricostruzione delle tappe della spedizione asiatica un'adeguata analisi critica della fonte volta a verificare chi riportasse in origine la notizia, da quale ottica, filomacedone o antimacedone si ponesse, se dicesse la verità o invece la alterasse, se commettesse errori nel riportare il dato. Su queste premesse, l'A. ricostruisce le tappe principali della spedizione del Macedone, affiancando al dato militare e strategico il lato meramente ideologico ovverosia la propaganda che precedette e accompagnò la diverse fasi della strateia asiatica e che si coglie nell'impostazione di gran parte della tradizione superstite.

Evitando di proporre in questa sede i tanti problemi legati alla spedizione e alla figura di Alessandro, sulla quale esiste una bibliografia sterminata nelle diverse lingue europee,³ è il caso di soffermarsi su quelli in relazione ai quali l'analisi di Heckel assume caratteri di novità. Se l'A. chiarisce il dato militare unendo all'analisi della tradizione una serie di cartine relative alle diverse fasi delle principali battaglie sostenute da Alessandro (Granico, Isso e Gaugamela contro Dario III, lo scontro sul fiume Hydaspes contro Poro), lo studioso pone un'attenzione particolare al dato ideologico che connota l'intera spedizione del Macedone.

Se la distruzione di Tebe nel 335, presentata dalla propaganda macedone come rappresaglia contro il medismos della città che aveva invitato i Greci alla rivolta contro il tyrannos Alessandro, non poteva non avere l'artefice nel re macedone stesso (e non nei suoi alleati greci come parte della tradizione ricorda) (p. 29), i gesti simbolici che accompagnarono la spedizione soprattutto nella prima fase (dai sacrifici ad Ilio, allo scioglimento del nodo di Gordio), gli slogan della vendetta e della liberazione dei Greci d'Asia ispirati da Callistene, avevano un valore marcatamente ideologico e propagandistico (pp. 42; 54-55).⁴

Merita rilevare come anche Heckel rimarchi il valore di Dario III dipinto in parte riabilitandolo.⁵ Non il re codardo dipinto dalla tradizione greco-macedone e da molti degli studiosi moderni secondo un modello negativo che rispecchia la voce del vincitore, ma un uomo di valore capace di valutare le diverse situazioni e di fare le mosse più opportune per risolverle sia in ambito strettamente strategico che sul fronte diplomatico.⁶ Analogo valore ideologico l'A. rileva nella morte di Besso, l'omicida di Dario e l'usurpatore della regalità persiana alla quale Alessandro aspirava dopo Gaugamela. Se, per un verso, l'umiliazione del regicida e la sua brutale mutilazione punivano un crimine e presentavano Alessandro nelle vesti di successore di Dario, come giustamente Heckel rileva, per un altro, va rimarcata, a mio avviso, un adattamento alla nuova situazione del tema della vendetta da parte di Alessandro e, congiuntamente, del principale ispiratore della sua propaganda: lo storico Callistene. Se in relazione alla prima parte della spedizione lo slogan era stato orientato contro Dario III e i Persiani, ora, mutata la situazione, veniva orientato in senso filopersiano. Contraddicendo palesemente le motivazioni iniziali della spedizione, Alessandro, punendo Besso, si faceva vendicatore del suo ex nemico, contro il quale aveva condotto la spedizione di vendetta in nome dei Greci. Da vendicatore dei Greci contro Dario passava a vendicatore di Dario contro Besso. L'ex nemico era ora suo alleato e suo predecessore sul trono achemenide.⁷ Forse anche da quest'ottica si spiegano i malumori, diventati congiure, che sorsero all'interno dell'esercito macedone e che, a ragione, Heckel ritiene veritieri e non frutto di ipotetiche macchinazioni da parte di Alessandro pronto a liberarsi di scomodi avversari come Filota, Parmenione, Clito e infine Callistene (p. 90 ss.).

Il volume affronta con nuove conclusioni altre questioni da tempo oggetto di indagini. Heckel legge le nozze di Susa non come strumento di fusione ma come gesto solo simbolico atto ad agevolare il dominio macedone sui popoli stranieri. Rileva, a proposito del decreto sugli esuli, come Alessandro intendesse attraverso tale provvedimento sia porre un freno alle masse di sbandati che si aggiravano in Asia, pericolose per lo stesso dominio macedone, sia, in forma più subdola, scatenare deliberatamente la rivolta tra i Greci necessariamente contrari ad una misura che avrebbe creato disagi e problemi nelle città. Solo così avrebbe avuto un pretesto per intervenire militarmente contro le poleis e per imporre su di esse con la forza il suo personale dominio riducendo così il potere in Europa di Antipatro personaggio non più così affidabile come in passato. Vede nella stessa morte di Alessandro, che una parte della tradizione lega ad un complotto, la crescente ostilità di uomini un tempo fedeli come lo stesso Antipatro e Antigono Monophthalmos che avrebbero anche potuto attentare alla vita del loro re pur di mantenere il potere.

Quello di Heckel è uno studio pregevole che cerca di sintetizzare, operazione certo non facile, la mole di problemi sulla figura e l'azione di Alessandro. In esso il personaggio viene fuori nelle sue diverse maschere: figlio di Filippo, hegemon dei Greci, re dei Macedoni, successore di Dario sul trono persiano. Un comandante in grado, come nei discorsi prima delle battaglie del Granico, di Isso, di Gaugamela, di motivare le truppe impiegando i temi più efficaci su ciascun contingente; un fine uomo politico, memore della lezione di Aristotele anche se non fedele ad essa, pronto a circondarsi degli intellettuali capaci di presentare la sua spedizione nella luce migliore; un sovrano macedone in grado di calarsi in nuovi ruoli: da figlio di Filippo, a figlio di Ammon, da re dei Macedoni ed hegemon dei Greci a successore di Dario sul trono achemenide, consapevole che solo mutando i suoi ruoli iniziali avrebbe dato stabilità all' impero ed evitato lo scontro tra vecchi e nuovi dominatori.

Notes

1. H. Berve, Das Alexanderreich auf prosopographischer Grundlage, München 1926; W. Heckel, Who's who in the age of Alexander. Prosopography of Alexander's Empire, Oxford 2006.

2. In questo senso gli studi di W.W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, Cambridge 1948; L. Pearson, The lost histories of Alexander the Great, Philadelphia 1960 e di N.G.L. Hammond, Three historians of Alexander the Great. The so-called vulgate authors, Diodorus, Justin and Curtius, Cambridge 1983; ma anche di M.A. Levi, Introduzione ad Alessandro Magno, Milano 1977; P. Pedech, Historiens compagnons d'Alexandre, Paris 1984.

