Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Wim M. J. van Binsbergen, Eric Venbrux (ed.), New Perspectives on Myth. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, Ravenstein (The Netherlands), 19-21 August, 2008. PIP-TraCS - Papers in intercultural philosophy and transcontinental comparative studies, 5. Haarlem: Shikanda, 2010. Pp. 466. ISBN 9789078382072. €90.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Eleni Boliaki, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece (eboliaki@bscc.duth.gr)

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This is a collection of twenty two papers that were presented at the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology at Ravenstein, Netherlands, in 2008.

Wim van Binsbergen and Eric Venbrux, the editors of the volume, first introduce the newly founded International Association for Comparative Mythology. According to them, interdisciplinary and intercontinental exchanges, close collaboration with a wide range of auxiliary fields (genetics, linguistics, ethnography, archeology, statistics, classics), along with the impact of globalization, are transforming regional studies, traditional disciplines, and over-specialized scholarship in comparative mythology. The editors claim that the papers of this volume reflect on new theories and methodologies on so far underrepresented themes (such as death), and on less acknowledged roles of cultural histories, such as that of sub-Saharan Africa.

The first serious studies of indigenous cultures of Africa, South Pacific and Australia occurred already in the 19th century, when the comparative approach was also employed by Max Mόller (1823-1900,) whose philologically based theory borrowed from comparative linguistics (etymologies). James Frazer (1854-1941) was another exponent of the comparative method in the study of myth, whereas his method was more anthropological. His comparative method supported the belief that similar myths derive from same sources. It was in the 19th century when advances in archaeology, geology and ethnography contributed to a reconstruction of European prehistory and the formulation of an evolutionary stage theory that supported the equation of the European distant past with contemporary savages and life in Africa, South Seas and Australia (John Lublock; Edward Taylor's "survivals" etc).

Given that death is not notably underrepresented in mythological studies either, one wonders what is new in the New Perspectives on Myth. If the "new" refers to methodology, apparently it concerns some new ways of doing comparative mythology. But the only "new" in this volume would be the renewed insistence on Bernal's arguments.

In 1987 Martin Bernal published Black Athena, challenging the comparative Indo-European and Near Eastern studies, and claiming the "Afro-asiatic roots of European civilization." His book created an international debate in the fields of African studies, comparative linguistics and biology, among others. In 1996, Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers (eds.) published Black Athena Revisited where they refuted Bernal's thesis. Recently, Bernal, in his essays in Black Athena Comes of Age: towards a Constructive Re-assessment (ed. W. M. J. Binsbergen, 2011) responds to his critics, systematizes his linguistic claims, and applies his thesis to sub-Saharan Africa.

The conference and its product, this volume, belong to this international debate and support the non-Eurocentric model of cultural history. They stress not only the massive intercontinental interactions and fusions, but, mainly, the contributions of the African peoples, and reconsider Africa's (mainly sub-Saharan) contribution to the global culture. Africa's history, accordingly, cannot be considered marginal anymore. As Vαclav Blažek's paper reveals, Bernal has not yet been conclusively refuted.

The contributors explain the parallels of myths not by polygenesis of the same motifs and narratives but by diffusion. They attempt a historical reconstruction of the lines of direct derivation and transmission of myths in reference to the history of human migration from Africa. A historic-geographic method traces their ultimate source in sub-Saharan Africa, from where they have descended.

Contributions that stand out are those of Wim van Binsbergen and Robert A. Segal. Some others—not few—lack a clear argument, have no strong points, are mainly descriptive, and, no less important, with very bad English (sometimes long parts of the papers make no sense).

Eric Venbrux compares ten Australian Aboriginal myths that refer to death and the moon that may belong to the oldest cultural heritage of humankind, as he claims.

Walter E. A. van Beek claims that there has been a neglect of African myths in world mythology. What makes African prose narratives distinct is the fact that they are not etiological or very supernatural but more mundane and related to everyday life. There is no clear-cut mythical world, nor supernatural beings independent of the everyday world, no battles between good and evil, no dilemmas, no reflection on ultimate origins. According to the author, the exclusion of African myths from mythological collections does not have to do with their quality but imply the definitions, preferences, and a deep romanticism in this scholarly field.

Boris Oguibιnine and Nataliya Yanchevskaya compare the Slavic motifs of an 'anthropology of death' with their counterparts in Indian, Iranian, and Baltic traditions, in order to reconstruct major features of the Indo-European mythology of death. It is indisputable, they would conclude, that, Vedic, Greek, Old Prussian and Buddhist traditions share common features. This is not by accident, neither simply a manifestation of the universal, but it reveals the inherited features that originated from a common Indo-European background.

Victoria Kryukova focuses on the differences between Indian and Iranian traditions that deal with death. Although there is an affinity between Old Iranian and Old Indian traditions that have to do with mythological and ritual features, there are also differences that can be explained on the basis of different pre-Indo-European traditions.

Joseph Harris places the Rӧk mythology of Old Swedish and Nordic mythology among various Germanic mythologies of death and sees it as a variant of the myth of the demonic figure of Baldr.

Yuri Berezkin discusses the global distribution of mythological motifs. The two major sets of motifs of world mythology are referred to as Continental Eurasian and Indo-Pacific. The mythologies of sub-Saharan Africa stand between the two, a view that supports the Out-of-Africa scenario. The mapping of the motifs reconstructs the distant past by showing the major patterns of migrations in prehistory. The discovery of links between tales recorded in Africa, in non-Aryan India, in Southeast Asia, and in Australia gives the evidence that Indo-Pacific mythology has preserved its African heritage.

Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi examines the value of indigenous cultures for historical reconstruction and for resolving contested histories, since they can be regarded as historical records. Cultural practices, he holds, are historiographical tools and techniques for remembering the past.

Wim van Binsbergen, after commenting on the othering and exclusion of Africa by North Atlantic scholarship, also examines the mythological continuities between sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia. His aim is a historical reconstruction based on mythical and oral historical material. According to him, there are long-range ethnic, cultural, linguistic and genetic affinities encompassing Africa, Europe, and Asia. South Central Africa contains many parallels with the mythologies attested in the texts of civilizations extremely remote in space and time. Some mythological traits in sub-Saharan Africa were taken to Asia at the 'Out-of-Africa' migration. On their way they underwent substantial transformations proliferating into a few dozen of Narrative Complexes. Thus, the world history of mythology largely coincides with the world history of the spread and diversification of Anatomically Modern Humans: "Most if not all mythologies outside Africa can be taken to descend, in part, from postulated pre-Exodus mythologies developed in Africa between 200 and 80 ka BP" (158-159). For that reason, African societies and cultures must be studied as part of the global constellation as a whole; there can be no separate comparative mythology for Eurasia and another one for Africa. The argument about massive African-Eurasian mythological continuities and cultural connections is also supported, he continues, by population genetics and genetic distribution patterns that have suspected continuity between Africa and Eurasia, along with linguistics, archeology and comparative ethnography and ethnographic trait distributions.

Michael Witzel argues that flood myths are not found only in Eurasia, Polynesia, and the Americas, but also at Gondwana bel: sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea/Melanesia, and Australia. A comparison of the Australian and African versions demonstrates a strong overlap that goes back to the time of the exodus from Africa, 60,000 years ago. The Eurasian-American versions can be traced back to Laurasian types which, in their turn, emerge from the Gondwana prototype. Naturalistic explanations and the 'Near Eastern origins' must be excluded.

Following Martin Bernal (Black Athena) and based on etymological/linguistic arguments, Vaclav Blažek not only suggests that Hephaestus can be related to the Egyptian god Ptah, but that the Greek theonym is of Egyptian origin.

Kazuo Matsumura indicates affinities between themes of classical mythology with the history of Japan. Various mythological motifs that came from outside Japan were organized as the classical Japanese cultural system.

