Bryn Mawr Classical Review

John D. Grainger, Great Power Diplomacy in the Hellenistic World. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. 264. ISBN 9781472484291. $149.95.

Reviewed by Daniel Tober, Fordham University (dtober@fordham.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

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'Logos', asserts Eteokles in Euripides' Phoinissai, overpowers 'everything that the sword of enemies might accomplish' (516-7). Plutarch recalls the line in his Life of Pyrrhus, applying it to the king's most trusted envoy, Kineas, widely celebrated for his rhetorical prowess: more cities had been won by Kineas's speeches, Pyrrhus himself allegedly said, than by his own arms. The function of logoi, of negotiations, treaties, and other such alternatives to warfare, lies at the heart of John D. Grainger's comprehensive new study, Great Power Diplomacy in the Hellenistic World. The book is light on critical analysis and synthesis; many of the chapters read as a catalogue raisonné of diplomatic episodes rather than a systematic investigation of the structures and mechanisms of diplomacy in the Hellenistic period. Nevertheless, Grainger marshals his considerable knowledge of the Hellenistic world to make a good case for the unique character of international affairs in the two centuries after the death of Alexander, showing in the process what we can gain by explaining the interactions among the Antigonids, Seleucids, Ptolemies, and Romans in terms of their diplomacy, not simply of their wars.

In a brief Introduction, Grainger clarifies the bounds of his study. Acknowledging that the Greeks did not themselves recognize a distinct field of 'diplomacy',¹ he nevertheless follows general precedent in using the term to refer more broadly to non-militant interstate relations, to a set of practices, including 'alliances, royal marriages, treaties of peace, extended negotiations, ... preparations for war, and spying and disruption' (3), through which states sought to 'control and manage disputes, avoid wars, but also to score points and "diplomatic triumphs"'(7).² Grainger's focus is on the years between 323 and about 100 BCE; and while he overstates previous neglect of Hellenistic diplomacy (6),³ his emphasis on what he calls the 'Great Powers', viz. the three major kingdoms and Rome, does distinguish his project from other studies of foreign relations in the Hellenistic period, which tend to prioritize the role of the poleis. This attention to king-initiated diplomacy, however, means short shrift for some important diplomatic tools and strategies employed by polities in the Hellenistic period, like proxeny, asylia, and what Christopher Jones and others have called 'kinship diplomacy'.⁴

Grainger divides his study into thirteen chapters grouped into four parts. In Part One, 'Techniques and Practices', he argues that diplomacy in the Hellenistic period was qualitatively distinct from what came before and after. He begins (Chapter 1) by tracking the development of what he sees as a 'generally accepted' and functional system, which emerged from the interactions among Alexander's generals at the end of the fourth century BCE. Most of these men, Grainger points out, were from the Macedonian elite, and the mutual trust and respect with which they conducted their negotiations, along with their reverence for the authority of the oath, resulted in unusually stable treaties, often lasting until the death of one of the treaty-making parties. This was the case even for successive generations, whose members lacked the camaraderie of the Diadochoi; in fact, as Grainger shows through a précis of the first several Syrian Wars (12-14), the durability of treaties among the Hellenistic kings soon became axiomatic (as did the corollary tendency for treaties to be dissolved immediately upon one party's death).⁵ This is a significant observation, and one that helps to expose patterns of Hellenistic international relations. Future work might build on these findings through a more methodical classification and comparative analysis of the period's numerous treaties.

In the remaining chapters of Part One, Grainger treats several other important features of Hellenistic diplomacy. In Chapter 2, he surveys the phenomenon of marriage alliances between the Hellenistic kings and the recurrence of sibling marriage in the houses of Ptolemy and Seleukos. His conclusion is largely negative: royal marriages, while occasionally symbolizing friendship between two Hellenistic kings, rarely had actual repercussions on the balance of power between the kingdoms; political implications tended to be internal only. Chapter 3 addresses the Macedonian kings' modes of interaction with one another (in particular their preference for conducting negotiations through envoys rather than in face-to-face 'summit meetings'), with other kingdoms, and with the Greek poleis. Here, Grainger acknowledges the kings' occasional lip service to Greek political ideals, but he devotes little attention to euergetism or the conferral of divine honors, behavior that belongs in his view to the 'internal mechanism of the kingdoms' (5). Grainger succeeds in Part One in demonstrating that the kings behaved differently from Greek poleis and other republics (like Rome and Carthage), who felt less bound by oaths to uphold treaties and customarily negotiated with one another in the open and through groups of envoys (30). His insistence, however, that the kings' distinctive brand of diplomacy derived solely from the conduct of Alexander's generals, who were themselves following Macedonian precedent, perhaps discounts too much the influence of the kingdoms on which the Seleucids and Ptolemies imposed themselves.

Having explored the origins and characteristics of Hellenistic diplomacy in Part One, Grainger devotes the remaining three parts of the book to an examination of the system in action. Part Two (Chapters 3-6) focuses on the eastern Mediterranean; Part Three (Chapters 7-9) on the western Mediterranean and the emergence of Roman imperialism; and Part Four (Chapters 10-13) on Rome's collision with the Macedonians, the increasing ruthlessness of Roman methods, and finally the dissolution of the Hellenistic system. Grainger's breadth is impressive, and his interpretations of particular events can be insightful and persuasive. In his account of the arrangement between Philip V and Antiochos III in 203 to divide Ptolemaic lands, for example, he helpfully draws attention to the motivations of Ptolemy V himself (114-9); and his reanalysis of the murder in 162 of Cn. Octavius, who was in Syria trying to enforce the peace terms of Apamea, highlights the operational messiness of Hellenistic diplomacy and the occasional ambivalence of Roman policy (234-9). But aside from Chapter 11, 'The diplomacy of peacemaking (222-188)', a useful collation of the various peace treaties concluded in the generation between Sellasia and Apamea, and the lucid but brief Conclusion, Grainger generally arranges the narrative of each part chronologically; and the result can feel less like an evaluation of Hellenistic diplomacy than a history of the Hellenistic world with the wars taken out.⁶

There are some virtues to this approach. For one thing, the sheer accumulation of exempla does help Grainger sketch a 'framework' of standardized protocols within which the great powers sought 'to resolve their disputes' (6)—the Hellenistic period was not, that is to say, pure 'anarchy'.⁷ The progressive narrative also allows Grainger to juxtapose the Macedonian kings, for whom diplomacy served primarily as a means to circumvent war, with Rome, for whom diplomacy was essentially 'naked preparation for war' (221) and thereby to explain the increasing irrelevance of the one under the weight of the other. But the reader must work hard not to lose sight of the forest for the trees, especially when these trees are themselves seldom distinct. For our sources' general disinterest in matters of diplomacy means that Grainger must frequently resort to conjecture—note, for example, his hypothetical reconstructions of the negotiations that preceded the marriage alliance between Magas and Antiochos I (77-8) or the so-called 'Ptolemaic partition agreement'. Even when our sources are better (so for the material treated in Chapter 5, 'Aegean diplomacy: Ptolemy I to Aratos of Sikyon'), he seldom presses the epigraphical testimony or asks how Polybius, Livy, or Plutarch color our interpretations of e.g. Aratos's diplomatic methods or Athenian neutrality in the shadow of Macedon. Grainger sees evidence of diplomacy everywhere, moreover, not only in negotiations, alliances, and treaties but also in 'threats ... spies, conspiracies, retributions, loyalties, disloyalties, lies, betrayals' (213); even sieges he sometimes reads, as in the case of Antiochos III's attack on Baktra at the end of the third century (111), not as acts of war but as part of the machinery of diplomacy. Such a wide ambit, while accentuating the variety and pervasiveness of diplomacy in these turbulent centuries, can also blur important distinctions of practice, particularly regarding the interface between diplomacy and empire, an important theme in Grainger's analyses not only of Roman methods but also of Ptolemaic expansion in the mid third century (87-8).

