Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Stéphane Marchand, Le scepticisme: vivre sans opinions. Bibliothèque des philosophies. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2018. Pp. 236. ISBN 9782711628292. €23,00 (pb).

Reviewed by Vicente Raga-Rosaleny, Universidad Nacional de Colombia (vraga@unal.edu.co)

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Although there are already a number of good historical introductions to ancient skepticism (in French, the classical one by Victor Brochard; in Italian, the magnificent but also ancient monograph by Mario Dal Pra; and more recently in English, those of Maria Lorenza Chiesara and Robert J. Hankinson),¹ it is certainly not inappropriate to return to this attitude—it is not a school—to investigate its central figures and most relevant ideas.

In fact, starting with the introduction, the author clarifies that his intention is not to carry out a project of philosophical archaeology, rescuing curious notions from a dark and forgotten past. Skepticism, unlike the classical and Hellenistic schools of thought, retains surprising vitality. There is paradox here: on the one hand, every now and then, skepticism returns to the forefront of thought, insofar as it implies a questioning of our way of doing philosophy and ultimately our model of rationality, theoretical language and practical action; on the other hand, it seems that no one seriously considers leading a skeptical life: in a certain sense, Sextus Empiricus, in whom the ancient tradition of skepticism culminates, was the last skeptic. Professor Stéphane Marchand devotes himself to unraveling this enigma and elucidating the keys to understanding the vitality of skepticism in his clear and rigorous monograph.

Although the four chapters into which the book is divided coincide broadly with those that can be found in the other introductions to skepticism mentioned above, its treatment is different in a number of ways. For example, the present book omits Brochard's distinction between 'dialectical' and 'empirical' skepticism as well as the emphasis on Agrippa in Dal Pra, and it lacks anything corresponding to the more thematic character of the second part of Hankinson's book.

In the initial chapter, the author focuses on the figures of Pyrrho of Elis, and his combative disciple, Timon of Phlius. In the case of the former, Professor Marchand lays out the interpretative options offered by the testimonies collected by Decleva Caizzi.² We perhaps find ourselves before a thinker at the limits of philosophy, living an indifferent existence consciously alien to philosophical discourse. But with the latter, things are quite different. The author attributes to Timon the creation of an original philosophical proposal, namely, that of Pyrrhonism. Although the sources are scarce and fragmentary, Professor Marchand outlines the main lines of this Pyrrhonism, understood as a mainly gnoseological critique of the philosophical schools of his time (with special attention to Aristotelianism). Timon undoubtedly formulates elements that will play a very important role in later skepticism,³ such as the use of the notion of 'phenomena'. At the same time, there is some distance from the very technical skepticism the Academy, or Pyrrho's nominal heirs, namely Aenesidemus of Knossos and Sextus Empiricus.

The second chapter of the book is devoted to the skeptical Academy, focusing especially on the well-known heads of this institution, Arcesilaus of Pitane and Carneades of Cyrene and concluding with a short review of the reception of Academic skepticism by Philo of Larissa and Cicero and of the history of eventual decline and abandonment of this current of thought. With regard to the above-mentioned heads, the autonomous development of this current of ancient skepticism was driven not only by the introduction of important notions such as the suspension of judgment, appropriated and adapted from Stoicism by Arcesilaus, or Carneades' appeal to the 'persuasive' as a criterion for action, but also by the Socratic-Platonic context and the debate with the Stoics (as Ioppolo, among others, has emphasized).⁴ Thus, according to Professor Marchand's interpretation, Academic skepticism evolved and introduced many elements that would later be recovered and reformulated by Aenesidemus, in its critique of the dogmatic epistemology of Stoicism as well as in its development of a criterion of action, meant to address the Stoic objections to skeptical apraxia. In addition, it is worth pointing out the Academics' critical, refutative, and ironic understanding of philosophy (more attentive to Plato's style of writing than to his doctrines). All of this culminated in a kind of epistemological fallibilism, both in the case of Philo, and finally in the return to dogmatism in the subsequent Academy.

