Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Harm Pinkster, The Oxford Latin Syntax. Volume 1. The Simple Clause. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xxiv, 1430. ISBN 9780199283613. $210.00 (hb).

Reviewed by James Clackson, Jesus College, Cambridge (jptc1@cam.ac.uk)

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Pinkster reveals in his preface that the publication of his new Syntax of Latin (hereafter OLS) was originally intended to be published in 2014, a century after the publication of the second volume of Kühner-Stegmann's Satzlehre.¹ Volume 1 of OLS was published in 2015, and we await news of Volume 2. The comparison with Kühner-Stegmann reveals the ambition of the project, and it is undoubtedly true that this book will become the point of reference for the next century of Latin scholarship as Kühner-Stegmann has been for the last. For those who think that we already knew enough about Latin grammar, think again. This work is the culmination of decades of research on Latin, enriched by the discovery and publication of new texts and a century's advances in linguistics. Furthermore, the Latin grammarian of the twenty-first century has resources that outstrip anything available to Kühner and Stegmann: not only digitised texts, but also the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (and the Oxford Latin Dictionary), and Pinkster has made excellent use of all of these (see, for example, the discussion of medius, pp. 1048-1050, which relies heavily on the Thesaurus article).

Some parts of OLS parade the grammarian's fancy new clothes and the benefits of research on digitised corpora. For example, one pie-chart shows the frequencies of Latin cases and prepositional phrases based on a survey of over six thousand nouns and pronouns occurring in a selection of five prose and five poetic texts (p. 1180); another on the next page gives the figures for the occurrences of different types of syntactic constituent in the same texts (i.e. subjects and objects of the verb and suchlike), and a bar-chart on p. 1182 cleverly combines the two. At other times the presentation seems reassuringly familiar. The subtitle of this volume of OLS recalls that of the first volume of Kühner-Stegmann, Syntax des einfachen Satzen. Like its predecessor, OLS is structured as a series of chapters with numbered sections, each of which is devoted to a specific aspect of syntax, bearing its own title. Each section is illustrated by the presentation of a series of well-chosen examples with English translations; further untranslated examples and problematic passages are sometimes included in a supplement. All examples in the main text (but not those of the supplements) are listed in an Index locorum (pp. 1361-1390). Another index combines the subject and Latin word indexes of Kühner- Stegmann, allowing the reader quick access to relevant discussions.

For many Classicists OLS will serve only as a fall-back in times of need and the superficial similarity between the two works may lead to the impression that OLS is an updated translation of Kühner-Stegmann, with some new terminology, pie-charts and tables thrown in for spice. Such users may not even notice that OLS has chapters with unfamiliar titles such as Verb frames or Sentence type and illocutionary force , but instead they may lament the absence of a self-contained section devoted to the grammatical category of number or the reduction in space given to prepositions, from a hundred and seven pages in Kühner-Stegmann to just over seven (pp. 1227-1235). In order to get the most out of OLS it is important, however, to appreciate its profound methodological and structural differences from its predecessor. OLS sets out to give a description of Latin within a framework which can be broadly described as functional, an approach which takes the primary purpose of language to be a communicative tool. 'An adequate grammar must take this communicative aspect into account and pay due attention to the contexts and situations in which utterances are produced.' (p. 7). The aim of OLS is to describe and explain language in use, rather than to lay down sets of formal rules. Consequently, OLS allows space to show how phrases and sentences fit into larger units of discourse and often relies on sampling of texts of different genres to reveal overarching patterns of use. Furthermore, although this does not aim to be a historical work, there are discussions of some of the major changes in Latin syntax throughout the language's history (see for example pp. 473-481 on some of the changes in the verb system, or pp. 1236-1242 on the rise of prepositional phrases in competition with bare case forms).

Since Pinkster is interested in the communicative function of language, texts which he terms 'interactional' have primacy in his description of Latin. The impact of this can be shown by a rough calculation of a sample of authors featured in the Index locorum (citations were counted to the nearest half-column, and the figures given express this as a percentage of the total; for comparison a similar calculation is given in brackets from the much larger Index locorum to both volumes of Kühner-Stegmann):² Augustine 0.6% (0.025%); Caesar 3.3% (4.3%); Cicero 27.8% (33.8%); Horace 0.6% (1.8%); Livy 4.4% (9.2%); Ovid 1.1% (1.9%); Plautus 32.3% (9.4%); Tacitus 1.1% (3.6%); Terence 5% (3%); Tertullian 1.1% (0.1%); Vergil 1.6% (2.6%); epigraphic and documentary texts 2.2% (0.25%). These figures reveal the major part played in OLS by our best source of interactional Latin, comedy; passages from Plautus feature in almost a third of all translated citations. This comparison also shows the greater attention to non-literary and later Latin texts, and the consequent demotion of historians and poets. On the above figures, the Augustan poets and Livy occupy proportionately half the space they did in Kühner-Stegmann.