Students of Hellenistic history who already have a good grasp on the major players, events, and territories will benefit from Grainger's palpable erudition and range and may find fresh treatments of particular episodes. For the newcomer to the Hellenistic world, however, this will be a tough read. Grainger's narrative is dense, in the first place, and he supplies no maps nor appendices, such as chronological tables, kings-lists, or genealogies to guide the uninitiated (the two annexes in Chapter 2 that tally royal intermarriages and sibling marriages are a notable exception, and these are very helpful). He assumes in his audience, moreover, a good deal of background knowledge not only about the many wars to which he alludes in passing but also about some of the important diplomatic crises on which his argument depends. While he offers an attractive analysis of the so-called 'Day of Eleusis' in 168 BCE, for example, he does not spell out the details of C. Popilius Laenas's celebrated ultimatum to Antiochos IV Epiphanes, mentioning the 'circle in the sand' only to dismiss it as 'pure theatricality' (232).

Without a background in Hellenistic history, moreover, readers may be led astray by errors in the text, of which there are many. These are on the whole innocuous: infelicities of syntax, misplaced or doubled words, misspellings, erratic or incomplete references to secondary material in the notes, and inaccurate citations of ancient texts.⁸ On occasion, however, the mistakes are more serious. Battles are sometimes misdated (on p. 28, the Battle of Ipsos is inexplicably dated to 302; on p. 81 the Chremonidean War more worryingly to the 250s; and there seems to be a miscalculation of years of peace and war between 274 and 241 BCE on p. 82), and sources are occasionally misidentified or misconstrued.⁹ Greater editorial oversight in future editions could not only address these issues but also help make Grainger's work more accessible to a broader audience. For the story he tells is ultimately an important one; no matter how stable and conventional their system of mediation, the kings' attempts to avoid war were mostly fruitless. Polybius makes the point well in his discussion of the negotiations between Antiochos III and Ptolemy IV on the eve of the Fourth Syrian War (5.67.11), a passage that Grainger does consider in some detail (106-7): without a neutral and powerful authority that could prevent either side from transgressing the terms of their covenant, without, that is to say, a system of international law, even the most eloquent and powerful logoi eventually give way to swords.

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Notes:

1.   There were among the ancient Greeks no professional diplomats, and representatives of one polity did not tend in an official capacity to reside permanently in another. Ambassadors' speeches (presbeutikoi), however, are attributed to Greeks as early as Ion of Chios, and by the time of Polybius (12.25a.3) they were recognized as a rhetorical genre in their own right (which Grainger does not consider).
2.   See e.g. F.E. Adcock and D.J. Mosley's Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (1975) and C. Eilers (ed.), Diplomats and Diplomacy in the Roman World (2009), reviewed in BMCR 2009.08.68.
3.   Adcock and Mosley, it is true, gave little attention to the centuries between Alexander's death and Actium, and the same can be said of V. Martin, La vie internationale dans la Grèce des cités (1940) and of P. Low, Interstate Relations in Classical Greece. Morality and Power (2007), reviewed in BMCR 2008.03.47. But other studies do explore foreign relations in the Hellenistic period: P. Klose, Die völkerrechtliche Ordnung der hellenistischen Staatenwelt in der Zeit von 280–168 v. Chr. (1972); S. Knippschild, "Drum bietet zum Bunde die Hände". Rechtssymbolische Akte in zwischenstaatlichen Beziehungen im orientalischen und griechisch-römischen Altertum (2002), reviewed in BMCR 2003.06.20; and A. Giovannini, Les relations entre États dans la Grèce antique du temps d'Homère à l'intervention romaine (ca. 700-200 av. J.-C.) (2007), reviewed in BMCR 2008.10.20.
4.   Kinship Diplomacy in the Ancient World (1999).
5.   See J.D. Grainger, The Syrian Wars. Mnemosyne Suppl. 320 (2010), 89-90 for an earlier formulation of these findings; for a review see BMCR 2011.03.86.
6.   Grainger has devoted ample attention to these wars elsewhere. Chapter 4, 'The diplomacy of the earlier Syrian Wars (274-241)', can be read alongside The Syrian Wars (2010), Chapters 6 and 10 on the diplomacy of Antiochos III alongside The Roman War of Antiochos the Great (2002), reviewed in BMCR 2004.03.52, and The Seleukid Empire of Antiochos III: 223-187 BC (2005). See also Grainger, Hellenistic and Roman Naval Wars 336-31 BC (2011) and The Wars of the Maccabees (2012).
7.   Grainger suggests that if the Hellenistic world was anarchic, a position eloquently argued by Arthur M. Eckstein Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War and the Rise of Rome (2006) (a book reviewed in BMCR 2009.06.44), it was in the sphere of war only, not of diplomacy.
8.   Citations: 'Livy 36.16.1-2' on p. 72 n. 54 should read Livy 31.18.1-5 (with Polyb. 16.27—Grainger correctly cites the reference at 192 n.4); the Memnon citation on p. 72 n.38 should read FGrH 434 F12.4-5, not F4-5; that on p. 82 n. 4, meanwhile, should read not FGrH18 F11.11 but FGrH434; nn. 2-4 on p. 101 have no page numbers; p.101 n. 13 should read IGI(2) 56 not 12.56; and p.159 n.8 should read Plutarch Pyrrhos 34 not 28. Syntax: p. 41 'almost as incestuous as that of the Ptolemy II'; p. 55 'Philip found only one to way cope with the problem'; p. 64 contains some odd sentence fragments 'The meeting of Demetrios with Lysimachos and Pyrrhos . . . more urgent matters'; p.106 'Sosibios was by not confident of'; p. 159 'I am here concerned here'; and p. 193 n.33 'that it was connected with the Rome's . . .'. Misspellings and typographical errors: in the Abbreviations list, 'Greichischen' (FGrHist) should read Griechischen and the title of A. Rehm's book should be italicized; 'Monophthalomos' on p. 2 should read Monophthalmos (Monophthalamos, meanwhile appears on p. 11 and passim); 'Kremonidean' in the section heading on p. 85, should read Khremonidean; and for consistency's sake, we should read Kassandros for 'Kassander' on pps. 19, 38, 65, and 132, Polybios for 'Polybius' on pps. 107, 119 n.22, 161, 210 n.3, and 211 n.45, and Demetrios for 'Demetrius' on p. 21; p. 121 n.58 'Athenaeum' needs italicization, so too n. 62 on the same page 'Macedonian Wars'; p. 125 'Which will be dealt with in Chapters 7 and 8' should read Chapters 8 and 9; and even though John Ma's book on Antiochos III is listed in the Abbreviations section, it is nevertheless cited in full on p. 192 n.13 but wrongly (Antiochos II should read Antiochos III).
9.   It is not Livy, for example, who tells us that M. Aemilius Lepidus was sent to Egypt to tutor Ptolemy V (178) but Valerius Maximus (6.6.1), Justin (30.2.8-3.4, 31.1.1-2), and Tacitus (Ann. 2.67.2)—that the anecdote is mentioned neither by Livy nor by Polybius, in fact, casts serious doubt on its authenticity. Nor is it Livy, as Grainger says on the same page, but Polybius (16.27.5) who claims that the original purpose of Lepidus's embassy to Egypt in 200 BCE was to mediate between Antiochos and Ptolemy.

