Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Alicia Walker, The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. xxvii, 260. ISBN 9781107004771. $95.00.

Reviewed by Antony Eastmond, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London (antony.eastmond@courtauld.ac.uk)

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Preview

The Emperor and the World is a thought-provoking and welcome book. Moving from the ninth to the late twelfth century, Alicia Walker explores how Byzantine imperial power could be presented in relation to other cultures – the idea of the exotic. It is a tightly woven book with a clear argument and a neat structure, bookended by descriptions of the Islamicising decoration of two Byzantine palaces in Constantinople. It is full of stimulating – but often controversial – points that should inspire new research on the objects and ideas that she discusses.

The introduction establishes Walker's ideas with a terminological tool-box: she gives succinct definitions of the relationships that she will examine, in terms of emulation, appropriation, expropriation, parity, and incomparability. Alongside this she talks about the distinction between 'official' and 'non-official' iconography and also provides a definition of the 'exotic'. This key word is a more loaded term than 'foreign', and Walker suggests it is a more active concept relating to the ways in which desires and anxieties about the foreign can be negotiated through representation. So armed we jump straight in to the first of the five chronologically arranged case studies that comprise the book.

The first chapter opens with Theophanes Continuatus' description of the Bryas palace in Constantinople, which is described as being an imitation of Abbasid palaces in Baghdad. It is considered alongside a range of ninth-century silks with hunting imagery drawn from Roman, Sasanian and Islamic traditions. Walker places these all in the context of military rivalry, trade, and intellectual links between the two capitals in order to suggest that Islamicising art in Byzantium emulates eastern art, and should be seen as a means of asserting Byzantine cultural supremacy. Questions of audience hover throughout the book, and one wonders at different possible readings that might not always have accorded with the intended meanings of the commissioners. Would Islamic ambassadors to Constantinople have seen these works in the same way?

The second chapter examines the Troyes casket, a lavish tenth-century ivory box. Its lid, front, and back are decorated with imperial scenes: two mounted emperors approach (or leave) a city on its lid, and lion and boar hunts grace the front and back. In contrast, the two short ends are decorated with Chinese phoenixes (feng huang). The discussion nicely situates the placement of the Chinese elements on the periphery of the box as echoes of the extent and reach of the empire. It is interesting that Walker sees all the meaning of these beasts lying in their intrinsic exoticness. No space is given to whether the iconographies might also have meaning. Whilst it is clearly impossible now to recover any specific meaning for such rare beasts within Byzantium, it might be possible to explore why the Byzantines chose these animals rather than any others from Chinese art. Were the Byzantines aware of the imperial associations of the feng huang in China? How might such meanings have been maintained, altered, or lost over the vast distances that the motifs were carried in the tenth century?

The end of the chapter on the Troyes casket raises the possibility that the ivory was used as a diplomatic gift. This is a tempting idea, but raises new questions about the use of exotic motifs. If the box were offered as a gift to a society which regarded Byzantium itself as an exotic 'other', then what role would doubly exotic Chinese animals have played in the box's reception? Would they have been recognised as even more foreign? The term 'exotic' is in danger of becoming too broad a term, and so lacking differentiation. Or is there a point at which all such elements collapse into a single category of the 'exotic '?

The third chapter looks at Byzantium from outside by considering the eleventh-century Fatimid Book of gifts and rarities and its account of gifts exchanged across the Mediterranean. Walker focuses on the gift of a saddle belonging to Alexander the Great, supposedly sent from Constantinople to Cairo in the mid tenth century, and the gift of a vest with the seal of Solomon, sent from Iran to Constantinople a century later. Walker sees these as evoking parity between the two states, indicating their joint membership in the international fellowship of kings.

The fourth chapter is the most seductive, but also the most controversial in the book. Walker now moves on to discuss a second small ivory box now in Darmstadt. Smaller than the Troyes casket, its sides are decorated with eight intricate scenes. Six she suggests come from the lives of Herakles and Alexander the Great. They are joined by a mounted warrior killing a dragon and, most confusingly, a fat naked figure playing a lute. Walker's reading of the box and its imagery is innovative and radical, but depends on re-dating it to the twelfth century (it has traditionally been ascribed to the tenth). Walker presents a plausible case for her re-dating, but it is necessarily very circumstantial. The re-dating of the box to the twelfth century cannot easily be substantiated since there are no obvious visual parallels to draw on. Instead we must rely on the accord between the imagery and what Walker calls the 'new sensibility' for such themes that emerged in the twelfth century.

The most interesting idea is her proposal that the naked lute player who appears on the end of the box opposite that showing Alexander the Great is his enemy, the Persian emperor Darius. This is a nice play of syncresis, comparison and opposition, between the ends. But the evidence for the identification is as circumstantial as that for the dating. Walker looks to the Greek Alexander Romance and its account of the death of Darius. Given that the Romance is the source for the Ascension of Alexander on the other end, this is an attractive idea. However, the account of Darius' death in the Romance presents him as a much more heroic figure than the fat sot on the casket. Clearly there was no requirement for the artist literally to reproduce the tale in the Romance, but each alteration from this one known source makes it harder to be sure of the foundations of Walker's argument.

However, even if you are not prepared to accept Walker's dating, or the precision of her identifications of the scenes, there is still much to be gained from reading her analysis of the Darmstadt box and the ways in which it seeks to evoke meanings through comparisons and contrasts. The final chapter looks afresh at Nicholas Mesarites' ekphrasis of the Moukhroutas, one of the more extraordinary buildings in the Great Palace complex in Constantinople. The passage, which describes a structure built in Persian style, is well known and has often been invoked by historians and art historians as evidence of cultural links between Byzantium and Seljuk Rum. Walker's focus on the context of the description – the failed revolt of John Komnenos the Fat in 1200 – suggests a very different reading of the building. She argues that it is evoked at this stage in John's revolt as an emblem of his inappropriateness to rule. Walker's argument is sustained and convincing. However, I find that a positivist worry creeps into my mind as I read her account. Underpinning the discussion is an assumption that Mesarites' description does evoke a real building within the palace. If this is correct then we are still left with the problem of how the building might have been seen or interpreted at the time of its construction. Previous scholars have tried to dismiss it as an exceptional structure built to honour the visit of the Seljuk Sultan Kılıç Arslan in 1161; but this seems a reductive argument, designed to exclude it from Byzantine art by divorcing it from a Byzantine context. However, if it was built by and for members of the Byzantine court, then the Moukhroutas moves from being an object of incomparability to one of her other categories: but which? Is it emulation or appropriation?

