Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Filippo Canali De Rossi, Le relazioni diplomatiche di Roma, Volume IV. Dalla 'liberazione della Grecia' alla pace infida con Antioco III (201–194 a. C.). Roma: Scienze e lettere, 2014. Pp. ix, 197. ISBN 9788866870715. €35.00 (pb).

Reviewed by John D. Muccigrosso, Drew University (jmuccigr@drew.edu)

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Table of Contents

This is the fourth in the series of volumes by Canali de Rossi on the variety of Roman diplomatic activities for which we have evidence. The format and contents are consistent with the previous volumes (reviewed in BMCR 2005.02.19, 2008.07.36, and 2014.06.24, respectively), though the first volume, including as it does the regal period, is somewhat sui generis. Readers are encouraged to consult these reviews, the opinions and overall tone of which remain valid for this most recent volume.

Canali De Rossi notes in the short preface to the work that the number of years covered in each volume is rapidly shrinking (from well over 400 in the first, to 49, then 15, and now eight), as one might expect given the nature of the historical evidence, and expresses a doubt that he will in the end be able to finish the original project of covering the entirety of the republican period. The single note in the preface also contains a welcome comment that Canali De Rossi may take up the suggestion of the reviewer of the third volume by presenting a methodological argument to explain his definition of "diplomatic relations."

The work covers the second war with Macedonia (in the first two chapters), the liberation of Greece, and the peace with Antiochus. The organization continues that of the previous volumes: chapters are numbered sequentially from them (so, XIX–XXII), as are the individual diplomatic events (778–1000).

The contents of the chapters themselves continue to be narrative accounts of the events of the period in question, arranged mostly year by year, with the year ("a. C.") and the Italian forms of the names of the consuls provided in the margin. Each chapter concludes with the supporting source material for each event quoted in full in the original language, and occasionally a scholarly bibliography. Occasional footnotes mainly address difficulties with a particular point in the main text, sometimes with reference to scholarship.

Several indices follow the bibliography at the end. First, names of divinities, Romans, non-Romans ("foreigners"), and places and people (combined such that, e.g., Aetolia and the Aetolians form one entry), are all provided in their Latin forms. Then follows a list of Greek and then Latin words cross-referenced to the text, and finally an index locorum. This last is unsurprisingly dominated by Livy, who provides nearly two of the four and one half pages (of which a half page is one inscription, listed under its four possible citations and broken into multiple diplomatic events by groups of lines). Polybius is the other major contributor with about three-fourths of a page to himself.

The indices are extremely useful. My only complaint about their organization is that when reference is made to a diplomatic event, the page number for it is not provided as well. I noted this in my review of the first volume in the series, and I will repeat the request I made there too: "The one addition I would ask for is a simple list of diplomatic events arranged by date with references to their location in the text. It is easy enough to go to the narrative section for any given year, but the reader should not need to wade through Canali De Rossi's narrative to discover what events occurred in a specific range of years." This last is of course less of an issue in a volume that covers only eight years.

On the editorial side, I found few errors (e.g., a repeated "anche" on p. 17, and an ὄνομα with the wrong breathing, which persisted from the text into the index). The quality of the Greek text is disappointing as the letter spacing often appears "off," mainly after accented letters.

This is a very useful book, which will serve as an excellent resource for students of the period. I wonder whether a more compact form with less narrative (and perhaps in a heavily linked on-line format, taking advantage of existing textual and other resources associated with the ancient world) might not provide its benefits with much less work for the author.

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Ryan K. Balot, Courage in the Democratic Polis: Ideology and Critique in Classical Athens. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv, 408. ISBN 9780199982158. $65.00.

Reviewed by Christopher Moore, Penn State University (c.moore@psu.edu)

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Ryan Balot's Courage in the Democratic Polis sets out to reconstruct a distinctly Athenian and democratic form of andreia ("courage" or "manliness"). One feature in particular sets this form of courage apart from other classical instantiations of the virtue. It combines, according to Thucydides' Pericles (2.40.2-3), the otherwise antithetical forces of passion and reason. Harmony between these two aspects of human action develops via democratic deliberation about the nature of courage and the eudaimonistic goal of personal and communal life. At any rate, this is what the Athenians told themselves. In support of this self-understanding, Balot marshals evidence from across fifth- and fourth-century literature — historiography, drama, oratory, and philosophy — showing that Pericles' celebration of a unique mode of courage is more than a self-congratulating rationalization for Athenian imperialism and exceptionality. Balot argues that virtues do in fact "vary according to regime type," and not only in form or context but also in quality. Democratic courage, he claims, is better than the tyrannical, conservative, or coerced forms of courage found among the Athenians' neighbors and predecessors. It is better in that it conduces more effectively to both extrinsic and intrinsic values. Among these he counts protecting the city, on the one side, and advancing the city's, and the citizens', flourishing, on the other. Much of the detail of this rather long book sets out the differences between Athenian democratic courage and other forms of courage:

• Population Saturation. Whereas courage in archaic or non-democratic Greece suited the singular hero or the aristocratic hoplite, Athens found a way to distribute it across the social classes (ch. 8). Naval rowers, for example, could manifest a specifically marine courage, despite the scorn they typically faced from soldiers. The Athenian populace's ability to accept a range of occasions for courage, and thus for increasing the number of people deserving of honor and commemoration, brought more citizens into close affective ties with the city. It may also have allowed Athenians to understand courage as protecting the entire city, rather than just preserving their own prerogatives or advancing their fame (ch. 1).

• Psychological Motivation. When non-Athenian men, including Homeric, Spartan, and non-Greeks, acted courageously, they did so more often than Athenians on the basis of fear, patterns of obedience, and the desire for esteem (ch. 9). Athenians, by contrast, more often acted courageously on the basis of the love of what is noble. Balot emphasizes that this is a comparative claim: "Demosthenes' funeral oration [for example] shows that the Athenians themselves sometimes relied on notions of honor, shame, and fear of the law in order to motivate their citizens to act courageously." But the Athenians also appealed, and were receptive, to articulations of overlapping communal and personal value.

