Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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In the year that Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, Biondo Flavio, humanist and historian from Forlí, published his Italia Illustrata, a systematic topography of the Italian peninsula, in Latin, combining observations on history and contemporary affairs and exhibiting a strong antiquarian interest in the origins and early history of Italian localities. Until 2005 no substantial portion of this unique work had been translated into English, but that year saw the publication of the initial volumes of two independent efforts toward complete annotated translations with Latin and English on facing pages: Jeffrey White's treatment of Books I-IV in the I Tatti Renaissance Library series,¹ and the volume currently under review, Catherine Castner's translation and commentary of Biondo's accounts of Northern Italy. While White is tackling Biondo's volumes in the order in which he published them (which describes a rather tailbiting and backtracking progress through the peninsula), Castner dismembers the text to deal with a contiguous chunk of northern Italy, with the more southerly books to come in a projected second volume. While one might argue with Castner's choice in this respect, one happy effect that it produces is that we currently have access to more of the work in English translation than we would have if the two authors had followed the same method: White gives us Books I to IV, while Castner, in addition to Book I, deals with Books VI-XI.

According to Castner, Biondo was "a key founder, if not indeed the father of modern historiography and archaeology," and "a pioneer in scientific method and critical judgment" (xiii). While not everyone would speak of Biondo's status so forcefully, he is a genuinely interesting figure worthy of greater renown than he currently possesses. Standing at a crucial period in renaissance scholarship, just at the point when a large number of original Greek texts were starting to enter the scholarly mainstream in Italy, Biondo provides a unique snapshot of the relationship between educated Italians and the classical past and an important testament to the reification of an "Italy", centuries in advance of political unification, with boundaries broadly similar to that of the modern nation-state. Italia Illustrata is an important source not only for Italian geography and political history but also for the intellectual history of the fifteenth century and for the reception of classical antiquity in the Renaissance. Since the bulk of BMCR's readership can be counted on to have some interest in the last of these topics, it is perhaps worthwhile to dwell a bit more on this aspect of Biondi's text in the current review.

As Castner describes the genesis of Italia Illustrata (xxi-xxiii), Biondo already possessed some repute as a historian when Alphonso of Aragon, King of Naples, commissioned from him a geographically arranged catalogue of contemporary leaders in the various regions of Italy. It was apparently Biondo's own initiative and predilection that led him to expand his purview back to ancient times, to follow classical precedents in the division and arrangement of Italy's geography (preface, 294E-295C), and to cast his efforts in the tradition of Fabius Pictor, Cornelius Nepos, Julius Caesar and others (293A). Biondo cites and quotes, often apparently from memory (with attendant imprecisions), a number of classical authors, including Pliny, Livy, Vergil, Florus, Pomponius Mela, Hyginus and Pompeius Trogus (via Justin's epitome). Though he possessed little Greek, Biondo did know, and cite, Ptolemy through Latin translations available at the time. He also was aware of Strabo (whom he calls "Strabo of Crete"), although no known translation of the complete work is known to have existed before Biondo's death. The availability of partial translations may explain why Biondo's references to Strabo cluster almost exclusively around the territory of Latium (not covered in Castner's volume). Biondo's relationship to Strabo is interesting because there is a certain congruity in the writing careers of the two men and in their conceptions of the relationship between geography and history: Strabo's massive Geography was written as a companion-piece to his even more massive Histories, whereas Italia Illustrata developed as a complement to Biondo's major historical work, the Decades. Another interesting intertext comes with Pausanias, an author mentioned neither by Biondo nor by Castner: at least one manuscript of Pausanias (apparently the ancestor of all surviving manuscripts) was known to scholars in northern Italy in Biondo's day, and there are striking similarities in the ways that the two authors combine topography and history in covering discrete parts of the oikoumene. In particular, Biondo's use of the rivers of Italy to provide an organizatory thread in his progress from place to place recalls Pausanias' organization of his descriptions of Greek sites along well-ordered land-routes. Any actual awareness of Pausanias' text by Biondo must remain a matter of speculation, but classical scholars who draw conclusions about the nature of Pausanias' work from its form and structure would do well to compare the similarly structured work of Biondo, who is much more upfront than Pausanias about what he is trying to accomplish. This is only one of many insights that classicists can gain by consulting Biondo's renaissance text.

To judge Castner's contribution to making this fascinating author better known to the English-speaking world, it is useful to compare her work with that of White, her closest competitor. Castner's introduction is somewhat longer and meatier, and gives more of a sense of the scholarly give-and-take on the issues it discusses; whereas White's introduction, though impeccably erudite, seems more designed to communicate the basic facts of Biondo's career and milieux in a readable fashion (this impression is increased by Castner's use of rich, discursive footnotes vs. White's more laconic endnotes). Similarly, Castner's running commentary on the text tends be more content-rich. For instance, when Biondo tells us that the territory of Genoa possessed few notable intellectuals (292G), Castner points out that this was not a unanimous opinion in Biondi's day, and summarizes a work of modern scholarship on the point. White is silent on the topic. When Biondo quotes the Historia Augusta in relation to a site he believes is the birthplace of Pertinax , White gives the citation for the HA, while Castner quotes several sentences of context and adds that Cassius Dio gives information at odds with Biondo's interpretation (240-241). In addition Castner provides an extensive bibliography, whereas White's is sound but quite selective. Castner also offers a separate index for place names, which is quite useful to have in a work of this sort, and a number of interesting illustrations, such as a color plate of a fifteenth-century map of Ravenna (271) and a photograph of a book-keeping record found in the state archive at Modena recording Biondo's sale of building materials for the construction of a fortress. The masters of this fortress, Niccolò d'Este and his son, are praised highly by Biondo in his text without reference to his relationship with them (351A). This is the sort of enlivening material that one will not find as often in White, who offers no illustrations and -- a singular omission in a work of this sort -- no maps (Castner provides some maps, though it is to be hoped that they will be more legible and detailed in her next volume). This is not, of course, to say that what White does provide is not very good, and he frequently manages to impart information that Castner omits. For instance, many readers will probably be puzzled by Biondo's cryptic statement that some ancient authorities derive the name of Italy from the many cattle it produced (nonnullos a bobus quos gigneret multos 294E). Castner's notes do not explain this remark, but White's do ((V)italia < vitellus).

Moreover, White is clearly more informative on textual matters. Despite the fraught and complicated condition of the manuscripts (Biondo kept working on Italia Illustrata, and publishing revisions, up until his final years) Castner is largely content to follow the Froben edition of 1559. White (who has published elsewhere on the textual tradition) follows basically the editio princeps published by Biondo's son Gaspar in 1474, but checks it against five manuscripts and reports variations not in a running apparatus but in a separate series of endnotes. In the part of the text covered by both of the authors in these initial volumes, however, this leads to few significant differences. The chief variance is that White includes some substantial chunks which are not in the editio princeps, distinguished by italics in his text and translation. Indicative of the varying approach of the two authors is that while White follows the editio princeps and Castner doesn't, it is from Castner that we learn that Gaspar's edition "was one of the very earliest books printed at Rome, issuing only nine years after what is considered to be the first printed book in Italy" (xxxiv).

When it comes to the translation, a comparison of the parts translated by both (the preface and Book I: Liguria) shows that Castner tends to hew more closely to the Latin where White, while remaining faithful to the sense of what Biondo's wrote, strives for more fluid English prose. This means that Castner imparts more of a sense of Biondo's frequently quirky efforts at classicizing diction, a fact that to my mind makes Castner's translation a more interesting read, although that is surely a subjective matter, and casual readers may find White's translation more amenable. For example Biondo's clunky phrase a maioribus traditum viderimus (295D) is rendered into clunky English by Castner ("I have seen it handed down by our ancestors..."), whereas White smooths out the rough edges ("We have it as a matter of tradition..."). At the same time, where Biondo succeeds in turning a well-hewn phrase, Castner is capable of following suit; for instance Biondo's succinct Liguria autem Plinium secuti duximus inchoandum (295C), is captured succinctly by Castner: "I thought that I should begin as Pliny does, with Liguria," while White is distinctly more flaccid: "I have determined that I ought to begin my survey with Liguria, following Pliny."

I detected few outright errors in either translation, but where they did occur they were more frequent on Castner's part. For instance, Biondo's description of Jordanes of Constantinople, qui Iustiniani imperatoris temporibus rerum a populo Romano gestarum epitoma confecit (295D) does not mean "who wrote an epitome of the emperor Justinian's account of the deeds transacted by the Roman people" but (as White puts it) "who compiled a digest of the achievements of the Roman people in the times of the emperor Justinian." In the passage cited above, the sequel of "I have seen it handed down by our ancestors..." is not handled well by Castner: "...as established fact that the Apuani were Ligurians from the territory of Pisa." Better is (again, as per White) "...that the Apuani are Ligurians -- the Apuani being a people of the Pisan territory, as is well known" (Biondo: Apuanos Ligures, quos agri Pisani populos esse constat, a maioribus traditum viderimus). White's choice of tenses in the following: "Genoa has enjoyed her greatest expansion, in fact, over the last four hundred years, and ... she has eclipsed the fame of Liguria (whose mistress she has become)" more accurately transmits the sense that Biondo is talking about a condition that still prevails in his time (298F: a quadringentis vero annis maximum Genua habuit incrementum quae ... Liguriae cui imperat nomen obscuravit). Castner's translation obscures that sense: "Four hundred years ago Genoa had its greatest period of growth .. and it ruled Liguria and eclipsed its name." On the other hand, there are also times where Castner's translation is to be preferred. For instance, when Biondo writes plerique Lucam Liguriae ultimam posuere (295D) White overinterprets in his translation: "most authorities made Lucca the southernmost city of Liguria." Preferable is Castner's: "Most people identify Lucca as the last city in Liguria." By sticking more closely to the Latin, Castner allows the text to reflect an important point: that Biondo, like other early geographers, conceived of Italy as running more west-east than north-south.

In sum, Castner has provided a very useful aid to the study of an underappreciated renaissance author. Her volume offers readers the Latin text, a readable translation, impressively wide-ranging and thoroughly researched comments and a number of helpful ancillary aids to the study of Biondo and his world. Researchers and aficionados of the many subjects that Biondo's text touches upon have an embarrassment of riches in the nearly simultaneous appearance of Castner's effort and that of White. The casual reader will be well served by either volume; the more serious researcher will do well to consult both for the different strengths that each possesses.

1.   Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated. Volume 1: Books I - IV. J. A. White, ed., trans. The I Tatti Renaissance Library no. 20. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2005.

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Everyday life and households have been the topics of increased scholarly examination in recent years, and Souvatzi has been part of a recent upsurge in studies of ancient housing and households.¹ The book under review claims no less than to be "the first to address the household as a process and as a conceptual and analytical means through which we can interpret social organisation from the bottom up." In it, Souvatzi, after setting out current approaches to the household in the social sciences generally and archaeology specifically, uses detailed examples from the Greek Neolithic to look at the ways in which households can be a means of interpreting social organisation.

