Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Birgit Bergmann, Der Kranz des Kaisers: Genese und Bedeutung einer römischen Insignie. Image and context 6​. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010. Pp. xx, 515. ISBN 9783110202588. $140.00.

Reviewed by Lee Ann Riccardi, The College of New Jersey (riccardi@tcnj.edu)

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By tackling the material that makes up the subject of this book, Birgit Bergmann has taken on a difficult task. Her ultimate goal is to determine how and why the corona civica, the oak leaf crown traditionally awarded to soldiers who saved the life of a Roman citizen in battle, became the exclusive privilege and symbol of the emperor. No scholar has examined this issue before. In order to do this, she had to organize and consider both literary and visual evidence about wreaths and crowns from the Republic through the Augustan period. This led her down a path long understood to be fraught with confusion and contradiction. Yet Bergmann has bravely attempted to find clarity in this material, and it is to her credit that she does at times succeed in making reasonable inferences and is able to draw sound conclusions, although many are also dubious. She will certainly be challenged on many points. Still, despite some significant flaws, there is much to praise about her efforts.

Bergmann's most important contribution is in the investigation of this topic. This study fills a large gap in the research regarding how the official imperial headdress came to be the corona civica, rather than one of the other significant crowns used in Republican Rome, such as the laurel wreath, the gold crown, or the grass crown. It is particularly important that she—in contrast to previous scholars who have used visual examples only occasionally — has included visual sources in addition to literary ones. The former consist of sculpture in the round, reliefs, and coins, as well as medallions, silver items and gems, which are given detailed treatment in the catalogue, all with good photographs. Bergmann often struggles to reconcile both types of evidence, yet she does also manage to illuminate issues that have long seemed impossible to settle, such as the appearance and number of crowns worn by a triumphator. Unfortunately, she does not always use visual representations with sensitivity. In some cases, she acknowledges their limitations as documents of reality,¹ but she fails to do so in others.²

The book began as Bergmann's dissertation at the University of Munich, and its origin remains evident despite the adaptation to a monograph. It is filled with meticulous cataloging, lots of extensive endnotes, and several digressions about relatively tangential points. Approximately half of the book consists of text and photos analyzing the meaning of various kinds of headdress and developing her argument about the ultimate choice of the corona civica. The rest is made up of a catalogue of the visual representations she used, followed by a lengthy section of tables that lists wreaths and images of Jupiter on Republican coinage, and non-numismatic depictions of Jupiter wearing different wreaths, drawn from material in the LIMC.

The text has four major sections: 1) crowns in religious ritual, 2) crowns in triumph, 3) crowns in military contexts, and 4) the emergence of the corona civica as the crown of the emperor. In each of the first three sections, Bergmann discusses the origins and meanings of the headdress used in those contexts. Each section also includes at least one excursus on a tangential topic, which, while interesting, is rarely relevant to her overall thesis. She also adds special 'case studies' of the Tiberius cup in the Boscoreale set and the Palestrina Relief.

In the first section (pp. 7-35), Bergmann examines the use of wreaths in religious contexts, including those worn by participants, onlookers, and victims, as well as those offered as votives. She concludes that wearing a wreath was not mandatory for participants, although it was common, but that it was required for victims. This section also contains a long 'Exkurs' on the Ara Pacis (pp. 18-33) that analyzes the placement of figures wearing wreaths, veils, and the special shoes called calcei patricii, demonstrating that visual documents like these cannot be taken literally. It is an important lesson that she could have applied to some of her other examples.

Section II concerns the triumphal crown (pp. 37-108). It simultaneously contains the most persuasive and the most problematic sections of her entire discussion. The first part is probably the most cogent integration of disparate sources about the triumphal crown that has ever been written. By carefully reading the evidence, Bergmann convincingly demonstrates that there were two triumphal crowns: one made of laurel that was the true triumphal crown given to the triumphator, and a second crown of gold owned by the state that was held over his head by a public slave during the triumphal procession, to be returned after the ceremonies were over. While she is not the first scholar to make this argument, with the inclusion of the visual evidence she is the most persuasive. Unfortunately, the conclusions that follow this discussion are not so convincing. Bergmann has to deal with discordant sources that must be evaluated carefully to determine which she will follow and which she will not and why. Here, however, she often supports or dismisses evidence without explanation and thus weakens her overall interpretation. For example, she accepts without question that the gold triumphal crown was synonymous with the corona Etrusca, following Pliny (NH 33,11) (pp. 58-60), even though this forces her to dismiss Tertullian's account (de corona 13) that the corona Etrusca was shaped like oak leaves and was worn by magistrates at the games, with no mention of its use in the triumph. She does not elaborate on why she finds Pliny's passage more convincing than Tertullian's. Instead, she embarks on a long discussion about the connection between oak leaves and Jupiter, ultimately concluding that there was no connection until the time of Domitian, and that therefore the corona Etrusca could not have been made of oak leaves until at least the late 1st c. AD. This conclusion also leads her into a long digression about where the centrally stored triumphal ornaments were kept (pp. 60-73): Unfortunately, as Bergmann herself acknowledges, the argument is complex and the evidence confusing. And, as with so many of her digressions, it is also ultimately irrelevant to the subject at hand.

