Bryn Mawr Classical Review

C. Jacob Butera, Matthew A. Sears, Battles and Battlefields of Ancient Greece. A Guide to their History, Topography and Archaeology. London: Pen & Sword, 2019. Pp. 385. ISBN 9781783831869. £24.00.

Reviewed by Emil Nankov, National Archaeological Institute with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (ehn2@cornell.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

At first glance the book under review may appear to be just another scholarly celebration of the ancient historiography of Greek and Roman warfare, supplemented by a healthy dose of modern topographic study, eruditely written by two academically-trained classicists and ancient historians.¹ That impression, however, does not do this book justice. In reality, the work offers fresh perspectives on the materiality of warfare by focusing on the topography of ancient battles — that is, on the battlefields themselves. Importantly, it also values and promotes personal interaction with ancient landscapes. The authors explicitly state in the Preface and Acknowledgments that "this is a book designed for the traveler to Greece" (p. vii), and one that encourages readers to visit the places themselves. Framing itself within the genre of practical travel guides, the book diverges significantly from any compendium of ancient battles arranged in chronological order.

The book's structure is well suited to fulfilling the aims stated at the outset. Each chapter is devoted to a particular battle, featuring short descriptions of the site, historical outlines of battles, topographical notes on battle sites, and informative lists of ancient and modern sources at the end. For obvious reasons the authors' narratives favor land battles (18 are described) as opposed to sea battles (only four: Salamis, Artemisium, Naupactus and Actium), which contributes to the decision to arrange the 22 battles first by region and then by date. ² The introductory chapter "Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare" (pp. ix-xxiv) provides basic historical background without unnecessary details, which makes the battle chapters easier to follow. In effect, the scope of the book inevitably directs the modern traveler to close encounters with the ultimate expression of Greek hoplite warfare: the pitched battle. A heavy emphasis falls on the achievements of the Greek phalanx of the Classical period in the context of the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, the Corinthian War, the Theban-Spartan War, and the clash with Philip II of Macedon, while the arrival of the Roman legions in Greece is examined through six decisive battles (Cynoscephale, Pydna, Chaeronea [86 BCE], Pharsalus, Philippi and Actium).

Butera and Sears rely primarily on Greek and Roman historiographical tradition for their brilliant descriptions, seamlessly intertwined with personal autopsy. The backbone of battle narratives is built on information from Greek and Roman authors, while only one inscription is cited as a primary source, the so-called 'Themistocles Decree' (p. 32).³ The text is aided beautifully by the 47 color photographs taken by the authors themselves during their visits to the battle sites. Thus they have followed closely the topography-based approach to the study of ancient warfare utilized by military historians like Johannes Kromayer and W. Kendrick Pritchett. For secondary sources it is obvious that the authors lean heavily on scholarship published in English, whereas the handful of cited titles in Greek, French, German and Italian concern exclusively the Roman expansion in Greece, e.g. the battles of Cynoscephalae, Pydna, Pharsalus, Philippi and Actium (pp. 220, 243, 262-263, 281-282, 378-379).

The graphic representation of battle tactics and troop movements, drawn attractively upon satellite photos from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), will be of immense help for any traveler trying to make sense of a battle site on the field. The result is well worth the effort on the part of the authors who, quite understandably, have assigned to these illustrations a prominent position in each chapter.⁴ These visual aids of the narrative can be further appreciated when one realizes that only in five cases — the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Leuktra and Chaeronea (in both 338 BCE and 86 BCE) — do we possess the luxury of having prominent topographical features like burial mounds and trophies erected in the aftermath, which can serve as more reliable markers when positioning oneself within an ancient battlefield. In most cases, travelers are at the authors' mercy, having to rely on battle site descriptions, color photographs and GPS coordinates in the attempt to get their bearings in the countryside.

The authors should be praised for the idea to include archaeology in the subtitle of their book. On at least a few occasions, such as the battles of Amphipolis (pp. 191-199), Chaeronea (338 and 86 BCE [pp. 173-177]) and Actium (pp. 374-377), one comes across substantial references to archaeological evidence in support of the history-laden narratives. The authors are not to blame for this imbalance. Battlefield archaeology as such is not practiced in Greece, and the exceptional case of the capture of Olynthus by Philip II of Macedon in 348 BCE, on the basis of which John W. I. Lee developed the concept of ancient urban combat⁵, has to do with the aftermath of city sieges, not pitched battles. Nevertheless, archaeology, unlike history, brings out the physicality of ancient warfare before the eyes of a modern visitor, regardless of whether one is looking at shattered bones (Chaeronea, 338 BCE) or a victory trophy carrying original writing from the time of the battle (Chaeronea, 86 BCE). Further opportunities, cited by Butera and Sears, for acquiring fresh insights into the study of ancient battlefields are the geomorphological and photogrammetric prospections carried out in the vicinity of Pydna (pp. 240-241) and Philippi. Albeit few in number, and in the case of Philippi with inconclusive results (p. 282), such approaches are likely to enrich scholarly discourses about decisive battles that are traditionally dominated by written sources and topographic considerations. In several cases the archaeological bent of the historical narratives could have been stronger if more artifactual evidence was drawn into discussion.⁶

Apart from the introductory chapter, where six illustrations have been reproduced, throughout the book photographs of archaeological artifacts are scarce. The three exceptions include the Spartan hoplite shield captured by the Athenians during the battle of Pylos, now on display at the Agora Museum in Athens; the so-called "Ossuary of Brasidas" at the Archaeological Museum in Amphipolis; and the sculptural reliefs of the Aemilius Paullus Monument at Delphi (pp. 197-198, 238, 301, 313).⁷ This fact may be attributed both to the authors' aim to stay more focused on experiencing topography as opposed to examining monuments or militaria in museums and to a restriction on the part of the publisher intended to reduce production costs.