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Benjamin Anderson, Felipe Rojas (ed.), Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison. Joukowsky Institute Publication, 8. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017. Pp. xii, 226. ISBN 9781785706844. $45.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Katherine A. P. Iselin, University of Missouri (ktp.iselin@gmail.com)

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

Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison is an important contribution to the study of antiquarianism. It seeks to challenge and expand our understanding of the word, exploring and comparing antiquarian traditions at various points of time in different parts of the world. In addition to challenging what antiquarianism is, several essays also explore the role of anti-antiquarianism in certain societies.

Primarily composed of papers from a symposium at Brown University in 2015 ("Antiquarianisms Across the Atlantic"), this volume is exceptionally organized, opening with two theoretical essays. These chapters by Felipe Rojas and Alfredo González-Ruibal question the term "antiquarianism" and how it has been applied to various cultures. After reading these provocative chapters, the following chapters, which focus on specific cases of how certain groups interact with the past, invite the reader to examine how each situation challenges or engages with various forms of antiquarianism. These case studies are separated into two sections, focusing on Spanish colonies in the Americas in one and European travelers and archaeologists in the Ottoman Empire in the other. The book concludes with a coda by respondent Peter N. Miller, who effectively brings all the volume's ideas together.

While the authors explore non-European practices in connecting with the past, the title Antiquarianisms is appropriate. The bulk of the book takes a Western perspective and approach, even when the subject matter is not considered part of this tradition. For example, Part II examines indigenous voices in colonial Spain, but each essay still sits firmly within Western parameters.

The greatest strength of this collection of essays is its ability to bring together different practices for interacting with the past, while simultaneously questioning whether it is possible to successfully compare these practices. The self-reflection evident in this volume is noteworthy and something that all scholars of antiquarianism should consider. Additionally, several of the essays discuss cultures or communities that made or make an active decision to ignore the past, asking the reader to consider these alternative perspectives in relation to Western antiquarian traditions. In the current academic culture, where inclusivity and diversity are (or should be) part of every curriculum, this is a particularly important—and timely—statement.

One of the most significant contributions to this volume, as well as scholarship on antiquarianism in general, is Rojas's chapter on archaeophilia (Chapter 2). In a book that challenges how antiquarianism is understood, Rojas presents a new perspective that also expands the vocabulary. Rojas questions how we define someone as an antiquarian and shows the multitude of ways that "traces of the past" can be understood. Using a number of examples from various cultures and time periods, he shows access to the past is not limited to literary sources or archaeological evidence. A modern archaeologist uses material evidence to access the past, but Rojas presents a number of other ways people can connect to the past, such as smell. He gives the example of a town near Cape Iapygia, which the Roman geographer Strabo records was associated with giants expelled by Herakles. Strabo states that the giants settled there, covered themselves in the earth, and expelled a "fetid discharge," the smell for which the area was known (18). Another possibility is through what are referred to as "living objects" by Native Americans. Some Native Americans "breathe life" into such artifacts when they create them, and the objects thus become a living part of the family (24-25).¹ Instead of broadening the definition of "archaeologist," he proposes a neologism that can be applied to any number of traditions that interact with the past: archaeophilia.

The second theoretical essay, by González-Ruibal (Chapter 3), is also a welcome addition to antiquarianism scholarship. In this chapter, González-Ruibal discusses how antiquarianism is often associated with the elite classes and how it is frequently politically motivated. He also highlights antiquarianism's often-problematic association with colonialism. He warns against "othering" differing antiquarianism practices, while also cautioning that these "other" traditions should not be considered the same as Western antiquarianism. González-Ruibal also incorporates an important discussion about several societies that have anti-antiquarianism practices, most notably in Africa. The Sith Shwala of Western Ethiopia, for example, display objects from their past in a ritual house as a way to show their past is also their present: they exist simultaneously. Similarly, Steve Kosiba (Chapter 5) explores how Inca wak'as were living monuments that both symbolized the Inca past (and timeless) connection to the land and spoke to the present. These chapters challenge Western conceptions of time and the past, asking the reader to examine their own relationship with objects and the past. Similar to González-Ruibal's discussion on elite antiquarianism, Kosiba also shows how the Spanish and their Andean allies used the destruction of a monumentalized wak'a as a political statement.

Chapters 4 (Byron Ellsworth Hamann) and 6 (Giuseppe Marcocci) both use literary texts to examine how Spanish antiquarianism influenced our understanding of colonial Spain, as well as how indigenous interactions with the past influenced Spanish colonists. Hamann looks at two historical-geographical surveys that were conducted by the Spanish government in central Castile and Spanish America during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Even though the questionnaires differed in their questions, the answers often described monuments and landscapes similarly. Additionally, these surveys preserve local knowledge that colonists recorded, but that does not survive elsewhere. Marcocci analyzes the treatise of Franciscan friar Toribio de Motolinía (Historia de los indios de la Nueva España), in which Motolinía compares the Aztecs and Romans. Marcocci also discusses how the local population produced forgeries of important idols for the colonists to destroy in order to preserve their own connections to their past.

In the first essay of the section on the Ottoman Empire (Chapter 7), Emily Neumeier looks at the role of Veli Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the Morea, in excavations at Bassae and other important sites. Using early modern Western literary sources that mention him, Neumeier brings Veli Pasha back into the Western historical record, from which he has all but disappeared, an absence promoted in order to give Western archaeologists credit for certain discoveries. She makes the case that it is possible "to read against the text and detect traces of the actions and motivations of local actors in these foreign sources" (151). She calls for a more inclusive examination of the early archaeological period, one that incorporates antiquarian practices of local populations. Significantly, Neumeier repeatedly states that differences in class would have created a variety of ways that individuals interacted with the past. She cautions that the interactions of non-elite individuals with antiquities were quite different from those of Veli Pasha, and thus should not be lumped into a single "other" group as a contrast to Western travelers and archaeologists.