A recurring theme in the first four chapters concerns the distant origins of the motifs employed. For the silks in the first chapter many Sasanian and Romano-Byzantine (i.e., Late Antique) parallels are cited. Walker makes a good argument for suggesting that the Sasanian imagery should be seen in terms of its reuse in the contemporary Abbasid world, rather than as a legacy of the engagement between the Byzantines and the Sasanians themselves, which had ended with the Islamic conquest of Iran in the seventh century. However the case for the Romano-Byzantine imagery is more problematic: whether it is the hunting imagery on the silks and Troyes ivory, the stash of saddles of Alexander the Great supposedly piled up in a cupboard in the Great Palace, or the images of Alexander and Herakles on the Darmstadt casket. Emerging from within Graeco-Roman culture, all these images and objects are presented as unproblematic. But, it is possible to see them very differently: in the words of L.P. Hartley 'The past is a foreign country'. Should we see the continuity of hunting scenes as straightforward evidence of Byzantine continuity with its Roman past, or is it a different form of exotic marker? This then changes the status of those images drawn from within the Graeco-Roman world and suggests a different way of reading them. The exotic might be internalised within the empire through its relationship with its own past, as well as externalised in terms of the contemporary cultures that surrounded the empire.

Walker's conclusion brings her chapters together to construct a chronological argument, in which the relationship between Byzantium and the exotic developed alongside the changing historical relationship between Byzantium and its neighbours. Within the parameters of the book Walker argues her case with care and conviction, but to base such an overarching argument on a discussion of so few objects (and objects which are, by their very nature, exceptional within Byzantine production) seems problematic. Her argument should make art historians look again at Byzantine production in relation to its neighbours afresh to see whether these arguments can be sustained on a larger scale, but I suspect that the different categories that she uses for each case will become more blurred and overlap across time. The power of the book lies in the way in which she deals with individual objects.

Throughout this book Walker demonstrates the value of re-examining this material both for what we can learn about the development of imperial ideology in the middle Byzantine period, but also for what it tells us about the changing relationship between Byzantium and its neighbours. Whilst I suspect that some of the details will not find acceptance, the overall ideas should inspire.

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Alessandro Garcea, Caesar's De analogia. Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xiii, 304. ISBN 9780199603978. $150.00.

Reviewed by Anthony Corbeill, University of Kansas (corbeill@ku.edu)

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The lost De Analogia of Julius Caesar tends to excite scholars less for its content than for its context. A couple of the thirty-odd surviving fragments are familiar to most Latinists—such as the injunction to avoid unusual words as a sailor would a rocky hazard (F2), or the alleged attempt to introduce ens into the language as the present participle of esse (F31).¹ By far the majority of the fragments, however, would seem to be of decidedly lesser moment: neuter nouns in -ar should have identical terminations in the dative and ablative singulars (F24); lac is preferable to lact as a nominative singular form (F7). Interest heightens, though, when the ancient testimonia agree in dating the composition of the text to Caesar's proconsulship in Gaul, most likely to the spring of 54 (Garcea 24-26). Even while recognizing that Fronto surely exaggerates when describing Caesar as composing "amidst a volley of weapons" (inter tela volantia; T1), I can only marvel at Caesar's tenacity as I ponder the difficulties that I am having trying to complete this review with only gentle students tapping at my door. Surely, many scholars have justly wondered, our conquering hero had better things to do than to contemplate the morphology of "milk"?

It is this issue, the "why" of De Analogia, with which Garcea begins his book and upon which much of his subsequent exegesis of the extant fragments rests. Neatly adapting Fronto's description, he follows previous scholars in demonstrating that the "volley of weapons" that Caesar must dodge are the less bloody but no less fraught philological arms wielded in contemporary debates between the so-called analogists and anomalists, more precisely as they manifest themselves in the tension between Cicero's view of Latinitas (as most clearly articulated in De Oratore) and Caesar's desire to make Latin eloquence more easily attainable. This ideological context, first outlined in Hendrickson's landmark article of 1906, has become generally accepted doctrine, and the arguments offered by Garcea throughout this book establish the position beyond any reasonable doubt.² That is not to say, however, that all Garcea's inferences from this premise are to be accepted unconditionally. Early in the introductory chapter, for example, he asserts confidently that the treatise's "direct addressees must have been the members of the higher ranks of Gallic society, who were in a sociolinguistic situation of 'partial language shift'" (4; my emphasis). Aside from the clear difficulties of taking this claim literally (would, for instance, high-ranking Gauls in need of these imagined reforms be able to profit from Caesar's often esoteric examples?), it also ignores segments of the population closer to home to whom such ideas could also directly appeal, such as those Latin-speaking Italians whose inherent lack of urbanitas served to hinder their rhetorical success in the capital.³ Furthermore, the same evidence has been used to advance a claim directly opposing Garcea's, namely that Caesar's linguistic program, rather than providing assistance to non-Latin speakers, in fact aims to ward off the language from foreign contamination.⁴ So while the contours of the intellectual debate have become increasingly clear, the identity of the constituencies in the real world who are to benefit from that debate remains unclear—if indeed such constituencies ever existed.

Before turning to Garcea's treatment of the fragments themselves, two caveats are in order. First, the book's title misleads. The advertised "edition, translation, and commentary" in fact covers barely more than half the volume (127-256). The first 124 pages contain introductory matter that covers contemporary rhetorical debates, including material of tangential importance for an understanding of the Caesarian treatise (see, most egregiously, the long excursus at 53-77 on Cicero's perception of the role of pure diction in the development of the orator). Second, the division between introductory essays and commentary proper occasionally hinders efficient access to the abundance of scholarship that is on offer. For those wishing to glean the background and interpretation of a given fragment (as would characterize, I assume, the majority of the book's users), most of the commentary meets expectations: the fragment is offered in Latin; a helpful and accurate English translation follows; a detailed commentary concludes. Occasionally, however, commentary does not follow the relevant fragment, with the reader instead being referred for exegesis to one of the essays in the book's first half. In the best circumstance, this simply forces the reader to move back and forth between Latin text and scholarly discussion, but with no obvious gain accruing from the inconvenience. For example, the discussion of the treatise's date (in a section ambiguously entitled "Some Chronological Reference Points," 24-26) could be removed to its expected position in the edition (after T1-2 on pages 127-128) without damage to the essay in which it appears. Still greater inconvenience is caused in trying to locate the exegesis of F1A-C. After the texts are quoted and translated in the "edition" proper (130-132), the reader is referred for commentary simply to "Ch. 5. B." In this instance, if the user wishes to learn, for example, why Garcea has included among his Latin citations (with a "cf." after F1A) Plin. nat. 7.116-117 (not in Funaioli), a cumbrous process unfolds. After locating "Ch. 5. B" in the table of contents, the reader will be met with a discursive essay of seventeen pages (81-97), only at the end of which does Garcea explain why he has quoted Pliny here (93- 97). I should add that the indices do not help find the passage any more quickly: the "General Index" under "Pliny the Elder" does not include this passage, although it does refer to the "Index of Sources with Sigla," wherein the relevant section brings us full circle back to "F1B app. crit." (the reader who uses the indices to discover Garcea's opinions about the value of John of Salisbury's partial quotations of F2 will follow an equally tortuous path).

