Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Marco Beretta, Francesco Citti, Lucia Pasetti (ed.), Seneca e le scienze naturali. Biblioteca di Nuncius. Studi e testi, 68. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2012. Pp. vi, 273. ISBN 9788822261892. €29.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Arthur Haushalter, École des hautes études hispaniques et ibériques (Casa de Velázquez, Madrid) - Université de Reims (arthur.haushalter@casadevelazquez.org)

Version at BMCR home site

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

Jusqu'à une période assez récente, il semble que les Questions Naturelles de Sénèque n'ont pas suscité l'intérêt qu'elles méritent dans l'érudition moderne. La faute en revient sans doute, comme bien souvent, à une tenace imperméabilité entre les disciplines académiques. L'idée de cet ouvrage collectif, qui fait suite à un volume sur Lucrèce (BMCR 2009.08.65), repose précisément sur un séminaire, tenu à Ravenne le 14 novembre 2008 (Université de Bologne), qui réunissait latinistes et historiens des sciences. Bien sûr, les philologues, après avoir longtemps réduit Sénèque aux Lettres à Lucilius et aux traités philosophiques, s'intéressent depuis plusieurs années non seulement aux tragédies, mais aussi aux Questions Naturelles ; la remarquable synthèse de Gareth Williams,¹ parue peu avant cet ouvrage (mais dont certains contributeurs ont pu tirer profit), témoigne, notamment avec sa bibliographie, des progrès entrepris dans la connaissance de la physique romaine d'inspiration stoïcienne. Ce volume, très agréable à manier grâce au soin des éditeurs comme à la qualité de l'objet lui-même, y contribue aussi à sa façon. On pourra toujours lui reprocher d'embrasser une matière trop ample pour assurer la cohérence de l'ensemble, mais c'est la loi du genre, et cet ouvrage n'a pas vocation à s'attaquer à tous les problèmes, ou même à offrir la moindre synthèse. En revanche, on sera fondé à regretter l'absence de bibliographie, à la fin de chaque article ou à la fin du livre.

La première contribution, par Marco Beretta, entend chercher dans l'antiquité les racines d'un concept fondamental de la modernité, celui de loi naturelle ; cette mise en perspective qui, sans être particulièrement novatrice, a le mérite de faire clairement le point sur la place de la providence divine dans l'explication des phénomènes depuis les présocratiques jusqu'à Sénèque, constitue une très bonne introduction à l'ouvrage. On appréciera en particulier son analyse de l'ambiguïté de la notion de pacte (foedera naturae) chez Lucrèce.² Considérant que Lucrèce et Sénèque représentent la somme des physiques épicurienne et stoïcienne, M. Beretta rappelle que ces deux « classiques » serviront de base, au XVIe s., à la formation de la science nouvelle, en rupture avec la tradition aristotélicienne ; ainsi l'ambiguïté des liens entre nature et loi, autrement dit l'opposition entre une loi naturelle conçue comme descriptive et une autre prescriptive, se retrouvera inchangée dans les débats de la science de la Renaissance, avant que la première ne l'emporte sur la seconde.

L'article suivant est d'une tout autre veine. Alfonso Traina avait naguère évoqué lo stile drammatico employé par Sénèque dans ses écrits philosophiques, reflet d'« une âme en guerre contre elle-même »;³ Piergiorgio Parroni propose ici d'étendre cette idée aux Questions Naturelles, et non seulement aux passages moraux, mais surtout aux exposés les plus techniques. Étudiant une série d'exemples, il évoque ainsi un style qui cherche, en créant des moments de tension, à convaincre le lecteur par les émotions. Ainsi les citations, directes ou implicites, de passages poétiques de Lucrèce, d'Ovide ou Virgile, n'ont pas une simple fonction ornementale : elles permettent, grâce à une mise en miroir de deux contextes, d'atteindre une « puissance évocatrice » (p. 19). Si l'idée générale de l'auteur, quoique banale, peut être intéressante, on peut regretter l'absence d'une véritable définition, ne serait-ce qu'en des termes stylistiques, de ce linguaggio ou stile drammatico ; mais surtout, on attendrait une réflexion plus large sur ce qu'on pourrait appeler la stratégie argumentative de Sénèque, notamment autour de l'exploitation de la culture commune partagée avec son lecteur.

Harry M. Hine, qui rappelle que Sénèque, avec ses Questions Naturelles, entreprend de transposer en latin une pensée fondamentalement grecque, se propose de revenir sur la question devenue classique de l'originalité de sa contribution. D'emblée, le récent éditeur du texte dans la Teubner rejette la notion d'originalité, inopérante dans un domaine où tant d'œuvres sont perdues pour nous, et lui préfère celle plus importante à ses yeux d'« indépendance de pensée ». On voit mal, à vrai dire, l'intérêt de cette distinction, sinon son mérite d'appeler à une remise en cause de l'usage simpliste de la Quellenforschung et (on le déduit de la lecture de la suite) à une sorte d'empirisme prudent. Pour autant, Hine explique de façon convaincante que Sénèque tente en quelque sorte de montrer comment les Romains devraient faire de la physique. Pour cela, il s'appuie sur une analyse du livre 2, en particulier des passages que le philosophe consacre au vin foudroyé, à la divination étrusque et à l'étude du vocabulaire technique latin ; il reconnait dans la structure de l'exposé une manière originale de partir de l'observation des phénomènes.

L'étude de Francesca Romana Berno porte sur le vaste tableau du déluge du livre 3 des Questions Naturelles. Sénèque y rattache la fin du monde à la confusio, ou perte de distinction entre l'eau, la terre, l'air et le feu ; en lien avec la théorie des bassins souterrains et avec une accumulation de facteurs externes (pluies, tempêtes en mer, séismes), c'est la terre qui devient eau. D'après Romana Berno, c'est curieusement dans le livre 15 des Métamorphoses d'Ovide, abondamment cité dans le livre 3, que Sénèque a trouvé les arguments scientifiques pour expliquer le déluge, en particulier dans un extrait du discours de Pythagore (244-251). Le philosophe, qui cite volontiers Ovide pour reprendre ses idées tout en critiquant ses images, chercherait ainsi à rivaliser avec le poète à partir de son propre texte. C'est dans ce sens qu'est bien analysée la mise en scène presque humanisée de la lutte que se livrent l'eau et la terre, cette dernière y apparaissant comme un corps en putréfaction.

Deux contributions portent sur le livre 4 du même ouvrage, consacré au Nil, fleuve qui est au cœur des interrogations des anciens sur la forme de la terre et la physique. La première, par Pasquale Rossi, est pour le moins déconcertante. Au mieux le texte est résumé, au pire il n'est que cité : les extraits de Sénèque occupent à eux seuls environ 70% de l'article. De même, l'extrait de Jean le Lydien, que la tradition tient pour un témoin de la fin manquante du livre 4, est brièvement présenté sans le moindre examen critique (voir pourtant l'article suivant p. 90-92 et, dans le même ouvrage, p. 168). En définitive, la seule analyse consiste à remarquer qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une simple analyse hydrologique, puisque le philosophe, pour rendre son texte plus vivant, le coupe par de petits récits. Cela semble donc un peu court ; pour s'initier au livre 3, on fera mieux de se rapporter aux notices des éditions, ou à G. Williams. L'étude de Daniele Pellacani, qui propose de dégager plusieurs thèmes du livre 4 semble plus intéressante : les liens entre Sénèque et l'Égypte, les éléments paradoxographiques, la comparaison avec le Danube, les théories sur les crues du Nil. On conçoit cependant que le projet, trop ambitieux, ne puisse pas être réellement mené à bien. Sur les crues du fleuve par exemple, rendre compte pour eux-mêmes de chacun des auteurs cités par Sénèque, quand il s'agit d'Anaxagore, Thalès, ou Diogène d'Apollonie, relève évidemment de la gageure, et on ne peut que regretter que la bibliographie utilisée soit souvent obsolète.⁴ Le problème de la lacune du texte est en revanche bien posé.