3. Solo a titolo di esempio, cfr. in francese, P. Briant, Alexandre le Grand, Paris 1974; C. Mossé, Alexandre le Grand, Paris 2001; in inglese N.G.L. Hammond, Alexander the Great, Cambridge 1980; in italiano M.A. Levi, Alessandro Magno, Milano 1977; M. Sordi (ed.), Alessandro Magno tra storia e mito, Milano 1984; in tedesco G. Wirth, Studien zur Alexandergeschichte, Darmstadt 1985. La difficoltà di controllare un patrimonio così vasto ha prima indotto alcuni studiosi a cercare di approntare delle raccolte: cfr., ad esempio, N.J. Burich, Alexander the Great. A bibliography, Kent 1970; poi, come ha fatto lo stesso Heckel: http://hum.ucalgary.ca/wheckel/bibl/alex-bibl.pdf, a creare apposite banche dati, che, pur aggiornate periodicamente, non riescono tuttavia a stare dietro a tutta la mole di pubblicazioni sul Macedone che continuamente viene edita in tutto il mondo.

4. Sull'inquadramento di questi slogan, cfr. G. Squillace, Basileis o tyrannoi. Filippo II e Alessandro Magno tra opposizione e consenso, Soveria Mannelli 2004.

5. È un tema, questo, su cui ha richiamato l'attenzione a più riprese Paul Briant specialmente nel bellissimo volume, Darius à l'ombre d'Alexandre, Paris 2003.

6. Ne è un esempio la lettera che il persiano, sconfitto ad Isso, nel 332 inviò ad Alessandro la quale, nella versione di Diodoro, conteneva , a mio avviso, le vere proposte di Dario ad Alessandro (matrimonio con una delle figlie e cessione di una parte dei territori). Il re macedone le respinse attraverso la strumentale attribuzione al nemico di una missiva dai toni tracotanti e superbi utile a giustificare il prosieguo della guerra: cfr. G. Squillace, " La voce del vinto? La lettera di Dario III ad Alessandro a Marato nel 332 a.C.. Nota a Diodoro XVII 39,1-2 ", in Mediterraneo Antico 9, 2006, pp. 365-375.

7. Cfr. Squillace, Basileis o tyrannoi, cit., pp. 60-73. (read complete article)

[Table of contents at the end of the review]

"To the liberty of oppressed peoples:" The dedication of Vlassopoulos' thesis illuminates the author's intention to initiate paradigm changes with political aims. You could speak of political historiography if it was historiography, but Vlassopoulos does not write a new history of the Mediterranean in those times which used to be characterised as an era of Greek poleis. Instead, he deconstructs old approaches and gives instructions to further researchers on how their work could be done. It is a book of announcements, in a double sense: Vlassopoulos not only begins every section by explaining what he wants to demonstrate and ends it by concluding what he wanted to show (the reader is guided perfectly through the outline of his argumentation), but he also summarizes in the very last paragraph: "I have not attempted to rewrite Greek history from a different perspective in this study; I have merely tried to show that the perspective is deeply problematic, and that an alternative perspective is both feasible and illuminating. But as the English say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating" (p. 240). Indeed. Being young, to write a book like this may be easier than being old and looking back on a long researcher's life. At least it is courageous. This book has to provoke, and the author wants to do so, even to be polemical (p. 4).

In the introduction (pp. 1-10) Vlassopoulos describes the starting point of and the motivation for his considerations: the politically powerful dichotomy between Orientalism and Eurocentrism, which is frequently traced back to the ancient opposition between Oriental despotism and Western freedom. To criticize the usual approach, the characterization of the Greek polis as the inventor of liberty and freedom, which tends to be conceptualized within the frame of the beginning, acme and fall of the Greek nation, Vlassopoulos names two principal aims: first to describe the historiographic tradition and then to develop a new approach, which includes all the alternative narratives never told, oppressed narratives and narratives of the oppressed. Following the model of Braudel's "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II," nationalist and ethnocentric views on Greek history should be overcome by an interlinked history of the wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern world.

"Part I: Defining the contexts of thinking about the polis" (pp. 11-96), consists of three chapters. The first, "An archaeology of discourses" (pp. 13-67), offers a well-informed doxography on polis historiography from Ancient Greek concepts to recent tendencies. Vlassopoulos describes the emergence of approaches focused on the autonomous polis as the result of nation-bound and imperialist thinking in the 19th century, and juxtaposes this still dominant orthodoxy with counter-tendencies since the 1980s. In the second, "The ancient discourses on the polis" (pp. 68-84), Vlassopoulos propagates Aristotle as the starting point for new approaches to Greek history, mainly his largely ignored concepts: the polis not only as a community of citizens and as the telos of good human community life, but also as a form of koinônia and as a unity of merê. From an ancient Greek point of view, the polis is to be understood not only as a specific community, but as a term for human communities in general. The third chapter, "Making use of Aristotle: concepts and models" (pp. 85-96), stresses that the Aristotelian concept of koinônia offers a model to overcome the linearity of our polis histories by looking at the plurality of levels and temporal scales involved, and that the concept of merê provides a fresh approach to people in action, determined by various roles they fulfil in polis life, instead of describing supra-personal entities. Finally, the polis should not be seen as a self-sufficient entity but as part of a 'world-system,' deeply influenced by inter-poleis relationships.

In "Part II: Rethinking the contexts. The polis as an entity: a critique" (pp. 97-141), Vlassopoulos criticises the common view of perceiving history as the succession, or juxtaposition, of entities like nations, West and East, societies, economies, or poleis. Instead, the entities' boundaries should be resolved in favour of interactive histories within wider systems of multiple scales and levels. In the chapter "East and West, Greece and the East: the polis vs. Oriental despotism" (pp. 101-122), Vlassopoulos dissolves the contrast between the two opposed entities, aiming at a Greek history as part of the wider Eastern Mediterranean one. He treats city identity, self-government, magistrates and assemblies, political deliberation, settlement of disputes, representation to authorities, arriving at the conclusion that they do not explain Greek distinctiveness, and that our teleological view of Greek history as leading to the outcome of the polis and finally democracy is misleading. In "The consumer city: ancient vs. medieval/modern" (pp. 123-141), he criticises the schematic view on the ancient consumer city, which does not take into account the variety of Greek poleis, their interconnected economies, and the co-existing levels of economic activities. This chapter contains the only orthographic mistake the present reviewer noted in this meticulously edited book, : "Konsummmentenstädte" instead of the correct spelling "Konsummentenstädte" (p. 125).