Section III, on crowns as military decorations (pp. 109-183) contains an excellent section on the corona graminea, the grass crown that was given to acknowledge a soldier who had saved an entire legion in battle. It was the highest military honor possible during the Republic, and only seven documented cases when it was awarded are known. Bergmann follows her discussion of the origins of this crown with a particularly interesting digression on the wreaths worn by Caesar on his coinage. She persuasively argues that Caesar's wreaths are not laurel or gold, as others have proposed, but rather grass, based on their unusual appearance as well as the importance of the corona graminea in the Republic and to Caesar himself. This crown was not given to him by the army, but rather was awarded to him by the Senate, so the military honor was already being appropriated for political purposes. Also in this section, Bergmann argues that a central medallion would originally have been placed at the summit of the wreath on the Bevilacqua Augustus in Munich. This theory is not only interesting and probably correct, but it also opens up the possibility that more Augustan oak wreaths also originally were adorned with central medallions.

The final section, on the emergence of the corona civica as the crown of the emperor, brings together many of Bergmann's most important points, and is especially effective when, based on her previous discussion, she postulates that the corona graminea was too closely allied with Caesar and too reminiscent of the Civil War, and was therefore passed over by Augustus in favor of the corona civica.

Overall, this book presents a well-researched and interesting thesis that is ultimately compelling, and it is a useful reference that collects most of the literary and visual sources pertaining to both Republican and imperial headdress. Many of Bergmann's arguments don't convince, but that is not surprising, given the gaps in the evidence and the necessity for conjecture in so many areas. It is still a worthwhile read and a valuable resource for continuing debate on this important topic.

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Notes:

1.   E.g., in her 'Exkurs' on the Ara Pacis (pp. 18-33), where she notes that the wreaths and shoes worn by figures in the procession friezes were not intended to reflect an actual situation but rather to call attention to the class and highlight relationships of certain figures to each other.
2.   E.g., in her 'Fallbeispiel' on the Palestrina relief (pp. 98-108), where she argues that the figure in the chariot is not Trajan because it does not look enough like his other portraits.

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Valentina Arena, Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. ix, 324. ISBN 9781107028173. $99.00.

Reviewed by Daniel J. Kapust, University of Wisconsin-Madison (djkapust@wisc.edu)

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[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

Arena's aim in this interesting book is "to study the conceptualisations of the idea of libertas and the nature of their connection with the practice of politics in the late Roman Republic" (p. 1). Focusing especially on Cicero's oratory and speeches in sources such as Sallust, Plutarch, and Dio, Arena argues that those engaged in late republican political debates shared a single notion of liberty as "non-subjection to the arbitrary will of either a foreign power or a domestic group or individual" (p. 8). To be free was not to be a slave, and being free had a political dimension protected by public institutions and practices.¹ This shared conception of liberty would, however, undergo conceptual change especially in the 40s BCE, in part as the result of debates surrounding the senatus consultum ultimum (SCU).

The book speaks to two broad audiences, the first and most obvious of which is classicists and ancient historians interested in the political culture and practices of first-century BCE Rome, evident in Arena's engagement with work by Clifford Ando, Joy Connolly, Fergus Millar, Matthew Roller, and Peter Wiseman, among others. The second audience, about which I will say more, is political theorists and intellectual historians interested in republicanism. In this regard, Quentin Skinner and Phillip Pettit seek to articulate a distinctively Roman (or neo-Roman) understanding of freedom centering on the opposition between freedom and slavery.² One is free in this tradition (and as opposed to the post-Hobbesian liberal tradition) not when one is not subject to interference, but rather when one is not subject to arbitrary interference. After all, as Pettit argues in Republicanism, "there may be enslavement and domination without interference" (p. 31). Arena's book builds on and extends such scholarship in a very valuable way, attempting to trace out the significance of the opposition between liberty and servitude in Roman republican discourse.