• Spectator Education. Spartans learned courage through "a severe education that harshly censured cowardice…; [their courage was] based on the most rigorous kind of training, and [was] the result of traditional discipline and austerity" (ch. 9). The Athenian dramatic festivals, by contrast, presented plays meant to infuse self-knowledge about, among other matters, courage. The Lysistrata, for example, contrasted fiery men obsessed with honor, devoted more to the polis than the oikos, and unable to restrain any desire, to women who exercised practical intelligence and thus actual political courage (ch. 12). Tragedy presented the democratic ideals to which the audience considered itself, if vaguely, already subscribed, as well as the disaster-laden counter-ideals of non-democratic masculinity (ch. 13, taking up Agamemnon, Andromache, Heracles, and Trojan Women). Drama, sculpture, and oratory (ch. 10) — especially funeral speeches — presented their viewers with images of the ancestors or contemporaries worthy to be tried out, assessed, and modified as models of courage, or, put another way, as authoritative judges productive of self-regulating shame (ch. 11). Balot treats Euripides' Theseus in the Suppliants, with the statues of the tyrannicides, as exemplary. He emphasizes that while these public works of art may not have caused direct institutional change, or even direct psychological or moral purification, and they may often have reinforced popular ideology, still they allowed the Athenian citizenry to take a reflective interest in the nature of courage in a way unavailable to non-Athenians.

• Political organization. Freedom of speech (ch. 3), frequent sessions of critical forensic, deliberative, and exhortative exchange (ch. 10), and joint decision-making (citing Ober, Democracy and Knowledge, BMCR 2009.04.24), give occasion for critiquing, refining, and justifying the Athenian view of courage. They also give occasion for practicing a non-martial but still risky and agonistic, if not antagonistic, form of courage. Balot relies especially on the texts of Thucydides (ch. 2) and Isocrates (ch. 7) for the argument here.

Balot's book in fact has two major strands of discussion: how Athens could treat as its own brand of courage one that blends reason and daring; and how Athens sometimes, or often, failed to act courageously in that special way. An important witness for Balot's latter strand of discussion is Plato's Laches (ch. 6). Neither Laches nor Nicias, famed generals both, prove able to unite energy and reason—erga and logoi, or tolma and gnômê—in the way that Pericles presented as the ideal of democratic courage. They fail in opposing ways, Laches failing to understand the importance of understanding what to do, Nicias failing to apply the abstract lessons he gained from Damon. Balot takes this as evidence that "the Athenians are unlikely to unite the[se] apparently antithetical attributes." This is, at any rate, Plato's assessment, and Balot finds other contemporary observers sympathetic to Plato's conclusion. Elsewhere, Balot argues that in Lysias' speech on the scrutiny of Mantitheus, we see a similar failure to attain perfect democratic courage. He diagnoses a tension between Mantitheus' attempt to publish his democratic courage by advertising that he joined the common man's infantry rather than the relatively safer aristocratic cavalry, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, his claim to his audience that he wants to look good to the demos, which "flies in the face of the democratic ideals of independent thinking and free speech," on the other (ch. 10). In support of his charge that Mantitheus gives into a non-democratic shame culture, Balot quotes Lysias' speech: "I did this, not because I found it easy to fight with the Lacedaimonians, but in order that, if I were ever unjustly threatened at law, I would secure every sort of justice because of the good reputation I had won with you. … We have to recognize the honorable and orderly citizens (tous philotimôs kai kosmiôs politeuomenous) of the polis on the basis of behavior like this" (Lys. 16.17-18). For my own part, I wonder whether Mantitheus would have actually been worse off justifying his actions by appeal to the "democratic ideals of independent thinking," given that this eudaimonistic reasoning may sound unduly self-sufficient and confident, indeed aristocratically self-improving, in just the way he meant to avoid. Perhaps some democratic debate need not always identify the deepest or best reason for doing something.

What those best reasons for acting courageously are is explained most fully in the final chapters of Courage in the Democratic Polis. Balot reads Lysias' "Funeral Oration" as showing how democratic Athens could resolve "the paradox of courage," the supposed problem that of all virtues, courage looks the most self-sacrificing, and is thus the one that pries furthest apart one's own good from that of one's city (ch. 14). Athens did better than Sparta, Balot argues, in producing a three-pronged defense against this problem: that the flourishing of the city is dependent on the flourishing of individuals; that the individual is educated through cultural institutions; and that aretê is intrinsically worthy. In explaining the third prong, Balot takes a line familiar from Alasdair MacIntyre (ch. 15). We are each embedded in, even constituted by, a community and set of relationships, and so their good is internally our own good. Further, we can make sense of ourselves only as people working to preserve (i.e., courageously) what we care about. The Athenians regularly promulgated such narratives of a situated life and identified themselves with doers of noble deeds. Balot supports this account with an analysis of courage in Solon's tale of Tellus (Hdt. 1.30).

In this book Balot canvasses a tremendous amount of classical Athenian literature about, and expressive of, courage, and he cites a great deal of relevant scholarship. And yet it is not easy to use his book for thinking about the definition of courage. Balot admits that he does not wish to take on the "numerous debates about the character of courage altogether," only the historical one, but even if he does not want to enter these debates, he should at least list the Greek terms he takes as synonymous or at times contextually equivalent with andreia. He does give a provisional definition of courage, as "an intrinsically worthwhile excellence of character, on the basis of which ethical agents knowingly strive to overcome difficult, dangerous, painful, or frightening obstacles or uncertainty, with a view to achieving noble ends." But I wonder whether the inclusion of "uncertainty" creates a too-expansive view of courage. We can see the consequences of this in Balot's praise of Socrates. The Laches, he argues, presents a positive picture of Socrates' courage. Socrates is in fact militarily courageous, humble about his knowledge of courage, and persistent both in his investigations about the nature of courage and in his pursuit of courage. These last two elements, his intellectual and self-therapeutic persistence, constitute "philosophical courage," since together they manifest perseverance in the face of obstacles and difficulties. It is true that the Laches entertains "steadfastness of soul" as a definition of courage. But then in Balot's argument courage as karteria becomes remarkably akin to sôphrosunê ("discipline," "sound-mindedness"). Even for those accepting the unity of virtue, this is a puzzling outcome.