The framework of functional grammar brings with it new terminology and concepts. Some of this may be initially off- putting, but the explanations are usually clearly written for the neophyte. For example, section 6.24 has the foreboding title Interrogative sentences with an indirect directive illocutionary force (p. 345). The opening sentence immediately explains what this means in a clear and approachable manner: 'Interrogative sentences can be used to order or invite someone to do something, or to stop doing something.' Despite the subtitle of this volume, OLS also pays greater attention to passages of text longer than the clause or sentence in order to present how a grammatical feature functions in a wider context. Thus Chapter 7, on tenses and moods, (pp. 379-671) and the section of Chapter 11 on pronouns (pp. 1118- 1176) contain citations of twenty lines or more in order to illustrate how tenses and pronouns contribute towards the structuring of discourse. In another departure from the general practice of his predecessors, Pinkster is not afraid to leave some matters open, and to present the reader with some of the scholarly discussion. There is a generous but discerning citation of relevant books and articles, and some users of OLS might be surprised to learn just how much has been written about even quite obscure points of grammar. Sometimes, however, this practice may lead the reader into the dark about what Pinkster himself thinks, or needing to make a further trip to the library to seek the full explanation of a passage (see, for example, the discussion of subjunctive tense forms in result clauses on p. 574, or the discussion of Example (d) on p. 646).

The new approach to Latin syntax in OLS brings with it many benefits. The emphasis throughout is on explanation, rather than simple categorisation and labelling. This can be seen clearly in the treatment of the Latin cases and prepositions. Where Kühner-Stegmann lists functions sequentially according to each case or preposition, in OLS the discussion of case and prepositions after verbs is mostly encompassed in a wide-ranging chapter entitled Verb frames (pp. 71-229), which is organised around the number of arguments occurring with various verbs. Arguments are here understood to mean the elements which are obligatory to fill out the meaning of a verb, and which may be expressed by case or by prepositional phrases. Latin do 'I give' and pono 'I put' both have three arguments: the first two are subject and object for both verbs, but for do the third argument, the recipient, is in the dative, and for pono the third argument, the location, is expressed by a prepositional phrase or adverb. This chapter also includes revealing discussions of the difference between different constructions such as the choice between the accusative and dative or the accusative and ablative after the verb dono (p. 152). The reader sometimes will have to work harder, and usually will not be aided by a handy but meaningless grammatical label, but perhaps the gain in understanding will be worth the effort.

Chapter 7, The semantic values of the Latin tenses and moods, marks a number of departures from Kühner- Stegmann, most notably in the section on the indicative tenses. As Pinkster states explicitly on pp. 391-392, other grammars build up their theories of tense and aspect by close attention to narrative texts, principally Roman historians, but the consideration of a wider body of texts enables Pinkster to put forward different conclusions, bolstered by frequency counts on select genres, which are presented in tabular form on p. 406. One striking claim is that the historic present, rather than being specifically marked as a stylistic device, is 'the narrative tense par excellence in Latin stories' (p. 405). Elsewhere in this chapter, he casts doubt on the view that there are two distinct values of the Latin perfect, one like a Greek perfect or English have past, expressing the resulting state of an action, the other like a Greek aorist or English simple past, referring to actions in the past. For Pinkster a speaker using the perfect 'asserts that an event has taken place before the moment he is uttering the assertion' (p. 442). This may lead to the special interpretation of the perfect that it describes a resulting state, but this interpretation is rarely found with active perfects, and then only with certain verbs, although this meaning is widespread with the perfect passive. As a concomitant to this, Pinkster does not see the examples of primary sequence with a perfect main verb as indications that the perfect here has its 'resulting state' meaning, but rather as evidence that 'adhering to the sequence of tenses is basically an optional strategy' (p. 559).

The disadvantage of the functional approach is that of any new paradigm: those brought up using a different terminology have to go back to the classroom. The copious index attempts to steer the reader familiar with the old set of terms to the right places to learn what is new, but this is not entirely successful. Take, for example, the term accusativus Graecus. A reader of Virgil might find a reference to this term in a commentary, and want to look it up. The index refers to three pages, p. 244, p. 267 and p. 1076; the first two passages address the topic of accusatives with passives, the third accusatives with adjectives. The index does not give any indication of where to find the best general discussion of the topic, in the section entitled 'Respect adjuncts', in Chapter 10, Satellites, pp. 915-917, a location that will not be obvious to most classicists (although there is a cross-reference to this passage at p. 244). Pinkster's argumentation shows clearly that several completely different phenomena are sometimes lumped together as accusativus Graecus, and he separates accusatives after the passive of verbs of dressing, such as induo (which he terms an 'autocausative'), from those after verbs of hitting or wounding. It is a shame that many readers will not have the patience to find out these insights. Perhaps a comprehensive index to the whole grammar, once it is completed, might take special care to highlight the best entry points to the discussion of those topics that appear at several different places across the work. Similarly, OLS is not recommended as a recourse to those who want to remind themselves quickly of Roman dating formulae, which feature variously at p. 835, p. 841 and p. 1229, even though there is useful information at all of these places.