The publisher has done an excellent job with the production of the book. Maps, satellite photos and photographs are of superb quality, which contributes greatly to its usefulness. The editing is perfect, and so is the typography. The guide is a must for military buffs and eager travelers, who should make it a necessary part of their travel kit when roaming the battlefields of ancient Greece, although the hard binding and the high-quality paper on which the book is printed make it a bit heavy to carry around. Because of its accessible writing style and a short index at the end, the guide will be equally useful for undergraduates, teachers and the general public. The annotated citations of ancient texts and modern studies accompanying each chapter is suitable for acquiring deeper knowledge, as well as for undertaking scholarly pursuits in the field of ancient warfare.

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Notes:

1.   The steady flow of books on ancient battles supported by the Pen & Sword Military demonstrates their continuing interest in Greek and Roman warfare. E.g. Pietrykowski, J. Great Battles of the Hellenistic World. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books (2012); Taylor, D. Roman Republic at War: A Compendium of Roman Battles from 498 to 31 BC. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military (2017).
2.   On the back of the book jacket it is stated incorrectly that the book "covers 20 battles".
3.   Perhaps an oversight has caused the omission of a full citation of the book (cited simply as ML 23) where the inscription has been edited: R. Meiggs and D. M. Lewis (eds.) A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC. Oxford University Press (1969; revised edition 1988).
4.   One assumes that all graphic renditions superimposed on the satellite imagery have been prepared by the authors, since nowhere in the book is there an explicit statement to the contrary.
5.   Lee, J. W. I. "Urban Combat at Olynthus, 348 BC". In: Ph. Freeman and A. Pollard (eds.) Fields of Conflict: Progress and Prospect in Battlefield Archaeology (BAR International Series 958). Oxford: Archaeopress (2001), 11-22. Lee, J. W. I. "Urban Warfare in the Classical Greek world". In: Hanson, V. (ed.) Makers of Ancient Strategy. Princeton University Press (2010), 138-157.
6.   For example, the work of Goette, H. R. and Weber, T. M. Marathon. Siedlungskammer und Schlachtfeld - Sommerfrische und Olympische Wettkampfstätte Verlag Philipp von Zabern (2004), 78-94, contains a useful presentation of data devoted to burial of the dead and the commemoration of the battle acquired through archaeological excavations at Marathon. Similarly, Kosmidou, E. and Malamidou, D. "Arms and Armour from Amphipolis, Northern Greece. Plotting the Military Life of an Ancient City." Anodos. Studies of the Ancient World 4-5/2004-2005, Trnava (2006), 133-147 has further bearings on the archaeology of battles near Amphipolis. Völling, Th. "Römische Militaría in Griechenland: ein Überblick." In: M. Feugère (ed.) L'équipement militaire et l'armement de la République. Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 8 (1997) 91-103 presents valuable data on the military equipment of Roman legions during the Late Republic found on various sites and sanctuaries. Occasional reference to the book by Holger Baitinger Waffenweihungen in griechischen Heiligtümern. Monographien des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums 94 Mainz (2011) may have augmented the traveler's experience of a battle site by directing their attention to military booty, examples of which can be seen in Greek museums.
7.   Curiously, the color reproduction of the fallen warrior from the East pediment of the Late Archaic temple of Aphaia, featured prominently on the book jacket, is uncredited.

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Matthew A. Sears, Understanding Greek Warfare. Understanding the ancient world. London; New York: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 140. ISBN 9781138288607. $150.00.

Reviewed by Clemens Koehn, University of New England (ckoehn2@une.edu.au)

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Publisher's Preview

Ancient military history remains a booming area of Classical Studies. In the last decade, major collective works have been published.¹ While these publications provide wide-ranging overviews of various periods and aspects of ancient warfare, their design (and price) is better suited for specialist scholars than for undergraduates. We are therefore grateful to the publishers for including a volume dedicated to ancient Greek warfare in their Understanding the Ancient World series of introductory textbooks; as such, it is the first book on this topic especially designed for tertiary teaching purposes.

The book follows the general chronology of Greek history. The first chapter deals with Bronze Age and Homeric warfare. Sears discusses aspects of warfare in the second Millennium BCE, such as the deployment of chariots and massed infantry. He then engages with the complex scholarship on the nature of Homeric battle, including discussion of the extent to which massed phalanx-style infantry formations were already in use, or alternatively, whether the battle order was more fluid and open compared to later developments. While generally providing a good account, he does so in a somewhat distorted manner when he argues that "scholarly boxes [are] too neat and tidy" (p. 19). No scholars involved in the discussion would claim that pitched battles were the only form of Homeric warfare, as Sears implies. The remainder of the chapter examines the imitation and perception of Homeric warfare by later generations of Greeks. Sears concludes the chapter with a discussion of an Homeric duel; here, his statement that the combined throwing and thrusting of spears in Homer is "a form of combat unattested in other Greek sources" (p. 26) is rather contestable, as the comparison of textual and pictorial sources from the Archaic period proves.²

The second chapter deals with warfare in Archaic times up to the Persian wars. Sears discusses the rise of the phalanx, the vexed question of the 'Hoplite revolution', the various interpretations of othismos (literal vs. figurative), etc. In the end, he tends to favour the so-called 'orthodox' view, in which there is not much development of the phalanx during the Archaic and Classical period. Unfortunately, he does not cite major recent contributions such as Adam Schwartz' Reinstating the Hoplite (an orthodox work), or Chris Matthew's Storm of Spears.³ Sears cursorily mentions his own experiments with hoplite equipment (p. 37), which would have made it all the more appropriate to give the reader his opinion of Matthew's results. Sears continues this chapter by discussing the political implications of the 'Hoplite revolution' and by analysing two case studies of hoplite battles: Thermopylae in 480 BCE and Nemea in 394 BCE. A short discussion of the pictorial representation of the hoplite, his image strictu sensu, concludes this chapter.