Arturo De Vivo rappelle, au sujet du livre 6 sur les tremblements de terre, qu'il s'agit du second texte de Sénèque sur le sujet ; c'est d'ailleurs l'auteur lui-même qui l'indique, donnant ainsi une dimension autobiographique à son texte, qui autorise De Vivo à tenter d'en comprendre la genèse à la lumière du contexte de sa rédaction. Les premières années de Sénèque en Corse semblent marquées à la fois par un intérêt pour la nature et un rejet de l'engagement, ainsi que de toute littérature liée à la politique ; De Vivo songe au Salluste du Catilina (4, 1-2) qui, rejetant l'ambition politique, funeste, choisit de se plonger dans la réflexion historique intérieure. Le livre 6 commence du reste par une observation empirique récente, ce qui est un type d'incipit très rare, celle du tremblement de terre de 62 (ou 63) en Campanie, qui aurait fait naître le projet de ce traité. Grâce à une étude formelle détaillée de la structure du livre, De Vivo montre que les deux excursus politico- historiques, l'un consacré à un éloge de Néron (et de son amor veritatis, lié à l'exploration très récente des sources du Nil), l'autre à la condamnation d'Alexandre (le rex / tyrannus, dont l'opération du Nil, aux objectifs purement impérialistes, a échoué lamentablement), entrent en symétrie. Dès lors, la figure de Callisthène, le sage exécuté par son propre roi, doit être vue comme un possible double de Sénèque lui-même, et l'ensemble interprété comme une mise en garde contre le risque pour Néron de devenir rex.

La courte contribution de Francesco Citti cherche à éclairer un passage du De otio (4, 2) qui divise l'érudition moderne. Le philosophe y évoque, en opposition à une res publica étriquée, tout le profit que l'homme aurait à tourner ses regards vers la res publica maior, c'est-à-dire l'ensemble du monde, la nature. Il produit une liste des possibilités de recherche qui s'ouvriraient alors, se demandant par exemple si unum sit hoc quod maria terrasque et mari ac terris inserta complectitur, an multa eiusmodi corpora deus sparserit. L'article fait le catalogue des traductions proposées dans diverses langues de l'expression mari ac terris inserta, pour montrer comme elle a plongé les savants dans le doute, au point que la leçon du texte a pu même être mise en cause. G. Williams y voit une allusion aux quatre éléments, d'autres une périphrase désignant les hommes, etc. Citti réfute soigneusement toutes ces interprétations, et fait plus logiquement reposer l'image sur une « disposition concentrique de la matière », le passage évoquant le cosmos dans son ensemble puis, si l'on peut dire, tout ce qu'il y a dedans. Pour justifier cette idée, l'auteur fait appel à une série de références relevant de près ou de loin de la géographie savante (Ératosthène, Cicéron, Strabon, et surtout Poséidonios) afin d'illustrer l'idée que Sénèque voit ici le monde comme sur une carte, où les terres sont entourées par la mer. Bien sûr, l'argumentation l'emporte nettement sur les autres mais, en s'appuyant sur des formules courantes comme terra marique, ne peut-on se passer de convoquer tous ces érudits, et considérer que l'expression est surtout d'une extrême banalité ?

Deux articles sont ensuite consacrés à la postérité de la physique de Sénèque à partir de la Renaissance. Hiro Hirai évoque Juste Lipse, figure du renouveau du stoïcisme qui publia à Anvers, en 1605, les œuvres complètes du philosophe. En proposant une étude systématique des citations des Questions Naturelles dans les trois livres de la Physiologia stoicorum, Hirai montre comment l'érudit flamand a christianisé le déterminisme pessimiste de la physique stoïcienne. Le champ de l'étude passionnante de Bardo Maria Gauly est plus large : celle-ci explique en effet que c'est l'épilogue du livre 7, c'est-à-dire un pamphlet contre la dépravation, qui a permis la connexion entre les théories originales de Sénèque sur les comètes et les découvertes de la modernité (Tycho Brahe, Galilée, Kepler).

La dernière contribution, une revue monumentale (91 p.) de la fortune des Questions Naturelles jusqu'au début du XIXe s., par Fabio Nanni et Daniele Pellacani, est non seulement une mine d'informations et un outil de travail prudent et bien informé, mais surtout un parcours plus que plaisant à travers la littérature et la pensée occidentales depuis Lucain ; l' indice dei nomi placé à la fin du volume lui doit presque toute sa richesse.

En dépit de l'inégal intérêt des contributions, le spécialiste comme le curieux pourront tirer du profit, et du plaisir, de la lecture de ce volume ; son plus grand mérite est sans doute de replacer la physique de Sénèque dans les traditions antiques des réflexions sur la nature, et dans le cadre plus large de l'histoire des sciences jusqu'à l'époque moderne.

Table des matières

Marco Beretta - Francesco Citti - Lucia Pasetti, « Premessa »
Marco Beretta, « Il concetto di legge naturale in Lucrezio e Seneca »
Piergiorgio Parroni, « Il linguaggio «drammatico» di Seneca scienziato »
Harry M. Hine, « Originality and Independence in Seneca Natural Questions Book 2 »
Francesca Romana Berno, « Non solo acqua. Elementi per un diluvio universale nel terzo libro delle Naturales Quaestiones »
Pasquale Rossi, « Le piene del Nilo nelle Naturales Quaestiones di Seneca »
Daniele Pellacani, « Le piene del Nilo. Nota bibliografica »
Arturo De Vivo, « Seneca e i terremoti (Questioni naturali, libro VI) »
Francesco Citti, « L'opzione della scienza. A proposito di Seneca, De otio 4,2 »
Hiro Hirai, « Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones in Justus Lipsius' Physiologia Stoicorum: the World-Soul, Providence and Eschatology »
Bardo Maria Gauly, « Aliquid veritati et posteri conferant: Seneca und die Kometentheorie der Frühen Neuzeit »
Fabio Nanni - Daniele Pellacani, « Per una rassegna sulla fortuna delle Naturales Quaestiones »
Indice dei nomi
Indice dei passi senecani

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Notes:

1.   Gareth D. Williams, The Cosmic Viewpoint : A Study of Seneca's Natural Questions, Oxford, 2012.
2.   On peut renvoyer sur ce point à G. Droz-Vincent, « Les foedera naturae chez Lucrèce », dans C. Lévy (éd.), Le concept de nature à Rome. La physique, Paris, 1996, 191-212, et à B. Cuny-Lecallet, « Les monstres dans la météorologie de Lucrèce », La météorologie dans l'antiquité, Saint-Étienne, 2003, 345-365, qui ne sont pas cités par l'auteur.
3.   Alfonso Traina, Lo stile « drammatico » del filosofo Seneca, Bologne, 1987.
4.   On se contente de renvoyer, au sujet d'Euthymène de Marseille, à l'étude déjà ancienne de J. Desanges, Recherches sur l'activité des Méditerranéens aux confins de l'Afrique (VIe siècle avant J.-C. - IVe siècle après J.-C.), École française de Rome, 1978.

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Marco Rocco, L'esercito romano tardoantico: persistenze e cesure dai Severi a Teodosio I. Studi e progetti. Padova: libreriauniversitaria.it edizioni, 2012. Pp. 683. ISBN 9788862922302. €35.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Philip Rance, Thessaloniki (prr@fastnet.co.uk)

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In this doctoral dissertation of the University of Padua, Marco Rocco seeks to trace the institutional evolution of the Roman army from the Severans to the death of Theodosius I. Although hardly virgin territory, Rocco justifies the enquiry as an attempt to provide a comprehensive synthesis hitherto lacking, at least in Italian scholarship, with the objective of identifying interrelationships and clarifying causal links that might explain "gli elementi di persistenza e i momenti di cesura". Certainly Rocco's decision to couple the third and fourth centuries recognises a long-term desideratum which previous scholarship has not properly addressed, partly owing to conventional periodizations of Roman military history, whereby the third century often slips between specialisms.

A preface by Luigi Bessone justly commends the vast breadth of this study; indeed, the diversity of historical problems confronted by Rocco might have furnished sufficient material and challenge for a dozen doctoral theses. In five chronological sections (the Severans to 284; Diocletian and the Tetrarchy; Constantine; 337 to Adrianople; Theodosius I) Rocco treats some or all of the same interrelated themes: unit types, organisation and distribution; numbers of effectives; recruitment and "barbarisation"; command structures; frontier strategies; equipment and tactics; soldier-civilian relations, touching upon adjacent cultural and socio-economic spheres.

