Bryn Mawr Classical Review

[Chapter titles are listed at the end of the review.]

Mary Beard's wonderfully engaging book about Pompeii is the answer to what to read before one's first visit to the site or what to assign one's students to interest them in the breadth of fields that pertain to the study of antiquity. The "Introduction" is a fine survey of what we know today about ancient Pompeii, and it is guaranteed to draw the attention of general readers -- the imprint of a breast, burnt loaves of bread in ovens, paint-pots and buckets of plaster left behind on a scaffold, and a tethered guard dog that failed to escape. Skeletons reveal infectious diseases, spinal disorders, and tartar on everyone's teeth, a record of ubiquitous bad breath in ancient Pompeii. Beard explains terms and the names of gates, streets, and houses, as well as why numbers were eventually assigned to houses. She gives dates of excavation, linking these to Pompeii's entry into the world of tourism and popular culture, reminding the reader that the city has not always been what it is now.¹

Beard presents questions, and notes conflicting viewpoints about the answers. For example:did Pompeii decline as a result of a social revolution that occurred after the earthquake of 62? Why would the town have been under repair for nearly 20 years? Did earthquakes continue during that time? Didn't the coastline shift, as it did at Herculaneum? She also points out how much we know about Pompeii from archaeological and epigraphical evidence, and how much of that evidence has been lost through 18th-century digging, tourism, the Allied bombing in 1943, and general neglect.

In the first chapter, "Living in an Old City," Beard focuses on the history of Pompeii, particularly in the phases preceding that of the AD 79 destruction. Campania had strong Etruscan and Greek undertones from the 6th century BC onwards, and the region wasmulti-lingual , to judge from evidence like a Latin message written in Greek letters (p. 11). Pompeii and its neighbors were allies of Rome by the early 3rd century BC. After Mummius defeated Corinth in 146 BC, he gave Pompeii some kind of trophy, on whose base was an inscription in Oscan, the native pre-Roman language of the region.² The oldest part of the walled city is in the southwest, and eventually some grand houses were built along the western wall, commanding fine views of the sea. An interior house-wall incorporates an Etruscan column from a 6th-century-BC sanctuary; elsewhere, 2nd-century Etruscan terracotta reliefs from a sanctuary were reused as decoration in a garden wall. The 9,700-square-foot House of the Faun, at least 200 years old in AD 79, had a mosaic floor showing a scene from Greek history: Alexander the Great defeating Darius. Beard does not mention that at the bottom of the tumultuous scene of fleeing and dying Persians were 3 charming Nilotic scenes, rarely remarked upon because all the figured mosaics from this house were removed from the floors and installed on walls in the Naples Archaeological Museum.³ And in the architecture and decoration of its Forum and public buildings, Pompeii is clearly tied to Rome.

In "Street Life" (ch. 2) Beard observes that beneath the romance of rediscovered Pompeii lies a dirty city that produced some 6,500,000 kilos (14,300,000 pounds) of human feces and urine each year. One graffito warned passersby to "keep it in till you've passed this spot" (p. 56). Beard describes the streets, the shop signs (20 food and drink outlets within 600 meters [650 yards]) of each other, ads, noises (all night long), smells, public fountains (there were 40 of them, and few lived more than 80 meters [260 feet] from a fountain). She even notes a study of one-way streets in Pompeii. Beard brings alive the people, the markets, the colors, and the "children at their lessons, beggars plying for cash, traders and hucksters of all kinds, or local officials at their business" (p. 77). "All those statues" get only half a dozen lines of text (p. 77-8, 186), but these too deserve treatment equal to that given in these pages to so many other aspects of ancient Pompeii.

Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii (1834), a reconstruction of the House of the Tragic Poet, and recollections of the Satyrica by Petronius vividly introduce "House and Home" (ch. 3), bringing to life the entrance, the atrium, the food, and the houses themselves. Beard summarizes the evidence for the types of houses, which, like today's houses, have "a certain predictability to their layout" (p. 88). She includes rentals, dining, sleeping, and furniture, as well as images in a lararium, lamps, gardens, water, toilets, bone and bronze fittings for chests, and items that were in a chest at the time of the eruption. But courtyard and garden décor, for which there is so much evidence at Pompeii, is in need of greater emphasis.

In "Painting and Decorating" (ch. 4), Beard examines an unfinished room in the so-called House of the Painters at Work, then the black, white, blue, yellow, red, green, and orange paints found in the room, and the wide range of styles, subjects, programs, and decorative designs and patterns that have been found on the walls and columns of Pompeian houses. Criticizing the imposition of chronological development in the so-called Four Styles, Beard warns of the similarities among styles, the few survivals of the First and Second Styles, and touches upon the link between a room's use and its wall decoration. Some wall paintings enhance our understanding of ancient mythology; others give the illusion of a view; and still others are repeated enough times (some in both painting and mosaic) that they must evoke "well-known and 'quotable' masterpieces" (p. 144). Beard intersperses her narrative with remarks about modern impact and our incomplete perception of paintings cut out of walls and framed in the 18th century. She reminds us that the excellent appearance of the paintings in the Villa of the Mysteries are the result of "aggressive restoration" (p. 133) in 1909.

Beard humorously introduces "Earning a Living: Baker, Banker and Garum Maker" (ch. 5) by explaining how the home of a garum producer is identified by self-promoting mosaics in the atrium of his house. Beard covers grapes, olives, cereal crops, production, storage, slaves, farming, sheep, a cattle market, regulation of weights and measures, and light industry, but not much about the local ports or about foreign trade. There was, after all, a thriving trade in marble from Greece, and the skills of Greek artisans around the Bay of Naples were in great demand. To make her points, Beard enlists a wide range of archaeological material, such as finds from the Villa Regina near Boscoreale,⁴ and the tools and illustrations of dozens of crafts and trades found in the excavation of Pompeii. Her evidence ranges from painted shop signs, advertisements, and graffiti to carved memorials for a architect, a baker, and a pig-keeper. In the kitchen of a bakery (known as the House of the Chaste Lovers), a bird and a boar were cooking at the time of the eruption, a large decorated dining room probably served as a restaurant, and a stable beside the kitchen housed the delivery crew of five horses and donkeys that were fed oats and broadbeans.

"Who Ran the City?" (ch. 6) Here Beard tells a fascinating tale of election posters, precincts, and town council-members. There were probably about 2500 male voters -- no slaves, women, or children. The local government owned and rented out properties. Elected officials decreed the erection of public statues, folowing the rules that"old money always counted" (p. 204), and "public office of any sort entailed public generosity" (p. 212). It is particularly interesting that the so-called Building of Eumachia, which borrows many decorative details from important buildings in Rome, was sponsored by a local priestess.

"The Pleasures of the Body: Food, Wine, Sex and Baths" (ch. 7) begins with a description of a cage for a dormouse, but Beard gives no citations for this subject, which fascinated a number of visitors to the Royal Museum at Portici, including J. J. Winckelmann.⁵ Trimalchio's feast appears again, along with the silver service from the House of the Menander, and the mechanics of an actual meal. Pompeian grocery lists included bread, oil, wine, sausage, lard, cheese, beets, cabbage, mustard, mint, salt, onions, leeks, whitebait, pork, and maybe beef. Apparently there were 200 bars and restaurants in Pompeii, some of which were perhaps grocery stores. Graffiti provide good evidence for bars and brothels, but even so we cannot tell whether there were one or 35 brothels in Pompeii, and whether some of them were simply bars. Public baths too receive interesting archaeological and literary coverage, including a remark by Celsus, who lived at the same time as Tiberius, to the effect that baths were dangerously dirty for people with infections (p. 247).