The differences and similarities between andreia and sôphrosunê return, in the final chapter, but with little increase in analytic clarity; Balot shifts quickly between their objects as "danger," "suffering," and "adversity" (ch. 16), which seem at least potentially ethically distinct. (I note that Balot makes only three passing remarks about Plato's Protagoras; the long discussions of courage in that dialogue may have been helpful resources for the book.) A philosophical courage that is responsive to fear and danger seems in principle possible, if it is connected to the dread of having to sacrifice one's pleasures and projects, for example, perhaps even to the extent that one loses oneself as presently constituted. But Balot does not discuss this. (We may also wonder whether Socrates' "courage" is influenced by his purported belief not to find bodily harms bad; were he really to believe this, then he would not find military battle dreadful, and so he might not need to exercise courage to put up with it.)

Leaving aside discussion of the necessary conditions of courage has its disadvantages. We end up with a less certain grasp of Balot's idea of political courage or any other non-militaristic versions of courage. This is especially the case when Balot claims, near the book's end, that "we might envision courage as providing a space for rational reflection by resisting the pressures to make quick and easy decisions based on the authority of cultural paradigms." In a similarly challenging statement, Balot argues that "in order to defend themselves, states will occasionally need the courage of bold action, but it is only the courage of steadfastness that permits adequate reflection on the question of when, where, how, why, and within what limits bold action should be undertaken." Does this mean that courage has two parts, or two moments, or is simply two related virtues? These questions could lead to the skeptical worry that applying the term "courage" to patience, due diligence, and the confidence in rational or experiential assessment is not as productive as it may on first glance seem.

For all that, the concluding chapter makes some sober and important remarks about courage and its connection to violence. Balot remains an optimist, however, hoping that democracy remains or becomes able "to disentangle courage from bellicosity, to imagine more appropriate and self-consistent ways for courage to express itself, and to transform standards of behavior." And it can set courage below justice, where it belongs, and find avenues for its citizens to exercise life-improving courage in non-militaristic pursuits: advocacy, sport, art, and radical thought.

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Barbara A. Olsen, Women in Mycenaean Greece: The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos. New York; London: Routledge, 2014. Pp. viii, 380. ISBN 9780415725156. $130.00.

Reviewed by Dimitri Nakassis, University of Toronto (d.nakassis@utoronto.ca)

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Linear B tablets, sometimes derided as mere laundry lists, are in fact a rich source for economic and social history. Although the latter has often been overshadowed by the former, in fact the most commonly attested words in Mycenaean Greek are personal names. The tablets thus include a wealth of information about the relationships of individuals and groups to the palatial authority. In this much-awaited book based on her 2004 dissertation, Olsen has done us a great favor by synthesizing the evidence for some 2000 women, for a comprehensive study of the role of women in the Mycenaean world has long been a lacuna in the scholarly literature.

Olsen's study falls into eight parts. An introductory chapter sets the stage and outlines the objectives of the book: to locate Mycenaean women, understand why they appear in the tablets, and assess the role that gender played in the polities of Pylos and Knossos, specifically addressing the question "is the treatment of women in the economic records from Pylos and Knossos the same?" (16). The second chapter lays out criteria for identifying women in the tablets and sketches the contexts in which women appear in the tablets. Evidence for low-status female workers at Pylos are treated in detail in Chapter Three. Olsen sorts the evidence by professional designation and location, and reviews the thorny issue of the status of these women, concluding that they were probably slaves. Chapter Four reviews the evidence for women as holders of property at Pylos. In some cases the women are allocated material in the texts, while in other cases they are involved in operations that suggest their control over goods and labor. Olsen shows that nearly all of the women who appear in these texts are probably or certainly religious officials and reasonably concludes that at Pylos, "only the institution of religion could trump gender" (154).

From Pylos, Olsen moves to Knossos. The production and property of Knossian women is the subject of Chapter Five. As with the Pylian data, Olsen moves systematically and in detail through the various groups of workers, and shows that in contrast to Pylos, all of the female producers at Knossos whose duties are identifiable concern themselves with textiles. She argues that, in contrast to the Pylian workers, Knossian women were largely corvée laborers. With respect to higher-status women, again the Knossian pattern seems different from the Pylian one: there is no evidence that religion plays an important role in regulating women's access to economic activity monitored by the palace, as it does at Pylos.

Two more chapters compare the situations of the women at Pylos and Knossos: first in respect to land tenure (Chapter Six) and then in respect to religious office (Chapter Seven). The first of these chapters shows that at Pylos, women have severely restricted access to land. Although the Knossian evidence is extremely sparse, Olsen nevertheless argues that the land-holding system there was "significantly less circumscribed along gender lines" (227). Chapter Seven demonstrates clear differences between the two polities: at Pylos, religion lent authority to women and did not significantly differentiate between male and female officials, whereas at Knossos, religion has a negligible effect on gender hierarchies.

Olsen's chief conclusions are two: first, that there are significant and qualitative differences between the statuses of women in Linear B texts at Pylos and those at Knossos, both when it comes to low-status workers and higher-status officials. There was no single Mycenaean system of gender. Second, Olsen suggests that regional variation can be attributed to cultural and historical differences. Specifically, she argues that the Knossian evidence may shed light on previous "Minoan" gender regimes, in contrast to the mainland "Mycenaean" pattern evidenced at Pylos.