The proofreading and cross-checking of this volume is generally of a high standard, and few readers will be troubled for long by any of the remaining slips (which are largely, as far as I could see, on the level of the choice of type face, such as p. 17 example (b) where Ostium should be Ostium and angiporto should be angiporto, or p. 74 example (d) where facere should be in bold). Any grammatical work of this size and scope will inevitably contain some minor errors and places where it is possible to disagree with the explanation or interpretation of a particular passage. These should not detract from the massive achievement that OLS represents. English is possibly the only other language for which there is a comparable modern description of syntax in scale and insight to match OLS (Quirk et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language,³ a work cited by Pinkster as an inspiration, p. xxxi). OLS will undoubtedly and deservedly be a source of pleasure and pride for Latinists for years to come.

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Notes:

1.   Raphael Kühner and Carl Stegmann, Ausfürliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache. Satzlehre. Revised by Andreas Thierfelder, 3rd ed. (Hannover, 1955).
2.   Gary S. Schwarz and Richard L. Wertis, Index locorum zu Kühner-Stegmann "Satzlehre". (Darmstadt, 1980).
3.   Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. (London, 1985).

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Rana Saadi Liebert, Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. ix, 218. ISBN 9781107184442. $99.99.

Reviewed by Clément Bertau-Courbières, Université de Toulouse (clement.bertau@laposte.net)

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This is one of a growing number of studies on Greek aesthetics published in the last decade. The aim of Liebert's book is to resolve a classic paradox in the field of ancient aesthetics, namely the pleasure taken in tragedy, and more widely the mimetics of painful emotions. This issue was significant enough in ancient Greece for Plato and Aristotle to address it at length. It has since been a standard problem in Europe that many philosophers and thinkers have tried to resolve. Being human and rational, how is it possible for us to feel pleasure at others' misfortunes? Is this ethical, acceptable or even beneficial? In Plato's Republic, the Muse is finally exiled from the ideal city, and in Aristotle's Poetics the mimesis theory partly relies on the famous but equally arcane notion of catharsis. However, the argument presented here refutes this traditional (and mainly Aristotelian) response and at the same time gets away from Kant's legacy. According to Liebert, there are no differences in archaic poetry between real and mimetic experiences of tragic pleasure. So then, to understand this "tragic pleasure", the author goes back to the Homeric epic and mostly follows Plato's philosophy to stress a "psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement".

In the introduction, the author presents her central argument as follows. The tragic pleasure at stake is a "satisfaction of a subrational appetite for grief", a satisfaction that, according Liebert, the hero Odysseus, for example, seeks to obtain while listening to Demodocos on the Phaeacian island – a reading first made in Peponi's book.¹ But, as we shall remember, Odysseus is secretly crying like a woman when listening to the bard. How can we explain his behaviour? Here, Liebert's objective is ambitious: she wants to refute a large part of contemporary aesthetic theory based on Aristotle. There is neither "aesthetic transformation" nor edifying dimension, the author argues, to explain the appeal of tragedy. Painful objects are pleasurable because "the pain itself, in art as in life, satisfies an unregulated appetite for affective intensity". At this point, Charles Altieri's conception of an aesthetic experience eluding any cognitive control – and therefore ethically neutral² – serves as a keystone in Liebert's argument.

In chapter I, the author focuses on poetic pleasure as it appears in archaic poetry – mainly Homer, Archilochus, and Pindar. In her reading of the sources, she underlines the peculiar sweetness of this poetic pleasure and the gustatory dimension that accompanies it. The purpose of song is to provide pleasure, and many poems use a comparison with honey, desire, and love to evoke that function. But this irresistible pleasure is at the same time deceptive as it arouses an insatiable desire. For that reason, Liebert explains how a poet like Pindar has to perpetuate a "painful state of arousal" so as to maximize the pleasure and avoid its satiety (koros) in the audience. Thus, in underlining the somatic features of poetic pleasure, the author basically regards it in a platonic way as a mixed or impure pleasure. Any experience of pleasure involves pain, and the good poet has to deal with it to reach his goal and enchant the listeners.