Apart from these not insignificant obstacles to ease of consultation, Garcea's new edition and commentary on the fragments will prove to be a valuable resource. Although, unsurprisingly, he is able to add no new Caesarian material to the corpus since Funaioli's 1907 edition of the grammatical fragments, he does utilize scholarship on and critical editions of the sources that have appeared in the intervening century to create a text that differs from Funaioli's in several significant places. The fragments are also situated more fully in the context of the source text than in previous editions. The exegesis too is admirably full. In addition to the intense focus on contemporary debates over grammar and rhetoric (Cicero, Varro, Philodemus), Garcea looks both backward and forward, frequently assessing the influence of Greek sources to an extent unprecedented in past discussions of De Analogia, and noting the afterlife of many of these grammatical issues among the later Roman grammarians. In each area, the full scholarly bibliography further increases the volume's usefulness.

Garcea's discussion offers fascinating details on even the most seemingly mundane fragments. I restrict myself to two examples. The first is typical of Garcea's approach in its full consideration of context and its careful weighing of the evidence. The grammarian Pompeius preserves F3. If one follows the consensus of the manuscripts, Pompeius here attributes to Caesar a theory elsewhere unparalleled, that the original Roman alphabet consisted of only eleven letters. Using helpful tables, Garcea offers a clear and methodical analysis of the issue of "primitive letters" from the Greeks through John Lydus in order to suggest that Pompeius has misconstrued a reference that Caesar (or an intermediate source) had made to the eleven primitive consonants. Regardless of whether one accepts this conclusion, Garcea equips the reader with the necessary background to assess that conclusion fully.

A second example shows grammar reaching outside language into the external world. At F32, Isidore cites Caesar's contention that the perfect participle of the verb morior should, by analogy with other verbs, be not mortuus but mortus (this latter form does in fact appear, though surely coincidentally, in several later inscriptions). Garcea treats clearly and concisely, and with a full bibliographical apparatus, the scholarly debates over the origin of the surprising form mortuus. Such treatment one would expect in a commentary of this scope. In addition, however, Garcea offers a fascinating explanation of Isidore's own interest in the etymology. Isidore has assembled his discussion of mortuus from two texts attributed to Augustine (one of which, incidentally, was not noted by Funaioli) in which the church father uses the unexpected morphological form of mortuus to make a doctrinal point about the potential punishment God renders to the human soul in death.

Not only scholars of Roman grammar and rhetoric but those interested in the intellectual debates that flourished during the late Republic can derive much of value from this work. Although I have reservations about aspects of the volume's organization, future readers will offer Garcea thanks for the immense amount of learning that he has distilled into its pages.

---

Notes:

1.   All references to fragments (F) and testimonia (T) are to Garcea, whose order differs radically from the previous standard editions, those of Gino Funaioli, Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta (Leipzig 1907) 143-157 and of Alfred Klotz (in the third volume of his 1927 Teubner edition, pages 177-185).
2.   G. L. Hendrickson, "The De analogia of Julius Caesar; its occasion, nature, and date, with additional fragments," Classical Philology 1 (1906) 97-120; agreement and elaboration are offered by, e.g., P. Sinclair, "Political declensions in Latin grammar and oratory 55 BCE - CE 39," Ramus 23 (1994) 92-96; J. Dugan, Making a New Man: Ciceronian self-fashioning in the rhetorical works (Oxford 2005) 177-189; A. Willi, "Campaigning for utilitas: style, grammar and philosophy in C. Iulius Caesar," in E. Dickey and A. Chahoud ed., Colloquial and Literary Latin (Cambridge 2010) 229-242.
3.   J.-M. David, "Les orateurs des municipes à Rome: intégration, réticences et snobismes," in Les "bourgeoisies" municipales italiennes aux II^e et I^er siècles av. J.-C. (Paris and Naples 1983) 309-323.
4.   L. Hall, "Ratio and Romanitas in the Bellum Gallicum," in K. Welch and A. Powell ed., Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter (Swansea 1998) 11-43.

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Dagmar Muchnová, Entre conjonction, connecteur et particule: le cas de επει en grec ancien. Étude syntaxique, sémantique et pragmatique. Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Philologica monographia, 163. Prague: Université Charles de Prague; Éditions Karolinum, 2011. Pp. 205. ISBN 9788024619385.

Reviewed by Olga Spevak, Université de Toulouse 2 (spevak@univ-tlse2.fr)

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[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

Ἐπεί est une conjonction traditionnellement rangée parmi les subordonnants temporels et/ou causaux mais certains de ses emplois peuvent être rapprochés des coordonnants tels γάρ. L'étude détaillée qu'en propose D. Muchnová, auteur d'une excellente syntaxe de la phrase complexe grecque,¹ permet d'éclairer le fonctionnement et d'expliquer les emplois de cette conjonction « difficile ». Pour obtenir une description systématique d'ἐπεί, il s'avère indispensable, en premier lieu, de séparer les types de textes dans lesquels il est utilisé (textes narratifs vs. textes interactifs tels dialogues). Il ressort clairement de son analyse qu'ἐπεί fonctionne comme un subordonnant temporel ou causal dans le genre narratif ; en revanche, dans l'épopée constituée de dialogues, on rencontre le plus souvent des ἐπεί qui ont une fonction différente : ils justifient des actes de parole (d'après le cadre théorique développé par E. Sweetser (1990) sur lequel je reviendrai). Pour son analyse, D. Muchnová a choisi comme corpus principal les Helléniques de Xénophon et les épopées d'Homère, qui représentent bien ces deux types de textes. En outre, elle a le mérite d'avoir montré que les valeurs qu'ἐπεί est susceptible de revêtir ne relèvent pas d'une « évolution diachronique » de cette conjonction. Le fait qu'ἐπεί subordonnant est le plus fréquent chez Xénophon et qu'ἐπεί justifiant un acte de parole est prédominant chez Homère découle du type de texte ; en effet, ἐπεί subordonnant n'est pas absent de l'épopée homérique (p. 143 sq.) et ἐπεί justifiant apparaît aussi dans les discours directs chez Xénophon (p. 147 sq).

L'ouvrage se répartit en six chapitres. L'introduction présente la méthodologie et le corpus (p. 9-14) ; le chapitre 2, l'état de la question détaillé (p. 15-27) ; le chapitre 3, les données statistiques (p. 28-35) – je recommande au lecteur de considérer, entre autres, les différences constatées entre les données réunies à l'aide du Thesaurus Linguae Graecae et les tableaux fréquentiels générés par le site Perseus. Les chapitres 4 et 5 présentent l'analyse des données réunies : l'un est consacré à ἐπεί chez Xénophon (p. 36-89), l'autre, à ἐπεί dans les épopées homériques (p. 90-153). Le chapitre 6 concerne l'emploi d'ἐπεί dans les propositions autonomes (p. 154-178). La conclusion (p. 179-184) résume les principaux résultats. Le livre est accompagné d'une riche bibliographie, d'un résumé en anglais et d'un résumé en tchèque, d'un index de notions linguistiques et d'un index de passages cités.