Olsen's first conclusion is convincing: she shows forcefully how different the gender regimes at Pylos and Knossos are. Especially important is her demonstration that most women at Pylos appearing in prominent roles are religious officials, whereas at Knossos religion seems not to have been a significant factor in this respect. Olsen's work is therefore a salutary reminder of the heterogeneity of the Mycenaean world, a heterogeneity that is often concealed by the Pylocentric view of most work on Mycenaean society, including my own. I am somewhat less convinced by the second conclusion, for two reasons. First, Olsen speaks of "mainland institutions" (259) structuring gender but does so by conflating Pylos with the Greek mainland. In fact we have no idea whether gender structures at Pylos were comparable to those at other mainland centers like Mycenae or Thebes. Second, Olsen assumes the traditional narrative of "Mycenaean" mainlanders invading and occupying "Minoan" Knossos, such that it is possible for her to conclude that mainland gender structures had not penetrated very deeply into Knossian society, yet this is now a controversial position. Many now prefer to understand the "Mycenaeanization" of Crete in terms of local changes to Knossian elite identities rather than through the traditional cultural-historical narrative of intrusive mainlanders.¹

Returning to the first conclusion: there are some problems with Olsen's interpretations of individual tablets and Mycenaean terminology that affect the validity of her conclusion as stated in its strongest form. For instance, Olsen concludes that Pylian women did not own private land whereas Knossian women did (257). The first claim is based on the observation that plots of land designated as ki-ti-me-na at Pylos are never said to be "from" (pa-ro) a woman. What ki-ti-me-na means is controversial and uncertain, however. Olsen follows Ventris and Chadwick's suggestion from the first edition of Documents in Mycenaean Greek (1956) that ki-ti-me-na plots are privately held, in contrast to communal ke-ke-me-na plots associated with the dāmos. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, however, research into these documents demonstrated that both terms referred to land associated with the dāmos.² Unfortunately this literature does not appear in Olsen's discussion or bibliography. The second claim, that non-sacerdotal "Knossian women were attested to as owning their own land" (257), is based on two words, both hapax, recorded against plots of land in the Uf series: pe-ri-je-ja and ]ka-wi-ja. Olsen interprets both as certainly feminine personal names on purely formal grounds (unfortunately these tablets are extremely lacunose and fragmentary, so that contextual grounds are simply absent). While the former is probably the name of a woman (although it has also been interpreted as a man's name), the latter may not be a personal name at all; furthermore, if it is a personal name, it is more likely to be not feminine but masculine: Kalwiās (cf. Καλλίας).³ We are thus left with a single probable example of a Knossian woman holding land, but there is no reason to believe that she actually owns the land. Other claims about the economic power of Knossian women are also on shaky ground.⁴

It also seems to me that the evidence for women in positions of economic prominence at Pylos is downplayed. Olsen concludes that at Pylos religion was "the sole locus where ideologies of economic restriction and subordination were superseded" (255, emphasis mine) and that all female laborers recorded at Pylos belong to collective workgroups (254). Both claims are debatable. With respect to the first claim, there is the example of a Pylian woman who, although she is never identified as a religious official, controls significant holdings. This woman, named Kessandrā (ke-sa-da-ra), is allocated extremely large quantities of grain and figs in two texts, presumably in her capacity, attested in a third text, as a labor supervisor of high standing.⁵ With respect to the second claim, there is the evidence of PY Ub 1318, a tablet normally interpreted as a record of allocations of hides to named leather-workers, male and female, who are tasked with producing finished leather goods. ⁶ Thus, although Olsen is correct to point to the differences between women at Pylos and at Knossos, Linear B specialists will find much to disagree with in the details of her argumentation.

In conclusion, this book is a valuable examination of an important and understudied issue. Although rich in technical detail, its topic and argument will doubtless appeal to a broad audience of Aegean prehistorians and ancient historians. The project is an important one, and Olsen does an good job pulling together all of the textual evidence, demonstrating how differently Pylian and Knossian women appear in the Linear B tablets, and relating these differences to social practices. We need more studies like these: studies that use the rich Mycenaean textual evidence to contribute to broader debates in Greek history and prehistory.

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Notes:

1.   See, e.g., Jan Driessen and Charlotte Longohr, "Rallying around a Minoan Past. The Legitimation of Power at Knossos during the Late Bronze Age," in M.L. Galaty and W.A. Parkinson (eds), Rethinking Mycenaean Palaces: New Interpretations of an Old Idea (Los Angeles 2007), 178-189.
2.   Especially J.T. Killen, "The Rôle of the State in Wheat and Olive Production in Mycenaean Crete," Aevum 72 (1998), 19-23. The complex history of this issue is summarized in S. Lupack, The Role of the Religious Sector in the Economy of Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece (Oxford 2008), 57-85.
3.   F. Aura Jorro, Diccionario Micénico (1985, 1993) s.vv. ]ka-wi-ja, pe-ri-je-ja. Olsen (correctly) does not include ]ka-wi-ja in her list of Knossian names identifiable as female by form (Table 2.4, p. 41). Possibly ]ka-wi-ja is actually a toponym, since the Uf tablets written by Hand "124" normally list a toponym immediately prior to the DA ideogram; one possible supplementation would be a-]ka-wi-ja (cf. a-ka-wi-ja-de, KN C 914.B). I owe this observation to Michael Lane.
4.   Olsen claims that Knossian women "were also attested as having massive amounts of food-stuffs, slaves, raw and finished textile products, and luxury goods such as gold and bronze vessels" (257), yet I cannot find any textual evidence that slaves and luxury goods are controlled by women at Knossos. Olsen's useful table 2.8 (53-54), entitled "Women's holdings at Knossos," records "slave woman" for KN Ga 713 (now re-classified as KN Gg 713), but the slave is the woman herself, and she seems to belong to *ma-ri-ne-u, which is either the name of a male deity or of a man. I can find no evidence for women holding luxury goods in the Knossos tablets, unless reference is again meant for KN Gg 713, but this text records an amphora of honey; the material from which the amphora is made is however unspecified. It is true that a large quantity of foodstuffs are allocated to women at Knossos (in a single text, KN E 777), but in this case the allocation represents monthly rations to a group of women.
5.   Olsen discusses ke-sa-da-ra (149-150) and cites my own discussion of this woman (D. Nakassis, "Labor Mobilization in Mycenaean Pylos," in Étudies mycéniennes 2010. Actes du XIIIe colloque international sur les textes égéens (Biblioteca di Pasiphae 10), ed. P. Carlier, C. De Lamberterie, M. Egetmeyer, N. Guilleux, F. Rougemont and J. Zurbach [Pisa-Rome 2012] 269-283), where I suggest that she belonged to a group of high-ranking administrators. Olsen on the other hand suggests that she was "a local rations supervisor," which seems to me to underestimate severely her administrative importance, considering that she commands quantities of grain comparable to high-ranking administrators like qa-ra₂.
6.   See, e.g., A. Bernabé and E.R. Luján, "Mycenaean Technology," in A Companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Greek Texts and their World. Volume I, ed. Y. Duhoux and A. Morpurgo Davies (Louvain-la-Neuve 2008), 201-233. Olsen's discussion of this tablet (150-153) is heterodox and a little confusing; she seems to think, for reasons that are unclear to me, that the women are not producers but recipients of leather goods being prepared for them.