"Part III: Beyond the polis: the polis as part of a système-monde" (pp. 143-240) tries to develop possible new approaches to Greek history. Vlassopoulos stresses that research has not been done yet to realize it (p. 143), but that the first step consists of providing an analytical frame, which relies on three premises: "(a) that the polis is part of a larger system (b) that there exists a multiplicity of co-existing temporal and spatial levels within that system and (c) that the poleis should be analysed within the 'environment' created by the systems and its multiple levels" (p. 145). Vlassopoulos discusses the aspects "The polis as a unit of analysis: poleis and koinônia" (pp. 147-155), "Poleis and space" (pp. 156-189), "Poleis and polities" (pp. 190-202), and "Poleis and time" (pp. 203-220). Finally, he poses the question, if his considerations lead "Towards new master narratives of Greek history?" (pp. 221-240), and suggests looking at Herodotos and his way of telling an interconnected history of the Mediterranean, even inventing dialogues or speeches to visualize how life could have been in former times.

Vlassopoulos is right that many of the established, yet already questioned,concepts of Greek history have to be rethought and differentiated. The reflection on Eurocentric master narratives creates an awareness of interpretation frames we follow by custom or conviction. Vlassopoulos knows that deconstruction on its own would be the end of history. Floating on a sea of knowledge atoms without context, interconnection, and sense, human beings would lack identity, and this is exactly what Vlassopoulos does not take into account: Why do the Greeks matter to us? No historian can avoid this fundamental question. Yes, identity centred histories exclude possible alternative developments which would not have led to certain results. Therefore deconstructions stressing the 'oppressed' developmental routes are healthy and help to detect master narratives stemming from current identity concerns. We should not construct a European culture or a culture of the 'West' translating it to the Ancient world, but we should not neglect either that differences existed between the Near Eastern world and the world dominated by Greek-speaking people, who distinguished their way of living by referring to a specific form of settlement: the polis. If you want to show that the differences between a Greek and a Near Eastern world are constructed, you risk using a very general tertium comparationis which does not allow differentiation any more. Polemically speaking, every agglomeration of houses is either a settlement or a polis , if you adjust the level of comparison. What is more, Vlassopoulos argues ex silentio to make a point for Near Eastern citizenship (p. 106). And if we follow Vlassopoulos's request to go back to the roots and to have a close look at Greek perceptions of their world, we cannot deny that the Greeks defined their identity by opposing themselves to Persia, that they reflected systematically on political concepts, and that they provide discourses around terms like 'liberty' and 'democracy.' Does Vlassopoulos offer a good alternative to the condemned Eurocentric master narratives? His starting point: "all of history is contemporary history" (citing Croce, p. 1), equally refers to his own considerations. You wonder if Vlassopoulos's political, thus subjective approach does not lead to anachronistic views of Greek history, if it is not as problematic as the condemned Eurocentric approaches, though in another way.

To conclude.Vlassopoulos's book offers many good observations on recent or former tendencies of classical scholarship, and he comes along with intelligent suggestions of how to go on. However, he is no hero of a paradigm change, rather a good observer of changes which are in the air. To put them together in a coherent way is an admirable achievement. His picture of future research is interesting, though rooted in a land of dreaming: On the one hand, it can be problematic to combine ideals of scholarship with visions of a world as it should politically be. On the other hand, it is of course much easier to come along with suggestions of how to go on instead of proposing new historical interpretations of one's own. To cite the author: "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" (p. 240). There have been attempts to write interconnected histories of the Mediterranean, and Vlassopoulos mentions them.¹ His reproach that Eurocentric views are still dominant is partly the result of his focus on social, economic and political history while leaving cultural and religious history apart, as he states himself (p. 9; 101). Whether the interlinked history Vlassopoulos dreams of can be realized is to be doubted. First, few scholars have the language skills to write such a history. Second, we lack sources -- there are no Near Eastern Politics, as Vlassopoulos mentions (p. 102) -- and depend on narratives of the ancient Greeks; archaeology cannot answer every question. Third, although categories of analysis are problematic if perceived as monads or closed entities, we cannot totally abolish them since it would make the description of phenomena impossible. Trying to un-think the Greek polis elucidates established concepts. But the polis will live, and the search for European identity by referring to the Greeks is not necessarily bad. After unthinking the Greek polis you have to rethink it, from different perspectives and in a more conscious way. Anyone interested in Greek history will be stimulated by Vlassopoulos' book. Historiographers and theorists like Vlassopoulos should come together not to un-think, but to re-think the Greek polis.

Table of Contents

Introduction (pp. 1-10)

Part I: Defining the contexts of thinking about the polis (pp. 11-96)

1) An archaeology of discourses (pp. 13-67)

2) The ancient discourses on the polis (pp. 68-84)

3) Making use of Aristotle: concepts and models (pp. 85-96)

Part II: Rethinking the contexts. The polis as an entity: a critique (pp. 96-141)

4) East and West, Greece and the East: the polis vs. Oriental despotism (pp. 101-122)

5) The consumer city: ancient vs. medieval/modern (pp. 123-141)

Part III: Beyond the polis: the polis as part of a système-monde (pp. 143-240)

6) The polis as a unit of analysis: poleis and koinôniai (pp. 147-155)

7) Poleis and space (pp. 156-189)

8) Poleis and polities (pp. 190-202)

9) Poleis and time (pp. 203-220)

10) Towards new master narratives of Greek history? (pp. 221-240)

Notes

1. To name but few: M. L. West, The East face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Early Poetry and Myth, Oxford 1997; K. Freitag, Der Golf von Korinth. Historiographisch-topographische Untersuchungen von der Archaik bis in das 1. Jh. v. Chr., München 2000; P. Horden, N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterranean History, Oxford 2000. (read complete article)

Against the classic status of Richmond Lattimore's verse translation of the Iliad,¹ and the more recent, highly acclaimed verse translation by Robert Fagles,² one might think, with some justification, that yet another rendering of the Iliad into English verse is unwarranted. Herbert Jordan's new translation, however, merits the praise by the poet Henry Taylor emblazoned on the book's front cover: it is indeed 'a splendid achievement'. This verse rendering is the product of a mature person's desire to learn Greek (relatively late in life) in order to read Homer in the original, the culmination of a personal journey stemming from tragic circumstances (family bereavement). As such, and together with the remarkably lively and poetic nature of the translation, this work can be an inspiration to all independent late learners as well as scholars of Greek.