Chapter 1 begins with a lengthy discussion of the constitutio Antoniniana, in which Rocco discerns primarily military-fiscal motivations: increased revenues for the aerarium militare and regulation of citizenship as a recruitment qualification. He proceeds to examine early third-century institutional innovations, notably the creation of, in his view, the first permanent "mobile army" which, even if originally intended for internal security, became the nucleus of imperial expeditions from the reign of Caracalla, to which Rocco traces the designation sacer comitatus. He also investigates modifications to military careers, particularly praetorian prefects, and the protracted process whereby equestrian viri militares superseded the senatorial antiqua nobilitas in/by the reign of Gallienus.

Consideration of defensive strategies in the later third century accentuates the impact of political fragmentation on military deployment and the evolving role of the comitatus as a strategic strike force. Investigation of the terminology and structural typologies of defensive installations identifies innovations, typically regional in origin, some of which potentially inspired developments elsewhere or empire-wide. The creation of a system of "in depth" defence in the Gallic Empire exemplifies zonal particularity along the limites.

Discussion of the late third-century proliferation of new categories of cavalry unit, characteristically styled equites (promoti, Dalmatae, stablesiani, scutati, Mauri, sagittarii), is disappointing, even accepting the difficulties of the evidence. While Rocco rightly discards Gallienus' "cavalry reform" as a twentieth-century myth (134), his decision to examine the equites in a purely "geostrategic" context (87-9) overlooks the wider (if not necessarily long-term) significance of the expansion, reorganisation and heightened profile of cavalry in this period.

A section concerning combat appreciates changes to soldiers' equipment and clothing, and contemporary representations thereof, and is sensitive to socio-cultural perspectives, but a cursory survey of tactical developments oversimplifies complex issues and presents contentious questions as if settled. Analysis of the distribution of legiones and auxilia and the total number of effectives at Diocletian's accession involves customary number crunching, complicated by Rocco's inference that recently created legiones were smaller and his conviction that Vegetius' antiqua legio reflects late third-century realities. Nevertheless, the final picture of an army much the same size in 284 as in 235, despite the intervening "crisis", is plausibly argued.

Chapter 2 begins by investigating the composition of Tetrarchic armies. Rocco emphasises the traditional framework of comitatus (pl.) amplified by ad hoc vexillationes and identifies regional differences (e.g. the western preponderance of new-style auxilia), although more perhaps could have been said on regionality as a defining characteristic of military developments during the Tetrarchy. Rocco traces the changing number, shape and location of legiones, notably fragmentation by permanent vexillatio, and elucidates terminological obscurities (e.g. lanciarii/lancearii). A lengthy discussion of new recruitment mechanisms and their fiscal consequences is instructive, even if the "normal" functioning of the system remains somewhat elusive, given that legislative sources, for which the Principate offers almost no comparanda, frequently respond to specific crises.

Rocco hypothesises that the drastic diminution of old-style auxilia (alae, cohortes) witnessed in the Notitia Dignitatum, involving the disappearance of around four-fifths of such units documented under the Principate, compared to the doubling of the number (if not the manpower) of legiones under the Tetrarchy, can be explained by positing the conversion of auxilia into legiones, though without actually abolishing this class of auxilia. Rocco sees this "promotion" as a consequence of the equalisation of civic status by the constitutio Antoniniana and the long-term uniformisation of equipment and tactics. Such a large-scale reclassification of existing troops would obviate the traditional notion that Tetrarchic restructuring of the army entailed massive recruitment, a view some have already questioned. As Rocco provides no explicit evidence for auxilia-to-legio conversion, this hypothesis must rest on circumstantial convenience. His attempt to show, in turn, that the armed forces of the Tetrarchs were not significantly larger than those of preceding Soldatenkaiser, though by no means implausible, cannot escape the imponderables of such arithmetic. His papyrus-based calculation of a specimen comitatus (Galerius' in 295) is more persuasive, at least as a general order of magnitude (25,000).

Following a discussion of fabricae and implications for equipment production, Rocco quickly surveys high commands (praetorian prefects, duces) before entering the minefield of late Roman regimental hierarchies. Here a tendency to rehearse the arguments of different scholars yields apparent inconsistencies, e.g. the officer- grade ducenarius cannot etymologically derive from both the equestrian ducena dignitas (235-6) and, as Vegetius supposes, a command of 200 legionarii (131, 229-30). Treatment of this complex subject would have benefited from greater precision in defining when a term signifies a rank, post or dignity, especially for designations with more than one meaning (e.g. again ducenarius, for which references are cited indiscriminately: 237). I am puzzled why a regimental hierarchy drawn from the late sixth-century Strategikon (but conflating ranks with posts and infantry with cavalry) is cited in relation to "coorti ausiliarie dioclezianee" (232).

The chapter concludes with a sector-by-sector reassessment of the evidence for a Diocletianic building program on the frontiers. Although cited bibliography occasionally seems dated (e.g. for Britannia), Rocco's argues persuasively for a traditional linear (rather than "in depth") defence designed to facilitate offensives.

Chapter 3 argues that, in contrast to Diocletian's traditionalism, it was Constantine who created the late Roman army, which was essentially a product of his rise to power. Rocco catalogues the many campaigns of augusti/caesares against external enemies 306-337, which rarely share the historiographic limelight with internal power struggles and pagan-christian conflict. An excellent analysis of the evolution of different classes of troops – comitatenses, scholae palatinae, ripenses/riparienses, cohortes/alae – stresses status, remuneration and role in recent civil wars over tactical or strategic functions. Discussion of ripenses/riparienses is especially enlightening in relation to the later- attested category of limitanei.

An uneven section on troop-types is followed by more on army sizes, well-trodden ground, but conjecturing the temporary enlargement of armies for civil wars, analogous to the Late Republic. This potentially explains the high figures in some sources, notoriously Zosimus, and contextualises the spate of legislation on veterans' privileges in 318-325, again with parallels to Octavian. A brief treatment of quartering soldiers, and to what extent comitatenses were "mobile", recites the usual litany of abuses against civilian hosts in urban billets.

Discussion of "barbarisation"/"Germanisation" rejects attempts at proportional calculation, but infers substantial enlistment of barbarian/Germanic troops, starting under Constantine and escalating from the 350s-360s, in contrast to a trend in recent (especially anglophone) scholarship to minimise its significance. Offering more than a rehearsal of a traditional paradigm, Rocco examines the mechanisms of recruitment-integration, sensibly connecting enrolment of barbarians with long-term socio-cultural developments within the Roman empire and new fiscal apparatus of recruitment (principally aurum tironicum) from the Tetrarchy. He attempts to strike a balance between countervailing tendencies of "Romanisation" and "Germanisation", allowing for reciprocal influences, but interpretation inevitably entails impressionistic judgements. It remains easier to trace the enlistment of non- Romans/Germani, arguably in large numbers, than to demonstrate the consequences, if any, for the operational practices and capabilities of Roman armies. Germanic influences surveyed by Rocco are chiefly in the sphere of "military culture" (dress, emblems, ceremony) and even here the evidence is often more complex than presented, especially against a background of centuries of Roman military eclecticism.

Examination of high commands, notably praetorian prefects, magistri (militum/officiorum), comites and duces, emphasises shifting terminology, functions and status. There follows a sequence of themes relating to frontier security: a conventional summary of the intensification of "guerriglia", seen as "una vera rivoluzione" (368), though both the theory and practice have a longer pedigree and Rocco risks generalising an opponent-specific development; an all-too-brief section on the provisioning of garrisons, which may point the way for future research; and a survey of Constantinian fortifications, demonstrating continuing offensive potential.