In chapter II, the author proposes to unveil the source of pleasure in the mimetic context. To this end, two emotions (grief and anger) that affect Homeric heroes are analyzed. In Liebert's view, modern cognitivists have neglected the body, which is indeed central to the comprehension of the mimetic context. She goes on to demonstrate that anger and grief are a kind of addictions: they flourish even at the expense of well-being. Homeric poetry mentions more than once the "pleasure of tears". In the case of anger, Achilles' well-known comparison with honey helps to show the appetitive nature of the emotion. Given the nature of these "pathological" emotions, the author explains that pleasure in the mimetic context derives from the sympathetic identification of the audience. There is no transformation at all, but only persuasion and identification. Gorgias may have been the first to recognize this in ancient Greece, as the author argues. Starting from this point, Liebert employs Altieri's affective theory to explain this nonrational desire of painful emotions. Affective experiences are not ethically motivated: the emotions are desired for themselves, as a "mode of participation in the world".

In chapter III, the author goes back to Plato's Republic. The philosopher's view, she says, is precisely that mimesis offers a way of vicariously experiencing tragic emotions. Socrates claims in the Republic that poetry satisfies our "hunger for tears". That is one of the reasons Plato decided on the expulsion of the Muses. Mimetic poetry can promote painful affective states that become addictive. Few can see it, but the poet's work has absolutely no ethical utility and is therefore harmful to the body and the city. Moreover, poetry takes advantage of the seductive quality of poikilia (variety), the same poikilia that Pindar used to enchant his audience, and that Socrates knows to be suspect as a way towards lawless desires. In that sense, wanting to satisfy one's desire for pathological emotions is nothing else than threatening one's psychological harmony and its social conditions. In an Epilogue, Liebert recalls that Plato would offer an attentive ear to any defence of the Muse's utility in the city, and that Aristotle's defence of poetry could be found in the Poetics, and even more in the Politics. But in her discussion of this defence the author concludes that Aristotle fails to address Plato's most compelling charges against poetry, those based on psychological and social grounds.

Liebert's book is a thought-provoking study. Many poetic passages and fragments are given welcome new interpretations. Her argument is demanding and ultimately persuasive. Many ideas are well elaborated. Claiming that the appeal of painful emotions stands at the core of "aesthetic experiences" (and of human psychology) is quite bold but interesting. Nonetheless, one could ask for more details in the description and presentation of the problem addressed. What is "poetic pleasure" in an anthropological, historical, or psychological perspective? "Tragic pleasure" could have been defined in comparison with other kinds of pleasures – those evoked by Sappho, Mimnermus, or Theognis for example. There are a number of Greek words that refer to different positive affects, helping us to understand the Greek point of view. Another question is about the methodological choices that are made at the beginning. The author seems to think that most of modern cognitive psychology – a quickly developing field of study – goes in a wrong direction, because it does not recognize the reason/passion dichotomy any more: a statement of this kind appears a little schematic. We may feel sometimes that Liebert has, against this modern view, an overwhelming confidence in Plato's reading. We should not forget the historical gap between Homeric epic and the Athenian thinker. Plato condemns the Iliad and Odyssey for moral reasons, but the Homeric poems have an ethical basis that may have something to do with the "poetic pleasure" felt by the internal and external audiences. If Homeric epic had nothing to do with pedagogy, how do we explain Telemachus' decisive place in the Odyssey narrative? Most of the theoretical tools employed here come from literary criticism, philosophy and aesthetics, and the study at times lacks a historical perspective. For example, there are very few mentions of religion or of the religious dimension of poetry, and of Homeric poetry in particular, although this is certainly not an irrelevant issue when we try to understand the "mimetic context".

These comments do not diminish the high value of the work proposed here. Anyone interested in Greek aesthetics should read it and think about it. The volume is completed by a bibliography and a general index.

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Notes:

1.   Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, Frontiers of Pleasure : Models of Aesthetic Response in Archaic and Classical Greek Thought, (Oxford; New York, 2012).
2.   Charles Altieri, The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects, (Ithaca, 2003).

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Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, Eric Salem, Plato. 'Symposium', or, 'Drinking Party'. Translated with Introduction, Glossary, Essay, and Appendices. Focus philosophical library. Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2017. Pp. xv, 122. ISBN 9781585105977. $12.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Chara Kokkiou, University of Crete (chara.kokkiou@gmail.com)

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Plato's Symposium is among his most translated and popular dialogues. There are more than ten translations of the Symposium in the English language, the majority of which have been published in the previous two decades.¹ Having previously published new translations of the Sophist (1996) and the Phaedo (1998), Brann, Kalkavage and Salem now offer a new translation of the Symposium, like them published in the Focus Philosophical Library. The choice of this specific Platonic dialogue undeniably raises certain questions: "Why do we need another translation of the Symposium?" for example, and, of course, "What does this translation offer compared to the previous ones?" Hence, this new translation of Plato's Symposium has to overcome significant challenges in order to prove that it deserves a position in the rich existing Platonic bibliography.

This new edition contains a very short introduction, the English translation (which is annotated with 170 footnotes), an interpretive essay, a glossary, two appendices and a select bibliography. The authors᾽ goal was to provide "a translation that was as faithful as possible to the Greek original in vocabulary and syntax, and that captured the playfulness of the interchanges and the varying tones of the formal speeches" (xv).