Il importe surtout de présenter plus en détail les chapitres 4 et 5. Le chapitre 4 est consacré à ἐπεί employé dans la prose historique, dans les propositions antéposées à leurs régissantes. Ἐπεί s'y laisse interpréter comme temporel et/ou comme causal. Après avoir dressé un bilan critique des études antérieures, D. Muchnová procède à une analyse des exemples offerts par son corpus pour aboutir à la conclusion qu'ἐπεί est, en premier lieu, une conjonction pourvue d'une valeur sémantique floue – tout comme lat. cum, fr. comme, angl. when, tch. když – valeur « circonstancielle » ou non spécifique (p. 63) qui convient à la pure temporalité, à la causalité ou à la concession. Dans son interprétation, le contexte dans lequel ἐπεί apparaît représente le facteur décisif ; en effet, prise isolément, une même phrase pourrait recevoir deux interprétations différentes. Cependant, il y a des contextes qui favorisent une interprétation causale (lorsque le contenu de la régissante représente une « réaction » au contenu de la subordonnée) et des contextes où l'idée de la pure temporalité s'impose (p. 53-62). Outre le rôle qu'elles jouent sur le plan sémantique, les propositions en ἐπεί, souvent accompagnées de particules (telle δέ) jouent un rôle au niveau discursif. Elles peuvent avoir une fonction continuative, en assurant la transition d'un segment textuel à un autre, ou au contraire, marquer la discontinuité, en ouvrant un nouveau cadre discursif.

Le chapitre 5 sur ἐπεί homérique est une brillante illustration du fait que des concepts développés par la linguistique moderne permettent de résoudre des problèmes délicats qui préoccupent les philologues classiques depuis longtemps. D. Muchnová adopte le modèle d'E. Sweetser (1990) qui distingue entre le niveau du contenu (« Il est rentré parce qu'il l'aimait »), le niveau épistémique (« Il devait l'aimer parce qu'il est rentré » qui se laisse paraphraser par : « Il l'aimait, et c'est pourquoi il est rentré ») et le niveau des actes de parole (« Qu'est-ce que tu vas faire ce soir, puisqu'il y a un bon film à la télé »), auxquels on ajoute encore le niveau textuel, qui recouvre des unités supérieures à des phrases, tels paragraphes. Le niveau du contenu recouvre les subordonnées circonstancielles antéposées en ἐπεί, que l'on a analysées chez Xénophon. Le niveau épistémique concerne la déduction d'un contenu à partir d'un autre contenu : ἐπεί assumant ce rôle est appelé inférentiel.² Au niveau des actes de parole, on a affaire, non pas à l'implication d'un contenu par un autre (« que vas-tu faire ce soir » n'implique nullement qu'« il y a un film à la télé ») mais à un ἐπεί qui justifie un acte de parole, une interrogation dans notre cas : le locuteur justifie pourquoi il pose la question. Si A. Rijksbaron (1976)³ a le mérite d'avoir identifié et décrit la valeur inférentielle d'ἐπεί, D. Muchnová se concentre sur le niveau des actes de parole dont Homère offre de nombreux exemples (p. 116) : μή με κτεῖν', ἐπεὶ οὐχ ὁμογάστριος Ἕκτορός εἰμι (Hom. Il. 21.95) « ne me tue pas : je ne suis pas sorti du même sein qu'Hector » (dit Lycaon à Achille). De telles propositions postposées sont traditionnellement considérées comme causales et, dans des études spécialisées, elles sont qualifiées de « motivantes ». Or, la fonction de la proposition en ἐπεί est de justifier un acte de parole, la prière dans notre exemple, en apportant un argument justifiant pourquoi cette prière est prononcée. C'est là l'emploi typique de l'ἐπεί homérique. Il se rencontre dans les discours directs et sert à justifier toutes sortes d'actes de parole : directifs (ordre, avertissement, conseil...), interrogatifs et assertifs. Le contenu articulé par ἐπεί exprime souvent une vérité générale ou un savoir partagé entre le locuteur et son interlocuteur.

Le chapitre 6 est consacré à ἐπεί fonctionnant au niveau textuel, employé dans les propositions autonomes. Cet ἐπεί – tout comme ἐπεί qui justifie un acte de parole – pose des problèmes de traduction. En particulier, ce sont des ἐπεί employés après un vocatif (p. 158 sq.) ou ceux qui précèdent une forme d'impératif d'un verbe de parole ou de pensée (p. 162 sq.). Dans les deux cas, il s'agit de contextes interactionnels : ἐπεί articule des propos qui représentent une réaction à ce que l'interlocuteur avait dit ou une incitation à justifier son point de vue.

Parmi d'autres mérites de cette étude sur ἐπεί, j'aimerais mentionner, outre la clarté du style, l'application systématique de critères distinctifs, les analyses précises des exemples traités, avec une attention particulière portée au contexte dans lesquels ils apparaissent, ainsi que les observations concernant les traductions. C'est une contribution précieuse qui permet de saisir le fonctionnement d'ἐπεί ; elle sera une riche source d'inspiration pour ceux qui vont entamer des études systématiques d'autres conjonctions « problématiques » qu'on a en grec, telles γάρ ou ὡς. Le grec semble en effet offrir encore un champ libre dans ce domaine ; pour le latin, les conjonctions et les connecteurs qui marquent la causalité ont été abondamment étudiés (et D. Muchnová s'y réfère). J'ajouterais seulement que les causales relevant du niveau épistémique, pourvues d'une valeur inférentielle, existent bien en latin (cf. p. 113), par exemple : Necesse est, quoniam pallet, aegrotasse. (Rhet. Her. 2, 25) « Il a dû être malade, puisqu'il est pâle ».⁴

Table de matières

1. Introduction
1.1 Principes méthodologiques
1.2 Corpus de base
1.3 Organisation de l'ouvrage

2. Status quaestionis
2.1 Ἐπεί dans les dictionnaires
2.2 Ἐπεί dans les grammaires
2.3 Ἐπεί dans les études spécialisées
2.4 Conclusions

3. Quelques éléments de statistiques
3.1 Propositions en ἐπεί chez Xénophon
3.2 Tableaux fréquentiels du site Perseus
3.3 Les données statistiques proposées par Zycha : cause vs. temps
3.4 Proposition en ἐπεί chez Homère
3.5 Conclusion

4. Les propositions en ἐπεί antéposées
4.1 Type de texte et temps du récit
4.2 Temps grammaticaux
4.3 Interprétations sémantiques
4.3.1 Rijksbaron
4.3.2 De la Villa, Sicking et Buijs
4.3.3 Discussion
4.3.3.1 Conjonctions spécifiques et non spécifiques
4.3.3.2 Problèmes de traduction
4.3.3.3 Propositions 'circonstancielles'
4.3.3.4 Propositions à interprétation temporelle
4.3.4 Conclusions
4.4 Approches textuelles et discursives
4.4.1 Fonctions discursives
4.4.2 Ἐπεί et particules
4.4.3 Dislocation à gauche
4.4.4 Cas spéciaux
4.5 Appendices
4.5.1 Les propositions en ἐπεί postposées
4.5.2 Oratio recta
4.5.3 Propositions dites inférentielles
4.6 Conclusions