Eva-Maria Troelenberg (Chapter 8) follows and takes several of the themes found in Neumeier's chapter even further. Troelenberg uses the published travel account of British traveler Henry Baker Tristram (1870s) as a case study to see how we can reread sources in an attempt to understand the voices of people and social groups outside of the Western elite. Troelenberg states that while an "against the grain" reading of Western sources would certainly better inform us of alternative perspectives, this method needs to be supplemented with other sources, archival research of the Ottoman administration, and a thorough discussion of oral history and anthropological research.

Benjamin Anderson's concluding chapter returns to the problem of defining antiquarianism, using an entirely different approach from any earlier chapter: art history. Here, Anderson argues that the only true way to compare antiquarianisms is to root the differing traditions in a shared object. This prevents each perspective from obscuring a true understanding of the other. The theoretical portion of his article defines antiquarianism as "the attempt to understand the past through interaction with objects that exist in the present" (186). While he admits that this definition is problematic since it excludes non-object-based methods like translating ancient texts, he argues it is possible to use this method to identify non- antiquarian practices. Anderson uses this definition in association with an art historical analysis of a watercolor produced by Louis-François Cassas in the 1790s, View of the Acropolis of Athens from the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Anderson concludes that Cassas's painting is a "representation of an encounter between distinct antiquarianisms" (204), but not an example of antiquarianism itself, in opposition to the general understanding that such representations in art were a form of antiquarianism. Cassas made the painting years after his visit to Athens, and the figures, as well as the main artifact in the painting (a relief in the foreground being viewed by several figures), function as "generic types." The scene does not reflect a moment in time, nor does the relief exist in reality. Thus, Cassas is not engaging with an object as an antiquarian would (202-203).

This volume has very few (and usually minor) typographical errors and features an excellent index. Six of the chapters have photographs or related images, the majority of which are in color. All of them are helpful to the reader, and each includes a full citation of the image's source.

One notable omission is the discussion of antiquarian traditions of China. Although Chinese antiquarian practices are referenced several times in the opening and concluding chapters as being similar to European antiquarianism, the reader is left with no understanding of the role of antiquarianism in East Asia, at least until the very last few pages. In a book that states its purpose is "to explore contact and conflict between antiquarian traditions" (3), this seems like a missed opportunity—especially considering how much contact there was between Europe and China during the early modern period. Although the introduction states that the bulk of the volume focuses on Spanish colonial America and the Ottoman Empire, the discussion of anti-antiquarian African cultures in one chapter blurs the lines of what the book includes. This volume should be read in conjunction with existing scholarship on antiquarian traditions, since it both supplements and questions current literature. In particular, it fills some of the gaps of 2013's World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Alain Schnapp, to which Antiquarianisms frequently refers (and which also includes a number of chapters on Asian antiquarianism traditions).

Antiquarianisms is a significant contribution to current scholarship on antiquarian traditions. Not only does the volume add to Schnapp's blueprint for comparing varying antiquarian practices, it also challenges its own goals and asks the reader to do the same in existing and future scholarship.

Authors and titles

1. Introduction: For a More Capacious History of Archaeology, Benjamin Anderson and Felipe Rojas

Part I: Comparison and its Limits
2. Archaeolophilia: A Diagnosis and Ancient Case Studies, Felipe Rojas
3. The Virtues of Oblivion: Africa and the People without Antiquarianism, Alfredo González-Ruibal

Part II: Contact in the Americas
4. La Relaciones Mediterratlánticas: Comparative Antiquarianism and Everyday Archaeologies in Castile and Spanish America, 1575-1586, Byron Ellsworth Hamann
5. Ancient Artifice: The Production of Antiquity and the Social Roles of Ruins in the Heartland of the Inca Empire, Steve Kosiba
6. Inventing the Antiquities of New Spain: Motolinía and the Mexican Antiquarian Traditions, Giuseppe Marcocci

Part III: Contact in Ottoman Lands
7. Rivaling Elgin: Ottoman Governors and Archaeological Agency in the Morea, Emily Neumeier
8. "…that we trusted not to Arab notions of archaeology": Reading the Grand Narrative Against the Grain, Eva-Maria Troelenberg
9. Forgetting Athens, Benjamin Anderson
10. Coda: Not for Lumpers Only, Peter N. Miller

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Notes:

1.   See also this report in the Guardian on Native American leaders protesting the inclusion of such artifacts in a 2016 Paris auction, which Rojas references: Native Americans implore France to halt artifact sale.

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Thomas F. Mathews, Norman E. Muller, The Dawn of Christian Art in Panel Paintings and Icons. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2016. Pp. 256. ISBN 9781606065099. $49.95.

Reviewed by Harikleia Brecoulaki, National Hellenic Research Foundation (hbrek@eie.gr)

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In late antiquity, both the nature of images and the treatment accorded to them generated deeply divisive debates. Portraits of human subjects were an accepted convention, but offering reverence to them might be controversial. Art historian Thomas F. Mathews here retells the story from the Acts of John about the apostle's rejection of the pagan-style honours—garlands, lamps, and an altar—given to the portrait secretly made of him, in gratitude for being raised from the dead, by the praetor of Ephesus Lykomedes. The third-century Platonist Plotinus, likewise the subject of a surreptitious portrait, went even further and questioned the very purpose and meaning of creating an image of an image: "Isn't it enough that I have to carry around the image that nature has clothed me with?" (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 1). As for images of divine beings, Clement of Alexandria condemned the masterpieces of the sculptor Lysippus and the painter Apelles, leading Greek artists of the fourth century BC, as examples of a "deceitful art" that vainly seeks to emulate God's perfection (Exhortation to the Heathens 4). Nevertheless, the gods continued to be depicted both in statues and on movable wooden panels. Clement specifically mentions lewd paintings of Aphrodite "hung on high like votive offerings" in pagans' bedrooms. Comparison is unavoidable with the emergent Christian genre of the icon. It is to documenting and speculating on these resemblances and possible continuities that Mathews addresses himself in this elaborate and sumptuously illustrated publication from the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Assisted by the art conservator Norman E. Muller, Mathews proposes a revised history of the evolution of panel painting from pre-Christian and pagan art to Christian icons. Mathews explores the dependence of Christian iconography on models provided by pagan paintings depicting gods from a mixed Greek and Egyptian pantheon, produced from the first through the fourth century AD. The driving aim is to show that the cultic use of panel paintings was a continuous tradition from antiquity into Christianity. "Continuity" and "syncretism" constitute the book's leitmotivs. In the context of this ambitious project, Mathews strives to set up a "fil conducteur" linking the new evidence he unveils with the larger picture of religion and pictorial production in late antiquity, which he believes had a decisive impact on the future of European art. Overall this is a thought-provoking book, calling into doubt earlier established opinions regarding the beginnings of Christian art, the cultic role of icons, and the common belief that early Christian art assumed the format of models developed for imperial propaganda. The raw materials assembled in this volume, with a number of details displayed in high quality close-ups, will significantly assist the progress of future studies.

