2012.08.60

Brigitte Pérez-Jean (ed.), Les Dialectiques de l'ascèse. Rencontres, 18. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011. Pp. 425. ISBN 9782812403071. €47.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Matthieu Cassin, Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes (CNRS, Paris) (matthieu.cassin@irht.cnrs.fr)

Version at BMCR home site

[The Table of Contents is given below.]

Dans ce livre sont rassemblés les fruits d'un colloque organisé à Montpellier du 18 au 20 novembre 2009. La perspective d'ensemble consiste à explorer, dans des contextes historiques, linguistiques et culturels variés, les formes que prennent l'ascèse et les discours qui l'accompagnent, la justifient et la construisent. L'ascèse elle-même est rapidement définie en introduction, à partir de l'étymologie grecque du terme et de son double emploi dans le champ philosophique et dans le champ religieux chrétien, en particulier monastique ; un cadre théorique commun est largement présupposé tant par l'éditrice que par chacun des contributeurs, qui réunit de manière un peu surprenante les travaux de Pierre Hadot sur les exercices spirituels et les études de Michel Foucault sur le souci de soi – un peu surprenante dans la mesure où les divergences entre ces deux approches, bien qu'elles soient fortes, sont peu abordées ici, ni même mentionnées.¹ C'est sans doute que la perspective du volume est autre : il s'agit bien plutôt d'explorer des formes prises par l'ascèse et l'ascétisme dans l'Occident chrétien depuis l'Antiquité. Les débats théoriques et la période de formation conceptuelle de l'ascétisme sont pour une large part laissés de côté, sauf pour une partie du champ philosophique antique.

Le recueil est organisé de manière thématique, mais un fil chronologique structure en fait de l'intérieur la deuxième et la troisième partie. Le principe organisateur de la première est moins clair ; celle-ci, intitulée « Transfert : d'une ascèse à l'autre », rassemble des enquêtes qui portent moins sur les transferts proprement dits entre différents domaines où s'exerce l'ascèse que sur la considération de l'ascèse en-dehors des domaines où elle est d'ordinaire située. Ainsi la contribution de Stefania Bonfiglioli sur l'usage du terme dans la Géographie de Strabon ; toutefois, l'hypothèse centrale de l'auteur, qui fait d'askèsis un terme technique chez le géographe, ne parvient pas à emporter totalement la conviction : un usage raisonné du mot ne signifie pas nécessairement une utilisation technique. L'étude de Frédéric Fauquier s'intéresse à un sujet plus attendu : la place de l'ascèse dans les lectures néoplatoniciennes du Phédon. Occasion d'un intéressant recueil de textes, qui n'ont pas tous un rapport étroit avec le dialogue platonicien, l'article suggère des pistes intéressantes, qui gagneraient sans doute à être plus directement reliées au système néoplatonicien des vertus dans son ensemble et aux modalités du progrès humain dans ce courant philosophique. L'étude de Jean-François Thomas offre un utile parcours dans le domaine du vocabulaire latin de l'ascèse ; on aurait aimé bénéficier du pendant grec de ce travail dans le même volume : toutefois, comme souvent dans ce livre, les domaines supposés déjà bien connus sont laissés de côté, au profit d'autres, supposés moins défrichés. La contribution liminaire de Marc Philonenko, qui revient de manière très rapide sur la question depuis longtemps débattue des liens éventuels entre les esséniens et le christianisme, cette fois à travers le filtre de l'ascèse, propose un traitement brillant, mais plus suggestif que démonstratif, des liens de filiation entre ces deux courants, dont la définition et l'identité, en particulier pour les esséniens, sont considérées comme évidentes. L'étude due à Vana Nicolaïdou-Kyrianidou croise deux perspectives, antique et contemporaine, en proposant une lecture croisée de Xénophon et d'Hannah Arendt ; les deux fils ont leur intérêt propre et la lecture des pensées politiques de l'un et l'autre auteur vaut pour elle-même. Toutefois, la valeur d'élucidation offerte par l'auteur moderne au regard du texte antique n'est pas évidente pour le lecteur et l'ascèse est davantage comprise ici sous le simple signe du « souci de soi », forme bien plus large que ce qui est généralement le cas dans le reste du volume. L'article de Pierre-Yves Krischleger, enfin, concerne Max Weber et fait figure d'aérolithe chronologique dans cette première partie, cela dit sans préjuger aucunement de son contenu et de sa valeur.

La deuxième partie, « Ascèses du corps, ascèses de l'âme », présente un profil plus homogène et est construite selon un fil chronologique. Jean-Luc Périllié propose une intéressante contribution sur un passage fort célèbre du Théétète, le début de la digression sur le naturel philosophe ; le rapport avec le thème du volume apparaît cependant relativement ténu. Dans une étude consacrée à l'ascèse épicurienne, Alain Gigandet adopte une perspective assez originale qui montre l'articulation étroite entre les exercices spirituels propres à cette tradition et les autres parties de la même philosophie, en particulier la physique. S. Luciani étudie les modalités du discours intérieur comme pratique philosophique chez Cicéron, à travers l'exemple des Tusculanes. La seule contribution qui porte sur le domaine chrétien de langue grecque est due à Stavros Perentidis et aborde brièvement la question des liens entre ascèse et pénitence, en s'appuyant principalement sur des sources canoniques. Si l'article est par lui- même intéressant et aborde des textes généralement délaissés même par les spécialistes d'Antiquité tardive, le volume aurait cependant gagné en équilibre s'il avait intégré des études consacrées aux réflexions et pratiques ascétiques dans l'Antiquité tardive chrétienne, en particulier dans le domaine oriental, dans la mesure même où ces expériences du désert sont en lien direct avec les « exercices spirituels » de l'Antiquité non chrétienne et sont fondamentales par la suite dans tout l'Occident chrétien – qu'il suffise de mentionner ici à titre d'exemples la Vie d'Antoine d'Athanase, l'œuvre d'Évagre le Pontique, les Apophtegmes des Pères du désert, l'Échelle sainte de Jean Climaque, etc. Les contributions suivantes concernent l'Occident médiéval et moderne ; on en trouvera le détail dans la table des matières ci-dessous.

La troisième partie aborde un thème attendu dans le cadre des réflexions sur l'ascèse, à savoir son lien avec la mystique. Toutefois, ce lien est supposé évident et ne fait pas l'objet d'un traitement théorique d'ensemble. La contribution liminaire, due à Laurent Lavaud, s'attache à l'ascèse discursive de Plotin, auteur fondamental puisqu'il représente l'un des moments essentiels de la réflexion de Pierre Hadot sur les exercices spirituels et plus largement des liens entre philosophie et mystique. Les contributions suivantes, en revanche, portent sur l'Occident médiéval et moderne, voire contemporain, avec un excursus rapide du côté de la Russie. Pour cette question, il aurait été sans doute intéressant qu'une contribution au moins soit consacrée au monde chrétien de langue grecque ; dans cette perspective, une étude du lien entre ascèse et mystique dans le cadre de l'hésychasme et de la querelle palamite aurait pu être d'un grand intérêt et offrir un contre-point intéressant au domaine occidental.

Ces souhaits mis à part, qui sont inévitables dans le cas des actes d'un colloque, pour lesquels il est souvent bien difficile de parvenir à couvrir tous les champs, ou même les principales dimensions d'un sujet lorsque celui-ci est aussi vaste que celui de l'ascèse, tant au plan chronologique que géographique, on ne peut que profiter de la confrontation entre les diverses perspectives qu'offre ce volume. La grande place faite aux discours de l'ascèse attire l'attention sur la place fondamentale du langage en ce domaine, et sur son articulation étroite avec les pratiques matérielles qu'on associe plus communément à ce mot. Or ces pratiques ne sont précisément accessibles que par le biais du discours qui les accompagne, les prescrit ou les décrit : à ce titre, les diverses contributions qui sont consacrées aux règlements monastiques ou textes assimilés sont d'importance. Les indications bibliographiques fournies dans l'introduction permettront également au lecteur curieux de se tourner vers d'autres publications pour confronter les conceptions héritées du monde grec et du christianisme antique aux ascèses présentes dans d'autres aires culturelles, en particulier en Extrême-Orient.

Table des matières

B. Pérez-Jean, Introduction, p. 7

Première partie. Transfert : d'une ascèse à l'autre
M. Philonenko, Les origines esséniennes de l'ascétisme chrétien, p. 19
J.-F. Thomas, Sur l'expression lexicale des notions d'ascèse et d'exercice moral et spirituel en latin, p. 25
S. Bonfiglioli, L'importance de l'askèsis dans la Géographie de Strabon, p. 43
F. Fauquier, Ascèse et lecture néoplatoniciennes du Phédon, p. 57
P.-Y. Kirschleger, L'ascétisme intramondain du capitalisme, p. 67
V. Nicolaïdou-Kyrianidou, Le prince ascétique de Xénophon et la politique de Hannah Arendt, p. 85

Deuxième partie. Ascèse du corps, ascèse de l'âme
J.-L. Périllié, Ascèse, contemplation et dialectique définitionnelle dans le portrait du philosophe du Théétète, p. 129
A. Gigandet, Problématique ascèse épicurienne, p. 151
S. Luciani, Discours intérieur et ascèse philosophique chez Cicéron, p. 167
S. Perentidis, L'ascèse au sein de la pénitence en tant que rite de passage de l'Église byzantine, p. 183
J. Thomas, Discipline cléricale et contrôle du corps dans les manuels pour novices (XIIe-XIIIe siècles), p. 197
J. Meyers, L'écriture comme ascèse philosophique dans le De Vita Solitaria de Pétrarque, p. 215
I. Kirschleger, Vivre d'ascèse et de psaumes, ou l'art de bien vivre et de bien mourir dans les manuels de piété réformés au XVIIe siècle, p. 231
J.-F. Galinier-Pallerola, Le jeûne de carême dans les sermons catholiques français du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, p. 253

Troisième partie. Discours ascétique et discours mystique
L. Lavaud, Dire l'ineffable : l'ascèse discursive de Plotin, p. 281
N. Nabert, Le corps en cellule, ascèse et exercices spirituels dans les sources cartusiennes du Moyen Âge, p. 295
Ch. Belin, Les avatars de l'ascèse au XVIIe siècle. Un argument de controverse, p. 313
B. Papasogli, Un dieu chirurgien ? L'imaginaire de l'ascèse chez Fénelon, p. 325
F. Damour, L'ascèse comme voie de vérité en Russie (XIXe-XXe siècles), p. 343
M. Fourcade, Ascétisme et mystique à l'heure du renouveau thomiste, p. 361
J.-D. Causse, La pratique ascétique : une divine jouissance ?, p. 391

Index des noms propres, p. 401
Résumés et abstracts, p. 407

---

Notes:

1.   Voir en particulier P. Hadot, « Un dialogue interrompu avec Michel Foucault. Convergences et divergences », dans Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, Paris, 2002, p. 305-311.