Emily Buchanan Lyle claims to have a new cosmological theory of myth based on the opinion that an oral society is been fused together in a different way than a literate one, and all our written evidence is by definition flawed.

Steve Farmer proposes a model for the evolution of human thought that combines neurobiology, philology, and history, which can explain cross-cultural similarities and the perseverance of primitive mythic tendencies in modern traditions. He mainly describes a "testable" neurobiological model of the origins of primitive religion and myth that could contribute to scientific approaches to comparative mythology. He concludes that, the anthropomorphism that underlies religion and myth is a result of normal neuro-developmental processes.

Robert A. Segal defends the 'superiority' of the Old Comparative method of J. G. Frazer against that of postmodernists who claim that seeking similarities is objectionable. Regional comparisons do not preclude universal ones and the quest for differences does not undercut the quest for similarities. Segal claims that this is based on misconceptions about comparison and knowledge itself, and discusses the four comparative methods of Postmodernism, Controlled Comparativism, New Comparativism, and Old Comparativism.

Willem Dupré is interested in the correlation between myth and thinking, and argues that reason needs to partake in myth, the latter been primarily a dimension and a form of consciousness.

Nick Allen first examines the similarities of the modes of involvement of gods in the struggles of mortals in Homer and in Mahabharata that derive from a common origin in a protoepic or protonarrative, yet, what he stresses are their differences.

Stephanus Djunatan proposes to apply the Sunda paradigm of connectivity among Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam and the harmony in unification in life (affirmative and sagacious life) to the present-day interplay of civilizations in a globalizing world. The indigenous account is compared with the Chinese wisdom tradition of the Dao De Ching.

Nadia Sels argues that the ambiguous treatment of the Olympic pantheon by the Greeks has been wrongly perceived as a paradox by a monotheistic and anachronistic model of understanding Greek mythology. Veneration and mockery towards the gods are not incompatible but inherent to the function of Greek mythology that tolerates discrepancies.

Genealogical relationship has been overstressed in comparative studies. As Robert Mondi wonders, do similarities provide the evidence of a loose commonwealth of motifs and ideas that exist not only at a "source" for all variants, from an "original" tale, but result from long and continuous intercultural contacts? ¹. Eric Csapo (Theories of Mythology, 2005) also wonders if myths are transmitted as fully embodied narratives or as already somewhat loose clusters of motifs: "we are dealing ... with the creative redeployment of common and revolving clusters of mythical ideas" (78). Differences, he concludes, are so great that cannot be "variants" of the same tale, but we have to do with networks that are constantly changing shape, overlapping circles and intersecting sets.

While some of the individual papers lack theoretical sophistication and their quality is not high, this collection of papers provides a contribution to the study of its subject, that is, the (geo)politics of comparative mythology and the global politics of knowledge.

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Notes:

1.   "Greek Mythic Thought in the Light of the Near East," in Approaches to Greek Myth, Ed. by Lowell Edmunds, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 1990.

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Christophe Bocherens (ed.), Nani in festa: iconografia, religione e politica a Ostia durante il secondo triumvirato. Bari: Edipuglia, 2012. Pp. 215. ISBN 9788872286463. €50.00 (pb).

Reviewed by John Henderson, King's College, Cambridge (jgh1000@cam.ac.uk)

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Chissà? My iconophile bet is that the miraculously rescued reception-room frescoes painted into a brilliantly executed mini- frieze from an obliterated triumviral/proto-Augustan Ostia mansion, 'Casa dei Bucrani', will become a popular fixture in Roman Art publications, once brought into broad circulation. The presentation under review is in some respects all too finalized a production, but the prospective full archaeological account will soon mark the début proper. Meantime the glimpse offered in this lavishly illustrated and affordable, but chaotically ill-designed and -proportioned, ouvrage has its part to play in attracting attention (and valorizing the project, a cooperative venture between Ostia and Lyons, Univ.II).

Patronal forewordage ushers us into two informative tours. First, orientation within 'The Historical Context' (the editor's turn: pp.15-24): a catch-up on Ostia, the Schola di Traiano built over the house on our site, its later-long-term-attested but possibly Republican association with a leading local branch of Fabii, and a posited date of 40-30 BCE for frieze, oecus, re- styled domus; second, colour-plates splashed round 'The domus dei Bucrani and the decorative system of the oecus dei Nani' (Thomas Morard and Thibault Girard: pp. 25-47; an essential scheme supplied later at p.105).

Thereafter Jean-Marc Moret takes over, reserving what he does best for the postlude, 'Curtain-fall: "Popular" Art and Hellenistic Tradition' (pp.163-77), where he delivers on the instantly compelling intensity of the frieze's splay of riotous spatiality, mobility, synaesthesia, inclusion of the viewer...He could have stood back a little more and set off the 'sequential art' design-values of the (whole, rhythmed/rhymed) picture-plane against the visually masterful physiognomy of the (individualized) cast members more emphatically.¹ But his account here of the organized chaos of depth/scale/detail, between proudly two-tone up-front figures, mostly in three-quarter view with torsion, expressive limbs and loud faciality, and the rudimentary schematic outlines out back-and-above, gets to the heart(-and-)beat of this theatre.

The strip has all the dynamics of the whole Fraggle Rock crew in an episode starring puny-legged topheavy 'Gorgs', with exaggerated Spitting Image/Sebastian Krüger-style Rolling Stones caricature heads worthy of any numismatic superman (one row of non-smiley-faced burghers on the run and another of engaged spectators, puffing trumpeter, and two heroic nudes, one rubber-lips hunk demanding sex and one muscleman hulk; neat profile juxtapositions with Caesar heads, figs. 52~53, 61~62). In the background, in a second idiom, a cohort of ghostly soldiers line up as (giant, impossibly bone-idle) 'Doozers'. And to deter us further from plumping for any single general identifier for the figures, any viewer will be struck by the third chief register and its midget population of extra-lifelike 'Fraggles' (robed priest (?) and sundry women: blowing on embers, serving-wench, party-girl, turbaned nude negotiating with hunk). One haunted grim desperado-cum-hot-coal- eyed-demon resembles the beaky 'Theseus' caricature from the House of Menander bath and the cartoon 'Gorgs' slightly resemble some of the egghead 'pygmies' from oecus 11 there, but I was reminded most of a Pompeian 'Priapus among the Pygmies'.² Certainly the Ostia frieze rounds out a distinctively complex cartoon art idiom in fully realized form. Just as certainly, this idiom has about as much to do with nanotechnology as it does with somatic dwarfism.³

That 'dwarfs' aren't on show rather detracts from Moret's section on 'Antony's Dwarfs' (pp. 137-62), which exhaustively pursues themes of anti-Antony sarcasm and dwarfs in Hellenistic court-culture (esp. 'grylloi') before entwining them as ideological markers of tyrannical luxury and bridging from cranes in the frieze background to Ptolemaic-Cleopatran- Egyptian othering of Antony and the freaks he fetched from Syria, according to Philodemus, De Signis IV, col.II.17. His section on 'Ostia, Rome, Tibur: Hercules Victor and the Pirates', pp. 109-35) no less exhaustively works a particular version of 'Hercules and Cacus' identified by Moret as one frieze scene in, with Mediterranean sea-lanes protection and associated Italian cult, with Sextus Pompeius, with the prime colleagues of the Fabii running Ostia, and then back to Tiberside and the Porta Trigemina glimpsed in the same scene, plus navalia and ship-prows among the elaborate mouldings of the oecus. These sections help Moret's remaining, gigantesque, essay, 'The Festivals of the Dwarfs' (pp. 49-108) bulk up his interpretative venture to 128 pages (of 181) supported by 1,170 often weighty footnotes, as well as providing the governing interpretative pitch for the frieze; which is, of course part of the campaign for kudos and backing for the archaeological project on the whole domus, already a decade into the struggle for support and achievement. Before confiding the (realistic?) dream of flanking the Farnesina in the Palazzo Massimo, Angelo Bottini ('Presentazione', pp. 9-11) accurately puts up-front that Moret's labours amount to provocation: '...to be eventually refuted, will require no less scholarly input'. Simply put, this is indeed Moret's booklet.⁴