The book consists of seven chapters, the first of which serves as an introduction to the book as a whole, and the last of which serves as an epilogue tracing the conceptual change noted above. Chapter 1 argues that "the strict dichotomy between libertas and slavery" structured the conceptualization of liberty in first-century BCE Rome (p. 21). Liberty was thus understood as "non-domination" (p. 29).³ Arena argues in Chapter 2 that the status of being a free person entailed the possession of the "same basic liberties" (p. 72). This status extended to, and was protected by, the political sphere: "the rights to suffragium, provocatio, all the powers of the tribunes of the plebs…and the rule of law generally, are presented as the true foundations of Roman liberty" (p. 48). Just as the individual Roman was free insofar as he was not subject to domination, Arena claims in Chapter 3, so too was Rome free insofar as it was subject neither to foreign domination nor a particular individual or group within the polity.

While Romans shared a view of liberty as non-domination, they disagreed on how to achieve it at the institutional level. Those disagreeing fell into two broad ideological categories, or what Arena (drawing on Wittgenstein's notion of a family resemblance) terms "families" (p. 79): optimates and populares. These ideological families functioned as styles of political discourse and should not be understood as reified political-philosophical systems; nor is it always the case that a particular individual or grouping was consistently in one camp or the other. Roman elites might deploy arguments from either family, yet this fluidity should not be taken to suggest that each side had its own understanding of liberty (or that libertas was an empty term). Rather, both families understood liberty as non-domination, while differing on how best to achieve liberty. Optimate ideology centered on three broad claims: the only regime that achieves political liberty is the mixed regime which distributes "power through different political loci" to prevent any individual or group from becoming too powerful (p. 88); the mixed regime gives space for the tensions that emerge between the many and the few while maintaining balance between them; the mixed regime promotes concordia through "full representation" of all the parts of the community (p. 101). Populares, by contrast, emphasized that liberty could only be achieved if the assembly was paramount, holding that equality should be understood as arithmetical rather than geometrical, to use rough Aristotelian terms (Politics V.1301a26-35).

Building on the distinction between these two ideological families, in Chapter 4 Arena analyzes the "ideological discourse of the political debate" (p. 170) of the late republic, focusing on three issues: the imperia extraordinaria, the senatus consultum ultimum, and agrarian distributions. The general discursive pattern that emerges is that those deploying optimate discourse tended to oppose populares proposals through appeals to liberty, while those advancing optimate proposals were opposed by populares who in their turn deployed the notion of liberty. Thus, a person opposing land distribution might argue that the powers possessed by land commissioners were "incompatible with liberty," as were "the procedures put in place to appoint the commissioners" (p. 236). So powerful was the shared idea of libertas that, as Arena argues in Chapter 5, elites understood that they needed to invoke "the idea of libertas if they wished to entertain any serious hope of success" (p. 255), regardless of their actual beliefs or intentions. The irony, however, of these conflicts is that the successful description of the SCU as necessary for liberty undermined the concept of liberty as non-domination. Accepting the SCU as necessary to preserve liberty meant describing as free a situation in which "the rule of law was not upheld" (p. 275). This innovation, introduced especially by orators, would pave the ideological way for Octavian to act privately for ostensibly public purposes, but the innovation could only succeed if it was accepted by "the language-users" of Rome – namely, the Roman people. We see this conceptual innovation, according to Arena, in Cicero's Philippics, which deploy themes from On Duties, in which, she suggests, "Cicero holds that a man is truly free when he acts according to virtue and, above all, justice" (p. 262).⁴ Liberty, in such an account, is "moral and universalistic" (p. 261); "no longer related to positive laws," liberty is a function of adhering to "the divine natural law" (p. 262).

My evaluation of Arena's book is primarily from the perspective of political theory; hence, I will not focus on matters of philology. With that as a preface, Arena's book strikes me as having three key features that make it an important and valuable contribution. First, Arena has assembled a generally persuasive case for the thesis that liberty structured important elements of Roman political discourse in the late republic not because different actors deployed different conceptions of liberty, but rather because different actors deployed different arguments drawing on a widely shared account of liberty. Second: in doing so, she lays out quite vividly and sensitively the fluidity of libertas in Roman political discourse, the political and legal institution of which becomes contested without the term becoming so slippery that it can mean just anything. Third, and finally, Arena's book is an important contribution to discussions of ideology⁵ in the late republic through her careful reconstruction of the ways in which actors supporting the "socio-political status quo adopted a consist [sic] pattern of political behaviour" by invoking liberty.