2012.08.59

Zacharoula Petraki, The Poetics of Philosophical Language: Plato, Poets and Presocratics in the Republic. Sozomena. Studies in the recovery of ancient texts, 9. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2011. Pp. viii, 292. ISBN 9783110260977. $154.00.

Reviewed by Patrizia Marzillo, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (marzillo@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

As the title shows, Petraki deals with Plato's poetics of philosophical language and its application in the Republic. Accordingly, the book is divided into two main parts ( The Theory and The Republic), framed by an introduction and conclusions.

In the introduction, Petraki starts from the assumption that the Presocratics' influence on Plato is undeniable. Plato's Republic, in particular, can be seen as an attempt to reconcile Parmenides' Being with Heraclitus' Becoming. Also Parmenidean, according to Petraki, is Plato's account of sense-perception (most importantly sight), which is considered – if trained – as a valuable assistant to the intellect in grasping true Reality. On this basis, Petraki argues that Plato, after stating that poetry and its performance have failed in presenting ethical values correctly, himself uses traditional elements of poetry – only to turn them into an innovative philosophical idiom and so reach people who are not familiar with Platonic philosophy. The ultimate goal is to address human senses through poetry to help them support the intellect in its epistemic ascent to the Forms. All these issues are connected, in Petraki's opinion, with Plato's view on language, understood in the Republic as "a thought-structuring and communicative medium". In other words, language plays a role analogous to that of the senses in helping us approach Reality. Petraki thinks that Plato's treatment of philosophical language is organized around the oppositions of "mixture" vs. "purity" and "variety" vs. "simple", oppositions that play a major role in Presocratic thought and in poetry.

In Section One, methodological issues are examined and the opinions of existing scholarship are presented and discussed. The author explains her understanding of the following issues: (a) poetics; (b) the relation between myths and images; (c) imagistic discourse; (d) the dramatization of language; and (e) metaphorical language in the Republic. Her basic theory is that Plato re-organized what was regarded by the fifth-century B.C. audience as traditional or poetic in order to put it to new use. (a) Poetics is understood as both the poet's art and as the exploration of those features built into the poetry produced. Petraki, however, distances herself from an Aristotelian point of view and proposes an analysis of Book 10 in which Plato first condemns and then himself uses poetic patterns to describe the World of Becoming and its polymorphy. (b) In this section it is made clear how Plato adopted and adapted traditional material to tell a new story. (c) In this part, it is claimed that each participant in the dialogue is invited by Socrates to visualise a number of images, which Socrates himself formulates in words. Petraki introduces here the Presocratic concepts of poikilia and mixis, but also appeals to Gorgias' Helen to explain Plato's use of images. She uses Silk's work as her basis for discussing figures of speech which involve comparatio.¹

Sections (d) and (e) are closely connected to (c). The word eikôn and its semantic field are at the basis of the whole discussion. Stress is also placed on the analogy between verbal and painted images. Socrates becomes a verbal painter just like that other verbal painter, the poet, the only difference being that the philosopher offers a correct representation of reality. The Republic is understood by Petraki on the whole as a "grand verbal picture". As for the 'dramatization of language' (section (d)): Petraki takes Thayer's study of the expression auto to in the Symposium² as her starting-point for a similar investigation in the Republic.

Section Two opens with a detailed analysis of book 5 of the Republic. The author has chosen the central book of the dialogue for two reasons: it introduces the motif of mixture, and it offers the image of the polis as a human body. Plato's treatment of mixture should, in Petraki's eyes, precisely be understood as his attempt to make connections between the polis and human nature by the means of verbal imagery. It is, at the same time, a further attack against poetry since Plato wants to show how imagery should be deployed. Since Plato here also exploits his theory of the Forms, the book is dense with philosophical language. Petraki interprets all three waves of argument pointed out by Socrates – that is, his definition of the guardians' nature, his description of their lifestyle and his exposition of the theory of the Forms – as a unified philosophical lesson on Platonic thought and language. Here imagistic and poetical language dominates. According to Petraki, Plato brings together images, starting with the eikôn of the pedigree dog, as if he were a painter.

The second chapter of Section Two deals with the philosophical style of Socrates' third wave of argument. What follows is an excursus on Glaucon as the most philosophical of Socrates' interlocutors, and on the dialogic genre as the most appropriate literary vehicle for Platonic philosophy. The third wave of argument is divided into three parts: in the first, Socrates speaks to Glaucon who accepts the existence of the Forms; in the second, he asks Glaucon to adopt the sight-lovers' point of view; in the third, Socrates directly addresses the sight-lovers with a remarkable change of style which becomes fully pictorial and poetic. The reasons for this change are explained in Chapter 3 by an analysis of the images of books 2 and 6 of the Republic. Petraki states that Socrates turns to a more imagistic style because he wants to educate his interlocutors. He wants to show how the variety of the sensible world contrasts with the simplicity of the world of the Forms. The chapter is closed by some considerations on the image of the Sun as analogon of the Good.

Chapter 4 focuses on the early part of book 6, and on books 8 and 9, in particular on the images used to describe democracy and tyranny. Petraki then examines Plato's use of skiagraphia (shadow-painting), which she reads as an attack on this technique for producing visual illusions. She also returns to skiagraphia in her conclusion, by analysing the use of the term in Plato. In her opinion, this is the word to which Plato resorts when he wants to speak of the erroneous way in which poetry portrays ethical reality.

Several passages of the Republic are introduced as evidence, accompanied by a translation into English. Petraki also analyses Socrates' main interlocutors in the dialogue, Glaucon and Adeimantus, since the differences between the two brothers are philosophically essential to Socrates' choice of specific discursive modes and linguistic styles of doing philosophy. Glaucon was already introduced in chapter 2 as a genuine disciple of Socrates. Adeimantus is mentioned in chapters 3 and 4 as a forgetful character who has to be replaced by his more philosophical brother as soon as the subject of discussion becomes too difficult.

Petraki tries to find in the Presocratics some aspects of the imaginative language that she sees in Plato, but if we expected a book that describes Plato's dependence on Presocratic language we would be disappointed. Presocratics are referred to in the introduction and then appear from time to time throughout the volume together with some other authors, so that it is not possible to distinguish the Presocratics' influence from what we could call the general influence of previous Greek literature or, in particular, of other "philosopher poets" such as Pindar (for the light- darkness metaphor) or Hesiod (for the Golden Race or the image of the "drones").

The bibliography is reasonably complete. It is understandable that the author could not take into account titles on the same topic appeared in 2011,³ but the omissions of Giuliano's monograph⁴ and of Leszl's studies on Plato and poetry⁵ are puzzling. A two-page index of names closes the volume. I could find only few misprints.

On the whole the book is well structured. The author is diligent in explaining the individual sections and passages of her argumentation – although her discussions of terminology and methodology, and her numerous verbatim quotations from other modern scholars sometimes make the reader lose the main thread. The intention is to provide a new way to read the Republic, a dialogue which Petraki shows that she know profoundly. She treats a number of images used by Plato in the Republic such as the Sun, the animal metaphors, and the image of the badly steered ship. She also analyzes the different linguistic registers present in the Republic, registers which change according to both the subject under discussion and the interlocutor addressed. When speaking of our world, and to sight-lovers, Plato adopts a poetic language characterised by variety and color; but when he wants to describe the unmixed, pure realm of the Forms he often uses an imageless, sober style. The aim is pedagogic: Plato appeals to both poetry and painting in order to attack them as the language of the ignorant, and to promote the didactic, philosophical style.

I do not know if this understanding of the Republic can open new fields of research on other Platonic dialogues. The idea that the language of the Republic constitutes a highly complex mosaic in which images predominate and in which different modes of linguistic configuration converge is at any rate interesting.

---

Notes:

1.  Silk, M. S. 1974. Interaction in Poetic Imagery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2.  Thayer, H. S. 1993. Meaning and Dramatic Interpretation. In Plato's Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations, Gerald A. Press (ed.), 47-61. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
3.   I refer to A. A. Long's article "Poets as philosophers and philosophers as poets: Parmenides, Plato, Lucretius, Wordsworth" in: B. Huss, P. Marzillo, T. Ricklin (eds.), Para/Textuelle Verhandlungen zwischen Dichtung und Philosophie in der frühen Neuzeit, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2011, 293-308; and to the volume Plato and the poets by P. Destrée and Fritz-Gregor Herrmann (eds.), Leiden: Brill, 2011.
4.   Giuliano, F. M., Platone e la Poesia: Teoria della composizione e prassi della ricezione. International Plato Studies Vol. 22. Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2005.
5.   Leszl, W. G., "Plato's attitude to poetry and the fine arts, and the origin of aesthetics 1", Études platoniciennes 2004/1: 113-197; " Plato's attitude to poetry and the fine arts, and the origins of aesthetics 2", Études platoniciennes 2006/2: 285-351; "Plato's attitude to poetry and the fine arts, and the origins of aesthetics 3", Études platoniciennes 2006/3: 245-336.

2012.08.58

Christopher Shields, Ancient Philosophy: a Contemporary Introduction. Second edition (first edition published 2003). Routledge contemporary introductions to philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2011. Pp. xiii, 245. ISBN 9780415896603. $36.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Gary Hartenburg, Saint Katherine College (ghartenburg@stkath.org)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents.

In Ancient Philosophy, Christopher Shields skillfully presents and evaluates rational reconstructions of important arguments from the ancient philosophers. At a time filled with handbooks, dictionaries, guides, and encyclopedias of ancient philosophy, it is refreshing to sit down to a coherent, single-author account of the arguments of the ancient philosophers from the Presocratics through the Hellenistic age.

The book is a new edition of Shields's Classical Philosophy (2003),¹ and the additions include an entirely new sixty-page chapter on Hellenistic philosophy and smaller additions to existing chapters: some new material on Zeno's paradoxes (19–20), a new section on Plato's images of the line and cave (100–106), and new sections on Aristotle on virtue and akrasia (150–156). Apart from the additions for the new chapter on Hellenistic philosophy, the lists of suggestions for additional reading at the end of each chapter (and at the end of the book) were not, so far as I can tell, updated, with the exception of an entry for Shields's 2007 book on Aristotle (reviewed in BMCR).² Those who are looking for an up-to-date list of good material on ancient philosophy will be disappointed by this oversight, but the readings Shields lists are all solid recommendations.

The book consists of five chapters, one each on the Presocratic philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic philosophers. Each of the chapters is devoted to an explanation of the main arguments of the philosopher in question. There is very little space given to discussion of the historical context of the philosophers or the literary contexts of their works. The book does not require the reader to have any knowledge of the Greek language. In the few places where Greek words are mentioned, they are transliterated, and Shields is careful to explain their philosophical significance.

