Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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Roman social history: a sourcebook assembles a diverse collection of Latin and Greek sources ranging from the well-known and easily accessible, such as Seneca's Letters and excerpts from the Digest, to the more obscure, including medical treatises of Galen and homilies of John Chrysostom, in addition to a valuable selection of inscriptions and papyri. In compiling these sources, Parkin and Pomeroy have sought to provide a comprehensive picture of Roman social life, one that incorporates the experiences of slaves, peasants, and labourers, and focuses less on the lives of the elite, who ultimately comprised a very small proportion of the total population.

The material is organized thematically around important topics for the study of the social history of the Roman empire during its first two centuries, and grouped under nine rubrics which form the chapter headings: social classes; demography; family and household; education; slavery; poverty; the economy; the legal system and courts; leisure and games. Each chapter begins with a short introduction that neatly summarizes its theme and establishes its importance for the study of Roman society, followed by an overview of the different subtopics to be addressed by individual or groups of entries. A brief explanatory note precedes each entry to provide some context and guidance. References and suggestions for further reading are listed at the conclusion of each chapter and provide students with up-to-date and relevant works predominantly in English. Supplementary materials include a map of the city of Rome and three maps of the empire that track travel times, olive and vine cultivation, trade routes and natural resources, plus a series of useful appendices on life expectancy, population figures for the early Imperial period, and Greek and Roman weights, measures, and coinage.

The volume is designed to be "the complete introductory resource" for students of Roman social history. Although many sourcebooks already exist on various aspects of Roman social history, including several useful ones in the Routledge sourcebooks series, it is the authors' expressed hope that, because of its extensive range of materials and reliable translations, the present collection "will be useful in popularising the field as a unified whole" (2) rather than remaining compartmentalized into several distinct subfields of study. I am skeptical, though, how much this volume (or any other) can contribute to achieving this goal from a curricular perspective since relatively few departments seem to have the luxury of offering introductory courses on both ancient political history and social history. It is far more common to supplement introductory Roman history offerings with upper-level courses on specialized topics such as Roman slavery or the economy, for which Parkin and Pomeroy's volume could be a very good fit even though this was not their intent. A course on the Roman economy, for example, could make substantial use of much of the content of the chapters on poverty and the legal system, in addition to the lengthy chapter on the economy itself. And for those who already teach a course specifically on Roman social history or are contemplating it, Parkin and Pomeroy have compiled a valuable resource that will serve both students and instructors well.

The greatest strength of the collection is its diversity both in the topics addressed and the sources used for illustration. The chapter on poverty, for example, covers a range of pertinent matters from alimentary schemes for the upkeep of children and the perils of urban life, to the diet and employment opportunities of the poor. The sources on these subjects similarly range widely from the familiar, such as Pliny's Panegyric and Martial's Epigrams, to the lesser known including the speeches of Dio Chrysostom and epistolary fiction of Alciphron. Parkin and Pomeroy have gathered together an impressive spectrum of texts on each major theme, blending the commonplace with the obscure to reveal the richness and vividness of the surviving evidence. The inclusion of a substantial amount of material from little-known literary authors and the corpora of inscriptions and papyri -- works that generally are not readily available in translation -- makes the collection especially useful for undergraduate students who likely would not otherwise have access to these items. The inclusion of less conventional and familiar sources, such as the jokes about book-smart students from a fifth century CE anthology or a recipe for contraceptives from the PGM, introduce readers to new and interesting texts, and increase the collection's overall value and appeal.

For the sake of consistency and reliability, all the translations are Parkin and Pomeroy's. These very readable translations nicely convey to students with little or no Latin and Greek some qualities of the original languages, for instance in the terseness and formality of legal codes and decrees, or in the "rough and ready Latin" (330) of a character in Petronius' Satyricon who is eager for upcoming gladiatorial games. The authors have also neatly captured the word play characteristic of some epigraphic texts in the funerary acrostics for a Sabine goat seller named L. Nerusius Mithres (ILS 7542) and a beloved North African wife named Urbanilla (CIL 8.152). Where it is essential for the meaning, Latin and Greek terms have been retained with an explanation conveniently placed in brackets afterwards, and a lengthy glossary of terms precedes the entries for the chapter on the family and household. The addition of a similar glossary, though one covering technical vocabulary for the entire volume, would have made it even more user-friendly.

This book makes an important contribution to the teaching of Roman social history, yet there are aspects that detract to some extent from its overall utility and benefit to students, as well as areas that, despite the volume's comprehensiveness, are either absent or merited further attention. It is hoped that if the opportunity should arise to issue a revised edition, some of the present considerations might be addressed in an effort to increase the volume's pedagogical worth even more so.

Though few people read a sourcebook cover to cover, in doing so to complete this review I was struck by the lack of uniformity in the explanatory notes that precede entries. Some are prefaced by a fairly thorough introduction that includes the date of the text (if it can be ascertained), the context in which it was written (if known), interesting or important points to note or be wary of, useful cross-references and comparanda, and one or two essential items of bibliography. Yet other entries contain only some of these elements and others none. This inconsistency is frustrating and poses potential problems for students when utilizing sources for their own research, especially the absence of dates and information about the type of work from which a particular entry was excerpted. Although Parkin and Pomeroy aim to illustrate predominant themes in the study of Roman social life, surely there were changes over time in behaviour and attitudes about which students should be aware in part by being attentive to the date and context of authors' views.

These concerns regarding dating and context could easily be remedied by providing either the date at composition (if known) or a date related to the entry's content, and by ensuring that each entry is preceded by a brief comment on its genre, reliability, or other notable features. One or two bibliographic items could routinely be included for each entry or students could simply be directed to the list of references at the end of each chapter. My preference, however, would be toward the former and largely to follow the model of another Routledge sourcebook -- Matthew Dillon and Lynda Garland's immensely useful Ancient Rome--¹ in which the majority of entries cite a short list of the most important bibliography on the topic. This has proven extremely helpful for students who can be overwhelmed by the scholarship available on a particular topic and uncertain where to begin. Dillon and Garland's volume also contains a chapter of short biographies for the ancient sources in the collection which I have found useful in helping students appreciate the importance of considering date, context, and genre when assessing the information in a textual excerpt. An outline of ancient sources such as this would also be of benefit since Parkin and Pomeroy make excellent use of some late material, drawing especially on patristic authors such as Cyprian and John Chrysostom, whose works are surely unfamiliar to the majority of Classics and Ancient History undergraduate students.

While most of the entries are moderate in length, in the chapters on the family and household and slavery the excerpts from legal sources, particularly the Digest, tend to be quite long and sometimes span several pages. Such lengthy excerpts seem excessive and unlikely to be read in full and processed by students. They also lend the study of these aspects of social history the appearance of being primarily legalistic in nature and thereby overshadow other approaches and elements of appeal. In the chapter on the family and household, for example, there are few glimpses of the joys of family life we find described in the Letters of Cicero and Fronto or the challenges of raising teenagers outlined by Apuleius in his Apologia, and only minimal record of the immense importance of slaves in the rearing of freeborn children and overall maintenance of domestic life. Similarly, in the chapter on slavery, the voices of the jurists' dominate and slaves are scarcely heard despite the numerous inscriptions by slaves that survive and the literary works of former slaves such as Phaedrus and Epictetus that offer invaluable insights regarding social relations.

A few additional areas received limited attention yet are important when seeking to present as comprehensive a picture of Roman social life as possible. Patronage and the role of collegia are both touched upon briefly but would seem to merit further discussion which would enhance the existing information in the chapters on social classes and the economy. Surprisingly, the final chapter on leisure and games includes no mention of gambling, prostitution, or the theatre, and religion barely makes an appearance in the volume despite its importance in nearly all aspects of social life.

Yet notwithstanding these minor criticisms, Parkin and Pomeroy's sourcebook is an extremely useful collection for the study of Roman social history, particularly for its diversity of topics and wide range of literary, epigraphic, and papyrological source materials. It will be a valuable resource for students, instructors, and anyone interested in accessing the 'other side' of Rome's history and evidence for the day-to-day experiences of the majority of Romans in the early empire.

1.   Dillon, M. and L. Garland. Ancient Rome: from the early Republic to the assassination of Julius Caesar. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.

This book is the result of an attempt to read the Odyssey simultaneously as a literary artifact and a political instrument. Its author, Jim Marks, tries to show that Zeus, in the hands of the singer, is the character responsible for giving narrative unity to the poem and establishing a Panhellenic version of the story to the detriment of "epichoric" (local) traditions. That kind of approach, though innovative and stimulating, is questionable, as I will try to demonstrate, because it downplays aspects of the poem that are central to its understanding.

The book is divided in two parts. In the first one (chapters 1-3), the author discusses Zeus's role in the structure of the Odyssey, paying attention to what he calls the "three major narrative choices" (p. 7) in Odysseus's story: (1) the return through the "enchanted" world (and not through the "real world"); (2) the triumph over the suitors by means of deception (and not as the leader of an invading force); and (3) the killing of the suitors resulting in a solution provided by a deus ex machina (excluding a political closure). Marks argues that these choices define the Panhellenic Odyssey against other competing narratives and give coherence to the version we have of the story.

In Chapter 1, "Oresteia and Odyssey", Marks argues that Zeus's narrative of events concerning Aigisthos, Agamemnon and Orestes in Book 1 announces the direction that the poem will take. Viewing the god's opening speech as a polemical casting of the tale, not only with theological or moral implications, but above all with narrative ones, he proposes that the very distinctiveness contained in this speech "raises the specter of other versions" (p. 18). Marks deals very attentively with character equivalencies (Agamemnon/Odysseus, Klytaimnestre/Penelope, Orestes/Telemachos, Aigisthos/suitors) and calls attention to the fact that the Homeric approach to the story omits the theme of the cycle of vengeance that the avenger brings upon himself, as we see in Aeschylos's trilogy Oresteia. He concludes that the Odyssey shows traces of the process of negotiation with a larger tradition -- in which we could find for instance an unfaithful Penelope and the god Hermes as her seducer -- and that this process contributes to deepen characterization and establish a unitarian narrative course in contrast with non-Homeric contexts.

In Chapter 2, "Ogygie to Ithake", Marks shows how in the divine council that opens Book 5 and resumes the first one in Book 1 Athene's plan of promoting Odysseus's nostos is now presented as a plan of Zeus, who thus takes control of the narrative; at the same time (Marks notes) Poseidon, the hero's antagonist, unintentionally contributes to the fulfillment of that plan by keeping his hostility. Both gods then operate in a subordinate and limited way, under the broad perspective of Zeus: Athene did not work with the possibility of a shipwreck during the return of her protégé and Poseidon did not expect that this shipwreck would take Odysseus to the people responsible for his safe homecoming. Marks also explains that the almost total absence of Zeus (and other gods alike) from the Apologoi (Books 8-12) is a consequence of Odysseus's limitations as a (mortal) narrator, and claims that the fact that his adventures did not take place in the "real" world insulated them from conflicting epichoric traditions. Despite that, the author examines three variant readings at Odyssey 13.158, and suggests that one of them, by which the Phaiakes' city should not be covered by a mountain, is representative of a possible narrative "switch" that regulated, during each performance, the interface between Homeric and epichoric versions.