To get to grips with the frieze, readers must start by working between figs. 12-18 with their subjoined outline-drawing versions which number the figures (pp. 34-47) and the essential Appendix ('Brief Description of the Figures of the Frieze', pp.179-81) which subjoins bare identification of the figures keyed to that numbering, working from left-to-right, to barebones précis of what Moret makes of each strip in the series of seven surviving 'scenes' as he has identified them, with the illustrations following suit. The schematic diagram on p.105 noted above shows that 'scene 7' is all that has been rescued from the southern wall, adjacent to 'scene 1' which begins the left-to-right sequence through 'scene 5' along the western wall, with 'scene 6' immediately round the corner on the north wall. As well as the bottom metre (and a half) of décor still in situ on the east wall (fig. 8), several fragments of frieze survive therefrom, to be glimpsed on the mock-up 'reconstruction' of the entire east wall provided in figs. 9-10. The elaborate set of ornamental mouldings above the frieze (40cm. high, at 3+m. from the floor, with the ceiling at 4+m.) is described in detail by Morard and Girard, but the mock-ups only go as high as the band with paired theatre masks flanking open-shuttered spaces for a depicted 'pinax' each. One flaw in the primary strip of illustrations (figs. 12-18, with accompanying numbered outlines) is that they are unsized and to different scales (between 1:5 and 1:8); but you can work out for yourself that of an original band working round a room of 10.5-by-4.5 metres (minus that doorway, say 25m. or so?), we are looking at pieced-together remnants that add up to just around 2.5m. (south) and 50cm. (north), but most all 10.5m. of the west wall: so we can feel confident that the minimal spacings allotted between non-adjacent chunks in the reconstructions used for the photo-strip are well-founded, and we aren't, for example, missing all that much.

A 'new art historian' scanning/moving round south-west-north to track this parergonal, supplementary, microscape on- high could scintillate plenty on these tableaux:

(7) Cranes wade in swampland, demon lowers above steer, hunk lifts right arm, leaning shield on his leg, in front of triple arch with Corinthian columns, nude shield-carrier legs it after the herd bolting gardenwards.

(1) Visitors enter stage-left carrying a container-full into the laundry/dyers where someone reaches for clothes hung on the dryer.

(2) Next door's hostelry spans from woman rousing hearth, with loaf, jar store, and oven behind, below suspended/flypast male-genitalia-bird; on past a couple of onlookers, a tiny sign over a deepfield door with horse refusing to be tugged even one pace further, tray-toting waitress beside basket-carrying servant, dog, inviting cocotte, seated customer and spread; to reach procession entering through door to-right headed by somebody in a tall cap fetching along a fowl, then another, toting shield (?).

(3) In the room 'proper', before straw hut, procession of men plus potbellied pig and then bull run-for-it looking behind them, stretching, beckoning, calling the human stampede on clean across the scene; to debouch finally (about to trip over?) on prone corpse strewn along foreground baseline wedged on his chin in full face.

(4) Watched by that parade of blank 'Doozer' troops and diminutive attendant (?), that squatter ties a lace; a veiled figure files after the robed and turbanned (?) priestly (?) figure who stares intently into the glittering helmet he proffers; after lacuna isolating cattle to rear, solid civic crowd of worthies onlook gravely from right; but immediately behind them one, likely two, trumpeters face away right, blowing their horn, before shield leant on column base (?).

(5) Closing the west wall line-up, enter shield-carrier behind speeding character splaying hands before him, galloping horses, another shield-carrier or so; one woman stoops, hugs, kisses child, another, dress-top ripped away, lifts high, kisses, baby, while from right, someone stretches hands towards her, before crowd of figures including one grounding (? grounded?) shield, another removing greaves (?).

(6) Muscle-rippling rockstar tries magnetizing bare-backed will-she-won't-she nudie round the corner.

Yes, richly rewarding pickings.

In Moret's closure-infested hermeneutic, priest staring into the helmet he embraces becomes a Salian because his headgear supposedly resembles that of the Villa Borghese Mosaic showing ritual from the Mamuralia (fig. 19). Where the masks above (fig. 11) help supply ipse nitor galeae claro radiantis ab auro (Ovid, Met.13.105, of dead Achilles' prize armour...), and so one from any number of Armorum Iudicium plays, for my thought-bubble the identification launches a Festival complex, Mars' March-focussed with associable others, 'scene'-linkage:

(1) Artificum Dies-(2) Liberalia-(3) Poplifugia-(4) Quinquatrus/Armilustrium-and-Tubilustrium-(5) Intervention of the Sabine Women. Flanked south by (6) (demon, hulk, Gate, herd) Cacus and Hercules; north by (7) (hunk-and-wanted-female) Mars with Anna Perenna.

To the anticipated cold eye of ultrascettismo, 'Hercules-Cacus' is difficult but possible, the rest more or less desperate; certainly there is no iconographic basis.

The marvelous recovery of the discarded hacked plaster buried in an Augustan make-over as rubble to raise floor-level by that 1-1.5m. margin, and their recomposition jigsaw-puzzle-style, will make an amazing saga; and proper estimation of the contents of the oecus dei Nani within its whole version of Casa IV.5.16 on Main St. down to the Porta Marina will become feasible.⁵ Soon, let's hope.

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Notes:

1.   See Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art (1993, New York), esp. p. 91.
2.   See John R. Clarke, Looking at Laughter. Humor, Power, Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 B.C.-A.D.250 (2007, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London), Fig. 62, Plates 14-15, with pp.135-43, and Roger Ling, Roman Painting (1991, Cambridge), p.166. For the 'Priapus', see J. Marcadé, ROMA/AMOR (1965, Geneva-Paris-Munich), p.65 (unhelpfully, '(fresco). Museum of Naples').
3.   Contrast, for example, the repertoire of dys-proportion collected in Alexandre G. Mitchell, Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour (2009, Cambridge), cf. esp. pp.235-6. The Ostian figures are rightly differentiated from Disney in the books' adland blurb and, more to the point, from Red or indeed any art-historical iconography of dwarfs in The Curtain-raiser: the Art of Depicting Dwarfs, Domingo Gasparro, pp.13-14).
4.   All this learning, and no index.
5.   Prequel in B. Perrier (ed.), Villas, Maisons, Sanctuaires et Tombeaux tardo-Républicains. Découvertes et Re-lectures Récentes (Actes du colloque international de St. Romain-en-Gal en l'honneur d'Anna Gallina Zevi, 7-9 febbraio 2007) (2007, Rome); on-line, Stella Falzone, 'Luxuria privata. Edilizia abitativa e arredo decorativo a Ostia e a Roma in età tardo-repubblicana', Bollettino di Archeologia On-Line Special Volume: Rome 2008 International Congress of Classical Archaeology Meetings between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean, pp. 59-73, at 66-9, is available at http://151.12.58.75/archeologia/bao_document/articoli/6_Falzone_paper.pdf.

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Theodosia Stephanidou-Tiveriou, Pavlina Karanastase, Demetres Damaskos (ed.), Κλασική παράδοση και νεωτερικά στοιχεία στην πλαστική της ρωμαϊκής Ελλάδας. Proceedings of the International Conference in Thessaloniki, 7-9 May 2009. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2012. Pp. 536. ISBN 9789601220840. €53.00.