Noting in "Fun and Games" (ch. 8) that the two permanent theaters in Pompeii seated 5,000 and 2,000, Beard asks whether the extensive theatrical iconography in wall painting meant that "the theatre provided a model for the whole spectacle of Pompeian wall-painting" (p. 255). Much entertainment in Pompeii had to do with the theater, including mime and pantomime with male and female actors. There are two portraits in the city of a famous actor, Caius Norbanus Sorex. 20,000 people might attend an event in the amphitheater, and the gladiatorial regalia suggest magnificent processions of the short-lived combatants.

"A City Full of Gods" (ch. 9) promises more than it delivers, because it contains little about the vast array of privately owned statuary in Pompeii. Although the chapter begins with a reference to the archaizing bronze statue of Apollo from the House of Julius Polybius, Beard does not mention that the statue was not simply a work of art, but that it held a tray.⁶ Beard covers other categories -- gods shown in wall paintings, statuettes from lararia, images of gods that were brought home from abroad, and a colossal head of Jupiter from the Temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva in the Forum. Was the ivory figurine of Lakshmi a souvenir brought home after a long journey? This chapter, which could contain a far wider array of topics and evidence, seems somehow undirected, though there is a very interesting section on the Temple of Isis, in which Beard covers its probable function, its rediscovery, and the Roman Isis-cult.

"Epilogue: City of the Dead" is too short, considering the extensive cemetery outside the Herculaneum Gate, its wide range of inhabitants, and the impact of that cemetery upon early tourists. "Making a Visit," a 3-page chapter, might have been eliminated, as first-time visitors will be far better served by one of the guidebooks produced by the Soprintendenza and available in the museum shop at the entrance to the site.⁷ Thorough explanations of terms and names that occur in the text obviate the need for a glossary. Unfortunately, there is no general bibliography, and readers who have been intrigued by a topic or a monument mentioned in the text may be disappointed not to find footnotes or endnotes, only a brief selection of Further Readings for each chapter.

Beard suggests answers to the questions that students always ask and that sometimes stymie their professors. What was the population of Pompeii? Estimates range from 6,400 to 30,000. Beard suggests that it was around 12,000, along with 24,000 additional inhabitants in the area. How many people died? Maybe 2000, but only about 1100 of them have been found, and some bones may have been misidentified early on as animals rather than children (p. 10). When was Pompeii rediscovered? In Antiquity it wasn't lost: former inhabitants and looters returned soon after the eruption to see what they could salvage. How far was the city from Rome? 240 km (144 mi.). Were Pompeians literate? More than 10,000 texts have been found in Pompeii, from loan agreements to wine labels, in Latin, Greek, Oscan, and even Hebrew; thus many people had to be able to read to do things like choose their wine and do their jobs. What was money worth? Wine cost 1 to 4 asses (copper coins: per glass or bottle isn't clear). Travelers and university students alike will thoroughly enjoy the many approaches to ancient Pompeii that Mary Beard presents here with clarity, enthusiasm, and humor.

Table of Contents

1.   For a thorough history of the excavations and the impact of Pompeii upon the modern world, see Alison E. Cooley, Pompeii, London: Duckworth Archaeological Histories, 2003.
2.   For such dedications, see Margaret Miles, Art as Plunder: The Ancient Origins of Debate about Art as Cultural Property, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
3.   See especially Stefano De Caro, I mosaici la casa del fauno, Naples: Soprintendenza Archeologica di Napoli e Caserta, 2001. Studies of mosaics and of the House of the Faun are not given in Further Reading for ch. 1.
4.   The Antiquarium at Boscoreale, right beside the farm known as the Villa Regina, provides excellent illustration of the locale and its economy: see Grete Stefani, Uomo e ambiente nel territorio vesuviano: Guida all'Antiquarium di Boscoreale, Pompeii: Edizioni Marius, (2003).
5.   Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Sendschreiben von den herculanischen Entdeckungen, Dresden 1762, p. 57.
6.   For a photograph of the statue and its tray being excavated in 1977 in the triclinium of the House of Julius Polybius, and for bibliography, see Carol C. Mattusch, Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples, Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2008, pp. 141-143.
7.   See, for example, Pier Giovanni Guzzo and Antonio d'Ambrosio, Pompeii, Naples: Electa and "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1998, and Antonio d'Ambrosio, ed., Discovering Pompeii, Milan: Electa, 1998.

In this book, begun as dissertation presented at the Université Libre in Brussels in 2004, Alain Delattre presents an edition of 60 Greek and Coptic documents originally from the Monastery of Apa Apollo of Bawit, now in the Royal Museums of Art and History at Brussels. Delattre offers detailed insights into daily life and business in one of Egypt's largest monasteries. Although reading documentary papyri may be acquired taste, I recommend the book warmly to all interested in monasticism and in the socio-economic history of the 7th and 8th centuries.

This volume comes on a wave of publications on the monastery of Apa Apollo. The newly re-opened Coptic Museum in Old Cairo displays frescoes from the monastery that rank among the most famous images of Christian Egyptian art. Recently Coptologists including Anne Boud'hors, Sarah Clackson, and Delattre have started to publish editions of papyri and ostraca from the site.¹

Delattre has divided the book into two parts: Part One provides the social-economic, historical, religious, papyrological and linguistic background to the 60 documents edited in Part Two. Extensive research instruments, including Greek, Coptic, and French indices and black and white images of all edited papyri, complete the work.

The introduction presents a short biography of Albert Henri Demulling (1884-1941), who donated most of the papyri edited in this volume to the Foundation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth.

In the lengthy first chapter of part One (pages 29-109), Delattre presents a general introduction to the monastery. What makes Bawit such a fascinating topic is the wealth and diversity of sources: Archaeological expeditions by the French in the early 20th century and again in the early years of the 21st century excavated the remains of the monastery's buildings.² Literary texts in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic contribute to the knowledge about the monastery, and over 1300 published graffiti and inscriptions left by monks and pilgrims provide prosopographical information and insights into the religious life in the monastery. Papyri and ostraca from Bawit did not come to light in the official excavations, but appeared on the antiquities market in the 19th and 20th century and as a result are dispersed among collections, their provenance often unknown to editors. One of the topics that occupies Delattre repeatedly is establishing the links between the papyri at Brussels with the Bawit monastery.

Three saints, Apa Apollo with his companions Phib and Anoup, are associated with Bawit. Documents and a calendar inscription mention their feast days, and more than 350 inscriptions especially in the reception hall testify to numerous pilgrims visiting the monastery.

Delattre's description of the monastery gives a good impression of its size and economy. Founded in ca. 386-88, Bawit reached its height in the 7th and 8th centuries, when according to Delattre's estimate some 1,000 monks inhabited the site. The monastic complex featured at least 2 churches, dining halls, monastic cells including special cells for children, a bakery, oil and wine presses, and almost 100 acres of landholdings. Library, scriptorium, or school have not been identified, although they would have formed part of a big monastery. Inscriptions indicate that nuns lived on the monastic complex. Unfortunately, these women do not feature in the documents edited. Arabic fiscal policies instituted in the early 8th century led to a slow decline of the monastery and its demise in the 12th century.

The monastery possessed immovables, such as buildings and land, and movables, such as books, clothing, liturgical objects (not well documented in papyri), and boats for transportation and fishing. The lands were partly rented out to lay-people, partly cultivated by the monks. Agricultural production included wheat, barley, honey, linen, viticulture, and the breeding of animals.