The third chapter addresses a thinker about whom we hardly know anything, Aenesidemus of Knossos.⁵ This author, who would have begun his philosophical career influenced by the skeptical Academy, according to prevailing interpretations, would have then distanced himself from the dogmatic turn of this school in order to develop his own current of thought, in which some of the main elements of Neo-Pyrrhonism are already clearly outlined. There are some historiographical questions that are difficult to resolve, involving the relationship between Aenesidemus' thought and that of Pyrrho of Elis himself; but beyond this, Professor Marchand addresses questions such as the exposition of the 'tropes', or argumentative schemas, which Aenesidemus likely compiled and perfected; the problem of the 'phenomenon' as a criterion; and the relation of Aenesidemus' thought with that of Heraclitus. Although it is not possible to settle these hermeneutical problems definitively or with the depth of a specialized study, Professor Marchand has good quality discussions of them.

The fourth chapter, the final one before the conclusion, focuses on the most studied and well-known author of all the ancient skeptics, and the only one from whom we have complete works: Sextus Empiricus.⁶ This chapter is more thematic in character, focusing above all on the Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Professor Marchand focuses here on Sextus' definition of skepticism, on the ends he supposedly pursues, on his method and on his use of tropes, as well as on the definition and role of his necessary counterpart, dogmatism. In addition, the chapter continues with a very interesting, though not terribly original, review of the role of the 'phenomenon', mainly as a criterion for action, the principal original proposal of Sextus that attempts to respond to the problem of action. Later, the author ventures into a more interesting review of a topic less written about in the earlier introductions: the problem of skeptical language and the general possibility of formulating a skeptical attitude. Finally, he closes his exposition with a reference to the important relationship between the skeptical attitude and certain medical schools of the Hellenistic period (although this, again, is an aspect explored at some length in other books).

By way of conclusion, Professor Marchand returns to the paradox I mentioned at the beginning of this review, and questions the fortune of skepticism after Sextus Empiricus. His proposal, controversial but attractive and well supported textually and argumentatively, is that skepticism evolved into a principally theoretical study, mainly under the influence of the reading of Augustine of Hippo, a notorious adversary of academic skepticism and general critic of a possible skeptical life. The transformation of skepticism with Augustine's reading, which in many ways would anticipate that of Descartes, makes it in the end a necessary step or stage towards the development of dogmatic thought. This transformation implies that what was initially proposed as a different form of philosophizing, one that questioned our dominant model of rationality, becomes domesticated by dogmatism.

Professor Stéphane Marchand's book is a magnificent introduction to the study of ancient skepticism, which has received relatively little attention despite its enormous validity and fertility. Apart from the inevitable reiteration of certain questions, which can be found well formulated, although now somewhat outdated, in the other introductions already mentioned, it is regrettable that this small work did not venture into some of the central problems of Greek skepticism in more detail. These problems include the important question of criterion, or the role of nature as the limit of skeptical research, or its relationship with relativism, as well as the difficulties experienced by skeptical attitudes towards causality or contradiction. All of this is mentioned in this work, but in a somewhat superficial way, without pausing over the problems of the skeptical attitude towards metaphilosophical discourse. It is true that this might have required a thematic approach rather than Professor Marchand's historical one, but it would have been equally desirable to go into greater detail in the treatment of these aspects, which constitute fundamental assumptions of skepticism in all its manifestations.

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Notes:

1.   V. Brochard, Les sceptiques grecs, Imprimerie Nationale, 1887; M. Dal Pra, Lo scetticismo greco, Laterza, 1950; M. L. Chiesara, Storia dello scetticismo greco, Einaudi, 2003 ; R. J. Hankinson, The Sceptics, Routledge, 1995.
2.   F. Decleva Caizzi (ed.), Pirrone. Testimonianze, Bibliopolis, 1981.
3.   R. Bett, Pyrrho, his Antecedents, and his Legacy, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 84 ff.
4.   A. M. Ioppolo, Opinione e scienza: il dibattito tra Stoici e Accademici nel III e nel II secolo a. C., Bibliopolis, 1986.
5.   R. Polito (ed.), Aenesidemus of Cnossus: Testimonia, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
6.   See, among others, C. Perin, The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism, Oxford University Press, 2010.

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Francesca Schironi, The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018. Pp. xxvi, 908. ISBN 9780472130764. $150.00.