In his introduction and first three chapters, Mathews extensively discusses a corpus of panel paintings from Roman Egypt of the second and third centuries AD, which until their recent publication in Vincent Rondot's comprehensive monograph, Derniers visages des dieux d'Égypte. Iconographies, panthéons et cultes dans le Fayoum hellénisé des IIe-IIIe siècles de notre ère (Paris 2013), constituted "a no man's land that neither Egyptologists nor Byzantinists have wanted to enter" (p. 13). However, while Rondot austerely confines his analysis to pagan works and their polytheistic Egyptian theology, Mathews extends his interest into the Christian sphere. The first chapter of the book provides information on the sites of discovery and contexts of panels, also including the mural paintings in the chapels of Karanis and Theadelphia and in the Imperial Chamber in the Temple of Luxor. The majority of the panel paintings were found within the Fayyum, but other contexts (the great Temple of Horus at Edfu; the temple of Tutu in Kellis and the Dura Europos shrine to Tyche) also yielded more isolated and fragmentary evidence. In this chapter, Mathews includes the so-called Goddess in Mourning panel from North Saqqara, a small painting found in a dump, containing debris from domestic quarters. The Saqqara panel depicts an enthroned woman holding a sceptre, probably a goddess. The throne shows close affinities with the marble thrones discovered in Macedonian tombs and is perhaps to be dated as early as the end of the fourth century BC. It is the earliest example of panel painting found in Egypt, "as close as we can get to Alexander the Great's introduction of Greek painters into Egypt," and although it was discovered during the 1970s, it has never been properly studied. However, the iconography of the panel should be further investigated, considering its early date and the divine honours offered to the Ptolemies, from as early as the time of Ptolemy II and his sister queen Arsinoe II (theoi adelphoi).¹

In the two following chapters, Mathews discusses at length the ancient custom of making votive offerings as an expression of private religious sentiment that reached Egypt from the wider Hellenic world. He scrutinizes the changes that occurred in the Egyptian pantheon through its progressive Hellenization and its assimilation of foreign divinities, for example the soldier gods Heron and Lykourgos, whom V. Rondot (336-40) has associated with Arab, probably Syrian, immigrants into Egypt. Particular attention is given to the group portrait with Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Domna, and his two sons Geta and Caracalla, probably dedicated in an Egyptian temple on the occasion of a family visit that took place between September 199 and April 200. According to Mathews, the panel was only cut down into tondo form much later. The original painting had acquired sacred status due to its dedication in the temple and to the syncretism of the Emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla with Serapis. Muller gives a detailed description of the panel's technique, stressing the fusion of painting with drawing and the dense hatching of coloured lines to model the face.

Relying on the technical observations of Muller on a number of pagan Egyptian panels and their painting materials, Mathews suggests a continuity in artistic know-how and pictorial technique with Hellenistic painting traditions. He draws comparisons with the large-scale wall paintings from Macedonian tombs, dated to the late fourth and early third centuries BC. Although common features certainly exist in both the use of materials and their application between the pagan panels and their Hellenistic predecessors (artistic technologies developed very slowly in antiquity), it is equally important to set them against the much larger and contemporary corpus of mummy portraits, considering the recent revival of interest in their technological features.² Mathews and Muller suggest that use of egg tempera was typical for the corpus of gods, while the encaustic technique seems to have been applied exclusively to mummy portraits, although several of them were also produced with egg tempera.³ While differences in subject matter may not necessarily call for different pictorial media and techniques, artistic aspirations regarding the mimetic reproduction of the human figure, be it mortal or divine, certainly affect the overall style of an image and produce different aesthetic approaches. With the exception of very few examples, such as the Septimius Severus tondo and the Harpocrates/Dionysos panel showing a skilful manipulation of form and colour, the pictorial representation of figures in the majority of Egyptian pagan panels is not particularly concerned with the modelling of flesh tones and realistic image making. Therefore Mathews' argument that both the paintings of the gods for private cultic use and the mummy portraits were commissioned by the same patrons requires further reflection, considering the fact that mummy portraits represent the elite ruling class, whereas pagan panels seem to be addressed to a rather illiterate part of the population, particularly widespread outside the metropolis of Alexandria.

Mathews' painstaking observations on the complex problem of door or wing panels from triptychs are particularly informative, and allow for a better understanding of problematic documents such as the Getty Museum doors in Malibu depicting Isis and Serapis. Mathews argues that the principal image in a portable shrine (or naiskos) was not its painted doors but the marble or bronze figurine contained inside, while the slight inclination of the hinge sides of the doors was intended to accommodate the shape of a naiskos, a placement which solves the problem of the gaze of the Malibu gods (111-15).

In order to further support the artistic and cultic continuity between the pagan and Christian images, Mathews attempts (ch. 4) to push the production of Christian icons back from the sixth to the second century, relying on textual accounts (in the works of Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and the non-canonical Acts of John). Despite the debate over whether the Acts of John belongs to the second century or later, Mathews opts for the most commonly accepted chronology in the second century, and uses it as crucial evidence to support his argument in favour of the early use of Christian icons.

Antecedents of Christ's iconography and specifically of his radiant halo are to be found, according to Mathews, in the haloed divinities of the pagan pantheon, in particular Sobek, while the construction of the cult of Mary is also viewed in relation to the pagan background. Indeed, the iconographical scheme of Mary with her child can hardly be separated from the pagan iconography of Isis with Harpocrates. The iconography of Mary is thoroughly discussed in chapter five, taking into consideration that Mary already played a prominent role in the second-century Protoevangelium (consistently misspelled by Mathews) of James.

A convincing reconstruction of the early sixth-century marble templon barrier from the church of St. Polyeuctus in Constantinople, excavated in the 1960s by Martin Harrison, is proposed in chapter six. Although the iconography of the marble reliefs depicting Mary, Christ, and ten apostles has already attracted scholarly attention, Mathews proposes a closer iconographical reading and an alternative assemblage of the mutilated fragments, and compares their location with that of the figures of Mary, Christ, and the Apostles in front of the altar of Hagia Sophia, following Paul the Silentiary's description of the templon program. He stresses iconographic details hitherto unnoticed, such as the omophorion worn by five of the apostles – the earliest documented ecclesiastical garment, popular during the fifth and sixth centuries. He further suggests that the templon iconography of St. Polyeuctus "owed some debts to Alexandria" (p. 182), pointing to the exaggerated ears in both the figures of the apostles and the Egyptian gods in the pagan panel corpus.