In Chapter 3, "The end(s) of the Odyssey", Marks demonstrates that Book 24 is perfectly integrated to the rest of the poem, because Zeus's over-reaching noos resolves the narrative in a way that is consistent with the preceding themes. Marks views the figure of Zeus in the epilogue of the Odyssey as the one charged with the role of establishing a boundary against non-Homeric traditions, specifically those in which the suitors' families seek vengeance and drive Odysseus into exile.

In the second part of the book, Chapter 4, "After the Odyssey", deals with epichoric and "real world" narrative options for the resolution of the conflict with the suitors. These alternatives lead to themes like Odysseus's exile, children he begot other than Telemachos and the hero's death; although the Odyssey rejects theses approaches, Marks claims that they are preserved, for the sake of pleasing local audiences, in "false" -- from the perspective within the poem -- tales (such as the Cretan ones) and allusions to discarded possibilities (such as Teiresias's ambiguous account of Odysseus's death in Book 11). In Chapter 5, "Nestor's Nostoi", Marks argues that in the nostos-narrative in Book 3 Nestor operates like a selective singer, conceiving the Trojan War in terms of performable sections, and that his deployment of divine characters (e.g. subordinating Athene's motivation to Zeus's) is thematically equivalent to the one in the main narrative. Finally, in Chapter 6, "Divine Plan and Narrative Plan", Marks proposes that Zeus was the "natural figure with which to identify an over-arching [narrative] plan" in the poem; in other words, this god provided the arrangement of events requested by oral composition-in-performance, for he embodies a "skeleton for the poem's overall thematic coherence and unity" (p. 136). At the same time, Marks argues that, since Zeus as a god was "less central" to rituals and myths of individual communities, he was a natural choice for Panhellenic authority.

It can be seen, even from this brief outline, that the second section of the book is built as a conceptual justification for the reading of the Odyssey that informs the first part, where all those ideas (the existence of parallel versions and the elaboration of the narrative through the character of Zeus) were already being dealt with. The author's movement towards clarity is perceptible, as if he were accompanying the readers through the construction of his method. As a matter of fact, clarity of exposition is one of the great qualities of this work: not only does the "Introduction" offer a neat presentation of the main purposes of the book and a summary of each chapter; Marks also gives helpful conclusions for every section, resuming his initial considerations and systematizing his results.

The first part, however, seemed to me more interesting, because Marks explores persistent problems concerning the interpretation of the poem. He proves to be an attentive reader, and the answers he advances for the role of the Oresteia-paradigm, the relations between Zeus and Athene/Poseidon, the repetition of lines, and the suppression of the vendetta theme, which links the epilogue of the Odyssey to its prologue (where there is no mention of the persecution of Orestes), are some of the precious contributions he makes to the study of Homeric poetry, in a style that is both simple and sharp.

The unitarian approach is a sensible one and Marks lucidly focuses on the coherence of the Odyssey. What I personally find problematic is his interpretation of the process, namely that Zeus is deployed as a narrative "tool" in order to elaborate this unity and, through the choices he is credited with in the narrative, to "de-authorize" and marginalize other traditions. It is clear to the Homerist that Marks is in debt to Gregory Nagy's hypothesis that the Homeric and Hesiodic poems represent the "mainstream" of Greek poetry, competing with other local versions of the same stories. In his chapter on "Hesiod and the Poetics of Panhellenism" (Greek Mythology and Poetics, 1990, pp. 36-82), Nagy viewed the contrast between true and false words that the Muses claim to enunciate in the Theogony (vv. 26-28) in terms of competition between Panhellenic and epichoric traditions. Marks extends this approach to the Odyssey, and does it by exploring precisely the figure of Zeus as the key factor for this Panhellenic movement and applying it to an overall interpretation of the poem.

This approach, however fascinating, is not without significant difficulties, and regrettably Marks seems less aware of them than he should be. First of all, we know hardly anything of the relations between the Homeric poems and the rest of the epic poetry that was produced in Archaic Greece. It is true that the same myth could be elaborated with much freedom, both in the context of the same genre and from genre to genre, as lyric fragments and dramatic poetry show us unequivocally. All these versions coexisted, and it is also true that the most powerful and complex ones tended to overshadow the feeblest, and consequently acquire an "authoritative" status. That is the furthest we can go. The plausible conclusion we can draw is that there was a rich exchange between these traditions and possibly innumerable connections. A clear picture of the political use of those stories is out of our reach.

In the specific case of the Odyssey and its relation with the myths concerning Odysseus, his return and his revenge, we face a nebulous situation. In the "Introduction" Marks acknowledges "the incomplete nature of the evidence for Homeric multiforms and for non-Homeric traditions", but still he hopes "to demonstrate that the available evidence is sufficient to support the case that many of the Odyssey's narrative choices are informed at least in part by the need to engage with competing myths" (pp. 5-6). Such "available evidence" is rather cursorily presented in the book as "relatively late sources" (p. 11) or accounts that "post-date the Odyssey" (p. 89). For all his efforts, Marks cannot give the promised evidence to his reader and has to admit, eventually, that "such interpretations are naturally incapable of proof due to the dearth of ancient Greek testimony" (p.132). At this stage the reader wonders to what extent the proposed reading is arbitrary.

Moreover, Marks's attempt to explain the structural role played by Zeus (and his plan, boule) in terms of the function of oral tradition, as if he were the personification and instrument of the control the singer had over his composition-in-performance, faces one serious limitation, in that it reduces the development of the narrative to the action of a single character. We cannot deny that Zeus, as the supreme god, plays a fundamental role in Homeric poetry, to the point that he may sometimes be assimilated to fate itself, but the interactions between gods (Zeus included) and heroes are complex, with human decisions forcing the gods to act this or that way. It seems to me that it is more reasonable to think of Zeus not simply (or mainly) as a decisive literary or poetic device, but as a character among others, affecting them and being affected by them, and to ascribe his preeminence to religious and moral causes, to which, however, Marks assigns a "subordinate" role (p. 21). Zeus's absence from the most part of the Apologoi can be explained in plausible narrative terms (the limitation of human perspective), but one should perhaps go beyond that and wonder about Odysseus's relationship with the god, who refuses his sacrifice offerings in Book 9 (vv. 551-555). Can this lack of divine interference (or favor) be explained on moral grounds -- a god's dissatisfaction with a hubristic hero?

Finally, if Marks is right in minimizing the differences between the Iliad and the Odyssey, stating in his "Preface" that the two poems "can be seen as more closely akin on a structural level than is generally appreciated" (p. vi), should that lead us to a search for a Panhellenic instrumental Zeus in Achilles' story and, consequently, for alluded epichoric traditions in the Iliadic narrative? And how should we explain, for instance, the role of Zeus in Book 2, where he deceives Agamemnon and where that same deception, with the trial of the troops, opens the possibility of an abandonment of the siege not allowed by fate (v. 155)?

As a conclusion, it must be said that, on the one hand, Marks's work offers many penetrating readings of the Odyssey and contributes to call our attention to the structural unity of the poem; but, on the other, that his approach seems to be less telling when overwhelmed by a theory that is problematic and lacks enough evidence to support it.

No fewer than three commentaries on Hekabe were published between 1991 and 2005.¹ This new edition and commentary may thus seem a late arrival at the feast, but in fact Matthiessen has been engaged with the play for more than forty years. Upon the appearance of Studien zur Textüberlieferung der Hekabe des Euripides (Heidelberg, 1974) Matthiessen's research on the play's manuscript tradition entered the bloodstream, so to speak, of Euripidean studies and has been circulating there ever since; notably, Diggle's Oxford Classical Text of the play (1984) draws on Matthiessen's collations. Furthermore, Matthiessen summarized his interpretation of the play in Die Tragödien des Euripides (Munich, 2002). Euripideans will therefore encounter in this volume a mixture of the familiar and the fresh.

Matthiessen's Hekabe inaugurates a series of translated and annotated editions of Greek tragedy, published by de Gruyter under the editorial oversight of Jens Holzhausen and Bernd Seidensticker and evidently conceived as a German counterpart to the Aris and Phillips series of bilingual (Greek/ English or Latin/ English) texts. The double-paged layout is designed to eliminate paging back and forth between text and notes. On the left side appears a line-by-line prose translation reflecting the Greek as closely as possible. Beneath the translation is printed as much Greek text as the facing commentary will accommodate, and beneath the Greek text appears a selective apparatus criticus written in German that also offers linguistic and grammatical pointers for students reading the play in Greek. On the right side is a more wide-ranging commentary intended to be accessible to readers without Greek. Ancillary matter includes a translation of the play's two hypotheses, a list of textual divergences from Diggle, and a selective bibliography. Regrettably, there are no metrical schemes and no indices.

The double-paged format has the advantage of providing a great deal of information and instruction at a glance. The drawback is that the text is broken up into distractingly small segments; moreover, the distinction between the left and right commentaries is not consistently observed. At 783, for example, Euripides uses a causal genitive, and the right commentary lists five additional Euripidean examples of this construction-- examples that will hardly interest the notional audience. The format entails the risk that general readers may feel overwhelmed by the amount of detail bearing on the Greek text, even as scholars feel shortchanged.

Matthiessen's 45-page introduction covers Euripides' biography and the play's mythical background, structure and production, while also paying careful attention to interpretative issues. The account of Euripides' career reaches the traditional conclusion (p. 3) that the poet's relatively few victories (as compared to Sophocles') testify to Athenian reservations about his work. One could object that an alternate interpretation is possible: that the three finalists chosen by the eponymous archon to compete at the City Dionysia had already survived a rigorous selection process, and that to be guaranteed funding, production, and exposure for one's plays was an accomplishment more significant than winning first prize.