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

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The very name of Aristarchus is enough to strike fear into the hearts of modern scholars. One knows that he did things of great importance in the history of Homeric scholarship, but exactly what did he do, and how do we know, since his work is lost? Answers have certainly been given to these questions, but those answers are so difficult to understand, are based on such an intimidating body of evidence, and are debated with such fire and vigour that most of us have little confidence even in our ability to grasp what has been argued, let alone to evaluate the different arguments and their evidence base to decide which is right. Schironi's work will change that situation completely, for in this book she lays out with total clarity what she believes Aristarchus' scholarly methods were, what the evidence for and against her views is, and how other scholars have interpreted the same evidence. This clarity constitutes an act of unusual courage and will revolutionise the study not only of Aristarchus but also of Alexandrian scholarship more generally: since there is now an authority that everyone can actually understand well enough to follow, from now on anyone who wants to propose alternative explanations will have to present them with equal clarity or face being ignored.

Aristarchus, who lived from 216-144 BC, was the greatest of the fabled group of scholars at the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt; indeed he was arguably one of the most influential Classical scholars of all time. He worked on a wide range of texts, producing editions and commentaries that were crucial in guiding the future direction of scholarship; all that work is now lost in its original form, but much survives indirectly in the form of scholia (i.e. notes in the margins of manuscripts). The scholia in the tenth-century Iliad manuscript Venetus A are particularly rich in material drawn (ultimately, not directly) from Aristarchus, making his work on the Iliad more accessible to us than his work on other texts. Schironi's arguments are therefore based on a corpus of more than 4000 Iliad scholia, comprising all the ones attributed by Erbse¹ to Aristonicus (a scholar of the Augustan period who wrote a treatise on the reasons why Aristarchus marked particular lines with critical signs) and all others that explicitly mention Aristarchus' name. The privileging of Aristonicus seems surprising at first glance but is convincingly argued on the grounds that Aristonicus focussed exclusively on recording what Aristarchus said in his commentary, while Didymus and the other writers quoted in the scholia used other sources besides Aristarchus and/or sometimes did their own thinking. The corpus of scholia is not given as such in this book, but individual scholia are constantly quoted, translated, and referenced, so that ample evidence is provided for each of Schironi's claims; material from outside the corpus is also used where relevant.

Schironi's focus is on Aristarchus' methodology: how did he decide which readings to accept or reject, which lines to athetize (mark for deletion), and which features to praise or condemn? Her conclusion is that he started from three assumptions: that Homer was a flawless poet, that he was internally self-consistent, and that he was the sole author of both the Iliad and the Odyssey (pp. 736-7). Aristarchus also had four methodological rules: to read the text attentively, to make use of contextual information, to have a full knowledge of the Homeric poems, and to consider the Homeric poems as a self-sufficient microcosm (pp. 738-41). Schironi argues that everything Aristarchus said about Homer followed with relentless consistency from those assumptions and rules.

Of course, neither these assumptions nor these rules are explicitly stated as such in Aristarchus' surviving writings; they emerge from Schironi's meticulous examination of his editorial and critical choices and arguments, as preserved in the scholia to specific passages. The core of that examination, chapter 3, is organized around the canonical six parts of grammar, as laid out by Dionysius Thrax: reading aloud, interpretation of poetic tropes and figures, explanation of glossai (difficult words) and historiai (characters, customs, and places of the heroic world), discovery of etymology, calculation of analogy, and the judgement of poems. (The six parts of grammar do not ultimately have much relevance to the argument, but they form a good framework in which to organize the vast amount of material that needs to be presented.) This chapter 3, which at 454 pages makes up half the book, convincingly proves Schironi's main points and gives the reader much other useful and interesting information along the way. For example, we learn exactly what 'reading aloud' entailed in antiquity (determining the right vowel quantities, accents, and breathings as well as deciding where each word ended and the next began), that Aristarchus drew his standards for judging poetry from Aristotle, and that in the case of the Iliad 'judgement of poems' mainly meant deciding which lines were genuine and which not: the pre-eminence of Homer's poetry was so well established that there was no need to argue for it. We also get some impressive diagrams, such as one laying out Aristarchus' use of two-, four-, and six-part analogies (pp. 394-5), one showing the locations of different contingents in the Greek camp at Troy according to Aristarchus (p. 312), and one showing Aristarchus' explanation of Homer's organisation of the cosmos (p. 324).