Wine was produced on the property both for distribution and for local consumption. Delattre estimates based on documentary evidence that the Bawit monastery produced some 50,000 liters (over 13,000 gallons) of wine annually, or enough for a daily ration for 800 persons. While literary sources (albeit for different monasteries at an earlier time) give the impression that monks ate little, drank no wine, and were vegetarians, the documentary and archaeological sources for Bawit provide a different picture. For the 6th to 8th centuries, it seems that monks at Bawit at least had no food restrictions and consumed wine and meat.

Home-made rope, mats, baskets, and textiles were sources of income and also had a religious dimension as the monks practiced meditation while working in these industries.

As is common with documentary papyri, issues of economy dominate the discussion. Nevertheless, the texts mention religious orders, feast, and pilgrimages. Direct evidence for book production at Bawit is lacking, but Delattre assumes that it took place at the monastery based on evidence of other large monasteries. Delattre points to the importance of non-canonical literature in the religious life of the monastery; for instance, two inscriptions at Bawit mention Enoch and another inscription quotes the Abgar legend. Magical inscriptions and papyri also feature among the texts from Bawit.

The sources remain silent on two important issues in scholarship on Egyptian monasticism: monastic organization and religious affiliation. Delattre suggests that Bawit had elements of both semi-ascetic and cenobitic organization: the monks had a communal life with a hierarchy and centralized economy, but, in contrast to a truly cenobitic order, they appear to have had considerable individual freedoms, especially financial ones. On the topic of affiliation, Delattre offers hypotheses for both Monophysite or Chalcedonian leanings, and even considers it possible that the different church buildings indicate that both communities were represented on its campus. If only we had the monastery's library with literary texts, would we learn more about these topics.

Chapter 2 of Part One gives background on the texts edited in the volume. Delattre establishes criteria for attribution of texts to Bawit. He discusses writing materials, reuse of papyrus, and matters of paleography and orthography. He also provides a list of scribes from the monastery who are known by name.

The choice of language (Greek, Coptic, Arabic) presents itself as a topic when studying the documents from this monastery. In this volume, I counted 17 documents written in Coptic, 9 in Greek, 30 bilingual Greek/Coptic, 3 bilingual Greek/Arabic, and one document did not have text preserved. Most monks spoke Coptic as their mother tongue and from the 7th century, Coptic replaces Greek as the common written language in loan contracts and letters. Greek remained in use in the 7th and 8th centuries for documents pertaining to administration and accounting in continuation of earlier practices.

In Part II, Delattre presents editions of papyri with a more or less certain Bawit provenance, grouped according to genre in eight chapters. The edition of each document consists of a description of the papyrus, the text, translation and detailed textual notes.

Chapter 1 (nrs. 1-3) deals with three papyri that belong to a distinct group: internal communications from the monastery's superior, that begin with the Coptic epistolary formula "It is our father who writes". In one letter, the archimandrite instructs a monk at the infirmary to give someone two beds "until he dies" (nr. 1), in another he orders that a person from a village be given his annual distribution--the substance is lost in a lacuna (nr. 3). These letters offer, as Delattre analyzes, a remarkable insight into the micro-management of the monastery. In this respect, he notes, the Bawit monastery differs from other Egyptian monasteries, where an oikonomos, not the archimandrite, executed such tasks.

The orders for payment edited in Chapter 2 (nrs. 4-21) constitute a dossier of small-sized, bilingual Coptic-Greek texts composed in a specific formula used at Bawit, with the following elements: mention of the recipient in Coptic, then in Greek the nature of the payment (wine, oil, salted fish, bread, other products), name of the accountable person (oikonomos, priests), and the date. I would add that such specific in-house scribal customs provide evidence also for training of scribes within the monastery and awareness of tradition.

In the monastery, internal communications such as these were often written on reused papyrus; some sheets appear to have been reused several times. This recycling happened not because of a shortage of writing material, but out of frugality. The reuse also helps to establish a date for this dossier: some texts are written on the back of Greek-Arabic pieces, the earliest ones dating from 705, which thus becomes the terminus post quem.

Through these small papyri, a diverse group of people featured on the monastery's commodities-payroll comes into view, both monks and lay people: shepherds, singers, dioiketes, assistants, guards, a mason, horse groom, sub-deacons, couriers, incense vendors, and Arabic financial officers. Most are mentioned by profession, but as Delattre cautions, they are not necessarily paid for work related to their jobs. The reason for the payment is not indicated and may have involved salary, fiscal obligation, or charity. Even though the oikonomos administered these transactions, the archimandrites still supervises them--in my opinion another sign of his micro-management. Most people received payment in wine, which, Delattre notes, was the common currency in monasteries, but other staples are also mentioned.

These small texts touch upon many issues of daily life in the monastery. An order to pay wine to an incense seller (nr. 4) evokes the fragrance of a church, while the mention of people working at a cistern (nr. 13) reminds us of the scarcity of water and the dangers of digging and maintaining cisterns. In another payment slip, Delattre identifies an animal-groom who transported dung, and who received oil and vegetables (nr. 12). The detailed note informs the reader about the use of dung for both fertilizing and heating, and mentions monks from other monasteries that also busied themselves transporting dung.

The seemingly dry accounts and lists edited in Chapter 3 (nrs. 28-33) provide fresh glimpses into the life at the monastery. For instance, in a list of salary payments (nr. 28), a monk who is a "dog-breeder" (κυνοτρόφος) appears. Who knew that monks bred dogs? Delattre suggests, based on extensive research, that these dogs were not bred for hunting (or consumption) but may have been used as watch dogs, shepherd dogs, or companion dogs, or simply for selling. Another document (nr. 32) gives a list of goods, among which are a bench, a bed, seat, and different water vessels made of stone--were they perhaps the possessions of a monk?

Chapter 4 (nrs. 34-35) adds two new loan contracts to those previously known from Bawit (listed conveniently at the end of the chapter). None of these contracts mentions the payment of interest. Delattre mentions the possibility that interest was included in the amount to be paid back, and that the sum that was lent had been smaller. Monks appear frequently as the lenders of money, lending to lay people and other monks; nrs. 34 and 35 are both contracts between two monks. These documents thus show that some monks possessed private funds. Contracts with lay-people (e.g., nr. 52, whose provenance is less certain) also indicate that monks did not live in complete seclusion from the world.

Chapter 5 (nrs. 36-42) is devoted to letters. Given the decline in the use of Greek in Egypt in these centuries, it is important that three of the letters are written in that language (nr. 36-38). Of these three, nr. 36 is the best preserved. It contains mainly pious greetings and mentions a "very pious monk John." Although the name and title of the addressee are missing, it appears that the letter was written to a monk or other religious person. Nr. 37, written on the verso of a Byzantine protocol (nr. 55) contains just fragmentary sections of lines. It is interesting for its date, which Delattre sets in the sixth or seventh century, and thus, among the earlier pieces in his collection. Nr. 38 contains only a fragment of an epistolary formula also present in the other letters probably from Bawit: "With the present letter. . ." Yet I wonder whether this expression is really specific to Bawit, or a local or regional one.

The Coptic letters in this chapter (39-42) are so fragmentary that it is hard to grasp their context. Most contain only segments of greeting formulas. Delattre finds another archimandrite of the monastery, who is also known from inscriptions (nrs. 39, 40).

Chapter 6 (nrs. 43-47) contains the edition of several documents that Delattre thinks come from the Bawit monastery. The most interesting one, nr. 43, dating to the 6th or 7th century, has a Trinitarian formula in Greek.