The introduction gives particular attention to the vexed question of the play's unity. Hekabe notoriously contains two distinct actions, and Matthiessen notes its episodic nature according to Aristotle's criteria (p. 12), even as he acknowledges that the fourth-century, prescriptive Poetics is not the ideal guide to fifth-century tragedy. Matthiessen regards the play as unified both by the corpse of Polydoros, which provides a tangible transition from the first part to the second) and by the figure of Hekabe herself (p. 41). He sees the two actions as unevenly weighted (p. 13), with Hekabe's vengeance on Polymestor occupying more lines and affecting the spectators more powerfully than the sacrifice of Polyxene; the ancient spectators, in his view, would not have been disturbed by the young woman's death but would have accepted human sacrifice as a given of the myth. This interpretation does not give sufficient attention to the doubts cast on Polyxene's sacrifice within the play. It is not the case, as Matthiessen claims (p. 16), that Hekabe alone objects to her daughter's fate; when the chorus leader summarizes the debate in the Greek assembly, it becomes clear that sentiments for and against the sacrifice were "about equal" (ἴσαι πως, 131) until Odysseus intervened to sway the crowd. The anachronistic references to fifth-century procedures that cluster around the sacrifice of Polyxene--the allusion at 287-88, for example, to the possibility of reconsidering a decision previously voted by the assembly--would surely have encouraged the spectators to regard the sacrifice from the perspective of their own time. Polyxene's death would thus have been more disturbing to the ancient spectators than Matthiessen acknowledges--a conclusion he should in fact welcome as contributing to the overarching tragic effect (which he emphasizes, p. 41) of the play.

I have no quarrel with Matthiessen's interpretation of the Polymestor-action. As he observes (p. 20), the king of Thrace is presented from the outset as a consummate villain, and his small sons are not sufficiently characterized (by being allowed to speak for themselves or by having other characters comment on their youthful innocence, two pathos-inducing techniques exploited by Euripides in Medea) for the audience to experience their deaths as wrenching. I also find much to applaud in Matthiessen's account of the main character. Reacting against critical assessments of Hekabe as a monster of vengeance whose prophesied transformation at the end of the play into "a dog with burning eyes" (1265) symbolizes her loss of humanity, Matthiessen stresses her consistency from beginning to end of the play: the same energy that leads her to argue strenuously with Odysseus on Polyxene's behalf (251-95) and to express the wish that Helen could share her daughter's fate (441-43) manifests itself in her vengeance on Polymestor. Matthiessen does not regard Hekabe's shift from suffering to vengeful action as anomalous, for he can point to other Euripidean female protagonists who undergo the same transformation: Medea, Alkmene, Phaidra (p. 23). He emphasizes what an accomplishment it is for Hekabe to gain Agamemnon's even partial cooperation in her scheme of vengeance, suggests that her revenge would have struck contemporary spectators as problematic only insofar as she is a woman and a slave, and interprets her death as both victory and liberation. If there is anything lacking in his account of the central character, it is that he underplays the psychic cost of her suffering and loss as revealed at the end of the play. "Too long a sacrifice/ will make a stone of the heart," says Yeats in "Easter 1916;" few characters in ancient literature illustrate this outcome as powerfully as Euripides' Hekabe.

As a textual critic Matthiessen is steadfastly conservative; repeatedly he rejects emendations or re-orderings championed by Diggle. At 824, does Hekabe worry that it will be "useless" (κενόν, as per the manuscripts) or "irrelevant" (ξένον, Nauck's emendation, adopted by Diggle)? for her to mention Agamemnon's sexual relationship with Kassandra? Matthiessen opts for the former, noting that the emendation does not improve the sense. At 1162 the Trojan women who have warmly welcomed Polymestor abruptly seize and immobilize him; do they act in the manner "of enemies" (πολεμίων, as per the manuscripts) or "of octopuses" (πολυπόδων, Verrall's emendation, adopted by Diggle)? Again Matthiessen opts for the manuscript reading, citing Euripidean parallels to justify his choice. He retains the traditional ordering of the lines at 415-20 and defends the general reflections at 599-602 and 831-32--all excellent decisions in my view (it's to be expected that I would think so, since they coincide with the choices I made in my own edition). Sometimes to be sure, he defends the indefensible (that is, he opts for readings I rejected): the awkward double comparison involving ὁποῖα and ὅπως at 398, for example, or (at 974-75) Hekabe's self-contradictory explanation of why she cannot look Polymestor in the eye. At other times Matthiessen seems excessively laissez-faire, as when he assumes despite striking metrical parallels that there is no responsion between Hecuba's monody (154-74) and Polyxene's (197-210). Matthiessen's textual choices are carefully considered, however, and he usually (though not invariably) explains his reasoning. His Hekabe is less tidy and stylish than Diggle's, but it may well be closer to what Euripides wrote.

Matthiessen's learning and experience are in evidence throughout. On easy terms with the entire classical tradition, he cites Scaliger from 1561 as readily as Hose from 2008.² His approach is refreshingly relaxed; rather than belabor every detail he is content to let some problems remain unresolved, as when he comments (in connection with the chorus' puzzling description of reflections in a mirror at 925) that he "prefer[s] to let the expression stand, in all its mysteriousness." He has a preference for straightforwardness that extends even to punctuation; at 875, for example, he decides against the dashes that would mark τηάρσει as parenthetical. Common sense and suspicion of what he deems over-subtlety is a hallmark of his method. In the introduction he evinces skepticism that some of the secondary themes detected by critics (Schlesier³ on Dionysiac elements, for example, or Kovacs and Gregory⁴ on the role of the winds) are relevant or significant. In the commentary itself he warns (on 1017 ff. and 1267 f.) against attempts to see inside characters' minds or reconstruct their histories. He expresses doubt (e.g. on 1003f.) that the spectators would have been capable of recalling prior allusions or putting together the verbal patterns detected by ingenious critics--but surely this is to underestimate the sensitivity to language of the fifth-century spectators, denizens of a culture that was still primarily oral. Matthiessen's consistent and laudable aim is to reconstruct the perspective of the contemporary spectator, but as happens to many a critic, that reconstructed perspective coincides with the critic's own insights and limitations.

This is not the major edition of the play Euripideans have been waiting for; that, according to Matthiessen (p. 45), is still to come. In the meantime this commentary will ensure that Hekabe continues to receive the attention it deserves.

1.   C. Collard, Hecuba (Warminster, 1991); J. Gregory, Hecuba (Atlanta, 1999); K. Synodinou, Hekabe (Athens, 2005).
2.   J. C. Scaliger, Poetices Libri Septem (Lyon, 1561); M. Hose, Euripides, Der Dichter der Leidenschaften (Munich, 2008).
3.   R. Schlesier, "Die Bakchen des Hades," Metis 3 (1988) 111-35.
4.   D. Kovacs, Euripidea Altera (Leiden, 1996) 63-64; J. Gregory, Hecuba (Atlanta, 1999) xxix-xxxi.

Gender, communication, Euripides, song and silence: the title of Chong-Gossard's book has the virtue of highlighting precisely the key terms and concepts of his work. In a largely successful endeavour, Chong-Gossard attempts to show what it is that -- in the case of Euripides -- characters communicate by singing or by being silent, and how Euripidean men and women differ in this respect. The book is the eventual product of Chong-Gossard's 1999 dissertation, written in Michigan under the auspices of Ruth Scodel. A few of the better sections have appeared elsewhere in article-form,¹ which is not to say that the remaining material is merely inferior padding (it isn't). Though most obviously valuable as a contribution to the fast-growing field of study into gender-specific language in Greek tragedy, the work's real achievement is that it invites a reconsideration of what actors' song expresses in Euripides (on silences, readers will find less that is 'new').

The book falls roughly into two parts (song and silence) of two chapters each, preceded by an introduction, and followed by a single briefer chapter and a conclusion. The introduction (1-24) offers, apart from a cursory status quaestionis,² a methodological framework for the rest of the book. Here, Chong-Gossard makes much of the term 'space', going so far as to say that "the basis of [the book's] inquiry is a definition of space as communication" (21): the idea is that whenever people talk to each other they create a 'space' that connects them, which can be 'gendered' if one sex is excluded from the conversation (e.g. when a woman confides a secret to a female chorus). Disproportionate emphasis is placed on this concept, however: it becomes useful as a way of looking at tragic conversation really only in the last chapter, and Chong-Gossard is occupied for much of the book with communication between men and women, rather than the gender-exclusive conversations which he stresses initially.

The introduction, then, is oddly irrelevant for chapters 2 ('Song as Knowledge: Recognition Duets', 25-63) and 3 ('Why Am I Singing? Resistance and Other Semantics of Lyric', 65-112); yet it is here that the true meat of the book is found. Chong-Gossard's core argument is that the way in which female song has traditionally been interpreted by scholars (as a highly emotional form of expression) is insufficient. He proposes that we move "beyond standard analyses that equate female lyric with exaggerated emotion," (3) and instead focus on "what lyric accomplishes, or what purpose it serves in the dramatic situations" (35). The questions that we should ask, according to Chong-Gossard, are "what does a Euripidean woman communicate when she sings?", and "how do Euripidean men's songs differ in what they communicate and when they occur?" (111). This is a worthy project, and Chong-Gossard does an admirable job of answering his own questions.

Chapter 2 is concerned with the epirrhematic 'recognition duets' of IT, Hel., Ion, Hyps., and Soph. El.. In the case of the Euripidean plays, Chong-Gossard convincingly argues that the traditional view contrasting an irrational, emotional female (singing lyrics) with a rational, restrained male (speaking trimeters) is defective: rather, according to Chong-Gossard, lyric should be seen as a mode of expression which allows women to communicate private knowledge about their past physical experiences (rape, abduction, etc.) to men in a persuasive fashion. In the case of Hel.,³ for example, Helen's lyrics explain her private history to Menelaus, who needs to be convinced of her chastity before their eventual mutual rescue can be accomplished; similarly, Creusa must share with Ion the story of her rape in order to convince him of his divine parentage (Chong-Gossard has good remarks on p. 69 on the differences between Creusa's two lyrical narrations of the rape).

In the third chapter, Chong-Gossard adds three further 'semantics' of female lyric: 'resistance' (e.g. Electra's monody and amoibaion with the chorus in Eur. El., Hypsipyle's exchange with the chorus of Hyps.), 'transition' (Hecuba at Hec. 683-723 and Hermione at Andr. 825-65), and 'interrogation' (e.g. Hecuba at Tro. 235-92, Antigone in the teichoscopia at Pho. 88-201). 'Transition' seems to me hardly to qualify as a 'semantic' (Chong-Gossard is perhaps making too much of the fact that Hecuba and Hermione sing at moments of transition in the plays), but Chong-Gossard otherwise consistently provides useful insights into what women's song 'does' in these various plays. He ends with a section on male lyrics, arguing that men's song expresses a "crisis or condition that is potentially 'demasculinizing' for them" (112), such as excessive grief (exemplified by Amphitryon in HF, Theseus in Hipp.).

All in all, these two chapters offer a useful lens through which to look at male and female actors' lyric in Euripides, though I am not instantly convinced by Chong-Gossard's claim that all lyrical passages not discussed in the book could "easily be fit into the new paradigm suggested" (111). Choral lyric, as announced in Chong-Gossard's introduction (22-3), is also left entirely undiscussed, and it is a shame that Chong-Gossard gives no indication if he sees any similarities between the lyric voices of actors and choruses. But these are the gripes of a reviewer who trusts that this author would have very useful things to say on those points as well.