The Egyptian counterparts of the Constantinople templon icons of Hagia Sophia and St. Polyeuctos are presented in chapter seven, together with an in-depth discussion of the decree of the council of Nicaea II in 787, the most important ecclesiastical document on the veneration of icons. Mathews gives a detailed account of the brilliant decoration of the recently restored church of the Red Monastery near Sohag, the largest intact sanctuary of Christian Egypt. Maintaining his thesis of artistic continuity from the pagan panels to the Christian icons, Mathews considers that the "faux" icons of individual saints in the Red Monastery belong to the same tradition as the surviving wood-panel icons from Egypt. His insightful interpretation of specific provisions in the canons of Nicaea allow some reconsideration of its correct meaning, as more focused on the cultic problems posed by the dedication of images, rather than on the philosophical problem of their nature.

One of the great merits of this book is that it includes information on the painting materials (pigments and binders) identified within the pictorial layers of the Egyptian pagan panels, discussed in Appendices A and B by Muller. Although a single chapter with a systematic presentation of the analytical results and their scientific documentation (spectra, chromatographs, microphotographs) would have been particularly appreciated, the discussion of the uninterrupted use of egg tempera from antiquity to the Renaissance in the last chapter of the book, as well as the acute observations on the rendering of flesh tones, the application of coloured primings, and mixtures of pigments, provide a significant addition to the study of historical painting techniques that will be of great help to future research in the field.

Three appendices (A: Pigment identification; B: Media analysis and C: Corpus of panel painting from ancient Egypt) are followed by an up-to-date bibliography and a general index. This book offers a penetrating and alternative view, replete with acute historical, philological and technical observations, of the history of the Christian icon from its origins in Egyptian pagan panels to its influence on subsequent painting traditions. Historians of Graeco-Roman and Byzantine art, Egyptologists, and historians of late antiquity are only a few of those who will derive much stimulation from this book.

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Notes:

1.   A. Chaniotis, "The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers", in: Andrew Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World, (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell 2005), 431-445: 436-437.
2.   J. K. Delaney, K. A. Dooley, R. Radpour and I. Kakoulli, "Macroscale multimodal imaging reveals ancient painting production technology and the vogue in Greco-Roman Egypt", Scientific Reports 7, 2017 (doi:10.1038/s41598-017-15743-5). Through a J. P. Getty Museum initiative (APPEAR Project: Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis, and Research), a shared database was created in order to collect technical and analytical information on Graeco-Roman panel paintings from collections all round the world: APPEAR Project.
3.   C. Cartwright and A. Middleton, "Scientific aspects of ancient faces: mummy portraits from Egypt", The British Museum Technical Research Bulletin, vol. 2, 2008, p. 59-66.

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Kurt Latte, Ian Campbell Cunningham (ed.), Hesychii Alexandrini lexicon: volumen I: A-Δ. Sammlung griechischer und lateinischer Grammatiker, 11. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Pp. xxxvii, 660. ISBN 9783110542813. €169,95.

Reviewed by Eleanor Dickey, University of Reading (E.Dickey@reading.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

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Hesychius' lexicon is undoubtedly the most important Greek dictionary to survive from antiquity. It provides the only evidence for the existence of a large number of rare words as well as crucial information on the meanings, dialects, and usage of others, not to mention numerous citations of lost classical literature. It is also very difficult to edit, being a huge work surviving only in a single, highly problematic manuscript. Kurt Latte began work on his edition as a young man in 1914 and left only two volumes when he died half a century later (Α-Δ published in 1953 and Ε-Ο published posthumously in 1966). Peter Hansen then spent a further 17 years on a third volume (Π-Σ, 2005), and the fourth was finally completed by Hansen and Ian Cunningham in 2009. A fifth volume consisting of indices had been promised, but after Hansen's death Cunningham opted instead to revise Latte's work, resulting in the work under review here: this is a revision by Cunningham of Latte's 1953 volume.

Latte's edition was pretty good in terms of the text it provided, the accuracy of its marginal attributions of particular glosses to different sources, and the usefulness of its detailed introduction, but it had a major drawback in the form of an inadequate apparatus criticus. Latte reported the manuscript's readings only selectively, sometimes misrepresented them, and never reported their accents; one reason his readings were poor was that he relied on photographs rather than looking at the manuscript itself. Cunningham set out to address these problems and accordingly has produced an edition based on personal inspection of the manuscript (a complete re-collation), in which all its readings are reported in the apparatus with all their diacritics. Therefore nearly every entry in the apparatus is different from the corresponding entry in Latte's apparatus, if only because the Greek words now have accents. In a sample of the apparatus for 200 entries (β 1-100, δ 1-100), 26 have changes to the manuscript readings going beyond accentuation (two changes to word division and 24 to the letters themselves)—and even where the readings are unchanged they are now more useful because one can have far more confidence that they are right. Of course, not having seen the manuscript myself, I cannot swear that Cunningham's readings are always better than Latte's, but given Cunningham's track record I would be inclined to trust his readings.¹

The apparatus has also been expanded and updated with other types of information, such as the sources of emendations. The apparatus of parallel passages has likewise been expanded and updated. They now offer more and better information, but unfortunately that information is often harder to understand than it used to be. For example, entries γ 19-22 are words beginning γαδ- where the γ represents a digamma, a fact first noted by the seventeenth-century Dutch scholar Daniel Heinsius; Latte's apparatus here reads 'ϝαδ-', while Cunningham's has 'ϝ agn. Heins.'.

Changes to the text itself are not infrequent. In the same 200-entry sample, eight entries have changes to the actual text, i.e. the letters of the Greek. Five of these are clear improvements: two correct Latte's typographical errors (β 90, δ 52), two print a corrupt manuscript reading (marking it as corrupt) where Latte emended into an implausible hapax legomenon (β 74, β 90), and one removes material not in the Hesychius manuscript, which Latte had added from another source (β 49). The other three changes to the text (β 12, β 27, β 87) are not necessarily improvements but do not make things any worse. Additionally, Cunningham divides two entries (β 87, δ 33) into multiple entries each, since originally separate notes had become mixed up with each other in transmission; these are major improvements. Then there are seven entries where Cunningham improves Latte's punctuation, seven where he changes the marginal sigla indicating the source of an entry, many where he adds, removes, or updates references to literary works, and very many where he alters the in-text sigla—with the result that fully two-thirds of the entries in this sample have some sort of change to the text presented in Latte's edition. With this level of alteration the volume is really a new edition rather than a revision; Cunningham would have been justified in removing Latte's name from the title page.

The changes to the text and apparatuses are clearly a net improvement, but the same cannot be said for the changes to the extensive explanatory material also included in Latte's first volume. Latte's 45-page Prolegomena explaining Hesychius' work, its complex history, and the difficulties of its transmission was the best introduction to Hesychius ever published ² and had just been updated by Alpers (Hesychius vol. 3 pp. xv-xxiii); it is shocking to find it removed and replaced with a tiny and infinitely less helpful version.