In chapter 1 ("Philosophy before Socrates"), Shields covers the arguments of Thales, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Democritus, and Protagoras. His main interest in this chapter is to trace the Presocratic philosophical positions and arguments concerning the nature of reality and our knowledge of it. (This line of inquiry predominates in the book as a whole, too.) For example, Shields explains why Thales's suggestion that everything is water was an attempt to answer the question "What is there?" in an explanatorily fruitful way, while remaining consistent with Thales's common sense observations. Shields also argues that contemporary philosophers have many things in common with Thales's philosophical methodology even though "we do not think that water is the basic stuff" (4). According to Shields, Thales, like many philosophers after him, does not accept the deliverances of sense perception without question and is even ready to reject them if they run contrary to "scientific systematicity" (4).

Chapter 1 ends with an extended discussion of Protagorean relativism. This section in particular highlights both a strength and a weakness of the book. The strength is the clarity with which Shields lays out an argument for Protagorean relativism. According to Shields, Protagoras's argument is a development of the atomists' argument (discussed in the prior section) for the conclusion that perceptual qualities are not in objects themselves (24). Protagoras's argument simply extends the atomists' argument about physical qualities to the realm of morality. In Shields's words, the argument for Protagorean relativism runs as follows:

(1) If S₁ perceives some action x to be F (e.g., euthanasia to be morally permissible) and S₂ perceives that same x to be not-F (euthanasia to be morally impermissible), then neither F nor not-F is a property of x in itself.
(2) It often happens in perception that S₁ perceives x to be F and S₂ perceives x to be not-F.
(3) Hence, moral qualities are not in actions themselves.

Laying out the argument in this way allows the reader to see the premises and the conclusion and assess the argument's soundness. What is not so clear is how Shields draws this argument from the text of Protagoras. In fact, the only text of Protagoras cited by Shields in this section is Diels Kranz 80 B 1, which is simply the statement that "a human being is the measure of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not" (quoted by Shields on 27). The way in which Shields gets from that statement to the argument summarized in (1)–(3) above is opaque to the reader, nor is it clear how justified we are in saying that Protagoras considered his argument an extension of the atomists'.³

A curious omission from chapter 1 is Pythagoreanism. Perhaps Shields does not discuss it because the Pythagoreans' interests and methodologies cannot be plotted easily on the Presocratic line of inquiry into the nature of reality and our knowledge of it that Shields draws from Thales to Protagoras. Perhaps it was omitted for other reasons, but because Plato, for one, drew from the Pythagorean tradition it would have been preferable if it could have been addressed.⁴

Chapter 2 concerns the philosophical positions of "Socrates." In a footnote at the beginning of the chapter, Shields discusses the problem of discerning what the views of the historical Socrates were, and after mentioning the writings of Aristophanes and Xenophon he comes to the conclusion that "Although it would be imprudent to be overly secure about doing so, it is nonetheless reasonable to regard Plato's Socratic dialogues as intended to represent the views of the historical Socrates" (58–59). Those who disagree with Shields's position on this will therefore have to think of chapter 2 as representing not the views of the historical Socrates but of the character Socrates presented in the early dialogues of Plato.

The main concerns of chapter 2 are the Socratic elenchus and the Socratic view of akrasia. Shields uses the examples of Meno and Euthyphro to illustrate different ways in which Socrates refutes his interlocutors. In the case of Meno, Socrates shows that Meno's account of virtue does not even include all the uncontroversial examples of virtue. In the case of Euthyphro, Socrates shows that even though at least one of Euthyphro's accounts of piety includes all the uncontroversial examples of piety, it is nonetheless defective because it does not state what it is that makes all pious things pious. Shields's discussion of the Socratic elenchus in these two cases is both easy to follow and insightful. The same is true for his discussion of the Socratic view of akrasia.

Chapter 3 is about Plato. Because of the position Shields takes about the historical Socrates in chapter 2, chapter 3 is really about the Plato of the middle and late dialogues. And because Shields does not discuss the Sophist, Statesman, or Philebus at all, the chapter is centrally about Plato's theory of forms as expressed in the Republic (and, to a lesser extent, the Phaedo) and critiqued in the Parmenides. The first main part of the chapter (72–85) is a discussion of some arguments for the existence of the forms. Shields's discussion is helpful because it addresses in a clear way a question at the forefront of a reader's mind: Why should I think that these Platonic forms are real? As in chapter 1, Shields's goal is to represent Plato's arguments as at least worthy of genuine consideration, and, in my view, he succeeds. Also included in chapter 3 are extended discussions of Plato's accounts in the Republic of justice, the soul, and the form of the good.

The organizing principle of chapter 4 is Aristotle's account of causation; in particular, the four causes—material, formal, efficient, and final—are explained and, as usual, Shields culls a number of arguments from Aristotle to encourage the reader to take Aristotle's ideas about causation seriously. Here again Shields's attention to the arguments of an ancient philosopher is helpful to the student. For example, although introductions to ancient philosophy explain what Aristotle means by "matter" and "form," few of them explain why Aristotle might have thought formal causes are real. Shields helpfully canvasses the Aristotelian corpus for the arguments Aristotle gives in favor of formal causation, and his clear presentation of them helps the reader to see that Aristotle's position is not a matter of speculation. Shields's discussion of final causation leads him to a lengthy discussion of Aristotle's ethics, which enables the reader to see how systematic Aristotle's philosophy is. The chapter also includes a discussion of Aristotle's response to the Socratic account of akrasia and closes with a brief discussion of Aristotle's account of homonymy, which is a kind of précis of Shields's 1997 book on Aristotelian homonymy.⁵

The final chapter, on Hellenistic philosophy, covers the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics. The first section focuses on Epicurean ethics, with special attention given to Epicurus's argument that fearing death is irrational. The second section covers Stoicism, and it, too, focuses on ethical considerations. In particular, Shields discusses at length the Stoic conception of living in accordance with nature and the Stoic conception of the emotions as false beliefs. The chapter closes with a section on the ancient arguments for and against skepticism.

One of the virtues of Ancient Philosophy, which has been mentioned a few times above, is the care Shields takes to make the arguments of the ancient philosophers as compelling as he can to the reader. The new material in the section on Zeno, for example, is a reasoned exhortation to readers that they not simply shrug off Zeno's arguments against the possibility of motion. As Shields says, "A reader does not refute Zeno by putting down this book and walking away: that is, rather, a way to ignore Zeno" (20). One suspects that Shields's attention to this point stems from years of teaching this material to students who are disinclined to take the impossibility of motion very seriously. Ancient Philosophy is a better book because of the evident care Shields displays to encourage his readers to consider at least some of the positions of the long-dead ancient philosophers as live options.

---

Notes:

1.   Christopher Shields, Classical Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 2003).
2.   Christopher Shields, Aristotle (London: Routledge, 2007).
3.   In BMCR 2008.03.06, in his review of Shields's Aristotle (2007), Ian Halim made a similar criticism of Shields's procedure. In Aristotle, however, Shields presents arguments from the texts of Aristotle, which are for the most part complete. In the case of Protagoras (and the Presocratics and, to a lesser extent, the Hellenistic philosophers), the texts are fragmentary, and the possibility of reading too much into a philosopher's argument is not negligible. This point is not meant to discredit Shields's treatment of the ancient philosophers, but in a book that takes pains to encourage beginning students of ancient philosophers to take the arguments of the ancient philosophers seriously, it would have been helpful if he could have made it clearer how in each case he moves from the ancient text to the reconstructed argument he presents in Ancient Philosophy.
4.   In any case, Plato's Timaeus, which expresses his most overt debts to Pythagoreanism, is never mentioned in Ancient Philosophy, and the relation of Pythagorean philosophy to the line of inquiry Shields outlines is not raised.
5.   Christopher Shields, Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

2012.08.57

James G. Clark, Frank T. Coulson, Kathryn L. McKinley (ed.), Ovid in the Middle Ages. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 372. ISBN 9781107002050. $105.00.