The five-page introduction addresses only the fundamental topics that may prove useful to the first-time reader of the Symposium, focusing mainly on the subject of the dialogue, Eros. It sketches the poetic tradition concerning the god Eros, briefly discusses the narrative framework, the characters and the structure of the dialogue and provides a list of basic points intended to promote a better understanding of the dialogue.

Brann, Kalkavage and Salem᾽s translation is literal, but reads naturally in English. The translators succeed in two important respects: first, they use clear and simple language; second, they avoid under-translating words, which is relatively common in literal translations. Therefore, the translation is accessible and easy to read and achieves the ultimate purposes of the translators, which are to reflect on the dialogue's principal themes and to ensure that it is pleasurable to read. As the manner in which some difficult words (such as deinos, thaumazein, phronêsis, sôphrosynê, mousikê, synousia) are translated shows, the authors are flexible and aware of the different meanings and connotations of particular words; for instance, they recognize that mousikê does not always denote "music." In addition, despite the high degree of linguistic accuracy that the authors maintain, they also convey the playful tone of the dialogue: they are alert to the humor and irony that pervade the text and they effectively handle the literary (mostly poetical) passages when they occur. In general, they do not provide restrictive interpretation; rather they open the text up to alternative readings. More importantly, the translation is accompanied by useful notes that either focus on the text itself (e.g. on the etymology and meaning of words) or go beyond it (e.g. they offer additional information about the characters of the dialogue and its intertexts).

However, in rare cases, I do not agree with the translators' choices. For example, the word phronêsis at 202a is considered a synonym of sophia, and it is, thus, translated as "wisdom." It seems, however, that, in this specific context phronêsis is closer to epistêmê than to sophia; therefore the translation "understanding" favored by the majority of previous translators is more suitable. In addition, the absence of the original text may make the life of a student or scholar who needs to focus on the Greek language or compare the two texts somewhat challenging. Of course, including the Greek text would increase the length, and thus the cost, of the book, which may lead to certain publishing issues. However, the authors could have included the most important and hard-to-translate Greek words in brackets and provided more extensive explanatory notes regarding their word choices (although they partly address this issue with the inclusion of the glossary towards the end of the book). Furthermore, the translators have not identified the primary edition and the variant readings that they employed (or at least the most important among them).

The 47-page essay that follows offers useful details that emphasize the dramatic aspects of the dialogue. The essay is principally aimed at undergraduate students of the Symposium or a general audience. Beyond providing a description of the dramatic framework, it pays close attention to the form and content of every speech on Eros, examining the arguments used by each speaker and providing valuable insights into love (Love) and beauty (Beauty). The notes that accompany the essay provide additional detail concerning the speakers, the cultural and historical context of the dialogue and references to other Platonic dialogues (namely the Republic, Theaetetus, Apology, Phaedrus and Protagoras), which enable various comparisons between the Symposium and these other Platonic works. In general, the essay, like the translation itself, is written in a less formal style. It clarifies many challenging aspects of the discussion featured in the text and raises some important questions concerning the general structure of the dialogue and the Socratic way of thinking. It is true that it does not provide a profound interpretation of the dialogue and fails to open up new possibilities for research, but doing so might exceed the scope of this edition.

The glossary is extremely helpful and illuminates the various meanings of certain Greek words. Glossary entries are arranged not alphabetically but thematically ("according to associated meanings," 108). Under every entry, detailed information is provided concerning the uses of the words, and their common roots or synonyms used through the course of the dialogue. The glossary explores interesting relationships between these, and expands on the concepts they refer to, as, for example, the association between epistêmê (knowledge), sophia (wisdom) and philosophia (philosophy).

Two appendices consist of a conjectural depiction of the spatial layout of the symposium and the positioning of the participants (A), and a chart that depicts the relationships between the first six speeches, focusing on their shared characteristics: the number of gods, the age of speaker, the parentage of Eros and the function of Eros (B). The book ends with a concise bibliography.

Overall, this book is well balanced: it addresses significant issues and provides the reader with a high-quality translation that is faithful to the original text and yet versatile and undogmatic. It also offers valuable and reliable interpretive tools for approaching this widely read Platonic work. I also did not detect any misprints. On the whole, this is a well-produced edition, with a logical structure, clear objectives and a reasonable price. It is lucid and accessible and it should be counted among the best English translations of the Symposium. It may perhaps not satisfy the demands of an advanced student or scholar, but it could certainly be included in introductory philosophy and ancient Greek literature courses.