The first chapter gives an overview of approaches to the household in the social sciences. Souvatzi brings together the broad body of scholarship on the concept of the household to demonstrate that it is a process and thus she moves away from earlier, more static definitions. This approach allows her to go beyond the tendencies towards essentialism in earlier work and to allow for fluidity not only in defining the household but also in approach; Souvatzi demonstrates that research should be dynamic to allow for the household as a dialectical process. An important archaeological ramification in this chapter, which does not include archaeological approaches, is the understanding of household space that is defined by activities rather than, necessarily, physical structures. This allows for an approach to the household which is culturally and historically embedded and that can be productive without relying on co-residence for its definition. Drawing broadly on the social sciences, Souvatzi's analysis and critique of approaches to households will be useful reading for archaeologists and others seeking to study the topic. This aspect alone makes the volume a worthwhile read, and Souvatzi carefully avoids culturally-specific arguments while making good use of salient, if sometimes repeated, examples.

The overview of archaeological approaches to households in the second chapter is similarly useful. Souvatzi argues that previous approaches have largely seen the household as being formed by and reacting to larger-scale changes, rather than investigating daily life and households in their own right. The repeated assertion that there has been a lack of interest by archaeologists in the everyday is true, but it is curious that Souvatzi does not engage with the substantial body of theory on this topic beyond Bourdieu's habitus and the work of Giddens (e.g. de Certeau, Lefebvre, and the recent work of Highmore). In this second chapter Souvatzi also sets out her alternative framework for the interpretation of the household. This alternative framework is one which is decidedly not prescriptive on specific terms. The social sciences, Souvatzi argues, have addressed the indeterminate nature of the household as a process, but archaeology has not done this because of its lack of focus on the household qua household. Souvatzi notes the problem of integrating understandings of agency and social dynamics in archaeological approaches which use economic indicators to assess difference within and between sites. After addressing this "problem of indeterminacy" Souvatzi broaches "the issue of variability" which addresses a range of problems, including the way in which archaeologists tend to create 'ideal' households or household types for settlements. In refusing to address the gap between the ideal and the real, as Souvatzi puts it, variation (including between households and over time) and the reasons for it are missed. One despairs for the state of archaeology, though, if such detailed critique is really necessary to encourage the use of (basically) a contextual approach and the employment of different categories and scales of evidence. Something that is not fully explicated here is how the temporality of activities works within this new framework; it seems that something which archaeology could bring to broader understandings of the household (given its chronological depth) is a problematised understanding of time, beyond households as process. Souvatzi does more to tackle this issue in her case studies than in the general framework.

Another part of Souvatzi's framework is household economics, where she argues for a study of household economy which sees the limits of discussions framed within terms of rationality and instead seeks to understand the household economy in terms of not only self-interest but also morality, and in so doing to recognise the household's place as more than a pragmatic entity. Souvatzi also moves away from tendencies in much recent archaeological writing to focus on the individual with such questions as "If individuals are the most pertinent agents of action and change, then why do they persist across time and space in organising themselves into such complex productive, distributive, and reproductive groups as households?" (p39). A very good question, but one that itself suggests a degree of agency amongst household members with regard to their membership in that group and also a leap of logic when it comes to the definition of household that Souvatzi has never really provided. The rest of the second chapter consists of sections on 'the individual and the collective', 'social complexities' and 'structure and agency, reproduction and change: a historical dimension'. All of these topics are complex, and Souvatzi cuts a swath through them to develop an approach to the household that incorporates "complexity, dynamics, historical specificity, and dialectics" (p. 46). The points made by Souvatzi on the theories and problems of studying the household are valid, but (in part due to the structure of the book, with its separate theory and case-study chapters) these theoretical households might be too theoretical for some readers. And while Souvatzi is arguing for, to an extent, a definition of household that is more 'fuzzy' and contextual, some of the assertions are a little too vaguely substantiated; the households described just "are". Souvatzi is indeed so effective in her quashing of previous approaches and assumptions about what a household is that the reader might be left wondering if it is a worthwhile concept after all.

The chapters that follow seek to put the approach set out in the first part of the book into practice. Chapter three, on the Neolithic in Greece, is an overview of the period for the purpose of framing the subsequent chapters. The fourth chapter, entitled "The Ideal and the Real: the examples of Early Neolithic Nea Nikomedeia and Middle Neolithic Sesklo" uses the evidence of these sites to implement Souvatzi's perspective as set out in the previous chapters. At Nea Nikomedeia, Souvatzi demonstrates (using evidence including a structure likely used as a communal building and burials throughout the site which respect similar patterns) that there seems to be a complex social organisation evident there, with spatial and social organisation and functional differentiation of space which belie usual interpretations of the such early Neolithic settlements that presuppose loose groupings of households engaged in subsistence activities. While Souvatzi is convincing on this community level of organisation, its relationship to the assumed households is unclear. Middle Neolithic Sesklo, one of the most intensively investigated Neolithic sites of Greece, is the other example in this chapter. Souvatzi shows that the open spaces associated with houses were an important part of the settlement and uses this observation to argue for a lack of a division of space between 'public' and 'domestic'. Space at the site is shown to be highly structured, with domestic space (both interior and external) being, broadly, symmetrically organised, and "[t]hese patterns suggest that the organisation of space may have been defined on a system of order and classification which revolves around the principles of symmetry and articulates links between the social structure, the symbolic order, and the 'natural' order or the cosmos" (p. 90). One can, at this point, almost hear Bourdieu and Lévi-Strauss whispering over Souvatzi's shoulder. Patterning in the material culture also indicates a socially regulated use of particular spaces for certain activities, and material culture indicates a degree of craft specialisation. The patterning throughout the site is indicative, argues Souvatzi, of "community-wide standards" (p. 95), and the treatment of external space and placement of houses in relation to 'community space' including lanes and squares indicates "collective planning" (ibid.).

The fifth chapter uses the case study of Dimini, and usefully demonstrates how the limitations of legacy data can be overcome using a multi-pronged approach of archival data, new fieldwork, and careful study of ceramics and small finds. Souvatzi shows that households might be seen to inhabit particular houses, but that they also can be seen in other spatial configurations, including external spaces and other structures. Overall, this chapter is successful at demonstrating the ways in which the patterning of space and objects is indicative of community organisation and practices, and, as the title of the chapter asserts, that "complexity is not only about hierarchy". When, as Souvatzi demonstrates, the spurious connection to Homeric texts is broken, the archaeology shows not elite 'megaron' households leading but rather a community of connected households using a range of communal and individual (household) strategies.

The sixth chapter, "Homogeneity or Diversity? Household as Variable Processes", uses a range of Greek Neolithic evidence to examine households from different contexts. The variation evident demonstrates that, in the Greek Neolithic, as elsewhere, the notion of 'type sites' or typical sites is problematic. Among the interesting commonalties Souvatzi does identify between sites is the importance of the household as a ritual unit in addition to an economic one (p. 195). Overall, Souvatzi sees a "relatively uniform Greek Neolithic culture" (p. 203) within which households are diverse in (for example) morphology, ideology, and economic activity. A problem is that these are among the things which define the household in the first place.

In the seventh chapter, Souvatzi discusses the place of households in broader models of change and asserts that households themselves generate social change. Heterarchy prevails in Souvatzi's explanations of social organisation rather than hierarchy. This is a very useful discussion, but it is odd that much of Souvatzi's framework claims to work from the 'bottom up': one wonders where this apocryphal bottom is, if there is no hierarchy. Souvatzi proposes a Greek Neolithic so complex that no model can contain it-this is part of Souvatzi's stated agenda, in that too much attention has been paid to making generalisations and not enough to micro-level processes. There is a danger, though, that this analysis replaces one type of generalisation with another, creating a Neolithic so variable and so complex it is almost impossible to conceptualise. That said, societies are indeed variable and complex, and Souvatzi's work embraces this rather than seeing it as a problem. The eighth and final chapter is a short conclusion examining the broader implications of the book for social archaeology.

This important volume does have some of the common problems of having evolved from the author's PhD thesis (2000, Cambridge), for example the often turgid prose and the structure. Souvatzi makes many interesting and important points on the Neolithic, in particular concerning the nature and form of the communities and the use of space, and makes excellent use of the ceramic evidence. These observations do not always arise from or relate to households, and the choice from the start of the volume to use the household as the defining group of Souvatzi's study almost does injustice to the breadth of material she covers in the second portion of the book. It might be considered a strength, though, that households and larger communities are considered together and that households are not extracted as a unit of study from the society of which they are a part.

Similarly, the abrupt break between the theory and data chapters contributes to a problem of terminology, namely that much vocabulary discounted in the first section of the book is used in the second. This is particularly irritating in the use of 'domestic' and the sometimes indiscriminate movement between the terms house and household (on occasion even "house/household" is used, as at p. 115) which is problematic given the theoretical stance set out at the start of the book, the repeated assertion that singular buildings are not necessarily conterminous with households, and that (p. 150) households use a variety of spaces within settlements. Household composition is not discussed, and the definitions are so dynamic (partly in Souvatzi's reaction against a body of archaeological theory which she argues places too much emphasis on the individual) that it is difficult to imagine people into these communities. While some might consider this depopulation unproblematic, one of the lures of the study of archaeological households is precisely their immediacy and the ease of analogy, and, although it can be appreciated that household as a concept should be culturally and historically situated, it is equally true that it is people that make them up and that examining the micro-level evidence, as Souvatzi does, might be a way of accessing them. Souvatzi cannot be expected, though, to reconcile all the problems of archaeology, as seen, for example, in the tension in current archaeological approaches between the individual, identity studies, issues of agency, and grand narratives and models.

This book is particularly successful in showing that the household can be usefully examined not by looking for spatially discrete units or architectural structures but by examining, contextually, activities. It also successfully bridges micro and macro as levels of analysis and shows that households cannot be studied separately from the broader societies they are a part of. Its central problem is that it makes the reader work very hard to appreciate both the breadth of the analysis and the relevance of its approach to broader studies. Despite these issues, this is a useful book that adds much to our current understandings of the household. It will be of interest to those studying the Neolithic and to those interested in the variable nature of housing and households more generally.

1.   See for instance her contribution in Westgate, Ruth, Nick Fischer and James Whitley, eds. (2007). Building Communities: House, Settlement and Society in the Aegean and Beyond. London, British School at Athens.

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This book is a general introduction to the use of myth as the subject of Greek architectural sculpture during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. It consists of chronologically arranged case studies about four monuments in Mainland Greece and one in Asia Minor: the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, the Parthenon, the Hephaisteion in the Athenian Agora, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the Heroon at Trysa. In each case, a presentation of the building and its topographical context is followed by a systematic description and iconographic analysis of its sculptural decoration. This approach leads to an iconological interpretation of the sculptures in relation to the original cultural, political, and social context of the building. It thus follows the model set by Heiner Knell in his 1990 important monograph on Greek architectural sculpture.¹

In the Introduction (pp. 1-7) Barringer lays out the premises and objectives of her book. Her first premise is that the myths chosen for architectural sculpture were not randomly selected and that, rather than having a purely decorative function, they had meaning. Her second premise is that meaning, and consequently the interpretation of a given myth, depend on context. Both premises have guided the interpretation of Greek architectural sculpture over the past two decades and, from a methodological point of view are clearly sound. On this basis, Barringer explores how ancient viewers might have interpreted these mythological representations in their original cultural context.