Two chapters precede this core. Chapter 1 provides the necessary background on Aristarchus and his context as well as an excellent explanation of our evidence for Aristarchus and his work. Chapter 2 gives more depth on certain key points: the critical signs employed by Aristarchus and other Alexandrians (which, Schironi argues, are the same as those visible today in the Venetus A manuscript), the manuscript evidence for Aristarchus' work, and the role of paraphrase in ancient interpretation in general and Aristarchus' work in particular. Highlights of this chapter include a full list of Aristarchus' critical signs with their shapes and meanings (pp. 50-1), a picture of what an ancient edition and commentary on Iliad 2.109-124 would have looked like (p. 55), and the information that Aristarchus' famous injunction to 'clarify Homer from Homer' (Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν) is actually not found in the fragments of Aristarchus at all, but in Porphyry (p. 75).

There are also a final three chapters, which collect and synthesize information on certain over-arching questions. Chapter 4 concerns Aristarchus' agreements and disagreements with other scholars; despite external evidence suggesting that Aristarchus' main opponent was Crates of Mallos, there is little in the scholia to indicate that Aristarchus was even aware of Crates' views. The scholar with whom Aristarchus most often disagreed was Zenodotus, whom he mentions far more frequently than anyone else. But of course in a larger sense Aristarchus' views were more fundamentally opposed to those of Crates, who interpreted the Homeric poems allegorically, than to those of Zenodotus, who basically shared Aristarchus' goal of restoring Homer's original text.

Chapter 5, in many ways the most interesting part of this interesting book, summarizes Aristarchus' views on particular points. The first of these is Homer's language; here we learn that Aristarchus thought Homer must have been an Athenian because he used the dual number (p. 607). Of course, Homer's variety of Attic was not the same as that used by the Classical Athenian writers, because Homer was earlier: he 'spoke 'ancient Attic', which was very similar, if not identical, to Ionic' (p. 622). There is also a section on the Homeric Question: some ancient scholars believed that the Iliad and Odyssey had been composed by different people, but Aristarchus was convinced that the two poems had the same author. (The modern idea of orally-composed poems not written down at all by their 'authors' did not occur to ancient scholars.) In a fourth section we find that Aristarchus considered Homer to have presented the original version of any myths he mentioned; when post-Homeric poets used myths in versions different from those found in Homer, this was due to their mistakes in not paying close enough attention to what Homer said. Aristarchus applied this principle even to Hesiod, apparently never allowing for the possibility (now commonly accepted) that both Homer and later poets might have drawn on the same stock of orally-transmitted mythological material, each shaping and adapting that material to fit their own goals. A final section discusses Aristarchus' views of individual Homeric characters; like many ancient and medieval writers he had a more positive view of Agamemnon than do Homer's modern readers.

As these examples show, Schironi is refreshingly open about the respects in which Aristarchus' methodology and results were different from our own. Far from trying to find in Aristarchus a straightforward mirror of modern critical activity, she does not shy away from pointing out the wide gulf between his way of looking at myths and poetic tradition and our way (p. 706), nor from saying that by athetizing lines in which Homer apparently departed from Aristarchus' standards for poetry, 'Aristarchus was correcting the text in order to make it as his own Homer would have written it.' (p. 495) Nevertheless, she argues persuasively that his approach represented a huge milestone in the development of scholarship (p. 496). The sixth chapter, 'Conclusions', not only offers an excellent summary of Aristarchus' method as reconstructed by Schironi, but also a section entitled 'Some problems in Aristarchus' method' (pp. 756-8)—as well as one entitled 'Aristarchus' legacy' in which it is argued that despite his flaws, Aristarchus laid the foundations of the discipline of scholarship by 'adding rational principles and following them consistently' (p. 759).

The work concludes with a glossary of technical terms (short, owing to Schironi's restrained use of such terms, but nevertheless very useful in pinning down the precise meanings of words that are often used unclearly in both ancient and modern scholarship), a bibliography, and five very detailed indices totalling over 100 pages.