Reviewed by Mary C. Sturgeon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (sturgeon@email.unc.edu)

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[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

"Roman sculpture in Greece, the classical tradition and new developments" is the publication of a major conference held in Thessaloniki in 2009. The editors, Theodosia Stephanidou-Tiveriou, Pavlina Karanastase, and Demetres Damaskos, should be congratulated on making the conference papers available so quickly and in such a handsomely produced volume. The papers give clear presentations of specific subjects supported by excellent photographs and drawings and detailed bibliography. With this book, the editors have made a major contribution to scholarship on Classical sculpture.

For most of the sculptures this is their first scholarly, illustrated publication, for others it is a new interpretation or a synthetic analysis of a specific type. The monuments range in date from the first century BC to the fifth century AD and include free standing items and reliefs of various subjects. Of the 37 papers, two-thirds are in Greek, the rest in English (2), French (3), German (3), and Italian (4). Nonetheless, each chapter is provided with a detailed abstract in English, which should be helpful for readers. The overall assemblage creates a picture of Greek sculpture in the Roman period that is quite different from what ancient historians and modern writers have led us to expect. Subjects are broad and varied, and artistic quality is high. A few papers present recent finds from outside Greece proper.

Three longer studies provide a broad setting for more focused contributions. In the lead paper, Georgios Despinis considers Roman acroliths, primarily with regard to technical aspects of construction, using examples from Thessaloniki, Ephesus, Athens, and Rome. Contrary to what is indicated by the sources, the stone parts are not only employed at the end points of a figure, but also for the chest, especially when it is nude. Sources also suggest that akroliths were designed for religious purposes, but some are not found in temples or sanctuaries, and not all were statues of gods. What is certain is that acroliths stood in a fixed place and that they derived some technical details from wooden construction. Key features are the swallow-tail cuttings that were used for attachments, in a form characteristic of wood-working art, as seen in the colossal Athena in Thessaloniki made in the 2^nd century AD and revised as a portrait of Julia Domna. Moreover, attachment surfaces are not level, and none have anathyrosis, as in marble construction.

The marble statue bases inside the Philippeion at Olympia require reconsideration. Some have thought the statues were not in gold and ivory (chryselephantine), as stated by Pausanias, because the cuttings on the bases resemble those used for marble figures. Possibly, however, a combination of techniques was used, as with a cuirassed statue in Thessaloniki. Like that piece, Despinis thinks the male figures would have had marble plinths and marble legs-to- lower body, with the torso added above in the acrolithic technique. Peter Schultz, who addressed this question elsewhere, believes that the statues were made entirely of marble and painted or gilded.¹ A different technique is illustrated by a cuirassed statue from Ephesus in which the cuirassed body is supported by poles inserted through the marble legs, as shown by part of the hollowed-out lower leg. Stronger support could have been provided by a long paludamentum hanging to the base, which would serve as the mast-pole of the wooden construction, as the wooden supports alone would not withstand a great weight. A similar approach was used at a colossal scale in an acrolith, the Genius Augusti, from the Forum of Augustus in Rome. Sufficient support for the heavy weight of such figures seems facilitated by cut-out sections of the back.

The colossal Constantine in Rome (height of head and neck 2.60 m) was also an acrolith, with marble used for the nude parts and wood for the rest, with no metal or stucco. Substantiating some of the sources are recent finds of an ivory face north of Rome. The head, based on radiocarbon-14 testing, comes from the 2^nd half of the 1^st century BC.

Guntram Koch provides a detailed overview of the production and trade of Attic sarcophagi. Made in Athens, one of the three major centers [with Rome and Asia Minor (Dokimeion) ] producing marble caskets, over 65% of Attic sarcophagi were intended for export and were more widely distributed than those of other centers. Ranging ca. AD 130-260, they increased after AD 200, so that about half were created ca. 220/30-250. Attic sarcophagi were exported in large numbers to Rome and Asia Minor, they were copied in all parts of the empire, and Attic sculptors travelled and set up workshops elsewhere. Individual features, such as heads, draperies, and ornamental motifs, are distinctive and provide a means of attribution to Attic workshops. As Attic sarcophagi can be dated, they help establish chronology for other Attic sculpture.

The numbers of exports, imports, and dates of sarcophagus manufacture are compared across the three main regions of origin, using charts. Production is estimated as between 10,000 or even 20,000 per year in the mid 2^nd century AD, assuming a survival rate of 1% or 2% percent. Koch estimates the number of blocks for sarcophagus boxes and lids that would have been quarried each year, calculates their weight, and then considers the shipping season and the capacity of the ships.

In the early 2^nd century AD well-trained sculptors clearly existed in Athens. Ca. AD 130 Athenians realized they could do exceptional work making sarcophagi in Pentelic marble. There was no preexisting tradition for marble caskets in Athens or the rest of Greece, so the stimulus clearly came from Rome. This is demonstrated also because Attic production began with the garland type, made earlier in Rome. Athenian carvers, however, did not imitate Roman models, but created their own type. The Attic sarcophagus is shaped like a house of the dead with a marble-tiled roof and carved moldings. Most Attic sarcophagi have an emphasis on form, decoration, subject, and style.

Subjects are most varied in examples up to ca. AD 170/80, with over 100 designs, but by the end of the 2^nd century production is focused on about 15 subjects. In the 3rd century, each item is individual, which would have resulted in high cost for the design and the work. Some sarcophagi provide good examples of Attic carving style. The heads are especially characteristic: the face somewhat soft, the brows engraved, the hair worked with the chisel, and the drill used in different ways. Hence, Attic sarcophagi provide the basis for recognizing and understanding Attic sculpture of the middle imperial period.

R. R. R. Smith discusses the 'second lives' of statues from earlier periods in Late Antique Aphrodisias. The Early Roman Sebasteion, a long double-colonnaded complex with over 80 relief panels, became a retail and craft center in the late 4^th or 5^th century. Smith's analysis shows that reliefs that were defaced contained frontally posed Olympian gods, as they may have appeared iconic, or depicted blood sacrifice, probably to avoid the ritual of pollution.

Honorific portraits continued to be set up in public civic buildings. Some pre-existing statues were moved to new locations, such as the logeion and scena of the theater, from the 2^nd century to the late 3^rd and early 4^th. Smith characterizes this practice as historic preservation, for the subject was not changed. After the scena and logeion had become full, in the 4^th century statues were placed in the Tetrastoon outside the theater on re-used bases. This action creates a genuine spolia monument, as it was put together from older sculptures to construct a new ensemble.

The Bouleuterion and north stoa in the North Agora (essentially the entrance to the Bouleuterion) provided the most prestigious honorific locations. In these structures statue bodies were reused from earlier periods, as the himation costume was still considered valid and impressive, and it expressed desirable civic values and continuity with the past. The densest statue display was seen in the Hadrianic Baths, which remained in use until ca. 600.

At one end of the Civil Basilica an unusual horse monument was found, composed of blue and white marble, which was also moved from a prior location,. The blue-gray marble horse wore a feline saddlecloth in gilded metal attached with 45 iron pins. A nude rider is of white marble, and a third figure is indicated on the base. The subject suggested is Troilos and Achilles, which also appears on the bronze cuirass worn by the statue of Germanicus in Amelia (Umbria) illustrated by Queyrel (pp. 428, 429).

Topics covered in the remaining papers are diverse. They include Attic funerary stelae, funerary reliefs from Crete, Macedonia, Thasos, Thessaly, and Veroia, and funerary statues. Regional studies focus on Boeotia, Macedonia, Thessaly, and Crete. Roman copies include the 'Petworth' athletic head and possibly a classical Medea. Greek deities form the subject of Late Roman statuettes of Demeter and Kybele from an Athenian villa, a Dionysos with elaborate hairstyle, and from Thessaloniki a statuette of Sarapis and statues of Roma and Zeus Eleutherios with aegis, from their Hadrianic temple.