5. Les propositions en ἐπεί postposées
5.1 Status quaestionis : le grec
5.1.1 Nilsson
5.1.2 Autres études (Knebel, Moorhouse)
5.1.3 Rijksbaron
5.1.4 Propositions 'indirectement causales'
5.1.4.1 Analyse des propositions 'indirectement causales'
5.1.4.2 Propositions de motif et propositions 'indirectement causales'
5.1.5 Buijs
5.1.6 Conclusions
5.2 Status quaestionis : le latin et les langues modernes
5.2.1 Le modèle de Kroon et de Wakker
5.2.2 Le modèle de Sweetser
5.3 Analyse des exemples homériques
5.3.1 Les actes illocutoires et leurs valeurs
5.3.1.1 Actes illocutoires de type directif
5.3.1.2 Actes illocutoires de type interrogatif
5.3.1.3 Actes illocutoires expressifs
5.3.1.4 Actes illocutoires engageants
5.3.1.5 Actes illocutoires assertifs
5.3.1.6 Cas particuliers
5.3.1.7 Appendices
5.3.1.7.1 Propositions postposées 'circonstancielles' chez Homère
5.3.1.7.2 Propositions préposées chez Homère
5.3.1.7.3 Propositions postposées chez Xénophon
5.3.1.7.4 Propositions postposées chez Sophocle
5.3.2 Propositions à interprétation épistémique : ὅτι
5.4 Conclusions

6. Ἐπεί dans les propositions autonomes
6.1 Niveau textuel
6.2 Grammaires grecques et études spécialisées
6.3 Ἐπεί après un vocatif
6.4 Ἐπεί introduisant une proposition à l'impératif ou une question
6.4.1 Ἐπεί introduisant une proposition illocutoire
6.4.1.1 La proposition illocutoire introduit une question
6.4.1.2 La proposition illocutoire suit l'objet de la question
6.4.2 Ἐπεί introduisant directement une question
6.4.3 Entre propositions justificatives et propositions dites autonomes
6.5 En guise de conclusion

7. Conclusion
Bibliographie
Summary
Shrnutí
Index des notions linguistiques
Index des passages cités

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Notes:

1.   Rédigée (malheureusement) en tchèque : Dagmar Muchová, Syntax klasické řečtiny, Prague, 2004.
2.   C'est ἐπεί avec cette valeur inférentielle qui est évoqué par les Stoïciens dans le passage bien connu (cité à la p. 18) de Diog. Laert. Vit. 7.71 : ἐπεὶ ἡμέρα ἐστί, φῶς ἐστιν « puisqu'il fait jour, il y a de la lumière ». On voit bien une affinité d'ἐπεί avec εἰ dont il est composé mais toute réflexion étymologique s'arrête là puisque l'origine de εἰ est peu claire.
3.   Albert Rijksbaron, Temporal and causal conjunctions in ancient Greek : with special reference to the use of epei and hōs in Herodotus, Amsterdam 1976.
4.   Voir l'article récent de H. Pinkster The use of quia and quoniam in Cicero, Seneca, and Tertullian, in: Page, B. Richard & Rubin, Aaron D. (eds.) Studies in classical linguistics in honor of Philip Baldi, Leiden (2010), 81-96.

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Thierry Petit, Oedipe et le Chérubin: les sphinx levantins, cypriotes et grecs comme gardiens d'Immortalité. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 248. Fribourg; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2011. Pp. vii, 291; 43 p. of figures. ISBN 9783727816925. CHF 110.00.

Reviewed by Minerva Alganza Roldán, Universidad de Granada (malganza@ugr.es)

Version at BMCR home site

Este libro sobre la iconografía de la Esfinge pretende no sólo establecer los vínculos de la esfinge griega con sus precedentes orientales, sino también ofrecer una interpretación global de sus distintas representaciones en la Antigüedad. Se trata de dilucidar si es una imagen vacía, una simple "forma", o bien si comporta un significado inmanente, una cuestión, según Thierry Petit, obviada o tratada de manera parcial e insuficiente en estudios anteriores.

A modo de Preámbulo (pp. 4-9), el autor se sirve de la conocida copa del Pintor de la Esfinge¹ para ilustrar las limitaciones de los análisis iconográficos que, al centrar su atención en el enfrentamiento de Edipo con el monstruo tebano, pasan por alto otros elementos del tondo (la columna y la palmeta), así como la escena dionisiaca del exterior. Sin embargo, estos motivos, ornamentales y secundarios a simple vista, podrían indicar el sentido profundo de la escena más allá del episodio mítico. De ahí, la necesidad de utilizar una hermenéutica apropiada, cuyos principios justifica en diálogo con la literatura crítica (pp. 10-18): ningún arte es puramente decorativo; el significado de un motivo no resulta del todo convencional, y al pasar de una cultura a otra, varía, pero no se pierde; en cada época y civilización los motivos mantienen asociaciones directas, indirectas o de sustitución; el contexto de la imagen no se reduce a los textos, sino que implica al medio arqueológico y al uso de su soporte. En resumen, la "comparación de tipos", preconizada por Panofsky, permitiría descifrar el enigma que acompañó a la Esfinge en su periplo desde Egipto a Beocia, por el Oriente Próximo, Chipre, el Egeo y el Mediterráneo central.

La primera de las tres partes del libro ("La sphinx au Levant: le chérubin", pp. 19-56), comienza precisando su morfología y función en Egipto y las innovaciones introducidas en Fenicia y Siria, donde se exporta hacia el III milenio. Frente al híbrido egipcio masculino, áptero y tumbado, la esfinge asiática es una leona alada con cabeza de mujer, que suele aparecer sentada y en parejas flanqueando al llamado "Árbol sagrado" o "de (la) Vida". Sigue el análisis de las variables tanto del esquema heráldico, donde las esfinges alternan con animales reales y fantásticos, como del motivo vegetal, que se representa estilizado y simplificado, o combinado con flores, palmetas y volutas. En Palestina, las esfinges coinciden con los Querubines mencionados en varios pasajes de Ezequiel, y que en el Génesis custodian el Árbol de la Vida. Por otra parte, si en Egipto la esfinge está ligada a Horus y al Faraón, su descendiente oriental parece una hipóstasis ya de la Gran Diosa, la Astarté sirio-babilonia, lo que explicaría su cambio de sexo, ya de una divinidad masculina, el Yahveh de los judíos. De la Diosa dimana la autoridad del Rey que se enfrenta a las esfinges o es defendido por ellas, un tópico figurativo con paralelos en un texto bíblico (Ezequiel, 28. 14-16). En conclusión, según Petit, el Árbol podría considerarse un símbolo de fecundidad y regeneración, pero también de inmortalidad; la esfinge-querubín abre y cierra el acceso a los mortales y, en particular, al Rey, protegido por la divinidad con la cual se identificaría post mortem.