Other features are less satisfactory. Arena admirably pieces together the rhetorical moves that political actors made in advancing and attacking policy proposals in the name of liberty. Less clear is what makes one move more effective than another. Under what circumstances does the invocation of liberty on behalf of granting extraordinary commands succeed, and under what circumstances does it fail? Is the success or failure of such moves a matter of logic, of political strategy, or of circumstance? A virtue of Arena's method, which strikes me as broadly Skinnerian,⁶ is that she does not rely upon reconstructing actors' actual beliefs in making sense of their ideological discourse, but a limitation of the method, in my view, is that we seem to encounter a political-rhetorical world of strategic moves and counter-moves, while the persuasiveness of any particular move may be unclear. It also struck me that the argument of the Epilogue might be fleshed out more fully. While I found intriguing Arena's turn to the usage of the "speaking community" (p. 276) to explain conceptual change, I wanted to hear more about why the community found the separation of liberty from the rule of law to be persuasive. In addition, it seems to me that we encounter in, say, On the Commonwealth 1.68 an account of liberty that is more moral than political, as "excessive license" in the moral domain leads to "slavery." Similarly, the moral and divine element of law allows Cicero at On the Laws 2.13 to argue that "a law of just any kind will not be a law."⁷ We also see in On Duties (e.g. 3.83) the connection between positive law and liberty. I do not mean to suggest that we do not see a separation of liberty from positive laws in Cicero's On Duties; it does, however, seem to me that we find Cicero making similar arguments in earlier texts, on the one hand, and Cicero still connecting liberty and positive law in On Duties. (I also wanted to see more discussion of the Roman strains identified by Brunt of liberty as "doing as one likes" ("Libertas in the Republic", in The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988).

Finally, I wonder what Arena's argument tells us about contemporary efforts to appropriate liberty as non-domination. While not one of Arena's explicit aims, her frequent engagement with the work of Pettit and Skinner make her arguments relevant to the neo-republican project. To the extent that "slavery provided the fundamental social category by the means of which membership of the Roman community was circumscribed and defined" such that "a Roman citizen was conceived as the polar opposite of slave" (p. 14), can the status-based idea of non-domination be appropriated as a universalistic ideal? This point has, in my view, been raised by others (notably Clifford Ando), but is worth repeating given the interdisciplinary appeal of Arena's book. Another point worth noting, in light of contemporary concerns with imperialism and colonialism, is the connection between Rome's status as a non-dominated polity and Roman imperialism. As Arena notes (p. 76), "Rome's dominion over the empire guaranteed the res publica the absence of arbitrary interference from external powers." Again, one might ask what the historical connection between Roman liberty and Roman imperialism might mean for those seeking to apply a Roman-rooted concept to our times.

Arena's book will be of interest and value to classicists, ancient historians, political theorists, and intellectual historians, and is sure to be of use to those interested in Roman political thought, its reception, and its potential application.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Introduction
1. Roman libertas
2. The citizens' political liberty
3. The liberty of the commonwealth
The 'optimate' tradition
The 'popularis' tradition
4. The political struggle in the first century BC
The imperia extraordinaria
The so-called 'senatus consultum ultimum'
Agrarian distributions
5. Political response and the need for legitimacy
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index locorum
General index

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Notes:

1.   Arena's description of Roman libertas as political is an important contribution. For contrasting views, see, e.g. Clifford Ando, Law, Language and Empire in the Roman Tradition (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Matthew Roller, Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001).
2.   See, e.g., Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998); Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997).
3.   As I have already noted the broad aims of the book, I will not discuss the Introduction further.
4.   In support of this claim, Arena cites On Duties1.17 and 1.20.
5.   Similar studies include Robert Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004) and T.P. Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late Republican Politics and Literature (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009).
6.   On method, see Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. I: Regarding Method (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002).
7.   The translation is Niall Rudd, The Republic and The Laws (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998).

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Clarisse Prêtre, Kosmos et kosmema: les offrandes de parure dans les inventaires déliens. Kernos. Supplément, 27. Athens: Centre d'Etude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 2012. Pp. 269. ISBN 9782875620064. €30.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Alexis Q. Castor, Franklin and Marshall College (alexis.castor@fandm.edu)

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How many words can you think of to describe jewelry? A bracelet could be labeled as a cuff or a bangle, perhaps, and adjectives can further designate a charm bracelet or the gel wristbands that signal advocacy for social causes. Prêtre's detailed lexical study of the jewelry listed in the Delian temple inventories offers seven Greek terms for wrist ornaments. Considering that bracelets are one of the least commonly recovered ornaments in the archaeological record, such diversity in labeling comes as something of a surprise, but it is representative of the wide range of terminology found in these sacred records.¹ The richness of jewelry vocabulary found in temple inventory lists stands in contrast to what archaeologists usually retrieve from sanctuaries: whole and fragmentary bronze pins, rings or the like, with stray finds of gold or silver ornaments.² Apart from the exceptional Archaic gold and electrum cache of ornaments found at Ephesus, it is temple inventories from the Classical and Hellenistic periods that give us the best insight into the gold treasures brought by pilgrims and dedicated to the gods. The Parthenon inventories probably come first to mind, but the Delian lists are the most extensive, both in chronological span and in surviving fragments. Prêtre's work provides valuable insight into jewelry terminology for epigraphers and jewelry specialists.