Chapter 4 summarises military operations 337-378, with remarks on the evolution of magistri militum, followed by analysis of units created in this period and the formalisation of orders of precedence and/or modes of deployment of different classes of troops, including limitanei, pseudocomitatenses, palatini. Rocco (as previously RSA 2009) re-evaluates evidence for the regimental appellations seniores/iuniores, arguing that these distinctions do not signify unit seniority, as recent scholarship holds, but relate, at least in origin, to age groups of servicemen, possibly reflected in different operational and/or tactical duties.

An intelligent investigation of interrelated developments in manpower and finance, and their consequences for recruitment and "barbarisation", drifts into a superficial review of technological exchange between the empire and barbaricum. A somewhat unfocused section includes methods of assimilating non-Romans; a wide-ranging enquiry into soldier-civilian relations; and perusal of the Abinnaeus archive. There follows another survey of building initiatives on the frontiers, principally European. The chapter concludes with a glance at the performance of cavalry and infantry in selected engagements, which preludes a brief, largely Vegetius-inspired consideration of weaponry and tactics.

A fifth, epilogic section, covering events 378-395, examines how Theodosius restored order in the Balkans after Adrianople, including the evidence for agreements with different groupings of "Goths" and their consequent status and terms of service as "foederati". Rocco also considers Theodosius' two interventions against western usurpers; the proliferation of eastern magistri militum; and new units documented in the East, whether newly created or possibly transferred from the West, potentially contributing to its subsequent chronic weakness. Finally, he rehearses the arguments surrounding Vegetius' much-discussed allegation of the abandonment of armour under Gratian.

A "riepilogo tematico" offers a diachronic reprise of the various lines of argument concerning "persistenze" and "cesure". Rocco identifies structural, operational and cultural continuities in the evolutionary dynamics of the late Roman army, much of which he traces to Severan origins or precedents, and overarching consistencies in the objectives and functioning of imperial defensive strategy. He distinguishes Constantine as the only major military innovator in this period, though even here one might have discerned systematisation of preceding ad hoc and/or regional measures. Rocco's appraisal of significant discontinuities includes Tetrarchic innovations in recruitment; new modes of armament production in state manufactories; Constantine's reform of high commands and their subsequent "barbarisation"; urban hospitium of comitatenses and its implications for soldier- civilian relations; the post-Adrianople accommodation of "Gothic" foederati. A thoughtful appendix (published RSA 2011) considers perceptions of barbarian ethnic identity.

On the whole, this well-researched book succeeds in synthesizing multiple complex themes, developments and controversies. Given its scope and sources, so bedevilled with uncertainties, it would be no surprise if the text evokes myriad disagreements and alternative interpretations on points of detail and general principles, but Rocco's analysis is typically sensible, well argued and overall free of kite flying, bandwagon jumping and for-its-own-sake revisionism. Its strengths include rigorous application of chronology, sensitive Quellenforschung and attention to regional particularities, thereby avoiding generalisations and anachronisms on the basis of deficient evidence, while affording a clear presentation of the course and pace of developments. Rocco's approach excels at an institutional level (composition of armies, unit histories, classes and categories of troops, command structures), which provides the main narrative thread, and he is adept at interweaving the intricacies of manpower, recruitment and finance. His treatment of operational aspects, including tactics and logistics, is less successful, while some of the excurses on numerous other topics, often cursory, uneven and/or derivative, could have been pruned or developed elsewhere. Errors are very few and minor.¹ Misprints are negligible.

Miscellaneous cavils should not detract from my favourable evaluation of the book as a whole. One suspects that it will become primarily a digest of scholarship and point of reference for Italian readers, but one can hope that it acquires a wider audience.

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Notes:

1.   E.g. 51: evidence cited for continuity of the old-style numerus (Herulorum) in fact relates to an auxilium palatinum (Heruli seniores); 326: confuses Lactantius Placidus with more-famous homonym; 344: Calocerus rebelled in Cyprus not Crete; 459: the legionary grades augustalis, flavialis are not "altrimenti sconosciuti", but well attested papyrologically.

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Yelena Baraz, A Written Republic: Cicero's Philosophical Politics. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012. Pp. xi, 252. ISBN 9780691153322. $45.00.

Reviewed by Walter Englert, Reed College (walter.englert@reed.edu)

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In this thoughtful study, Yelena Baraz argues that in the philosophical works he wrote near the end of his life (45-43 BCE) Cicero attempted to establish a new place for philosophy in Roman culture and politics under the oppressive regime of Julius Caesar. This is a wide-ranging book, focusing primarily on the prefaces of the philosophical treatises of 45-43, but setting the discussion in the larger cultural currents of the late republic. Baraz makes a number of important observations about Cicero's philosophical project and what he tried to accomplish with it. This is an excellent study, and will be of great use to those interested in Cicero, his philosophical works, and the intellectual and cultural currents in which he wrote.

In the Introduction, Baraz clearly sets out goals of her study. She argues that by looking at the prefaces of the philosophical treatises that Cicero wrote in the years 45 to 43, we can see him responding to the failure of the republic by appropriating a segment of Greek cultural capital, philosophy, and by trying to provide a new conceptual framework for interpreting the many historical exempla upon which the mos maiorum was founded. Baraz suggests that Cicero uses the prefaces for two primary purposes: to justify his philosophical project, and to create the right rhetorical setting for his discussions. Working from the prefaces, Baraz says she hopes to contribute to the understanding of Cicero's philosophical works by setting them in their cultural and historical settings.

In the Introduction, Baraz also discusses her methodology. She takes Cicero's prefaces as paratexts in Genette's sense, as a "fringe" which is both a transition and a transaction, in which Cicero can gain a better reception for his work. Baraz also invokes the Hegelian conception of a preface as "an explanation of the author's aim, why he wrote the book, and the relationship in which he believes it to stand to other earlier and contemporary treatises on the subject." (7). Finally, Baraz argues that in focusing on the prefaces she follows not only Genette, but Cicero himself, who composed a separate "book of prefaces," the volumen prohoemiorum. Instead of taking (as many have done) the fact that Cicero composed his prefaces separately as evidence that the prefaces were relatively unimportant, Baraz takes it as showing that Cicero thought of his philosophical project as a unified whole, and one in which prefaces would allow him to address important issues consistently. Thus, Baraz argues, the prefaces hold valuable information for the historical and cultural questions she is exploring, and are sites of explicit engagement between author and reader.

Baraz rounds out the Introduction by situating her study in the context of Cicero's philosophical works as a whole. She argues that Cicero began his philosophical project in earnest with the Hortensius, his programmatic defense of philosophy. Thus the dialogues of the 50s (De Oratore, De Re Publica, and De Legibus) do not form part of her discussion. Baraz justifies excluding the prefaces of the works of the 50s by noting that Cicero was an active politician at the time he wrote them, while the situation in the 40s under Caesar was strikingly different, when writing became for Cicero an alternate way of doing politics. Baraz is correct in these observations, though here it might have made her case even stronger if she had briefly discussed the very different prefaces of the De Oratore, De Re Publica, and De Legibus and contrasted them with the prefaces of the philosophical works of the 40s.

In Chapter 1 ("Otiose Otium: The Status of Intellectual Activity in Late Republican Prefaces") Baraz helpfully sets Cicero's attempt to deal with Roman resistance to philosophy in the broader context of attempts by Roman writers to address prejudices against writing in other fields. She examines Sallust's monographs and the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium to see what strategies two contemporary authors use to demonstrate that writing is a valuable activity for Roman elites. Baraz argues that these texts reveal options Cicero had for meeting Roman resistance to intellectual activities, and the even greater difficulties he faced in trying to present philosophy as a valuable cultural practice.