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Paul Barolsky, Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Botticelli to Picasso. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2014. Pp. xviii, 250. ISBN 9780300196696. $45.00.

Reviewed by Rosemary Barrow, University of Roehampton (r.barrow@roehampton.ac.uk)

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Barolsky makes clear at the start of his book that this is not a traditional academic study but rather a meditation on art works inspired by the writings of Ovid. His aim, as he states it, is to aspire to a 'lightness' or 'leggerezza' that Italo Calvino ascribed to the Latin poet in Six Memos for the Next Millennium (p.230). Instead of writing within familiar conventions of scholarly discourse, Barolsky has endeavoured to reproduce something of the playful Ovidian tone into his discussion of art works themselves based on Ovid's texts.

The structure initially follows the Metamorphoses, but then (as Barolsky admits), the sequence becomes more capricious. Part I begins with a personal reflection of the author's own discovery of Ovid in art, and is followed by a general introduction to the Roman Ovid himself. Part II concentrates on two major works – Titian's Diana and Actaeon and Bernini's Apollo and Daphne– in order to explore metamorphosis from poetry to painting and from marble to flesh. Less coherent in theme, part III includes notes on a number of works concerning pursuit, seduction, and revenge. Part IV is devoted largely to pictorial receptions of Pygmalion, especially prevalent in the nineteenth century. It also includes a discussion of Narcissus where Caravaggio's painting, in particular, points to large questions surrounding the relationship between art and desire as found in Ovid's retelling of the myth. Part V begins with Bruegel's Fall of Icarus in which a ploughman continues his work unaware of the tragedy unfolding around him, and the chapter continues the theme of Ovidian stoicism as explored in Poussin's eternal cycle of nature paintings. The same chapter mentions natural and artificial architecture and touches upon metamorphosis and the grotesque with the transformation of the Lycians turning into frogs by Giuseppe Chiari and Lucas Cranach's Actaeon, in which the stag still wears human hunting boots.

The myth of Arachne begins part VI with weaving and interweaving as its theme. In Velásquez' The Spinners, Arachne's tapestry of the myth of Europa takes on a life-like appearance, as indicated by Ovid, so that the cupids hovering in the sky seem as if they are flying before the image rather than being part of it. Velásquez also looks back to Titian's painting and perhaps also Rubens' copy of it., thus suggesting an intertexuality characteristic of the way that artists look back to other artists as well as to the classical texts that inspire their works when dealing with mythological subjects. The chapter goes on to look at Venus, Mars and Adonis. The subjects of part VII are Bacchus, Apollo and Orpheus. Here Ovidian landscape is also touched upon with the example of Domenichino's Hercules and Achelous in which natural surrounding overwhelms Ovidian characters. Fewer images in the visual repertoire as a whole derive from the last five books of the Metamorphoses, and Barolsky lights upon two paintings by Poussin from book 13 of the Metamorphoses showing Achilles hiding among the daughters of king Lycomedes as comparatively rare examples of Ovidian Trojan war subjects.

In keeping with Ovid's Metamorphoses as the main source of inspiration transformation is a major theme. Another important theme that emerges is the exploration of what can and cannot be depicted. The representation of the 'seen' and 'unseen' is illustrated in Bernini's sculpture Apollo and Daphne, with its suggestion of the'unseen' wind and the 'seen' effect of wind on the fluttering drapery of Apollo. In a similar vein, in Correggio's Jupiter and Io, where we see Jupiter in the form of a cloud embracing an ecstatic Io, vapour is shown as if it were corporeal. Barolsky also ponders the 'limits of art' (p.194): the whispering reeds that relate that King Midas has the ears of an ass cannot be visualized; nor can the head of Argus, decapitated by Mercury, and spilling onto the rocks; nor Philomela's tongue, which, continues to twitch and quiver after Tereus has cut it out of her mouth.

Barolsky has selected more paintings than sculptures for discussion, the majority of which belong to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most are well known but occasional unexpected examples such as Honoré Daumier's nineteenth- century caricature of the Pygmalion myth and Kiki Smith's late twentieth-century brutal plaster sculpture of Daphne's transformation into a laurel tree, offer contrasts with the Old Masters. Particularly noteworthy is Recumbent Venus with Cupidby a sixteenth-century Flemish follower of Titian, Lambert Sustris. A nude Venus awaits her lover Mars who is shown arriving in full armour in the background. Before the goddess two doves copulate as she gently strokes the male's feathers in an episode of 'displaced foreplay' (p.157).