Jewelry was the second most common offering mentioned in the Delian inventories – vases and vessels top the list – and the objects range from iron finger rings to gold necklaces that weighed almost 600 grams (1.8lbs). Prêtre presents a brief introduction that focuses mainly on the terminology found in the inventories, explaining, for example, the many different ways in which the temple administrators described damaged or broken objects, or the several words used for gilded ornaments. The remainder of the book is devoted to analysis of the 60 different words used for jewelry in the inventories. For each entry, Prêtre provides an etymology, where possible, and discussion of the term as used in Greek literature. Where archaeological evidence exists, either in the form of depictions of a jewelry type or its actual examples, she presents that as well, although below I express reservations about this aspect of her work. In some cases – by far less often than one would hope – it is possible to correlate a particularly descriptive entry in the inventories with a jewelry type known in the archaeological record. The ὅρμος ἀμφορέων (necklace with amphora pendants) or the ὅρμος λογχίων (necklace with spearhead pendants) are two examples where description can meet reality. These were almost certainly the strap necklaces woven from gold wire and embellished with a fringe of dangling pendants; the types begin to appear in Macedonian graves in the last quarter of the fourth century and also show up on Attic painted vases at about the same time.³ The inventory also describes finger rings with engraved scenes or seal stones, such as a δακτύλιος ἐπίσημον ἔχων Ἔρωτα, a ring engraved with an Eros figure. These happy coincidences can raise the hopes of researchers that the inventories will fill in some gaps in our knowledge of what Greek jewelry looked like. But of those seven terms for bracelets mentioned above, it is impossible to know how they differed from each other or what form they represented. Indeed, the most common bracelet type, which had snake-head terminals at either end, may have been described simply as ὄφις, ὀφίδιον or δρακόντιον, which all refer to snakes. Prêtre's detailed examination of these terms shows the importance of snake imagery in jewelry: they appear as bracelet and necklace terminals, and, according to Euripides' Ion (24-26), as amulets for the baby Erichthonios.⁴ Prêtre acknowledges that the word used in the inventory can only generally indicate – or even merely suggest – what type of ornament was dedicated.

Despite her caution about the complexity of the relationship between written description and real ornaments, Prêtre often makes an attempt to correlate the two. While I sympathize with her desire to do so, this is not always successful. Her entry on καθετήρ (necklace), for example, includes a fascinating discussion of the borrowing of the word from medical terminology for reasons we cannot now know. (It certainly raises interesting questions about the appearance of both the necklace and the instrument!) Stratonike, daughter of Demetrios Poliorketes, dedicated to Leto such a necklace, decorated with 48 disks . Prêtre reconstructs its appearance with a drawing (fig. 12-13) that seems to conflate a strap necklace type with a disk-and-pendant earring. I am not sure how valuable this attempt is, given the lack of comparable pieces. I also find problematic her decision to prioritize jewelry found on Delos in her discussions and illustrations. All of the figures that are used to illustrate jewelry terms show Delian jewelry, despite the fact that, as she correctly notes in her introduction (p. 12), the island does not provide examples of all the different types. It is not credible that all the ornaments dedicated in this cosmopolitan sanctuary were made in Delos, but her focus on material excavated there implies otherwise.

The strength of Prêtre's work lies in her detailed investigation and discussion of the jewelry terms within the Delian inventories. She has taken on a difficult and unwieldy body of material that does not readily fit into archaeological, historical, gender, religious or etymological categories, but she has drawn on all these disciplines to help illuminate the votive offerings. Her work will become a key resource for those exploring the use of jewelry in ritual practices.

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Notes:

1.   B. Deppert, "Greek bracelets of the Classical period," 91-94, in D. Williams, ed., Art of the Greek Goldsmith (London, 1998)
2.   H. Philipp Bronzeschmuck aus Olympia. ÖlForsch 13 (Berlin, 1981)
3.   See P. Themelis and I. Touratsglou, Οι τάφοι του Δερβενίου (Athens, 1007, pl. 24 and 140 for strap necklace with spearhead pendants from Grave Z (c. 300), Derveni and La Civilisation Grecque. Macédoine royaume d'Alexandre le Grand (Athens, 1993) fig. 272 and 285 for black-glaze vessels decorated with a strap necklace with spearhead pendants found in Macedonian tombs.
4.   Additional discussion of the significance of the snake is offered in D. Ogden, ed., Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford, 2013), which appeared after Prêtre's work was published.

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James E. Holland, William J. Dominik, Petronii Satyricon Concordantia. Alpha-Omega: Reihe A, Lexika, Indizes, Konkordanzen zur klassischen Philologie, 263. Hildesheim; Zürich; New York: Olms-Weidmann, 2013. Pp. vi, 564. ISBN 9783487148939. €198.00.