In Chapter 7 (nrs. 48-54), Delattre edits Coptic pieces from the Demulling cache, whose Bawit provenance remains uncertain. These texts are very damaged. Nr. 48 contains just the first two or three letters of four lines; it is perhaps another letter of the type of "It is our Father who writes. . ." Nr. 49 seems to present an account for the payment of wine to harvesters of linen.

Chapter 8 (nrs. 55-60) presents "protocols" (the front leaf of a papyrus roll with a written or painted stamp) from the Byzantine and Arabic period which have been reused for other purposes in the monastery. The ones given here are bilingual, Coptic-Greek and Greek-Arabic. (I am not sure why Delattre calls nr. 59 a bilingual Greek-Arabic protocol, since its preserved text is Greek-Coptic).

Delattre is to be commended for his hard work of deciphering small, effaced and difficult-to-read documents in multiple languages and putting them in context. This has paid off in a book that remains accessible despite its level of detail and that contributes significantly to scholarship on Bawit, on Egyptian monasticism in general, and on issues of daily life and economy in Egypt in these centuries. These fragmentary and often reused papyri both complement and complicate our knowledge about monastic life from other sources and also evoke larger questions, for instance, about writing history with literary and/or documentary sources, about bilingualism in Egypt, nourishment, monastic production and economies, the impact of fiscal policies on religious life, education in the monastery, and contacts with outsiders.³

1.   Especially Sarah J. Clackson, Coptic and Greek texts relating to the Hermopolite Monastery of Apa Apollo (Oxford: 2000); Anne Boud'hors, Ostraca grecs et coptes: des fouilles de Jean Maspero à Baouit: O. Bawit IFAO 1-67 et O. Nancy (Cairo, 2004); Sarah J. Clackson, It is Our Father Who Writes: Orders from the Monastery of Apollo at Bawit (Cincinnati, 2008).
2.   Published by different authors in the series émoires publiés par les membres de l'institut français d'archéologie orientale (MIFAO), vols. 12, 13, 39, 59.
3.   There are some small issues with the layout of the book: on pages 19-20, a quotation covers more than one page, flowing over several paragraphs, but there is no difference in font or warning in the text that a very long quote is coming. In the formatting of the index something went wrong, as spaces are lacking between bold chapter headings. I noted some typographical errors: page 67, double "mais, mais;" on page 182, second paragraph, the font for et between Coptic "Mhna" and "Isaak" should be Roman, not Coptic.

The eleven papers in this volume, from long-established scholars such as Burnyeat and Ferrari as well as relative newcomers, continue the tradition of serious scholarship, mainly in the analytic tradition, for which the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy series is highly regarded. Four papers are devoted to Plato, six to Aristotle, and one to Plotinus. Nearly all of the contributors specifically thank the editor, David Sedley, which implies he is to be commended not only for selecting these articles, but also for improving them. No single theme unifies the essays, but most of the papers aim at the correction of some interpretation that is uniformly or widely shared in recent scholarship. It would not be right to call the papers equally weighty, but each requires serious study and none is for beginners. Scholars will want this collection on their own shelves or in a nearby library.

"Socratic Irony as Pretence" G. R. F. Ferrari

Ferrari brings a version of contemporary "pretense theory" of irony to bear on Socrates. Specialists in ancient philosophy have not noticed the inadequacy of the "traditional theory" of irony, which emphasizes a contrast between a statement's true meaning and its literal meaning. According to pretense theory, irony involves pretending to be in a context where one's (actually inappropriate) action or speech would be appropriate (6). Socrates pretends, e.g., to be in the presence of someone superior by being (inappropriately) deferential. Socratic irony is "solipsistic" not communicative, since he wants it to go unnoticed as he disturbs his interlocutor's unfounded self-satisfaction (16). Those who see through Socratic irony see what Socrates still tries to hide (18-19). Whereas Socrates never drops his irony and aims to test or improve his interlocutors, Platonic irony needs an appreciative audience because it aims to be understood (29). Platonic writing is self-assertive display, not moral or philosophical exhortation. Ferrari's interesting paper makes one wish it were always as clear as it sometimes is. At the least, a taxonomy of forms of irony (solipsistic, everyday, communicative, Platonic, etc.) would help. Also, given that Plato is the source of both Socratic irony and his own markedly different irony, has Ferrari made Socrates the central victim of Platonic irony?

"Appearances and Calculations: Plato's Division of the Soul" Jessica Moss

Moss examines two arguments in Republic X that use internal conflict to divide the soul into a calculating part and a non-calculating part (602c-603a and 603e-605c). Calculation is opposed to a violent emotional part and to a part that assents to mere appearances. Moss takes these [ latter two parts] to be the same, non-calculating part: appetite plus spirit. On this reading, pleasures and desires become (fallible) perceptual states of awareness, and the soul's emotional evaluations stand in need of correction by calculation (or measurement or deliberation) since they may be illusions just as some sense perceptions are. She defends the non-rational parts as capable of beliefs, means-end "thinking," and as susceptible to persuasion, but also as unable to transcend appearances (65). Reason has its own desires based on its calculation of what is truly good. Against many who would diminish the significance of these passages, she finds in them the key to Plato's distinction between rationality and non-rationality. It is unfortunate that Moss does not address the chimera image of the soul (588b ff.). Also, when reading this paper after Ferrari's, one cannot but be struck by the absence of any appeal to Socratic irony.

"Glaucon's Challenge and Thrasymacheanism" C. D. C. Reeve

Dissatisfied with received accounts of the beginning of Republic II, Reeve sets aside most scholarship and presents a fresh reading. He examines closely the demand to praise justice Glaucon and Adeimantus make on Socrates. This challenge arises secondary to their own critique of common opinions about justice, which usually go unstated, but which Thrasymachus presents as his own wisdom. Reeve takes Thrasymachus as expressing a naturalistic view of justice based on egoistic eudaimonism, and he makes a strong case for its internal consistency. Reeve sees the Republic as the Socratic response to Thrasymacheanism as it is (faithfully) restated by Glaucon and Adeimantus (84-86). This paper is notable for its careful attention to the text and serious consideration of the philosophical questions raised by the text.

"The Copula and Semantic Continuity in Plato's Sophist" Fiona Leigh

Leigh examines Lesley Brown's influential interpretation of uses of einai in Sophist. On Brown's view, some copulative uses of esti are not merely copulative but have existential force, i.e., they are semantically continuous with complete, existential uses that admit no complement. Leigh defends Brown against recent criticism from John Malcolm as a prelude to her own criticism that this reading is insufficiently supported by Sophist. Although this is the shortest paper in the collection, it makes considerable demands on the reader. One must juggle murky passages in Sophist concerning whether 'what is not' is, Brown's reading of those passages, Malcolm's construal of Brown's reading, Leigh's defense of Brown as (mis-)construed by Malcolm, and Leigh's own critique of Brown. Such complexity is not Leigh's fault, to be sure, but the paper does seem to presuppose fresh familiarity with Brown's thesis.

"What's the Matter with Prime Matter?" Frank Lewis

Lewis defends the view that Aristotle genuinely endorsed at least most of what he is traditionally understood to have held about prime matter. In Lewis's "philosophical reconstruction," prime matter essentially has only the capacities to be affected by the various occurrent contraries (hot, cold, wet, dry) of the elemental bodies. Prime matter is found only as affected by pairs of these accidental properties and is the persistent principle underlying, not all substantial change, but elemental change. Matter is spoken of in many ways, and Lewis takes being matter to be "a second-level functional property" that belongs to something in virtue of its first-level causal powers. For example, bronze and wood both have determinate first-level passive powers for receiving specific contraries, and thus each has the second-level functional property of being matter. Lewis engages a multiplicity of Aristotelian texts and contemporary interpreters in an illuminating way; one issue he does not address is the relation between matter and extension.