Chapter 1 (pp. 8-58) views the sculptural decoration of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia in relation to the agonistic contexts of this Panhellenic sanctuary. Barringer explores the question of how the athletes who came to compete at the Olympic games were meant to understand the decoration of this building. Arguing against previous interpretations of the sculptures as an admonition against hubris, as a general vision of justice imposed by the gods, and as negative paradigms to the athletic competitors, Barringer suggests that the sculptures of the temple of Zeus instead offered "positive models of heroism, arete, and glory expressly aimed at the Olympic competitors, who were urged to emulate these examples in various areas of their lives" (pp. 18-20). According to Barringer, it was Nike, not dike, that was more prominent in the message of the sculptural decoration of the temple, and in the mind of the Eleans who commissioned the building (cf. p. 46). The metopes depicting the labors of Herakles accord well with this interpretation, as does the Centauromachy, although in this last case the behavior of the half-beasts must have also served as a negative, mythological exemplum for the athletes. In the case of the chariot race between Pelops and Oinomaos, this interpretation only works if, like Barringer, one excludes the possibility that this pediment featured the version of the myth in which Pelops cheated by bribing Oinomaos' charioteer. This is an issue that cannot be resolved with the evidence at hand , Barringer's main argument for discounting this version -- that it "is implausible that the Eleans would have celebrated their hero and founder of the games, Pelops, with sculptures that depicted him as a cheat" (p. 35)-- is, however, not particularly sound. To quote from a memorable discussion of Greek heroes by Angelo Brelich,² "l'inganno è caratteristico di tutta la vita eroica" (p. 255). One may mention as an example heroes who were famous for their cunning, like Sisyphos and Tantalos, and still received heroic worship in their hometowns. As for Barringer's central argument, one can only agree with her idea that the sculptures of the Temple of Zeus were particularly meaningful to athletes, and that in the imagery of this building one can find several elements that resonate with the athletic games. Both ideas are found frequently in previous literature (in Ashmole and Tersini, for example). But limiting the intended public of the sculptures of the Temple of Zeus to athletes is dangerously reductive, because one runs the risk of losing sight of the very Panhellenic nature of the Sanctuary at Olympia and its games, which attracted a large, varied crowd from all over the Greek world. In addition, one should not forget that the Olympic competitions were part of a cult festival. A contextual interpretation of the sculptures of the temple of Zeus in relation to the local ritual should have this cult festival as its background, rather than just the athletic games and the athletes.

Central to Chapter 2 (pp. 59-108) is the discussion of the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon, in which Barringer devotes particular attention to the role of women. Barringer focuses her analysis on the special links between the myths chosen for the decoration of the building and the myths and rituals of the Akropolis. Here the author's main argument is that the representations of women on the Parthenon and other fifth-century monuments reveal much about the contemporary Athenian male view concerning women. This view was a dual one, that regarded women both as necessary to the survival of the city and capable of bringing disaster to their families and community if their seemingly irrational nature and sexuality were not kept in check. Thus, for Barringer--who argues against the traditional reading of the sculptures as visual metaphors for recent historical events, such as the Persian Wars--the Amazons on the west metopes offer the negative example of powerful and independent females who invade the heart of the patriarchal city and threaten its male populace. The androgynous female deity Athena triumphs on the west pediment over her male antagonist, Poseidon. On the east metopes, the same goddess is celebrated for her role in the defeat of the Giants by the Olympian gods. On the south metopes, the Lapith women embody female vulnerability and modesty. Finally, on the north metopes, the Ilioupersis presents the destruction and chaos wrought by the power of Helen. For Barringer, this emphasis on women could also reflect the concern of the Athenian state for legitimate citizenship and the family, the role of Athenian women, and the significance and benefits of Athenian marriage. Barringer extends this interpretation of the Parthenon sculptures to other fifth-century monuments on the Akropolis, such as the Erechtheion caryatids and the Prokne and Itys by Alkamenes. The author's exploration of the Parthenon sculptures as a reflection of male views of women in contemporary Athenian society is persuasive and valuable. Yet the relation between the genders and the status of women were important subjects of Greek temple decoration well before the Parthenon: I need only mention, for the Archaic period, the first temple of Hera at Foce del Sele (not a treasury, as this building is still incorrectly referred to by Barringer at p. 189), and, for the Early Classical period, the metopes of the Heraion at Selinous. This insistence on gender relations and on the status of women, on public images that were meant to educate the polis, therefore does not come as a surprise. In the case of the Parthenon, however, this theme was only one of the multiple layers of meaning of the complex and sophisticated imagery of this building, and to turn it into the key to its interpretation would quickly lead to problems. I need mention only the east metopes, which are first and foremost celebrations of victory in war, like the Gigantomachy on the pediment of the Treasury of the Megarians at Olympia decades before. Finally given Barringer's contextual approach and her interest in the relationship between images and ritual, I am surprised that she does not include the figural decoration of the temple of Athena Nike and its precinct in her discussion of the fifth-century Akropolis.

Chapter 3 (pp. 109-143) is dedicated to the sculptural decoration of the Hephaisteion. In keeping with a line of interpretation that can be found in previous literature on this building (e.g., Thompson and Knell), Barringer explores the potential meaning of its sculptural adornment in relation to both the other monuments of the west side of the Agora and the various activities that took place in the civic center of Athens. Barringer focuses her attention on the friezes (for the east frieze she suggests that it might feature the battle of Atlantis (Plato Timaeus 24e-25d) and the metopes (which feature the labors of Herakles and Theseus). Barringer's conclusion is that the Hephaisteion's sculptural themes resonated with monuments such as the Stoa Basileios and the Stoa Poikile, and offered models of heroic behavior to Athenian citizens, particularly young men, who would have been the primary intended public for the images. This suggestion is certainly appropriate in the case of Theseus, the founder of the Athenian state and the model ephebe. Unfortunately, we know too little about the decoration of the pediments (not to mention the akroteria) of the Hephaisteion to propose a comprehensive interpretation of its sculptural "program." One last note: Barringer suggests that the association of Theseus with Herakles in the Hephaisteion would represent "the Greek ideal, the joining of brains, in the form of Theseus, and brawn, represented by the athletic Herakles (pp. 121-122; cf. also 128). This is certainly not what one sees on the metopes , given that their emphasis is on Theseus' physical strength, which is paralleled visually to that of Herakles. It may be added that in the representation of Herakles on the east side, particular emphasis is given to the labor of the Golden Apples featured on the last metope (East X) of the series, near the north corner. It seems to show the hero-god who has successfully deceived Atlas (according to the version of this myth by Pherekydes) and is now proudly presenting the apples of the Hesperides to Athena. The labor of the Golden Apples is not only about brawn, but also about brains and the cunning of Herakles at the expense of Atlas.

Chapter 4 (pp. 144-170) is dedicated to the pediments of the fourth-century temple of Apollo at Delphi. The east pediment featured Apollo together with Artemis, Leto, and the Muses, and the west pediment featured Dionysos in the company of the Thyiades. Barringer observes that the two gables are remarkable in two respects. The combination of their subjects is radically new in Greek sculpture. At the same time, however, their composition looks strikingly old-fashioned for the fourth century. Barringer explains this peculiarity as a deliberate effort to echo the east pediment of the Late Archaic temple of Apollo, which was directly sponsored by the Athenian family of the Alkmeonids. According to Barringer, this effort was in turn part of an Athenian strategy to stress both its well-established, special relationship with Delphi and also its leadership in the Greek world, vis-à-vis the Macedonians. Athens had a say in the Amphictyony during the course of the fourth century, and--as pointed out by Croissant--with the precedent of the Alkmeonids, Athens could easily have had a say on the sculptural decoration of the temple. In fact, the commission was given to Athenian sculptors. Granted that the paratactic composition of the two pediments of the fourth-century temple of Apollo seems unconventional by contemporary standards (although we know little about the figural decoration of many temples built during this century), I am not convinced by Barringer's suggestion that it was meant to quote the east pediment of its Late Archaic predecessor. In such a case, one would have expected the repetition of its central image: the epiphany of the god on a quadriga. Based on present knowledge, the composition of the fourth-century pediments of the temple of Apollo at Delphi remains without precedents. The possibility that the sculptures were carved in Athens and transported to Delphi may account for their paratactic character.

Chapter 5 (pp. 171-202) focuses on the fourth-century Heroon at Gjölbaschi-Trysa, and analyzes the rich imagery of the doorways and friezes of its peribolos wall. The identification of many of the scenes on the friezes is notoriously difficult. Moreover, there is a total absence of written documentation that could help to interpret the monument. Basing her interpretation on comparative evidence, Barringer draws a parallel between the Heroon at Trysa and the Throne of Apollo at Amyklai, which she proposes may have served as a model, in particular for the idea of a funerary monument decorated with a vast array of mythological scenes. Barringer concludes her analysis of the individual mythological themes, suggesting that monuments in Athens--in particular the Theseion--had an influence on the decoration of the heroon. In the decoration of the latter there are also elements of Lycian and Near Eastern derivation, including the blending of mythological and non-mythological themes. This association is seen by Barringer as part of a strategy of heroization of the deceased ruler through visual metaphor and juxtaposition. The final message of the Heroon was that the Lycian ruler had significant achievements, just as the heroes of Greek myth did. This is all very convincing. A similar line of interpretation of the imagery of the Heroon, and similar conclusions are to be found in an important essay by Claude Bérard,³ which is not mentioned by Barringer, but to which the reader of this chapter should be directed.

In the Conclusion (pp. 203-212) Barringer summarizes the main arguments of her book: context determines the selection and depiction of mythological scenes on Greek sacred buildings, and context determines their meaning to contemporary audiences.

The clarity of the exposition, the carefully designed structure, and the excellent collection of images make this book a valuable introduction to the study of fifth- and fourth-century Greek architectural sculpture, and for this the author and the publisher deserve to be congratulated. Barringer should also be praised for her contextual approach to this important subject.

1.   Knell, H. Mythos und Polis. Bildprogramme griechischer Bauskulptur. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990).
2.   Brelich, A. Gli eroi greci, un problema storico-religioso. (Roma: Ateneo, 1958).
3.   Bérard, C., 'La Grèce en barbarie: l'apostrophe et le bon usage des mythes', in Métamorphoses du mythe en Grèce antique, ed. C. Calame, 187-199. (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1988).

Preview

According to church historians who subscribe to the theories of Max Weber, the early church's spiritual power became routinized into a form of hierarchical authority represented by office-holding bishops who were more bureaucratic functionaries than charismatic leaders. With the growing involvement of the Roman state in church affairs after the conversion of Emperor Constantine, the process further accelerated with the result that local Christian communities more or less lost their ability to shape their own destinies, squeezed as it were between interventionist Christian Roman emperors and equally imposing metropolitan bishops who single-mindedly pursued their own agenda. Thus most historical narratives of late antique Christianity focus upon the interactions between these two groups of powerful actors, with local communities outside the metropolitan cities frequently relegated to a secondary or tertiary role. The result is that, for moderns who regard the effective autonomy of local communities and democratic practices on a grassroots level as signposts of societal health, the converging authoritarian trends in the late Roman state and church serve to indicate a deeply-set malaise.

