Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Rex Winsbury, Pliny the Younger : A Life in Roman Letters. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Pp. viii, 246. ISBN 9781472514585. $120.00.

Reviewed by Nicole Méthy, Bordeaux, France (nicole.methy@free.fr)

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Preview

Longtemps dénigrées pour leur futilité, les lettres de Pline le Jeune (dénommé Pline dans la suite de ce compte-rendu) suscitent aujourd'hui un regain d'intérêt et l'épistolier lui-même un nouvel élan de sympathie. C'est dans ce renouveau des études pliniennes que s'inscrit le présent ouvrage, à l'instar d'autres travaux publiés depuis déjà plus d'une décennie. De ces derniers, cependant, il se distingue par une spécificité explicitement voulue et affirmée par son auteur (p. 12-13). Car Rex Winsbury n'entend proposer ni une analyse proprement littéraire, ni un véritable commentaire, mais avant tout une biographie. Son but est de connaître, en se fondant sur le seul texte de sa correspondance, ce que fut réellement Pline, l'individu comme l'homme social et politique, avant de porter sur lui un jugement.

Le volume se présente donc comme un récit de la vie de Pline, envisagée en elle-même et replacée dans le contexte de son époque. L'ordre d'exposition choisi est, en conséquence, chronologique. Celui-ci ressort d'une série de seize chapitres, comprenant chacun entre quatre et quinze rubriques et regroupés en huit parties inégales, utilement complétées par deux pages de bibliographie et quatre index (noms, noms de lieux, termes latins, sujets). La première partie (Pliny : the case for the prosecution) fait office d'introduction, annonçant le propos (chapitre 1) et définissant les caractéristiques essentielles du recueil des lettres (chapitre 2). Les six parties suivantes ont pour objet les différentes étapes de l'existence et de la carrière de Pline, avec, lors de chacune d'elles, un examen plus approfondi des aspects jugés prédominants. Sont successivement abordés : dans la deuxième partie (Eye-witnessing Vesuvius), composée d'un unique chapitre (chapitre 3), les origines et la jeunesse, marquée par la fameuse éruption du Vésuve de l'année 79, dans la troisième (Pliny the rising lawyer) l'activité judiciaire, au tribunal des Centumvirs (chapitre 4), puis, à l'époque où Pline s'oppose à son grand rival Regulus (chapitre 5), au Sénat ou aux côtés de l'empereur (chapitre 6), dans la quatrième (In the service of emperors) le cursus politique sous Domitien (chapitre 7) puis sous Trajan (chapitre 8, qui s'appuie quasi exclusivement sur le Panégyrique de Trajan), dans la cinquième (Marriages and money) le personnage social, dont importent avant tout les mariages (chapitre 9), la fortune (chapitre 10) et les villas (chapitre 11), dans la sixième (Pliny as man of letters) l'homme de lettres, ses pratiques (chapitre 12) et ses relations avec les écrivains contemporains (chapitre 13), dans la septième (Pliny as imperial trouble-shooter) la fin de sa carrière, dans la province de Bithynie, (chapitre 14), où il s'est en particulier trouvé confronté à une importante communauté chrétienne (chapitre 15). La dernière partie (Your verdict), confondue avec le seul chapitre 16, récapitulant les côtés négatifs et les côtés positifs de l'homme sert, enfin, de conclusion.

Malgré une apparente dispersion, due à une louable volonté d'exhaustivité, l'ensemble n'est pas dépourvu d'unité. Cette cohérence ne repose pas seulement sur le sujet choisi, mais aussi sur le point de vue adopté et les conséquences de sa mise en œuvre. Les lettres sont considérées comme un miroir ou le reflet, globalement fidèle, de la personnalité de l'épistolier en même temps que de la vie et des usages de la société qui fut la sienne, précisément la classe sénatoriale. La principale préoccupation de cette élite romaine est de justifier sa position dominante et son droit affirmé à gouverner l'empire ; de ce processus le texte plinien contient une description. Celui-ci, pourtant, reste un texte littéraire. Or cette constatation ne peut manquer de conduire à une question récurrente (p. 80, p. 100...) : Pline ne réécrirait-il pas sa propre histoire afin d'en effacer les épisodes discutables, surtout sous le règne du « mauvais empereur », Domitien ? La réponse doit à l'évidence être affirmative. Le point de vue, initialement défini comme simple, se révèle en définitive plus complexe.