The loss of Latte's list of abbreviations is almost as serious—for the abbreviations themselves are still used freely in the edition. Entries from the Cyrillus lexicon are marked with an asterisk, and five different kinds of brackets are used in the text, but the reader is never told what these symbols mean. The margins are festooned with indications of the sources of individual glosses, most often 'D' (Diogenianus, a lexicon compiled in the second century AD and now lost except insofar as it was incorporated into Hesychius' work in the fifth or sixth century) but also 'K' (Cyrillus, a late antique lexicon), 'Ap.S.' (Apollonius Sophista's lexicon of Homeric words), 'Att.' (Atticist lexica), 'On. sacr.' (collections of scriptural names), 'Orth.' (Byzantine orthographical works), etc. Only 'K' appears in the list of sigla and only 'Ap. S.' in the bibliography; the Prolegomena has information that could lead to decoding several others, but it does not have any of these abbreviations as such, and it has no information at all on quite a few of them. Fortunately almost all the abbreviations can be found in volume 3 (pp. xxv-xxxiii) and the symbols in volume 4 (pp. xvi-xix), but how many readers of volume 1 of an edition will think of looking in volumes 3 and 4 for help in decoding the abbreviations and symbols? At very least a prominent cross-reference should have been provided.

This volume also greatly expands the sigla used within the text itself to indicate which parts of each Cyrillus-derived entry can be found in which Cyrillus manuscripts. This offers scholars more and better information, but at the cost of giving the text a more cluttered and intimidating appearance. For example, entry α 8697 now reads '*ἄφιξις· ἔφοδος vg^αφο4 (AS¹⁹Br¹¹⁸⁹). παρουσία g^αφο4(AS¹⁹)'. Scholars wanting to use this extra information are going to have to work hard—although v, g, A, S, and Br are in the list of sigla, the key to the superscripts can only be found in a footnote in volume 3 (p. xxv). (The superscript numbers are sequential numbers for entries beginning with α in each manuscript; superscript letters indicate what the first three letters of each entry are in that manuscript, if they are not the same as in Hesychius.) The non-specialist reader may well wonder whether this information is important enough to be worth cluttering up the text of Hesychius to this extent, and if it is so important, why the key to it has not been given in a more prominent location.

The other type of information in the text is references to the literary sources from which many entries seem to derive. These have been checked for accuracy and updated with references to new editions, which is very welcome—but it is a great pity that no attempt was made to address the general opacity of the abbreviation system used for these references. All the abbreviations used here are specifically excluded from the bibliography, and yet some are far from being familiar (e.g. 'Dosiad. Ara 5' = Dosiades, Βωμός line 5 (in Powell's Collectanea Alexandria); 'Ps. Sal. 16, 4' = Septuagint, Psalmi Salomonis 16:4; 'Cyr. hom. div. 14, PG 77, 1072' = Cyril of Alexandria, Homilia diversa 14, in Migne's Patrologia Graeca vol. 77 p. 1072). Some conventions will also be unfamiliar to most readers, such as putting two dots after a reference to indicate that other examples can be found in the same author. It does not help that the same abbreviation can have different meanings in different places, such as 'Prov.' when it occurs in the text referring to the Biblical book Proverbs but when it occurs in the margin referring to ancient paroemiographical collections, or 'K' in the text referring to Iliad book 10 but in the margin to the Cyrillus glossary.

On the positive side, Cunningham has made the reader's life much easier by printing the numbers of all entries in full rather than continuing Latte's confusing system of printing only the last two digits of each number—and his decision to retain Latte's numeration avoids making the reader's life harder. The book is meticulously proofread; I found only a very few typographical errors, none of them serious.

In short, this edition is an enormous improvement on Latte for scholars who have the prior knowledge needed to understand the extra information provided, as well as the motivation and interests to use that information. But there are not many such scholars, and for the average user the edition is at best a mixed blessing, as the benefits of a small number of improved readings in the text do not compensate for the loss of the Prolegomena and list of abbreviations, not to mention the increased difficulty of reading both text and apparatus. One hopes that libraries will keep Latte's original volume along with this one, to ease readers' difficulties, but that hope is unlikely to be realized; therefore this publication may in the long run damage the study of Hesychius by making the work more difficult to approach. Twenty-first-century scholarship ought to make important texts more accessible, not less: if we want future generations to be able to use the ancient texts we treasure and to appreciate our research on them, we need to break down barriers to understanding rather than building them up.

Cunningham is probably already working on a revision of Latte's second volume, and I have every confidence that it will offer as many improvements to the text and apparatus as the current volume does. I hope it will also, before it is too late, make up for the deficiencies of this volume by providing a complete list of abbreviations and restoring Latte's Prolegomena—ideally in an English translation incorporating Alpers' changes from volume 3 and Cunningham's own Prolegomena from volume 4, but failing that at least reprinting the original Latin, which is exceptionally clear and engaging.

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Notes:

1.   Note especially his edition of the Συναγωγὴ λέξεων χρησίμων (Berlin: De Gruyter 2003).
2.   Cf. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship (New York: OUP 2007) p. 89, and note Alpers' assessment (Hesychius vol. 3 p. xv), 'Latte's Prolegomena are of great importance not only for the Lexicon of Hesychius itself, but ... also for Greek lexicography in late antiquity and the Byzantine period'. Alpers' corrigenda to the Prolegomena will of course lose much of their value once the work to which they refer is no longer available, as they do not make much sense on their own. And the general coherence of the whole Hesychius edition is impaired by having volume 3 begin with a set of corrigenda to something that is no longer there.

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Books Received May 2018.

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This list contains all books and notifications of new books received in the previous month by BMCR. Potential reviewers should not respond to this email, but should use the request form linked here (Books Available for Review). Some books listed in this email may already have been assigned to reviewers.)

Adema, Suzanne M. Speech and thought in Latin war narratives: words of warriors. Amsterdam studies in classical philology, 24. Leiden: Brill, 2017. viii, 416 p. €120,00. ISBN 9789004347120.

Ahbel-Rappe, Sara. Socratic ignorance and Platonic knowledge in the Dialogues of Plato. SUNY series in western esoteric traditions. Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2018. 296 p. $90.00. ISBN 9781438469270.

Allan, Arlene. Hermes. Gods and heroes of the ancient world. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. 214 p. $140.00. ISBN 9781138805705.

Atkins, Jed W. Roman political thought. Key themes in ancient history. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xvii, 239 p. £19.99 (pb). ISBN 9781107514553.

Auer, Martin and Harald Stadler (ed.). Von Aguntum zum Alkuser See: Zur römischen Geschichte der Siedlungskammer Osttirol. Ager Aguntinus, 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018. 174 p. €49,90. ISBN 9783447109499.

Avagliano, Alessandra. Le origini di Pompei: la città tra il VI e il V secolo a.C. Bulletin antieke beschaving. Supplement, 33. Leuven; Paris; Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2018. 245 p. €86,00 (pb). ISBN 9789042935679.

Bailey, Doug. Breaking the surface: an art/archaeology of prehistoric architecture. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xv, 338 p. $35.00 (pb). ISBN 9780190611880.