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Notes:

1.   B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1889) (this still remains the standard English translation); W. R. M. Lamb, Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias (Cambridge ΜΑ: Harvard University Press, 2915); A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff, Symposium (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989); T. Griffith, Symposium of Plato (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989); S. Benardete, Plato᾽s Symposium (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993); W. S. Cobb, The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato᾽s Erotic Dialogues (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); R. Waterfield, Plato: Symposium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); C. J. Rowe, Plato: Symposium (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1998); A. Sharon, Plato's Symposium (Newburyport: Focus Press, 1998); C. Gill, Plato: The Symposium (London; New York: Penguin Books, 1999); D. O᾽Connor, The Symposium of Plato. The Shelley Translation (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustin᾽s Press, 2002); M. C. Howatson and F. C. C. Sheffield, Plato. The Symposium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
2.   Plato ̓s Sophist (1996) and Phaedo (1998) are also published by the Focus Philosophical Library.

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Pierre Briant, Alexandre: exégèse des lieux communs. Folio Histoire, 259. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2016. Pp. 660; 8 p. of plates. ISBN 9782070793761. €11.90 (pb).

Reviewed by Jeremy Trevett, York University, Canada (jtrevett@yorku.ca)

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This remarkable volume, inexpensively published in a series directed towards the general reader, offers a survey of the rich 'afterlife' of Alexander III of Macedon (Briant rightly rejects the traditional question-begging soubriquet 'the Great'). It covers some of the same ground as his 2012 book Alexandre des lumières, of which a revised English translation, re-titled The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire, appeared earlier this year.¹ But this accessibly-written book ranges much more widely, from antiquity to the present day, and from popular culture to academic debates. In addition, it advances an important thesis. As his subtitle suggests, Briant is concerned above all with the persistence and pervasiveness of a number of topoi about Alexander, many of which, he argues, have a very long history indeed. These are not restricted to the depiction of Alexander in popular culture, since it and 'l'Alexandrologie savante' are cut from the same cloth (p. 18).

The first chapter ('Les images du prince') considers different views of Alexander as ruler. It ranges from Hellenistic Greece and Rome, via various medieval and early modern ducal, royal and papal courts, to the early 19^th century. Over more than two millennia Alexander has proved 'good to think with' both for rulers and for those who advised them. Divergent assessments of Alexander's kingship existed in antiquity and continued into the medieval period and beyond. For example, at the Burgundian court of Philip the Good Jehen Wauquelin depicted Alexander as a model ruler, whereas the Portuguese writer Vasque de Lucène, translator of Curtius Rufus, saw his example as one to be avoided. By the early modern period Alexander's dealings with the Persians came to be seen as relevant to the policies of European rulers towards the Ottoman empire. Various kings and princes, regarding him as an exemplary role-model, created Alexander-themed rooms in their palaces. Paintings, such as those by Charles Le Brun for Louis XIV, were commissioned and later copied into other media: tapestries, engravings, cameos, as well as pottery (a majolica platter depicting Alexander nobly covering the body of his defeated enemy Darius is illustrated in one of the volume's colour plates). Napoleon, on the other hand, whilst certainly interested in Alexander, judged that he took too many risks and therefore should not be considered—unlike himself—a great general.

The second chapter ('D'Orient et d'Occident') surveys the different ways in which Alexander was viewed, from late antiquity onwards, in the context of relations between 'the west' and 'the east'. In Europe, Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire made him a straightforward role model for dealing with the Muslim Other. Thus Walter of Châtillon in his 12^th-century poem 'Alexandreis' depicted him as a proto-crusader; Michael the Brave of Romania in his wars with the Ottomans saw himself as a second Alexander; and 18^th-century Greek nationalists invoked Alexander in their struggle for liberation from Ottoman rule. Views of Alexander in Iran and in the Ottoman empire were more complex, since he was not only the impious destroyer of the Persian empire, but also (as Iskender) the hero of local versions of the Alexander Romance, in which he is commonly represented as Muslim. Thus Mehmed II, successful besieger of Byzantium, is depicted in Ottoman sources as a second Iskender. In British-ruled India, by contrast, Alexander's opponent Porus was viewed as a victorious national hero.

In the third chapter ('Le héros colonial') Briant examines Alexander as conqueror and colonizer. As late as the first half of the 20^th century his example was used to justify French imperialism in North Africa, his policies towards the Persians being regarded as a model for France's ostensibly paternalistic system of protectorates. Briant pays particular attention to the long-lasting — and wholly misleading — influence of Plutarch's claim, in his On the Fortune of Alexander, that Alexander brought civilization to Asia. He rejects outright the picture of Alexander as liberator from Persian oppression: local elites, in Babylonia and elsewhere, naturally sought accommodation with the new regime, but Alexander 'était comme ses prédécesseurs perses un roi étrangère' (p. 243). He also casts a skeptical eye over such claims as that Alexander sought to bring economic improvements to the lives of the peoples he conquered; that he opened up or was the first to survey the Persian empire (he used existing roads; the Persians also measured distances); that he was motivated to any significant degree by scientific curiosity; or that he aimed to stimulate the economy of his new empire by putting Persian royal gold and silver reserves into circulation (weighed silver was already important as a means of exchange; the main result of his looting of the Persian treasuries was short-term inflation).