The book is very well written, lucid and at the same time elegant, with remarkably little jargon considering the subject matter. Nevertheless, some readers may have difficulty with 'Neoteroi', which refers to all poets later than Homer, including Hesiod and the fifth-century tragedians (e.g. p. 228); this is Aristarchus' usage of the term, and Schironi repeatedly reminds readers of its meaning in his work, but the unwary may still have a tendency to confuse it with the modern expression 'Neoteric poets'. Individual chapters and sections within chapters have their own conclusions sections, making it easy to understand where the argument is going, and between the table of contents, the frequent cross-references, and the indices the book is very easy to navigate. It does not really feel to the reader as long as it actually is.

The book is well proofread, with very few errors, and is in many ways well produced. Nevertheless it is unfortunate that the running headers include only the titles of chapters, not their numbers, while all cross-references are by chapter numbers: in order to follow up the cross-references readers need to refer to the table of contents, which (fortunately) is extremely detailed and helpful.

In short, this magnificent work has set a new standard against which all studies of Alexandrian scholarship will now be measured.

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Notes:

1.   Hartmut Erbse, Scholia graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Berlin 1969-88).

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Response: Avagliano on Giglio on Avagliano, Le origini di Pompei. Response to 2019.01.38

Response by Alessandra Avagliano, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Direzione Musei archeologici e storico-artistici, Ufficio Mostre - Musei Capitolini (alessandra.avagliano@comune.roma.it)

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La presente nota si rende necessaria per segnalare alcune gravi imprecisioni contenute nella recensione al volume "Alle origini di Pompei: la città tra il VI e il V secolo a.C." edita in Bryan Mawr Classical Review 2019.01.38.

Il principale difetto del volume è individuato nel mancato aggiornamento bibliografico, imperdonabile pecca che avrebbe «condotto l'Autrice a proporre un'interpretazione delle evidenze legata ad una visione tradizionale di questo periodo storico della città». Peccato che le lacune segnalate non siano realmente tali, come potrà facilmente verificare il lettore attento:

1. Il contributo a firma di M. Holappa, E.-M. Viitanen "Topographic Conditions in the Urban Plan of Pompeii: the Urban Landscape in 3D", in S. Ellis (Ed.), The Making of Pompeii. Studies in the History and Urban Development of an Ancient Town, JRA, Suppl. 85, 2011, pp. 169-189 è discusso a pagina 22 e note 31-32, oltre che riportato nella bibliografia finale. Finanche l'utile carta altimetrica elaborata dagli autori è riprodotta a pagina 19, fig. 12. Una rapida occhiata è sufficiente a riconoscere il modello DEM realizzato dal team finlandese, che del resto Marco Giglio conosce bene avendone pubblicato ampi stralci, reduce da un proficuo soggiorno di studi a Helsinki (M. Giglio, "Considerazioni sull'impianto urbanistico di Pompei", in Vesuviana, 8, 2016, pp. 11-48).

2. I contributi relativi agli scavi eseguiti a Cuma a partire dal 2007 sono stati tutt'altro che ignorati. Alle pagine 108-109 è sintetizzato lo stato delle conoscenze sull'urbanistica cumana con i riferimenti alle numerose relazioni di scavo, comprese quelle preliminari, relative ai saggi nell'area del Capitolium (Petacco, Rescigno 2007), del Foro (Greco 2009), delle fortificazioni (d'Agostino, Fratta, Malpede 2005; d'Agostino, D'Acunto 2008), della zona tra il Foro e le mura settentrionali (D'Acunto 2009). Si sono considerati, inoltre, le panoramiche d'insieme tracciate in Greco 2008 e Greco 2014.

Non entro nel merito di questioni urbanistiche, richiedendo la materia una precisione non adusa al recensore. Mi limito a segnalare un'integrazione all'apparato di note posto a corredo di M. Giglio, "Considerazioni sull'impianto urbanistico di Pompei", in Vesuviana, 8, 2016, pp. 11-48:
- A. Avagliano, Le origini di Pompei. La fase arcaica, Tesi di Dottorato, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Roma 2014;
- A. Avagliano, "Under the skin of Pompeii: the archaic city", Relazione nell'ambito del Convegno di Studi, Cityscaping and Bathing Culture in Central Italy, June 2-4 2016, Berlin, Topoi-Haus Dahlem, (incontro cui lo stesso M. Giglio ha preso parte come relatore e di cui non sono stati stampati Atti). Una citazione sarebbe stata doverosa, presentando il recensore come sue nuove personali acquisizioni alcune conclusioni del lavoro di dottorato, in seguito rielaborate nella mia monografia che quindi di "tradizionale" ha ben poco.