La segunda parte ("Le sphinx à Chypre", pp. 57-97) analiza el tema en la isla, donde está bien documentado desde el Bronce reciente hasta la época clásica en variados soportes. Pese a las evidentes influencias fenicias, egipcias, egeas y griegas, la esfinge chipriota responde, en lo fundamental, al canon sirio. Así, suele conformar un grupo heráldico en torno a las figuraciones, estilizadas o naturalistas, del Árbol (palmeras, volutas, flores de loto, rosetas, espirales, espigas, esvásticas); en ocasiones, son sustituidas en la terna por grifos y cabras como en Oriente, y además por ciervos, toros, pájaros y peces. Este repertorio apunta a la fecundidad, y en el caso de los seres fabulosos quizá tuviese un sentido escatológico. Por otra parte, tanto el Árbol como la esfinge pertenecen al área funcional de la Diosa Cipria, quien, a su vez, mantiene una estrecha relación con un Dios-héroe dinástico, semejante a la de Astarté y Melkart. Aunque no hay textos ni mitos que aclaren el significado de esta asociación iconográfica, podría ser idéntico al oriental, hipótesis confirmada por la comparecencia de los cuatro motivos (esfinge, Árbol, Diosa y Dios- Rey) en una pieza excepcional, el Sarcófago de Amatonte,² cuyo programa iconográfico Petit interpreta como una metáfora de la supervivencia en el Más allá del Rey. La esfinge sería, pues, no sólo un genio funerario con valor apotropaico, sino la encargada de dispensar los beneficios de la Diosa.

En la tercera parte ("Le sphinx grec", pp. 96-242), el meollo de la monografía, ante la discordancia entre la morfología oriental del híbrido y su papel en la leyenda de Edipo, el autor propugna "ir de la imagen al mito y no a la inversa". La heterogeneidad iconográfica ha hecho suponer la existencia de tipos independientes e irreductibles: las esfinges puramente "decorativas", dispuestas en fila, friso o en composiciones no escénicas; las "bienhechoras", guardianas y protectoras, que adoptan el esquema heráldico típico de sus parientes orientales y chipriotas, o bien la esfinge solitaria de columnas votivas y estelas sepulcrales; y, en fin, las "maléficas", asimiladas a las Keres, que encuadran escenas de combate, raptan hombres o se enfrentan con ellos, como la Esfinge tebana. Petit, por su parte, distingue ocho tipos iconográficos, cuyos puntos de convergencia demostrarían que, en realidad, son distintos avatares de una misma figura. Por ello, considera provechoso relacionar la esfinge helena con los integrantes de su constelación iconográfica en Oriente y Chipre: el Árbol de la Vida, la Diosa y el Dios-Rey.

Tras un pormenorizado comentario de las variantes del Árbol (en especial, de su estilización en la columna jónica), Petit deduce que, pese al silencio de los textos, su escatología era bien conocida por los griegos cuando adoptaron el símbolo entre los siglos VIII-VII a. C. Respecto a la esfinge, frente a interpretaciones condicionadas por los textos clásicos, que enfatizan su carácter cruel y sanguinario, observa que en el corpus figurativo tiene una actitud protectora e incluso delicada con sus "victimas": actúa como un daímon psychopompós, de ahí su presencia en contextos funerarios y su afinidad simbólica con las Keres, las Harpías o las Sirenas. A continuación, se ofrecen algunos testimonios sobre la asociación, directa o contextual, del híbrido y/o del motivo vegetal con diosas del Panteón heleno (Atenea, Ártemis, Afrodita y Hera). Destacan los vasos apulos con representaciones del palacio de Hades y Perséfone, donde concurren el Árbol (en forma de palmetas, inflorescencias y capiteles jonios) y parejas de esfinges, sobre las columnas del edificio y/o el trono de la Diosa infernal. Finalmente, el autor considera que la presencia de esfinges en escenas donde Atenea auxilia a distintos héroes, señaladamente a Heracles, las dotaría de contenido escatológico: con su hazaña el favorito de la diosa no sólo conseguirá la realeza, sino también la promesa de apoteosis, de inmortalidad.

Una vez completado este largo rodeo por la iconografía, Petit regresa al mito de la Esfinge tebana, a fin de desvelar el significado profundo de su enfrentamiento con Edipo en su contexto cultural y religioso. Mediante una elaborada argumentación donde confronta y sintetiza los datos extraídos de la encuesta iconográfica, las fuentes mitográfico- literarias, los pasajes de la Biblia y textos de laminillas órficas, llega a las siguientes conclusiones: la caracterización de la esfinge tebana como una criatura nefasta, destructora de hombres, tiene paralelos en los querubines de los textos bíblicos, que cortan el paso al Árbol de la Vida en castigo de la falta contra un dios; el enigma de la Esfinge equivale a la contraseña que en los textos órficos el mýstes debe responder a los guardianes del Hades para ser admitido entre los Bienaventurados; Edipo representa al iniciado en los ritos escatológicos de Dioniso-Zagreo, que se extienden por Grecia en el siglo VI a. C., coincidiendo, precisamente, con la introducción de la Esfinge y su enigma en la leyenda del hijo de Layo.

En este horizonte espiritual cobra sentido pleno la iconografía ideada por el Pintor de la Esfinge: a causa de una falta anterior, la hipóstasis divina cierra el acceso al Árbol de la Vida (la palmeta situada detrás del híbrido) a los tebanos; el héroe tiene que despejar el camino, venciendo un obstáculo físico y simbólico a la vez (la Esfinge y su enigma); su propia recompensa será coger la flor de la inmortalidad (el loto enlazado en la palmeta); los sátiros del exterior del vaso evocan los efectos del vino, preludio de otra embriaguez, la del iniciado en los misterios dionisíacos, que el bebedor visualiza en el medallón interior. La copa podría considerarse, pues, una composición erudita cuyos arcanos el pintor desvela alusivamente, manteniéndolos ocultos a la mirada profana.

En el Epílogo ("Les sphinx-chérubins après Oedipe", pp. 243-245) Petit señala la pervivencia de la constelación simbólica del Árbol de la Vida en el arte cristiano. Y si en páginas anteriores había achacado el desinterés por desvelar el enigma de la Esfinge, esto es, la Inmortalidad, a la focalización de las corrientes estructuralistas en la idiosincrasia griega, ahora aduce la repugnancia de algunos autores a considerar las religiones antiguas como religiones de salvación.

Completan el volumen la Bibliografía (pp. 246-270), el Índice general (pp.271-278), el de Textos citados (pp.279- 281) y la Lista de figuras (191 en total), seguida de sus reproducciones fotográficas en blanco y negro.³

Thierry Petit ha compuesto una obra de altos vuelos, en cuanto a objetivos, marco espacial y cronológico, y calado crítico. Por todo ello merece, sin duda, la atención de los historiadores y arqueólogos interesados en los intercambios culturales entre los pueblos del Próximo Oriente y del Mediterráneo antiguos y, en concreto, de los especialistas en el imaginario de la mitología y la religión griegas.