Chapter 2 ("On a More Personal Note: Philosophy in the Letters") is a perceptive and valuable treatment of how Cicero presents philosophical themes in his letters and how he develops lines of approach that he later presents in the prefaces to his philosophical works. In this chapter, Baraz examines a number of issues, including Cicero's belief in philosophy's ability to improve character, Cicero's hope that philosophy could function in political contexts, and Cicero's portrayal of his philosophical activity in the letters. The chapter ends with Baraz's view of a key interpretative problem: how to understand Cicero's numerous statements in his letters and prefaces about philosophy's important role in consoling people who have suffered great loss. Baraz rightly notes that in his prefaces Cicero lists a number of motivations for writing his philosophical works, including his need to serve the state and its citizens, his need to keep active even when he cannot directly take part in politics, and his desire to find consolation after the death of his daughter. Baraz tries to separate out these motivations, ultimately arguing that Cicero's political motivations for writing were more important than his personal and consolatory ones. Her account is well-balanced overall, but there are times when she underplays Cicero's consolatory motivations for both himself and his readers. To say that Cicero's philosophical works have a strong political motivation does not necessarily mean that his talk of consolation is largely confined to the Consolatio (94-95) or that it is secondary to his political motivations. Almost all of Cicero's late philosophical works can be seen as offering consolation to himself and his readers, helping to provide a larger philosophic framework on which to reconstruct their lives.

Chapter 3 ("The Gift of Philosophy: The Treatises as Translations") examines the prefaces of the philosophical treatises of 46-43 BCE and explores Cicero's claims about his philosophical writings and their potential benefit to the state. A major theme of the chapter is the centrality of the idea of Cicero's philosophical works as translations, and to explore this topic Baraz looks at sections of the prefaces of the De Natura Deorum I, Tusculan Disputations I, and De Finibus I. The chapter raises a number of productive issues, including Cicero's views on the relationship of Roman sapientia and Greek philosophia, the nature of Cicero's project of "translation," and the different audiences he was trying it reach with his philosophica. The chapter concludes with a thoughtful discussion of the difficult balancing act Cicero had to achieve in writing the works, and leaves open the important question of how Cicero thought Rome would benefit from his philosophical treatises written in Latin.

Chapter 4 ("With the Same Voice: Oratory as a Transitional Space") explores Cicero's use of rhetoric in the prefaces, both as an explicit topic of discussion and as embodied in the consciously rhetorical manner of his presentation. Baraz discusses the prefaces of the Paradoxa Stoicorum, De Natura Deorum I, and Tusculan Disputations I, showing how in each of these works Cicero, through the rhetorical style of the prefaces, the emphasis he puts on the similarities between rhetoric and philosophy, and his own claims to have joined rhetoric and philosophy throughout his own life, tries to create a place for philosophy in Roman culture.

Chapter 5 ("Reading a Ciceronian Preface: Strategies of Reader Management") explores the means (including appeals to amicitia, selection of quotations and allusions, and choice of particular historical characters as speakers) that Cicero uses to draw his audience in and create an "ideal reader" (151) who is well disposed to his works. Discussing the preface and conclusion of the Topica, Baraz evaluates Cicero's use of the work's dedicatee (the jurist C. Trebatius Testa) to reach his audience, and how his appeals to different aspects of his ties of amicitia with Trebatius help create similar ties with his readers. This is followed by a perceptive analysis of the preface of the De Senectute that demonstrates persuasively how Cicero combined the theme of amicitia with an appeal to the authority of great Romans from the past, including Ennius and Cato the Elder. Baraz ends the chapter with a comparison of the ideal reader created by the prefaces of the Topica and De Senectute and what we know independently of Cicero's readers, and says that the profile of Cicero's intended reader is consistent: "He emerges as an elite Roman male well versed in Roman tradition and fairly familiar with Greek culture, a man who would appreciate the importance of a real translation and integration of Greek philosophical ideas with the Roman cultural tradition." (186)

Chapter 6 ("Philosophy after Caesar: The New Direction") concludes the book. Analyzing the preface of De Divinatione II, written after Caesar's assassination, Baraz suggests that Cicero begins at this point to change the direction of his philosophical project, and that we can see him working out this new approach in the philosophical works that follow: the De Fato, De Amicitia, and De Officiis. As part of her discussion, Baraz pauses to explore another feature of Cicero's philosophical works: his choice of dedicatee. The philosophical works of the 50s are dedicated to his brother Quintus, while the rhetorical and philosophical works written under Caesar are almost all dedicated to Brutus (the exceptions are the Consolatio and De Senectute, dedicated to Atticus, and the Academica, dedicated to Varro). After Caesar's death, a different pattern emerges. The De Divinatione lacks a dedicatee, while the De Fato (which has not survived in its entirety) may have been dedicated to the younger politician Hirtius. The De Amicitia was dedicated to Atticus, the Topica to C. Trebatius Testa, and De Officiis to Cicero's son Marcus. Baraz sees the differences in types of dedicatees during the three periods of his life as reflective of Cicero's view of the relationship of politics and action during the same periods: in the 50s, the dedication of his philosophical works to his brother matched his view that philosophy was an activity that was a subject for and product of otium; in the 40s before Caesar's death, his dedication of most of his philosophical works to Brutus (an active politician) signified that philosophy was now substituting for politics for Cicero; after Caesar's death, Cicero returned to a more active engagement with politics, and began to see his philosophical writings as a legacy he could bequeath to a younger generation of Romans.

Baraz has thus demonstrated how a careful reading of the prefaces of Cicero's philosophical works yields important information about Cicero's attempt to Romanize Greek philosophy. My only criticisms are relatively minor. First, while Baraz rightly highlights and convincingly argues for the importance of the political aspects of Cicero's philosophical works, she at times undervalues another aspect of them that Cicero also stressed: the value that philosophy had to console Romans for the private losses they suffered during a period of intense social turmoil. This causes her at times to interpret passages from the philosophic works and letters that read more naturally as referring largely to private losses as being primarily political. Second, it would have been helpful if she had taken the opportunity, if only briefly, to try to connect some of the themes of the prefaces with the discussions of the philosophical material contained in the works themselves. And third, it might have helped if there had been a separate conclusion that drew together the major strands that emerged from the perceptive discussions in each of the six chapters. Still, this is an excellent study, and will be valuable reading for anyone interested in Cicero's philosophical works and the cultural and political environments from which they emerged.

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Adeline Grand-Clément, La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens (VIIIedébut du Ve siècle av. n. è.). De l'archéologie à l'histoire. Paris: De Boccard, 2011. Pp. xxxii, 564. ISBN 9782701803036. €81.00.

Reviewed by Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel, Université de Genève (anne-caroline.rendu@unige.ch)

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Table of Contents

Le présent compte-rendu n'est pas le travail d'une helléniste, mais d'une assyriologue qui s'intéresse à des thématiques similaires dans les textes cunéiformes de la Mésopotamie ancienne. Il n'y aura donc pas de remarques sur le grec ou la traduction des textes anciens. Adeline Grand-Clément nous propose ici une vaste enquête sur les couleurs dans la Grèce archaïque, fruit de ses recherches de doctorat. Sujet novateur et porteur, la perception des couleurs dans l'Antiquité et les discours des Anciens s'y rapportant ont invité l'auteure à élargir ses travaux à l'ensemble des phénomènes sensoriels (le toucher, le son, les fragrances…). D'où le sous-titre donné à cette monographie. Malgré les difficultés constituées par la disparité des sources (réparties inégalement dans le temps et dans l'espace), l'auteure souligne l'enjeu majeur d'un tel sujet dès les premières lignes : les couleurs – et l'attribution de celles-ci à certains objets ou entités – ne sont en rien un phénomène universel. Elles sont le témoignage de concepts culturels et sociaux, propres à chaque culture. La mer est pourpre chez Homère. L'auteure a cherché à retrouver les catégories de pensée des Grecs, leur façon de percevoir le monde sensible, intéressée surtout par l'expression de la sensibilité collective et non individuelle.

Le premier chapitre offre une historiographie de la recherche autour des notions de «couleur» et de «coloration» dans différents champs disciplinaires, entre l'Antiquité (avec les présocratiques notamment) et l'époque moderne (Newton). Si, sur le plan de l'optique, on est en mesure d'individualiser chaque couleur (en quantifiant les trois variables qui la composent – la teinte, la saturation et la luminosité –), il n'en est pas de même sur le plan du lexique, surtout celui antique, qui considère la couleur, non comme une matière, mais comme une sensation, voire une expérience. La part de subjectivité est donc importante dans l'analyse chromatique, comme l'annonçait déjà l'historien d'art John Gage (p. 28). Le caractère évanescent, fluide et insaisissable de la couleur ne fait que renforcer son lien fondamental avec son support et sa matérialité. Autour de khrôma, dérivé du mot khrôs, terme de l'époque classique pour désigner le phénomène chromatique, la problématique est élargie aux notions de surface et de peau. Le noircissement est une coloration inquiétante et de mauvais augure; le rougissement est associé à l'épanchement de sang; la gamme des rouges traduit visuellement la violence guerrière (pp. 64-5). Les sens accordés aux couleurs font de la coloration un processus intrinsèque et dynamique, au cœur de la sensibilité grecque, et non une simple métamorphose superficielle. Les couleurs entrent en résonnance les unes avec les autres, dans un réseau de correspondances et d'associations.