Reviewed by Niall W. Slater, Emory University (nslater@emory.edu)

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Is there a use for printed concordances in the age of do-it-yourself word searches for most ancient texts? The current volume offers a highly persuasive answer in the affirmative. It thoroughly supersedes the 1986 entry in the Olms series, Concordantia Petroniana: Computerkonkordanz zu den Satyrica des Petrons by Korn and Reitzer. Their volume, based on Müller's 1983 edition for the main text and larger fragments of Petronius and Buechler's edition for the shorter fragments, was a basic, computer-generated list, with each word of the text simply alphabetized in its given form down the center of the page, with as much context as could be fitted in a single line of print on either side. In the case of the poetic fragments, the computer program would also print the end of the previous fragment as the beginning of the "context," as there was no easy way to sort these out. Different inflected forms of the same verb were simply alphabetized, so a reader studying the use of ferre needed to search separately under the fer, tul, and lat stems. Though very useful in its time, the Korn and Reitzer volume now offers nothing the reader cannot more easily search on his own.

Holland and Dominik's volume, based on Müller's Teubner edition of 2009 for the text of Petronius, does and will offer far more for some time to come. In the first instance, the entries are thoroughly lemmatized. Thus the 24 uses of forms of ferre are listed together under that lemma. Moreover, the usages are then separately categorized as Classical prose, Vulgar Latin, and poetry, and the heading of each entry gives the absolute word counts and those of the categories. The 24 instances of ferre are out of 32,412 words; 10 of these occur in the prose (out of 21036 words), 5 in the Vulgar Latin (out of 6284 words), and 9 in the poetry (out of 5092 words).

The clear and engaging preface to the volume lays out both some of the challenges of categorizing in these ways and the potential for qualitative as well as statistical analysis of usage and style. The editors acknowledge that the category of Vulgar Latin is not always self-evident. They have chosen to include the speech of the named freedmen and freedwomen and the texts accompanying the apophoreta handed out at the Cena, but Trimalchio's three efforts at composing poetry they have subsumed into the category of verse. Even so, the question of what constitutes quoted speech can still be tricky. Their preface offers as examples fascinating studies of some conjunctions, including enclitic -que, as well as iste, ille, and habere. Enclitic -que is almost totally absent from the category of Vulgar Latin and would be entirely so, if Encolpius's report of Trimalchio ordering his guard dog Scylax to be brought in, praesidium domus familiaeque ("the guardian of home and household"), represents either Encolpius's comment or a reformulation of what Trimalchio said, rather than an exact quotation of Trimalchio's words. It is thus no surprise that et is significantly more frequent in the Vulgar Latin passages, with 244 instances out of 6384 words total (just over 38 per 1000 words), compared to the Classical prose sections (584 instances out of 21,036 words total, for a frequency of just under 28 per 1000 words). Users skilled in statistical analysis will be able to do far more with this body of material, but even those as innumerate as this reviewer have much to gain.

Holland and Dominik's Petronii Satyricon Concordantia will be a very welcome resource for all scholars and serious students of Petronius. Its large and clear format makes it very reader-friendly. While its price, reasonable by today's production costs, will put it beyond the means of many individual scholars, it belongs in every serious research library.

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Mark Griffith, Aristophanes' Frogs. Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 291. ISBN 9780195327731. $24.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Ian C. Storey, Trent University (istorey@trentu.ca)

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The goal of this series is to make available "studies of individual works that will provide a clear, lively, and reliable account based on the most up-to-date scholarship without dwelling on the minutiae that are likely to distract or confuse the reader" (v). For Aristophanes this is a very welcome development. Monographs aplenty discuss Athenian tragedy at various levels, but for comedy there is nothing like the useful series Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy (Duckworth/Bloomsbury). Griffith's volume may begin to turn that tide.

What I liked about Griffith's work is the fairness and balance with which material is presented and discussed. He pitches the material at the level of the newcomer, presents the details fully, admits where we are still in the dark, and canvasses various explanations, usually leaving the reader to explore further and above all to ask the right questions. Each chapter is followed by a short section on "further reading" that will benefit both student and instructor.

In Griffith's first chapter ("Comedy at Athens") the etymology of "comedy" is assumed as "revel song", and its origin (as Aristotle maintained) is found in communal singing, dancing, and joking (sometime abusive and obscene). But by the time of Aristophanes Old Comedy had become a sophisticated art form in its language, structure, and song. Griffith discusses briefly five other poets whose work bears on Frogs: Crates, Pherecrates, Cratinus, Eupolis, and Phrynichus, and makes the good point that well before Frogsin 405 there existed other comedies featuring Dionysus and with descents into or returns from the Underworld. He might have added that Cratinus' Dionysalexandros is seen by some as directly influencing Frogs, since in both comedies Dionysus disguises his identity, undergoes teasing and ill-treatment, and judges an important contest.