Reviewed by Marylène Possamai, Université Lyon2-Lumière (marylene.possamai@univ-lyon2.fr)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Le recueil comprend treize articles sur les réécritures européennes d'Ovide au Moyen Âge. L'introduction de James G. Clark, en présentant les contributions, brosse un panorama très détaillé de cette transmission dans tout le Moyen Âge occidental et oriental. Elisabeth Fischer ne trouve guère de traces d'Ovide chez les auteurs grecs médiévaux, sauf dans les traductions du moine byzantin Planoudès (fin XIII^e siècle), dont elle montre la qualité au moyen de comparaisons minutieuses avec les originaux. Frank T. Coulson se penche avec précision sur la tradition scolaire en France entre 1180 et 1400, dont les Allegoriae d'Arnoul d'Orléans et les Integumenta Ovidii de Jean de Garlande, qui furent souvent associés ou recopiés par morceaux dans les marges des manuscrits d'Ovide, et enfin assemblés avec d'autres commentaires pour aboutir à ce qu'on appelle le « commentaire Vulgate », qui fit autorité dès la fin du XIII^e siècle, mais ne nous est parvenu que sous la forme de gloses interlinéaires dans des manuscrits des Métamorphoses. Ana Pairet présente les défis de l'Ovide moralisé, qui « recrée » les Métamorphoses au XIV^e siècle : grâce à des analyses de détail très fines, du prologue en particulier, elle dégage le « cadre herméneutique » et la « poétique de la métamorphose » : en lisant fable et commentaire comme une partie du continuum poétique et non comme deux modes distincts de discours placés en juxtaposition, A. Pairet peut ainsi affirmer la cohérence de l'Ovide moralisé. Marilynn Desmond étudie la transposition romane des conceptions d'Ovide sur les femmes et sur le désir sexuel : elle rappelle que la réception médiévale de l'Ars amatoria et des Héroïdes fut fondamentale pour le développement d'un discours érotique dans les traditions textuelles médiévales. L'Ars fut lu comme un traité didactique sur la performance érotique, et la translation en prose – l'Art d'amours – inclut les commentaires marginaux, ce qui crée un registre didactique à la place de l'ironie originelle d'Ovide. Quant aux translations des Héroïdes, insérées dans des contextes narratifs plus larges, elles constituèrent les traits de la subjectivité et du désir féminin. Robert Black décrit des manuscrits glosés et des lectures d'Ovide dans l'Italie du Moyen Âge et du Rinascimento : il recense avec minutie les citations d'Ovide chez Dante, Pétrarque, Boccace, Giovanni del Vergilio, qui les utilisent pour les éléments mythologiques ou les allégorisent, mais aussi chez les grammairiens italiens des XII^e, XIII^e, XV^e siècles, qui s'en servent comme exemples linguistiques. Il décrit aussi des manuscrits glosés d'Ovide, utilisés en Italie comme livres d'école dès le XIe siècle. De longues notes érudites accompagnent les descriptions de R. Black. Warren Grinsberg révèle les subtilités de l'utilisation par Dante des écrits d'Ovide, qu'il imite, transforme et rejette à la fois : c'est comme si, œuvre après œuvre, Dante enjoignait Ovide au silence, mais cela relève de sa stratégie littéraire. Il censure Ovide moins pour des raisons morales que pour des raisons poétiques, moins pour son obscénité que pour son ironie. Siegfried Wenzel, examinant les citations d'Ovide dans des sermons anglais des XIV^e et XV^e siècles, constate que des récits ou simplement des vers tirés surtout des Métamorphoses ou des Héroïdes, mais aussi de la poésie amoureuse, ainsi que des commentaires mythographiques, sont utilisés pour illustrer les leçons morales des sermons. James G. Clark retrouve la présence d'Ovide dans les monastères de l'Angleterre du Moyen Âge tardif : les XIV^e et XV^e siècles voient le retour des studia litterarum, spécialement d'Ovide, dans les monastères anglais, où pendant cette période nombre de manuscrits furent rénovés, rachetés et enrichis d'accessus, de commentaires, d'apparats critiques. Cette renaissance s'explique par les réformes du XIII^e siècle et du début du XIV^e siècle, qui introduisirent l'ars dictaminis dans le programme d'étude des cloîtres, et par l'expansion de la prédication chez les moines anglais du XIV^e siècle, qui utilisaient les textes d'Ovide pour les expositions morales qu'ils trouvaient dans l'Ovidius moralizatus de Bersuire. Kathryn L. McKinley montre comment Gower et Chaucer ont lu Ovide : Gower utilise Ovide pour construire un monde idéal, du point de vue politique, éthique et théologique (ce qui est très novateur), « l'Ovide » de Gower est reconstitué à partir des versions moralisées. Chaucer, lui, utilise Ovide pour explorer des questions morales et éthiques, ce qui explique qu'il retienne les détails les plus incongrus et toute l'ironie d'Ovide ; mais il transforme les contes ovidiens en exempla pour sonder le terrain complexe de l'action morale. Vicente Cristóbal examine l'influence d'Ovide en Espagne aux XIII^e et XV^e siècles, s'arrêtant tout particulièrement sur la General Estoria d'Alphonse X, et poursuivant jusqu'aux écrits de Mendoza ou de Mena. D'une part, le contenu mythographique des Métamorphoses et des Héroïdes se prête à des usages historiographiques et moralisants, en fournissant des exemples de vices et de vertus, et propose différentes formes d'expression narrative et des concepts et images pour exprimer les processus mentaux ; d'autre part les textes sur l'amour sont une source importante pour ce qui concerne l'amour et les relations entre hommes et femmes, et un modèle pour le langage sentimental. Carla Lord étudie le programme iconographique de manuscrits médiévaux des Métamorphoses et de leurs récritures, dont l'Ovide moralisé français (en particulier le manuscrit Rouen O 4, dont les rubriques annoncent les images et non le texte), l'Ovidius moralizatus de Bersuire et ses images des quinze dieux, qui se répandirent dans toute l'Europe, et les initiales historiées de manuscrits italiens, qui peuvent servir de marques pour les changements de livres. Elle s'appuie en particulier sur les illustrations du conte de Diane et Actéon, et de celui d'Io, Mercure et Argus. Elle montre que l'image médiévale a du mal à représenter la métamorphose dans son déroulement : le plus souvent, elle la présente comme un fait accompli. Et le plus souvent, les programmes iconographiques concernent les fables plus que les moralisations. Enfin Ralph J. Hexter s'intéresse aux écrits attribués faussement à Ovide pendant le Moyen Âge, et montre que les « pseudo-ovidiana » sont indispensables pour compléter l'image que les médiévaux se faisaient du poète latin. Certains textes, écrits au Moyen Âge, ont même été signés du nom d'Ovide, et représentent « l'ovide le plus médiéval ». Hexter discute alors sur l'emploi du préfixe « pseudo » et sur la notion d'invention (« forgery »), qui sont en relation avec le concept d'auteur et la notion d'authenticité. Il suggère de remplacer le préfixe « pseudo- », entaché du soupçon de tromperie, par un préfixe plus neutre, celui de « para- ». Il examine successivement l'Halieutica, le Nux, des textes comme l'Ovidius puellarum, le Pamphilus, et surtout le fameux De Vetula, qui se présente comme une autobiographie d'Ovide, et qui coïncide avec les interprétations moralisantes et allégorisantes des Métamorphoses.

Le recueil permet donc un tour d'horizon des copies, traductions, commentaires et réécritures d'Ovide tout au long du Moyen Âge : cette nouvelle contribution à l'étude de la réception du poète latin se distingue en particulier par cette extension géographique et temporelle. La bibliographie du recueil, qui recense éditions et études de la fin du XIX^e à nos jours, donne une bonne idée de l'étendue des domaines étudiés : les copies, les gloses marginales, les résumés, les allégories, les traductions en plusieurs langues vernaculaires, les programmes iconographiques, les écrits pseudo-ovidiens et para-ovidiens, du XI^e siècle au XV^e siècle, de l'est à l'ouest et du nord au sud de l'Europe, sont examinés dans leurs différents usages et lieux de productions, cours seigneuriales, monastères, ateliers de copistes et d'enlumineurs. Avec ses appendices – une liste annotée de manuscrits médiévaux des principaux textes et commentaires d'Ovide, l'abondante bibliographie déjà citée, un index des auteurs et œuvres médiévaux, un index des manuscrits et un index général des sources premières et secondaires – il fournit donc aux chercheurs qui s'intéressent à la réception médiévale d'Ovide un outil très utile et même précieux dans des domaines étendus. Même si plusieurs études reprennent des aspects déjà présentés par le passé, le spécialiste de la question peut aussi apprendre beaucoup dans ce recueil.

2012.08.56

Daniela Patrizia Taormina, Rosa Maria Piccione (ed.), Giamblico. I frammenti delle epistole. Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento. Elenchos, 56. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2010. Pp. 680. ISBN 9788870886009. €60.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Peter Lautner (lautner@btk.ppke.hu)

Version at BMCR home site

Iamblichus' philosophy has recently received renewed interest. In particular, there seems to be a special emphasis on the aspects that both reveal the influence of Plotinus and connect these views to the later developments of Neoplatonic philosophy in late antiquity.¹ The volume to be discussed offers a new edition of the fragments of Iamblichus' epistles, preserved in Stobaeus. The new edition is preceded by an extensive introduction where Piccione discusses textual problems along with an examination of Iamblichus' position in the Anthology (1-89) whereas Taormina offers a detailed analysis of the philosophical content and background of the letters (89-275). The Greek text is accompanied with a translation and detailed notes (334-517).

The new edition is all the more welcome since, as Taormina (17) and Piccione (34-38) say on the basis of autopsy of the manuscripts, the standard edition of Stobaeus' text by Wachsmuth and Hense needs critical revision. To take just one sample, it seems that Hense did not pay due attention to the Cod. Bruxellensis (11360) containing a fragment of a letter by Iamblichus (Stobaeus IV 5.76). As for a general feature of the Anthology, it is clearly a kind of manual, serving the purpose of an exhortation to philosophy (30). The kind of philosophy the work is supposed to turn us towards is Neoplatonism, which is shown by the selection of the material and the conceptual frame. Within Neoplatonism, Stobaeus followed Iamblichus. He selected and arranged portions of texts for didactic purposes, as it is particularly clear in the fragments of Iamblichus' De anima (48). The excerpts from the letters, addressed to members of Iamblichus' circle, are also arranged in such a way as to fit in with the particular lemmata that introduce the themes in Stobaeus' work. They reflect the central themes in the philosophical debates of the age, which was an important reason for including them into the anthology.

Taormina points out that Iamblichus examines the notion of dialectic both in his works that have come down to us in medieval transmission and in the letters excerpted by Stobaeus (89). The reason why he did so may be that he applied the term to cover two main areas; knowledge of Forms and logic in the Aristotelian sense. Thus dialectic has both an elenctic and a purificatory function. From this point of view Iamblichus dissents from Plotinus who considers dialectic as a knowledge pertaining to falsehood and sophisms as well (Enn. I [20] 3.5.10-23). In Iamblichus, the logical function is, of course, subordinated to the Platonic notion of knowledge of Forms. The discussion of the difference between the Plotinian and Iamblichean conceptions of the individual soul centers on the response to the Plotinian view of the undescended soul according to which a part of our individual soul do not descend into the world of generation. As is well known, Iamblichus rejects this doctrine. Taormina examines his views in detail and also reconstructs the fate of the doctrine of undescended soul among Neoplatonists living right after Plotinus, with Porphyry as the protagonist. She points to an important parallel between Porphyry's Sent. 22, 13.13-14 Lamberz, and Iamblichus' De anima (in Stobaeus I, 365.7-9 W.) where we read that νοερὰ οὐσία is ὁμοιομερής (148-149); it cognizes always as a whole and its parts represent the whole in the sense that they do not differ from it in respect of their essence – a thesis quite common in later Neoplatonism (see also the parallel between Porphyry's Sent. 10, 4.7 Lamberz, and Iamblichus' De anima in Stobaeus I, 365.12-13 W.). Relying on Iamblichus' De anima and Ep. ad Maced. (Stobaeus II 8.45, 174.9-27 W.) she argues that for Iamblichus the soul is sharply separated from the intellect and the superior genera (beings located between the intellectual realm and the rational soul) and that the individual human soul as a whole is an integral part of the physical world, but at the same time is endowed with a certain autonomy insofar as it can revert to the higher realm. This makes it a true intermediate entity. Taormina also attempts to get some idea of the content of Iamblichus' De providentia et fato, a work attested by Proclus, but unfortunately lost by now. She examines the details of the letter to Macedonius (Stobaeus I 5.17, 80.10-81.6 W.). The thesis 'all what exists exists in virtue of the one' (80.10 W.) is ambiguous since it says both that the One is the principle of the all and that unity inheres everything. She shows that Iamblichus dissents from the Plotinian model (see Enn. VI 9.1.1) radically.² The crucial difference is that he thinks unity manifests itself in the single net (συμπλοκή) of the primary, total causes. In supposing such a net, Iamblichus shows his preference to establish extra layers between the ontological realms discussed by his predecessors. The unity has different aspects, referred to by different terms, which reflects the problems of the theory (193-194).³ The relation of fate and nature is explained with reference to De Mysteriis VIII 7, 269.19-270.7 Parthey, and formulated with the thesis 'fate as nature' (197-8). Here one might object that the text seems rather to say that fate is a result of the activity of natures – fate is what natures bring about (ἐπιτελοῦσιν) in the world of generation. Fate shows the same structure in the world of generation as the interweaving of 'total causes' in the world of universal beings. Iamblichus' classification of virtues draws on the vertical arrangement in Plotinus but develops it in greater detail, into a sevenfold stratification. The classification results from three operations: (1) collection of the traditional material with special emphasis on Plato, (2) fixing the criterion for the arrangement and the relation between different levels, and (3) basing the theory of virtue on a theory of the soul (229). As a consequence, Taormina discusses the relevant portions of Iamblichus' De anima as well. As part of the Platonic heritage, Iamblichus stresses the importance of paideia in the acquisition of virtues.