The next two chapters (ch. 3, 'Silence I: Gendered Categories', 113-154; ch. 4, 'Silence II: Solidarity and Complicity', 155-203) deal with a phenomenon which has received much attention in the past few years, and Chong-Gossard rightly mentions that much of what he says overlaps with the recent work on silence of (among others) Montiglio and Stockert.⁴ Chong-Gossard deals, broadly speaking, with three categories of 'silence': first, the actual non-speaking kind, of characters whose first words come more than a hundred lines after their first appearance (sometimes called 'Aeschylean silence'). Though Aeschylus' Cassandra is the obvious prototype, the Euripidean examples are all male: Adrastus in Supp., Orestes in his name-play, and Menoeceus in Pho.. Chong-Gossard points out that unlike 'silent' Euripidean women, these male characters are not deliberately withholding personal secrets or vital information; instead, Chong-Gossard argues, they are silent only "until Euripides has provided the proper 'moment'" for them to utter important speeches (117). This is no doubt true, but should not obscure the dramatic significance of these silences: Adrastus is temporarily mute because it underlines his status as grieving suppliant, Orestes because it marks his troubled sleep, Cassandra's silence expresses her noble resistance to Clytemnestra (Chong-Gossard is not unaware of these aspects, but gives them little weight). The second type of silence (as marked by the Greek terms σιγή, σιγάω, σιωπή, σιωπάω) is not characterized by lack of speech, but by the deliberate refusal to give up a certain piece of information: Chong-Gossard here gives thoughtful readings of Phaedra and Creusa, and the social constraints which compel them to keep their dark and personal secrets concealed. Such torturous secrets of women are then contrasted with the ruses of men, who on occasion wish to keep knowledge hidden until a politically appropriate time (e.g. Xuthus in Ion, Agamemnon in IT). Chong-Gossard's third kind of silence (covered in chapter 4) is that of female choruses (in Med., Hipp., IT., Hel., Ion, and IA) who keep secrets for others (or, in the case of the chorus in Ion, let the cat out of the bag), and that of two virgins (Hippolytus and Theonoe) who take an oath not to reveal a secret. As for the female choruses, Chong-Gossard shows that female solidarity is the all-powerful factor driving the behaviour of fellow captives, neighbours, etc., an impulse stronger than the social control of 'good gossip' which women might be expected to exert on each other. Chong-Gossard's discussion of Hippolytus and Theonoe, which rounds off the chapter, includes interesting observations on the different implications of male and female virginity.

The final chapter ('Women Out of Place', 205-40) deals with Euripidean women who intrude upon a 'male space', where they are not expected to speak. Some of these women (notably 'Macaria' in Heracl. and Aethra in Supp.) explicitly apologize for speaking: Chong-Gossard neatly analyzes these apologies as both necessary pro forma pleas for the forbearance of men, and rhetorical devices providing their words with legitimacy. The situation is entirely different in the case of Evadne in Supp. and Clytemnestra and Iphigenia in IA: the awkwardness of these women's presence in a male environment is, according to Chong-Gossard, deliberately thematized by Euripides. In the case of Evadne, Chong-Gossard details how her extraneousness leads to all kinds of confusion on the part of her father Iphis; in the case of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra, Chong-Gossard discusses the constant renegotiation of female propriety which these women have to do in the Greek camp.

It is worth mentioning a few general merits of Chong-Gossard's book. First, more than other works on gender-specific language in tragedy I have seen, Chong-Gossard is consistently attuned to differences between the three tragedians in their treatment of women and gendered speech. That women in Euripides are portrayed differently than their Aeschylean and Sophoclean counterparts is well-established, but Chong-Gossard offers many nuanced observations on how these distinctions affect the language of Euripides' characters (e.g. at 54-7, 104-5, 107, 114 n.4, 153, 201-2). Chong-Gossard is also careful not to treat the entire Euripidean oeuvre as a monolith, but makes allowances for developments in Euripides' career and other differences between his plays (e.g. at 110, 142, 180). Secondly, Chong-Gossard pays ample attention to fragmentary plays: Hypsipyle in particular receives a full treatment (51-4, 96-8), but there are also discussions of Antiope (105-6), Cretans (148-9) and other lost plays. Finally, Chong-Gossard devotes a good amount of space to discussions of Euripidean men (scholars working on language conditioned by gender sometimes seem to forget that there are two).

I have some complaints as well, apart from such unavoidable differences over the interpretation of individual scenes and plays as any reader will have (I find myself in the minority, for example, which thinks that the Euripidean Electra -- treated very harshly by Chong-Gossard -- should be given a bit of a break by scholars; see Cropp's commentary (Warminster, 1988) for some needed nuance). Many of the problems can be summed up by a general feeling that the book is an erstwhile dissertation which still needed one more 'pass' of revision and tightening. I have already mentioned above that the introduction does not seem entirely integrated with the rest of the book. Chong-Gossard can also be frustratingly repetitive, literally copying whole sentences three or four times, and his liberal quotations of other scholars are not always to the point. Finally, Chong-Gossard can take his claims too far (at least for this reviewer): we read too often that certain things "cannot be communicated in mere trimeters", and there are several places where song is said to 'mean' more than I think it can (for example at 103, where Chong-Gossard claims that Antigone's lyric in Pho. "is indicative ... of her youthful incapacity to recognize the approaching forces for the disaster they are."

The book has also not been produced without imperfections: a number of mistakes have escaped the prying eyes of proofreaders, and there is an annoying inconsistency in the printing of transliterated and/or untransliterated Greek.⁵

In spite of these misgivings, the book should become required reading for anyone working on gender-specific communication in Greek tragedy. It is to be hoped that it will find a wider readership as well, especially those interested in what it means for an actor to sing in Euripides. The unqualified equation of lyric with emotion, for all its popularity and digestibility, is restrictive and ignores a whole range of communicative functions performed by actors' song. For those looking to gain a fuller understanding of those functions, Chong-Gossard has provided a good place to start.

1.   'Song and the Solitary Self: Euripidean women who resist comfort', Phoenix 57 (2003) 209-231; 'The Silence of the Virgins: comparing Euripides' Hippolytus and Theonoe', Antichthon 38 (2004) 10-30; 'Female Song and Female Knowledge in the Recognition Duets of Euripides', Greek Drama III: Essays in Honour of Kevin Lee (London, 2006) 27-48.
2.   In Chong-Gossard's survey of literature on gender-specific language, I missed the important contribution of A. Willi, The Languages of Aristophanes (Oxford, 2003) ch. 6 (also absent from the bibliography).
3.   Chong-Gossard does not always engage convincingly (for my taste) with linguistic and textual issues. He includes a sizeable footnote on the problems of Hel. 625-97 (43 n. 29), but fails to mention that the choices an editor makes here have real consequences for his argument. (Incidentally, the autobiographical nature of female lyric identified by Chong-Gossard should, in my view, settle the attribution of Hel. 638-40 (clearly Helen's), and if we indeed let go of the traditional division between the emotional female and the rational male, editors (and Chong-Gossard!) should think twice before taking Hel. 654-5 from Menelaus, or IT 832-3 from Orestes.) I do not see what is relevant about the textual issues mentioned at 44, 198 n. 33 and 199 n. 35.
4.   S. Montiglio, Silence in the Land of Logos (Princeton, 2000); W. Stockert, 'Zum Schweigen in den Tragödien des Euripides', in A. Timonen et al. (eds.), The Language of Silence, vol. 2 (Vammala, 2004) 35-47.
5.   The translation "Why did you mean by that?" on p. 100 surely cannot be right, and also on p. 162 something seems to have gone wrong in the translation. On p. 151, read "Creusa" for "Cresua"; on p. 162, "those same experiences make" for "those same experience makes"; on p. 163, delete the comma after "women of Corinth sang" and read "seriously limited" for "serious limited"; on p. 183 n. 10, read "section" for "chapter"; on p. 213 "Evadne" for "Evande"; on p. 245 n. 2, "Schlegels" for "Schelgels". I also suspect that Chong-Gossard meant Hermione when he names "Andromache" on p. 111. Longer Greek quotations are printed in Greek alphabet, while Greek cited in the body text and footnotes is usually transliterated (why?), but there are deviations at 17 n. 24, 18, 20, 110, 115 n. 6, 155, 165 n. 4, 225, 229 n.32, and probably at other places I have missed.

Grabowski approaches the Platonic theory of the Forms as an epistemological problem where he rejects the Forms as abstract universals and instead tentatively concludes that they are perfect particulars. For Grabowski, the Forms are a combination of the universals and particulars. However, as the author admits, Plato never explicitly states whether the Forms are universals or particulars, thereby making Grabowski's central argument inconclusive. Nonetheless, Grabowski's book is valuable to consult because it runs contrary to the conventional scholarship on the Platonic Forms as does his treatment of Plato's theory of the Forms as an epistemological rather than metaphysical problem.

The book has an introduction, conclusion, and three main chapters. Chapter one reviews and criticizes the standard interpretation of Plato's theory of the Forms as metaphysical abstract universals. Chapter two sheds light on the intellectual background of Plato's epistemological considerations by looking at his predecessors, specifically Homer, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, all from whom the author claims Plato derived many of his ideas. Chapter three makes the argument that the Forms are perfect particulars and connects Plato's epistemology and metaphysics. The book concludes that Plato's epistemology is one of acquaintance with the Forms known through direct contact rather than some discursive process. As perfect particulars, the Forms therefore become a provisional solution to the epistemological problem that Plato had confronted.

Grabowski examines how the Forms are known rather than how they exist. Citing the Cratylus and Phaedo as well as passages from Aristotle's Metaphysics, Grabowski contends that Plato's metaphysical theory was developed as a result of his concern about knowledge, specifically how someone could know anything in a world that continually undergoes change. Plato believed that knowledge was possible, thereby committing himself to the existence of eternal and unchanging entities. From this epistemological premise, Plato arrived at the metaphysical conclusion that the Forms must exist. But are these Forms abstract universals as the standard interpretation claims?

For Grabowski, the answer is no, as demonstrated in the inconsistency of how the Forms are referred to in the Platonic dialogues as both collective and individual entities, as states both of being and of becoming, and as both universals and sensible particulars. The Forms are described as παραδείγματα in the Euthyphro (6e6), Republic (472c4, 501s2-b7), and Timaeus (28a6-b2). Instead of being collective and abstract, the Forms for Grabowski are individual different objects that have a sensible nature. They are concrete standards, like the platinum-iridium bar housed at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures is the concrete standard of one meter, as opposed to the abstract criterion of the path of light travelled in a vacuum during a certain time interval. As παραδείγματα, the Forms therefore are not abstract universals, which can exist at several places at once; rather, they are sensible particulars that exist only singularly and independently of each other.