The book, in addition to the translation, consists of a brief preface by the translator, a short introduction by Christian Kopff, a useful map of the Aegean region, some very brief explanatory notes, a pronunciation glossary of proper names, and an index of significant similes. While Knox's outstanding introduction to the translation of Fagles will continue to provide the benchmark, Kopff's concise introduction (perhaps too concise for undergraduates wishing to garner as much as possible about the Iliad without having to look too far elsewhere) is also informative, giving the reader some historical background, brief excursuses on the plot, and some discussion of the poetics, ethics, and oral inheritance of Homeric poetry, as well as an overview of the world depicted in the Iliad. Section headings and a brief bibliography by Kopff would be helpful too, but the lack thereof perhaps reflects the book's intended readership -- possibly an educated public more than professional classicists. The explanatory notes, at eight pages in length, are slightly inadequate, but balanced by an excellent glossary that gives short explanations of the names and places mentioned in the epic. The index of significant (that is, long, as opposed to short) similes is also useful.

Jordan justifies his new translation in the preface by stating that it is the only recent version that is line-for-line, 'one line of English blank verse for each line of the original Greek', in a line format of five stressed syllables (p. ix). Given the strictures of such a meter compared to the Homeric dactylic hexameter, Jordan does not translate many words that appear in the original, such as epithets and patronyms (pp. ix-x -- compare Fagles p. xi). We are informed that this is not a literal translation, but rather one whose object 'is to capture the essence of Homer's individual lines, not to render the Greek literally' (p. ix). With this in mind, if we take, by way of example, the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Ἀγαμέμνων, we find that rather than translating this stock epithet exactly the same way every time it appears (as indeed Lattimore does), Jordan either omits Agamemnon's epithet, or translates variously as 'high king', 'high-commander', 'warrior-chief', 'chief warrior', 'chief Greek warrior', 'lord', 'supreme commander', 'far-ruling', 'the king', and even 'Atrides'. The same is for all the other stock phrases in the poem. Stock expressions such as "so he spoke" (ὥς ἔφατο) are almost entirely omitted. Whole line repetitions in the Greek appear differently in English: for example 3.455 and 19.76 are translated respectively as 'Agamemnon spoke to his enemies' and 'next Agamemnon addressed the assembly'.

Brief analysis of a portion of text, Iliad 3.1-9, will provide further insight into the nature of Jordan's translation. His version runs as follows:

After each warrior fell in behind his chief The Trojan army marched screaming like birds-- Cranes whose shrieks rise above the sky to heaven When they escape winter's wearisome storms, Flying cacophonous over Ocean's streams To where they find and slaughter Pygmy men In vicious attacks the birds launch from the air. The Greek forces marched quietly, breathing fury, Each man's heart steeled to support his comrades.

The nine lines of verse here match the nine lines of hexameter in the original. The poetic quality of the English is immediately apparent: note, for example, the antithetical juxtaposition of 'marched' with 'screaming' (line 2), emphasising the unusualness of the Trojans' military order in contrast to the silent awesomeness of the Achaeans in line 8. Note also the alliteration and rhythm of 'when' with 'winter's wearisome' in line 4. When we compare it with the Greek, however, we discover that closeness to the original is frequently sacrificed for poetic turn of phrase. A translation of 'screaming', 'shrieks', and 'cacophonous' (lines 2, 3 and 5), while vivid (more so than 'cries', 'cries', and 'shrieking' by Fagles) does not do justice to the repetition of κλαγγή in each of these places (Lattimore gives the best rendering with 'clamour', 'clamour', and 'clamorously'). Jordan here reflects more naturally the sound of cranes, while Lattimore mirrors the close correspondence between the words in the narrative and simile. Similarly, while Jordan's 'flying cacophonous over Ocean's streams' (line 5) certainly reads better than Lattimore's 'and clamorously wing their way to the streaming Ocean', the latter translator reflects more accurately the sense of the preposition ἐπί plus genitive (Fagles translates accurately and poetically with 'Flying in force, shrieking south to the Ocean gulfs'). Again, Jordan's translation 'Each man's heart steeled to support his comrades' at line 9 is eminently better to read than Lattimore's painfully literal 'Stubbornly minded each in his heart to stand by the others' (Fagles again comes out best with the graphic 'Hearts ablaze to defend each other to the death').

Jordan's Iliad is a very easy, vivid read, and I have already emphasised the intended audience and the aims of the translation. Taken on these terms, Jordan's translation is highly recommended: it is perhaps the most readable of all the verse translations of the Iliad to date. Yet it should be stated that what we read in this translation is not a true reflection of "Homer". A reader discovering the Iliad for the first time in Jordan's translation would miss much of the oral tradition that the Iliad inherently reflects. Would a reader realise that the Greek line at 24.217 'Priam drew himself up like a god and said' was actually built up of a series of stock expressions that reflect the oral poetic tradition? The Greek in this case translates literally as 'And her in turn addressed the old man Priam the godlike'. Priam does not deliberately try to appear as a god there, but rather 'godlike' (θεοειδής) is a stock epithet that fills the last four syllables of the hexameter. If a reader wants an English Iliad closer to the original, then they would be advised to use Lattimore (Fagles, like Jordan, is not fussy about the mechanics of oral poetry).

A few more points: Jordan employs a more established orthography for names than in the current trend in Classics. Achilles, Ajax, and Aeneas are much more recognisable and easy on the eye than the pedantic Akhilleus, Aias, and Aineias. Jordan also employs a system of paragraph divisions in his text that again is reader-friendly, as are the page headings for quick reference. The titles he has invented for each book are misleading and reductive in many cases ('The Thousand Ships' for book 2 is the worst example). On a much more minor point, we are not informed in the introduction or preface which edition of Homer has been followed. The absence of such information again underscores for whom the book is intended. This is a literary creation for an educated public, though a rendering that still tries to follow the line for line structure of the original. Those seeking a more literal translation should look elsewhere.³

Notes

1. R. Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, Translated with an Introduction by Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, 1951)

2. R. Fagles, Homer: The Iliad: Translated by Robert Fagles; Introduction and Notes by Bernard Knox (Penguin: New York / Harmondsworth, 1991)

3. Thanks to Nicola Dümmler for reading an earlier draft of this review. (read complete article)

The Epigraphical Museum and the Hellenic Parliament Foundation for Parliamentarism and Democracy in cooperation with the University of Athens organized an exhibition of inscriptions dealing from the activities of officials and bodies of the Athenian democratic polis. The book under review is the catalogue of this exhibition, . Along with the editors, M. Lagogianni-Georgakarakou, director of the Epigraphical Museum, and K. Buraselis, professor of Ancient History at the University of Athens, a team of collaborators from the Epigraphical Museum and the University of Athens (S. Aneziri, P. Grigoriadou, E. Zavvou, A.A. Themos, N. Birgalias, A. Ramou-Chapsiadi, Ir.-L. Choremi) made contributions to the text.