Le chapitre 2 aborde les mots laissés par les poètes. Le vocabulaire des couleurs se prête à une souplesse et une plasticité qui enrichissent le domaine affectif. Les couleurs font appel aux autres sens: sève et pâleur, végétation, chant du rossignol, couleur et odeur des fleurs... L'enquête témoigne de la sensibilité des Grecs aux notions de brillance, de chatoiement et de bigarrure. Le chapitre 3 s'interroge sur la pratique des artisans et les données plus proprement techniques et matérielles relatives à la couleur. En proposant une histoire des tekhnai (peinture des vases, de la plastique, travail des métaux et incrustations, tissage et teinte), l'auteure cherche à comprendre les changements (techniques et sociaux) dans le maniement et dans le rôle de la couleur (fonction esthétique, plastique et symbolique).

Dans une perspective politique et sociale, les couleurs sont instrumentalisées, permettant de se distinguer de l'Autre; le corps porte les marques de la différence, visible par la pigmentation (chapitre 4). Le vêtement (chapitre 5) ne fait que confirmer la position dominante de l'élite dans la société: celle-ci «monopolise à son compte les couleurs vives, éclatantes et durables», les emblèmes colorés, les parures éclatantes, et instrumentalise l'or et la pourpre. Dans le chapitre 4, le blanchiment est le signe de la décoloration et le symbole de la vieillesse et de la décrépitude; le blanc est un marqueur sexuel, devenant la couleur des femmes et une norme sociale pour ces dernières. Les étrangers sont nommés par la couleur de leur peau. La couleur est un marqueur social et identitaire fort et a donc une valeur classificatoire, en particulier vis-à-vis de celui que l'on considère comme Autre. Ce sont les «figures marginales» qui en sont marquées (p. 262). Le chapitre 5, développant la couleur (or et la pourpre) et son utilisation par l'élite (parures, vêtements, maquillage), invite à s'interroger sur la perspective esthétique du signe coloré comme plaisir social, soulignant le lien fondamental entre la couleur, la brillance, l'éclat des matières et la vibration chromatique. La couleur distingue également les héros du commun des mortels, grâce à l'éclat et la blondeur.

Une couleur ne prenant sens que dans un contexte de contact avec une autre, l'auteure s'interroge dans son chapitre 6 sur le réseau sémantique et affectif, construit autour des signes chromatiques (rouge, noir, blanc) et sur les usages des couleurs dans les rites (pp. 368-396): funérailles (passer du noir au pourpre), les purifications (le feu, le blanc et la pourpre), mais aussi les couleurs qui marquent les rites de passage (comme le mariage). Les couleurs participent à la construction du monde divin et sa distinction: les épithètes témoignent de l'éclat du corps des dieux (avec l'usage de l'or notamment), Athéna a le regard bleu clair ou brillant glaukos.

Le dernier chapitre est consacré à la polychromie et au terme particulièrement riche de poikilia: la bigarrure, cet éclat chatoyant des couleurs, dans la parure notamment, invitant à penser le monde dans sa pluralité, caractéristique de la sensibilité archaïque (p. 418). Ce chapitre est l'occasion pour l'auteure de faire le point sur l'historiographie de ce terme, et d'interroger ses multiples réalités: données littéraires, lexicographiques mais aussi techniques (peinture, orfèvrerie, métallurgie...), animales (pelages, plumages et écailles). On a alors une image particulièrement harmonieuse et unique de cette polychromie, témoignage de la diversité riche et féconde du monde, pensé comme un textile (coloré, contrasté mais équilibré et harmonieux, p. 452).

La conclusion, un peu trop brève par rapport aux immenses champs abordés, rappelle la complémentarité des sens et souligne l'aspect vivant et bariolé de cette civilisation ancienne de la Grèce archaïque.

Si le vocabulaire demeure une source indéniable de renseignements, l'auteure ne se limite pas à une enquête lexicographique, mais développe le phénomène couleur dans toutes ses réalités, questionnant alors les matières, les supports, les vêtements, mais aussi les peintures, les teintures, les pigments et les techniques maîtrisées (ou non) en Grèce ancienne. Elle fait dialoguer les données tirées des œuvres littéraires (Homère, Eschyle, Pindare, Hésiode...), aux données plus proprement archéologiques: les matières utilisées pour produire telle ou telle couleur, les pratiques artisanales...

L'auteure inscrit sa démarche dans une perspective comparatiste, en ponctuant sa réflexion d'exemples tirés d'autres sphères culturelles: le Mexique est également convié dans cette enquête, à travers la récente thèse d'Elodie Dupey Garcia, portant sur les couleurs chez les Aztèques.

Peu de sujet semble avoir échappé à l'auteure, et chacune des thématiques est traitée avec un grand souci de précision, au risque d'entraîner quelques répétitions. Mais ces répétitions sont là pour donner plus de clarté et offrir au lecteur toutes les cartes en main pour la compréhension d'un développement. L'ouvrage reste particulièrement bien écrit, agréable à lire et très complet: les trente-deux planches couleur sont d'excellente qualité; l'ouvrage est complété par un index des sources et deux autres thématiques (termes grecs relatifs à la couleur et index général) qui faciliteront la lecture à tous, en particulier aux comparatistes, venant d'autres champs culturels.

Le lexique des couleurs s'ouvre aux autres sensations, enrichissant la dimension symbolique et affective des mots: poikilos renvoie à des contrastes de couleur, de textures et de formes et non à une nuance; aiolos associe les notions de lumière, de vitesse et de mouvement. Les produits cosmétiques – baumes et huiles appliquées sur la peau – supposent le contact et le mouvement, notions fondamentales pour la couleur. L'émerveillement face à un produit ou un objet ne se limite pas à l'appréciation de son aspect coloré, mais, au contraire, sollicite l'ensemble des sens de la perception. La synesthésie, lorsque les sens se mêlent et se confondent, crée l'irrésistibilité du pouvoir de la séduction. Les anthropologues des mondes anciens ne pourront qu'être sensibles aux diverses remarques formulées sur la synesthésie: lumière, bruit et mouvement se mêlent, faisant alors écho aux travaux d'Eléna Cassin sur la splendeur divine en Mésopotamie.¹ On regrettera peut-être que ces remarques soient dispersées dans tout l'ouvrage, ne permettant pas au lecteur d'avoir une image claire de ce mélange des sens et des pluralités de ses emplois. Qu'en est-il des stratégies rituelles sensorielles dans les scènes de rencontre avec le divin? Si l'association de différents matériaux comme les métaux produit un effet de polychromie indéniable, quelle est la logique d'utilisation des objets dans les sanctuaires en fonction des autres effets produits (couleur, mais aussi sons, odeurs...)?

Plus de cinquante ans après les travaux de Louis Gernet sur le terme porphureos «pourpre», cette brillante et passionnante étude montre bien à quel point le chromatisme est un sujet particulièrement fécond, permettant de comprendre davantage en quoi les Grecs sont «autres» (p. 16) ou pour penser les Grecs autrement. Cet ouvrage s'inscrit dans une perspective de recherche tout à fait actuelle: ces dernières années, grâce aux travaux en anthropologie des sens (Constance Classen, David Howes, David Le Breton entre autres ²), les phénomènes sensoriels et affectifs reviennent sur le devant de la scène des études historiques (Alain Corbin, Michel Pastoureau, Jean-Pierre Gutton ³), faisant écho presque un siècle après à ce que suggérait Lucien Febvre.⁴ Les sens et les concepts qui leur sont associés remettent en question l'évidence du naturel et de l'universalité des valeurs. Apportant les premiers renseignements sur le monde dans lequel l'individu évolue, les sens sont aussi un moyen de comprendre et d'appréhender l'environnement, dépassant le cadre simple de l'état physique passif et individuel: «Érigé entre ciel et terre, souche identitaire, le corps est le filtre par lequel l'homme s'approprie la substance du monde et la fait sienne par l'intermédiaire des systèmes symboliques qu'il partage avec les membres de sa communauté».⁵

Entre l'intime et le codifié, l'intériorisation et le partage, la perception est un prisme par lequel les membres d'une société donnent du sens au monde qui les environne, le traduisent, l'interprètent et se l'approprient.