This new understanding of the Forms stems from approaching Plato's theory from an epistemological rather than metaphysical view. The problem that Plato confronted was that, on the one hand, knowledge is akin to sense perception, while, on the other hand, knowledge is also permanent in its truth, like mathematics and logic. Grabowski's contention that the Forms are concrete exemplars or perfect particulars solves this problem: the Forms are known perceptually because they are concrete, but they also are unchanging and therefore true. The assumption that Grabowski makes is that Plato subscribed to an epistemology of acquaintance: knowledge overall is perceptual in nature, whether through personal experience, divine inspiration, or telepathic cognition. But is this assumption correct?

Although Grabowski presents a series of pre-Platonic thinkers who subscribe to this acquaintance mode of knowledge, the connection between these thinkers' epistemology and Plato's is not evident. It is possible, and most probable, that pre-Platonic thinkers influenced Plato's epistemology, but the author fails to make that connection explicit in chapters two and three. It is also strange that the author substantially skips over the Parmenides, especially when trying to establish the relationship between pre-Platonic thinkers and Plato. The failure to make this connection does not eliminate the acquaintance mode of knowledge for Plato; however, the gap seems to raise more questions than answers about Plato's epistemology.

Grabowski is on firmer ground when the analysis turns to the Platonic dialogues themselves. The evidence cited for an acquaintance mode of knowledge is Plato's frequent use of direct-objection constructions with verbs of knowing and the recurrent metaphor of the senses as the way one acquires knowledge. Scrutinizing the terms γιγνώσκειν, εἰδέναι, and ἐπίσταστηαι in the Theaetetus, Meno, Republic and other dialogues, Grabowski argues that propositional knowledge did not appeal to Plato, thereby leaving him with the choice that knowledge is derived from words alone (which is rejected) or by direct experience (the acquaintance mode of knowledge). Grabowski continues his philological analysis with a look at δύναμις in the Phaedrus and Republic as the power or faculty to bring knowledge or knowing into a person's mind. But this faculty of the mind for Grabowski is not just a metaphorical way of speaking about knowledge; it is literally an organ or power that directly touches the Forms for knowledge.

This part of Grabowski's argument seems to me for the most part correct, for Plato speaks of reason not only in its discursive aspect but also in its intuitive nature. This is Grabowski's point: the organ of the mind comes in direct contact with the Forms by intuition rather than by discursive (abstract) thought. However, if Grabowski is correct and knowledge is obtained by acquaintance, then how do humans acquire mathematical and logical truths? We know mathematical proofs, for instance, are true, but do we understand them through acquaintance or through some other method, such as abstract reasoning? If it is the latter, then what is the relationship between the mode of acquaintance and the mode of abstraction in Plato's epistemology? Although Grabowski does an excellent analysis on the acquaintance mode of knowledge, the study leaves one asking about the place of other modes of knowledge, specifically about mathematics and logic, in Plato's epistemology.

In spite of these questions, Grabowski's Forms are definitely not abstract universals, for then they could not be seen or touched; rather the Forms are a combination of eternal and sensible truth. They are paradigmatic: the Forms are perfect, like mathematical truths, but also sensible, allowing us to access them directly. Because we know sensible things through personal acquaintance, and because we know the Forms through a similar process with δύναμις, the "mind's eye," the objects of these similar methods are ontologically akin and therefore concrete. The result seems to be that Plato's Forms are not abstract and universal but concrete and particular.

Grabowski's study thus places the study of Plato's Forms in the context of epistemology instead of metaphysics and rejects the standard interpretation of the Platonic Forms. The study is not entirely persuasive, as the author admits, for Plato himself does not make any conclusive statement about the Forms. Nonetheless, Grabowski makes a strong case for the consideration, or rather re-consideration, of Plato's theory of the Forms with a potent combination of philological analysis and cogent argument that runs counter to conventional scholarship. His claim that Plato's Forms are perfect particulars should prompt us to raise more questions about Plato's theory of the Forms and explore where these questions lead.

Il libro di Martínez Fernández (d'ora in poi M.) consiste in una raccolta di iscrizioni metriche cretesi: sono tutti testi di età ellenistica, compresi fra la morte di Alessandro Magno (323 a.C.) e la dissoluzione del regno dei Tolemei (31 a.C.).¹ Di ogni epigrafe viene fornito un dettagliato ragguaglio sulle circostanze del rinvenimento e sullo stato attuale di conservazione, il testo, un esteso apparato critico, la traduzione, un commento filologico e linguistico, la bibliografia, mentre le numerose immagini sono accluse nelle tavole in fondo al volume. Si tratta nella quasi totalità dei casi di iscrizioni già note da precedenti pubblicazioni,² ma le ricerche autoptiche condotte da M. e la accurata valutazione e discussione delle interpretazioni precedenti rendono questo volume strumento indispensabile per successive ricerche relativamente a ciascuna delle iscrizioni in oggetto.³

Dopo i ringraziamenti ed una prefazione di K. Kritsas, nell'introduzione (25-50) M. documenta la tradizione filologica all'interno della quale il suo contributo si inserisce, a cominciare dalla prima raccolta di epigrammi a noi pervenuta, l'Antologia Palatina. Una minuziosa rassegna dei progressi compiuti dalla scienza epigrafica rivela l'assenza, ad oggi, di un corpus omogeneo e unitario che raccolga le iscrizioni metriche conosciute nell'ambito della lingua greca. Una seconda parte dell'introduzione è dedicata ai progressi della esplorazione epigrafica cretese, a cominciare dai viaggiatori veneziani del XVI secolo, Francesco Barozzi e Onorio Belli, fino ai moderni lavori accademici, in parte notevole pure dovuti a studiosi italiani, fra cui -- oltre alla già menzionata Guarducci -- F. Halbherr, G. De Sanctis e D. Levi.

Per quanto riguarda la delimitazione cronologica della materia, delle circa 100 iscrizioni metriche cretesi, solo due sono anteriori al III secolo a.C.,⁴ mentre 36 in tutto sono giudicate appartenere all'età imperiale e pertanto escluse, benché indubbiamente abbiano una certa rilevanza anche per il materiale qui raccolto.⁵ Restano pertanto 64 iscrizioni metriche giudicate di età ellenistica, ma solo 55 di esse sono considerati veri e propri epigrammi e vengono riprodotti e analizzati nel catalogo del volume. Le altre iscrizioni metriche comprendono 7 lamine di contenuto orfico, un amuleto e un inno a Zeus Ditteo.⁶

Seguono alcune osservazioni generali in merito alla lingua e alla metrica delle iscrizioni. Per quanto riguarda l'aspetto linguistico troviamo la combinazione di tre diverse matrici: la lingua dorica propria del luogo, la koiné propria dell'età ellenistica e la lingua epica propria del metro dattilico. Per quanto riguarda la metrica, due soli epigrammi risultano infine composti in giambi, mentre tutti gli altri sono svolti appunto in metri dattilici, a volte però con irregolarità nella alternanza di esametro e pentametro.

Gli epigrammi sono disposti nel catalogo secondo un ordine geografico: innanzitutto gli epigrammi della parte centrale dell'isola (Arcades [1-3], Cnosso [4-5], Gortina [6-8], Lasea [9], Lato [10-19], Lebena [20], Malla [21], Olunte [22], Festo [23], Rauco [24], Tilisso [25-26]), poi quelli della parte occidentale (Asso [27-29], Cantano [30], Caudo [31], Lisso [32-33], Pecilasion [34], Polirrenia [35-39]), infine quelli della parte orientale (Ierapitna [40-41], Itano [42-51]). Al termine del catalogo figura un epigramma di provenienza cretese indefinita [52]; nel caso di un epigramma di Cnosso [53] e di uno di Litto [54], incerti per quanto riguarda la datazione, e di un testo di Piloro [55], di non sicura natura metrica, si tratta in ogni caso di frustuli assai miseri.

Per quanto riguarda il contenuto, il genere sepolcrale è quello largamente più rappresentato: un sottogruppo è costituito dai funera acerba, che a loro volta possono essere suddivisi tra quelli di giovani maschi adolescenti e quelli di fanciulle defunte in età da marito.

Agli epigrammi per i fanciulli ascriviamo il nr. 18, posto da entrambi i genitori per un bambino di sette anni, Aristono. Sedici anni aveva Leon, figlio di Leodamante, pianto nel nr. 48. Il giovane ricordato nel nr. 29 non aveva ancora compiuto 20 anni. L'epigramma nr. 19 A viene posto pubblicamente dalla città per il ventunenne Ierone, morto in circostanze imprecisate, a consolazione della madre. Il nr. 43 è un lunghissimo epigramma (30 vv.) per il giovane cacciatore Exakon, morto all'età di 22 anni. Nel caso del giovane Adrasto (nr. 35, cfr. 36), la madre lamenta il mancato compimento delle nozze. Nel nr. 40 il lamento riguarda il giovane Panson, morto di malattia prima di poter rilevare la casa paterna. Il nr. 44 commemora tre giovani fratelli, Damon, Pheidon e Ammonios.

Fra gli epigrammi per le giovani donne il nr. 28 commemora Radó, morta all'età di 15 anni, lasciando insoddisfatto il desiderio del padre di vederla sposa. L'interesse del nr. 8 è principalmente costituito dalla forma dialogica: dalla conversazione fra i due viandanti e la tomba apprendiamo che la defunta, originaria di Tauchira in Cirenaica, pur essendo stata sposata ad un tal Quinto era morta senza figli in età di 20 anni. Il nr. 19 B è un epigramma posto in memoria di Amphia, morta all'età di 21 anni, dal padre Eraclida e dai fratelli. Il nr. 3 è un componimento di cinque esametri posto dal padre Quinto alla figlia Demetria morta all'età di 22 anni. Il nr. 16 rinnova il tema di una morte femminile prematura, ma in questo caso la donna aveva già avuto due figli. Anche Teodota, compianta nel testo nr. 30, lascia in vita il marito e i figli. Della fanciulla Tiro, posta accanto al padre Sosameno dalla madre Pisis (nr. 38), ignoriamo l'età del trapasso. Un carattere particolare ha il nr. 50, in cui è una donna di nome Semiramis e non il marito Phidon a porre l'epigramma per la defunta, di nome Pisó, che ha lasciato in vita il figlio decenne Sonautas.