Il conduit sans doute à nombre de remarques pertinentes, qu'elles portent sur des détails : par exemple sur la place réservée aux esclaves (p. 9), sur le lien entre littérature et politique à Rome (p. 10), sur la définition de la liberté dans le discours à Trajan (p. 111), qu'il est cependant étrange de voir réduite quelques pages plus loin (p. 21) à une simple exemption fiscale, sur l'attitude de Pline face aux chrétiens (p. 214) ou qu'il s'agisse de réflexions plus générales sur une œuvre qui ne peut reposer sur le mensonge (p. 105) et ne mérite pas le mépris dont elle est souvent l'objet (p. 110). Elles ne sauraient pourtant dissiper une ambiguïté fondamentale, voire une contradiction. Peut-on chercher des indications objectives dans une œuvre qui ne l'est pas et n'a pas pour vocation de l'être, une œuvre qui, par ailleurs, reçoit maintes fois l'appellation de « biographie » (p. 1, p. 7, p. 10, p. 12...) ou d' « autobiographie » (p. 4), mais à laquelle est aussi refusée la même appellation d' « autobiographie » (p. 15) ! La confusion est patente. Elle s'ajoute (à moins qu'elle n'en résulte) à un certain manque de rigueur dans la méthode. D'une part, en effet, Rex Winsbury, réduisant l'usage du latin à quelques mots épars (ce qui n'empêche pas le solécisme consulare potestate p. 196 !), ne cite partout qu'une traduction, celle de Betty Radice (Loeb Classical Library, 1969) et n'hésite pas à se contenter de références toujours incomplètes pour le texte plinien, parfois omises (p. 122, p. 236...), souvent sommaires (p. 229...) et de seconde main (p. 235...) pour les travaux scientifiques. Ceux-ci, d'autre part, quand ils ne sont pas ignorés, comme le sont tous ceux qui utilisent une autre langue que l'anglais, ne sont nulle part discutés, dans des développements qui n'aboutissent à aucune conclusion sûre ni à aucun choix, laissant presque à chaque page en suspens les questions posées par des formules telles que « we don't and can't know » ou « we shall never know ». Tout cela fait passer au second plan longueurs et redites, affirmations sans nuance (p. 188 sur l'attitude de Pline face aux provinciaux), interprétations hâtives (p. 181 sur la lettre X,94, qui prouverait la présence de Suétone en Bithynie) ou inexactes (p. 92 sur la lettre IV,24 – Rex Winsbury indique à tort IV,2 – dont l'extrait cité (§ 4) a pour véritable sujet les studia, p. 175 sur la lettre VI,15, dans laquelle Passenus Paulus ne fait pas exactement allusion à un de ses auditeurs mais à un homonyme dont le nom apparaît dans sa lecture de vers élégiaques). Ce livre, il est vrai, n'est pas destiné à des universitaires, bien plutôt à un large public anglophone, auquel, semble-t-il, les discussions érudites importent moins que les allusions contemporaines (p. 5, p. 38, p. 41...) ouvertement destinées à faciliter la compréhension. D'où des digressions et des explications pédagogiques que d'aucuns pourraient juger superflues, entre autres sur les chevaliers (p. 8) ou les préteurs (p. 11)... D'où peut-être aussi un style toujours simple, très souvent familier, et volontiers accrocheur par la fréquente accumulation de questions ou des adresses directes au lecteur. D'où enfin la présentation générale : Pline n'est pas l'objet d'une description, il subit un procès, dans lequel Rex Winsbury apporte des éléments à charge et à décharge pour permettre au lecteur de rendre un verdict et en rendre un lui-même. Pline sort heureusement blanchi de ce procès.

Et là est l'essentiel. Aussi, malgré son étrangeté et tout réducteur qu'il soit, puisque la vie de Pline y occulte sa pensée, et que celui-ci finit par n'être plus qu'un homme très ordinaire, l'ouvrage de Rex Winsbury, qui compte, au demeurant fort peu d'imperfections formelles, a-t-il le grand mérite de participer à la réhabilitation d'un écrivain bien plus profond et plus moderne qu'on ne le croit généralement et de le faire connaître au-delà du cercle restreint des spécialistes.

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Michael Fontaine, Funny Words in Plautine Comedy. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi, 311. ISBN 9780195341447. $74.00.

Reviewed by James Tatum, Dartmouth College (jht@dartmouth.edu)

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Preview

Nothing expires more pitifully than a joke being dissected for scholarly scrutiny. Freud still provides the best model for how this kind of autopsy can be done in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Amy Richlin put Freud's example to brilliant use in her book on sexuality and aggression in Roman humor, The Garden of Priapus. In Funny Words in Plautine Comedy Michael Fontaine shows he is as ardent a philological vivisectionist as Freud or Richlin, in the process writing a witty and deeply learned book about Plautine comedy at its most Beyond-The-Fringe moments. For Plautine studies in particular Funny Words should prove comparable to such original and enduring books as Niall Slater's Plautus in Performance and Timothy Moore's more recent Music in Roman Comedy. Like Slater and Moore, Fontaine is bound to be of great help to anyone who reads and teaches Plautus in Latin, at any level. His work should be a constant companion for future translators who want to turn an ancient comedy into performable scripts for actors today. For those who have already seen their translations performed or published, Funny Words will also inspire the gnashing of teeth. It's the kind of book that makes you wish it had been at hand when you attempted to translate the untranslatable and explicate the inexplicable.