Some portraits depict imperial subjects, such as a Livia from Leptis Magna, a Vespasian from Veroia, and Faustina the Younger's sixth portrait type. Non-imperial portraits include a Claudian five-figure family group from the Gymnasium at Sikyon, a male head from Messene with a curious bulging vein on the bald skull, Antinous as a hero of the Second Sophistic, and portraits of women (3^rd, 5^th centuries). The marble cuirassed torso from Iria on Naxos with Dirce and the Bull relief is reinterpreted by Queyrel as Caligula or Nero, rather than Mark Antony, as previously suggested. And the full-length bronze of Polydeukion discovered in the sea off Punta del Serrone (Brindisi) in 1992 receives detailed treatment.

Additional contributions should be noted. Sculptures from the Late Hadrianic phase (ca. AD 130) of the Theater of Dionysos in Athens are reexamined. Colossal statues of Tragedy and Comedy are recomposed and a reconstruction of the Hadrianic scaenae frons presented that incorporates all the silenos support figures previously recognized. Unusual are the piers in Kavala supporting male busts, possibly from a gymnasium. Similarly curious is a portrait head of a woman from Thessaloniki, which once had two children grasping the fruit in her wreath. Identified as a possible 'Tellus,' this figure recalls the 'Tellus' on the Ara Pacis and a seated female figure in the Durrës Museum (Albania) with two children in her lap.

Also noteworthy is Goette's re-interpretation of the large relief from Mantineia of the 'priestess' Diotima, usually dated to the 420s BC as made in the 2^nd century AD. It would have served as a Roman 'memory relief' to honor the Seer shown holding a liver, who may have helped the Athenians during the plague of 429 BC.

In summary, this publication demonstrates the high quality of sculptures produced in Greece during the Roman period, the on-going tradition of excellent scholarship that characterizes our European, and primarily our Greek colleagues in this case, and the high standards of publication in Greece. A number of books recently produced on sculptural topics by leading presses contain pale gray photographs that are barely legible. A major contribution of this volume is the printing of photographs of consistently high quality, which is of critical importance for sculpture. I look forward to a second conference on this topic, which is planned for a few years hence.

Περιεχόμενα

Πρόλογος , 9

Εισαγωγικό σημείωμα της Θεοδοσίας Στεφανίδου-Τιβερίου. Η έρευνα της πλαστικής των ρωμαικών χρόνων στην Ελλάδα, 11

ΔΙΑΛΕΞΕΙΣ

Γεώργιος Ι. Δεσπίνης, Ακρόλιθα αγάλματα των ρωμαϊκών χρόνων, 19

Guntram Koch, Οι αττικές σαρκοφάγοι και η σημασία τους για την τέχνη της αυτοκρατορικής εποχής, 35

Roland R. R. Smith, The second lives of classical monuments in late antique Aphrodisias, 57

ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΕΙΣ

Ισμήνη Τριάντη, Κεφαλή νέου στον τύπο του Αθλητή Petworth από το οικόπεδο Μακρυγιάννη στην Αθήνα, 77

Olga Palagia, The peplos figure Athens National Museum 3890: Roman copy of a classical Μedea? 89

Στυλιανός Ε. Κατάκης, Αγαλμάτια Δήμητρας και Κυβέλης των ύστερων ρωμαικών χρόνων από την Aθήνα, 99

Aλκηστις Χωρέμη-Σπετσιέρη, Πορτρέτα της ύστερης αρχαιότητας από την Αθήνα, 115

Χριστίνα Παπασταμάτη-von Moock, Θέατρο του Διονύσου Ελευθερέως. Tα γλυπτά της ρωμαικής σκηνής: χρονολογικά, καλλιτεχνικά και ερμηνευτικά ζητήματα, 129

Derk W. von Moock, Η αναβίωση της παραγωγής των αττικών επιτυμβίων στηλών κατά τον 1ο αι. π.Χ., 151

Aννα-Βασιλική Καραπαναγιώτου, Ανδρική εικονιστική κεφαλή από τη Μεσσήνη. Πορτρέτο και κοινωνία στην Πελοπόννησο του ύστερου 1ου αι. π.Χ.,163

Πέτρος Θέμελης, Έργα επωνύμων γλυπτών και εργαστήριο γλυπτικής πρώιμων ρωμαικών χρόνων στη Μεσσήνη, 177

ΚΛΑΣΙΚΗ ΠΑΡΑΔΟΣΗ ΚΑΙ ΝΕΩTΕΡΙΚΑ ΣTΟΙΧΕΙΑ ΣTΗΝ ΠΛΑΣTΙΚΗ TΗΣ ΡΩΜΑιΚΗΣ ΕΛΛΑΔΑΣ

Ναταλία Καζακίδη, Eνα οικογενειακό σύνταγμα ανδριάντων της εποχής του Κλαυδίου και το γυμνάσιο στη Σικυώνα, 193

Hans Rupprecht Goette, Klassisches Original oder klassizistische Tradition in der Kaiserzeit? Zum Relief Αthen, Νationalmuseum Inv. 226 aus Mantineia, 213

Σταύρος Βλίζος, Εικονογραφικά παράδοξα και ερμηνευτικά ζητήματα: επιτύμβιο άγαλμα νέου από τη Λακωνία, 225

Margherita Bonanno Aravantinos, La scultura di età romana nella Beozia: importazioni e produzioni locali, 233

Ιφιγένεια Λεβέντη, Eπιτύμβια ανάγλυφα από τη Θεσσαλία. Παρατηρήσεις στη γλυπτική της κεντρικής Eλλάδας στα χρόνια της ρωμαιοκρατίας, 251

Εμμανουήλ Βουτυράς, Όρθιος Σάραπις από τη Θεσσαλονίκη, 265

Θεοδοσία Στεφανίδου-Τιβερίου, τα λατρευτικά αγάλματα του ναού του Διός και της ρώμης στη Θεσσαλονίκη, 273

Μπάρμπαρα Σμιτ-Δούνα, Γυναικεία κεφαλή από το ανατολικό τείχος της Θεσσαλονίκης, 287

Ελένη Τρακοσοπούλου-Σαλακίδου, Άγαλμα Διονύσου των αυτοκρατορικών χρόνων από τη Θεσσαλονίκη, 297

Κατερίνα Τζαναβάρη, Μαρμάρινο πορτρέτο του Βεσπασιανού από τη Βέροια, 307

Εμμανουέλα Γούναρη, Αγάλματα ιματιοφόρων ανδρών στο Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Θεσσαλονίκης. Ο «κανονικός τύπος» στη Μακεδονία κατά την αυτοκρατορική περίοδο, 325

Πολυξένη Αδάμ-Βελένη, Εικονιστική γυναικεία κεφαλή από την Αγορά των αυτοκρατορικών χρόνων της Θεσσαλονίκης, 337

Δημήτρης Δαμάσκος, Αρχιτεκτονικά και διακοσμητικά γλυπτά στο Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο της Καβάλας, 347

Βικτώρια Αλλαμανή-Σουρή, τα ανάγλυφα επιτύμβια μνημεία της Βέροιας από τον 1ο αι. π.Χ. έως τον 3ο αι. μ.Χ. Παράδοση και νεωτερισμοί, 357

Χρυσούλα Ιωακειμίδου, Ναόσχημο ταφικό μνημείο από την κοινότητα του Σιδηροδρομικού Σταθμού Αγγίστας Σερρών, 373