"Elemental Teleology in Aristotle's Physics 2.8" Margaret Scharle

Scharle's paper extends much more widely over the corpus than her title suggests. Aristotle's puzzling discussion of whether rain falls for the sake of an end is the focal point for a discussion of multiple texts. She rejects both those who argue that rainfall is non-teleological and those who argue that winter rain falls for the sake of crop growth. She emphasizes that natural motions for the sake of an end must be referred specifically to the nature or natural being that has the end. Her own account is that winter rainfall is teleological in the sense that elemental motions to natural places imitate the Prime Mover. This preserves an important sense of cosmic teleology, without claiming that rain falls to make the crops grow and without removing the accidental character of rare, summer rain. The argument is complex, with a number of moving parts. She says so much to make Aristotle's non-biological teleology intelligible that it would be interesting to know whether she thinks any of his teleology remains defensible in light of modern and contemporary challenges.

"Alteration and Aristotle's Theory of Change in Physics 6" Damian Murphy

Murphy examines Aristotle's account of unified change as continuous in time and as infinitely divisible because time is infinitely divisible. Murphy defends Aristotle's claim that infinite temporal divisibility (ITD) holds for all changes by concentrating on the case of alteration (specifically, change of color). Alteration presents more difficulties than does locomotion, due in part to questions about positing an infinite array of shades of color and in part to texts that have led many interpreters to deny that Aristotle thinks alterations are infinitely divisible. Murphy draws some fine distinctions, e.g., between infinite divisibility of a change and infinite divisibility of the "path" of that change. The persuasiveness of these fine distinctions is uneven, not least because the texts are treated in isolation from consideration of what is at stake philosophically for Aristotle or for us in these passages. In the concluding section of the paper Murphy constricts the scope of his argument for ITD to changes in color; for other qualitative changes, he says ITD is "not obviously false" (217).

"Kinêsis vs. Energeia: A Much-Read Passage in (but Not of) Aristotle's Metaphysics" M. F. Burnyeat

This seventy-page article, some thirteen years in the making, devoted to eighteen lines of Aristotle's Metaphysics, approaches the status of a short book. Burnyeat argues that "the Passage" (Met. Theta 6, 1048b18-35), which asserts an exclusive distinction between motion (kinêsis) and actuality (energeia), is genuinely Aristotelian but does not belong to Metaphysics; the distinction is unique in Aristotle's corpus and should not be brought to bear on other parts of it (220, 259). Ultimately, Burnyeat reconstructs a version of the Passage that he considers a genuine fragment that was introduced into the text here perhaps to prevent a misinterpretation (that all actualities are motions) arising from the identification of motion as one sort of actuality (1048b8-9). His argument, with its extensive analysis of manuscripts, its meticulous attention to detail, and its comprehensive examination of Aristotle's writings, casts serious doubt on the textual tradition: he found no ancient author other than Michael of Ephesus (Pseudo-Alexander) exhibiting knowledge of the Passage's exclusive sense of energeia (231-32, 278). Burnyeat's argument for the Passage's uniqueness in the corpus also provides support for its authenticity, especially by showing its affinity to arguments in Nicomachean Ethics that distinguish pleasure from motion. However genuine the Passage may be, it will no longer be possible to treat it as belonging to Theta without confronting Burnyeat's study.

"Aristotle's Argument for a Human Function" Rachel Barney

Barney attempts to delineate precisely how Aristotle argues for the claim that human beings do have a function without identifying what that function is. She argues that Aristotle alludes to and rejects a Platonic conception of function as instrumentality (Republic 352d9-e4), which would render a human being something that some user uses to accomplish a task (299-300). Barney resists any reading that would make the Ethics depend directly on teleological principles from Aristotle's theoretical treatises. The ethical argument should be construed as supportive of natural teleology, not as a deduction from it. Barney offers two "complementary" (319) readings of the argument, the more interesting of which she calls the "realization" argument. According to this reading, Aristotle invites us to see that the functions of the various artisans instantiate or realize the good of the artisans themselves as human beings (not merely as artisans of a particular type). The most attractive dimension of this reading is that, according to it, the human good is not the isolated privilege of the virtuous few, but it is found in differing modes of realization throughout the various human lives and even in the good functioning of the parts of the human body (318).

"Nicomachean Ethics 7.3 on Akratic Ignorance" Martin Pickavé and Jennifer Whiting

Pickavé and Whiting defend the argumentative and textual integrity of this chapter as a "progressive articulation" of Aristotle's analysis of akrasia; the price of this interpretation is that one must abandon the widely shared reading "that Aristotle seeks to explain akratic behaviour by a failure either to have or to use knowledge of some particular" (324). They emphasize Aristotle's claim that the akratic agent acts voluntarily (1152a6-19), which includes "knowing the particulars" (1111a22-23). Akrasia is a genuine problem only when the agent avoids the kind of ignorance of universals characteristic of vice and the kind of ignorance of particulars that makes action involuntary (110b24-1111a26). The distinctively akratic impairment of knowledge is revealed only when Aristotle addresses matters phusikôs (1147a24-b12). The presence of epithumia (and its effects), the authors say, explains which universal beliefs get activated or used and which do not; this preserves the voluntariness and the humanness of akratic action and shows how the relevant "practical syllogism" issues in action, not in change of belief (353-56). This paper goes a long way toward making the details of Aristotle's text intelligible without explaining away the puzzling character of akratic action.

"Automatic Action in Plotinus" James Wilberding

"Automatic action" is spontaneous, non-deliberative action in the sensible world performed by the sage without being drawn away from contemplation of the intelligible and becoming thereby engrossed in the world. Wilberding finds several (not all) Plotinus scholars embracing this interpretation in passing, without an examination of the evidence in its favor, an account of its origin in the soul, and a determination of the limits of this sort of action. He defends the view that Plotinus is committed to some important role for automatic action emerging out of the ascent of the soul, much as art makes possible intelligent bodily action without deliberation or conscious attention. In addition to this, he argues that some deliberative (i.e., non-automatic) action might still be required and that this mundane engagement would not necessarily prevent the sage from being "continually directed to the intelligible" (389-90). By "continually" Wilberding means only that the sage does not lose his train of thought despite interruptions that force him to suspend contemplative activity intermittently, an interpretation drawn from Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. Moreover, some deliberative attention to the "delicate neglect" of the body is necessary to preserve reason's capacity to look upward (394-97). The sage attends to practical action not as genuinely noble, but as something necessary or compulsory, although Wilberding is non-committal on just what sort of necessity this is (note 82). Might such action be fairly described as, in some important sense, automatic?

Das kleine Buch von Roberta Tomber fügt sich ausgezeichnet in die Reihe "Duckworth Debates in Archaeology" ein, die keine systematische Abarbeitung der Archäologie anstrebt, sondern ganz gezielt aktuelle Forschungsbereiche in knapper Weise aufbereitet. Der römische Fernhandel mit Indien ist ein solcher Bereich. Seine altertumswissenschaftliche Relevanz und Faszination sind vor allem durch die Arbeiten von Sir Mortimer Wheeler zu den römischen Funden aus Arikamedu an der Ostküste Indiens und seine Monographie "Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers" von 1954 in den Blickpunkt gerückt. Das Problem dieses Forschungsfeldes liegt auf der Hand: Allein schon die Grösse des zu berücksichtigenden geographischen Raumes und die Länge des interessierenden Zeitraumes vom 1. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis zum 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr. -- von theoretischeren Fragen zum antiken Handel ganz abgesehen -- machen ein Einarbeiten in den aktuellen Forschungsstand überaus mühselig.