In compliance with his chronological approach, Sears then discusses naval warfare, since during the Persian wars the navy became Athens' major instrument of waging war. This chapter focuses exclusively on Athenian naval developments in the 5^th century, analysing Salamis in 480 BCE and Naupactus in 429 BCE as case studies for sea battles. Sears does not discuss any later naval history, the important developments of the late Classical and Hellenistic periods are ignored. While he generally provides a solid overview of naval matters in the 5^th century, it is rather inappropriate in this context not to find any mention of significant contributions such as H.T. Wallinga's study of the naval aspects of Xerxes' campaign, or Boris Rankov's final report on the reconstructed Olympias.⁴ Furthermore, Sears' discussion of Aeschylus' presentation of the Persian defeat at Salamis is rather one-sided. Of course, there is a stream of scholarship that interprets the Persians as blatant celebration of Greek triumphalism; but at the same time, there are also many scholars who stress the highly empathetic aspects of this play, given that it basically consists of numerous scenes of collective and personal mourning and grief after the loss of so many lives.⁵ In an introductory textbook, but not only there, one has to follow the principle of audiatur et altera pars, otherwise one's own point of view is not contextualised.

In the fourth chapter, under the rather misleading title 'Total War', Sears discusses military developments during the Peloponnesian war. Given its importance as a trigger for many changes, the decision to dedicate a full chapter to this major conflict is absolutely justified. Sears first discusses the implications of having an author of the status of Thucydides as the main source for the war. Sears then gives a lengthy outline of the war as such, and then continues to discuss military developments such as siege warfare and the role of light-armed infantry. The chapter concludes with an interesting discussion of the new generation of military leaders that the war generated, such as Brasidas and Alcibiades, and an overview of the war as portrayed in contemporaneous Athenian dramatic productions. The latter is quite topical, but one has to be cautious not to make too many connections between actual events and the dramatic staging, at least with regard to tragedy. That Euripides' Trojan Women is a direct answer to the Athenian atrocities at Melos, is rather unlikely on the basis of the chronology (and, in addition, one should not forget that it is part of a trilogy on the Trojan War, so the mythological context is more complex).⁶ It is strange that in this chapter, Sears does not follow his usual structural paradigm by including a section dedicated to providing close-up case studies of battles. For instance, the major battles of Delium in 424 BCE and Mantineia in 418 BCE are surprisingly not reviewed.

The fifth chapter covers the fourth century until the rise of Macedon. Sears discusses to what extent the phalanx formed from a civic militia still mattered, or whether mercenaries now dominated warfare. An analysis of the battles of Lechaeum in 390 BCE and Mantineia in 362 BCE concludes this chapter. Again, although Sears provides a wide-ranging overview of various developments, he fails to analyse the growing importance of cavalry; standard works such as the monographs of I.G. Spence and R.E. Gaebel are nowhere referenced.⁷ His brief discussion of the development of artillery under Dionysios I in Syracuse in the 390s, does not consider the scholarly debate as to whether Dionysios oversaw the invention of artillery per se or of torsion artillery in particular. Here, Sears seems to follow the outdated hypotheses of Marsden and neglects to consider the views of more contemporary scholars.⁸ Sears has also overlooked the fact that Andreas Konecny's article on the Lechaeum battle has been translated into English and published in an influential essay collection on peltasts.⁹

The sixth chapter is dedicated to the rise of Macedon under Philip and Alexander's conquest of Persia. Sears adumbrates the sources, and then focuses on Philip's military reforms and Alexander's subsequent campaigns. He selects the siege of Tyre in 332 BCE, and the battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE, for in-depth analysis. He concludes the chapter with a brief evaluation of other scholars' assessments of Alexander's military genius. Sears bases his discussion of Philip's reforms on Minor Markle's summa on Macedonian arms and armament, but fails to refer to Markle's major thesis, that the army had been fully equipped with the new sarissa only under Alexander and that Macedonian phalangites still used a variety of conventional weaponry. The vast literature on the precise length and use of the sarissa since the publication of Markle's work is nowhere mentioned. ¹⁰

The last chapter covers Hellenistic warfare. Sears initially discusses the polis level, and then examines the new large kingdoms and their armies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Polybius' famous comparison between phalanx and legion, and two case studies, this time not on battles but on leaders: Pyrrhus and Hannibal. The inclusion of the latter is fully justified, since the Carthaginian army as well as its leaders clearly fought in a Hellenistic manner. Sears does not discuss the late attempts by Seleucids and Ptolemies to adjust to the Roman manipular system.¹¹ Whether the cavalry really "fell by the wayside, replaced by the reemergence of the phalanx as the be-all-and-end-all of Hellenistic warfare" (p. 181), is rather contestable. The decision in Hellenistic battles was still primarily sought through the cavalry on the wings, but without defeating the phalanx, the battle could not be won (as Raphia in 217 BCE illustrates)

Sears' book is written in a casual and sometimes informal style, and it therefore will certainly appeal to undergraduates. However, despite its ostensible comprehensive coverage, there is often a conspicuous absence of scholarly debate. Sears provides his own translations of sources, but they are arguably not accurate on several occasions.¹² Sears makes the undergraduates aware that important scholarly work exists in other languages besides English; but his repeatedly used formulation "though in German/French, this is an important book" sounds rather odd. This being said, Sears' book offers a detailed presentation of the vast and difficult topic. As regards its suitability as a textbook for educational purposes at the tertiary level, it will have significant utility.