The second chapter ("Aristophanes and His Athenian Audience") again presents a concise and balanced survey of what we can say for certain about Aristophanes and his career. I was pleased that Griffith argues that, although Aristophanes' early plays were produced through others, it was "no secret who the true author was" (29). Traditionalists may be displeased at his acceptance of a low size for the audience (6000-8000) and the likelihood of a trapezoidal orchestra. The caption to Figure I-Ia (11) may mislead one to think that this sketch of a circular theatre represents current ideas; on the previous page he makes it clear that this represents an earlier and traditional view. For more recent reconstructions one should consult the handy monograph by Dugdale.¹ Griffith accepts that Old Comedy had considerable freedom and licence to make fun of leaders of the city and the citizens themselves, but throughout his study Griffith admirably demonstrates how skilled Aristophanes is in getting almost all citizens on side.

In his third chapter ("What Happens in Frogs? (The Plot)" Griffith presents a brief survey of the conventional features of Old Comedy, followed by a running commentary on the details of the plot. I do wonder whether "Let's Stop This New-Fangled Education" (56) is a legitimate way to sum up Clouds as we have it, especially given Aristophanes' own claim to sophia and his appearance in Plato's Symposium. He makes the good observation that, when compared with Lysistrata or Dicaeopolis, Dionysus is a "seriously deficient" comic hero. But as audiences would have been familiar with "Dionysus as anti-hero" in comedy and satyr-drama, this may not be much of a problem.² He draws our attention (76) to the evolution of the plot from "a desperate raid to rescue Euripides" to a contest for the throne of tragedy, on which we finally learn depends the salvation of Athens. He delineates the "crucial moment in the play" at 1009-10, when Aristophanes has Euripides agree readily with Aeschylus that the criteria for a good poet are both technical skill (dexiotes) and making people better citizens (74). Thus the comedy is not a simple opposition between "art for art's sake" and "the moral duty of the poet". And it may load the dice in Aeschylus' favour from the start.

Griffith's work is primarily a monograph about Frogs as a literary comedy. Chapters 4 ("Agôn Sophias: Judging the Arts in Classical Greece"), 5 ("Old and New Styles in Tragedy: Aeschylus, Euripides, and the Rest"), and 7 ("Dionysus' Verdict and the Ending/Message of the Play") form the core of this discussion. He observes both the very competitive nature of Greek culture and the tension between appreciating a right and proper performance of a story and admiring the creation of something bold and different. He identifies three sorts of sophia: ³ (a) truth and accuracy, (b) good moral lessons, and (c) technical virtuosity (91-2). In the end it will be types (a) and (b) that prevail, "with cleverness, technical skill taking a back seat" (114). One suspects that Aristophanes would have applied these same criteria to comedy, with himself taking the prize, although with technical skill more prominent in the discussion.

"Greek theater was musical theater" (132). Here Griffith provides an extended study of the differences in tragic lyric between Aeschylus and Euripides, including the rise of the professional musician, the advent of the "New Music", innovations in aulos-playing, and Euripides' increasing reliance on the singing actor rather than the chorus. Both Euripides' parody of Aeschylus' grand style and Aeschylus' brilliant counterthrust with the monody where a lower-class character laments the theft of her rooster say more about Aristophanes' own abilities than they reveal how the tragic poets composed lyrics.

Griffith regards it as a misreading to assume that reaffirmation of the old styles and rejection of the new is the "message" of the comedy. Rather the play is about "unity and good will at all levels . . . that seems to transcend the previous squabbling and contradictions" (200). But I would have liked more discussion of the choral song at 1482- 99, which praises Aeschylus for possessing synesis (which seems to replace sophia as a criterion), but also describes Euripides as "jettisoning mousike and abandoning the most important aspects of tragedy . . . a man who has gone out of his mind". Given Aristophanes' fondness for and intimate knowledge of Euripides' work elsewhere, let alone Cratinus' wonderful coinage euripidaristophanizon (F 432), this passage stands out for its apparent hostility. Griffith twice observes that Dionysus' initial preference for Euripides is motivated by his kardia ("heart": 54), but his choice for Aeschylus is the product of the desire of his psyche (1468). But I am not sure that I want to push Griffith's distinction (213-14) of psyche as "inner self", since 1468 is a paratragic line and kardia will not scan.