An dieser Stelle bietet das überaus verdienstvolle Werk von Tomber einen willkommenen Überblick über aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse und Grabungsbefunde von Ägypten bis Indien, wobei sich die Weite des Themas schon in der ausführlichen Bibliographie spiegelt. Das Buch ist klar gegliedert: Nach einer kurzen Hinführung inklusive der Nennung der forschungsgeschichtlichen Marksteine erfolgt die summarische Angabe der relevanten Quellen. Hierzu zählen Texte, vor allem der 'Periplus Maris Erythraei', und die Funde in den Handelsplätzen, vor allem Keramik und Münzen. Den Schwerpunkt der Arbeit bilden die Kapitel 3 bis 5, die in den drei Stufen "the Roman Red Sea", "Beyond the Roman World" und "Lands to the East" die bedeutenden Fundplätze, also zumeist Hafenstädte, und das hier zu Tage getretene Material vorstellen. Das abschliess ende Kapitel "Changing Scenes and Forces" versucht, unter allgemeiner Perspektive die Gesamtentwicklung des römisch-indischen Handels zu resümieren.

Das Buch wird vor allem durch zwei Leistungen geprägt: erstens eben die kompakte Darbietung der aktuellen Fundsituationen und dabei zweitens die gleichwertige Sicht auf die unterschiedlichen Teilnehmer an diesem Handel und somit die Vermeidung einer auf Rom fixierten Perspektive. Insbesondere wird so auf eine Vielzahl neuerer indischer Grabungspublikationen verwiesen, die sonst von klassisch-altertumswissenschaftlicher Seite kaum zur Kenntnis genommen werden. Demgegenüber leidet die Lesbarkeit der Darstellung insbesondere in den geographischen Kapiteln etwas an der ausgesprochenen Detailfülle und der Aneinanderreihung von Funden, wobei des Öfteren auch singuläre Scherbenbelege angesprochen werden. So ist nicht immer klar zu ersehen, welchen Stellenwert einzelne Befunde und Funde gegenüber anderen haben (etwa S. 80-82). Der Stand der Ausgrabungen und ihrer Publikationen, die Probleme bei der Identifizierung etwa von Terra Sigillata oder Amphoren und andere wichtige Punkte werden oftmals angesprochen, aber selten problemorientiert berücksichtigt.

Die Behandlung der "theoretical basis" (17) des Handels im letzten Abschnitt von Kapitel 5 (Trade and Traders) und im abschliessenden Kapitel 6 bleibt hinter der dichten Beschreibung der Orte und ihrer Funde zurück. Zum einen betrifft dies die konkrete Durchführung des Handels. Die Bedingungen der Navigation, der Monsunwinde oder die Frage der Rekrutierung der Seefahrer und ihrer Wissensvermittlung werden nicht thematisiert. Der 'Periplus Maris Erythraei' wird als "practical guide aimed at merchants" (20) angesprochen, ohne auf die Diskussion von Ziel und Zielgruppen antiker Fachschriftstellerei einzugehen. Zum anderen bleiben aber auch die Motive und Bedingungen der im Hintergrund stehenden Kräfte unterbelichtet. So wird zum Beispiel wenig zur Verwendung und zum Prestigewert der Verfügbarkeit exotischer Produkte im Römischen Reich gesagt. Tomber nennt in diesem Zusammenhang den Indienhandel zwar ein "expensive business that reaped great profit" (169), bleibt aber die Analyse der entsprechenden Mechanismen und des Organisationsgrades dieser Unternehmen schuldig.

Der indisch-römische Handel umfasst die Zeit vom 1. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis zum 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr., mithin also den gesamten Zeitraum der römischen Herrschaft über das östliche Mittelmeergebiet. Diese lange Spanne wird von Tomber in zwei Abschnitte geteilt, nämlich in die vom 1. Jahrhundert v. bis zum 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr. und vom 4. bis zum 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr. Diese Zäsur im 3. Jahrhundert entspricht den allgemeinen Gepflogenheiten bei der Betrachtung römischer Geschichte und hängt mit der so genannten Reichskrise des 3. Jahrhunderts zusammen. Auch für den Indienhandel konstatiert Tomber einen Rückgang, etwa anhand des "dip in occupation from the mid-third century ... on the Red Sea coast" (161). Allerdings erweist sich die Beweiskraft des Rückgangs vor allem der Keramikfunde oftmals als trügerisch, da in dieser Zeit die Produktion etlicher signifikanter Keramikgattungen generell nahezu aussetzt, wie etwa die der östlichen Sigillaten. In Bezug auf das Für und Wider dieser Zäsur sollten also auch stärker andere äussere Bedingungen analysiert werden, wie etwa die Herrschaftsübernahme der Sasaniden in Mittelasien (100) oder die von Tomber ausführlicher thematisierte, aber später anzusetzende Zunahme des Einflusses der christlichen Kirche auch im Bereich des Handels (168 ff.).

Nicht zuletzt aus den genannten Punkten zur Präsentation der beeindruckenden Detailfülle und zu den weniger beleuchteten theoretischen Problemstellungen ergibt sich die Frage nach den Adressaten des Buches. Für interessierte Anfänger wären etwa strukturierende Kommentierungen zu den einzelnen Befunden und den entsprechenden, schlicht additiv angegebenen Literaturbelegen hilfreich. Fachleute, die sich auf den neuesten Stand bringen wollen, würden zum Beispiel umfassendere und differenziertere Belegtabellen für die Fundorte, die mehr als nur Häkchen für 'belegt' oder eben 'nicht-belegt' angeben, begrüssen. Nichtsdestoweniger ist das Buch sicher für beide Gruppen gedacht und Dank seiner beeindruckenden Informationsdichte für jeden, der sich mit antikem Fernhandel beschäftigt, eine unschätzbare Hilfe. Dass dabei an der einen oder anderen Stelle nicht jeder Informationsbedarf erfüllt wird, darf angesichts der intendierten Kürze des Buches nicht wundern und schmälert seinen praktischen Wert nicht.

In a body of scholarship spanning three decades, Arthur Eckstein (hereafter "E.") has established himself as one of the world's foremost scholars on Roman imperialism in the middle republican period. His new book is dedicated to his teacher, Erich Gruen, and continues the tradition of Gruen's masterly The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (1984) by emphasizing the agency of Rome's neighbors in explaining Roman military policy. On one level, both works are critiques of William Harris' highly influential War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (1979), which saw Roman imperialism as the result of the uniquely bellicose culture of the Roman people. However, E.'s new book breaks sharply with Gruen's in its espousal of a reductive explanation for Roman behavior. While Gruen tended to look to the particulars of every situation in explaining Roman decisions to go to war, E. presents us with a single fundamental reason for Roman militarism and aggression, namely, the anarchy of the Mediterranean interstate system.