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Notes:

1.   Including the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (2007), and the Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World (2013).
2.   Eg Call. 1 West; Tyrt. 11 West; the famous Chigi vase, hardly properly analysed by Sears, and other depictions of warriors using spears fitted with throwing loops for both throwing and thrusting. On p. 42, Sears cites Callinus and Tyrtaeus but assumes that the warriors there are operating both with javelins and thrusting spears. However, the mode of fighting is the same as in Homer, the formulation in Call. 1.5: καί τις ἀποθνήσκων ὕστατ᾿ ἀκοντισάτω refers to a spear as well as a javelin, as the formulation in Tyrt. 11.25: δεξιτερῇ δ᾿ ἐν χειρὶ τινασσέτω ὄβριμον ἔγχος can clearly refer to movements before throwing the spear; this is exactly the same vocabulary as in Homer. For a more detailed analysis of this hybrid mode of fighting see now C. Koehn, In Speergewittern. Zur Semantik von "Fernkampf" und "Nahkampf" in der griechischen Archaik, in Mnemon 18 (2018), pp. 46-70.
3.   A. Schwartz, Reinstating the Hoplite. Arms, Armour and Phalanx Fighting in Archaic and Classical Greece, (Stuttgart 2009); C. Matthew, A Storm of Spears. Understanding the Greek Hoplite in Action, (Philadelphia 2012); one could have mentioned also F. Echeverría Rey, "Hoplite and Phalanx in Archaic and Classical Greece: A Reassessment", in Classical Philology 107 (2012), pp. 291-318.
4.   H.T. Wallinga, Xerxes' Greek Adventure. The Naval Perspective, (Leiden 2005); B. Rankov, Trimreme Olympias. The Final Report, (Oxford 2012).
5.   See e.g. the discussion in: A. Favorini, "History, Collective Memory, and Aeschylus' Persians", in Theatre Journal 55 (2003), pp 99–111.
6.   See now D. Kovacz, Euripides: Troades, (Oxford 2018), pp. 8-15.
7.   I.G. Spence, The Cavalry of Classical Greece. A Social and Military History, (Oxford 1993); R.E. Gaebel, Cavalry Operations in the Greek World, (Norman 2002).
8.   Cf. P. Kingsley, "Artillery and Prophecy: Sicily in the Reign of Dionysius I", in Prometheus 21 (1995), pp. 15-23; H.M. Schellenberg, "Diodor von Sizilien 14,42,1 und die Erfindung der Artillerie im Mittelmeeraum", in Frankfurter Elektronische Rundschau zur Altertumskunde 3 (2006), pp. 14-23; D. Campbell, "Ancient Catapults. Some Hypotheses Reexamined", in Hesperia 80 (2011), pp. 677-700.
9.   N.V. Sekunda-B. Burlinga (eds.), Iphicrates, Peltasts and Lechaeum, (Gdansk 2014).
10.   See as a more recent example C. Matthew, "The Length of the Sarissa", in Antichthon 46 (2012), pp. 79-100.
11.   N. Sekunda, Hellenistic Infantry Reform in 160s BC, (Lodz 2001).
12.   Some examples: p. 52: Hdt. 7.211: "as soon as the barbarians had overtaken them" – it means rather "as soon as the barbarians had reached them" (the Spartans could hardly turn around if already been overtaken); p. 107: Thuc. 6.15.4: "This state of affairs went a long way towards ruining the city" – it must rather be "They (sc. the Athenians) ruined the city in a short time" (this refers to the time after the expulsion of Alcibiades in 406 BCE); p. 130: Xen. Hell. 6.4.28: "He (sc. Jason) was the greatest man of his time and not to be despised by anyone" – the sense is certainly more nuanced: "He was the greatest of his time in that regard that he was not easily despised by anyone."

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Christian H. Bull, The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 186. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xvi, 532. ISBN 9789004370814. €164,00.

Reviewed by Korshi Dosoo, Würzburg​ (korshi.dosoo@gmail.com)

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Preview

The Corpus Hermeticum (CH) must represent one of the most complex textual phenomena of the Roman period, and as a collection of pseudonymous works, the reconstruction of its context of production, circulation and use poses considerable problems for historians of religion. Christian Bull's monograph, a revised version of his 2014 doctoral thesis, represents one of the most successful attempts to come to grips with these problems. Ambitious in its scope, it aims not only to understand the ritual 'Way of Hermes', but also the lived reality behind the texts. In these goals the author draws considerably upon other recent scholars, notably Garth Fowden, David Frankfurter, and Jacco Dieleman, whose extensive use of the Greek and Demotic magical papyri allowed them to argue that the Hermetica should be seen as originating from the same linguistically and culturally diverse priestly milieux as these texts.¹ But while these authors may have left us with a commonly-held consensus on these questions, they did not, as Bull notes, provide a fully argued form of the hypothesis, a task that he sets out to perform.