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David B. Hollander, Farmers and Agriculture in the Roman Economy. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. Pp. vii, 131. ISBN 9781138099883. $140.00.

Reviewed by Maëlys Blandenet, ENS de Lyon (maelys.blandenet@ens-lyon.fr)

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In continuation of his work on the Roman economy of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, in particular Money in the Late Roman Republic ¹, David Hollander pursues his study of monetization in Roman society, focusing this time on the rural world. His latest book deals with the economic behaviour and mentalities of Roman peasants in Italy between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. The book aims to analyse the relationship between Roman peasants and the economy, by studying the interactions between rural people and the market, exchanges of goods or services, situations of economic cooperation or competition, the question of the monetization of the Roman countryside and economic mentalities. According to David Hollander, peasants, even of modest social status, were far from being excluded from the monetarized economy. The author thus questions the concept of self-sufficiency, often used by scholars to describe the economic situation of Roman peasants, even though, as he rightly points out, self-sufficiency in textual sources is above all an ideal and a guideline rather than a description of a factual situation.

David Hollander's study is based primarily on textual sources, and in particular the Latin agronomists, but also takes into account some of the recent archaeological literature. The question of sources is addressed in the first chapter, which serves as an introduction to the book as a whole ("Problems and sources").

The second chapter ("Parameters of Roman agriculture") reviews the main characteristics of Italian agriculture, such as climate and types of production, underlining the importance of regional diversity. The thorny issue of the demography of the rural population is also addressed briefly: without revisiting the case or discussing the rural labour force question in detail, Hollander prefers to insist on the importance of population movements between town and country. The conclusion of the chapter, and more particularly that of the section on the variety of crops and livestock, underlines the importance of farmers' purchases, in order to refute the concept of self-sufficiency.

This argument is further developed in Chapter Three ("Buyers and borrowers: The rural demand for goods, services, and money"), where the author discusses the equipment and materials needed for farming. He notes an interesting and usually under-appreciated feature, namely that farmers' purchases were not always guided by the criterion of necessity and utility (which he demonstrates, in particular, on the basis of Varro, I.22.2, p. 40). From the same perspective, the last section of this chapter deals with non-agricultural expenses that likely led to an increased rural demand for money, in particular expenses related to health, religious rites and funerals.

The next chapter logically focuses on how Roman farmers obtained the necessary money ("Vendors and lenders: The rural supply of goods and services"). Hollander successively examines what he identifies as the four ways of acquiring money: the sale of products, the sale of other assets, working for others, moneylending. The chapter focuses most on the question of the profitability of different agricultural productions, to show in particular that most of the income was generated by livestock, and that cereal growing was proportionally very unprofitable.

Chapter 5 ("Farmers' markets, farmers' networks") then deals with the modalities of economic exchanges by distinguishing three types of transactions: financial transactions in the context of sales ("markets"), exchanges of goods and services ("reciprocity"), and government action ("redistribution"), in particular through frumentationes and land confiscations.

The last short chapter ("Farmers in Roman economic history") serves as a conclusion by taking up the question of self-sufficiency. Hollander proposes to replace this last concept with that of "degrees of market dependency" depending on the economic situation of the farmer, from the elite farmer to the landless farmer. The reconstruction of these degrees of dependence remains highly speculative, but Hollander's objective here is to point out that, although the idea of being economically independent has always been attractive, in terms of economic behaviour the farmers who could afford it did not particularly seek to be independent of the market. Briefly retracing the economic history of agriculture between the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, Hollander considers that the main changes affecting the situation of Italian agriculture took place later, from the end of the 2nd century AD.