Chapter 6 ("Underworld and Afterlife: Dionysus and Greek Fantasies of Salvation") is something of an intrusion into the analysis of the contest and the judgement, and Griffith might well have reworked the presentation of his material, perhaps moving this discussion of cults and Dionysus to follow his third chapter. Returns from the dead appeared in earlier comedies, and if we knew more about Cratinus' Archilochoi and Wealth-Gods (as well as his Chirons), Aristophanes' Gerytades, and especially Eupolis' Demes, correctly dated to 417 (166), we would be better placed to understand the resurrection of Aeschylus at the close of Frogs. I was pleased to see that Griffith discusses both the Eleusinian cults and the so-called Orphic mysteries, but given the prominence of Iacchos in the latter and at lines 339-413 he might have mentioned the thesis of Tierney that the mystai of the chorus are worshippers at the Lenaia rather than Eleusinian initiates.⁴ If there is a ritual of initiation in the comedy, then who is it that is being initiated? Griffith considers and rightly rejects several candidates, including Xanthias, finally suggesting the people of Athens. Dionysus has come down to do more than bring a back a dead poet, but "to restore the vigor of the favorite art forms (tragedy and comedy) while also reminding them of the strength and potential of their own citizen body and social institutions" (199).

I would make three suggestions about how the material might have been better presented. First the political level in Frogs needs its own separate chapter. After all, Dicaearchus says that the play was afforded the honour of a second performance "because of the parabasis". We do get a lengthy discussion of the political background in chapter 2 (37-53), but the reader needs to be aware how crucial this is to the play as a whole. Griffith does make it clear that the ultimate criterion of the judgement between the poets depends on who will give the best advice for the city, but Frogs must rank among the most political of the extant comedies. To this end Griffith should do more than just allude to the second production of Frogs. If the arguments of Sommerstein are correct, then this occurred in 404 and was exploited by the Thirty as a means to get rid of Cleophon. More than one critic has argued that the very men for whom Aristophanes pleads in the parabasis would become the oligarchs we call "The Thirty".⁵ Perhaps the three chapters on the literary theme (4,5,7) could have been condensed to two to achieve more balance.

Second, we need more about the physical and visual aspect of the comedy. The first part of the last chapter ("Reading and Performing Frogs After Aristophanes – Reception", 220-5) does canvass briefly the conventions of performance in the fifth-century theatre, and in his plot summary (72-3) Griffith suggests that an elaborate panoply was presented as the two tragedians prepare for the contest. The scene with the Muse, he admits, will also have allowed for good visual humour, especially if she appears in provocative dress or as an aging harlot. But he needs to do more of this, and again a separate chapter is required. While the rest of chapter 8 was very informative, I am not sure how necessary it was to an introductory study.

Thirdly, there are times when the minutiae should be discussed. I have noted above the need to deal with the date of the second production, and beginners should have more documentation about basic issues that have troubled scholars such as the visible (or invisible) frogs and the lekythion joke.

I noticed the following points in passing. The "slur" against Cleophon (48) is best explained if he was the son of Cleippides and a Thracian woman, born shortly before the passing of Pericles' law on citizenship in 451. Is it possible that Euripides' Bacchae was produced with Frogs at the Lenaia of 405? If so, the Athenian audience (185) might have seen the play before Frogs. Could Aristophanes have learned anything about it while he was writing Frogs? Is it really fair to say (216) that in 405 "an era of comedy (as well as tragedy) was coming to an end", especially given that in the fourth century "theater was flourishing at this time" (226)? Griffith argues that in Pytine "Cratinus . . . had staged the renunciation of his own wayward past" (218), but it is more likely that Cratinus argued successfully that wine is essential to the creation of good comedy (see F 203). Finally, according to Hypothesis Ic Dicaearchus said only that the play was honoured publicly with a second production; there is nothing in the text dating that to "the next year" (220).

On the whole I enjoyed Griffith's monograph very much; students and instructors alike will learn a great deal about Old Comedy, Aristophanes and his rivals, lyrics and performance, the mystery cults and Dionysus' role within them, and the history of the text. Griffith sums up his concept of melding art and society and Aristophanes' versatility in rallying his citizen-body: "but Aristophanes – and Frogs in particular" – is very much of our own time. We need to be saved; and this Dionysus is on the right track towards saving us all with his Art" (255).

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Notes:

1.   E. Dugdale, Greek Theatre in Context (Cambridge, 2008).
2.   A. H. Sommerstein, The Comedies of Aristophanes. Vol. IX, Frogs (Warminster, 1996) 11.
3.   K. J. Dover, Aristophanes Frogs (Oxford, 1995) 12 argues that these terms mean something like "great <poet>/greatness".
4.   M. Tierney, "The Parodos in Aristophanes' Frogs", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 42 (1935) 199-202.
5.   See I. C. Storey, "Comedy and the Crises", in A. Markantonatos and B. Zimmermann (eds.), Crisis on Stage: Tragedy and Comedy in Late Fifth-Century Athens (Berlin, 2012) 313 n. 19.

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