As mentioned above, the edition of text is based on a new examination of the manuscripts, which resulted in many important and plausible revisions. The notes are detailed and some of them amount to an independent essay. For instance, in n. 14 (338-41) there is a discussion of the notion of τὸ πρώτως ὄν (to be read in I 5.17, 80.13 W. for τὸ πρῶτον ὄν) with reference to Damascius' analysis in De principiis III.⁴ The notion, attested in Iamblichus' commentary on the Timaeus (fr. 29 Dillon), refers to the principle of plurality. From n. 207 (439-41) we learn not only that the notion of 'intellective eye' (ὄμμα νοερόν, III 3.26, 201.18 W.) takes its origin in Plato's Rep. VII, 533d2 (though he mentions 'the eye of the soul') but also that Iamblichus modifies it to separate it from the 'the eye of the soul', the former being attached to the intellectual, the latter to the psychic realm. Iamblichus' view of temperance (σωφροσύνη, III 5.9 and 45-50), a fundamental virtue, is examined in n. 213 (442-51) with the conclusion that its meaning is quite close 'moderation' (μετριότης, 445). One might add here that approaches of this kind can be seen in Middle Platonism as well. Piccione also draws attention to the musical terminology such as 'well- tuned state' (of the soul) in the description of this virtue. The organization of the fragments on temperance shows a certain process from the theoretical level (description of its status in III 9, definition in III 45) to the practical.

We also find two appendices, one by Piccione on Iamblichus' Protrepticus, the other by Taormina on two passages, one from Damascius' in Phaed. 1 §548 Westerink, the other from Olympiodorus, in Gorg. 46.9, 242.1-9 Westerink. To sum up, the book is thorough and will be definitely an indispensable tool for scholars interested in the philosophy of late antiquity. It contains a selected bibliography of 34 pages, and four indices, of words, fragments, places and names, all highly informative.

---

Notes:

1.   For an English translation of the letters, see Iamblichus of Chalcis. The Letters. Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by John M. Dillon and Wolfgang Polleichtner. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.
2.   This led her to claim ('"Todos los seres son seres en virtud del Uno". Unidad y multiplicidad en el principio Jambliqueo de causalidad universal', Signos filosóficos XI, n. 22 (2009), 59-74, esp. 70) that the One regulates the series of causes at the level of 'total causes' (τὰ ὅλα αἴτια) that are the principles of universal beings (see De Mysteriis VIII 1, 260.17, and 2, 261.9 Parthey, where 'total causes' are paralleled to 'total principles'.).
3.   One of terms is εἱρμός (Stobaeus I 5.17, 80.22 W.) which has a distinctly Stoic legacy, referring there also to a series on antecedent causes. One might wonder if Iamblichus did not allude to a certain priority (clearly not a temporal one) between these causes. Taormina discusses the Stoic origins (201-4) and points out the differences from Iamblichus' conception without dwelling on the problem of possible priority. In n. 31 she talks about 'assimilation' of fate and nature in Hellenistic context (347) and 'identification' of the two in post-Iamblichean Neoplatonism (349).
4.   Here we encounter a methodological problem since even if we consider (p. 340) Damascius as defending Iamblichus' position (identifying the One-being (τὸ ἓν ὄν with the first-being (τὸ πρῶτον ὄν), the being itself (αὐτὸ τὸ ὄν) we might not be entitled to say that the argument itself is 'not without an implicit allusion to Iamblichus'.

2012.08.55

David R. Slavitt (trans.), The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2011. Pp. xvii, 66. ISBN 9780520267657. $21.95.

Reviewed by Holly M. Sypniewski, Millsaps College (sypnih@millsaps.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

The poems of the Vergilian Appendix have curried little interest outside of small circles of Latinists. With his slender volume of fresh translations, David R. Slavitt seeks to bring many of these poems out of the shadow of Virgil's opera maiora. Prior to Slavitt, the last English translation of the Appendix was Goold's revision (2000) of Fairclough's Loeb (1931).¹ Slavitt's collection fills a long-standing need for fresh translations of poems of the Appendix that are more accessible to a general audience. Slavitt's skillful and contemporary style of translating Latin poetry is well known from his many previous volumes including, recently, Lucretius and Ovid.²

Readers seeking literal translations or a faithful reproduction of the entire Appendix, if we can even say such a thing existed, should not abandon Goold's translations in the Loeb which offers the majority of the poems published in the 1966 OCT.³ Slavitt's aim is to produce readable, enjoyable translations of the pseudo- Vergiliana which he thinks best and most approachable for contemporary readers: "The Gnat," "The Barmaid," "Curses," "Lydia," "Priapus Poems," "Pesto" (Moretum), "The Good Man," "Yes and No," and "Budding Roses." Slavitt presents interpretations of these Latin poems in a variety of verse forms that are designed to delight the reader rather than frustrate by obscure mythological references and literary in-jokes. He claims that "good poems, even good minor poems, are worth keeping alive" and not just for and by classical cognoscenti (p. xiv).

The introduction outlines Slavitt's rationale for including or omitting poems that have been traditionally included in the Appendix. Provenance or attribution to a different author is of little interest. "Yes and No," "Budding Roses," and "The Good Man" are included despite attribution to Ausonius, one of Slavitt's favorite poets (xiv). "Ciris" does not make the cut in part because Slavitt doesn't like it, but largely due to its abstruse references that would require a spate of footnotes that would nullify the poet's literary game. "Aetna" is also omitted as "an exercise in tedium" like what "Lucretius would have written if he'd had less talent" (p. xvi). Finally, Slavitt leaves out the collection "Catalepton" because he felt that the poems, as short as they are, would require lengthy explanations to clarify references and to convey jokes that are inaccessible in English.

The collection opens with "The Gnat." Slavitt approaches the poem with a liberal eye toward the poem's proem so that the reader grasps the tone and key tropes. He focuses on the invocation to Octavius (the young Augustus), the neoteric aesthetic for which the poet strives, and the effective praeteritio that puts off greater epic topics for a later work. To do this, Slavitt must necessarily flatten some of the Latin poetic language, but in this case it is for the best: not every image of refinement must be conveyed for the Latin-less reader to grasp the spirit of the introduction. In many cases, Slavitt's decisions make the proem much clearer than any literal translation of the Latin original. In terms of the narrative progression of the poem, Slavitt nicely shows the reader how the poem moves from scene to scene and in and out of mythological digressions within scenes. The poem unfolds in three main episodes which Slavitt preserves: the shepherd's morning musings as he pastures his sheep, his midday nap and encounter with a serpent in a numinous grove, the nocturnal visit by the spirit of the gnat who saved him from the serpent. Sign-posting, such as "That's the scene" (p. 11), helps to ease the reader through what could be abrupt transitions. Other features of Slavitt's translation include deepened psychological tension, more explicit connections between episodes or between inset myths and the narrative, and fuller explanations of mythological characters that are named only by epithets or patronymics. For example, Colchida matrem(l. 249) simply becomes "Medea." Slavitt also adds explanatory phrases to clarify obscure figures, such as Pales whom Slavitt identifies as "the shepherds' goddess." In effect, Slavitt fortifies the tenuous connections between myth and narrative episodes and usefully does away with the footnotes that often accompany translations by clarifying the poem's more obscure references. In doing so, he crafts a charming, readable and cohesive poem.

Slavitt follows a similar approach to translating the "Barmaid" (Copa) with the addition of end-rhyme in alternating verses. The setting and diction are made more contemporary without completely sacrificing all of the mythological and ancient literary tropes that pepper this "carpe diem" poem. For example, the barmaid dances "to the sizzle of a tambourine" and "as the fiddle plays" instead of to castanets (p. 23). The catalogue of food served is simplified in terms of the number of items, while Slavitt freely adds some poetic color. A simple cucumber (pendet iunco caeruleus cucumis) is transported to the table: "On that wall, there are cucumbers to slice / and eat with a touch of salt perhaps on the plate" (p. 24). Some of Slavitt's other liberties with the Latin add a more moralizing (or perhaps salacious) tone than the original bears. In the Copa, Priapus simply appears at the end of the catalog of foodstuffs as a staple of the garden landscape (est turguri custos, armatus falce saligna, / sed non et vasto est inguine terribilis, ll. 23-24). Slavitt brings Priapus to life as "the god of the house, offers advice / on what life is all about--although that great / member he has might frighten more than entice / women, except for the most degenerate" (p. 24).

Slavitt's "Curses" offers a slightly compressed but emotionally rich translation of Dirae. Features of Slavitt's rendition include pruning the imagery in some instances from several examples to one or a very few, using the same refrain throughout the poem ("O Battarus, friend, let this be and more!") where the original offers variations with slight changes in meaning, and few unadulterated additions that heighten the emotional pathos of the poem. For example, two lines of Latin piscetur nostris in finibus advena arator / advena, civili qui semper crimine crevit (ll. 80-81) become "Let foreigners fish in shallow lakes that stand / in the place of fertile fields that are, like us, in exile / and hating those who have come to arrogate for themselves / what they never loved or deserved, not husbandmen but rapists" (p. 32). Adherents to literal translations may find Slavitt's choices too extreme in some cases, but "Curses" effectively evokes the venomous tone and imagery of the original.

"Lydia" is the gem of the collection. Slavitt's translation captures all the features of the original: pathos, pathetic fallacy, idyllic setting, mythological allusion and the tropes of Latin elegy. The translation is also more literal than many of the others in this volume but still fluent and engaging. The "Priapus Poems" allow Slavitt to flex his wit with plenty of double-entendre and phallic puns. He translates the three shorter Priapea that were commonly printed with or following the Catalepton and the longer, impotence poem attributed to Virgil in the Graz manuscript sometimes published separately as "Priapeum: 'Quid Est Hoc Novi?'." Slavitt renders all four of the ribald poems in vivid contemporary idiom. In particular, the impotence poem, rife with explicit sexual imagery and crude jokes, shows Slavitt's talent for updating the Latin text.

The collection closes with Slavitt's "Pesto," or Moretum, and the three short Ausonian poems: "The Good Man," "Yes and No," and "Budding Roses." As throughout the collection, Slavitt uses a variety of English verse forms to translate the Latin dactylic hexameters or elegiac couplets of these poems. Some explanation of these poetic choices would be welcome. We do not, however, expect poets to illuminate the relationship between the form and content of their work; the poetic translator deserves the same creative freedom. Students and scholars of Virgil may miss the minora that Slavitt chose to omit from his collection, but if one wants to read clever, well-wrought translations that do much to capture the spirit of much of the Appendix, then Slavitt's translations hit the mark.