The catalogue deals with almost every aspect of the Athenian democratic state, adducing numerous inscriptions that illuminate its daily functioning. Moreover, the most important exhibited inscriptions are edited and commented upon, with excellent photographs of the stone supplied in each case. This significantly increases the usefulness of the catalogue.

The first part of the catalogue, entitled Η γέννηση της δημοκρατίας και των ψηφισμάτων (The birth of democracy and voting), provides a general introduction to the history of the Athenian polis, its institutions, society, reformers, and tyrants. As the first preserved decree of the Athenian people, the decree on the cleruchs on Salamis (Meiggs-Lewis 1988², 14, Fornara 44 B and A. Matthaiou, *HOROS 8-9, 1990-91, 10-13) is examined: a photograph, a text, a translation into Modern Greek and a concise commentary are provided.

The second part, entitled Όψεις της δομής και της λειτουργίας της διαμορφωμένης αθηναϊκής δημοκρατίας (Observations on the structure and operation of the formative Athenian democracy), deals firstly with the officials and the collective bodies of Athens from Cleisthenes until the end of the classical period. An important part of this study is devoted to the allotment machines, known as kleroteria, of which the one dated in 162/1 BC (IG II² 2864a) is illustrated. The process of election by lot of the nine archons, the boule, the juries, and minor state officials is explained in detail and changes in the procedure noted. Other chapters of the second part examine decision-making and forms of decrees, legislation, public buildings and cults, foreign policy and honorary decrees for Athenian citizens and foreigners. As integral parts of these chapters, editions and commentaries of a number of inscriptions presented at the exhibition are included. To mention just a few: Draco's law on homicide (IG I³ 104), the decrees on the priestess and the temple of Athena Nike (ibid. 35-6), the decree of Kleinias (Meggs-Lewis 1988² 46), the decree on the alliance of Athens and Leontini (ibid. 64), the "charter" of the Second Athenian Confederacy (Rhodes, Osborne 2003, 22), the decree of Themistocles (Meggs-Lewis 1988² 23), the decree on the foundation of the Athenian colony at Brea (ibid. 49).

The third part of the catalogue, entitled Οι περιπέτειες της αθηναϊκής δημοκρατίας κατά τον 5ο αι. π. Χ. (The adventures of Athenian democracy during the 5th century BC), deals with the regimes of the Four Hundred and of the Thirty Tyrants and the restoration of full democracy. Three honorific inscriptions, for Thrasyboulos from Kalydon and seven other individuals involved in the murder of Phrynichos (IG I³ 102), for Eucles, the fearless fighter for democratic restoration in 403 BC, and for his son Philocles (IG II² 145 and Hesperia 10, 1941, 266), are singled out and presented as documents contemporary to these momentous events in Athenian history.

The final part of the catalogue, Αγώνες, περιορισμοί και προσαρμοστικότητα της αθηναϊκής δημοκρατίας: απο την ανασμέτρηση με τη Μακεδονία έως και τα ρωμαϊκά χρόνια (Struggles, limitations, and adaptability of Athenian democracy: from the confrontation with Macedonia until Roman times) is devoted to the changing situation in Athens in the Hellenistic and Roman period. Among the adduced inscriptions, the most important one is the decree on the anti-Macedonian alliance of Athens with Areus of Sparta and his allies, the so-called Chremonidean psephisma (IG II² 686+687, between 268/7 and 265/4 BC).

The catalogue closes with a bibliography, an index of personal names, terms and toponyms and a concordance of ancient literary sources.

The catalogue of the exhibition Ἔδοξεν τῆι βουλῆι καὶ τῶι δήμωι. Η αθηναϊκὴ δημοκρατία μιλάει με τις επιγραφής της (The Athenian democracy speaks with its inscriptions), with its well composed and beautifully illustrated editions and commentaries of the most important public inscriptions of democratic Athens, will be continually consulted by all who have recourse to this valuable book, especially those involved in teaching Athenian history to undergraduates. (read complete article)

Greece's debt to the Ancient Near East was so profound that some scholars today prefer to view Greek culture as an offshoot of Near Eastern culture. Nonetheless it was different, based in a system of writing so altered from its Near Eastern antecedents that a kind of veil prevented scholars from seeing what went before, and how what went before shaped Greek culture. In this elegant book Jan Bremmer brings together fourteen articles that trace Eastern influence on Greece, all published before but here lightly revised and organized according to the presentation of various themes in the Bible: creation, Eve, paradise, fratricide, heavenly war, the Flood, "don't look back," seers, dining customs, the scapegoat, revelation, magic, the healing god, Attis, and the Golden Fleece.

In "Canonical and Alternative Creation Myths" Bremmer notes how creation myths in the East were told only in a ritual context, but in Greece during secular feasts at the houses of kings and aristocrats. The Babylonian story of Tiamat and Apsu, the primordial waters, turns up in the Greek tradition of Tethys, a form of "Tiamat," and Okeanos, whom Homer calls apsorhoos, as if he knew the Babylonian name Apsu. Other Greeks thought that Night, not water, might have been the first being, like the "darkness upon the face of the deep." Hesiod's account, of course, which had the most influence, combines earlier traditions of the watery, dark origins of things, but introduces Eros, a motive force not really clear in Eastern sources. Bremmer writes as if Greeks had actually read such Babylonian documents as Enuma Elish that describe the intermingling of Tiamat and Apsu, but because that cannot be true we continue to wonder how Homer and Hesiod might have received their material.

The so-called canonical Greek cosmogony ends with the race of the Titans, but there were other "orphic" cosmogonies. The Derveni papyrus teaches much about such occult views, which seem to have traced the origin of the world to a primordial unity followed by the separation of heaven and earth. Bremmer finds the source of this mytheme in Egypt, where it certainly is important, as he accepts that the gold plates found in Mediterranean graves descend from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. While Bremmer distinguishes the cosmogonic image of an initial separation from Hesiod's description of spontaneous appearance followed by sexual generation, surely Cronus' castration of Sky, who lay across Earth, suggests the same image, an original unity until Sky separated from Earth.

Aristophanes parodic bird-cosmogony, which involves a winged Night and a primordial egg without parent whence sprang the birds, must depend on Orphic models, Bremmer thinks, and eventually go back to the Egyptian so-called Hermopolitan cosmogony, in which the ibis-god Thoth laid a primordial egg. From the Aristophanic egg sprang Eros, Hesiod's personification of first motion. Aristophanes and the Orphics must be taking Eros in this role straight from Hesiod.