Ελένη Παπαγιάννη, ταφικά ανάγλυφα ρωμαίων στρατιωτών στη Μακεδονία, 385

ΠΕΡΙΕΧΟΜΕΝΑ

Vassiliki Gaggadis-Robin, Sculptures romaines de Bouthrôte, 399

Bernard Holtzmann, Les médaillons funéraires de Thasos, 409

François Queyrel, Modes de représentation des Julio-Claudiens dans les Cyclades. τraditions régionales et reprises de schémas iconographiques, 417

Παυλίνα Καραναστάση, H πλαστική της Κρήτης στην αυτοκρατορική περίοδο, 433

Katja Sporn, Römische Grabreliefs auf Kreta. Alte Traditionen und neue Wege, 451

Katia Mannino, Bronzi antichi dall'Adriatico: una statua di Polydeukion da Punta del Serrone (Brindisi), 467

Elisa Chiara Portale, Una "nuova" Livia da Leptis Magna. Osservazioni sul contributo delle botteghe attiche nell'elaborazione e diffusione dell'immaginario imperiale, 477

Thoralf Schröder, Im Angesichte Roms. Überlegungen zu kaiserzeitlichen männlichen Porträts aus Αthen, Thessaloniki und Korinth, 497

Ειρήνη Χιώτη, Επιδράσεις του έκτου εικονιστικού τύπου της Φαυστίνας της νεότερης στα ιδιωτικά πορτρέτα του ελλαδικού χώρου, 513

Marco Galli, Antinoos heros e gli eroi della Seconda Sofistica, 523

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Notes:

1.   "Leochares' Argead Portraits in the Philippeion," in Early Hellenistic Portraiture: Image, Style, Context, P. Schultz and R. von den Hoff, eds. (Cambridge 2007), pp. 205-233.

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Michael Squire, Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xxvi, 516. ISBN 9780521756013. $120.00.

Reviewed by Jennifer Trimble, Stanford University (trimble@stanford.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

This book is a major contribution to our understanding of image-text interactions in antiquity. In it, Michael Squire does two main things. First, he argues that Reformation theology and its modern academic legacy have subordinated the image to the word in ways that are misleading and anachronistic for the Greco-Roman world. Second, he builds on this critique by exploring complex interplays of text and image in Roman culture. The intellectual ambition and range of the book make it difficult to do justice to it in the short space of a review, and I apologize deeply for the lateness of this one.

The first two chapters lay out Squire's argument. He begins with Martin Luther, a watershed figure here because of the way Luther prioritized the Word over the image on theological grounds. This relationship was then institutionalized and routinized in religious teachings, church decoration, and children's books, inter alia.¹ Images were treated as easy to understand but also alluring and deceitful, and therefore important to control. This would not matter for the study of antiquity except that Luther's legacy has profoundly shaped modern scholarship on the relationship of image and text.

Squire explores these "Lutheran debts" in an impressive sweep that includes Winckelmann, Kant, Hegel, nineteenth- century German philology, twentieth-century art historical theory, and recent critiques of classical archaeology. Countertrends existed, not least statements on the impossibility of reducing an image to verbal terms (Squire brings in Derrida, Barthes and Foucault here, as well as Schapiro, Gombrich, Steinberg and Bal). However, even these positions were shaped in important ways by a post-Lutheran legacy, notably in the ongoing separation of content and form and in the perennial deferral of the actual meaning and impact of the image.

All this is deeply anachronistic for ancient art, and in Chapter 2, Squire looks more deeply into how this legacy has shaped the study of classical antiquity. He offers an extended critique of G. E. Lessing's famous 1766 essay on the Laocoon; Lessing's subjugation of the visual in favor of the textual, and his formulation of the spatiality of painting vs. the temporality of poetry, are here contextualized within post-Reformation thinking and contemporaneous European cultural politics. This then allows Squire to explore just how different things were in the Greco-Roman world.

Crucial for the developing argument is Squire's deconstruction of illustration and ecphrasis, the dominant frameworks within which modern classicists have analyzed text and image relationships. Illustration presumes the image's direct dependence on the text (Weitzmann is a key figure here). Methodologically, this has often been a literalist concept, in which scholars look for direct correspondences and compare "telltale minutiae" (121) to make judgments about how well images and texts agree. Squire argues that we should not expect images to closely align with a text; instead, differences can open up interpretive possibilities.

The recent interest in ecphrasis arose partly in rejection of these constraints (140-46). But here, too, Squire sees a post-Lutheran inheritance in the tendency to treat ecphrasis as an entirely literary phenomenon, isolated from visual culture. Squire stresses that practices of viewing shaped these texts and their receptions, just as textual practices shaped viewing. Numerous examples then let him demonstrate more complex interplays of visual and verbal, from Phrasikleia's funerary epigram and Athenian symposium pottery through the Tavern of the Seven Sages at Ostia and a fourth-century CE mosaic from Lullingstone. For Squire, all of these items ultimately raised questions for their viewers about interactions of image and text and about representation itself.

It is one thing to critique an existing situation. It is another, more valuable thing also to offer a better way forward, as Squire does in parts 2 and 3. The first part of the book creates a baseline for four case studies intended to show how images and texts interacted in the Roman world and how our interpretations can change with this expanded approach. All four are Roman in date and Italian in location. Chapter 3 is about Sperlonga, where Squire argues intriguingly that a fourth-century ecphrastic inscription placed on the rear wall of the cave reshaped the viewing of the sculptures even as the sculptures shaped the reading of the text. I did wonder here about the role of materiality and accessibility; by comparison to the dominant visual and physical presence of the sculptures from all parts of the space, the small inscription installed on the back wall would have been much harder to access and read.

Chapter 4 then discusses the first-century CE wall-paintings and Greek epigrams found together in the "House of Propertius" at Assisi, a tour de force I will return to below. These first two case studies are the most text-heavy, and some reviewers have chided Squire for prioritizing the textual over the visual. At Sperlonga, however, Squire's stated focus was the inscription; at Assisi the paintings are very badly preserved and difficult to treat in detail. The next two case studies work much more fully with the visual material. Chapter 5 looks at verbal and visual depictions of the myth of Polyphemus and Galatea—not only individual texts and images, but also the interactions of literary and visual traditions (more below). Chapter 6 then considers Roman "still life" paintings. For Squire, this modern art historical category is anachronistic, and instead he offers a very different—and convincing—interpretation relating these images to broader Roman discourses about food, luxuria and resemblance.

Among these case studies, to my mind chapters 4 and 5 offer the fullest demonstrations of Squire's approach. I want to highlight two strengths. The first is the richness of Squire's interpretations. In part 1, he argued that we should not expect text and image to align. In the epigrams and paintings at Assisi, he builds on this premise to show that a "disjuncture" (277) between text and image could be deliberate and meaningful. For example, epigram 4 quotes Iliad 7.264, in which Hector throws a huge rock at Ajax; the heroes eventually exchange gifts. The wall- painting here is badly preserved but clearly does not depict this event. Instead, it shows two white goats or sheep and traces of a human figure, and has been interpreted as a scene of the madness of Ajax. In that case, notes Squire, we have a juxtaposition in text and image of the heroism and madness of Ajax. There is a literary lineage for this juxtaposition, down to the same sword appearing in both scenes; to make this connection here, viewers had to look at both the image and the epigram, which played with exactly these interpretive possibilities.

A second strength is Squire's commitment to open and multi-layered interpretations. In part 1, he asserted the need to move beyond illustration and ecphrasis; in the case studies, the material and its viewers are treated as playful, mutually challenging, and interested in slippages between text and image. For example, recent scholarship has shown how, by means of textual puns and allusions to the Homeric episode, Theocritus' Idyll 11 plays with Polyphemus' lack of awareness of his future fatal encounter with Odysseus. Squire shows that the visual imagery engaged with similar themes, by means of iconographic allusions, gazes and visual focalization. He highlights their "'interpictorial' resonance…the dynamic ways in which visual schemata work as a collective system that might bring to mind, through a process of complementation, expansion and fulfilment, related images, stories and responses" (325).