---

Notes:

1.   H. R. Fairclough, ed., Virgil: Aeneid VII-XII, Appendix Vergiliana, rev. by G. P. Goold. Cambridge, MA 2000. R. Giomini, ed. (Florence 1953) provides Italian translations in his critical edition of the Appendix Vergiliana. English verse translations may be found in J. J. Mooney, The Minor Poems of Vergil, Birmingham 1916.
2.   Love Poems, Letters, and Remedies of Ovid, Cambridge, MA 2011; De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things): A Poetic Translation, Berkeley 2008.
3.   The Appendix Vergiliana is an editorial creation of minor poems attributed to Virgil, based on lists by Donatus and Servius, an entry in a 9th c. catalogue of manuscripts, and editorial decisions by modern critics. Goold's introduction to the Loeb edition provides a good overview of the history and problems of the collection and a list of the poems that were usually included: 1. Dirae and Lydia, 2. Culex, 3. Aetna, 4. Copa, 5. Elegiae in Maecenatem, 6. Ciris, 7. Catalepton, 8. Priapea, 9. Moretum, a. De Est et Non, b. De Institutione Viri Boni, c. De Rosis Nascentibus (2000, 370-381). Goold omits translations of the last three poems because of their attribution to Ausonius and inclusion in H. G. Evelyn-White's Loeb volume, Ausonius, vol. II, Cambridge, MA 1921.

2012.08.54

Pierre-Louis Gatier, Julien Aliquot, Lévon Nordiguian (ed.), Sources de l'histoire de Tyr: textes de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge. Beyrouth: Presses de l'IFPO; Presses de l'Université Saint-Joseph, 2011. Pp. 303. ISBN 9782351591840. €15.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Élodie Guillon, Doctorante à l'Université de Toulouse (UTM) (eguillon31@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

Pierre-Louis Gatier, Julien Aliquot et Lévon Nordiguian nous proposent un ouvrage collectif né d'une idée originale et ambitieuse, celle de rassembler des sources extrêmement variées et dispersées sur l'histoire d'une grande cité méditerranéenne antique et médiévale, Tyr. Le projet initial, de 2006, prévoyait un colloque sur ce thème, mais les événements régionaux ont obligé les éditeurs à recourir à une autre forme de travail collectif suivant un double objectif : faire le point sur les textes antiques et médiévaux concernant l'histoire tyrienne et soutenir la recherche archéologique, récente ou en projet, in situ. Tout en souhaitant aider la recherche sur Tyr, largement lacunaire à l'heure actuelle, les auteurs espèrent également éveiller l'intérêt d'un public plus large, cultivé et curieux.

Compte tenu de l'ampleur de la documentation, les éditeurs ont privilégié différents dossiers de sources textuelles, thématiques ou chronologiques. L'ouvrage s'organise donc en 11 contributions, dont 7 sont relatives à l'Antiquité, avec une large place faite à l'épigraphie, et 4 traitent du Moyen-Âge. Le cadre chronologique est délimité dans l'introduction. Il englobe les périodes antiques dites historiques, c'est-à-dire les époques hellénistique, romaine et byzantine, ainsi que le Moyen-Âge jusqu'à la prise de Tyr par les Mamelouks et la destruction de ses remparts en 1291.

La première partie s'ouvre par la contribution de Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet qui propose un bilan d'un des plus riches dossiers épigraphiques tyriens : les inscriptions hellénistiques. Classé par zones de découverte, ce dossier n'est pas exhaustif et fait la part belle aux inscriptions religieuses, choix que l'auteur justifie à la fin de son article. Elle ne propose pas de traduction, ni d'informations nouvelles, mais bien une synthèse des données existantes et des pistes de recherche nées de l'étude des inscriptions, dans le domaine de l'onomastique, la politique ou la linguistique notamment, une longue bibliographie à l'appui.

Jean-Baptiste Yon s'intéresse également à la période hellénistique dans le cadre d'un dossier différent, celui des Tyriens expatriés en Méditerranée. Se focalisant, dans un premier temps, sur les gens de lettres qui forment un groupe à part, il propose ensuite de regarder, par zones géographiques, l'ensemble des dossiers épigraphiques ayant trait aux groupes tyriens installés tout autour de la Méditerranée, par exemple en Grèce, en Asie Mineure, en Égypte ou à Carthage. Le vaste corpus qu'il réunit, de façon très claire et organisée, mentionne surtout des notables, souvent des commerçants, des athlètes et des philosophes. En conclusion, Jean-Baptiste Yon propose différentes pistes de recherche et une mise en perspective de sa démarche prosopographique, intéressante et exploitable, selon lui, dans le cadre d'une étude plus vaste sur les Phéniciens et les Orientaux expatriés en Méditerranée.

Les deux contributions suivantes concernent l'époque romaine. Le premier dossier est présenté par Julien Aliquot et traite des Tyriens dans le monde romain, d'Aguste à Dioclétien. Il est articulé en deux parties - une étude menée par catégories socio-professionnelles des Tyriens apparaissant dans les inscriptions et un catalogue exhaustif, organisé par zones géographiques, reprenant l'ensemble du corpus à disposition avec transcriptions et traductions, mais aussi discussions autour de certains de ses éléments. L'ensemble de la contribution fait ainsi ressortir trois groupes importants : les ambassadeurs et hommes de lettre, connus nommément pour la majorité, les marchands et les affranchis, en particulier à Rome et Pouzzoles et enfin les soldats au service de Rome, notamment à travers des textes mentionnant la cohors Tyriorum. Julien Aliquot conclue son étude sur l'apport du dossier et ses lacunes, par exemple au sujet des plus humbles expatriés. La volonté d'exhaustivité de l'auteur et la présence d'un catalogue font de ce dossier l'un des plus complets de l'ouvrage. Il est également suivi d'un index onomastique des Tyriens expatriés, rédigé par Julien Aliquot et Jean-Baptiste Yon.

Jean-Paul Rey-Coquais présente ensuite une inscription latine inédite découverte dans la nécropole de Tyr. Malgré la perte du support, l'auteur a pu en proposer une transcription et une traduction. Il en met enfin en lumière l'apport et l'intérêt : seule épitaphe latine retrouvée dans la nécropole de l'isthme, elle renseigne sur un fonctionnaire romain en poste à Tyr. Remise en contexte, elle souligne une nouvelle fois la force des rapports entre la cité et Rome ainsi que sa place régionale de premier ordre à l'époque romaine.

La partie sur les sources antiques se clôt avec l'étude de Pierre-Louis Gatier relative aux sources hagiographiques. Il s'interroge sur leurs apports dans le cadre du culte des saints, phénomène essentiel dans le développement du christianisme antique. Il y cherche, en outre, les détails éclairant l'histoire et la topographie tyriennes. Même si la conclusion est finalement décevante, puisque l'auteur ne trouve aucun élément éclairant les sanctuaires de la cité, l'article, très complet, présente un corpus riche, diversifié, bien délimité et expliqué, renseignant au moins sur le développement des cultes de Saint Paul, Sainte Christine et Marie. Les sources présentées sont aussi susceptibles d'éclairer les questions de société de l'époque protobyzantine, celle des différents métiers connus, des rapports commerciaux de Tyr avec l'Égypte, de la place de la minorité juive dans la cité ou encore des réseaux monophysites tyriens.

Il ressort des différents dossiers examinés l'image en pointillés d'une ville importante et rayonnante. L'hétérogénéité des dossiers, cependant, empêche une vision continue et évolutive de Tyr et des Tyriens dans l'Antiquité.

La seconde partie de l'ouvrage regroupe quatre contributions ayant trait à la Tyr médiévale. D'abord, celle de David Bramouillé, dédiée à la période fatimide. En raison de la nature et du nombre plus important de sources à sa disposition. L'auteur présente, de manière moins exhaustive, textes arabes, chrétiens melkites ou judéo-arabes. Protégée par ses fortifications puissantes, jugée imprenable, Tyr a alors développé un sentiment d'impunité face au pouvoir fatimide que David Bramouillé juge pénalisant, notamment dans ses rapports commerciaux avec l'Égypte.

La contribution de Patricia Antaki-Masson fait écho à la précédente, puisqu'elle s'attache aux fortifications de Tyr, durant trois périodes différentes : la première époque islamique, l'époque franque et l'époque mamelouke. Outre une description physique des fortifications tirée des textes, l'auteur explique les choix militaires défensifs éclairés par leur contexte politique et stratégique régional. Cette étude très complète s'achève avec la prise de la ville par les Mamelouks et le démantèlement des fortifications afin de ne pas laisser aux Croisés la possibilité de faire de Tyr une de leur base militaire.

Pierre-Vincent Claverie s'intéresse ensuite aux sources diplomatiques et leur contribution à l'histoire ecclésiastique de Tyr. S'appuyant sur un vaste corpus de quelques 430 documents, il présente les principaux faits historiques liés à l'archevêché tyrien à l'époque des Croisades. Il met en lumière un dossier complexe impliquant Tyr, Antioche et Jérusalem, mais également d'autres villes de la Phénicie maritime comme Béryte. Un point intéressant est l'intervention de Rome qui, dans un contexte bien différent de l'Antiquité, souligne tout de même la permanence de liens privilégiés entre Tyr et l'Italie.

Cécile Treffort propose, pour clore la partie médiévale de l'ouvrage, un retour à l'épigraphie, avec les inscriptions latines et françaises des XII^e et XIII^e siècles. Elle présente, à la suite de son étude, le catalogue inédit et exhaustif de l'ensemble des sources. Elle souligne ensuite les difficultés méthodologiques posées par ces sources avant d'éclairer le lecteur sur la composition de son catalogue. Sur les 18 inscriptions présentées, la très grande majorité sont des épitaphes, mentionnant des noms et des fonctions. L'auteur donne quelques pistes d'étude, mais elle ouvre surtout sur une perspective plus large, à savoir un travail approfondi et élargi sur l'ensemble des inscriptions lapidaires levantines, qui permettrait, selon elle, d'affiner les datations et d'avoir un aperçu plus intéressant de la classe socio-économique qui a produit ces témoignages.

Cette partie de l'ouvrage est différente de la précédente, en raison d'une documentation plus fournie et diversifiée. Les nombreuses sources écrites, associées aux inscriptions lapidaires permettent d'entrer dans les murs de la cité, de saisir une partie de sa topographie, militaire et religieuse en particulier, et de connaître les détails de ses implications dans la géopolitique régionale. Elle est suivie d'une annexe, une étude diachronique de Pierre-Louis Gatier sur les séismes, phénomène qui a traversé l'ensemble des périodes étudiées.

À la lecture de ces onze contributions et de l'annexe de Pierre-Louis Gatier, on peut dire que l'ouvrage répond globalement aux objectifs fixés en introduction par les éditeurs. Dans un même livre, en effet, ont été regroupés et surtout classés des ensembles de documents écrits ayant trait à l'histoire de Tyr. Les difficultés posées par les sources sont clairement exposées dans chaque contribution. Des propositions de questionnement des documents sont avancées, pour utiliser au mieux ou redécouvrir certains corpora. L'absence d'une conclusion synthétique, toutefois, se fait ressentir, d'une part pour donner plus de cohérence à l'ensemble de l'ouvrage, constitué de corpora de qualité et quantité très inégale, en soulignant par exemple les apports des différents dossiers et leurs points communs pour l'étude de la cité, et d'autre part pour résumer les pistes et possibilités de recherche proposées par les auteurs. Quant à la non exhaustivité des dossiers, elle est annoncée dès l'introduction et expliquée clairement par la variété des sources et donc des outils que leur étude mobilise. Nous pouvons donc nous joindre aux éditeurs quand ils souhaitent que les années à venir voient la parution d'autres volumes du même genre pour d'autres ensembles documentaires ou d'autres cités phéniciennes.