The monograph begins with a helpful presentation of the status quaestionis of hermetic studies, summarising past research and major problems before ending with a helpful theoretical discussion of the role of Hermes within the texts, understood through the theoretical lens of cultural memory. The remainder of the book is divided into three main parts, the first of which, Who is Hermes Trismegistus? introduces more fully the central protagonist of the Hermetica. This section begins with an investigation into the origin of his title "Thrice Greatest" in Egyptian and Greek-language sources, and it continues with a survey of early discussions of Hermes-Thoth in Greek literary texts. This search for a prehistory of the Hermetica is followed by one of the monograph's boldest sections, an exploration of the writings of the Egyptian priest and Greek author Manetho. Bull's argument, too rich to resume in full here, makes the case for the authenticity of the letter of Manetho to Ptolemy II Philadelphus preserved by George Syncellus, suggesting it to be the introduction to Manetho's work on Egyptian history usually known as the Aigyptiaka. This work's ultimate goal, he argues, was to demonstrate that the beginning of Ptolemy III's reign marked a new Sothic cycle, and hence a new golden age.

The importance of this work for the Hermetica lies in the fact that it refers to a succession of figures named Hermes, the latest of whom, Hermes Trismegistos, is associated with familiar later Hermetic topoi such as the recovery and transmission of primeval wisdom. Indeed, the letter seems to attest to the existence of Greek-language texts attributed to Hermes-Thoth as early as the reign of Ptolemy III. Bull's argument here goes well beyond the sphere of religion, linking the writing and circulation of these 'Proto-Hermetica' to the production of Ptolemaic, and later Roman, political propaganda.

This leads into a discussion of the theory of kingship, already present in Manetho, but more fully expressed in the Hermetic tractates proper (principally SH XXIII, the Korē Kosmou), which makes the case for the divine origin of royal souls. Traces of this doctrine can be found in Hellenistic and Roman astrological material more broadly, suggesting that the "proto-Hermetic" layer may be taken to include the fragmentarily-attested but highly influential Hellenistic authors Nechepsos and Petosiris, legendary Egyptian king and priest respectively. Again, the intricacy of the argument prevents a full summary, but the cosmology implied by this doctrine—centred on kings, and valorising various categories of ritual experts—implies for Bull an origin in priestly milieux whose goal was the legitimation of pharaonic kingship and their own authority.

The second part, What is the Way of Hermes? reconstructs the cursus followed by an initiate of Hermetism using the evidence of the philosophical Hermetica. While the phrase "Way of Hermes" does not, in fact, appear in the Hermetica, but we do find comparable discussions of a "Way of Immortality", and the mention of an order (suntaxis) in CH XVI and of various different categories of discourses (genikoi, diexodikoi) in the Coptic Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth (Disc.8–9) demonstrate that the authors of these texts did imagine them as following a sequence.

Bull's principal innovation in this section is in his reconciliation of the 'monistic' and 'dualistic' tendencies of the different tractates. While previous authors proposed multiple schools of Hermetism, or a cursus that moved from a world-affirming monism for initiates to a world-denying dualism for the initiated, Bull proposes a movement in the other direction, from dualism to monism. The initial stages ("conversion", "knowing oneself", "becoming a stranger to the world") consist in a recognition of the need to separate oneself from the Way of Death followed by the masses, and instruction in the nature of humanity and the cosmos, leading to a recognition that goodness exists only in the divine. This separation sets the stage for a ritual of rebirth represented in CH XIII. Despite the challenges of reconstructing a ritual from an idealised mythic representation, Bull convincingly suggests a real ritual context through linguistic parallels to the magical papyri. This assimilation of the initiate to God effected by the ritual now reveals the divine origin of the cosmos, resulting in the monism of the later tractates. The final stage, "Heavenly Ascent", is reconstructed based on Disc.8–9, and consists of a guided ascent to the eighth hypercosmic sphere, where the Hermetist hymns the ineffable ninth sphere, gaining a preview and guarantee of his blessed afterlife. Again, this section is informed by a careful attention to the ritual context, noting again the parallels to the magical papyri in the chanting of vowels and the idea of recording the ritual on a temple stela protected by curses.

The third part of the monograph, Who were the Hermetists? turns to the question of the social context of the authors and users of the Hermetica. This section draws most heavily on the often-underutilised technical Hermetica, with Bull stressing the insufficiency of distinct modern categories such as philosophy, 'magic', and the mysteries. The author follows earlier studies in pointing out references to communal activities such as the singing of hymns and the sharing of meals, to which he adds the observation that both strands of Hermetica presuppose an interest in astrological contemplation and calculation. This introduction is followed by an extended reconstruction of the relationship between the Egyptian priesthood, the Hermetica, and the magical papyri, delving more fully into seams already identified by Fowden and Frankfurter. In particular, this section uses the archive often known as the Theban Magical Library (here the 'Thebes Cache') to demonstrate the clear parallels between the Hermetica and magical texts, and demonstrate the implication of priests in both. The key text used here is the so-called Mithras Liturgy of PGM IV.475-829, already recognised by Fowden as parallel to the Hermetic ascent ritual. This section integrates the story of Thessalos, the Greek doctor who visited Thebes to seek a magical revelation, as a prototype of the exchange between a Hellenic seeker of knowledge and the Egyptian priesthood that might lie behind the Hermetica.