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Notes:

1.   Elena Cassin, La splendeur divine. Introduction à la mentalité mésopotamienne, La Haye—Paris: Monton and Co, 1968.
2.   Constance Classen, «Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses», International Social Science Journal 49/153 (1997), pp. 401-412; David Howes, Sensual Relations. Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. David Le Breton, La saveur du monde. Une anthropologie des sens, Paris: Métailié, 2006.
3.   Alain Corbin, Le Miasme et la Jonquille. L'odorat et l'imaginaire social, XVIII^e- XIX^e siècles, Paris: Seuil, 1982; du même auteur: «Histoire et anthropologie sensorielle», Anthropologie et Sociétés 14/2 (1990), pp. 13-24; Les Cloches de la terre. Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIX^e siècle, Paris: Flammarion, 1994. Jean-Pierre Gutton, Bruits et sons dans notre histoire, Le nœud gordien, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000. Michel Pastoureau, Bleu, Histoire d'une couleur, Paris: Seuil, 2000; du même auteur,Noir, Histoire d'une couleur, Paris: Seuil, 2008.
4.   Lucien Febvre, «La sensibilité et l'histoire : comment reconstituer la vie affective d'autrefois?», Annales d'histoires sociales 3 (1941), pp. 221-238.
5.   David Le Breton, La saveur du monde. Une anthropologie des sens, Paris: Métailié, 2006, p. 15.

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Basil Dufallo, The Captor's Image: Greek Culture in Roman Ecphrasis. Classical culture and society. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xi, 279. ISBN 9780199735877. $74.00.

Reviewed by Jas' Elsner, Corpus Christi College, Oxford; University of Chicago (jas.elsner@ccc.ox.ac.uk)

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In this latest addition to the burgeoning literature on ecphrasis in antiquity, Basil Dufallo—focusing almost entirely on Latin literature—offers a series of savvy readings that collectively reveal what he calls the 'ambivalent receptivity' (p. 1) of Greek culture in the ecphrastic writings of the Roman world. His scope is broad—moving from the uses of the description of art in the earliest surviving Roman writing to Apuleius. Dufallo's command of the material—the literature itself, its long and complex series of bibliographies in many languages, the theoretical frames in which ecphrasis has been received over the years—is impressive. Although this is a self-consciously literary project, Dufallo laces his discussions with some visual comparanda and is certainly clued up on some of the range of artistic parallels.

After an introduction that briefly positions the book within the field, he Dufallo offers us seven substantive chapters and an epilogue. Chapter 1 takes us from the Gigantomachy ecphrasis of Naevius' Bellum Punicum (though, frankly, I am not convinced that enough survives to make a fair assessment in his case) to strong readings of Plautus and Terence (notably ecphrases in Menaechmi and Eunuchus). Chapter 2, building on an earlier published article, turns to Catullus 64, with an emphasis on inconsistent narratorship and a case to place Peleus' palace in the context of second-style Campanian villa painting (something perhaps not wholly persuasive). Chapter 3 explores the challenge of rustic art, making an interesting juxtaposition of Vergil's beechwood cups in Eclogue 3 and the Priapus statue of Horace's Satire 1.8 (unfortunately written before the arrival of Emily Gowers' excellent new commentary ¹). This discussion both addresses issues of pastoral, which are key to the reception of Hellenistic ecphrasis, and takes them into the much more explicitly Roman genre of satire and its play with Callimachean forms. The excellent chapter 4 explicitly confronts the divine—and as Dufallo rightly says, 'ecphrasis of religious images has been a problem for ecphrastic theory at least since Lessing' (p. 108). The focus is on temples, rather than statues, at the opening of Georgics 3.13-36 and in the temple of Phoebus at Propertius 2.31. My one hesitancy here is Dufallo's keenness to read these complexes in relation to Augustus' Palatine temple of Apollo; he is of course right that the context of this monument is significant, but it is surely reductive to tie a fictional and hence deliberately open ecphrastic account too narrowly to a specific monument, known to us only through fragmentary archaeology and much speculation. Chapter 5 explores heroic objects in the Aeneid and Metamorphoses. Chapter 6 is a witty account of sex, satire and the hybrid self in Petronian ecphrasis—moving the volume's range of discussion into prose. Chapter 7 focuses on the specific complexities of panegyric and patronage in Statius and Martial, 'a feature of Roman ecphrasis unfamiliar enough to go almost completely unrecognized in modern theory' (p. 207). This may be true of post-ancient theory but it is fundamental to the culture of pre-Roman ecphrastic epigram, notably for example to the newly discovered works of Posidippus. The book ends with a relatively brief epilogue on Apuleius and Philostratus.

Oddly, as I shall discuss below, the range of what is in the volume raises numerous questions about what has been excluded—since the selection of texts is not obviously determined by Dufallo's thesis or opening propositions and might therefore be deemed whimsical. One disappointment is the lack of discussion of the kinds of objects described —which are in fact strikingly diverse—Catullus' coverlet, Vergil's wooden cups in Eclogue 3, the statue of Priapus, paintings in Terence, temples, shields, the equestrian bronze of Domitian and so on. This may be an art historian's gripe, but despite Dufallo's use of relevant images for social contextualization, there is no discussion of the potentially different kinds of poetics in play in describing different kinds of works of art (whether fictive or 'real'). Since this issue is specifically thematized in the Aeneid which does discuss two shields in its numerous ecphrases, but otherwise offers a deliberate variation of objects (temple images, a cloak, the doors at Cumae, Latinus' statues, the baldric of Pallas), the question of Latinity's fascination with a poetics of textualizing the material is an interesting one, motivated—it seems to me—from within the culture and relevant to the book's concern with the Romanness of ecphrasis.

Since the interventions of Ruth Webb (looking, it is true, at the Greek side of the spectrum and especially at the rhetorical corpus), we have been forcefully reminded that ecphrasis in antiquity meant vivid description in general and not only or even specifically the description of art.² Dufallo, however, takes the word in the sense of literary accounts of works of art, and does not—it seems to me—sufficiently justify his appropriation of a series of mid- to late-twentieth-century theoretical assumptions against the clear ancient meanings. The very hypervisuality identified by Philip Hardie in Ovid's Metamorphoses and by Tim Whitmarsh in Heliodorus (of whom Whitmarsh uses the elegant term 'ecphrastic contagion') in fact speaks to the rhetorical permeability of vivid visualization across all kinds of descriptive writing beyond works of art.³ What works of art distinctively offer within ecphrasis—and why there is a strong case, pace Webb, for isolating the ecphrasis of art as a sub-genre in its own right—is self-referential potential for using the descriptions of art as a commentary on the artistry of a text through the trope of mise-en- abyme.⁴ That feature of description—the staging of a described object which can stand meta-poetically for the text itself, and the staging of a series of responses and viewings of the object which can stand for ways readers might respond to the author's own writing in the text wherein the described object features—is, one presumes, what drives the particular quality and frequency of the trope of stand-out purple passages which celebrate works of art, especially in epic and 'epyllion'.