El autor es consciente de las dificultades de la empresa y de los reparos que podría suscitar el acercamiento fenomenológico-comparativo. De ahí su encomiable empeño en afilar las herramientas conceptuales y construir su tesis sobre bases sólidas: un vastísimo corpus figurativo, acompañado de los textos que, a su juicio, aclaran el significado profundo de la esfinge. Sin embargo, en ocasiones, el paralelismo entre los esquemas orientales y la imaginería griega resulta algo forzado (por ejemplo, Le sphinx et la déesse, pp. 187 ss.). Tampoco se logra conjurar el peligro, siempre latente, de desnaturalizar los documentos al sacarlos de su contexto, o de sobre interpretar las imágenes dejando volar la imaginación. Tal ocurriría, a mi entender, con las exégesis propuestas para algunas piedras angulares del argumento (así, Génesis 3. 24 y Heródoto IV, 78-80, o el Sarcófago de Amatonte). En cambio, resulta no sólo estimulante sino plausible la interpretación escatológica de la copa del Pintor de la Esfinge, si bien cabría precisar el concepto de "Más allá" y sus relaciones con el "Más acá". De hecho, Petit deja sin resolver una cuestión capital: qué se entiende por "Inmortalidad" y cuáles son sus contenidos en cada una de las áreas culturales abarcadas en la monografía.

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Notes:

1.   Copa ática de figuras rojas (470-460 a. C.), de Vulci. Vaticano, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, inv. 16.541.
2.   Sarcófago en piedra caliza (475-450 a. C.). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Arts, inv. 74.51.2453 (The Amathus sarcophagus).
3.   La distinción en el texto entre las figuras "109a" (pp. 99; 125) y "109c" (p. 125) no aparece en el Apéndice de ilustraciones; en la página 222 donde dice "fig. 85" debería decir "fig. 95". Se trata de erratas insignificantes, que no menoscaban la cuidada edición y presentación del libro.

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Mark Bradley (ed.), Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire. Classical presences. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xxiii, 335. ISBN 9780199584727. $125.00.

Reviewed by Leslie Dodd, University of Edinburgh (dr.leslie.dodd@ed-alumni.net)

Version at BMCR home site

[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

This volume is published in the 'Classical Presences' series by OUP and emerges from a conference entitled 'Cornucopia and Hegemony: Classical Scholarship and the Ideology of Imperialism' held at the University of Nottingham in December 2005. It comprises ten chapters, plus envoi and introduction, broadly examining the ways in which classics and imperialism influenced one another during the second British Empire. The contributions do not constitute a comprehensive study but rather a selection of "discrete historical or discursive moments" (p.12) united by thematic considerations.

The introduction by Bradley is lively and informative. It includes a synopsis of the British Museum's development, seen through the volume's twin foci of classics and imperialism, and a handy summary of contemporary scholarship on classical reception. Its flaws are minor and mainly relate to periodisation and contextualisation, for example describing the antiquities brought to Britain under the 1801 Treaty of Alexandria as "advertising British muscle- flexing on the Continent" (p.3), an interpretation which would not be recognisable to anyone familiar with the Napoleonic and Revolutionary periods.

Vlassopoulos' workmanlike chapter, 'Imperial Encounters', is effectively a prologue for the rest of the volume. Unlike the other contributors, Vlassopoulos focuses on the different ways in which pre-nineteenth century thinkers approached the issue of empire, the different epistemological uses they made of classics and the ways their concerns shifted and evolved over time. It notes particularly that Greece, Rome and Carthage jostled with one another as models for Britain's empire. This chapter contextualises the volume's other essays and provides a methodological frame, as well as being an extremely worthy piece of work in its own right.

Mantena's 'Imperial Ideology and the Uses of Rome in Discourses on Britain's Indian Empire' considers Britain's methods of legitimising her Indian empire by looking first at the works of Thomas Macaulay and Charles Trevelyan and then at those of J.R.Seeley. She argues persuasively that Britain initially pursued a policy of "Anglicization" within the context of liberal imperialism whereby Britain would do for the Indians what Rome was perceived to have done for the British: civilise them to the point where they could function independently while remaining part of the civiliser's Kulturwelt. Later, following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the British came to see the Indians as intractable and India as a burden which, in a very Periclean sense, should be maintained only because it was so dangerous to release.

The chapter as a whole is cogent, perceptive and eminently readable but does suffer from a certain lack of polish. Repeated use of "England" and "English" for "Britain" and "British" is jarring. A quotation from Macaulay (p. 64) which should say "a territory the present clear revenue of which exceeds the present clear revenue of any state in the world" is rendered "a territory the present clear revenue of any state in the world".

Williamson's 'The Mirror-Shield of Knowledge' discusses the prose of Henry Nelson Coleridge (nephew and later son- in-law of the poet) produced while visiting the West Indies in 1826. This essay is intriguing but also problematic. It opens with a purported description of the classics-oriented British education of the early nineteenth century that draws heavily upon Stray's 1998 study.¹ Williamson mischaracterises Stray's monograph as an analysis of "classical education in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain" (p. 77) when, in fact, Stray deals exclusively with the English classical tradition (as the title of his monograph states). Scholars at this level should be aware that Britain and England are not interchangeable terms and that what was true of England was not necessarily true in the rest of Britain or the wider Empire.

Williamson focuses on Coleridge's use of classical allusion and language in order to construct a theory whereby classics is "deployed defensively, as a kind of talisman, at moments of [social] threat" (p.84). Unfortunately, Williamson's examples simply cannot bear the weight placed upon them. During a line-crossing ceremony at the equator (p.82), Neptune and "Amphitritty" (i.e. Amphitrite) appear to the crew. For Williamson, the "spelling of Amphitritty…alludes to the sailors' pronunciation and thus to the limits of their classical knowledge" and illustrates the sailors' status as non-elite outsiders. It was, however, British maritime practice, regardless of education or class, to pronounce and refer to Neptune's female companion in these ceremonies as Amphitritty.² So, far from marking the sailors' outsider status, its use marks Coleridge's insider status as a newly-inducted member of the maritime fraternity. Similarly, when Coleridge uses Spanish and Latin phrases to describe a scene in which the Governor of Trinidad speaks in a slave patois (p.83), Williamson sees another instance of social threat. The more obvious reading is as an ironically comic anecdote juxtaposing learned and unlearned language. It must also be noted that the Governor – Sir Ralph James Woodford – had held his post for 13 years at this point, the longest tenure of any British Governor of Trinidad.³ Thus Coleridge's vignette highlights Woodford's longstanding connexion to the island through his familiarity with vernacular language. The use of Spanish, meanwhile, rather than being "talismanic", surely references the fact the island had been Spanish-ruled until 1797 and still retained a distinctly Spanish (and, following the 1783 Cedula of Population, French-tinged) culture.

The chapter is far stronger and more persuasive when discussing Coleridge's interaction with the slaves themselves, the related class-, sex- and race-based boundaries and his own ambiguous approach to slavery. Overall, though, one cannot shake the sense that further reading of contemporary sources by the author would have been beneficial and would have alleviated the many problems of contextualisation and superficiality from which this chapter suffers.