In critiquing Harris, E. asks a crucial question: How can one argue that Roman aggressive militarism was somehow exceptional without explicitly comparing Rome to its Mediterranean contemporaries? E. concludes that, while Rome was extremely warlike and brutal, it was in no way uniquely so, and the equally or even surpassingly aggressive nature of its Mediterranean neighbors necessitated that it be so. But E. is no mere Roman apologist--he argues that all the states of the ancient Mediterranean were trapped in the same "cruel logic", a logic that was imposed by the lack of any effective law or order within the Mediterranean community of states. To demonstrate, E. presents a series of chapters surveying interstate relations among the city-states of classical Greece (Chapter 3), the Hellenistic kingdoms (Chapter 4), and the communities of Italy and the western Mediterranean prior to the second century BCE (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 situates Roman culture within this Mediterranean context. Finally, E. builds on this foundation to make a strong case for the "nonexceptionalism" of Rome's response to the threats from Philip V and Antiochus III, which precipitated the extension of its imperium into the eastern Mediterranean in the early second century (Chapter 7). The great attraction of his argument lies in its ability to synthesize Harris' strongest evidence, which reveals the centrality of warmaking in Roman culture, with Gruen's most convincing case studies, which tend to demonstrate the lack of conscious imperialism in Roman decision-making. As E. notes repeatedly, his insight is not new (Mommsen made a number of similar points long ago), but E. articulates his argument so clearly and supports it with such a wealth of evidence that no future analysis of Rome's rise to power will safely ignore it.

In Chapter 1, "Political Science and Roman History", E. anchors his explanation in the influential Realist tradition of international relations theory, exemplified by the work of Kenneth Waltz. The states of the Mediterranean found themselves in a world without a higher power to enforce international law and adjudicate disputes, that is, in a situation of interstate anarchy. Under these conditions, so the Realists argue, a state's very survival depends on its ability to compete militarily. Realists argue that there is no security without power, and that all states are therefore involved in a desperate competition for power. Thus, it was ultimately the international system in which Rome found itself that was the primary cause of its behavior.

Chapter 2 ("Realist Paradigms of Interstate Behavior") usefully summarizes the Realist model for the readers who are not political scientists. In a nutshell, security comes only through power, and, as one state achieves the extra margin of power necessary to create the impression of security in the awareness of its own imperfect knowledge of the world, this results in a corresponding reduction of perceived security among the other states, creating a "security dilemma." Interstate politics is understood by the participants as a zero-sum game. In such a world, it is "natural" for states to seek power, and differences between states lie not in their motivations but only in their capabilities. All states are equally "revisionist" in their quest for power and essentially imperialist in their intentions. Occasionally "unlimited revisionist" states, which seek universal dominion, emerge, such as Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, which do exhibit exceptional militarism, but E. insists that Rome never fit this mold.

In Chapter 3, "Interstate Relations in Classical Greece", E. demonstrates the inadequacy of norms, arbitration, and treaties for ameliorating the evils of interstate anarchy and shows that war and militarized competition were virtually constant. Thus, classical Greece was a "militarized and multipolar anarchy" (47), approaching bipolarity in the run-up to the Peloponnesian War and a weak unipolarity immediately following, but at other times reverting to multipolarity. E. certainly presents some supportive statistics (forty known cases of states being destroyed (53); Athens at war two out of every three years from 497 to 338 (47)), but in general this chapter is based less on the accumulation of in-depth case studies than one might have hoped. A great weight is placed on the analysis of Thucydides, including his confirmation of the Realist principles that all states are functionally similar, that fear is the predominant motivator of policy decisions, and that the structure of the interstate system is the primary cause of conflict. Yet, as E. himself admits, most modern Realist theorists consider Thucydides their "intellectual ancestor" (48) and so his analysis of events should take a second position to the testimony of other sources as way of avoiding circularity. E. does exploit Herodotus, Plato, and other sources, but not in the systematic manner with which he approaches Thucydides, and some rich veins are left virtually untouched, including Aristotle and the Attic orators. In fact, it was a common claim among ancient observers that external threats promote internal stability, presumably by lessening the relative urgency of centrifugal forces within the state such as class and status inequalities (e.g., Plato Laws 698b-c; Aristotle Pol. 1308a 20-30, 1334a 5-9; Pol. 6.18 and 57; Livy 34.9.4). This would imply a powerful domestic incentive for political leaders to err on the side of belligerence in interstate relations.¹

In Chapter 4, "Interstate Relations in the Hellenistic Age", E. demonstrates that the situation of militarized interstate anarchy that prevailed in the classical period persisted into the Hellenistic age. He sides with Pierre Lévêque and M. M. Austin against earlier interpretations that saw a rough balance of power and curtailment of limitless ambitions on the part of the diadochoi after about 280. On the contrary, international law continued to be ineffective, and the need for self-help and reputation-building among rulers was greater than ever. Furthermore, the behavior was no more indicative of a "status quo" attitude among the smaller federal states, kingdoms, and city-states.

In the same chapter, E. attempts to place Polybius "among the ancient founders of the realist approach" (117). He argues that the plan of Philip V and Antiochus III to build a bipolar imperial system in the eastern Mediterranean was flawed by the monarchs' failure to perceive that the entire Mediterranean had now become interconnected, forming a single geopolitical system--a point emphasized by Polybius. The reading of Polybius is persuasive, but the attribution of the Realist label will fail to convince many. For instance, does not Polybius' deep faith in the importance of moral conduct and education ("a fund of moral exemplars" 117) open an obvious case for counting him among the ancient founders of Neoliberalism or Contructivism? If Polybius were really an ancient Realist, what would be the point of such moral teachings? Still, E. is correct to point out that Polybius has been largely ignored by modern theorists, and it will be a welcome development if E.'s book brings more attention from modern theorists to this important text. The story of Rome's expansion to the East and, importantly to my mind, the story of the changes wrought on Rome's domestic politics as a result of imperial expansion have received relatively little attention from modern political scientists.

Chapter 5, "Terrores Multi", focuses on Rome and its rivals in Italy and continues the style of detailed analytical narrative begun in Chapter 4 with the discussion of the crisis in the Hellenistic world after 207. In separate sections on Rome's interactions with the Etruscans, Celts, Samnites, Tarentines, and Carthaginians, E. convincingly supports his main points: Rome's militarism was not exceptional among the communities of Italy and the western Mediterranean; the anarchic conditions of the system created a security dilemma for all of the states within it; and international law, treaties, and diplomacy were ineffective in creating security. E.'s survey of the dense history of Italy through the third century offers a wealth of cases illustrating various dynamics and models of interstate behavior. He is most effective when pointing out the similarities in the behavior of Rome and its neighbors. However, he has a tendency to go beyond this and try to create the impression of Rome not only as unexceptional but also as exceptionally moderate in terms of its aggressiveness. Thus, E. points out that Rome was apparently considered by the Capuans to be a less threatening great power than the Samnites, but he fails to acknowledge that the same logic reveals that, for instance, by the time of the battle of Sentinum, Rome was considered by a large coalition of Italians to be a threat of unprecedented magnitude. Examples like this seem to me to obscure the essential Realist argument that even seemingly unprovoked aggression can be understood as a "natural" response to the perpetual quest for power under conditions of interstate anarchy.

Chapter 6, "Rome and Roman Militarism", presents a theoretical attack on unit attribute theory, the practice of explaining wars as the result of particular features of individual states. E. points out that "large and enduring structures that have developed over time are at least as likely to influence the behavior of individual actors within those structures as the other way around" (187) and that, therefore, the anarchic interstate system is more likely to influence the behavior of individual states than the reverse.

E. also appeals to the internal discourse of Rome concerning the importance of iustum bellum and the pax deorum, the necessity of fighting only defensive wars, and the emphasis on salus as evidence that the Romans did not seek war for its own sake. The absence of such discourse among, say, the Hellenistic monarchs does tend to make Rome appear the more moderate. But E. goes too far in citing examples where domestic opponents of war in Rome criticized wars on the grounds that they were unjust as proof that the Romans did not seek war for its own sake (226-28). These same examples have been used by others to prove the opposite. Furthermore, the fact that one does not find such criticisms directed at the Hellenistic monarchs undoubtedly has as much to do with the different types of political discourse allowable in monarchies and republics as with a distinction in popular attitudes toward war. Similarly questionable is his argument from silence to demonstrate the lack of moral discourse about war in other ancient states (239).