For this reason, I find Dufallo's definition of ecphrasis at the opening of the book distinctly puzzling. His argument is for ecphrasis as 'competition between cultures—Greek and Roman, literary and visual'. (p. 3). 'Polemical[ly]' (his word, p. 2) he rejects the mise-en-abyme position that treats 'ecphrasis primarily as a way in which authors can write about writing without appearing to do so' (pp. 2-3). What Dufallo calls 'the standard view' (p. 3, p. 9, p. 36) in which ecphrasis has a 'programmatic role… [as] a symbol or stand-in for the written text' (p. 36) is precisely that which justifies his own chosen focus on descriptions of works of art, as opposed to other kinds of descriptions such as battles or landscapes. And so it is very odd that he rejects it—indeed, the rejection is really of a 'straw man', since in specific cases (e.g. the ecphrastic temple of Georgics 3) he accepts that an ecphrasis can be 'undeniably a symbol for a poem' (p. 116). Indeed, the view he rejects is hardly in conflict with the model of ecphrasis as agonistic paragone in the fight between word and image, which he wants to espouse. However, within the paragone model he affirms (which is a very old one in the study of ecphrasis, going back to the Renaissance at least⁵), the implicit claim that competition between Greece and Rome can be married easily with the competition between literary and visual, needs significantly more discussion and argument than it gets here: at any rate, I do not see the point as obvious or unchallengeable.

Now the choice to do ecphrasis in Latin, excluding—well, the range of exclusions are interesting and need much more discussion than they get —is bold. It presupposes the assumption (about which I am at best agnostic if not skeptical, and which I am not persuaded has been proved here) that there is a Roman ecphrastic tradition clearly and categorically distinct from the Greek. That very assumption is complicated by the fact that Dufallo needs his Latin tradition to be dependent on the Greek canon (since for him Roman ecphrasis is both a form of 'dominance over Greece' and a construction of 'Roman identity as Greek, ambiguously and with varying purposes', p.2). The fact that he ends with an epilogue on a Greek text of the Roman imperial period—Philostratus' Imagines—is, one might suppose, a kind of admission that the lines cannot be drawn so definitively. It is telling that he calls Philostratus' scintillating text 'in some way a Roman phenomenon itself, though never mentioning Rome or the Romans, … [a] version of the receptivity to Greek culture that informs the Latin texts studied in this book' (248). Among the oddities that follow this chosen emphasis on Latin is the focus on novels (Petronius, Apuleius) in the absence of the Greek novel and on shorter poems in Flavian Rome (Statius and Martial) in the absence of the rich world of imperial-period Greek epigram, much of it ecphrastic. These absences are different from the exclusion of a deep discussion of the classic instances of ecphrasis in Greek models (like Homer, tragedy, even Hellenistic poetry), which had come to be canonical in Rome; and I think they need justifying. It may indeed be that Longus or Achilles Tatius, let alone Lucian, offer different kinds of reception of the Greek canon from what is done in Latin, but we need to be shown that this is the case and how it is so. Dufallo never even raises the point. But in fact the anxiety of influence (yes, Bloom is in his bibliography) presses as hard on the Greek side of the inheritance of antiquity as on the Roman, and to miss the chance of assessing the comparison between them is to miss the opportunity to give culturally substantive and propositional force to his arguments.

In effect, Roman ecphrasis in Dufallo's theoretical model is really a form of cultural reception (ideologically and politically inflected, to be sure, in line with the arguments of Dufallo's favourite modern theorist, W.J.T. Mitchell) that is typical of the so-called Second Sophistic. Indeed, the book's discussions are largely situated in the time-frame of the Second Sophistic, from say the mid 50s BC to 250 AD. But Dufallo discusses this fundamental thematic of cultural reception through the description of art, with hardly a nod to any of the Greek literature produced by, or the copious recent scholarship produced on, the Second Sophistic as a cultural phenomenon of Roman imperial times. Is this exclusion about keeping prose out of the book (with the exception of Roman fiction)? That too is odd, because even if one were to exclude the Greeks (as I would not), the richness of the ecphrastic gestures in such as Vitruvius, the older and younger Seneca, the older and younger Pliny, not to speak of the orators, let alone epistolary writing (John Henderson has written a whole book on ecphrasis in Pliny's letters⁶), offers a vast range of contemporary comparanda and situating parallels to the poetry and prose fiction on which Dufallo has focused. One might argue that such parallels are no less fictional, vivid or rhetorically-charged than the ecphrases of Vergil or Ovid. Nor are they less germane to the question of integrating or responding to Greek culture in Rome.

And why does Dufallo's Latin literary interrogation end with Apuleius? The late-antique tradition in Latin and Greek is extremely rich in its ecphrastic gestures—from Tryphiodorus and Nonnus on the Greek epic side to Ausonius' epigrams in Latin, with their self-conscious play on Greek sources, or the poems of Prudentius or the letters of Sidonius.⁷ That late tradition, written in knowledge of and as a commentary on the Republican, Augustan, Julio Claudian and Flavian materials which form the bulk of Dufallo's book, is no less complicit in the complex of competition of contemporaneity with the past, of Latin with Greek culture, than are the texts he discusses. If his book were really led by the theoretical substance of 'a fascination with Greek culture' (p. 3), 'paradigms of inheritance, transformation, shared purpose and play' (p. 4), 'cultural hybridity' (p. 13), then it would actually demand the inclusion of the late-antique material as offering a fundamental vantage point from which to view the developing culture's concerns with the same tropes, at a point of transition all the more powerful because its Christianity both marks the difference from the past and demands an antiquarian revaluation of the past.

The strangest exclusion of all, however, is that of the rhetorical tradition. Ecphrasis is an ancient rhetorical term—one for which there is a specific set of technical definitions in the school books (the Progymnasmata) and a long series of show-piece exercises by the likes of Libanius and indeed Philostratus in his Imagines. It is inconceivable that the poetry and fictional texts chosen by Dufallo for his account were not the result of long and sophisticated rhetorical training, perhaps for some of his authors in Greek as well as in Latin. Our finest range of epideictic ecphrases are, it must be admitted, on the Greek literary side of Imperial culture—in the works of Lucian and Philostratus. But that should surely not exclude some level of grounding of Dufallo's discussion in the range of numerous references to visual and material culture, especially for self-reflexive parallels with the way oratory works, that pepper the likes of Cicero and Quintilian, and that fill the various suasoriae and controversiae of the Latin educational tradition.

It is peculiar to review a book by focusing so much on what it does not do. Yet it matters here because Dufallo's stated aims demand a much deeper and broader account than his rather easy, though often illuminating, canter through an anthology of texts that have been largely well-discussed in the last generation.

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Notes:

1.   E. Gowers (ed.), Horace. Satires Book , Cambridge, 2012.
2.   R. Webb, ' < EkphrasisI Ancient and Modern: The Invention of a Genre', Word and Image 15 (1999) 7-18; R. Webb, Ekphrasis, imagination and persuasion in ancient rhetorical theory and practice Aldershot, 2009, 1-11 and 61-86.
3.   P. Hardie, Ovid's Poetics of Illusion, Cambridge, 2002, 173-8; T. Whitmarsh, 'Written on the Body: Ecphrasis, Perception and Deception in Heliodorus' Aethiopica', Ramus 31 (2002) 111-25, esp. 111-2 for the concept.
4.   For the concept of mise-en-abyme see L. Dällenbach, The Mirror in the Text, Cambridge, 1989. For ecphrasis in this context, see e.g. J. Elsner, 'The Genres of Ekphrasis' Ramus 31 (2002) 1-18, esp. 3-9.
5.   For some discussion, see L. Barkan, Unearthing the Past, New Haven, 1999, 5-7; on antiquity, see e.g. A. Becker, 'Contest or Concert? A Speculative Essay on Ecphrasis and the Rivalry between the Arts' Classical and Modern Literature 23 (2003) 1-14
6.   J. Henderson, Pliny's Statue: The Letters, Self-Portraiture and Classical Art, Exeter, 2002
7.   For some discussions see M. Roberts, The Jeweled Style, Ithaca, 1989; C. Kaesser, 'The Body is Not Painted On: Ekphrasis and Exegesis in Prudentius' Peristephanon 9' Ramus 31 (2002)158-74; L. Miguelez, Cavero, Poems in Context: Greek Poetry in the Egyptian Thebaid 200-600 AD, Berlin, 2008, 283-309; J. Hernandex Lobato, Vel Apolline Muto: Estética y poética de la Antiguëdad tardía, Bern, 2012, 257-317. ​

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