Against such an image of a society that was moving inexorably towards greater autocracy in respect of both imperial power and ecclesiastical authority, Norton offers his fruitful book as a riposte as well as a cause for hope. Episcopal Elections closely examines the specific circumstances by which bishops came into office as well as the types of interventions and obstructions that continued to threaten or undermine the ability of local communities to elect their own religious leaders. While the scope of the study appears at first sight to be quite narrowly circumscribed, this project has direct relevance for our broader understanding of the evolving relationship between local Christian communities, ecclesiastical hierarchies, and the late Roman imperial state. Through an appraisal of the forms of agency that determined the (s)election of late antique bishops and their efficacy, Norton presents a well-crafted argument against a set of widely-shared assumptions regarding the extent to which the rise of imperial Christianity in the later fourth century onwards repressed the effective autonomy of local Christian communities.

The individual chapters in this book take on topics and themes that have long been deemed worthy of study by specialists such as historians of the church, ancient historians and classicists. The volume introduction is followed by Chapter Two, "Legislation and Theory," which addresses the formal prescriptions stemming from Christian churches and the Roman state regarding the election of bishops. Drawing upon conciliar and synodal canons as well as imperial pronouncements on the subject, the author articulates the principal rationales and means by which ecclesiastical and state authorities sought to regulate the procedures and, to a certain extent, impose a set of minimal criteria for those who sought the office of bishop. Chapter Three, "The Electorate: Local Communities and Public Disorder," parses the composition and competence of those who cast the vote for bishops, namely the local Christian congregations. After reviewing particularly well-known cases of disputed episcopal elections, Norton concludes that the "popular will" of Christian "electorates" by and large prevailed not only in theory but also in practice even in the face of attempted imperial interventions in favor of rival candidates. The ensuing chapter (ch. 4) logically expands on the prevalence and effectiveness of imperial meddling in episcopal elections. It posits and then goes on to provide evidence for a categorical difference between elections to the most important sees, such as Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria by Egypt, and Rome, and those to smaller and (both symbolically and juridically) less important ones, concluding that the emperors only showed significant interest in the outcomes of the former. At this particular juncture, the study expands its scope beyond the frontiers of the late Roman imperial state by describing royal interventions in episcopal elections in the post-Roman west: Vandal Africa, Visigothic Spain and Frankish Gaul; it provides, however, no treatment of the important Christian communities within the Sassanian Persian Empire.

Chapters Five to Seven are devoted to the institutional and power structures of the church, including the relations between the metropolitan bishops and bishops of other sees. A succinct narrative traces the rise of the concept of the five patriarchal sees of Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Antioch and surveys the roles played by their respective bishops. Given that elections to these metropolitan sees attracted the preponderance of attention in our surviving sources, this discussion underscores what can be known in evidentiary terms and cautions against the extrapolation of conclusions based on such examples to the less elevated sees. In examining the effective power that bishops of the patriarchal sees had in shaping the election of suffragan bishops, the author concludes that the preëminence of the metropolitan bishops was mainly manifested in their role as the consecrators of the elected bishops rather than in their actual ability to determine the outcome of particular episcopal elections.

Chapter Eight, "Corruption, Constraint, and Nepotism," offers a useful examination of the varieties of practices by which men sought to influence the course of episcopal elections. By pointing out that the later fourth- and fifth-century churches accrued increasingly sizeable patrimonies and therefore became valued prizes that were thought worthy of capturing at almost any price, the stage is set for understanding the growth in the practice of simony. As Christianizing aristocratic dynasties sought to secure church offices for family members by whatever means possible, including offering monetary bribes to the right persons, such practices would in turn provoke anti-simony rhetoric and measures. The book is rounded off with an appendix ("Greek and Latin Texts of Canons Relating to Episcopal Elections"), a bibliography and an index of cited names and main topics.

The present book originated in an Oxford dissertation written under the supervision of G.E.M. de Ste Croix. Its genesis in a 1980s academic and intellectual milieu has greatly informed its choice of topic, structure and approach. In the book, the popular sovereignty of the plebs christiana is used as a barometer of the fundamental health of the church and the society at large. Thus the author's well-intentioned desire to give due weight to the agency of the non-elite, which underpins the book's central intellectual premise, turns the investigation into how "sovereign" communities resisted the impositions placed on them by powerful "outsiders." In short, Norton has been motivated by the scholarly desire to highlight the success of the "voiceless masses" in maintaining their agency and autonomy, especially during an age that many have characterized as being marked by the rising authoritarianism of a centralizing state and ecclesiastical hierarchy. A similar intellectual outlook has guided a number of other studies that attempt to discover traces of the continued functioning of conciliar bodies and civic institutions well into the late Roman period and, more generally, seek to underscore the practical limits of imperial autocracy during this time. Norton's proposal that the will of the Christian plebs continued to play a central role in determining the outcome of episcopal elections, especially outside of the major centers of power where imperial intervention was less common, offers thus a reassuring message.

In suggesting that local communities continued to exert meaningful influence over the (s)election of bishops, the author is thereby also advancing a claim that the post-Constantinian church had been much less transformed by the rise of imperial Christianity than some scholars have previously supposed. Yet by conforming the book so much to the pursuit of its main thesis, the author may have missed an opportunity to lay out some of the very fundamentals regarding episcopal elections that most readers of the book would appreciate learning about. Still, this book opens the way into an important topic and invites further investigation into the nature of electoral practices in the ancient world, including the mechanisms of episcopal elections, the exercise of influence and patronage, the use of slogans and pamphleteering, and the role of cliques and claques in shaping the outcomes of episcopal and other elections.

On the whole, Episcopal Elections posits the communal or local popular voice as a relatively unproblematic category, whereas "popular will" is not only itself an object of contested representations but also a formulation that glosses over the many-faceted and multi-layered exercise of power and influence that went into shaping any given contest for office. The limited attention paid to the role of local notables in shaping the results of elections, and this only en passant in the conclusion (240-41), serves as a telling illustration of the book's tendency to present a dyadic juxtaposition of local congregation versus outside authority as the premise and framework for its analysis. In declining to address the admittedly complex issue of the constructedness of the "popular will," and the various competing rhetorics of power and community, the author in effect presents the local mechanisms and process of episcopal elections as analytical "black boxes" that are to be used to gauge the presence or absence of effective popular sovereignty rather than as explananda in themselves. In other words, he seems less interested in studying the processes that led to the (s)election of bishops than in engaging in a broader debate about the extent to which popular will was able to withstand outside challenges. The book therefore seems to take for granted that, where such elections were unopposed by outside ecclesiastical and imperial authorities, the popular will was allowed to prevail and, where they were interfered with, the local communities were effectively overruled.

Yet elements of compulsion, moral or physical, may be assumed to have been a fairly constant ingredient in contested elections as rival congregants could -- and historically did -- inflict violence on each other to bring about a particular outcome. Nor can the process that led to the shaping of "local" views be assumed to have been monolithic, benign or free from the practice of "bullying." By the same token, "outside" interventions might not have been all morally bad or by nature violent. Thus electoral results in which "outside" manipulation played little or no role may not be by nature more valid, either morally or intrinsically, than those in which "outsiders" played a significant role.

As the author evinces in his introduction, Episcopal Elections has been updated since the writing of the original dissertation with the inclusion of more recent scholarship, notably Claudia Rapp's fine study of the figure of the late ancient bishop. Even so, the book's engagement with issues and methodologies that have come into prominence in the past two decades remains selective. Among issues that would have benefited from closer scrutiny of these developments is the use of highly stylized literary texts as historical evidence for social realia. Ancient authors' references to mass participation in events such as the election of bishops have been accepted at face value even though the authors in question were invariably pursuing specific agenda as they gave voice to particular constructions of the nature of ecclesiastical authority. What historians have before them in the literary sources is therefore not so much a body of transparent or direct evidence for the participation (or non-participation) of the common people but rather elite views regarding their supposed roles. Averil Cameron, Elizabeth Clark and others have called attention to the need to give due weight to just such a consideration, an emphasis some choose to call the "rhetorical turn." Indeed, such a perspective has informed successful historical interpretations such as Peter Brown's pioneering studies on urban bishops' invocation of the "Christian poor" as their own special charge and Conrad Leyser's examination of the episcopal language of reticence and humility as an aspect of the self-representation of power-wielding bishops.

Lacking a requisite measure of attentiveness to the importance of rhetoric and representation, the analyses found in Episcopal Elections seem to offer instead descriptions of what happened in realia rather than narrative refracted through the lenses of elite Christian writers who were usually interested parties if not partisans in the controversies under consideration. And yet, even if the investigation is to remain focused on the presentation and analysis of historical realia, it might still have devoted some attention to a wider set of contextual issues such as both lay aristocratic and ecclesiastical patronage, the nature of communal violence in contested episcopal elections such as that in the Laurentian schism in Rome--admittedly out of the purview of this study given its metropolitan setting--and the relative importance of the possession of real and symbolic property (e.g., prestigious urban basilicas that conferred legitimacy and authority) to the assessment of the character of a given episcopal election itself.

Episcopal Elections represents a concise monograph that offers readers a helpful and intelligent introduction to an important subject. Even while its treatment of the topic may have been too severely restricted in scope to make a fully effective challenge to the prevailing paradigm, the book's investigation of the ongoing dynamism of popular sovereignty as a practice in late antique Christian communities still contributes in useful ways to the important ongoing conversations regarding the role and authority of the figure of the late antique bishop as well as the scope and effect of imperial interventions in ecclesiastical affairs. By cautioning against the prevalent view that makes the increasingly powerful bishop and Christian emperors the center-pieces of our historical accounts, in which local Christian communities in turn necessarily come to be relegated to the role of voiceless and passive agents, the book invites further discussion regarding the factors that limited the ability of even the most powerful actors such as the emperors in shaping the lives and experiences of their social and political inferiors.

[Les auteurs et les titres sont énumérés à la fin du compte rendu.]

"L'argent est le nerf de la guerre !" Cicéron (Philippiques, V, 3), Tacite (Histoires, II, 84, 1), Quinte-Curce (Histoire d'Alexandre le Grand, IV, 6), Plutarque (Vies d'Agis et Cléomène, LVI) ou Diogène Laërte (Vies et sentences des philosophes illustres, IV, 7, 48), les écrivains de l'Antiquité ont relayé largement une idée qui semblait relever du lieu commun. Les auteurs postérieurs ont, par ailleurs, confirmé l'intemporalité de cette sentence. Certains comme François Rabelais dans son Gargantua ou Jean le Rond d'Alembert dans sa Lettre au roi de Prusse du 11 octobre 1782, l'ont repris à leur compte. D'autres, comme Machiavel, l'ont récusée, arguant que c'était essentiellement la qualité des troupes qui déterminait l'issue d'une bataille. Il va de soit que de l'argent et des troupes dépendent les actions militaires ; les stratèges et dirigeants actuels ne le nieraient sans doute pas non plus. Ainsi, il nous paraît utile de souligner l'importance du présent ouvrage consacré aux coûts et aux financements de la guerre durant l'Antiquité et les siècles suivants.