In "Pandora or the Creation of a Greek Eve" Bremmer notices that many local traditions claimed that the first man belonged to the hometown. As for woman, Hesiod's account was canonical. He tells the story of Pandora twice, in Works and Days and in the Theogony. She was a separate creation, a different race and a major innovation, along with fire and sacrifice, which are all bound together: Prometheus cheated Zeus with the division at Mecone; Zeus punished man by withholding fire; Prometheus stole fire; Zeus made woman, the source of all our suffering. The myth of the theft of fire is old, but Hesiod has told his own story about it. Hephaestus, the artificer, is not ordinarily a god who worked in clay, but in Works and Days he does mix clay with water to make the first woman. Pandora's other artificer, Athena, is also a god of crafts. Hesiod takes Pandora's name as meaning "gift of all the gods," but it could as well mean "gifted by all the gods," or "giver of all presents," a suitable title for the first woman.

Pandora is a thorough calamity, irresistible but lies and deception within, qualities that come from Hermes. She wears necklaces and crown, the original sex-pot, and Epimetheus stands no chance against her wiles. She opens the jar, but Hope remains within, a conundrum never explained (if Hope is in the jar, what is the good of it?). Hesiod appears to have confused different elements in concocting his tale.

Hesiod's myth was little told, although Sophocles wrote a satyr play on it and numerous vases between 470-450 BC show Pandora, perhaps inspired by the play. Occasional later authors treat the myth. Her original home may have been in Thessaly, a area of which was called "Pandora." Pandora transcended local myths of anthropogony because she was the ancestor of all women everywhere, of the female race. Ancient Near Eastern myth, by contrast, told only of the origin of the first males.

In "The Birth of Paradise" Bremmer wonders why the Septuagint uses the Persian word paradeisos for the Garden of Eden. He examines the word in the Achaemenid and post-Achaemenid eras. The word appears to be Median in origin, meaning enclosure and broadly applied to storage space, orchards, stables, vineyards, and tree farms. In the later Achaemenid period, the word narrowed in meaning and came roughly to designate a hunting park for the aristocracy. With the fall of the Achaemenids, the word referred to enclosures that were small and without animals to hunt. Probably from the usage of paradeisos in Hellenistic Egypt, where paradeisoi accompanied the king's palace, did the authors of the Septuagint in the early third century BC apply the word to the Hebrew gan Eden, "garden of Eden."

In "The First Crime: Brothers and Fratricide in the Ancient Mediterranean" Bremmer wonders why the first crime (Cain killed Abel) was fratricide. He inspects attitudes towards brothers in Greece, Rome, and Israel to note the importance of brotherly solidarity in a cutthroat pre-state world. But the very closeness of brothers could lead to exaggerated violence, of which myth preserves many examples. Cain's murder of Abel was a natural choice for the author of Genesis to characterize life after the expulsion from paradise.

There was war in Heaven. "Greek Fallen Angels: Kronos and the Titans" reviews such traditions in Greece and in the East. The Titans were thoroughly bad creatures throughout antiquity and even equated with the biblical 666, "the beast." Homer rarely mentions them, but Hesiod's account was complemented by the lost Titanomachy, perhaps by Eumelos of Corinth. We know nothing about the epic except that it told of the struggle between Zeus and the Titans. Details in Apollodorus must go back in some way to this poem. Bremmer attempts to sort out something about the lost poem, for example, that Aither came first in the generation of the gods and that there was a hundred-hander named Aigaion. Bremmer tries to recreate Hesiodic innovations based on older tradition represented by the lost Titanomachy.

Various details suggest origins of stories about the Titans. The genital-mauling sickle looks like an Anatolian scimitar. The stone that Kronos swallowed could be a Cretan fetish. The casting of lots for portions of the universe is an old motif. If a surviving fragment of the Titanomachy refers to the Flood (it is only a guess), then (stretching further) perhaps the lost Titanomachy ended with an anthropogony?

Although Bremmer has characterized the Titans as evil fellows, is this true of Okeanos, oldest of the Titans? Bremmer reviews the other Titans, whose names too often are opaque. Who is Kreios, for example? Hesiodic Iapetos looks like biblical Japheth, but it is hard to see why. Kronos alone had cult, very occasionally, and festivals named after him. We cannot explain his name either, although Bremmer fancies a Hittite origin. A Syrian festival in which masters and slaves changed places sounds like the Kronia celebrated in Ionia, so maybe there is a connection; perhaps a poem came with the imported festival. Again Bremmer imagines Homer or his sources consulting books in Eastern archives; in any event the Titanomachy no doubt depends on Eastern models.

As primordial beings the Titans were logically associated with anthropogony, although Greek myth in general shows little interest in the topic. The Orphics (whoever they were) had made the connection by the mid-fifth century BC in the story of the Titans' attack on Dionysus, from whose ruins was made man. Later, the giants took the place of the Titans in this story. In Ovid Deucalion and Pyrrha are descendants not of the Titan Prometheus or Epimetheus, but of the giants. The Hellenistic Jews knew of these traditions and recast them, for example in the Third Sibylline Oracle from the second century BC, which describes a war between the sons of Kronos and the sons of Titan. Jewish stories of the fallen angels, imprisoned in an underworld, reflect Hesiod's story and the lost Titanomachy.

Next Bremmer examines "Near Eastern and Native Traditions in Apollodorus' Account of the Flood." All agree on the Near Eastern origins of this story. Apollodorus' account depends on Hesiod, a lost Orphic cosmogony, and the lost Titanomachy, of unknown date but later than Homer (whom Bremmer places in the wrong century). Undoubtedly the division of the world by lottery, and features of the Iliadic Deception of Zeus go back to Eastern sources, but Bremmer again trips in imagining that the unknown author of the lost Typhonomachy was directly familiar with the Babylonian poems Atrahasis, Gilgamesh, and Enuma elish. And certainly the Homeric poems were not "gradually fixed in writing" (p. 105) (!), but were fixed in writing at a single time and place.

Bremmer reviews the Flood in Apollodorus. He suggests that the myth entered Greece in Locris, but was refined in Thessaly where the role of Deucalion was defined. Although Greek accounts sometimes closely reflect details in the Eastern accounts, never do they place animals on the ark, so prominent in the famous Hebrew description.

In "Don't Look Back: From the Wife of Lot to Orpheus and Eurydice" Bremmer notices how little use the Bible makes of Lot's wife's transformation into a pillar of salt because while fleeing she looked back. Commentators, too, have said little. In Greece he finds the similar motif more influential.

You must not look back when dealing with ghosts, as Odysseus is told and Assyrian rituals require. In magical ceremonies in general you must not look back, nor when saying farewell (for the same reason?). The custom is associated with separations of various kinds and of course is rooted in an aversion to behold something terrible. Bremmer sees such magical behavior as a ritualization of a natural human response, but does not turning around give the ghost power over you? Is that the same thing as repulsion at beholding the horrible?