The fourth chapter ('Médias et médiatisation') examines four aspects of the representation of Alexander in popular culture. Somewhat unexpectedly, Briant starts with a well-informed analysis of the lyrics of a number of songs about Alexander by heavy metal bands, including Iron Maiden ('Alexander the Great') and Greece's Sacred Blood, whose 2012 album 'Alexandros' glories in Alexander as a proudly Greek conqueror.² From there he turns to the French Arabist — and former Vichy minister — Jacques Benoist-Méchin, whose 1976 work of popular history Alexandre le grand: le rêve dépassé offered an influential vision (it is still in print in France) of Alexander as idealistic dreamer. A third section on Hollywood films compares Robert Rossen's swords-and-sandals era Alexander the Great (1956) with Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004). The former is faulted for its complete lack of interest in the Persian side, the latter for the clichéd orientalism of its depiction of Darius. Lastly, Briant considers the plethora of recent Alexander-themed exhibitions, which he sees as serving the interests both of museum directors, who wish to put on blockbuster shows, and of the Greek government. In many cases, Alexander is included in the exhibition's title to add glamour to material that has little if any direct connection with him.

In his fifth chapter ('Galerie d'experts') Briant surveys in chronological order eight historians of Alexander, from the 18^th century to the present day. As in his Alexandre des lumières, he argues that serious study of Alexander did not start with Droysen; consequently, his group of historians includes both Montesquieu and the Baron de Sainte-Croix. His assessment of the two most recent of the eight, Ernst Badian and Brian Bosworth, is broadly positive, though he faults the former for his failure to engage adequately with Achaemenid material, and points out that several of the main arguments of the latter's explicitly postcolonial Alexander and the East (1996) had been anticipated by much earlier writers. This chapter, selective as it is, offers a very useful account of the main trends in the historiography of Alexander.

The next chapter ('Juger Alexandre?') also ranges widely, from the sub-genre of counterfactual history (what would have happened if Alexander had lived?) to the age-old debate, started by the Romans and still going strong, about how Alexander should be evaluated. A section on Alexander and Nazism discusses two important historians not covered in the previous chapter: Fritz Schachermeyr and Helmut Berve, the latter of whom argued that Alexander sought to create a joint Macedonian and Persian Aryan elite. Meanwhile the English classicist Adela M. Adam delivered a paper to the Cambridge Philological Society in 1940 entitled 'Philip alias Hitler'. After the Second World War the favourable picture of Alexander advanced by Droysen and later Tarn was demolished by the revisionist scholarship of Badian, himself a refugee from Nazi Austria, whose much darker Alexander was surely influenced by his experiences of totalitarianism and dictatorship. At the same time, growing criticism of the legacy of European colonialism has led to a markedly more critical view of Alexander's conquests.

Briant's seventh chapter ('Au péril de l'histoire immédiate') looks at how the example of Alexander continues to be invoked for political ends. His first case study is the use of Alexander's campaign in Bactria in connection with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) in 2001. He regards those who would see parallels between the two as misguided. Books such as Frank Holt's Into the Valley of Bones, anachronistically subtitled Alexander the Great in Afghanistan, do not in his view escape the trap of presentism. His second topic is the rival claims of Greece and the Republic of Macedonia to 'ownership' of Alexander. Ever since the late 18^th century Alexander has been seen in Greece, with few exceptions, as a national hero. But the star of Vergina (i.e., the star or sun-burst on the gold casket from Tomb II at Vergina in northern Greece) is also claimed as a national emblem by the Republic of Macedonia. Against the massive equestrian statue of Alexander in Thessaloniki now stands the even larger statue of a mounted ancient warrior—officially unnamed but clearly intended to evoke Alexander— erected in the main square of Skopje, depicted on the cover of the book.

In his final chapter ('Que faire?') Briant turns to the problem of finding anything new to say about Alexander, when from antiquity to the present day the same stock of words, images and judgments has been endlessly recycled. As he puts it — and it is hard to disagree — 'plus on lit d'ouvrages intitulés Alexandre le Grand, plus on a le sentiment de lire le même livre' (p. 557). His solution to this impasse is that the study of Alexander needs not new arguments but new evidence. Such evidence, he insists, exists in the form both of Macedonian epigraphic and archaeological material and, above all, of material from the Achaemenid empire. Failure to use the latter continues to result in a one-sided and defective historiography of Alexander. Briant demands that historians do more than take the views of the conquered into account; what is needed is a new history of the transition from Achaemenid to Macedonian rule, conceived of as global history, whose focus should extend beyond the thirteen-year reign of Alexander to cover the entire second half of the 4^th century, and in which the Persians and their subjects are 'acteurs de plein droit' (p. 567).