Ancora nell'ambito degli epigrammi sepolcrali un altro sottogruppo è costituito dal ricordo di uomini caduti in battaglia. Il nr. 4, in distici elegiaci, è in memoria di Trasimaco, morto combattendo valorosamente a cavallo, in un episodio che, sebbene non sia possibile identificare con assoluta certezza, è stato ricondotto dalla Guarducci all'ultima campagna condotta da Filopemene in Messenia. Al nr. 15 all'interpretazione di Peek seguita da M. preferisco quella del Van Effenterre, che ha identificato il valoroso defunto in battaglia con un Polytimos figlio di Cletonymos ben noto da un'altra iscrizione.⁷ Nel nr. 37 Theagenidas vanta di aver mantenuto inviolato l'onore degli antenati guerrieri, sopportando in prima persona fatiche e pericoli di guerra pari a quelli di un eroe. Dell'epigramma nr. 41 sfortunatamente manca la traduzione di M.: sembra farsi riferimento ad una azione militare condotta con l'ausilio di cani da caccia; l'epigramma è preceduto da una lista, verosimilmente degli uomini che hanno preso parte alla spedizione, capeggiata da un tal Onasandro. Azioni di caccia sembrano associate ad azioni di guerra anche nel nr. 42, per il giovane Demetrio figlio di Ammonio, morto circa ventenne e seppellito a spese pubbliche, e nel nr. 45, per Leon figlio di Thennas: in questo epigramma al verso 1 suggerirei l'integrazione ἐν ἀλκαῖς ('nelle battaglie') oppure meglio ἐν ἄγραις ('nelle cacce') piuttosto che ἐν ἀστοῖς proposto dalla Guarducci ('fra i cittadini').

Altri uomini adulti sono pure commemorati per meriti civici o di altro genere: il nr. 17 riguarda un Cletonymos (cfr. 16) che viene paragonato, per la saggezza politica dimostrata in vita, alle figure dei sapienti Cleobulo di Lindo e Periandro di Corinto. Il nr. 24 ricorda il flautista Hyperphanes. Nel nr. 34 mi sembra che l'espressione τέρμα βιóτου (lin. 4) unita al participio ἡνιοχῶν della riga 6 evochi il contesto di una corsa di carri, che potrebbe avere costituito l'occasione accidentale della morte di Trophimos. Nel nr. 52 i genitori piangono Demetrio, che come medico tanti aveva salvato dalla morte.

Altri epigrammi hanno invece carattere votivo: fra questi i nrr. 6-7 sono accomunati dalla identità del dedicante, Pyroos: il personaggio è verosimilmente un uomo d'armi al servizio dei Tolemei d'Egitto, il quale nel primo caso dedica agli dèi Sarapide ed Iside armi di sua invenzione,⁸ nel secondo offre alle medesime divinità egiziane una preghiera ed un ringraziamento in occasione di una fallita offensiva militare da parte di Antioco. Il nr. 11 è una dedica posta ad Afrodite da un collegio di magistrati presieduto da un tale Aution, noto anche da altre iscrizioni. Il nr. 20 è invece un ringraziamento rivolto al dio Asclepio da parte di Soarco, il quale è stato guidato in visione alla riscoperta di sorgenti sacre, già rivelate al padre di lui, Soso, e poi essiccate. Anche il nr. 33 attesta che un figlio è succeduto al padre nella devozione al dio Asclepio: la dedica di un sacello e di un altare per i sacrifici è accompagnata qui da alcune prescrizioni rituali. Il nr. 21 è un ex-voto posto al dio Apollo da Neocle per essere tornato felicemente dalla Libia. Il nr. 22 è l'offerta di un sacello, pure ad Apollo, accompagnata dal sacrificio di 22 buoi.

Un carattere squisitamente sacro ha l'iscrizione nr. 23, in esametri, una sorta di aretalogia della Magna Mater venerata a Festo, la quale per mezzo di oracoli profetizza agli uomini pii la benedizione di una discendenza.

Per concludere: si tratta di un lavoro di grande interesse sia per il filologo, che trova qui raccolto un numero consistente di epigrammi appartenenti ad un ambito geografico e cronologico circoscritto, sia per l'epigrafista, che vede documentati in questo libro tutti gli elementi di carattere archeologico, antiquario e squisitamente epigrafico relativi ai documenti in oggetto.⁹

1.   La recensione di questo libro, prevalentemente composto di epigrammi funerari, è stata accompagnata dalle drammatiche notizie relative al terremoto che ha sepolto la città de L'Aquila, alle cui vittime va il nostro pensiero.
2.   L'unico testo inedito, a quanto mi risulta, è il frustulo nr. 39.
3.   Oltre ad una bibliografia generale, il volume è fornito alle pp. 341-345 di concordanze, le quali permettono di valutarne la rispondenza con precedenti lavori di epigrafia cretese, fra i quali in primis ovviamente le Inscriptiones Creticae di Margherita Guarducci, voll. I-IV, Roma 1935-1950). Fra le precedenti raccolte di epigrammi tramandati in forma epigrafica i lavori di W. Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, Berlin 1955, di L. Moretti, Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae, III, Roma 1979, e di R. Merkelbach-J. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten I-V, München-Leipzig 1987-2004, costituiscono i modelli più rilevanti.
4.   Queste ricevono una succinta trattazione preliminare a p. 38.
5.   I dettagli su tali iscrizioni vengono forniti alla p. 45 s.
6.   Queste sono trattate alle pp. 41-44.
7.   Ho difficoltà infatti a credere che l'espressione ἄριστ' αἰχμᾶι non debba essere intesa come un epiteto ('eccellente in battaglia'), bensì come un indicazione del nome proprio Aichmaios, peraltro espresso in forma abbreviata.
8.   Il tema è analogo a quello sviluppato in un epigramma di Callimaco (Anth. Pal. XIII, 7).
9.   Un piccolo inconveniente si registra nella numerazione delle tavole, dove l'ordinale romano viene adoperato tanto per indicare le pagine, quanto le singole fotografie, con una fastidiosa sovrapposizione. Nomi e parole italiani a volte risultano scorretti (p. 14: Ma[t]teo; p. 35: Marg[he]rita; p. 158: si[g]nificare; p. 247: pre[s]tigio). Al nr. 8 manca l'indicazione delle righe del testo epigrafico. A volte (ad es. nrr. 15, 17) l'apparato critico risulta ipertrofico e sarebbe stato forse conveniente sviluppare la discussione critica assieme al commento lineare. Per l'identificazione corrente del materiale sarebbe stata utile l'indicazione di un titolo per ogni iscrizione, con riferimento agli aspetti più rilevanti della stessa. Al nr. 37 (riga 11) viene tradotto un testo che non è esattamente quello stampato.

Table of Contents

Reyes Bertolín Cebrián è una studiosa spagnola; formatasi in parte in patria e in parte in Germania, attualmente lavora in Canada. Il suo libro è costruito attorno alla proposta di un modello di sviluppo dell'epica eroica greca a partire dal lamento funebre. Dopo una introduzione che presenta le linee-guida, il volume è diviso in due parti. Nella prima parte viene presentata e discussa la teoria che è al centro del libro, attraverso un inquadramento del genere-epica, posto a confronto con altri generi letterari contemporanei. Nella seconda parte la prospettiva si allarga ad esaminare il ruolo dell'epica nel contesto sociale e culturale in cui questa si sviluppò. Vediamo ora brevemente un dettaglio dei capitoli che costituiscono il libro.

Il primo capitolo ('In the Beginnig Was the Rite'), uno dei più densi del libro, si apre con una riflessione sull'associazione tra letteratura e eventi sociali nelle epoche antiche, e sull'importanza del prodotto letterario nell'ambito dei rituali. L'autrice passa poi subito a proporre una definizione di rituale (p. 9), presa dalla dissertazione di dottorato di Monika Vizedom del 1963.¹ Sarebbe forse stato opportuno rifarsi in maniera più ampia al dibattito scientifico (tanto per fare qualche nome: Stanley Tambiah, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, Catherine Bell), che avrebbe permesso ad esempio di prendere in considerazione l'esistenza anche un aspetto non religioso del rito. Ad ogni modo, da queste pagine emerge un punto importante attorno al quale è costruito il modello proposto, ovvero il valore "performativo" della parola e della letteratura, la sua forza "illocutoria", secondo la celebre formula introdotta da J. L. Austin. Secondo Bertolín Cebrián l'epica perde la sua forza illocutoria nel momento in cui viene separata da uno specifico rito. Acutamente l'autrice sottolinea (p. 11) che un testo che nasce in collegamento con un rito, e che dunque aveva in origine una forza illocutoria o performativa, nel momento in cui perde questa forza deve compensare con una maggiore descrittività. Questo, in nuce, è il passaggio dal testo rituale, legato alla commemorazione funebre del defunto, al testo epico, che ha perso il suo legame con il rituale funerario e deve recuperare sostanza attraverso un più ampio e più dettagliato racconto delle gesta del defunto. La commemorazione si trasforma così in racconto; alcuni di questi racconti diventano tradizionali, ed assumono status di mito, di epica. Il primo capitolo prosegue con interessanti osservazioni sul contesto rituale in cui nasce la produzione letteraria in Grecia, grazie al prodursi di una situazione eccezionale di separazione dall'ordinario che caratterizza il momento rituale. In particolare, la produzione letteraria che nasce in questo contesto è l'elegia, legata a occasioni diverse come battaglie, simposi, funerali, festival (p. 22). L'elegia, come già sottolineato da M.L. West, ha in sé un valore illocutorio, e per confermare questo assunto Bertolín Cebrián richiama una serie di esempi tratti dalla letteratura greca, in particolare la produzione di Tirteo; a questi si aggiungono però riferimenti anche da diversi contesti culturali (ma sempre indoeuropei), come la letteratura vedica degli Atharvaveda e quella germanica dei Merseburger Zaubersprüche. E di nuovo viene sottolineato il passaggio dall'elegia all'epica: la perdita dell'aspetto performativo comporta un ampliamento in lunghezza, tipico dell'epica, che non crea azione immediata: 'When there is no future action to justify the words, memory to recall the past is further necessitated' (p. 23). La separazione tra epica e contesto rituale è legata, come spiegato nell'Introduzione, alle migrazioni ioniche, che separarono la popolazione dalle tombe degli antenati: su questo punto l'autrice torna a soffermarsi nei capitoli successivi. Questa riflessione ovviamente presuppone l'originaria coesistenza dei due generi, che effettivamente oggi prevale sull'idea che il genere elegiaco sia posteriore a quello epico.