The index is preceded by a bibliography that includes all the major works of economic history relating to the Italian peninsula, as well as some archaeological studies devoted more narrowly to a specific Italian product or region.² It may be noted, however, that this bibliography leaves aside the most recent work on the monetization of the countryside in other regions such as Gaul.³ Similarly, literary and ideological studies of the Latin agronomic corpus are almost absent, even though some of them address the question of the economic mentality of the authors who wrote these agricultural treaties.⁴

Overall, David Hollander's book deals with a question of economic history in a synthetic form by focusing on all the material aspects of the Roman peasant's life, a subject that is both exciting and disappointing by its very nature. Indeed, thinking about the modalities of the economic and social relations of Roman peasants, even though they are rarely discussed in our sources, is a stimulating topic for researchers. The downside is that scholars have to rely on very limited sources, reducing the analysis to general assumptions, which is often the case here. Hollander's study is limited by the lack of analysis of specific cases, comparisons with other geographical areas, lexical studies (such as on the vocabulary for work and labour) or engagement with anthropological material (on the issue of interpersonal relations and peasant solidarity, for instance). On the other hand, the book is synthetic and easy to read. It has almost no typos (one can be found in the quotation in French from Paul Veyne on p. 3, where for "practiquée" one should read "pratiquée"). Finally, the merit of this book is to propose a global vision, over a large period of time, of the economic behaviour of these almost "mute" people that the Roman peasants are for us today.

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Notes:

1.   David B. Hollander, Money in the Late Roman Republic. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 29. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Reviewed by Fleur Kemmers (BMCR 2008.01.04
2.   Certainly the studies carried out by Catherine Virlouvet or Federico De Romanis, particularly concerning the supply of Rome, could also be useful here. E.g. B. Marin, C. Virlouvet (ed.), Nourrir les cités de Méditerranée. Antiquité-Temps modernes, Maisonneuve & Larose, Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l'homme, Paris, 2004.
3.   Much of this work was carried out as part of the European Rurland project, led by Michel Reddé: https://rurland.hypotheses.org. See for example Stéphane Martin (ed.), Monnaies et monétarisation dans les campagnes de la Gaule du Nord et de l'Est, de l'âge du Fer à l'Antiquité tardive, Bordeaux, Ausonius éditions, 2016.
4.   E.g. E. Noè, Il progetto di Columella : profilo sociale, economico, culturale, Como, New Press, 2002 ; S. Diederich, Römische Agrarhandbücher zwischen Fachwissenschaft, Literatur und Ideologie, Berlin; New York, Walter de Gruyter, 2007.

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Philip Rance, Nicholas Sekunda (ed.), Greek Taktika: Ancient Military Writing and its Heritage. Proceedings of the International Conference on Greek Taktika held at the University of Toruń, 7-11 April 2005. Gdańsk: Akanthina, 2017. Pp. 300. ISBN 9788375312423. £40,00 (pb).

Reviewed by Matthew A. Sears, University of New Brunswick (matthew.sears@unb.ca)

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

This volume offers a selection of updated papers originally presented at a conference on Greek taktika held in Poland nearly a decade and a half ago. That conference, along with another held in Winnipeg, Manitoba in late 2016, indicates that ancient military manuals are enjoying something of a resurgence in scholarly interest. And rightly so, since aside from representing another important source for the ancient world, these tactical texts prompt us to think about issues such as genre, textual transmission, and reception, well beyond the nuts and bolts of warfare. Most of the chapters in the volume under review treat very specific questions about rather esoteric texts, and, as such, will appeal only to specialists. That said, a couple of the entries provide enough of a survey to serve as a starting-point for those who are new to this scholarly subfield.

After a long and comprehensive introduction by Rance (over fifty pages, with a full bibliography), the editors conceive of the volume as loosely consisting of six sections. The first section deals with the beginning of Greek technical military thought and how it was taught, particularly as evinced by the work of Aeneas Tacticus. Section two treats the tradition of the specialized tactical handbook which emerged during the Hellenistic period and influenced many subsequent eras, including the Roman imperial period and even Arabic tactical writers. Third, two entries discuss Polyaenus as a source for two historical problems, respectively the creation of the Hellenistic monarchy and a stratagem attributed to Alexander. Section four seeks to add to our knowledge of military equipment by drawing on tactical writings. The fifth section addresses the Roman reception and adaptation of Greek tactical writing by considering historical context and the limits of genre. Finally, section six considers the reception of ancient tactical writing in early modern Europe.