Challis' 'The Ablest Race' is an overview of the influential position occupied by Greek art in Victorian race theory. She shows how a classical physical ideal was employed as evidence of a supposed racial-cultural relationship between Greeks and Anglo-Saxons and discusses the ways in which this was used both as justification of British imperial rule and as an argument against imperialism and the attendant dangers of racial miscegenation. This chapter constitutes an excellent contribution to the field. However, editing issues exist: a quotation from Disraeli's Tancred "And when a superior race, with a superior idea of Work and Order, advances…" is rendered "And when a superior race, with a superior race, with a superior idea…" (p. 111) while in a quotation from Disraeli's Lothair the word 'then' is omitted in the phrase "Semitism then began…" (p.114).

Bradley's 'Tacitus' Agricola and the Conquest of Britain' adroitly explores the many, sometimes contradictory, uses made of this most ambiguous of imperial texts by British scholars, educators, politicians and popular writers during the Empire's heyday. It is a lively, enlightening and wide-ranging endeavour which, like many other chapters in this volume, should be of considerable interest to students outside the usual limits of classics as well as to anyone with any interest in late Victorian reception generally.

Fearn's 'Imperialist Fragmentation and the Discovery of Bacchylides' is the most forcefully argued and unashamedly tendentious chapter in the volume. It discusses the dubious appropriation of the Bacchylides papyrus by agents of the British Museum in 1896 and the wider ideological and imperial contexts within which this and other appropriations took place. Even if one does not accept Fearn's assessment, even if one thinks Fearn sometimes forces his sources to say more than is warranted, his is nevertheless a chapter that has many thought-provoking things to say about the intersection of the philological, the archaeological and the papyrological within the discipline of classics. Papyrologists and those interested in the text as artefact will find this chapter particularly worthwhile.

Rogers and Hingley's 'Edward Gibbon and Francis Haverfield' discusses the background to Gibbon's theories of decline and the influence which imperialism (both Roman and British) had on his work before going on to examine the position of Gibbon in Haverfield's historical and archaeological studies of Roman Britain. The chapter covers more ground than its title suggests and represents a noteworthy addition to the study of British declinist thinking in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. One error creeps in: the (Second) Boer War is dated 1898-1902 (p.202) when the war did not begin until 11^th October 1899; this mistaken date is repeated in the index (p.328).

Reisz' 'Classics, Race, and Edwardian Anxieties about Empire' ably discusses how the Edwardians used classics in analysing, explaining and responding to the issues of the contemporary and imagined future Empire. The essay's first half focuses on anxieties about the multiracial nature of the Empire and describes how "classical models remained touchstones and comparators" for understanding and responding to the concerns of empire (p.213) while a classically-inspired civilising mission remained a justification for direct imperial rule outside the self-governing white Dominions. The latter part of the chapter examines the position of malaria in Edwardian declinist thought with some especially constructive analysis of the work of W.H.S. Jones. Reisz demonstrates not only how classics could be used to explain Britain's empire but how Britain's ongoing imperial experience was used as a means of understanding the ancient world.

Kaicker's 'Visions of Modernity in Revisions of the Past' examines the Urdu poetry of Altaf Hussain 'Hali' (1837-1914) and shows that Hali's great poem on Islamic history (Musaddas-e Madad-o Jazr-e Islam or Poem on The Ebb and Flow of Islam) responded to classics as a justificatory mechanism for European imperialism.

Amongst other things, Kaicker shows how Hali ('the Contemporary') internalised British criticisms of Indian indolence and employed Gibbon's theories of decline, using the latter to explain the former. The poem's function was to show that Islamic culture shared ownership of the classical past along with the Europeans and that the classical corpus upon which perceived European cultural superiority was built had depended on "the magnanimity of the ancient Arabs" (p.247). This is a fascinating essay showing classics and empire from a perspective we rarely see explored: that of the ruled rather than the ruler.

Malamud's 'Translatio Imperii: America as the New Rome c.1900' is something of a cuckoo in the nest as it is about American appropriation of antiquity and relates only tangentially to the British Empire. Nevertheless, it is an excellent contribution, particularly in its energetic treatment of Roman-inspired architecture and entertainment in New York during the Gilded Age and in its explanation of how antiquity was used to legitimise and glorify American imperialism. Those with an interest in declinist thought will be intrigued by the way that Americans of this era, unlike earlier Americans and contemporary Europeans, embraced what they perceived as the most excessive and decadent elements of Imperial Rome without any fear of an ensuing moral decline; Malamud shows that they saw popular entertainment based on the (imagined) excesses of Imperial Rome not as something dangerous or threatening but as a visible manifestation of American power and wealth. A word should be said about the illustrations, which are excellent throughout but nowhere more so than in this chapter.

This collection leaves an impression that is overwhelmingly positive. As a whole, the work makes some very significant contributions to a neglected field of study. It has its faults – the quality of essays, while generally very high, is not uniform; many errors have somehow survived the editing process; the index could be fleshed out a little more – but they are venial when compared to the volume's many strengths. Surprisingly for a collection of this kind, there is quite a unitary character to the essays. Disparate and varied as they may be, they seem nevertheless to complement one another very effectively. The extensive cross-referencing contributes to the collaborative feel of the work.

This is an important collection, potentially even a landmark volume, and it is the reviewer's hope, first, that it will receive the attention it deserves and, second, that it may inspire further attention to classical reception within a British imperial context.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Approaches to Classics and Imperialism
Mark Bradley
PART 1: CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND IMPERIAL HEGEMONIES
1. Imperial Encounters: Discourses on Empire and the Uses of Ancient History During the Eighteenth Century, Kostas Vlassopoulos
2. Imperial Ideologies and the Uses of Rome in Discourses on Britain's Indian Empire, Rama Sundari Mantena
PART 2: CLASSICS AND THE SUPERIOR RACE
3. 'The Mirror-Shield of Knowledge': Classicizing the West Indies, Margaret Williamson
4. 'The Ablest Race': The Ancient Greeks in Victorian Racial Theory, Debbie Challis
PART 3: EMPIRE AND THE CLASSICAL TEXT
5. Tacitus' Agricola and the Conquest of Britain: Representations of Empire in Victorian and Edwardian England, Mark Bradley
6. Imperialist Fragmentation and the Discovery of Bacchylides, David Fearn
PART 4: DECLINE AND DANGER
7. Edward Gibbon and Francis Haverfield: The Traditions of Imperial Decline, Adam Rogers and Richard Hingley
8. Classics, Race and Edwardian Anxieties about Empire, Emma Reisz
PART 5: RELOCATING THE CLASSICAL
9. Visions of Modernity in Revisions of the Past: Altaf Hussein Hali and the 'Legacy of the Greeks', Abhisheck Kaicker
10. Translatio Imperii: America as the New Rome c.1900, Margaret Malamud
Envoi
Phiroze Vassunia

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Notes:

1.   C. Stray, Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830-1960 (Oxford, 1998)
2.   See contemporary accounts of the ceremony, e.g., The Cruise of HMS Bacchante (London, 1879-1882) by Princes Albert and George of Wales or To India and Back by the Cape (London, 1859) by CR Francis; cf. also Folklore and the Sea (New York, 1999) by H Beck. Williamson cites no period sources and uses, instead, the US Navy website (p.82).
3.   M. Anthony, Historical Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago (London, 2001)

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