Il capitolo 2 ('From Funeral Lament to Epic') è dedicato in particolare allo sviluppo che porta dal lamento funebre all'epica: in apertura Bertolín Cebrián riespone la sua idea secondo cui l'epica sarebbe nata dall'esigenza di ricreare il lamento funebre in un contesto lontano dalle tombe degli eroi e degli antenati, il che avrebbe indotto una espansione della parte narrativa. Un punto chiave del capitolo è la definizione del concetto di 'eroe' all'interno di una logica che assegna grande importanza al momento funebre: in quest'ottica, l'eroe sarebbe 'a person to whom the praise or blame is addressed' (p. 34).² La collocazione della figura dell'eroe in questa ottica è indicata, secondo l'autrice, dall'aspetto che distingue il dio dall'eroe, ovvero che quest'ultimo muore. È a partire dall'undicesimo secolo che si sarebbe avuta la separazione tra antenato reale ed eroe mitico, e di conseguenza la distinzione tra il lamento per l'antenato e la narrazione epica per l'eroe (p. 37). Questo processo, come già accennato, affonderebbe le sue radici nella separazione fisica che avvenne nell'ambito delle colonizzazioni ioniche: a questa separazione l'autrice riconduce anche il revival dei culti eroici che ebbe luogo in Grecia nel corso dell'ottavo secolo, presumibilmente per ragioni politiche. Il capitolo, che è il più lungo del libro, prosegue con una analisi dei generi letterari del lamento funebre, ed in particolare del threnos e del suo legame con l'elegia, di cui è di solito considerato un sottogenere. Uno dei punti centrali di questa analisi è il rapporto tra il threnos ed il goos, visti tradizionalmente il primo come espressione di lamento 'professionale' ed il secondo come lamento 'libero' espresso dai parenti del defunto (p. 50). Bertolín Cebrián propone in queste pagine che l'elegia fosse il componimento poetico messo in atto in occasione dell'agon funerario, e che threnos e goos fossero le sue parti, affidate rispettivamente ai maschi ed alle femmine, con una differenziazione quindi non di professionalità ma di genere: su questo punto l'autrice torna poi nel capitolo 4. Anche in questo capitolo vengono fatti riferimenti ad altre culture, in particolare all'Irlanda medievale (dunque ancora nel solco della tradizione indoeuropea) ma anche alla cultura Zulu dell'Africa meridionale.

Nel capitolo 3 ('Laments and other Genres') l'autrice procede a mettere a confronto il genere epico, quale risulta dalle pagine precedenti, con gli altri generi letterari contemporanei, tra cui i poemi di guerra, i cataloghi, l'epinicio, e soprattutto la tragedia, ovvero l'altro genere che in passato era stato già collegato al lamento funebre (p. 80), ma che a differenza dell'epica è più legata ad idee democratiche. In questo capitolo, come anche nel precedente, Bertolín Cebrián mira a presentare il contesto storico e culturale nel quale l'epica come genere si cristallizza.

Il capitolo 4 ('Women's Funeral Lament') chiude la prima parte del volume. In queste pagine l'autrice riprende alcuni spunti già accennati nei capitoli precedenti, e mette l'accento sul legame tra lamento funebre e sfera femminile da un lato, e tra epica e sfera maschile dall'altro. Propria degli uomini sarebbe stata la celebrazione delle gesta del defunto attraverso una gestualità controllata; propria delle donne invece sarebbe stata l'espressione incontrollata del dolore: questo confronto tra threnos maschile e goos femminile sarebbe al centro dell'agon che si svolgeva per i funerali, e che per alcuni aspetti assomiglia dunque agli agoni in occasione di matrimoni e in ultima analisi alla stessa tragedia. Va detto peraltro che questa prerogativa femminile del lamento è stata recentemente messa in discussione,³ ma il dibattito si può considerare ancora aperto. Piuttosto, un punto che a mio parere andrebbe precisato riguarda proprio la gestualità del dolore. Gli studi sull'iconografia del pianto rituale (in Grecia ma non solo)⁴ hanno in realtà sottolineato che anche gli atteggiamenti che possono sembrare più scomposti e naturali hanno una loro calcolata ritualità, e sono riconducibili a definite serie e definiti gesti, schemata⁵ tali da definire una vera e propria 'grammatica del dolore'. Trovo dunque discutibile l'ipotesi espressa riguardo al celebre vaso del Dipylon con scena di prothesis, che secondo Bertolín Cebrián rappresenta l'inizio di una differenziazione tra ruoli maschile e femminile nel lamento funebre, dal momento che alcuni uomini sono raffigurati sul vaso in atteggiamento "femminile" di lamento, mentre altri sono raffigurati virilmente mentre imbracciano armi (p. 98).⁶ L'uso della documentazione visiva avrebbe potuto essere più ampio ed esauriente, e condurre ad una analisi più articolata anche su un ultimo importante aspetto affrontato in questo capitolo, ovvero il controllo sociale sui riti femminili ad Atene dopo le leggi di Solone. Le osservazioni svolte su questo punto sono interessanti, ma dovrebbero misurarsi con la circostanza per cui, nonostante le norme soloniane, le raffigurazioni di prothesis non vengono meno nell'arte ateniese del sesto e quinto secolo.⁷

La seconda parte si apre col capitolo 5 ('Epic and Sports'), che sviluppa una analisi comparata dell'epica e dei giochi sportivi in Grecia tra ottavo e sesto secolo, mostrando come entrambi i fenomeni fossero legati alla società contemporanea, ed in particolare alla contrapposizione tra aristocrazie dominanti e classi medie. In questa prospettiva viene individuato l'inizio del processo di testualizzazione e di abbandono della produzione epica. Si tratta, a dir la verità, di un capitolo che rimane piuttosto estraneo nell'ambito del libro.

Il sesto ed ultimo capitolo ('Classical Funeral Orations and the Epic') si apre con l'analisi dell'orazione funeraria ateniese di epoca classica, che secondo diversi studiosi era legata proprio al lamento funebre. Al centro dell'analisi è ovviamente l'orazione di Pericle per i caduti della guerra peloponnesiaca, riportata da Tucidide, vista come 'programmatic for the epic, since these ideas are the foundation of the heroic code of epic' (p. 130). Le orazioni funebri di età classica hanno lo stesso ruolo dell'epica: 'to transmit the values of society and to inspire younger generations to noble deeds' (p. 132). In aggiunta, esse avrebbero avuto una importante funzione di controllo sociale, come mezzo per limitare le pratiche funebri aristocratiche. In quest'ottica si colloca anche il passaggio da una società orale ad una basata sullo scritto, passaggio che in Grecia avrebbe avuto come parallelo quello dalla poesia alla prosa: 'the passive spectator of the funeral speech implies a society that is leaning towards written records more than oral ones' (p. 133). Questo passaggio viene esplicitato proprio nel discorso di Pericle, laddove si dice che gli Ateniesi non hanno bisogno di un Omero che ne canti le virtù (Thuc. 2.41.4): l'epica appartiene al passato. La nuova cultura scritta, peraltro, permette ad un più ampio pubblico di avere un suo 'momento di gloria' funerario. Inoltre, anche se il discorso funebre è legato al rituale del seppellimento, perde ora il suo valore religioso e magico, poiché è al servizio di un rito che ormai ha assunto un valore civico e secolare. Le orazioni di Lisia offrono all'autrice diversi esempi per queste riflessioni. Verso la fine del capitolo, Bertolín Cebrián ritorna sulla questione dell'eroe, sottolineando come gli Ateniesi di età classica, in virtù della loro origine autoctona, non sentissero il bisogno di una divisione tra la figura dell'eroe e quella dell'antenato, divisione legata alla visione aristocratica per cui non tutti gli uomini sono nati uguali. Anche in questo caso, dunque, la prospettiva politica assume il suo peso nell'evoluzione dei generi letterari, e questo è forse l'aspetto più convincente e più riuscito dell'approccio di Bertolín Cebrián.

Tre pagine sono poste a conclusione dell'opera, con l'obiettivo di riassumere il contenuto del libro.

Il volume è infine chiuso da una appendice ('Did the Romans Have an Oral Epic?') in cui l'autrice volge lo sguardo al contesto romano, per verificare se il modello di evoluzione proposto nel volume può essere applicato anche ad altri contesti. Va detto che questa appendice si presenta come una delle parti più deboli dell'opera, e forse sarebbe stato tutto sommato meglio ometterla, dal momento che nulla aggiunge alla validità del ragionamento. Tra le principali debolezze del capitolo, vi è una sottovalutazione della cultura orale nel mondo romano: 'we do not know if the Romans ever had an oral epic' (p. 151). Sarebbe stato utile leggere i lavori di T. P. Wiseman⁸ per avere un quadro della vitalità della tradizione orale nella Roma pre-quarto secolo. Anche l'idea che nella cultura funeraria romana 'the image takes the role of the word' (p. 156) si presta ad essere discussa, specie dal momento che l'iconografia romana del lutto attinge largamente da modelli elaborati in Grecia.⁹ Infine, sarebbe stato forse utile coinvolgere nella discussione anche un autore epico rilevante, ancorché ingombrante, come Virgilio.

Dal punto di vista editoriale, l'idea che si ricava dal libro è che sia stato realizzato con una certa fretta. Il testo purtroppo è pieno di refusi, specie nella prima metà. L'indice finale è decisamente scarno e poco utile. Vanno segnalati anche alcuni rimandi bibliografici che mancano nella bibliografia finale (M. Wilson 1957 a p. 29 nota 3; Svenbro 1988 a p. 160). Infine, la stessa bibliografia contiene diverse parole trascritte in maniera errata, soprattutto nei casi di titoli in italiano (ad es. i titoli di Pagliaro e Palmisciano), e non sempre rispetta l'ordine alfabetico (Ford precede Foley).

Il punto di forza del volume è che ha al suo centro un'idea: un'idea fresca, suggestiva, che apre interessanti prospettive di lavoro, e che è sviluppata grazie anche ad una apertura intelligente verso altre discipline come l'antropologia e la semantica, e con il ricorso accorto alla comparazione con altre letterature. Il punto debole sta nel fatto che quest'idea è argomentata non sempre in maniera chiara e consequenziale. L'intera esposizione avrebbe forse potuto essere più sintetica, più essenziale; nel testo infatti si notano diverse ripetizioni, e spesso gli argomenti sono riproposti più volte. Questo non giova alla leggibilità complessiva, e in alcune occasioni il discorso diventa poco lineare. Si aggiunga che l'appendice dedicata al mondo romano avrebbe potuto essere eliminata, senza che il valore del libro ne venisse diminuito. Rimane comunque, a mio parere, un testo che offre spunti e stimoli interessanti: coloro che si occupano di letteratura greca nei suoi aspetti sociali e culturali troveranno certamente nel libro di Bertolín Cebrián diversi utili spunti di riflessione.