The major question I am left chewing on is this. How are we to contextualize these erudite viewers within ancient viewing and visual culture more broadly? Squire's interpretations depend on the viewer's knowledge of an array of textual and visual referents conjured up by a given iconotext, and on the viewer's readiness to perform an intricate exegesis (e.g., 168-69, 230, 248). Did all viewers see and respond to these iconotexts in this way? What about everyone else? Addressing these questions was by no means Squire's goal or theme in this book. At the same time, in a book so committed to viewing and reception—and so productive in illuminating them—they inevitably arise.

A related question is whether this sophisticated model of viewing is applicable to all kinds of Roman iconotexts. Honorific portrait statuary, for instance, combined figural sculpture with inscribed texts for a wide range of viewers in public space. I have argued elsewhere that this imagery worked hard to limit exactly the kind of interpretive play that Squire's material revels in, for reasons having to do with the functions of honorific portraiture.² Squire makes tremendously productive use of concepts of play, playfulness, and games played (e.g., 189-90), and I am persuaded by his approach to the private world of the cultivated viewer. I remain curious about how this approach would work in situations with different audiences and differently constructed relationships between image-makers, patrons, images, and viewers.³

These questions touch on a broader tension within the study of Greco-Roman visual culture between historical/contextual and aesthetic/formalist approaches to viewing and reception, and a first answer may come from the observation that Squire engages productively with both.⁴ On the one hand, Squire's erudite viewers are historical, and historically substantiated. For example, the Assisi chapter opens with a discussion of the Roman cultural context for erudite viewing and the importance of displaying one's knowledge by responding eloquently to artworks seen; this was a "socially divisive phenomenon" (242). Most tangibly, the epigrams at Assisi were inscribed onto the paintings by actual persons, as were further emendations. From this perspective, the gain is a fuller, more nuanced understanding of erudite Roman viewing practices.

On the other hand, Squire's work also recalls the emphasis of reception aesthetics on the ways in which an artwork shapes its own viewing. This approach allows the formal structure and details of an artwork to be analyzed to reconstruct the artwork's implied viewer.⁵ From this perspective, Squire's interpretation brings out the richness of the material, without ever requiring that all actual viewers were this erudite or all responded to the material in the same way.⁶ Here, the gain is a more sophisticated understanding of the interplays between art and text.

A closing comment on the book's own reception. One of Squire's goals was to contribute to current art historical debates well beyond antiquity (12). To my knowledge, the book's reviews have all been within classical journals,⁷ but its citations point to a broader impact. The book is cited in recent work not only on Greco-Roman image and text interactions but also on Augustine and intermediality,⁸ visual aspects of early Christian texts,⁹ and visual and print cultures in the nineteenth-century United States.¹⁰ An important reception of the book is Squire's own subsequent monograph on the Tabulae Iliacae,¹¹ which builds on these ideas and methods to explore what it means to miniaturize a massive epic. There, Squire traces the sophisticated games of scale, medium, narrative and response played by the tablets' images and texts with their readers/viewers. Ultimately at stake, there and here, is the question of how ancient audiences found meaning in what they read and saw, and how image and text interacted both to produce representations and to question them. Squire's exploration of how this worked for antiquity, and why that matters, is a substantial achievement.

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Notes:

1.   Influential here is the work of J. Koerner, The Reformation of the Image, Chicago, 2004. Throughout the book, Squire acknowledges his debts to previous work on art-text relationships and ways of viewing, notably by W.J.T. Mitchell, Jas' Elsner, and others.
2.   J. Trimble, Women and Visual Replication in Roman Imperial Art and Culture. Cambridge, 2011.
3.   A brilliant answer to this question is now V. Platt's Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco- Roman Art, Literature and Religion, Cambridge, 2011.
4.   R.R.R. Smith, "The Use of Images: Visual History and Ancient History," in T.P. Wiseman, ed., Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome, London, 2002: 59-102.
5.   On these trends and how they have played out in art history, M. Holly, "Reciprocity and Reception Theory," in Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde, eds., A Companion to Art Theory, Blackwell, 2008: 448-457.
6.   To my mind, this counters E. Mayer's concerns that Squire awards too much sophistication to images seen in relatively humble contexts: The Ancient Middle Classes: Urban Life and Aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE-250 CE, Harvard, 2012, 284 and 286.
7.   N. Spivey in Greece and Rome 58.1 (2011) 136-37; E. Moignard, The Classical Review 61.1 (2011) 267-68; Z. Newby, Journal of Roman Studies 101 (2011) 309-11; A. Pappas, Classical World 104.4 (2011) 513-15.
8.   K. Pollmann and M. Gill, Augustine beyond the Book: Intermediality, Transmediality and Reception, Brill, 2012.
9.   Jane Heath, "Nomina sacra and sacra memoria before the monastic age," Journal Of Theological Studies, NS, 61.2 (2010) 516-549.
10.   M.J. Dinius, The Camera and the Press: American Visual and Print Culture in the Age of the Daguerrotype, University of Pennsylvania, 2012.
11.   Michael Squire, The Iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae, Oxford, 2011.

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Carlos F. Noreña, Imperial Ideals in the Roman West: Representation, Circulation, Power. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xxii, 456. ISBN 9781107005082. $105.00.

Reviewed by Andrew M. Riggsby, University of Texas at Austin (ariggsby@mail.utexas.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Returning to classes this Fall, I explained (as many readers of this journal will have done many times) to yet another group of students in my Roman History survey class that Rome had an empire long before there were emperors. The nature of the connections between the two institutions is the big question raised at the beginning of this interesting book. The question, of course, is so large that this very interesting new book does not pretend to cover it all. Norena's strategy is rather is to pursue a fairly narrow line of inquiry through most of the work (albeit one that relies on controlling a large mass of data). By the end, however, he has said some important and general things about the workings of power in the empire, and how the trajectory of ideological messaging may have altered its very foundations.

The book comprises a general introduction and conclusion, two chapters on concepts presented on imperial coinage ("values and virtues" and "benefits of empire and monarchy," respectively), two on the use of similar themes in honorific inscriptions, general introductions to those two pairs of chapters discussing the samples of evidence on which they rely, and 15 appendices further cataloging evidence and discussing statistical technicalities. (The study treats principally the western empire from 69-235, but there are also wider views in time and space.) Before going on to further analysis, I will summarize the contents of the four core chapters and the conclusion.

Chapter 2. While Roman politics had always been framed in broadly ethical terms, its reduction (at least in a certain rhetorical register) to a list of virtues and vices was largely an imperial development, and one that does not really start to take hold until the Flavians. Personifications of virtues are one of the two most important reverse types on imperial coins. Looking at coins over time and across metals we can construct a set (never proclaimed as a canon in antiquity) of the most important of these: aequitas, pietas, virtus, liberalitas, and providentia (61). Noreña analyzes the meaning of these terms based on a variety of texts and images, and looks at their distribution. In several cases he makes a case that "the state was careful to ensure that its public claims correspond to some objective reality." (70) I will have more to say about the substance of this claim below, but here I note that the "objective reality" in question is not typically individual episodes but rather broad trends in policy.

Chapter 3. Even more frequent than the virtues are purported "material, social, and juridical benefits of empire." (106) Here the canon is slightly larger and has a fuzzier edge, but Noreña plausibly restricts detailed consideration to victoria, pax, concordia, fortuna and salus (111; several of the less common types are readily grouped with one or the other of the major ones). These concepts are framed in ways that allow the generalization of a benefit to a specific audience or at a specific time (e.g. annona for the urban populace; a particular military conquest) to slide over into more general ones (abundance, victory in general). The importance of victoria varies considerably over time, and seems to track the importance of aggressive war as measured by other indices. More constant over time, however, is an emphasis on pax and concordia in the silver coinage as opposed to fortuna and salus in base metals; Noreña reads this as reflecting a more elite audience for the former. Conspicuous by its relative rarity in any form and at all times is libertas.