Le titre de la publication est d'ailleurs trompeur dans la mesure où il laisse entendre que les contributions ne portent que sur une seule période. Or, le champ d'investigation s'avère bien plus large. En fait, l'ouvrage réunit les interventions des participants aux journées d'études ayant eu lieu à l'Université de Mannheim du 16 au 18 février 2006, autour du thème : Kriegskosten und Kriegsfinanzierung von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Ainsi, si de nombreuses pages concernent des questions grecques, plusieurs contributions abordent des cas romains, et la réflexion est poussée jusqu'aux mécanismes de financement des guerres au XVIIIe siècle. D'aucuns y verront probablement une dispersion des efforts sur des thématiques, des périodes et des réalités fort différentes. D'autres examineront avec intérêt l'approche diachronique du rapport entre les mondes économique et militaire.

Comme le précisent Friedrich Burrer et Holger Müller dans l'introduction générale, l'ouvrage tente de répondre à plusieurs questions essentielles. Quelle était l'importance des coûts directs de la guerre ? Quels groupes sociaux devaient supporter ces coûts et à qui profitaient-ils ? Avec quels moyens la guerre était-elle financée ? Quels étaient les coûts relatifs aux conséquences de la guerre comme, par exemple, les coûts de la reconstruction ? Quels avantages économiques, directs ou indirects apportait la guerre ? Pour répondre à ces questions, les articles de cet ouvrage sont articulés autour des quatre grandes thématiques des journées d'études de Mannheim. La première concerne les questions relatives aux coûts de la guerre, avec toutes les difficultés qu'engendre l'éparpillement des sources écrites antiques en la matière. La deuxième s'intéresse à la nature de ces coûts, avec une attention particulière portée aux dépenses engendrées par les guerres maritimes. La troisième consiste à comparer des cas d'espèces de manière diachronique, depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'aux Temps Modernes. La quatrième et dernière thématique s'intéresse, quant à elle, à la nature des financements.

Klaus Meister propose en premier lieu un état de la question sur la situation financière d'Athènes au début de la guerre du Péloponnèse. Les connaissances à ce propos reposent essentiellement, il est vrai, sur les renseignements fournis par Thucydide. C'est ainsi que K. Meister, à partir de plusieurs extraits traduits, présente les ressources dont Athènes disposait et combien elles dépassaient celles de Sparte ; ces richesses ne se limitaient pas aux avoirs militaires et financiers de la cité, mais comprenaient également les revenus annuels versés par les cités alliées. Rebondissant sur ces informations, Jürgen Malitz propose un article portant sur le prix de la guerre et sur les finances d'Athènes selon Thucydide. Ces deux contributions ne se limitent fort heureusement pas à une simple lecture des extraits choisis, mais elles tentent d'apporter un regard critique sur le témoignage de Thucydide, dans lequel les chiffres eux-mêmes doivent être appréhendés avec la plus grande prudence.

La communication de Vincent Gabrielsen sur les coûts de la flotte athénienne à l'époque classique constitue une réflexion des plus intéressantes. Pour ce faire, l'auteur recense deux grandes catégories de coûts qui doivent être pris en compte. Tout d'abord, le prix de la flotte en tant que telle, c'est-à-dire les dépenses relatives à la construction des bateaux et à leur équipement. Ensuite les coûts d'exploitation des navires ; rameurs, matelots et soldats devaient être payés et les bateaux devaient être entretenus. Sur la base de sources littéraires et épigraphiques, l'auteur tente de rassembler toutes les informations permettant d'affiner la reconstitution de ces budgets, en essayant de tenir compte des évolutions inévitable entre le début du Ve siècle et la fin du IVe siècle.

Les soldes et compensations financières attribuées aux militaires grecs aux époques classique et hellénistique font l'objet de l'article de Friedrich Burrer. Le problème de cette question, comme le souligne l'auteur, est que contrairement à ce que nous pouvons observer pour l'époque de l'Empire romain, la Grèce classique et hellénistique n'a laissé que très peu de sources relatives au paiement des soldats. En outre, comme le rappelle Fr. Burrer, la qualité de soldat ne se définit pas forcément par rapport à la solde. En effet, la compensation financière pour les milices de citoyens n'apparaît que relativement tard dans l'Antiquité, et la situation de la fin du Bas-Empire romain ne peut, en aucun cas, être comparée aux réalités hellénistiques. Les quelques sources littéraires et épigraphiques connues permettent toutefois à l'auteur de dresser un tableau reprenant, pour chaque document pertinent retenu, la date à laquelle il renvoie, l'origine des soldats qui bénéficiaient d'une solde, ainsi que la quantité de numéraire qu'ils percevaient.

Holger Müller s'intéresse ensuite aux représentations diplomatiques dans le contexte des conflits armés de l'Antiquité. En effet, depuis que les sources parlent et jusqu'aujourd'hui, les cités ont toujours usé des services de représentants, de légats, de négociateurs, d'ambassadeurs ou autres diplomates, non seulement pour représenter les intérêts de la cité, mais également pour négocier avec les régions voisines. Or, l'envoi ou la réception de représentations diplomatiques pouvaient coûter beaucoup d'argent. C'est ce que s'emploie à expliquer l'auteur, notamment sur base du témoignage de Tite-Live.

Kai Brodersen s'attarde sur un passage de l'Oikonomika du Pseudo-Aristote traitant des économies des poleis. C'est plus particulièrement le deuxième livre qui retient l'attention de l'auteur. Il y étudie 77 exemples pratiques d'organisation financière des poleis ; la plupart des exemples concernent évidemment le IVe siècle. Hans van Wees s'attarde ensuite sur une cité particulière. La conduite et le financement des guerres maritimes de l'Erétrie archaïque constituent le coeur des recherches de l'auteur. Ces dernières furent entreprises sur base de deux fragments de marbre, datant de 525 av. J.-C., comportant toutes deux des inscriptions.

Léopold Migeotte aborde la question du financement de la guerre et de la défense dans les cités hellénistiques. L'auteur rappelle qu'en matière de financement militaire, les ressources sont essentiellement affectées à deux postes principaux : d'une part la défense permanente de la cité envers des ennemis isolés et non clairement identifiés, comme les pirates, d'autre part les guerres menées au niveau de l'état contre une autre puissance militaire. Il convient de constater que les sources antiques rapportent essentiellement les récits portant sur les grands conflits interétatiques, négligeant ou omettant souvent de mentionner les questions relatives à la protection permanente de la cité. Il est donc évident que même en temps de paix, certaines dépenses militaires sont inévitables afin de mieux préparer la guerre, comme l'exprime l'adage latin si vis pacem, para bellum ; c'est le cas de la construction de murailles et de forts, de la fabrication d'armes, de navires ou de machines de guerre. Il faut donc considérer qu'en cas de guerre, ces dépenses militaires de base en rencontrent d'autres comme, par exemple, le paiement des soldats.

La numismatique peut également révéler bien des choses sur le financement de la guerre. C'est dans cette optique que Wolfgang Szaivert a analysé ce type de sources. En effet, que ce soit au niveau des préparatifs de la guerre, de son déroulement ou de sa conclusion, ceux qui la mènent doivent toujours disposer de numéraire. La difficulté, pour le numismate, est de définir dans quelle mesure certaines monnaies ont été émises dans le but spécifique de contribuer au financement de la guerre. Pour tenter de repérer ces monnaies, l'auteur dresse une série de critères à étudier comme, par exemple, les légendes militaires ou la typologie de la monnaie. Le cas du denier romain est longuement étudié. Toujours en matière de numismatique, Olivier Picard enchaîne sur l'étude de la tétradrachme de Thasos et son utilisation durant les guerres balkaniques du Ier siècle avant J.-C. L'intérêt de l'étude de la diffusion de cette monnaie est qu'elle permet d'appréhender la guerre que le préfet de Macédoine mena contre les Thraces, épisode de l'histoire pour lequel les sources ne sont justement pas légion.

Effectuant un large bond dans le temps, Uwe Tresp s'intéresse à la manière dont les princes allemands du XVe siècle finançaient la conduite de leurs guerres. Le contexte est ici quelque peu différent des réalités antiques, ne serait-ce que dans la constitution même des troupes. Selon l'auteur, le recours toujours plus important à des mercenaires et le rôle toujours plus important joué par l'attrait de l'argent par les belligérants aurait sensiblement modifié la physionomie de la guerre, qui aurait mis en présence des armées toujours plus importantes, des sommes toujours plus considérables et des durées de conflits toujours plus longues. Il faut toutefois rester attentifs aux points de comparaisons envisagés, et ne pas oublier les réalités antiques dont les sources ont également livré des témoignages de guerres mettant en présence de grandes quantités d'hommes et d'argent, combattant dans des campagnes de longue durée. Le problème est que l'auteur envisage essentiellement une comparaison entre le début et la fin du Moyen Âge, alors que l'ouvrage ne présente précisément pas d'articles relatifs à la situation au début du Moyen Âge. À la lecture de cet article, le lecteur ne devra donc pas perdre de vue que l'auteur envisage ici des comparaisons strictement internes à l'époque médiévale et non pas avec l'Antiquité. Dans le sillage de cette communication, Niklot Klüssendorf continue quelque peu le voyage dans le temps pour arriver au XVIIIe siècle, en abordant les mécanismes du financement de la guerre durant l'époque moderne. Ceux-ci reposent sur trois piliers : l'utilisation des biens de l'exécutif de la guerre, c'est-à-dire du Trésor, l'obtention de fonds par le biais de la fiscalité en ce compris les prélèvements sur les populations conquises, et enfin l'emprunt.

Reinhard Wolters dresse, dans son article sur le triomphe et le butin durant la république romaine, le portrait d'une des pratiques symbolisant la victoire les plus marquées dans les imaginaires collectifs. En effet, combien de films hollywoodiens, combien d'ouvrages de toutes natures n'ont pas mis un point d'honneur à présenter, dans toute sa splendeur, cet exercice de démonstration de force qu'est la présentation en défilé du butin obtenu, à l'occasion des cérémonies de triomphe ? Essentiellement sur base des témoignages de Tite-Live, l'auteur tente de recadrer au mieux l'importance réelle du butin, non seulement d'un point de vue symbolique, mais surtout dans le contexte des recettes générales de l'État.

À l'issue d'une guerre, l'intemporelle notion de réparation des dommages est connue de tous, aussi bien des vainqueurs que des vaincus. Burkhard Meissner a choisi de l'aborder plus particulièrement dans la Grèce classique et hellénistique, dans le monde romain du début de l'époque hellénistique ainsi que dans le monde romain du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. Pour accentuer encore l'approche diachronique, l'auteur choisi de prendre comme point de comparaison la situation imposée à l'Allemagne au sortir de la première guerre mondiale, avec le Traité de Versailles. L'article suivant de Peter Kehne, vient compléter le sujet en abordant la question des réparations à l'époque de la Rome républicaine. L'auteur se pose plus spécifiquement la question de savoir si Rome imposait réellement un tribut à ses vaincus en guise de dédommagements de guerre, ou si d'autres critères entraient en ligne de compte. Pour P. Kehne, les chiffres des tributs reflètent moins les coûts engendrés par la guerre pour Rome, que la santé et la vigueur économique du vaincu. Enfin, pour clôturer la liste des communications, Jutta Nowosadtko porte un regard sur les poids qu'engendraient l'entretien et l'administration des occupations militaires pour les populations civiles locales, aux XVIIe et XVIII siècles.