1.   Sarebbe stato forse più opportuno rifarsi al volume della Vizedom (Rites and Relationships: Rites of Passage and Contemporary Anthropology, Beverly Hills, CA, 1976). La tesi risulta oltretutto citata di seconda mano da un M. Wilson 1957 che però manca in bibliografia (pag. 29 nota 3).
2.   Forse alla discussione sul concetto di eroe avrebbe giovato tenere in considerazione i lavori che ruotano attorno al Centre International d'étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, come quelli raccolti in V. Pirenne-Delforge-E. Suárez de la Torre, Héros et héroïnes dans les mythes et les cultes grecs, Actes du Colloque Vallodolid 1999, Kernos Suppl. 10, Liège 2000 (recensito in BMCR 2002.12.07).
3.   K. J. Hame, "Female control of funeral rites in Greek tragedy: Klytaimestra, Medea, and Antigone", Classical Philology 103.1, 2008, pp. 1-15.
4.   Questo aspetto era stato già individuato da Émile Durkheim (si veda al proposito l'analisi di P. Metcalf-R. Huntington, Celebrations of death, Cambridge 1991, pp. 48 sgg.) e ribadito in pagine illuminanti dall'antropologo italiano Ernesto de Martino (Morte e pianto rituale. Dal lamento funebre al pianto di Maria, Torino 1958).
5.   Si veda di recente l'analisi in M. L. Catoni, La comunicazione non verbale nella Grecia antica, Torino 2008, pp. 166 sgg.
6.   L'analisi sarebbe stata più equilibrata se si fosse tenuto conto del fondamentale lavoro di G. Ahlberg, Prothesis and ekphora in Greek Geometric Art, Göteborg 1971. Tra i lavori che sarebbero stati utili, ricordo anche: M. Pedrina, I gesti del dolore nella ceramica attica (VI-V secolo), Venezia 2001; I. Huber, Die Ikonographie der Trauer in der Griechischen Kunst, Mannheim-Mohnesee 2001; J. H. Oakley, Picturing Death in Classical Athens, Cambridge 2004; E. Brigger-A. Giovannini, "Prothésis: étude sur les rites funéraires chez les Grecs et chez les étrusques", MEFRA 116, 2004, pp. 179-248.
7.   Cfr. F. Cordano, "Morte e pianto rituale nell'Atene del VI sec. a.C.", Archeologia Classica 32, 1980, pp. 186-197; H. A. Shapiro, "The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art", American Journal of Archaeology 95, 1991, pp. 629-656.
8.   Diversi contributi interessanti sono ora raccolti in T.P. Wiseman, Unwritten Rome, Exeter 2008. Sul tema dell'orazione funebre romana è importante il breve articolo di E. Gabba, "Dionigi d'Alicarnasso sull'origine romana del discorso funebre", Studi Classici ed Orientali 46, 1998, pp. 25-27.
9.   Al riguardo rinvio al lavoro di M. Carroll, Spirits of the Dead: Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe, Oxford 2006.

In this contribution to the Blackwell Ancient Religions series, Sarah Iles Johnston explores the primary archaeological, literary, and documentary sources for ancient Greek divination. The introduction argues for the central significance of divination in Greek religion, and it summarizes relevant ancient and modern scholarship. The remaining four chapters are organized around the ancient evidence: two consider "the divine experience" at specific oracles, and two "freelance divination" professionals and their practices. Delphi, Dodona, Claros and Didyma receive special attention, and are set in the context of some other attested oracles. Johnston then explores the societal role and techniques of the mantis, largely as presented in ancient Greek literature. Finally, the last chapter focuses on the evidence of the Greek magical papyri, the links between magic and divination, and (at last) the evolution of ancient Greek religion during the later Roman empire. Each chapter concludes with a three-page bibliography of secondary scholarship; the book ends with indices of primary sources and subjects.

Johnston has made a fine exposition and analysis of a wide variety of ancient evidence, well-supported by current scholarship and her own careful interpretations. It is wonderful to read a synthetic work by a single author on a broad topic in ancient religion, rather than another volume of disparate collected essays. Yet the high cost of this slim book, its omission of Roman divination (on which more below), and its frequent deployment of technical Greek terms could hinder its use as an undergraduate textbook, or by "general readers" (p. 29). For the scholar, whom Johnston also explicitly addresses (p. 29), an enormous amount of regional and chronological variation is glossed over, while the lack of footnotes places academic debates awkwardly into the text alongside the frequent parenthetical citations. However, Johnston does contribute actively and sensitively to these debates, making this book an important contribution to the study of ancient Greek religion.

The first chapter is an expansion of the call-to-arms issued in the introduction to her co-edited conference volume on ancient divination.¹ "Divination" is defined as practices for obtaining knowledge about the unknown, especially about the future. Since these practices satisfy a universal human desire, they deserve attention as an essential element of religion. To demonstrate the ubiquity of divination, Johnston juxtaposes modern American use of tarot cards or astrology with ancient practices, and she highlights the paradox of active ancient scholarship on divination with its relative modern neglect. Her overview of ancient scholarship focuses first on Cicero's On Divination, its definitions and lost sources, and then on the Stoics and authors from Hesiod to the Second Sophistic to St. Augustine. Ancient scholars were keenly interested in defining the linkage between the human and divine world, and thus they explored how "natural" and "technical" divination worked at length. Though they were often skeptical of the efficacy of certain techniques, divination itself was always worthy of inquiry. Yet the profound interest in the rational of post-Enlightenment scholarship on Greek religion largely has left divination out of that field, while Ritualist or anthropological work focuses instead on magic. Johnston thus well-demonstrates the need for this book, then clarifies that she has replaced these ancient categories with the modern ones of "institutional oracles" and "independent diviners," following the evidence. She also, regrettably, decides to leave aside Roman divination yet draws on Roman authors. By "ancient Greek" she thus means a "culture" rather than an era, though she leaves her own ideas on the evolution of this culture to the final chapter and never really defines its scope. In such a slim book, I was disappointed at this choice, since Roman imperial archaeology, literature and papyri are used heavily, and since the list of forthcoming books in this series does not fill this gap. It would be nice to see the category of "Greco-Roman" revived for topical books such as this one, particularly when aiming for a broad audience.

The two chapters on oracles begin with a few words on why they were attached to particular places and what went on in them besides divination, before moving on to "what sort of divine encounter each of several oracles offered" (p. 36). Johnston privileges the process of connection between the human and the divine at oracular sites throughout their entire period of use, deploying texts from Homer to the church fathers along with archaeology and epigraphy. She devotes the first oracle-chapter to Delphi and Dodona, the most well-attested oracles in peninsular Greece. She emphasizes the pre-eminent authority of the Pythia and supports recent research arguing that ethylene escaped from the ground under the Temple of Apollo. Delphi is portrayed as a sort of societal safety valve, a place to engage with the divine, which offered a range of services from low-status reply-by-lot to high-status consultation of the Pythia herself. Johnston then helpfully develops the pairing of Delphi and Dodona in myth to shed light on Dodona's mix of lot-oracles and inspired prophecy, with oak, spring and cauldrons integrated into a coherent whole.

Chapter three moves to Anatolia for a detailed look at the evidence for two more enthusiastic oracles, Claros and Didyma. Shorter discussions of other types of oracles follow, first those involving incubation, most often for healing. The cults of Asclepius at Epidaurus and Pergamum, the oracle at Daunia in Italy and the oracle of Amphiaraus at Oropos are all offered as examples of divination by dreams available only at specific sites.² Similarities of myth and iconography then link in Trophonius, though sensibly what little is known about the process for consulting this hero at Lebadea is linked to a discussion of mystery cults. The undeniably chthonic cult of Trophonius also leads Johnston to emphasize (not entirely convincingly) that both Greeks and Romans always preferred to consult gods or heroes rather than the dead, and "seldom or never practiced" necromancy (p. 97); she reiterates these arguments in chapter five, responding to challenges to her book.³ She then collects evidence for oracles using fire, water, mirrors or dice, and concludes with Lucian's famous exposé of Alexander of Abonuteichos and his oracular snake. Throughout these oracular chapters, Johnston steers a middle course between the skepticism of Lucian and most modern scholars, and total credulity. She places the phenomenon of oracles in a culture of people eager to seek divine advice at specific places through age-old methods, including the consultation of people who were credited with communicating with the gods.

She then devotes the last two chapters to the mantis or diviner who could determine the will of the gods outside the oracular context. Chapter four describes how one might become a mantis through a combination of birth and/or training, where one might be called upon to use that training, and the many techniques of divining available: through organs, birds, chance, the stars, dreams, oracle texts or personal daimones. In this chapter, the focus on Greek literature and culture imposes some artificial limitations which might have been avoided or at least indicated. Mythological and historical diviners are treated together throughout, and though the distinction between them is always made, the relation among Classical diviners, Classical literary authors, and stories about Tiresias or Chalchas, is far less clear. When Johnston explores battle and healing as specific situations calling for a mantis, the Athenocentric and literary cast of the evidence is clear. She does more broadly define the diviner as an expert in communication with the hard-to-reach, a person to call on in a crisis of any sort, but surely diviners also played a role in the public life of Greek cities outside battle.⁴ The rich connections which each technique of divination has with Near Eastern and Roman traditions are also largely unexplored, despite the use of the Greek magical papyri from Egypt in the very next chapter or frequent references to Cicero.

The final chapter contains an analysis of divination in the Greek magical papyri (PGM), an overview of changes in ancient Greek religion, and some conclusions on the close relationship between magic and divination. Johnston helpfully draws out unique information on divinatory circumstances, people and techniques from the PGM, and demonstrates how difficult it is to draw distinctions among ancient religion, divination and magic, though Christianity and scholarship continue to try. The appearance of both Democritus and Pythagoras in the PGM and the growth of Neo-Platonic theurgy contrast with the mythical seers of chapter four; imperial Greeks privately seem to have looked to philosophers, a wide range of gods and the dead for information about the unknown.

Johnston then argues for three changes within the "strong tendency toward continuity in all aspects of Greek religious practices and belief" which she has largely assumed throughout the rest of the book (p. 151). She argues convincingly for the changes, though limits herself perhaps too much in confining them to circa 100-500 AD. Certainly more foreign gods were adopted, personal "utopian" religions became more popular, and Roman emperors took official action against some forms of divination. Christian authorities were then even more active in persecuting both divination and other aspects of traditional Greco-Roman polytheism. Yet throughout this era the divinatory professional shared with the magician the goal of accessing the unknown, creativity, practicality and consistent demand for their services across the Greek world. These informed conclusions and careful handling of the evidence lead one to hope that Johnston will offer further contributions to the study of Greek religion soon.⁵

1.   "Divining Divination" in S.I. Johnson and P.T. Struck (eds.), Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, Leiden 2005, 1-28, reviewed by A. Nice in BMCR 2006.04.10.
2.   The book's single map of "the Greek world" is very limited. Only the Greek peninsula and western Anatolia are shown in outline, and the mere 8 labeled places include neither these sanctuaries, other than Oropos, nor most of the other oracles Johnston goes on to discuss in chapter three. The 12 black and white pictures do complement the text well, though one misses a plan of either Dodona or Claros.
3.   S.I. Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece, Berkeley 1999; D. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, Princeton 2001. See now also D. Ogden, Night's Black Agents: Witches, Wizards and the Dead in the Ancient World, London 2008.
4.   For the Mythical through Classical Greek diviner see now M.A. Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, Berkeley 2008, and, for the overlap between civic priest and diviner, see the articles collected in B. Dignas and K. Trampedach (eds.), Practitioners of the Divine: Greek Priests and Religious Officials from Homer to Heliodorus, Washington, DC 2008.
5.   I noticed very few typos. On p. 94 and in the index Strabo 6.9.3 should be 6.3.9.