Chapter 4. The emperor's presence was projected throughout the empire by a number of media (especially sculpture). Among these, monumental inscriptions—both official and unofficial—stand out for their combination of articulateness and (in at least some sense) broad availability.¹ The official inscriptions work with largely the same canon of virtues as the coins. Moreover, the frequent coincident appearance (or prominence) of particular terms or themes in both media suggest a centralized source (if not authority) for language that appears across the entire west. Severan inscriptions, however, show a strong tendency (only weakly represented in the coinage) to replace generalized virtue terms with more narrowly militaristic language.

Chapter 5. Inscriptions by unofficial actors again exhibit the same general canon of virtues and sensitivity to the reign-to-reign variation we have already seen. Noreña takes this as evidence that non-state actors appropriated the official language. More specifically, local aristocrats voluntarily reproduced the official line, but they did not do so in order to reflect it back to the central government, nor did they seek to display "loyalty" to the regime or attract/reciprocate imperial benefactions. Rather they sought to achieve local advantage. They were themselves beneficiaries of the gross inequalities of the imperial system, and this provided a ready-made ideological package to legitimate that system. It also allowed them to re-appropriate the same symbolic language to describe and legitimize themselves more directly. This became problematic under the Severans, as the emperor moved from "[ethical] model to master" (283), from optimus to dominus. The new, autocratic vision offered by the central state left little space for layered hierarchies. Under the Antonines, playing the emperor's ideological game made it worthwhile to replicate (and in fact make much more concrete) his supposed beneficence. This became an engine for the local euergetism that made the system function. As the ideological motivation declined, that euergetism did as well.

Chapter 6. The argument just presented suggests a convergence of language (and symbols more generally) between the state and local aristocracies based on converging but separate individual interests. Noreña also shows paths by which this ideological convergence might have gone deeper in the population as well, though, as he notes, this is hard to prove and probably not directly relevant to the main argument. The ideological convergence of different elites was enough to generate a lot of power. In particular, the notional exchange of imperial generosity for various honors served as a model for similar but much more concrete exchanges at the local level. This is what motivated mechanisms of redistribution throughout the empire.

At the core of the book is, as Noreña points out, a lot of quantitative analysis of the deployment of various ideas on coins and elsewhere. In particular, he makes three kinds of quantitative argument. (1) Frequencies of appearance on coinage of particular ideas are compared to frequencies of appearance on coinage of other ideas. This gives us some sense of what messages were most important to the state on a reign-by-reign basis. (2) Frequencies of appearance on coinage are compared to those on inscriptions, both official and unofficial. The former illustrates the coherence of the messaging coming from the center; the latter shows the extent to which those messages were picked up and echoed (for whatever reason) by those outside the state. (3) Frequencies of appearance on coinage are compared to various statistics about external phenomena (purity of the coinage, frequency of imperial victory celebrations). This is used to argue for a connection between the official rhetoric and the realities of policy.

The arguments of the first and second categories (coins vs. coins, coins vs. inscriptions) are for the most part clear and straightforward, despite a few quibbles that could be offered. The connections between coin types and real- world factors are necessarily more complicated and more speculative, and deserve special attention. Let me start with a general remark, before considering two particular cases. When Noreña ties frequency of coin types to external phenomena, he calculates a correlation coefficient for the two variables, then does a further test to confirm the statistical significance of the first result. Within my limited ability to discern, these calculations have been done in a formally correct way. We should keep in mind, however, that "statistically significant" need not mean significant to the subject matter, and that correlations (even when "real") can be caused by many things. Let me give two examples in which more explicit attention might have been paid to alternative interpretation of the data in light of these considerations.

Noreña points to a correlation between production of aequitas types and the silver content of contemporary coinage to argue that the aequitas types were used to emphasize actual production of good coin rather than (as some might have suspected) serving to conceal real debasement. He notes a strong correlation between his variables for the period from Nerva to Caracalla (r = -.73; pp. 69, 357) and an even stronger one for just the period from Marcus Aurelius to Caracalla (r = -.96; pp. 70, 357). It might be useful to take a look at a plot of the data involved.

See Graph

Noreña sees a single phenomenon, starting as a vague trend, then sharpening under Marcus Aurelius. It seems to me that we have, rather, two different linear phenomena, one from Nerva to Antoninus Pius and the other from Marcus Aurelius to Caracalla. In fact, the correlation coefficient for the first half (-.9687) is slightly higher than that already calculated by Noreña for the second half. If both series show high correlation, there is no reason to write either off as a poor approximation of the other. How then can we account for both halves? Frankly, I have no answer, but I would be cautious of any real-world interpretation of this graph that did not offer a clearer account of the change.

Or consider the correlation (r = .95) between the frequency of liberalitas types and frequency of congiaria over the reigns of the emperors from Hadrian to Caracalla. Here, a graphic plot would simply emphasize Noreña's statistical findings, but we might want to take a closer look at the underlying data. Most rates of congiaria fall into a small cluster between .32 and .38 per year. In real world terms this seems like a fairly subtle difference. Suppose Hadrian or Septimius Severus had given out just one more over the course of their entire reigns or Antoninus Pius one fewer. This would send the former two to the top half of the cluster and the latter to the bottom.

See Table

One difficulty with any quantitative study of broad social phenomena is coming up with statistics to represent the phenomena in which we are really interested. How does one measure imperial generosity or social welfare or the like? Finding such statistics for the ancient world is, of course, doubly difficult. Counting congiaria is an entirely reasonable move to make, but it perhaps turns out not to give particularly robust results. And in any case, this is an area in which we might want multiple indices.

Noreña contrasts his opportunistic view of what provincial elites are up to with Ando's account of loyalty (or at least loyalism).² The interpretation that local imperial honorifics were in the first instance "public expressions of loyalty to the imperial regime... is not tenable." (270-271, cf. 272) But elsewhere (19n61) he allows "these perspectives [including Ando's] are not wholly incompatible with mine," although "the emphases are very different." I would suggest taking the latter formulation as more than simply polite. The case against the loyalist interpretation hinges on the argument (probably correct) that there were few or no ties between direct encounters with a traveling emperor and either imperial benefactions or dedications, and so the emperor (or even his senior officials) cannot be thought of as the audience for the dedications (271). But this is perhaps too literal a reading. This was after all a world in which the emperor maintained a considerable virtual presence, not least through the coins and statuary this book analyzes so well. Moreover, if we look beyond the kinds of communications studied here, it is also a world in which all manner of requests were thought suitable to be passed on to the emperor, with some real expectation of a response.³ Noreña makes a very strong case for the important local effects of local honorific regimes (and their consequences for the structure of the empire as a whole), but that need not constrain our account of their motivation. One should maintain the normal doubts of the sincerity of such gestures, but that does not mean that upward display is not an important part of what they were meant to do.

As often happens in reviews, I concentrated on points of disagreement, but I should stress both that I found most of the work convincing, and that even beyond that I have found it profitable to think through these issues with Noreña.

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Notes:

1.   "Official" inscriptions here are those put up by any element or agent of the central government. (214) A text put up by a town council, then, would be "unofficial."
2.   C. Ando Imperial ideology and provincial loyalty in the Roman empire. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2000.
3.   F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (Cornell 1992
1977.  ), esp. Part Three; S. Connolly, Lives Behind the Laws: the World of the Codex Hermogenianus (Indiana 2010).

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