Given that only loose themes can be detected woven throughout this book, I recommend it primarily for specialists interested in one or more of the specific issues addressed by particular chapters. This volume is not a comprehensive treatment of ancient tactical writing, nor does it claim to be. I, however, do want to single out two contributions, both by Philip Rance, that should appeal to a broader audience, and deserve a wide readership among students of Classical antiquity. The first is Rance's lengthy introduction to the volume, which represents a considerable percentage of the volume's overall length. Far more than just an introduction to the chapters that follow, Rance provides a good overview of the state of the field in terms of ancient military writing. He offers no less than a brief history of scholarship concerning ancient military writers, beginning with a provocative quote from Friedrich Haase, the first modern scholar of ancient tactical writing, and continuing on to parse various questions, such as genre, context, and reception, that define current scholarly efforts. Rance's bibliography alone will be an essential resource.

Rance's other chapter, after his introduction the second longest contribution to the volume, on its surface discusses a far narrower topic, namely how the early Byzantine tactical treatise of Maurice can shed light on the reception of Aelian and Arrian in late antiquity. Students of Maurice's work will need to read this contribution, but far more scholars than that will benefit from Rance's wide-ranging discussion of genre and reception, using Maurice as a case study. For example, Rance explores to what extent we can glean any genuine historical information from a text that so self-consciously and artificially emulates earlier works in terms of style and vocabulary, and the extent to which genuine traces of earlier authors can be found in Maurice, rather than simply generic similarities. Arguing that a section of Maurice's treatise was originally a stand-alone document largely derived from Arrian's Acies contra Alanos, Rance concludes that "[t]he composition of 12.A.7 was not motivated by slavish conceptual dependence or considerations of literary mimesis, but entailed a selective critical adaptation of Arrian's text where relevant and applicable to late antique scenarios, adding contemporary and explanatory detail, and with an overriding concern for practical utility" (249). Anyone interested in reception studies would benefit from such a discussion.

The volume would have been more useful with indices and list of contributors, and perhaps detailed guides to further reading. Those who desire a systematic treatment of ancient tactical writing, which would be a welcome addition to scholarly literature, will need to wait. The editors and contributors, though, are to be congratulated for taking on a relatively neglected area of study.

Authors and titles

Philip Rance, "Introduction"
Burkhard Meißner, "Early Greek Strategic and Tactical Teaching and Literature"
Hans Michael Schellenberg, "Reflections on the Military Views of the 'Military Writer' Aeneas Tacticus"
Bogdan Burliga, "Tactical Issues in Aeneas 'Tacticus'"
Alexander Nefedkin, "The Classification of Greco-Macedonian Cavalry in Ancient Taktika and in Modern Literature"
Nicholas Sekunda, "Cavalry Organisation in the Taktika: the Tarantinarchia"
Bogdan Burliga, "Asclepiodotus' τοῖς γε σώμασιν ἐπιβρίθοντες (Taktika 5.2) and Polybius' τῷ τοῦ σώματος βάρει (18.30.1-4)"
Hans Michael Schellenberg, "A Short Bibliographical Note on the Arabic Translation of Aelian's Tactica Theoria"
Jacek Rzepka, "Polyaenus and the Creation of the Hellenistic Monarchy"
Sławomir Sprawski, "Alexander at Tempe: Polyaenus, Strategemata 4.3.23"
Pierre O. Juhel, "The Rank Insignia of the Officers of the Macedonian Phalanx: the Lessons of Iconography and an Indirect Reference in Vegetius"
Radosław A. Gawroński, "The Javelins used by the Roman Cavalry of the Early Principate in Archaeological Contexts and Written Sources"
Wojciech Brillowski, "The Principles of ars tactica: Roman Military Theory and Practice in Arrian's Acies contra Alanos"
Philip Rance, "Maurice's Strategicon and 'the Ancients': the Late Antique Reception of Aelian and Arrian"
Keith Roberts, "The Practical Use of Classical Texts for Modern War in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries"
Richard Brzezinski, "The Influence of Classical Military Texts in Early Modern Poland: a Survey"
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