Il convient de mettre l'accent sur l'abondance, pour chaque communication, de références et de notes, ce qui n'est pas toujours le cas dans les publications d'actes de colloque. En outre, un important index, commun à tous les articles, est disponible en fin de volume. Force est également de constater que bon nombre d'articles concernent plus spécifiquement le rôle et le coût de la flotte dans l'Antiquité. Pour mieux se rendre compte de ce que pouvait représenter la constitution de ces flottes, il nous a semblé intéressant d'établir un lien supplémentaire avec le Museum für Antike Schiffahrt, situé à Mayence.¹ Il présente, de manière très savante et très pédagogique, des reconstitutions de navires de la flotte de Germanie à l'époque romaine impériale. Ces reconstitutions grandeur nature, peuvent également contribuer à comprendre les coûts engendrés par les flottes de la Rome impériale, ce qui va totalement dans le sens de l'esprit original du colloque de Mannheim.

Table des matières :

1.   PFERDEHIRT Barbara, Das Museum für Antike Schiffahrt. Ein Forschungsbereich des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums I, Mainz, 1995.

It is now seventy years since Syme's Roman Revolution made its lasting impact on the study of the Augustan Age. While the post-war generation was largely engaged with examinations of its main thesis, the transformation of the Republic and its political struggles into the one party state of Augustus, the last twenty years or so have witnessed a series of studies that came to fill voids left by Syme. To name only a notable few, P. Zanker's The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (1988), K. Galinsky's Augustan Culture (1996) and R. MacMullen's Romanization in the Time of Augustus (2000) all illuminated important aspects of the age. Now Andrew Wallace-Hadrill shows us how different it was to be a Roman -- not necessarily of the ruling class -- in the Late Republic and under the Early Empire, with the transformation of society, culture and identity. To realise how much this book reflects present-day concerns one should read it alongside Keith Thomas' wonderful and exactly contemporaneous The Ends of Life. Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England: for instance their discussions of the spread of consumer goods, luxury wares and fashions show one of the most amazing historical parallels one is ever likely to encounter.

The book consists of four parts, two chapters in each. The first, 'Cultures and identities', starts with the introductory, as it were, 'Culture, identity and power' (3-37), exploring the conceptual underpinnings. Rather than following the outdated models of nineteenth-century cultural superiority, or of the more modern notion of 'creolisation,' Wallace-Hadrill points to the parallel of bilingualism (or rather multilingualism) and sees hellenisation and romanisation as processes of code-switching, in fact 'two closely interrelated aspects of the same phenomenon' (26). 'Code-switching' does not require value-judgments and is free from the constraints of a chronological sequence. Hellenic influence was present in Rome from the very beginnings, and the picture of the uncouth Romans was a rhetorical construct of the second century BCE. Yet the replacement of old by new elites is very real: '"Being Roman" is only superficially the same thing in 100 CE as in ...100 BCE ... ' (36).

'Dress, language and identity' (38-70) is very much about the relationship with the Other. The toga becomes a conscious marker in contrasting the Roman with the Greek in the period of 'hellenisation' and its 'classic' form emerges under Augustus. Though on certain occasions it was appropriate to dress in Greek style, the accurately worn toga sent a clear message of character and of intellectual qualities. In an interesting discussion of heroic nudity we are reminded that Octavian, after a brief flirtation with it, adopted as Augustus the compromise of the 'hip-mantle'. (One regrets here that Wallace-Hadrill does not discuss and offer his view of the Terme Ruler.) While dress marked in the first place Roman as against Greek, with language it was the other way round. It is here that the socio-linguistic concept of 'code-switching' comes to the fore. Most significant here are the changes that both languages underwent: in order to become an imperial language Latin had to be standardised -- and involved in Greek scholarly polemics between anomalia and analogia, while the Greeks were discussing the proper meaning of hellenismos.¹

Part ii, 'Building identities', puts forward the central arguments from archaeology in 'Roman Italy: between Roman, Greek, and local' (73-143). That consistent patterns underlie the variety is demonstrated by a survey of some important case-studies, ranging from Celtic Oleggio through the Oscan mountain sanctuaries to Praeneste, the Secco valley and finally to Pompeii and its comparison with Pietrabbondante. It is the different aspects of hellenisation, romanisation -- and in some cases Etruscan and Oriental influences can also be perceived -- and their varying degrees of absorption combined with a range of local traditions that construct the rich harmony of a great orchestra consisting of many different instruments. An important concept is autoromanizzazione, especially in monumental building as an expression of communal identity. All this of course without losing sight of Roman political and military might that enabled much of the boom up to the Social War. The other aspect of 'Roman, Greek, and local' in this chapter is bilingualism or trilingualism (one remembers Ennius' tria corda). Here again, Latin was never imposed from above, but there were abundant incentives for Italians to learn both Latin and Greek. Here one must also distinguish, for example, between Oscan and Umbrian; it is the different situations that determine the use of the various languages, as well as the adoption of the Latin script. The famous Social War coin (depicted on the cover) of the Italian bull vanquishing the Roman wolf is in fact 'a mirror image of Roman coinage' (89), and there are copious examples of Latin penetrating the Italic dialects. And surely there is little truth in the widely held view of bilingualism being an elite phenomenon -- it is as so often the elite attestation that leads us astray. Influences were long-term, gradual, and shaped by local moulds.

'Vitruvius: building Roman identity' (144-210) analyses the work in terms of Greek theory and Roman context and practice, of ratio and consuetudo. Taking account of social and political structures enables a new definition of Roman-Italic contrasted with Greek identity. Yet Vitruvius' juxtaposition of Greek and traditional Roman architecture is his own artificial construct, and it is responsible for much in the work and for some omissions, as, famously, amphitheatres. It is enlightening to see that the contrast between Greek and Roman theatres is very much a geometrical game -- as is so much of ancient mathematics, one may add. There follows an excellent discussion of the replacement of wooden theatres by stone and its implications for Roman society and politics. Next, baths and gymnasia. Rather than a contrast, the former are an evolution of the latter. But what really matters are the social uses and the intellectual associations of these institutions, and the latter often were associated with paradigms of morality.² Last, discussions of the town house and country villa bring out once again the deliberately deployed (rather than opposed) Greek and Roman elements, perhaps nowhere better to be observed than at the Villa of the Mysteries.

Part iii is about 'Knowledge and power'. Three different aspects of 'Knowing the ancestors' (213-258) are explored. First, the regard of the nobles for their maiores received renewed emphasis by the erection of statues and monuments whose permanent display was a leap from the traditional funeral masks. Yet, as Sallust reminds us, the reference to the hallowed memory of the ancestors is acceptable only if it is indeed a spur to virtue, rather than an excuse for the abuse of power. Next, while in speeches the ancestors are invoked in order to justify contemporary policies it is above all in Cicero's philosophical works where the gap between the Good Old Days and the present is made evident. The nobility's declining expertise in religion and civil law was replaced by antiquarian study, constantly re-defining the mos maiorum. Perhaps the new calendars and time, first under Caesar and then under Augustus, are the best examples of the wish to represent radical change as a return to tradition. Third and most importantly, a revolution in the structure of knowledge and a new specialisation deprived the elites of their traditional dominance. While in the Good Old Days a Cato could master all that a Roman needed to know, now one had to refer to the authority of experts in the various branches of knowledge -- and Augustus could employ them for his own ends.

'Knowing the city' (259-312) is played on the home ground of the author. First, the Seven Hills: as so often -- e.g., there were seventeen contenders for a place among the Seven Sages (Diog. La. 1.41-42) -- it was the number that was fixed rather than the actual list. Then, the four Varronian regions and the vici of republican Rome, in a city that resisted the temptations of a Hippodamian grid: how well could one know the city? It was Julius Caesar and his reduction of the number of the recipients of the corn-dole that first required detailed information based on the neighbourhoods of Rome. This, and the encounter with the magnificent cityscapes of Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamum and other Hellenistic centres were instrumental in the Augustan revolution. Despite our very limited information about the establishment of the fourteen regiones on August 1st, 7 BCE³ and their connexion with the vici, there is no question that they were a cardinal component in the Augustan scheme, as witnessed e.g. by the numerous surviving monuments -- a fraction of the lost ones -- of the vicomagistri. The last sections of the chapter discuss the Severan marble plan and the fragments of its predecessors. It appears that they were only display pieces standing in for much richer and more detailed information stored on perishable material. Who would profit from such exhaustive information? Wallace-Hadrill provides the answer, in some cases certain, in others perhaps somewhat speculative: certainly those in charge of the distribution of grain and other commodities, and no less certainly the vigiles; very probably the aediles, the curatores aquarum, and quite probably the praefectus urbi and also the praetorian prefects. The disorder aided by the lack of information, and the ensuing political upheavals of the Republic, were not to recur. The Severan marble plan and its predecessors were above all symbols of the control of the city brought about by the Augustan revolution.

The last part, 'The consumer revolution', starts with a discussion of 'Luxury and the consumer revolution' (315-355). The modern historian, living in a society of consumerism and of conspicuous consumption, tends to focus on the historiographical aspect of Roman discourses about luxury, moral decline and the sumptuary laws. Yet at the time these were serious social and economic concerns. Here Wallace-Hadrill broadens his scope and discusses early modern discourses concerning luxury, from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits to Voltaire and Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Dr Johnson. Europe, in both the northern monarchies and the states of Italy, introduced sumptuary legislation in the course of some 600 years. It was the transformation of the economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, characterised by the extraordinary rise in the quantity and quality of consumer goods and in their diffusion over the different classes of society, that brought about a sea-change in attitudes, giving economic considerations priority over moral concerns. Another factor is the pursuit of fashion, often reflecting the tensions between social rank and wealth. Roman sumptuary laws centred mostly on the details of lavish feasting, entirely neglecting economically far more significant issues, such as the magnificent houses of the elite with their luxurious furnishings or their grand funerary monuments, thereby betraying both the laws' function as social discourse and their Greek origins -- indeed, closely connected to the Greek discourse of τρυφή and the decline of states. Dress, a matter of sumptuary legislation in many other societies, never became an issue in Rome with its regulations concerning political rank, as indicated by the stripes and other features of the toga. Also, in Rome attempts at conserving social differentiation (such as gold rings) were directed against the pressure of the newly wealthy. Yet as that arch-conservative Tiberius already realised there was no point in sumptuary legislation, and in the event Tacitus could, perhaps over-optimistically, announce the demise of luxury by his time. Since my summary of this chapter, in particular, fails to do justice to both the richness of material and the depth of thought in it, it is perhaps in order to emphasise again its main point: we have to contemplate the Romans' discourse about luxury on their own terms, free from our preconceptions, to see both the seriousness of their approach and the selection of their targets.