Particularly effective is Barolsky's description of Piero di Cosimo's A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph, in which an intense feeling of sorrow matches Ovid's descriptions of death of Procris and Adonis. He similarly compares yearning in Ovid's Cephalus myth with Poussin's Cephalus and Aurora, where the young man held captive by the lovelorn goddess of dawn looks at the portrait of his beloved wife. An entirely different mood is captured in Guido Reni's Atalanta and Hippomenes. Barolsky describes the foot race depicted as a dance of the two figures who move across the canvas in opposite directions. For a recollection of the tensions between stone and flesh found throughout the Metamorphoses, Barolsky cites Bernini's Pluto and Persephone, where the god grasps his victim so tightly that his fingers press into her thigh as if it were not hard marble but soft flesh.

As well as suggesting connections with Ovid's text, Barolsky makes a number of perceptive observations on individual paintings. In Titian's Europa Jupiter in the guise of a bull has 'big dewy eyes' (p.137) that look out of the canvas. This is an irony echoed in the putto on the back of sea creature that imitates Europa on the bull's back. Both parodic details are at odds with the violence of the central image of the powerful bull charging through the water. The same myth depicted by Veronese has a very different (and arguably less successful) effect. In a literal visualization of Ovid's description of the bull kissing Europa's hand, Veronese shows his bull licking her foot. What Ovid imagines anthropomorphically becomes ridiculous when depicted literally.

Alongside interesting observations and connections, the book touches upon some important issues that would have benefited from further discussion. Although art historians are familiar with the application of linguistic and semiotic theories to the study of visual material, ¹ Barolsky makes the bold claim that the concept of 'reading' is applicable to words and not images (p.23). His example of the difference between seeing and reading is Titian's Diana and Actaeon. The picture presents only one active moment when Actaeon stumbles upon Diana bathing, and it is the painting's symbolism – a stag's skull and animal skins hanging in the trees – that prompts the viewer's memory of Ovid's narrative. The complex relationship between text and image, a subject well-discussed in art historical research, does merit elaboration. So also does the concept of the gaze, another well-researched art historical topic and highlighted in Rubens'Orpheus Leading Eurydice from Hades, a painting about the dangers of looking, in which, as Barolsky points out, most of the figures look at one another. This is an interesting observation that would have profited from elaboration.

Barolsky has written extensively on the connection between Ovid and post-classical art,² but his previous articles are not cited nor their arguments noted. He points out that Botticelli's Primavera is too rich in symbolism to be treated fully in this book (p.74), but he does not provide any hints as to further reading, not even his own writings.³ The book has no footnotes and only a brief bibliographical note; the absence of both is noticeable. If the reader is expecting an academic book that expands on themes already explored by the author, then s/he will be disappointed, but if s/he is looking for a journey through the pleasures of the history of art, then this engaging and beautifully illustrated volume will be more than satisfying.

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Notes:

1.   For an overview of the topic, see, for example, M. Bal, 'Reading Art?' in G. Pollock, ed., Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts (London, 1996), 25-41.
2.   See, for example, 'As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art', Renaissance Quarterly, 51. 2, 1998, 451-474; 'Ovid, Bernini, and the Art of Petrification', Arion 13. 2, 2005, 149-162; 'Ovid's Protean Epic of Art', Arion14. 3, 2007, 107-120.
3.   'Florentine Metamorphoses of Ovid', Arion 6.1, 1998, 9-31.

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Milena Bontempi, La fiducia secondo gli antichi: 'pistis' in Gorgia tra Parmenide e Platone. Pensiero giuridico e politico. Saggi, nuova serie, 30. Napoli: Editoriale scientifica, 2013. Pp. 255. ISBN 9788863424973. €20.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Fjodor Montemurro, Università degli Studi della Basilicata (fyodor.montemurro@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

L'universo semantico del greco πίστις copre una rete di significati che ritroviamo anche nella corrispondente fides latina; a differenza di fides, tuttavia, πίστις richiede, come base dell'articolazione, un rapporto di parità tra i contraenti. Concentrando la sua indagine su Parmenide, Gorgia e Platone, Bontempi propone un saggio di filosofia politica di solido impianto scientifico in cui evidenzia le diverse modalità con cui πίστις si configura quale fondamento dello sviluppo dell'interazione. Il saggio è diviso in 7 capitoli, accompagnato da "Fughe e variazioni", piccole appendici che fungono da contrappunto o approfondimento filosofico ad alcuni concetti impiegati dall'Autrice.

Nei capitoli 1 e 2, dedicati a Parmenide, Bontempi mette nitidamente in luce come πειθώ e πίστις non possano essere intesi come termini intercambiabili, ma indichino due momenti gnoseologici ed ontologici differenti: πειθώ, riferibile sia alle ἀλήθειαι sia alle δόξαι, si delinea come uno stato del parlante (semplice convinzione di verità) nel momento dell'assestamento di una condizione di relazionalità e reciprocità, ma è sempre preceduta da πίστις, credenza o fiducia tipica del λόγος, che si esprime soltanto nell'ambito dell'essere e del pensiero, i quali per Parmenide, come è noto, coincidono. Scrupolosa la critica che Bontempi muove alle traduzioni dal greco che sminuiscono la portata di πίστις a mero fenomeno psicologico o che ne forzano indebitamente il significato (in particolare risulta convincente, a p. 45 n. 80, l'opposizione alla proposta "Evidenz" di Fraenkel-Heitsch, che assimilano πίστις a πειθώ). In Parmenide, la persuasione si concretizza, secondo la formula di Bontempi, in una "relazione assoluta". Dato che la lingua degli uomini è persuasiva mentre il λόγος è sempre λόγος πιστός, contro il rischio di un'apertura al molteplice e la disposizione di una relazione nella differenza a causa di πειθώ, intervengono i "lacci di πίστις", conditio sine qua non per l'instaurarsi di una forma reale di reciprocità e che delinea, nell'Eleate, un "modello relazionale contrapposto a quello dis-posizionale che apre al molteplice e al divenire" (p. 52). Nella relazione tra essere, pensiero e linguaggio bisogna evitare che si generi un di più o un di meno: la logica dell'uguale o dell'identico è alla base della proposizione di identità che suggella tutto il pensiero parmenideo, una proposizione tautologica scevra da ogni vizio dialettico (senza gli esiti hegeliani di Essere come Nulla) che si dà come relazione già positivamente determinata risultante dall'esclusione di ogni differenza, dis-crasia o dis-posizione. È l'etica o l'ascetica della ripetizione o dell'uguale, imposta da πίστις: il logos parmenideo non è passaggio di informazioni, né rivelazione o rappresentazione.