As for the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the first attestation of "don't look back" is in Virgil's Georgics. Even the name Eurydice cannot be traced back earlier than the second century BC. We cannot identify Virgil's source, but presumably it was some Greek compendium. Bremmer sees it as a literary motif in Virgil, rather than something based in ritual (but isn't Eurydice just such a ghost that magical practice forbids one to see?).

"Balaam, Mopsus, and Melampous: Tales of Traveling Seers" reminds us that seers are important in both biblical and Greek traditions. In Israel, however, a master trained a disciple, whereas in Greece seership ran in families. Biblical seers "saw" things, while Greek seers "knew" things. Both types moved around a lot. In Greece, the families of Mopsus and Melampous were famous for seership. Mopsus was an early Argonaut, famous for his boxing. Greek seers were often warriors and died in battle, in myth and in reality (Balaam too died on the battlefield). Mopsus was expert in divination by birds and lots. He defeated Calchas in a riddle contest, who then died from shame. Mopsus is at home in Cilicia, where he gave his name to numerous places. He is named in a Phoenician/Anatolian Hieroglyph bilingual inscription, although the Anatolian Hieroglyphic version (in the so-called Luwian language) appears to reflect a form "Moxus" for the seer's name.

Homer refers to Melampous twice, as if his story were well known. A complex myth, reconstructible from many sources, tells how he understood the speech of animals and through his mantic skills won a wife for his brother Bias. He came from Pylos, then later wandered to Argos and cured the king's daughters of madness, for which he received part of the kingdom as reward. Many seers were kings, unlike their biblical counterparts, who did not go beyond king-maker. The seer as king must, however, precede Homer, because in the archaic age no seer ever became king.

In the Old Testament Deborah, although a woman, is a prophetess. There were Greek female seers too, but unlike their male counterparts they were not travelers. In the Aramaic/Israelite literature, seers were of a lower class than in Greece, and they were visionaries rather than technicians.

In the "Hebrew Lishkah and Greek lesche" Bremmer returns to the old problem of the nature and origin of the lesche. Whatever it was, it must go back to the Mycenaean period because it gave its name to a month in various isolated and archaic calendars. Meals were served at leschai. The Delphians called the Cnidian treasury a lesche because they met there to discuss serious matters, but its architecture is that of a dining hall. Evidently philosophical speculation was a feature of the lesche, where the guests sat in chairs, in the old style, and did not recline on couches. The tragedians use the word to refer to clever speech and social council. An early, perhaps original function was for adult males to meet in a common mess. Strangers stayed in the lesche overnight. Its importance declined steeply by the fifth century BC when it was replaced by the private symposium and the public assembly (but what is the relationship between the lesche and the symposium?).

Many hold lesche to be Greek in origin, but it may be the same as Semitic lishkah, evidently a room where people drink or priests eat, later associated with the temple in Jerusalem. As for the scant traditions about the telling of myths at the lesche, our information does not allow good conclusions.

In "The Scapegoat between Northern Syria, Hittites, Israelites, Greeks and Early Christians" Bremmer examines this ritual famous from Leviticus by first looking at evidence from third-millennium Ebla, where something similar took place to purify a room. A thousand years later a Ugaritic text refers to the custom, although now used to prevent a disaster. By far the most detailed early description of the scapegoat ritual is from a Hittite archive c. 1300. The animal--or a woman--is adorned then sent away to the land of the enemy in order to avert plague. The Israelites received the rite from Northern Syria, but allowed only animals to bear the weight of transgression, and attached the rite to the temple calendar.

Information from Greece is more abundant. Scapegoat or pharmakos rituals were common: a man or woman would take up the pollution of the community, either during a crisis of plague or drought, or during certain festivals. Such rites turn up often in Greek myth. They appear to have come into Greece via Ionia.

In real life human pharmakoi were chosen from the scum of society, but in myth their marginal quality could even encompass kings. Although of common origin, they were given special foods and treated as if they were important to enhance the efficacy of the ritual. Often the Greek pharmakoi went to death voluntarily. Their bodies were burned on "wild wood." They wore plants associated with a marginal social status. They were led from the heart of the city out through a special gate. They circumambulated the city, then were stoned and chased over the border. The pharmakos was rarely or never killed in reality; in myth they are often killed, as if the story clarifies the ritual's meaning. Scapegoat rituals tend to take place at the new year to banish evil influence on the new season.

What, if any, relationship does the scapegoat ritual have to the Christian doctrine of the atonement in which the sacrificed victim removes the burden of sin from the community? That teaching seems to have been Paul's formulation, but he may have heard something like it from early followers of Jesus. Faint anticipations appear in Jewish sources, but seem not to have influenced the doctrine of vicarious death. Bremmer finds a more likely culprit in Euripides, whose plays, often performed under the Ptolemies, celebrate the theme of one dying for the good of all. The argument is clever, but hard to believe; Paul appears to have been an original thinker capable of his own theologies.

The next chapter invokes Steven Spielberg's sentimental film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Heliodorus in the Temple and Paul on the Road to Damascus." Sometimes people see gods, especially in battle (for example, the Angel of Mons in the First World War). Heliodorus, sent by Antiochus IV to take the money from the Jewish temple, saw a rider all in gold charging on a horse, and so did those who accompanied him. He also saw two angels before losing consciousness. Later, Heliodorus converted to adoration of the Jewish God.

Something happened to Paul, too, on the Damascus road. He alludes to the incident twice, and Luke tells the story three times. Bremmer cites numerous literary parallels for a vision at noon, then explains Luke's description as a topos. (But what if Paul did have a vision around noon? Paul is not a figure in a literary or mythical work.) Following a strange theory of literary influence, Bremmer seeks for parallels between Luke's description of Paul's experience and passages in Euripides, especially the Bacchae.

"Persian Magoi and the Birth of the Term Magic" takes up a theme that Arthur Darby Nock famously explored in the 1930s. The name Magus first appears in Heraclitus, where it refers to practitioners of a private cult. The author of On the Sacred Disease, in the first attack on magic as we think of it, takes the Magus as a charlatan, a purifier, and begging priest. Aeschylus calls a man Magos Arabos, as if he had no idea what a magus really was. In Euripides the word means "practitioner of magic."

Of course the word is Persian in origin. One Xanthos, a historian of Lydia, appears to have referred to them and to Zoroaster. Herodotus, our first real prose source, does not take them to be charlatans, but seers who understand dreams, celestial phenomena, and are important in sacrificial rite. The philosophers, too, disagreed with the earlier poetic use of magos as term of abuse. The word appears in the Derveni papyrus, c. 420 BC, where they seem to cast spells. Perhaps the singing of these wandering Magi of verses from the Persian Avestan suggested to their critics that they were nothing but gibberish mongers.