The final part of this section discusses the distinctive contribution of Egyptian priests to the Hermetica in more theoretical terms, using Frankfurter's idea of the appropriation by the priesthood of the Hellenic stereotype of the oriental sage, nuanced by Richard Gordon's argument that this development arose in part from the priests' own sense of their vocation. ² As with the discussion of Thessalos, this section uses material found in similar discussions of religious interculturality in Roman Egypt—Chaeremon's idealised description of the priesthood, the apocalypticism of the Asclepius in the context of the Egyptian Chaosbeschreibung—but Bull succeeds in finding interesting new perspectives; once again he innovatively demonstrates the relationship between the Hermetica and politics, arguing the "impious new law" mentioned by the Asclepius to be the decree of 198/199 CE which outlawed traditional Egyptian divinatory practices.

In his conclusion, Bull returns, albeit cautiously and with careful grounding, to Richard Reitzenstein's idea of the origin of the Hermetica in a small community of Hellenes interested in both Egyptian wisdom and Greek philosophy, led by Egyptian priests, perhaps in the Fayum of the first century, which may have expanded into a larger number of voluntary associations of the type well attested in Graeco-Roman Egypt.

Bull's work represents an accessible yet profound and thoughtful introduction and handbook to the Hermetica, providing both a fair and thorough summary of previous work and a lucid approach to understanding them, and it is likely to become an invaluable reference work and source of further ideas in years to come.

Potential readers may be disappointed to find relatively little engagement with the Demotic text published in 2005 by Richard Jasnow and Karl-Theodor Zauzich as the Book of Thoth: A Demotic [...] Pendant to the Classical Hermetica. This represents less Bull's failing than the fact that this text's connections to the Hermetica have proven less clear than originally hoped.³ Bull's solution, rather than seeing the Book of Thoth as a direct predecessor, is to argue that a simple translation of such a text would have been unsatisfactory to a philosophically-oriented Hellenophone, requiring the priests to (re)invent an Egyptian tradition using their knowledge of Greek philosophy. This deep enmeshment of the corpus with Greek texts is apparent from Bull's able exegesis of the texts in this second part, but it was precisely this feature that led Festugière to suggest the Egyptian elements to be largely decorative. This complicates the priest-as-authors hypothesis, intended to explain the presence of Egyptian ideas, to which priestly authors would have unique access, an explanation which loses power according to the degree to which such Egyptian ideas are absent or ambiguous. A second problem, perhaps a resolution to the first, arises from Bull's convincing demonstration that many of the central ideas contained in the Hermetica were already circulating in Greek in the early Roman period, and likely earlier. If many of the borrowings from Egyptian theology were already accessible to and used by hellenophone authors before the writing of the philosophical Hermetica, this may further reduce the need to presuppose priestly authors writing qua priests, that is, as inheritors of tradition that only they could mediate.

Another problem of chronology is apparent in Bull's use of Frankfurter's theory of the commoditisation of priestly knowledge following the decline of the temples, originally intended to explain the high number of magical formularies that survive from the third and fourth centuries CE.⁴ Bull proposes that the priests were already seeking non-traditional sources of income in the first and second centuries, yet despite the policies of the Roman administration, a decline is much less apparent at this period.

None of the objections raised here reduce the value of Bull's work as a major advance in our knowledge of Hermeticism; rather they represent unresolved issues in the studies upon which he builds, and they point the way towards research which may nuance our understanding of socio-ethnic identity and the transmission of knowledge in the Roman Mediterranean even further. ​

---

Notes:

1.   Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998); Jacco Dieleman, Priests, Tongues and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscriptsand Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE) (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
2.   Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, pp.225-237; Richard Gordon, "Shaping the Text: Innovation and Authority in Graeco-Egyptian Malign Magic," in Kykeon: Studies in Honour of H.S. Versnel, edited by Herman F.J. Horstmanshoff et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 71–76.
3.   Cf. Joachim F. Quack, "Die Initiation zum Schreiberberuf im Alten Ägypten", Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 36 (2007), p.261.
4.   Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, pp.214-233. ​

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Caterina Barone, Francesco Puccio (ed.), Profanazioni. Ithaca; Padova: CLEUP, 2018. Pp. 248. ISBN 9788867879250. €26,00 (pb).

Reviewed by John Henderson, King's College (Cambridge)

Version at BMCR home site

The keynote essay Profanazioni in a 2005 jamboree of associative short essays by the prolific political theorist Giorgio Agamben (pp.83-106) interlaces remarks featuring Trebatius and Roman law, Benveniste and play (viz. gioco), Benjamin and capitalism as religion, Freud and Pope John XXII, the world as Museum and the pornostar, to dig into profanation as any tricksy process of restoration to free use of people to the coming C21st generation to apply themself to profane the unprofanable (viz. the all-swamping destruction of creativity, freedom and joy represented by capitalism). To be sure, a politicizing call, profaning, liberating, joyous..., to be read in its collection's solidary barricade of essays, but also within the voluminous corpus headed Homo sacer. Now the proceedings of a 2017 international conference under the auspices of the Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali at Padova pick up on the core notion of Giamben-profanation, in a baker's doz. of sundry short essays that include topics directly relating to classical studies.

Full of surprises throughout (not least when essays 11 and 13 profane the Italian language with the Spanish tongue), this makes a handsome paperback, rounded out by a remarkably generous gazette of illustrations from within the book now enlarged to page-size and now reproduced, where relevant, in colour, and I have indeed enjoyed reading the ensemble, though I should perhaps warn of a complete lack of profanity, and only a disappearing, though as we shall see not despairing, dollop of the canon law-and-defecation element in Giamben's giambico game (nb this is my gioco).

A brisk introduction situates the volume and checks through the contributions. I follow suit, dummying for the Indices we don't get, as is the Italian way, by highlighting classical referents.