I capitoli 3, 4 e 5 prendono in esame il λόγος gorgiano. Come si evidenzia dal trattato Sul Non Essere, Gorgia dimostra l'incomunicabilità dell'ente: il λόγος è puro passaggio di parole, l'ente se ne sta al di fuori e non viene mai comunicato; tuttavia, l'atto di parola non rinuncia ad essere poietico, ma produce una esteriorità che compone una referenzialità rovesciata. La parola non è compressa in un significato predeterminato, ma per essere disponibile ed essere fatta propria da altri deve essere ambigua: il λόγος e la comunicazione si reggono sull'ambiguità delle parole e sulla loro potenza creatrice. Si viene così introdotti all'elogio dell' ἀπάτη che campeggia nell'Encomio di Elena: il λόγος è poiesi, e il suo effetto, la persuasione del linguaggio, produce ἀπάτη, inganno; contro Parmenide, la parola è persuasiva quanto più inganna. L'Autrice dedica alcune pagine alla discussione della struttura del processo percettivo rilevando nel testo gorgiano un parallelo tra l'artificio della percezione (declinato anche nella sfera teatrale) e il discorso stesso: "la relazione percezione-emozione non è univoca e dipende dall'intervento ermeneutico -decodificatore, culturale- dell'individuo" (p. 108 n. 138); acute e precise le riflessioni sviluppate intorno alla concezione gorgiana delle funzioni psichiche (p. 92 n. 119 , pp. 94-5 n. 121, e p. 100 n. 130). Rivelato quindi che il λόγος è costituzionalmente scambio e passaggio di parole, benché non di enti, informazioni o vissuti, e che tale scambio produce legami coscienziali e sociali, Bontempi si spinge ad attribuire a Gorgia la categoria ermeneutica della transazione deweyana, intesa come quella "relazionalità assoluta" che sintetizza il λόγος quale τέχνη e poieisi, suprema espressione della sua potenzialità generativa.

La categoria della transazione dall'io parlante all'altro che ascolta segna il passaggio dall'Encomio di Elena all'Apologia di Palamede, orazione dove domina l'aspetto relazionale del λόγος gorgiano, quasi assente nell'Encomio. Bontempi mette in luce come πίστις venga ad assumere nella perorazione tre livelli di significato: nell'ipotetico scambio tra Palamede e il barbaro, πίστις si configura come pegno, garanzia o vincolo, ma per la mancanza di un movente ragionevole, e per l'incompatibilità tra i beni offerti dallo straniero e il male assoluto che colpirebbe il traditore, πίστις assume l'accezione di fiducia che viene data allo scambio e non della garanzia dello scambio stesso, ponendosi come discriminante rispetto alla follia. Palamede serra l'argomentazione ed estende la transazionalità logologica sino alla dimensione unica che permette l'atto della parola: la sua dimensione sociale. Il tradimento, infatti, mette a rischio la partecipazione dell'uomo libero alla vita della polis, ne mina la sua identità: chi perde la πίστις non può avere transazione alcuna. Bontempi opera una buona disamina del par. 14 dell'orazione e allarga gli orizzonti inserendo l'argomentazione gorgiana all'interno della riflessione etica della Grecia del V secolo; pertinente ed equilibrata è la sua comparazione tra l'epideixis gorgiana e l'intellettualismo etico socratico. L'Autrice procede a chiarire, seppur con una certa ripetitività, la funzione del λόγος come atto sociale, evidenziando la tragicità di fondo dell'Apologia di Palamede: l'eroe non può fare appello alla sua esistenza precedente, in cui ha dimostrato di essere πιστός tra gli uomini: la parola appare nuda, scoperta, disarmata, e l'elogio di se stessi si rivela meramente un discorso, sullo stesso piano della calunnia. La πίστις vive quindi un paradosso: a meno di non essere deficitari di diritti costituzionali (come i folli) o socio-culturali (come gli schiavi), il gioco di decostruzione della credibilità del discorso altrui rappresenta una minaccia sempre latente anche per il proprio λόγος: la relazionalità, che πίστις sostanzia tra gli uomini, non solo è dubbia, ma è sempre revocabile.

Rifuggendo letture gorgiane orientate alla messa in luce di derive solipsistiche del Leontino, Bontempi nel capitolo 5 riscopre in Gorgia un io poetico, produttore dell'atto comunicativo, irriducibile alla parola, mai risolvibile nel λόγος stesso: nello scarto tra l'io che si esprime e la parola stessa risiede la possibilità della comunicazione, poiché ogni parlante mette in circolazione un qualcosa di esterno, indipendente da lui e produttivo (ambiguo) verso gli altri. Diversamente da Parmenide, per cui Bontempi conia la formula di "relazione nell'identità", ovvero di "identità senza differenza" (λόγος, ἐόν e νοεῖν), per Gorgia la prospettiva è ribaltata, per cui si può parlare di "uguali nel differire", ovvero di "differire senza identità". Solo rifuggendo dal vincolo identitario lo scambio può essere produttivo; Bontempi lo chiama generativo, per rimarcare il legame quasi genitoriale tra l'io po(i)etico e il λόγος. Acutamente, l'Autrice rimarca che, come per Parmenide, anche per Gorgia πίστις non va confusa con πειθώ: πειθώ non ha alcun freno, è pura forza, e si avvicina subdolamente a βία, cieca e unilaterale violenza che agisce su soggetti inerti (le donne, come Elena) o impossibilitati (come gli schiavi). In secondo luogo, Bontempi ha buon gioco nello svincolare πίστις dalla fides romana: se fides trascina con sé un universo giuridico, religioso o politico, πίστις fonda l'uguaglianza che sta alla base della relazione sociale all'interno dell'uomo Greco; come il fr. 276 Radt di Eschilo suggerisce, non sono i giuramenti a fondare la garanzia, ma è l'uomo, con la sua εὔνοια, che si pone a garanzia del giuramento.