The last, and longest, chapter 'Waves of fashion' (356-440), is a detailed analysis of some categories of luxury items, both known from literature and richly represented in archaeological finds, such as bronze candelabra, bronze (and downmarket clay) lamps, various metal vessels, pottery, couches (bronze and ivory, but also more expensive silver and cheaper bone -- and the author stresses (435) that the list could have been expanded by an assortment of marble furniture), Herms and many other items. I will limit myself to the two main conclusions drawn from a very wide range of evidence. For one, fashions have not only a 'trickle-down' effect, but there are also sub-luxury items, made no less to distance one from one's social inferiors as to imitate one's betters. Though not to be compared with the industrial revolution, the period's wide variety had most significant effects on the economy, a fact ignored by our sources, intent as they were on moralising. The other main point is the chronology: the heyday of Hellenistic imports is in the late Republic, not unconnected with the activities of Italian negotiatores in such places as Delos. The second phase is the Augustan production in Italy, not blindly imitating, but naturalising, as it were, and developing the various products. Finally, in the early Empire, Italian products were exported to fill the increasing demand in the provinces, generating also local production: it is hardly helpful to term the first phase hellenisation and the last romanisation. Luxury creates its own language (and its solecisms), and the changes in that language are part of the larger revolution.

This is a great work of synthesis, building, as all the best works of its kind, both on previous groundwork by the author and on (generously acknowledged) foundations laid by a host of other scholars. Though its view is panoramic it is both very much focused on the city of Rome, and to a lesser degree on Italy -- hence Rome's rather than the Roman cultural revolution -- and kept very much at eye level. No doubt every reader -- not least this reviewer -- will be grateful for having learned a great number of details and having become more familiar with a number of issues. But, more importantly, this book is not only an assembly of evidence, however learned, but also a thoughtful engagement with that evidence. Nowhere more so than in the 'Epilogue: a cultural revolution?' (441-454). As was hinted at the beginning of this review, the time when the historian can discuss this period without wrestling with Syme's Roman Revolution has not yet come. Here we get discussion not only of the elite, but of the newly expanded citizen body and the new meaning of citizenship, characterised by a new pride and a shared culture. This is perhaps the basic meaning of the revolution here discussed: the forging of a new citizen body in which not only is the old elite replaced by a new one, but where sub-elite groups are coming into their own and where a new cultural language, and a new identity, absorbing constituents of 'hellenisation' and 'romanisation', come into being.

The book is almost⁴ faultlessly produced and it is well served by its numerous black and white illustrations, which are as much part of the book as is the text, but it contains a feature I do not recall ever seeing before: the 31 excellent colour plates in the middle of the book do not contribute new material, but are colour versions, in some cases slightly enlarged, of some of the illustrations distributed in their proper places all over the book. I wonder whether any reader will be able to refrain from speculating about the negotiations between author and publisher that brought about this oddity. (A hint: in the text the references are only to the black and white illustrations, not to the colour plates.)

1.   If the reviewer may introduce an example of his own, it seems significant that Ptolemy of Ascalon, in all probability an Augustan author, wrote On Hellenismos, i.e. On Correct Diction (in 15 books), and that Theodorus of Gadara, Tiberius' teacher of rhetoric, wrote On Questions in Pronunciation (in 3 books): it was precisely in a rather incompletely hellenised part of the Empire where proper hellenismos had to be sanctioned.
2.   It is correctly maintained that the Romans had no equivalent to the rite de passage of the ephebeia, associated with the gymnasium. Yet one wonders whether short discussions of the Augustan Troia and iuventus were not in order here.
3.   Despite the prominent place given to Varro in this chapter Wallace-Hadrill does not consider the possible influence of that scholar with an obsession for hebdomads on the division, for which see J. Geiger, The First Hall of Fame. A Study of the Statues in the Forum Augustum (Mnem. Suppl. 295, Leiden and Boston 2008), 106.
4.   Misprints are few and trivial (though, as in so many English-language books, not so few in the German items of the bibliography), but a few minor mistakes will have to be corrected in a second edition. An alloy is not 'a new chemical compound' (7); 7 BCE is not 'dated by Augustus' eleventh consulship', rather he had been eleven times consul before that date (247); at 293, second paragraph, the syntax is mixed up: though 'he', 'his', 'he' and 'him' all refer to the subject, Suetonius, there can be no doubt that they were meant to refer to Augustus, nowhere mentioned in the entire paragraph. The debate about luxury in Tac. ann. 3.52-55 is correctly dated to 22 at 329 and 351, but to 23 at 330 and 333. To follow Athenaeus in referring to 'Nicolaus the Peripatetic' (357; viz., of Damascus) is less than reader-friendly.

To set the record straight, I was expecting to review a new critical edition or translation of Suetonius's De Vita Caesarum. To my surprise, I found an edited volume of twelve concise biographies, largely written by some of the most respected and influential names in the field, on most of the major Roman emperors from Augustus through to Justinian -- if you count the latter as a Roman emperor (which is, of course, how he thought of himself). So, the title is somewhat misleading (though potentially more so for the classicist or ancient historian than that most enigmatic and ill-defined of audiences, the 'general' or 'non-specialist' reader). Perhaps Lives of the Emperors, especially in view of the Byzantine ruler Justinian's inclusion in the volume, might have been more appropriate.

Barrett's edited volume is the usual Blackwell paperback fare. It is light, easy to handle, not too expensive, with an attractive typeface. For a book of somewhat indeterminate audience, there are relatively few pictures, save for a small black and white numismatic representations of the subject emperor at the beginning of each chapter, and a handful of black and white photographs of relevant sculptural representations, or other items of interest, in the text. A timeline, with 'featured' emperors helpfully in bold typeface, is found at the volume's beginning, together with important family trees and some line maps. References are in-text and keyed (in the case of modern works) to a not particularly compendious "Further Reading" section at the end of each chapter. I am unsure of the rationale here, but I would have thought that these selections of modern scholarship could have been more authoritative, especially for those new to the subject matter. A few endnotes accompany each of the chapters. The volume includes a short glossary towards the end of the book, in keeping with the work's popular audience, while a fourteen-page index rounds out proceedings.

At this point, it will be worthwhile to run a rule over the volume's contents, which are divided into twelve essays preceded by an introduction by the editor. Chapter 1 (Werner Eck, translated by Ruth Tubbesing) deals with Augustus, Chapter 2 (Greg Rowe) with Tiberius, Chapter 3 (Anthony A. Barrett) with Caligula, Chapter 4 (Donna W. Hurley) with Claudius, Chapter 5 (Miriam T. Griffin) with Nero, Chapter 6 (Barbara Levick) with Vespasian, Chapter 7 (Hadrian) with Mary T. Boatwright, Chapter 8 (Anthony R. Birley) with Marcus Aurelius, Chapter 9 (David Potter) with Septimius Severus, Chapter 10 (Simon Corcoran) with Diocletian, Chapter 11 (Noel Lenski) with Constantine, and Chapter 12 (James Allan Evans) with Justinian. There is no concluding or synthesizing chapter, which I feel constitutes something of an oversight given the complexity of the themes introduced in the volume (for example, the concept of dynastic succession appears regularly, while reconstructing the actions of a 'bad' emperor emerge as particularly problematic if the sources are mainly hostile). It will be noted that some of the chapters deal not only with the life and reign of their subject, but also with their immediate successor(s).

Some reasonably important emperors missed out all together. A chapter on Clodius Albinus might not have proved enlightening, but the omission of a life of Trajan is puzzling. The optimus princeps, the conqueror of Dacia and Parthia, the emperor whose military exploits encapsulated the soldier-emperor ideal (for better or for worse), the statesman who beautified the Empire's capital, the reformer who set the Empire on a path of relative stability fails via his administrative and relatively progressive reforms (at least briefly acknowledged on p. 155) fails to warrant his own chapter. Furthermore, why does the volume end with Justinian, as if he were the capstone of the entire story of the Caesars? Barrett (p. 2) justifies concluding with Justinian since his reign represents a "link between the Roman empire and the Byzantine empire that followed, or ... into which it metamorphosed". Yet I remain unsure whether Justinian is the best 'link' between the two eras. Moreover, does anyone ever call Justinian a Caesar? To my way of thinking, Justinian belongs firmly in the Byzantine era. Perhaps Theodosius I, the last ruler of East and West after crushing Eugenius's ephemeral usurpation in 394, might have been a more appropriate link.

A review usually calls for some quibbling on the content of the contents. But, with a book of this broad nature, to devote too much space to such concerns seems a trifle arbitrary and probably unwarranted. What follows is a (hopefully) concise of what is new and/or interesting in the various chapters, with a few technical remarks as appropriate.

Chapter 1 (Augustus/Eck) represents a concise overview of Octavian's rise and his major achievements as emperor. There is little new here, though it is worthwhile to single out the importance that, according to Eck, Augustus placed on ensuring the continuity of the imperial bloodline, a theme which crops up in several chapters (p. 33). Some up-to-date archaeological evidence is pleasingly adduced in the context of the Varus disaster of AD 9 (p. 29). I would have liked to see more on the annona, which warrants only a line on p. 31 -- odd given that imperial oversight of the grain supply was one of the most long-lasting initiatives of Augustus's reign.¹ Julia is interestingly described as being guilty of "unconventional life choices" (p. 35), though details are given by Rowe in the following chapter (p. 44). The use of "legionnaires" for "legionary" is a little grating, though more the fault of the translator than Eck (p. 14).

Chapter 2 (Tiberius/Rowe) makes much more use of ancient sources, though emphasis on Velleius over Tacitus with respect to Tiberius's accession is unusual (p. 48). With regard to the sources, Rowe makes the point that Tiberius may indeed have hesitated to accept the principate, but later writers (e.g., Tacitus and Suetonius) knew that he would rule for twenty-three years, and thus saw hypocrisy in Tiberius's initial reluctance (pp. 38-39). The chapter is a rehabilitation of sorts: Tiberius was not responsible for Agrippa Postumus's death (p. 48), while Drusus was "perhaps murdered through Sejanus's agency" (p. 56). Rowe suggests that Sejanus probably hoped to be a regent to a child emperor, rather than an emperor in his own right (p. 57). Furthermore, there is an interesting emphasis on Tiberius philhellenism, which is not usually discussed in any great detail (p. 55).²

Chapter 3 (Caligula/Barrett) represents one of the more enjoyable chapters. Barrett claims that Tiberius "probably" intended, after his death, to let the senate choose between Gaius or Tiberius Gemellus (p. 60), although he argues that Tiberius was preparing Caligula for public duty on Capri (p. 62). Barrett sees Caligula as the first emperor to come to power on the basis of bribing the Praetorian Guard. Despite Caligula's ephemeral reign, Barrett looks at the constitutional developments of the Principate and makes the important claim that he was the first emperor to be given "total imperial powers" at the outset (p. 65), and thus was the first emperor "in the proper sense of the word" (p. 66). Of real interest is the assertion that Claudius may have had something to do with Caligula's assassination, and that "Claudius was certainly looked upon as a usurper" (p. 82). In all, the chapter is largely a rehabilitation of the eccentric rather than truly mad Caligula -- and is quite a convincing rehabilitation too.