E. also argues against the idea that Rome was transformed into an imperialist machine in the mid-fourth century. Here again his strongest argument is the lack of exceptionalism in the Roman case: these pressures may have been felt, but the overwhelming motive for war was still security, and Rome's behavior was still little different from that of its peers.

In the final chapter, "Roman Exceptionalism and Nonexceptionalism", E. provides his explanation for why, if Rome was not exceptional in its dedication to making war, it nevertheless was exceptionally successful in the interstate competition for power in the Mediterranean. His answer is persuasive. The exceptional principle that provided the foundation for this state was "the divorce of citizen status from ethnicity or geographical location", an idea which allowed the Romans to create a polity whose population dwarfed that of any other ancient city-state (254-55), and that, as Mommsen long ago observed, came closer than any other ancient polity to creating a "unified nation-state" (257).

The remainder of the chapter is devoted to demonstrating how "nonexceptional" Rome's decision to make war on Philip V in 200 was. This decision was, arguably, the great pivot point, when Rome made its first major intervention into the Greek world, which inevitably led to further entanglements and eventually imperial domination. E.'s interpretation is based on his arguments in favor of the historicity of the pact between Philip V and Antiochus III, which I find compelling, and in favor of the sincerity of the Roman fear of Hellenistic aggression, which I find at least plausible. Yet, while I can accept E.'s basic reconstruction of events, I find his analysis incomplete in a significant way. Ultimately, everything that I find unconvincing in this book derives from E.'s consistent assumption of states as unitary decision-making actors.² For instance, if one accepts the historicity of P. Sulpicius Galba's speech to the voters prior to the centuriate assembly's vote for war in 200, as E. does (281-82), then one must also accept that Galba seems to have distorted the Senate's reasons for going to war, exaggerating the immediacy of the threat of an invasion of Italy.³

In my opinion, E.'s application of Realist theory to the case of Rome's rise presents a major breakthrough in the discussion and challenges the assumptions and conclusions not only of Harris but also of most other previous scholarship, including, ironically, E.'s own interpretations of Roman behavior. He differs from Maurice Holleaux and Arnold J. Toynbee in that the fear of the Hellenistic kings, which they saw as irrational, E. sees as essentially well-founded. Gruen's is the best example of the pericentric argument, which holds that Rome was drawn into universal empire unwillingly and on an ad hoc basis by the interstate rivalries of the Greek East. However, Realist theory implies that there was a more consistent underlying logic to Roman policymaking. Finally, E. himself argues consistently for the validity and sincerity of Roman fear and defensive thinking. Yet if the Realist model of interstate anarchy does apply here, and if the unavoidable fact of life in that world was that military dominance was the only guarantee of a state's survival, then it would not necessarily be the case that every aggressive act on the part of Rome had a specific threat and a sincere defensive rationale behind it. But E. never admits a case like this. It is significant in this regard that E.'s analysis stops after the Syrian War of 191-188 BCE. Consideration of later developments, such as the Third Punic War and the wars in Spain of the later second century, would have forced him to deal with these complexities.

E. has done an admirable job of paying close attention to the indirect implications of Realist theory and finding correlations in the ancient evidence. For instance, this study demonstrates well that states with highly diverse forms of government, from democratic Athens to the Hellenistic monarchies to Republican Rome, all exhibit "functional similarity" in terms of their behavior within the interstate system, which is a key prediction of Realist theory. His logical rigor in testing the implications of a modern theory against the ancient evidence is commendable and all too uncommon among works of ancient political history. However, E. also states his intention to use the evidence from the ancient Mediterranean to "test" the Realist model against several alternative modern theories of international politics. This project is less successful since falsifying alternative theories requires more than simply demonstrating the anarchy and warfare that Realism predicts. While an entire chapter is devoted to elucidating the logic of Realist theory, the alternatives each receive a mere paragraph of explanation, followed quickly by a review of the Realist rebuttals (29-33). An effective falsification of a theory requires a good faith effort to match it to the evidence, a function not adequately fulfilled by the cursory discussions sprinkled throughout the empirical chapters.

In addition, the analytical emphasis on states as irreducible actors seems invalid, for what are states but the larger systems within which decision-makers, be they individuals, dominant factions, or winning coalitions, act? Thus, while it is true that the interstate system weighs heavily on the actions of states, so must the intrastate system weigh on the actions of decision-makers. In other words, decision-makers serve at least two masters at the system-level, the pressures of either of which may be determinative at any given moment. The tragic inability of certain states (such as Corinth and Tarentum) to avoid precipitating their own downfalls at the hands of much stronger states strikes me as evidence that the security of the state was not always the primary motivator of state actions. E. sees support for the opposite conclusion in the fact that Roman warmaking slows down and Roman elite culture becomes less militaristic as the pax Romana comes into existence in the later second century (188). Yet this could just as easily be explained as the result of a change in the intrastate system that rendered military aggression less attractive to domestic decision-makers. In fact, the relative frequency of war even after the establishment of unipolarity in the Mediterranean, including seemingly elective wars like the Third Punic War, the Spanish Wars of the later second century BCE, Caesar's Gallic campaign, and Crassus' Parthian expedition, raises more difficulties for the Realist explanation than the partial demilitarization of the Roman elite solves.

In spite of my reservation about the Realist model as E. employs it, his critique thoroughly demolishes the argument that Rome's rise was due to an exceptional bellicosity and militarism. E.'s collection of comparative evidence for militarist cultural and institutional features in ancient states from throughout the Mediterranean is very convincing. Each piece of evidence of Rome's supposedly exceptional dedication to aggressive expansion is placed in the context of an impressive abundance of similar evidence from other Mediterranean states.

Realism is a highly pessimistic view of the world. It argues that we can only hope for two possible situations: frequent war or imperial domination. When political leaders accept this formula, the theory becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet E. is correct to assert that Realism is the dominant paradigm in international relations today. As a classicist, I read E.'s book with delight, but as a political scientist, I am concerned about its influence on a non-specialist audience whose worldview the book too confidently reinforces. Thus I hope that this book will stimulate the production of other similarly sophisticated studies of ancient international relations that give full consideration and a fair hearing to alternative theories that envision the possibilities for developing a world that is more reasonable, cooperative, and non-zero-sum.

1.   On the centrality of stasis in ancient Greek political thought, see J. Ober, "Political Conflicts, Political Debates, and Political Thought", in R. Osborne (ed.), Classical Greece 500-323 B.C. (Oxford 2000), 111-38.
2.   A measure of just how far E. has internalized the "single actor" assumption of the Realists is revealed by his use of Elijah Anderson's analysis of the behavior of inner-city youths (Code of the Street [New York 1999]) as a model for the behavior of individual states. See A. Eckstein, "Brigands, Emperors, and Anarchy", Int. Hist. Rev. 22 (2000): 862-79.
3.   See J. Seibert, "Invasion aus dem Osten: Trauma, Propaganda, oder Erfindung der Römer?" in C. Schubert and K. Broderson (edd.), Rom und der griechische Osten. (Stuttgart 1995), 237-48; J. Quillin, "Information and Empire: Domestic Fear Propaganda in Republican Rome, 200-146 B.C.E.", The Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 160 (2004): 765-85; and J. Quillin, "The Authenticity, Impact, and Sincerity of the Speech of P. Sulpicius Galba (Livy 31.7)" (unpublished paper; email me for a draft).