Se Πίστις è categoria sostanziale alla relazione e delimita il sociale in quanto generazione costruttiva, risultano esclusi dai rapporti sociali sia lo schiavo sia il folle. Accomunate a queste due categorie di parlanti infidi, seppur in maniera problematica, sono le donne, esseri della socialità ma non della società, ossia della politica. Tradizionalmente dipinte come truccate, ove l'estetica è ossessivamente inganno e seduzione e l'ornamento è intenzionalmente raggiro, la donna esprime il differire come condizione pre-politica, laddove la deriva di πειθώ non è trattenuta dall'attività delimitante di πίστις. In controluce, escludere la donna dalla politica significa intendere il sociale come relazione in cui ci si espone nudi, non camuffati o nascosti, poiché "πίστις è una relazione sociale fra individui che si mettono l'uno nelle mani dell'altro, senza veli" (p. 239).

Nei capitoli 6 e 7 Bontempi rileva l'eredità gorgiana alla base della concezione platonica del λόγος. Restringendo l'analisi ai dialoghi Gorgia, Repubblica e Leggi, Bontempi rileva come il rapporto di fiducia, che in Gorgia si definisce secondo la disponibilità, la trasparenza e la revocabilità, si ritrova anche in Platone, ma si amplia ulteriormente, perché l'iniziativa dell'uomo significa tensione verso il bene: "solo un dire legato ad un pensare è produttore di senso e realtà" (p. 203). È la razionalità che guida l'uomo nelle scelte e nelle situazioni di giudizio: la generica intelligibilità gorgiana cede il posto alla ragione, mentre il parlare poetico di Gorgia viene ridotto a esempio di imitazione. La πιστότης, che si configura come vicinanza alla ἀλήθεια, diviene, nelle Leggi, la caratteristica preferibile nell'uomo correttamente inserito nel contesto della socialità politica. Se il Palamede gorgiano metteva a paragone la città con lo straniero, le Leggi platoniche riconducono il rapporto con l'altro all'interno della città stessa e lo spingono sin dentro l'anima di ognuno. La città è integrazione e armonizzazione dell'individuo nel legame comunitario: l'uomo πιστός, per non scivolare in un astrattismo morale kantiano, deve saggiare la bontà della sua relazionalità all'interno della comunità, mettendo in gioco, in una prospettiva etica molto più ampia di quella gorgiana, anche se stesso. Nel gioco della differenza dell'io con l'altro, nell'irrimediabile distanza reciproca, nella stasioticità latente quale elemento essenziale della comunicazione politica, trova la sua collocazione πίστις, la quale, come forma dell'opinione e non del sapere, agisce come memento della precarietà dei legami sociali: è infatti sottile la linea che separa l'affidamento dall'acquiescenza al sistema vigente. Pertanto, l'affidamento all'interno delle differenze deve mantenersi dialettico, preservando quella tensione critica negli assetti comunitari per non ritrovarsi ingabbiati nella gerarchia e in realtà sovra e sub-ordinate. Poiché l'altro si configura come istanza sempre da integrare (e mai di fatto completamente integrabile) in una relazione costantemente revocabile che trova la sua ragion d'essere proprio nella sua irrisolutezza e frantumazione, la comunità non è il superamento omogeneo delle differenze, ma è confronto tra soggetti irriducibili e discreti i cui rapporti divengono riconoscibili nell'interazione con gli altri. Il λόγος non è universale, si immiserirebbe nella ὁμολογία che sanerebbe le differenze, eliminando quella tensione ossimorica alla base della politica, che Bontempi chiama della "resistenza generativa". Se il λόγος diventa semplice riconoscimento oppure organizzazione, e non più costruzione di nessi dialettici tra identità e differenze, rischia di tradursi in oppressione. Questa eventualità è scongiurata dalla criticità della ragione che, surrazionalmente, si interroga su di sé e conosce la possibilità di modificare anche se stessa: davanti al "non" dell'altro, l'io diventa più potente e al contempo, in tale sovrabbondanza, la relazione con gli altri si attiene alla sua dimensione politica e non oppressiva.

Nel complesso, il saggio si muove con grande disinvoltura tra problemi testuali, questioni filosofiche, e implicazioni socio-politiche, proponendo prospettive organiche e convincenti. Bontempi mostra grande rispetto per il testo e solidità filologica. La scelta di traslitterare il testo greco (tranne nelle note a carattere più tecnico) mira a coinvolgere lo studioso del pensiero politico prima che il filologo, che comunque troverà nel saggio un valido strumento di confronto (unico refuso nel greco a p. 100 n. 80). Apprezzabile è l'acribia terminologica e l'utilizzo delle etichette di "relazione assoluta" e "relazionalità assoluta". Ciò che, invece, risulta poco attraente e rende il saggio non di agevole lettura è una certa ripetitività ed una eccessiva ridondanza retorica dell'argomentazione, talvolta legata ad una compiaciuta prolissità, specie nei capitoli dedicati a Platone, che soffrono di una eccessiva enfasi ermeneutica. Questo rischia di limitare la conoscenza del saggio presso gli studiosi che vogliano approfondire la valenza politica della nozione di πίστις, e di privarlo della diffusione che, per robustezza e finezza di analisi, esso sicuramente merita.

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