Chapter 4 (Claudius/Hurley) represents a marked contrast, especially regarding Claudius's accession. Although Hurley acknowledges Barrett's position, she sees Claudius as "fearful" at the time of the assassination (p. 84), and "living in fear" under Caligula (p. 89) -- perhaps all the more reason to want to be rid of Caligula? Still, Hurley points out that the Praetorians who killed Caligula were executed (p. 90). Is this possible if Claudius was a party to the conspiracy, or do we need to re-examine Claudius's character? (a more Machiavellian Claudius does have a certain appeal.) Hurley plays it straight with the sources, perhaps overly so. Silly anecdotes on the part of the sources are not really put into their vituperative context, which jars with Hurley's overall attempt to show that Claudius was not the passive fool described in the sources, but an "unseemly figure" (on account of his alleged cerebral palsy) that was "comparatively harmless" (p. 106) and, what is more, diligent with regard to his imperial office. On the centralization often attributed to Claudius, Hurley suggests that this was not necessarily a policy of Claudius, but a logical "accretion" of powers and prerogatives to the principate (p. 100). This is fair enough.

Chapter 5 (Nero/Griffin) characterizes Nero, not as a depraved monster, but as "the greatest showman of them all" (p. 109) -- a kind of P.T. Barnum of the ancient world. Griffin deals with Nero in a slightly curious way: there is praise for his eastern policy (p. 108), and his abolition of the more arbitrary aspects of Claudius's reign (p. 115), but there is also a great deal of emphasis on Nero's 'art'. Griffin credits the notion of Nero practising hard at his singing, putting weights on his chest to build vocal strength, and using enemas and strict diets (p. 119).³ Furthermore, the rebel Vindex especially vexed Nero by calling him a bad lyre-player (p. 126).⁴ These tales, it could be argued, cast Nero as a comic buffoon, a bad actor who has cast himself in his own bad play, and are perhaps not meant to be taken quite so seriously.⁵ There is also the slightly odd statement that "Had he only been allowed to be professional musician rather than an emperor, how much better it would have been for Rome" (p. 129). In all, Griffin paints the picture of a loveable rogue.

Chapter 6 (Vespasian/Levick) focuses on the rise of the Flavians from rather obscure origins to masters of the Roman world. The chapter also deals with Vespasian's respective successors, his sons Titus and Domitian. In that context, there is a solid treatment of Vespasian's dynastic principles. According to Levick, Vespasian was really in the right place at the right time: in command of armies, in the East, controlling Egypt, while others perhaps had stronger claims to the principate (p. 134). Of interest, too, are Levick's insightful thoughts on the proposed marriage of Julia to Domitian: "the relation of son-in-law put the groom firmly in the younger generation, and Domitian may have felt all along that he should have been his brother's partner in power" (p. 151).⁶ This chapter is a bit dry, but nevertheless learned. Still, it is high time that ancient scholars avoid statements such as the "homosexual Mucianus" (p. 149), which ignores some of the important nuances of ancient sexuality.⁷

Chapter 7 (Hadrian/Boatwright) tries to describe the most complex of Roman emperors in a succinct format -- and succeeds. There is a streak of admiration for the subject that perhaps distorts some aspects of the emperor's character and rule but, for the most part, the perfectionist, hyper-critical and cultivated character of Hadrian comes to the fore. There are a few aspects worth discussing here. Boatwright writes that Hadrian became interested in "wine and young boys ... so as to ingratiate himself with Trajan" (p. 162). But, from what we know of Hadrian in his later life, he was naturally predisposed towards such pursuits (Antinous, for example, is discussed on pp. 168-169 and 176-177).⁸ Although it is generally thought that Hadrian had no time for Sabina, his wife, Boatwright claims that he "he seems possessive of his wife" and dismissed the praetorian prefect Septicius Clarus and Suetonius "because they had treated Sabina more informally than befitted the imperial court" (p. 169).⁹ Hadrian was not the sort of man to brook any disrespect, so this incident perhaps says more about Hadrian's inflexible standards than anything about his personal affection for his wife.

Chapter 8 (Marcus Aurelius/Birley) is a very good snapshot of the Antonines, from Antoninus Pius's adoption by Hadrian, Marcus's co-rule with Verus, through to Commodus. There is little that needs to be said here -- the reader is in safe hands. Of interest is Birley's observation that Hadrian's "two-tier succession system" (i.e., Antoninus Pius + Marcus Aurelius = Tiberius + Germanicus), the main difference being that Hadrian's vision came to fruition (p. 184). Finally, Birley contends that there was "never a so-called adoptive principle" (p. 201). Indeed, that Marcus was the first emperor since Vespasian to have a natural son ensured that Commodus would succeed him, regardless of his character.

Chapter 9 (Septimius Severus/Potter) emphasizes the enigmatic nature of Severus, the man and the emperor. Potter looks closely at the emperor's reception among his peers, and highlights the 'foreign' aspect of the man, who spoke Latin with a strong Punic accent. This has implications for Potter's claim that Severus was instrumental in establishing "greater cultural unity" in the ethnically and culturally diverse empire (p. 218). The chapter includes a useful discussion of Commodus's reign described (pp. 208-210), in addition to the events leading up to Severus's imperial triumph. Aside from some slightly glib language about Commodus's supposed gladiatorial activities (p. 209), there is little to warrant any discussion or criticism here.

Chapter 10 (Diocletian/Corcoran) does an outstanding job at describing the complexities inherent in Diocletian's rise to power, and his founding of an imperial college, first a diarchy, then a tetrarchy. Overall, Diocletian is defensibly portrayed as a "conservator and restorer", not as a "radical reformer" (p. 235). Corcoran makes some especially cogent remarks throughout this chapter. While some see Diocletian "crafting a deliberately meritocratic college that was ... anti-dynastic", Corcoran argues, and rightly in my view, that it is one thing to adlect tour own sons-in-law as opposing to existing sons-in-law (p. 232). To sum up, "Historically, emperors had chosen sons as heirs whenever possible, and only lack of sons forced the adoption of outsiders". There are a few puzzling comments. On p. 238, the author notes that the "curly-bearded Greek style of the past 150 years gives way to a severe, trimmed, military look" under Diocletian -- but what of Caracalla, who is similarly represented?¹⁰ I am perplexed as to why "Caesar" and "Augustus", as imperial titles, are italicized.

Chapter 11 (Constantine/Lenski) begins with an excellent recounting of the tortured political history of the imperial college post Diocletian and Maximian's simultaneous abdication (pp. 260-263). Constanine's religiosity is unavoidable, and Lenski cannot decide, with good reason, whether the emperor's Christianity and "crypto-pagan" features was an example of "realpolitik" or "some deeper psychological ambivalence" (p. 276). There is some repetition of imperial administration as per the chapter on Diocletian (p. 271), while comments on Church architecture, however interesting, are not greatly biographically relevant (pp. 268-270). My only other gripes are technical. Lenski's use of "count of the imperial funds" and "count of the royal estate" is rather odd for titles beginning with comes (p. 171).¹¹ The full Latin might have been better, together with an explanation of the meaning. Likewise, duces translated as "dukes" seems anachronistic, however etymologically sound.¹² In sort, there is a lot of material covered here -- even The Da Vinci Code gets a mention (p. 278).

Chapter 12 (Justinian/Evans) completes the volume. As stated previously, a life of Justinian seems an odd fit at first glance -- a supposition borne out from reading the chapter. There is certainly nothing awry with the material contained within. It is just that the subject matter has as little to do with Augustus as a chapter on Arminius would have to do with Bismark. Witness a discussion of Christian controversies relating to Christ's nature (pp. 281-282). Some might maintain a contrary view -- and I will respect that. On p. 285, there is a curious mention of "the good old House of Theodosius", even though this is first mention of Theodosius I in the book! Of course, the story of Justinian is also the story of his rages-to-riches wife Theodora, while Belisarius's wars against the Vandals in Africa and the Goths in Italy are discussed, together with activities in the East. Perhaps, there is not as much on Justinian the man as some readers might wish.

Suffice it to say that each of the individual chapter authors knows their material well and communicates, in general, their individual viewpoints on aspects on their subjects' reigns with confidence and authority. Of course, some chapters are better written than others, but not one singles itself out for especial criticism. Indeed, it is a credit to each of the individual authors that they have taken the task seriously (unlike that exhibited by authors in similar volumes), and have been mindful of the demands placed on scholars to craft entries that are meaningful yet still accessible. Some essays follow largely longitudinal path, such as Eck's piece on Augustus, while others, such as Evans' essay on Justinian, are somewhat more thematic. Which approach is preferable depends largely on personal taste. What really impresses is that, despite the obvious temporal gaps between some of the essays, the whole thing works rather well. The editor has done a sterling job in instructing the authors to provide almost seamless links between the chapters. And the authors have carried out their tasks well. There are few typographical errors, except for p. 74: "one of wealthiest women"; and p. 256: Augustus and Caesar italicized but also, oddly, Caesars (Caesares later on the same page).

In sum, the work largely achieves what it set out to do, that is, to provide an overview of the reigns of important Roman emperors. Once again, my main issue is the selection of the emperors, which is never really explained, aside from some brief comments by Barrett on p. 2. To be frank, there is not an especially great deal of interest here for those familiar with the material and broader themes -- save for some useful insights on occasion into matters of controversy. It is therefore difficult to judge the book's appeal and indeed utility to the not-so-well initiated. For what it is worth, I would venture to say that there is plenty here for the "non-specialist reader" (p. 2) and, even if such readers are not covering entirely new ground, they will at least be impressed with the care taken in crafting the individual entries.

1.   On Augustus and the annona, see, for example, Cass. Dio 52.24.6, where an equestrian prefect of the grain supply (praefectus annonae) was appointed towards the end of Augustus's reign.
2.   This interesting topic is now covered by S. H. Rutledge, "Tiberius' Philhellenism", CW 101 (2008), 453-467.
3.   Suet. Ner. 20.1.
4.   Suet. Ner. 41.1.
5.   On this theme, see, for example, E. Champlin, Nero (Cambridge, MA/London, 2003), 149, where Nero's marriage to the eunuch Sporus is depicted as a conscious farce.
6.   On the possibility of a marriage between Julia and Domitian, see K. H. Waters, "The Character of Domitian", Phoenix 18 (1964), 59-60, who suggests there might have been "dynastic reasons" for Domitian to have married Julia; see also id., "The Second Dynasty of Rome", Phoenix 17 (1963), 198-218; G. Townend, "Some Flavian Connections", JRS 51 (1961), 54.
7.   See H. N. Parker, "The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and Sexuality for Classicists", Arethusa 34 (2001), 313-362.
8.   I would admit, however, that Trajan's same-sex tastes were perhaps in a slightly different vein to those of Hadrian. If his later conduct is anything to go by, Hadrian was more interested in the traditional (and supposedly more cerebral) Athenian model of the erastes and the eromenos, as witnessed in his relationship with Antinous; see A. R. Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor (London/New York, 1997), 2. Trajan's approach may have been somewhat less refined.
9.   On this, see HA Hadr. 11.3.
10.   For a sculptural representation of Caracalla, see B. Andreae, Art of Rome, trans. R. E. Wolf (New York, 1977), pl. 109.
11.   Presumably these titles refer to the comes sacrarum largitionum and the comes rerum privatarum respectively.
12.   I also wonder about calling the Sassanid king a "Shah" (p. 275), even if the word is closer to the Persian. This does not seem to be usual, at least from my reading of ancient Persian history. Evans also uses this word in his chapter on Justinian (pp. 285 and 297).