1. Archaeology/Epigraphy: a review of the mainly C3rd CE tomb inscriptions featuring what have been lumped together as Raised hands somewhere within a pictorial area or in with text or between both, and instead of probing for a common inspiration and so variants of a motif opens up imprecation to an expressive multi-directional discourse, a hands-on, hands-off, whose hands anyway, double-handed swipe.

2. Film. (How) To show the corpses of dead, wounded, et sim. soldiers? The essay undoes (yes, profanes) a shibboleth that says Italian filming of WW1 reserved such abomination from public viewing. Footage from the time doesn't, but inter-war compilation and re-cycling of that footage does, heavily monitor the fallen friend and foe, and we're left to fill in how we think we are are dealing with our versions of such desecration, residual or re-inforced, through the wwww.

3-8 Theatre:
3-4. Tragic theatre.
3. The Medeas. Explore contemporary transfocalization of the tragedy around the children. Profane Euripides, release connection with our theatres, re-wire our cultures into, but through, the sacred legacy. What children can do to us. (btw All Euripides, no Seneca.)
4. Ajax, Persians and Heraclidae; Supplices, Peace, Octavia. How classical plays are utilizable for therapy, as in post-trauma programmes, weaponizable for political activisms, realizable beyond the theatre.

5-6 Comedy: Birds.
5. Across five centuries, watch the profaner profaned, Aristophanes, sponsor one in/famous flight of fancy production after another. (Yes, flight is the craziest idea.) The thread is two-pl(a)y, profaned text, profaned theatre-space: free to join us, for us to join.
6. Focus on C19th cultural dissemination of the semiotics of theatre tuned to the dashing of hope in delusion counterclashing with the giddiness of tripping out into utopia. Dance, music, costume, the thrills and spills of the show (in monsta-maestro footnote referencing.)

7. Symposium. More tragedy, Agathon. More Aristophanes, Aristophanes. From scenographic discourse on erotics, through Alcibiades, to the politicization of erotic discourse. This essay stakes out a rich re-reading that goes straight to, and through, the heart of Plato's sacred theatre of language. Profaned, so released to befoul and free the polis.

8. The spectator. Set free the theatre audience? They always were free, to make of theatre what they do, to make it mean what it must. As in essay 4, watch us join in; this springy essay boings us to think through, so liberate, spectatordom. For reals.

(We have by now left behind classical names, if not games.)

8-10 Art History:
9. Roberto Longhi's early forays into iconoclastic dismissal of art culture and critical apparatus, ground a career-trajectory of sweeping broadside profanation transmuted into a revelatory mission to cut the volumes of accreted dicta and instead, take icons off their pedestals, dethrone maestri, (don't read anyone else's books), open eyes. And (the sermon of the dismount) get real with art in your life.
10. Ernst Kris's revaluation of the art of the disturbed makes for a revelatory release of a very different kind, reimagining realities with the psychoanalytic version of profanation: what's needed is a break-out consecration of politically pitched pyrotechnics on a societal basis.

11. Political militancy. Hola! Onto the streets of Bogota: public space appropriated (along with everything else, remember) by the capitalist religion, and citizens barred from their sacred right to own it. A provocation (to think): street-traders doing business from a laden push-chair, under arrest. A stunt (gioca) from the Museum, with a human chain spanning from private space to vendor, so trade at a distance, across the reclassified space: political struggle figured as a process of marking, demarking, and remarking. Here's a graphic prompt to strike out a bit farther into Agamben heartland, via invocation of the notion of Genius, the unreachable person inside that really controls your creativity, sets terms for our freedom, etc.

12. The Golem. The Talmudic-kabbalistic creature that does not enjoy but does (and how!) humanoid creation from earth anticipates by eons many perturbations now attaching to the conundrum of AI, but comes pre-fitted with an expansive commentary reaching back to OT abomination then forward through the minefield of Hashem, inside ourbeginning.

13. Authorship. Appropriately enough, the sequence homes on Modernity's positioning of the Writer, a displacement of priesthood in turn displaced into 1960s obliteration, and since then resurrected in po'mo's nemesis, autofiction, which would reconsecrate author-ity, in a jocular fiestaof profanation.

In the end, I wouldn't claim to have gleaned all that much Agamben from these games, but especially in the essays concerned with classical presence through reception drama, scholars will find clear presentation of stimulating materials and aperçus.

Table of Contents

Caterina Barone, Alessandro Faccioli, Giuliana Tomasella, Introduction, 7
1. Monica Salvadori, Luca Scalco, Dall' "Elogio della profanazione"alla paura della violazione del sepolcro: per una rilettura delle mani alzate sui sepolcri di epoca romana, 15
2. Alessandro Faccioli, Il corpo del nemico ucciso? Rappresentazione e censura nei filmati della Grande guerra, 33
3. Daniela Cavallaro, Dalla parte dei bambini: i figli di Medea e Giasone nel teatro contemporaneo, 53
4. Caterina Barone, Dall'intangibilità alla strumentalizzazione: il teatro greco come forma di propaganda politica, 71
5. Simone Beta, Il dissacratore dissacrato: il, "folle volo" degli Uccelli di Aristofane dal Cinquecento a oggi, 93
6. Francesco Puccio, Il dissacratore dissacrato: il"folle volo"degli Uccelli di Aristofane nel Novecento, 107
7. Alessandra Coppola, Amore e politica: profanazioni sceniche e retoriche nel Simposio di Platone, 117
8. Anna Bandettini, L'eresia dello spettatore, 127
9. Giuliana Tomasella, Brevi ma veridiche storie: le profanazioni di Roberto Longhi, 135
10. Marta Nezzo, Ernst Kris: storia dell'arte tra effrazioni e profanazioni, 147
11. Nicolás Leyva Townsend, Bogotá: resistencias frente a la ideologización neoliberal del espacio público, 161
12. Barbara Henry, I "non nati/e da donna" e la nozione di profanazione nella tradizione golemica, 175
13. Javier Sahuquillo, Los autores profanados: la autoficción como género teatral , 189
Bibliography, 203
Ills., 223-43
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Jean-François​ Pradeau, Plotin. Qui es-tu?. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2019. Pp. 156. ISBN 9782204126533. €15,00.