In its chronological, geographic and thematic range, its mastery of a vast amount of information, the lively curiosity with which it investigates so many aspects of Alexander's reception, and its combination of sharp argumentation and accessible presentation, this book is a tour de force.³ It is, quite simply, one of the most important and interesting works on Alexander to have appeared in recent years. Briant not only suggests (not for the first time) a more productive approach to the study of Alexander's reign, but also builds on his own earlier Alexandre des lumières to open up the reception of Alexander as a subject of vast scholarly potential. It is a book that deserves to be very widely read. To that end it is to be hoped that, as with Briant's other recent books, an English translation will in due course appear.

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Notes:

1.   It is unclear (to me) how this book relates to the similar-sounding work of synthesis announced as forthcoming in the preface of The First European (p. viii n. 6) under the title Alexandre le Grand au passé et au présent.
2.   My thanks to Oliver Trevett for his knowledgeable advice on this section.
3.   The few errors I have noticed are trivial. The legend on the 3^rd-century AD coins of the Macedonian koinon is Alexandrou not Alexandrous (p. 40); 'Georges Boas' (p. 202) should be Georges Bohas (correctly in the bibliography); and, as far as I can see, in Tajikistan it is not 'la ville de Khodjend' but the district of Nau that was renamed Spitamen, after the Sogdian noble Spitamenes who led a campaign of military resistance to Alexander (p. 505).

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Nicholas Richardson, Prudentius' Hymns for Hours and Seasons: 'Liber Cathemerinon'. Routledge Later Latin poetry. London; New York: Routledge, 2016. Pp. xvi, 181. ISBN 9780415716642. $54.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Aaron Pelttari, University of Edinburgh (aaron.pelttari@ed.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

The lyrical hymns of Prudentius combine the language of Vergil and Horace with a Psalmist's laser-sharp focus on the praise of God. They are no less poetry for being a learned Christian's expression of pious devotion. Not surprisingly, they have attracted the attention of modern and post-modern readers inclined to view their own religious and cultural transformations through the lens of late antique Christianity.

Richardson offers a useful introduction, translation, and commentary that is aimed at undergraduate survey courses but may also appeal to non-academic readers with some Latin. The introduction covers the life of Prudentius, his works, the Liber Cathemerinon, context, language, metre, reception, and transmission. Richardson helpfully provides details on the singing of Prudentius's hymns in the Middle Ages and on versions in modern hymnals. The section on metre is especially useful for students with some Latin. In a note on the translation, Richardson explains that "out of respect for the variety and skill with which Prudentius uses his metrical schemata" he has been strict with metre and sometimes adapted the classical schemes. The notes take up half of the book, and they provide a very nice mix of summary, observation, and references. Richardson is tuned in to intertexts in earlier Roman poetry, in the Christian scriptures, and among contemporary texts from late antiquity. Because a variety of texts including Horace, Ambrose, Claudian, and the scriptures are all cited, the notes give a good idea of the range of Prudentius's language. The volume concludes with a four-page bibliography of the most relevant secondary literature, and there is a reasonable amount of reference to it throughout. Notes on the wording and construction of the Latin original are not uncommon. On a more specific note, Richardson somewhat downplays the anti-Jewish polemics of Cathemerinon 11.

The series Routledge later Latin poetry was launched by Joseph Pucci in 2012, and volumes of Juvencus (BMCR 2017.03.25), Rutilius Namatianus (BMCR 2017.01.11), and Ausonius have already been published; Ennodius is advertised as forthcoming (full disclosure: Pucci was a reader for my PhD). According to the publisher's blurb, the series "is devoted to publishing creative, accessible translations," and it "responds to the increasing interest in later Latin authors and especially the growth in courses devoted to late antiquity." All of us who teach later Latin poetry in translation are glad to have these books available. They make a real difference when you are planning a course syllabus.

The high price of the hardback version is offset somewhat by the less-expensive paperbacks, but most students will probably read Richardson's translation in an electronic edition. My university library offers access to the text via ProQuest, and electronic copies can currently be purchased individually for use with apps by Amazon and VitalSource. I did not notice any inaccuracies in the ProQuest version, and it does offer a search tool. But the paper copy responded more quickly, was better formatted, and was more pleasant to read.

This book is ideal for undergraduate courses that include the Liber Cathemerinon. Advanced students should be directed to Gerard O'Daly's Days Linked by Song: Prudentius' Cathemerinon (Oxford, 2012), which Richardson cites as an important resource (ix). Those who want a translation of the poet's entire corpus can still use Sister M. Clement Eagan's version: The Poems of Prudentius (Washington, DC, 1962–1965). And there is also H. J. Thomson's two-volume Loeb translation (Cambridge, MA, 1949–1953), with the Latin on facing pages. These previous translations do not make a new version with a different focus any less welcome.

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