Baltzly, Dirk and Michael John Share (trans.). Hermias. On Plato: Phaedrus 227A-245E. Ancient commentaries on Aristotle. London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. 328 p. $114.00. ISBN 9781350051881.

Banner, Nicholas. Philosophic silence and the 'one' in Plotinus. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. ix, 299 p. £75.00. ISBN 9781107154629.

Barrandon, Nathalie. Les massacres de la République romaine. Histoire. Paris: Fayard Editions, 2018. 448 p. €23,00 (pb). ISBN 9782213671314.

Barton, William M. (trans., comm.). The Pervigilium Veneris: a new critical text, translation and commentary. Bloomsbury Latin texts. London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. 168 p. $114.00. ISBN 9781350040533.

Berard, Stephen A. Vita nostra: subsidia ad colloquia Latina. Tomus I. Clinton, WA: Cataracta Publishing, 2018. 145 p. ISBN 9781976102967.

Bernard, Floris and Christopher Livanos (ed., trans.). The poems of Christopher of Mytilene and John Mauropous. Dumbarton Oaks medieval library, 50. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. xxii, 601 p. $29.95. ISBN 9780674736986.

Bertolini, Gabriella. Kosmos tis somatikos: il "sistema" metaforico del Filebo di Platone. Ricerche di filologia, letteratura e storia, 25. Roma: Tored, 2018. 371 p. €40,00 (pb). ISBN 9788899846053.

Boehm, Ryan $95.00. City and empire in the age of the successors: urbanization and social response in the making of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. xiv, 300 p. ISBN 9780520296923.

Bordeaux, Olivier. Les Grecs en Inde: politiques et pratiques monétaires (IIIe s.a.C. - Ier s.p.C.). Numismatica antiqua, 8. Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions, 2018. 324 p. €40,00 (pb). ISBN 9782356132192.

Borgna, Alice. Ripensare la storia universale Giustino e l'Epitome delle Storie Filippiche di Pompeo Trogo. Spudasmata, Band 176. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2018. 294 p. €54,00. ISBN 9783487156606.

Brennan, T. Corey. Sabina Augusta: an imperial journey. Women in antiquity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xxiv, 302 p. $85.00. ISBN 9780190250997.

Budelmann, Felix (ed.). Greek lyric: a selection. Cambridge Greek and Latin classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xvii, 321 p. ISBN 9780521633871.

Budelmann, Felix and Tom Phillips (ed.). Textual events: performance and the lyric in early Greece. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 315 p. $85.00. ISBN 9780198805823.

Busche, Hubertus and Matthias Perkams (ed.). Antike Interpretationen zur aristotelischen Lehre vom Geist: Texte von Theophrast, Alexander von Aphrodisias, Themistios, Johannes Philoponos, Priskian (bzw. "Simplikios") und Stephanos ("Philoponos"). Philosophische Bibliothek, 694. Hamburg: Meiner, 2018. 954. €136,00. ISBN 9783787329946.

Canevaro, Mirko and Benjamin D. Gray (ed.). The Hellenistic reception of Classical Athenian democracy and political thought. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiii, 359 p. $90.00. ISBN 9780198748472.

Chankowski, Véronique, Xavier Lafon and Catherine Virlouvet (ed.). Entrepôts et circuits de distribution en Méditerranee antique. Bulletin de correspondance Hellénique supplément, 58. Paris; Athens: École Française d'Athènes, 2018. 314 p. €30,00. ISBN 9782869582958.

Cipolla, Paolo B. (ed.). Metodo e passione. Atti dell'Incontro di studi inonore di Giuseppina Basta Donzelli, Catania, 11-12 Aprile 2016. Supplementi di Lexis, 7. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 2018. 226 p. €48,00 (pb). ISBN 9789025613310.

Coombe, Clare. Claudian the poet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xii, 242 p. £75.00. ISBN 9781107058347.

Cresci, Lia Raffaella and Francesca Gazzano (ed.). De imperiis: l'idea di impero universale e la successione degli imperi nell'antichità. Rapporti interstatali nell'antichità, 9. Roma: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2018. 325 p. ISBN 9788891312457.

Davies, Rachel Bryant. Troy, Carthage and the Victorians: the drama of classical ruins in the nineteenth-century imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xix, 383 p. £90.00. ISBN 9781107192669.

de Poli, Mattia (ed.). Euripides: stories, texts & stagecraft. Padova: Padova University Press, 2017. 113 p. €14,00 (pb). ISBN 9788869381133.

Dekker, Renate. Episcopal networks and authority in late antique Egypt: bishops of the Theban region at work. Orientalia lovaniensia analecta, 264. Leuven: Peeters, 2018. xvi, 350 p. €96,00. ISBN 9789042935600.

Den Dulk, Matthijs. Between Jews and Heretics: refiguring Justin martyr's dialogue with Trypho. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. 174 p. $140.00. ISBN 9780815373452.

Dhont, Marieke. Style and context of old Greek Job. Supplements to the journal for the study of Judaism, 183. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018. 410 p. €138,00. ISBN 9789004358485.

Dilts, Mervin R. and David J. Murphy (ed.). Antiphontis et Andocidis: orationes. Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xxxii, 212 p. $45.00. ISBN 9780199605477.

DiPalma, Brian Charles. Masculinities in the court tales of Daniel: advancing gender studies in the Hebrew Bible. Routledge studies in the biblical world. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. x, 162 p. $150.00. ISBN 9781138724730.

Domingo, Rafael. Roman law: an introduction. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. 238 p. $150.00. ISBN 9780815362753.

Dueck, Daniela (ed.). The Routledge companion to Strabo. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. 408 p. $230.00. ISBN 9781138904330.

Dugan, Timothy V. The many lives of Ajax: the Trojan war hero from antiquity to modern times. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2018. vii, 422 p. $49.95 (pb). ISBN 9781476663968.

Eijnde, Floris van den, Josine Blok and Rolf Strootman (ed.). Feasting and polis institutions. Mnemosyne, supplements, 414. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018. €121,00. ISBN 9789004356726.

Elliott, Simon. Empire state: how the Roman military built an empire. Oxford; Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2017. xiv, 169 p. £36.00 (pb). ISBN 9781785706585.

Elsner, Jaś. The art of the Roman Empire AD 100-450 (second edition). Oxford history of art. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xx, 314 p. $29.95 (pb). ISBN 9780198768630.

Empereur, Jean-Yves, Tony Koželj, Olivier Picard and Manuela Wurch-Koželj. The Hellenistic harbour of Amatus underwater excavations, 1984-1986: volume 1, architecture and history. Études Chypriotes, 19. Paris; Athens: École Française d'Athènes, 2018. 172 p. €40,00. ISBN 9782869582934.

Eramo, Immacolata and John F. Haldon (trans., comm.). Appunti di tattica: (de militari scientia). Collection ISTA Sciences et Techniques de l'Antiquité. Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2018. 220 p. €22,00 (pb). ISBN 9782848676173.

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