"Anaphe, Apollo Agletes and the Origin of Asclepius" investigates scholarship surrounding Apollonius of Rhodes' description of Apollo's raising of the small island of Anaphe off the coast of Crete. Apollo appears in history to have been special on the island. Bremmer is especially interested in the origin of Apollo's epithet Agletes. W. Burkert thought that the alternative form Asgelatas was a corruption of the cult epithet of Akkadian Gula, a Mesopotamian healing goddess. Asgelatas seems to be a variant of Asklepios, but what is the origin of that name? His sons fight in the Iliad, leading a Thessalian contingent. In Thessaly, where Asklepios' cult seems to have originated, his name has the form Askalapios (which does not scan). His name has many other variations through Greece, often playing on the popular etymology from Greek aigle, "shining," but the many different forms suggest a pre-Greek name. In any event, in a nocturnal festival dedicated to Apollo Aigletes on the small island of Anaphe women and men mocked one another and may have engaged in orgiastic intercourse, practices more appropriate in festivals to Demeter (?) and Dionysus.

What is the relationship between the Attis of cult and literature? In "Attis: A Greek God in Anatolian Pessinous and Catullan Rome" Bremmer reports on a nineteenth-century scholarly tradition equating the Atys of Herodotus (killed in a boar hunt) with the Attis of myth and cult, but this association was never true in the archaic and classical periods. The earliest attestation of Attis in Greece is from the fourth century BC, when the cult appears to have appealed especially to women.

The name ates/ata turns up in Phrygian inscriptions from the sixth and fifth centuries BC, maybe meaning "father," but Bremmer dismisses (too hastily) their identity with the Attis of cult. Bremmer retells the highly complex and bizarre myth of Attis preserved in Arnobius of the third century AD, who summarizes an Athenian essayist Timotheus from the third century BC. Many very old Near Eastern elements turn up in the story. Not until the third century AD do we hear of Attis' resurrection.

Other early sources tend to leave out Attis' self-castration and the odd hermaphroditic character Agdestis, Attis' companion, apparently named after a mountain, about whom Arnobius has much to say. Bremmer takes the Galli, self-castrated followers of Attis, to be named after the river Gallos in northwestern Anatolia (not after the Mesopotamian spirits the gallu, as some think) or after a king (mythical or real) of the same name.

One can isolate features of a hypothetical original Anatolian myth, but nothing can be confirmed. Certainly there was an Anatolian festival of Attis and priests who called themselves Galli. The mourning for Attis was part of the festival. A pine tree may have been involved, promising renewal. The Galli may have castrated themselves at this festival (but hardly as examples of "those transcultural groups of men who have given up their sexuality in the service of religion" (p. 290), and hardly comparable to the North American Indian Berdaches, men who dress and behave as women. Does Bremmer understand the psychology of sacrifice?) It is never clear from Bremmer's descriptions whether the Galli removed testicles and penis together, or only the testicles and left the scrotum, or exactly what is known about the nature of the mutilation (what does "lost his manhood" mean? p. 292).

The cult of Cybele was introduced to Rome in 204 BC, but the first mention of Attis in Roman literature is in Catullus' poem 63, from the mid first century BC. Here Catullus freely combines features from the cults of Dionysus and Cybele, probably basing his poem on a Hellenistic original.

"The Myth of the Golden Fleece" examines prominent elements of this celebrated myth, especially the account in Apollodorus, in light of Near Eastern parallels and folkloristic motifs. As for the fleece, Bremmer is sympathetic to its identification with the Hittite kursha, a ritual bag made of cowhide, goatskin, or sheepskin containing fertility amulets. Other explanations attach the kursha to the Greek aegis, "goatskin," and perhaps the kursha gave rise to both the Golden Fleece and the aegis. (But as always with such explanations that attach cult implements to traditional narrative, there is plenty of room for speculation.) In the myth of Jason, the Hittite myth of the battle against the monstrous Illuyankash may explain his need to kill the dragon that guarded the fleece, because this myth may have been told at the same festival where the kursha was displayed. (But doesn't the dragon always guard a treasure in folklore?)

Why did Medea kill her brother Apsyrtus? The question prompts a very long excursus on close relationships between brother and sister not only in Greece, but in India, Persia, and Arabia. Apparently brothers and sisters like one another. So why did Medea kill Apsyrtos? To break all ties with the past and, through violating traditional brother/sister affection, to heighten the horror of her personality.

How did the stories that made up the Argonautica come from East to West? Overland across what would become the royal road from Sardis to Susa, and by sea from the North Syrian and Cilician coasts. Although Bremmer thinks that traders brought the stories, we do not ordinarily think of traders as singers of tales. Bremmer views Cyprus as playing an important role in the transmission of some stories, and sees the word kibisis, referring to the wallet that only Perseus used, as of Cypriote origin. Perhaps, but I was surprised to learn that on Cyprus the "alphabet" too might have been passed to the Greeks.

The book concludes with three appendices. One examines Genesis 1.1 in light of Persian parallels, seeking to find a model for the succinct "In the beginning…" Similar phrases are used of Ahura Mazda, but it is impossible to establish chronological priority. A second appendix about magic and religion notes that the semantic range of these words is post-medieval and modern and did not exist in the ancient world. Our own opposition depends on James George Frazer and is therefore of limited use in understanding the ancient world. In the third appendix he explores the meaning of the name Megabyxos, a friend of Cyrus the Great and enemy of the false Smerdis.

A persistent weakness of the book is Bremmer's fancy that early Greek poets were reading Ancient Near Eastern literatures and in this way influenced by them. This misconception gives a certain scholastic tone to his research, as if an old-fashioned Quellenkritik will solve the very real problems he articulates. The too-abundant notes are also an unpleasant feature, as if Bremmer were playing a parlor game when the reader wants to learn something about the ancient world. A footnote should lead the reader to a source worth exploring, or verify a point of contention. Too many of these notes, to obscure journals or even such languages as Polish, do neither. I doubt we need a footnote to prove that Gladstone was busy in December, 1872 (p. 101) or that Greek poets could be given to exaggeration (p. 176), or seven citations to verify that Codrus dressed as a woodworker when he killed himself (p. 180). Will anyone consult the thirteen citations that discuss the wording of a quotation by Clement of Alexandria (p. 236)? But Bremmer writes in a European tradition that admires such behavior, and his clear style, transparent organization of thought, deep learning, and sober judgments make this book a treasure to explore. (read complete article)