Reviewed by John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin (jmdillon@eircom.net)

Version at BMCR home site

This little—or at least, very compact—book, excellently constructed as it is, provides Francophone readers with a fine conspectus of all that is distinctive and important about Plotinus as a philosopher. Pradeau himself has been having much to do with Plotinus over the last decade or so, in company with Luc Brisson, in connection with co-authoring the valuable Flammarion edition of translations, with notes, of the tractates (in chronological order), and the work is doubtless to some extent a fruit of those labours. As such, it is most welcome.

After a short introduction, in which he sets out his stall—he sees Plotinus as championing a return to the timeless truths enunciated by Plato, against the dominant (though declining) philosophical tradition of Stoicism, and in face of the rising threat of what he would see as the irrationalities, and disrespect for the wisdom of antiquity, of Christianity, and the various forms of Gnosticism—we are presented with a sequence of nine short chapters, dealing, first, with Plotinus' life and working environment in Rome (chs. 1-3), and then with Porphyry's strategy in putting together his edition of his master's works (ch. 4), with the last five chapters focusing on various aspects of his philosophical system. We are reminded of the peculiar—though comfortable—situation in which Plotinus found himself in Rome, under the patronage of the lady Gemina, and the informal nature of his school, together with his remarkable habits of composition, as related by Porphyry.

In each of the later chapters, Pradeau picks out a key issue or issues relevant to Plotinus' philosophical position. In ch. 5, ('Un platonicien?'), he highlights the fact that the great majority of the tractates—and therefore of Plotinus' seminars—take their start from an aporia arising out of some Platonic passage or other, and deal with it, normally, through the lens of later Platonist, Aristotelian, or even Stoic positions, though without ever explicitly challenging Plato's infallibility. In ch. 6 ('L'inventeur d'une philosophie nouvelle? L'apparition du néoplatonisme'), he dwells on the salient features of Plotinus' form of Platonism, as opposed to that of his immediate predecessors, viz. the rejection of dualism, as well as of tendencies towards the adoption of theurgical or religious practices, and the supplanting of that by a doctrine of progressive emanation of all things from a single first principle; the development of the doctrine of a supra-intellectual and radically simple One; and the concept of a part of the soul, or of the personality, that does not 'descend', but remains ever embedded in Intellect.

And indeed it is to these three topics that the last three chapters are devoted: Pradeau is not concerned to give an exhaustive account of Plotinus' philosophy, but rather to focus on salient points. The three features that he selects are indeed the most distinctive aspects of Plotinus' philosophy. In ch. 7 ('La méchanique de la procession'), he provides a most refined analysis of the mechanism of procession, from the One to Intellect, and from there to Soul and beyond, with due attention also to the corresponding process of 'return' In this connection, he focuses on the exegesis of just two key passages from the Enneads, ch. 6 of Tractate 10 [V.1], and ch. 1 of Tractate 11 [V.2], both very aptly chosen. The chief problems to be addressed are the nature of the 'overflow' from a first principle that is absolutely simple and absolutely self-sufficient, and how it generates both multiplicity and the desire and capacity of the lower principles thus generated to turn back towards their source, and thus generate themselves.

He next (ch 8: 'L'un: premier, indicible, insaisissable') tackles the topic of the One itself, and why Plotinus felt it necessary to postulate it. In this connection, after having noted how Plotinus' presentation of an ineffable first principle attracted such French philosophers as Bergson, Jankelevich and Levinas, he once again picks out some key passages to discuss, in this case ch. 6 of tractate 32 [V.5], and ch. 7 of 10 [V.1], which are indeed key passages for setting out both the otherness of the One and its connection with what follows from it. He then makes the interesting move of adducing the doctrine of an influential predecessor of Plotinus, the Neopythagorean Numenius, who does postulate a system involving three levels of reality, with at the top a divinity described as an 'intellect at rest', which could indeed have provided a stimulus to Plotinus' postulation of a first principle above Intellect altogether; and he follows this by making an enlightening contrast between the systems of Plotinus and Proclus—all this to emphasise the originality of Plotinus' position.

Lastly, in ch. 9 ('L'âme humaine peut-elle remonter vers son principe?'), Pradeau focuses on what is distinctive about Plotinus' doctrine of the human soul—specifically, its non-descended element—noting how this position of his is rejected by later Platonists, from Iamblichus on. He also includes some pertinent remarks about matter, and the sense in which it is 'evil' for Plotinus: it is 'evil', really, only as a negativity.

The work is rounded off by a short conclusion, in which he reminds us of the remarkable way in which what seems to be the complete corpus of Plotinus' writings was preserved in later antiquity, and filtered down also through the mediaeval culture of the Arab world, till it was restored to the early Renaissance West by the industriousness of Marsilio Ficino.

All in all, this is a very finely composed little work, aimed, I presume, primarily at the reader seeking an acquaintance with Plotinus' thought, but replete with insights for all who appreciate his genius.

​

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