2012.08.53

D. M. Carter (ed.), Why Athens? A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 472. ISBN 9780199562329. $160.00.

Reviewed by Alex Gottesman, Temple University (gottesman@temple.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

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

It is no longer controversial in the least to suggest that tragedy has a politics, or that understanding a tragedy's social and cultural contexts are crucial for understanding it. But where do we go from here? This well-organized volume (originating from a 2007 conference at Reading) takes a wide view of tragedy's contexts and seeks to explore the many ways in which tragic performances resonated with their audience(s). The essays here remind us that, as far as the politics of tragedy are concerned, there is much more to be discussed about tragedy than whether, and how, it was democratic. At the outset I should say that all the contributions are of high quality. But in my review I will highlight those that seemed to me to be especially interesting or novel.

The volume consists of fourteen essays by both established and younger scholars. It is divided into six parts, each concluded by a response. The first part sets the stage by focusing on the contexts of tragedy. Wilson's paper builds on his previous research on the financing of tragic performances (the khoregeia), while Carter discusses tragedy's Athenian audience, which he believes was quite broad. Duncan also considers the audience of tragedy but from a different perspective. Specifically, she considers the evidence for plays that we think were written to be performed somewhere other than Athens, namely Aeschylus' Aetnaeae, written for Hieron of Syracuse, and Euripides' Archelaus, written for Archelaus of Macedon. Had these two plays survived, they would certainly have added much to the debate about tragedy's "Athenianness," since we could then easily compare them with Athenian productions and discern what remained the same and what changed when the public art form of democratic Athens was transplanted to the courts of tyrants. Duncan prefers to read the testimonia about both plays as suggesting that they rather straight-forwardly celebrated the poets' patrons. In her view, this shows that tragedy's ideological commitments depended on who was holding the purse-strings, whether a monarch or a democracy.

The papers of the next part showcase a particularly promising approach to the question of tragedy's close engagement in Athenian politics at the level of discourse. While Burian considers general features of democratic ideology and practice, examining how tragedy itself, as a genre, explores central democratic notions of equality, free (or frank) speech, and agonistic deliberation, Hesk attempts to pin down a specific democratic concept which finds resonance in tragedy, namely, euboulia, or "good deliberation." Starting from Edith Hall's recent work on the Trachiniae, Hesk argues that euboulia, is also foregrounded in Euripides' Supplices and the Euripidean Rhesus. However, as Hesk reads the concept, euboulia is not exclusively a democratic concept. It was readily exportable abroad. Anyone, regardless of the prevailing political regime, could relate to deliberation scenes in tragedy and find in them the limitations of human planning and intelligence compared to the ineluctable work of fortune and the gods.

Barker, like Burian, also takes up the notion of parrhesia, and considers its operation in one play, Euripides' Orestes. The term parrhesia is relatively rare in fifthcentury sources, appearing in Euripides only a handful of times. What Barker has in mind, however, is not the inconvenient-truth-telling aspect of parrhesia, central to Foucault's influential study of this term (surprisingly not cited, although the second lecture is precisely on Euripides, with a focus on the Orestes), but its aspect of disagreement or dissent. This aspect he reads as central to the plot of the Orestes. Barker does not dwell on the one occurrence of the term parrhesia in the play, which interestingly occurs in the messenger's unflattering depiction of a demagogue (905). Instead, he argues that with the play's increasingly anarchic action Euripides is dramatizing the failure to manage dissent. Unlike the trial of Orestes in the Eumenides, which is carefully contained within the framework of an institution, Euripides treats the trial of Orestes as an instance of dissent breaking its institutional moorings and threatening to destabilize social order.

Tragedy, it is often noted, involves not only the polis but also the oikos. The next section accordingly is focused on family contexts, and explores how the audiences' social frames of reference might have colored their interpretation of tragic action. Griffith returns to ground he covered in his seminal article "Brilliant Dynasts" (1995),¹ which was focused primarily on democratic/aristocratic tensions in Aeschylean tragedy. Elite, inter-polis, xenia-based relationships clashed with civic obligations to one's fellow citizens, but also called for reconciliation with them. Dramatists continued to exploit these fertile tensions in later tragedy, regardless of changes associated with Pericles' Citizenship Law of 451/0. Athenian audiences continued to be interested in "brilliant elite adventures, dynastic plotting, and divinely assisted catastrophes and rescues" (180).

While Griffith surveys the topic widely, highlighting relevant elements in all the later tragedies, OKell focuses on only one aspect. Most, if not all, the audience members would have been concerned at one time or another with the issue of inheritance. Thus OKell considers how laws and practices of inheritance might have shaped how the audience responded to the tragic action. Athenian inheritance laws were much more patrilineal than those of places like Sparta and Gortyn. Heiresses were much more important, since the property would devolve through them undivided to their husbands. Did that difference substantially affect how a Spartan might have reacted to the figures of Antigone and Ismene, or those of Orestes and Electra? Probably not, according to OKell, but it does raise the possibility that different audiences responded differently to different aspects of the story. For example, Athenians might have read the father-son tension between Creon and Haemon against the backdrop of the epiklerate, with Antigone's marriage determining who will "inherit" Theban rule. That nuance might have been lost on Cretans and Spartans, but they would have been able to relate to the conflict regardless (much as we can).

The next section deals with a topic that has been attracting increasing scholarly interest, choruses. In an interesting paper Murnaghan picks up on Henrichs' work on choral self-referentiality, and highlights a paradox: "Even as [choruses] themselves sing and dance, they testify to conditions in which no one would want to do so" (246). Choruses play a dual role. On the one hand they are characters of a tragic plot, in which they must bear witness to horrendous acts and consequences. On the other, their function is to dance and sing even when the topic is painful stories. Tragedy takes advantage of this duality in multiple ways. It is often exploited when a chorus misreads the situation and dances for joy while the audience knows it will soon sing a very different tune (e.g. in Ajax, OT, Trachiniae). It is also exploited when its two aspects are brought into alignment thanks to the work of Athenian institutions (e.g. Eumenides, OC, Eur. Suppliants), or when they incorporate ("jingoistically") non- Athenian cultic traditions into Athenian dramatic forms (e.g. Helen, IT, Electra). Finally it is exploited (as in Persians) to call into question the relationship between a chorus and a leader—a particularly pregnant dynamic in the context of Athenian democratic politics.

The next two chapters are grouped under the title "Suppliants," and both deal with the very common sub-genre of what has been called "suppliant drama." These plays all turn on the reception of suppliants and their requests for aid (e.g. Aesch. Supp.; Eur. Hcld., Supp.). Commonly, but not necessarily, the requests entail a war against those threatening the suppliants. As Tzanetou reads them (following Isocrates 4. 56), the plays in fact comment on imperial Athens' relations with its subject states. They encode empire as a fundamentally moral enterprise to protect the weak against the powerful (while also depicting Athens, or a stand-in for Athens, as in addition more powerful and more just than its opponents). She traces the beginning of this trope to Aeschylus' lost Eleusinioi (ca. 470), but argues that it became more pronounced as the empire became more onerous and oppressive, as if the playwrights were compensating for Athens' imperial policies.

Tzanetou's historicising approach is nicely paired by the approach of Vinh in the following chapter. Whereas Tzanetou gives an overview of the genre of suppliant drama and its political subtexts, Vinh takes a close look at a single paradigmatic suppliant drama, Euripides' Suppliants, a play that has seemed to many as inferior or unsatisfying dramatically. Vinh suggests that its lack of dramatic coherence stems from the play's reliance on music and ritual, rather than plot, to create a meaningful experience for the audience. Thus, the play weaves together disparate threads, such as the Proerosia festival, funerary orations and rituals, and supplication, to send complex messages that are not reducible to any single dimension. In fact, Vinh resists readings that seek to distill the political message of the Suppliants into a simple celebration and justification of Athenian power, such as the one offered for suppliant drama in general by Tzanetou. She instead sees the Suppliants as a "dynamic force that generates in the audience an emotional and behavioral involvement rather than an intellectual understanding" (344). The play's agenda is certainly hegemonic, culturally and probably politically as well, but Vinh does a good job showing how it actually goes about getting that agenda across in an artistically compelling way.

The final section deals with the Panhellenic aspirations of tragedy. Rosenbloom surveys the evidence broadly, but focuses especially on Aeschylean and early tragedy, while Gibert deals with Hellenicity in later Euripidean tragedy. In his wide-ranging contribution Rosenbloom begins with the semantics of the term Panhellenes, suggesting that it differs from the simple Hellenes in that it suggests an assembled collective. It also implies "elite agents competing for material and symbolic rewards and a mass audience that authorizes and promulgates their status" (354-5). In tragedy it occurs only in the context of war, specifically in Panhellenic expeditions such as the Trojan War and the Theban War. Rosenbloom examines in detail the different tactics used to make Athens into a stand-in for all of Hellas, especially in Aeschylus' Persians and Eumenides, Euripides' Suppliants and Ion, but also touching on Sophocles' Philoctetes, and even (in a rare nod to comedy in this volume) on Aristophanes' Lysistrata. It is not a straightforward sleight-of-hand however, equating Athens with all of Greece in order to praise Athens as most Hellenic of the Hellenes. Thus he reads Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis as critical of the equation: a searching question of what it means to be a "Hellene," and what it means to demand individual sacrifice for a supposedly Hellenic good.

Overall, the essays in this volume are uniformly high-quality. Scholars working on the topics and plays covered will certainly want to consult them. It is uncommon to find a set of conference proceedings this well-integrated. The essays frequently refer to each other not only in the footnotes but in the body as well, suggesting that the original conference must have sparked lively and fruitful scholarly exchange, which has been carried over into publication.

Table of Contents

Mark Griffith and D. M. Carter, "Introduction"
I. Context
Peter Wilson, "The glue of democracy? Tragedy, structure and finance"
D. M. Carter, "Plato, drama, and rhetoric"
Anne Duncan, "Nothing to do with Athens? Tragedians at the courts of tyrants"
Richard Seaford, "Response"
II. Discourse
Peter Burian, "Athenian tragedy as democratic discourse"
Jon Hesk, "Euripidean euboulia and the problem of 'tragic politics'"
Elton T. E. Barker, "'Possessing an unbridled tongue': frank speech and speaking back in Euripides' Orestes"
Malcolm Heath, "Response"
III. Families
Mark Griffith, "Extended families, marriage, and inter-city relations in (later) Athenian tragedy: Dynasts II"
Eleanor OKell, "Inheritance and the Athenian nature of Sophoclean tragedy"
Peter Rhodes, "Response"
IV. Choruses
Sheila Murnaghan, "Choroi achoroi: the Athenian politics of tragic choral identity"
Eirene Visvardi, "Pity and panhellenic politics: choral emotion in Euripides' Hecuba and Trojan Women"
Ian Ruffell, "Response"
V. Suppliants
Angeliki Tzanetou, "Supplication and empire in Athenian tragedy"
Graziella Vinh, "Athens in Euripides' Suppliants: ritual, politics, and theatre"
Barbara Goff, "Response"
VI. Athens and Greece
David Rosenbloom, "The panhellenism of Athenian tragedy"
John Gibert, "Hellenicity in later Euripidean tragedy"
Anthony J. Podlecki, "Response"
Note

---

Notes:

1.   M. Griffith, 'Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the "Oresteia"', CA 14 (1995) 62-129.

2012.08.52

Noel Lenski (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine. Revised edition (first published 2006). Cambridge companions to the ancient world. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xx, 471. ISBN 9781107601109. $39.99 (pb).

Reviewed by John Noël Dillon, University of Exeter (j.n.dillon@exeter.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine has been revised and reissued five years after it first appeared in 2006. (The first edition was reviewed here: BMCR 2006.06.04.) The revised Companion thus accompanies a great number of publications on Constantine, especially in English and German, that have appeared since 2006 and coincide more or less with the 1,700th anniversary of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. The most significant publications are listed in the "Preface to the Revised Edition" (pp. xv-xvi), the most recent of which are T. D. Barnes' Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire and R. Van Dam's Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, both published in 2011.

Noel Lenski summarizes the revisions made to the Companion in the new Preface. The revisions are fairly light and primarily bibliographical. The main text, down to the page numbers, is nearly identical. Most changes are in response to the long review of the first edition by Barnes, who catalogued errors and mistakes and offered significant criticism on several points of interpretation.¹ So, for example, Helena, the mother of Constantine, and Minvervina, his first wife, have been promoted from concubines to partners (p. 92ff.). Barnes argues that both were lawfully wedded wives.²

Other points of contention have resulted in new material and bibliography in the notes. Most of the discussions of the Edict of Milan to which Barnes objected still stand, but H. A. Drake, for example, has included new literature on this text in his discussion of Constantine's impact on Christianity. Drake argues (p. 135n25) that "there is utterly no reason other than preconception to think [Constantine] did not participate or believe in the policy enunciated therein." Among the new works cited by Drake that minimize Constantine's role in formulating the policy of the Edict of Milan appears Barnes' own review of the Companion.

A few stylistic infelicities noted by Barnes have also been corrected. Constantine now vaults over the Alps with a "compact strike force," not a "compact crack force" (69); but "swampification" stands defiant on p. 250n2.. The rest of the emendations to the notes reflect the progress of scholarship in the years since the first edition. So, for instance, whereas the first edition (p. 31n58) noted the lack of an English translation of Philostorgius, readers are now directed to Amidon 2007.³ A delay of a year or so would have caught all the publications that are appearing on schedule for the anniversary of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, but perhaps a future, substantial revision will digest the academic fallout of the present activity on Constantine and his age.⁴

---

Notes:

1.   T. D. Barnes, "Constantine after Seventeen Hundred Years: The Cambridge Companion, the York Exhibition, and a Recent Biography," International Journal of the Classical Tradition 14 (2007): 185-220.
2.   Barnes, 195; id., The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 36, 42f.
3.   P. R. Amidon, trans., Philostorgius: Church History (Atlanta, 2007).
4.   2012 has already seen the publication of e.g. J. Bardill, Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age (Cambridge, 2012).

2012.08.51

Emma Aston, Mixanthrôpoi: Animal-human Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion. Kernos. Supplément, 25. Liège: Centre International d'Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 2011. Pp. 383. ISBN 9782960071788. €40.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Danilo Nati, Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene (danilonati@hotmail.it)

Version at BMCR home site

Il volume, che nasce dalla revisione della tesi di dottorato discussa dall'Autrice presso la Exeter University nel 2007, colma una lacuna negli studi storico-religiosi del mondo greco. Per la prima volta, infatti, viene sviluppata un'analisi complessiva delle divinità ibride umano-animali (denominate dall'Autrice Mixanthrôpoi, termine rarissimo, utilizzato dai soli Libanio e Temistio a proposito dei centauri), sinora di problematico inquadramento, sia per l'oggettiva difficoltà di inserirle all'interno di categorie religiose note, sia per la scarsità di fonti letterarie, epigrafiche e iconografiche che le riguardano.

L'opera, suddivisa in dieci capitoli, a loro volta raggruppati in tre sezioni, inizia con un'estesa introduzione volta a illustrare le linee guida dell'opera e la presenza di divinità ibride nell'ambito religioso egizio e vicino orientale. Nella prima sezione si analizza la grande varietà di mixanthrôpoi attestati nell'universo religioso greco: divinità singole e gruppi di divinità vengono trattati sistematicamente, con una discussione sulla loro iconografia e sulle forme di attività cultuale a loro dedicate, attraverso l'attento esame delle fonti letterarie, epigrafiche e iconografiche disponibili. Il capitolo 1 ("Deities of the sea and the rivers") analizza le divinità legate al mondo marino (quali Proteus, Thetis, Eurynome, le Sirene e Glaukos) e a quello delle acque interne (Acheloos e le altre divinità fluviali). Nel capitolo 2 ("Terrestrial mixanthropes") sono invece trattate le divinità legate allo spazio terrestre (Cheiron, Demeter Melaina, Kekrops). La figura di Pan viene giustamente sviluppata isolatamente in un lungo paragrafo, mentre piuttosto inconsueta risulta la presenza di Dionysos, la cui forma ibrida (corpo umano e testa di toro) è attestata da poche fonti letterarie di epoca tarda, che descrivono sommariamente anche le particolari modalità del culto. Nel capitolo 3 ("Winged and horned gods") che chiude la prima sezione dell'opera, si discutono le divinità munite di ali (Boreas, Nike ed Eos) e di corna (quali, ad esempio, Apollo Karneios e Zeus Ammon).

Nella seconda sezione l'Autrice dimostra come le storie mitiche dei mixanthrôpoi, seppur nelle specificità che le connotano, seguano significativamente dei modelli che le accomunano. Tali modelli, che presentano analogie con i temi mitici relativi ai mostri di natura ibrida, sono composti fondamentalmente dai temi dell'espulsione e dell'allontanamento volontario.

I mixanthrôpoi vengono infatti generalmente banditi dalle loro posizioni topografiche originarie, con il risultato che i loro luoghi di culto sono spesso inseriti in un paesaggio caratterizzato dal senso di assenza e di separazione, come ad esempio le grotte (luogo privilegiato per il culto di tali divinità), o in regioni in cui prevale l'impressione di arcaicità, come l'Arcadia — considerata già nell'antichità un territorio teatro di vicende che apparivano remote perfino ai Greci— , regione alla quale è consacrato l'intero capitolo sesto ("The fallacy of Arcadia") . L'allontanamento non è dunque soltanto un fattore spaziale, ma anche temporale, che relega l'esistenza di tali esseri divini ai primordi della storia.

Se l'allontanamento dei mostri ibridi è percepito dalle comunità umane come legittimo e inevitabile per il bene della collettività, la situazione per i mixanthrôpoi è ben differente, perché in molti casi il loro allontanamento e la loro assenza sono concepiti come privazioni dannose e gravide di conseguenze funeste per la comunità umana. Inoltre, mentre i mostri ibridi sono sempre le vittime passive dell'espulsione —che in alcuni casi coincide con la loro uccisione —-, alcune divinità ibride si allontanano volontariamente dalla società umana (come ad esempio Demeter Melaina). Le divinità ibride possiedono dunque una natura decisamente ambivalente in ragione delle loro caratteristiche distruttive, che le avvicinano ai mostri ibridi, ma che, a differenza di questi ultimi, possono potenzialmente ripercuotersi sulla comunità umana sia in loro presenza, sia in loro assenza. Questa circostanza li separa nettamente dal modello mitico dell'espulsione del mostro ibrido, che è costantemente a vantaggio del genere umano.

Negli ultimi quattro capitoli sono esplorate le strette relazioni esistenti fra i mixanthrôpoi e il processo artistico che ne ha prodotto le rappresentazioni iconografiche, connesse, secondo l'Autrice, con il fenomeno della metamorfosi.

Il capitolo 7 (" Mixanthropy and metamorphosis") esamina le prove della connessione fra ibridismo e metamorfosi. Nella storia mitica o nella linea genealogica di una divinità ibrida, l'Autrice riscontra la presenza pressoché costante di un processo grazie al quale una divinità prende le sembianze di un animale per unirsi a un altro personaggio, divino oppure no, con la conseguente generazione di una divinità ibrida o di un suo antenato. La natura ibrida di una divinità si connette dunque strettamente al fenomeno della metamorfosi; non solo, ma la stessa raffigurazione della divinità ibrida appare essere il risultato di un processo di fissazione e canonizzazione di un fenomeno fluido e dinamico qual è la metamorfosi.

Nel capitolo 8 ("Mixanthropy and masks – the iconography of Acheloos") l'Autrice discute la stretta relazione fra le divinità ibride (in particolar modo Acheloos) e la loro rappresentazione in forma di maschera (motivo probabilmente ripreso dall'imagerie dionisiaca), che amplifica l'associazione fra divinità ibrida e la sua facoltà di essere contemporaneamente presente e assente.

Il capitolo 9 (" Mixanthropy and plurality") esamina altre due caratteristiche di alcuni mixanthrôpoi, pluralità e anonimato, tipiche ad esempio di satiri e sileni: in particolare i componenti del thiasos dionisiaco annoverano una varietà di esseri ibridi che, trascendendo dalla propria individualità, proiettano alcuni aspetti della loro personalità su Dionysos, che mantiene invece la sua immagine propriamente antropomorfica.

Nell'ultimo capitolo (" Gods, Monsters and images") l'Autrice estende infine la discussione sulle forme di rappresentazione del divino in Grecia, al fine di contestualizzare le osservazioni del capitolo precedente.

Alcuni sviluppi argomentativi non sembrano particolarmente convincenti: Ad esempio, la figura mitica di Cecrope non sembra rientrare perfettamente nel modello interpretativo prospettato dall'Autrice, nonostante la sua indubbia appartenenza al variegato cosmo dei mixanthrôpoi. Cecrope rappresenta infatti un vero e proprio eroe culturale, privo di legami con il fenomeno della metamorfosi, e strettamente connesso all'evoluzione politica della comunità ateniese. Tuttavia Emma Aston mantiene l'indiscutibile merito di aver raccolto e messo a nostra disposizione un enorme volume di utili informazioni.