It's also a book that can be judged by its cover. As ecphrastic moments go this one is really something. Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1861 painting Phryne before the Areopagus depicts the legendary Athenian courtesan at the moment when her lover Hypereides snatches away her cloak with a flourish, revealing her nude to an astonished audience of Athenian men of all ages and types, each one caught in various stages of gawking and gasping.¹ I wondered at first if Fontaine realized he was going over some ground that Edward Said used, with an earlier painting by Gérôme for the cover of his 1978 book Orientalism: The Snake Charmer (1850). There the centerpiece is not a beautiful woman but a callipygous youth unfurling a huge python before a calm audience of distinguished-looking men in a suitably orientalist setting. ² What on earth does this picture of the disrobing of Phryne have to do with funny words in Plautine comedy?

Everything, as it turns out. Fontaine's use of Phryne before the Areopagus is not just a knowing glance back to the rhetorical design of Said's famous book, but also the best possible image he could have chosen to illustrate the surprises his own argument has in store for his readers. The point of Gérôme's startling image will come to seem obvious, even inevitable, once you have read the first chapter on ambiguous words, Verba Perplexabilia (3-36). Fontaine argues that the courtesan-in-chief in Truculentus that we have all known as "Phronesium" was actually named "Phrynesium" by Plautus himself, recalling the Athenian courtesan Phryne whose fame as a ruthless and overwhelmingly beautiful woman made her a name a legend to conjure with, comparable to a film stars like Marilyn Monroe. To give just one example of the many eye-opening moments that lie in wait for readers of Funny Words, here is how I once translated the first appearance of her name in the dissolute youth Diniarchus' opening monologue.

Now, consider my case. Phronesium,
The courtesan who lives here in this house:
Her name is one I should learn from, but don't.
Phronesis, you know, is Greek for "good sense."

So much for me, erring. Fontaine steps back and asks an Emperor's-New-Clothes kind of question. What on earth does it mean to give the most ruthless and grasping courtesan in all of Roman comedy a name that suggests "Ms. Sensible"? For the courtesan-in-chief in Truculentus is nothing less. He shows that these lines of Diniarchus are a mish-mash of a scribe or scholar's intrusive gloss (one whole line carefully explaining Phronesium's origin in the Greek phronesis) and the result of more recent critics' too-rapid dismissal of a reading in a Vatican codex that preserves an archaic spelling of the name "Phrynesium, "a clear link to the famous Athenian courtesan Phryne, not phronesis.

In short, we have been thinking "Einstein" when we should have been dreaming of "Mae West," if not of Barbara Stanwick in "Double Indemnity." In a welcome pedagogical move clearly designed for Latin teachers and their students as well as text critics, Fontaine takes his reader into the heart of the paleographer's work by supplying a photograph of lines 186-189 in Codex Vaticanus 3870, where the shadowy Phrynesium's name makes its misty appearance, along with another, close-up picture of the archaic spelling of her name, Brunesium, written at a point in the evolution of Latin where the voiced bilabial stop br- replaced Plautus' voiceless bilabial phr- (p. 24). What Diniarchus' lines actually constitute is not a moralizing message but a characteristic trope that Fontaine refers to throughout his book, parechesis, "jingle," "near-echo," a riddling and echoic pun (p. 27). Mindful here and everywhere of the theatrical dimension—like every dramatist, Plautus was writing lines for actors, not silent readers—Fontaine provides enough blocking and direction to make the plausibility of his emendation clear. The lines require direction and blocking if they are to be realized completely.

Now here's my case—this courtesan that lives in there, Phrynesium
(pointing), she's expunged that name of hers entirely from my mind.
(Waiting for our puzzled reaction. Then, deadpanning) Phronesis. (dryly)
'Cause "phronesis" means "being sensible" (jabbing his elbow at us).

In a comic tradition filled with dumb kids squandering or threatening to squander their inheritance and disgrace their families, Diniarchus is about as clueless an adulescens as they come. It's a delight to see him liberated from delivering an etymology that made him sound more like a third-rate Isidore of Seville than a comic actor. The courtesan Phrynesium thus inhabits a comedy even darker than what I had realized, and this ecphrastic moment and what it reveals about Fontaine's book brings me to the second point that needs to be made about Funny Words in Plautine Comedy.

After you've taken in the full implications of this book's cover and frontispiece, you will need to heed the King of Hearts' advice: Begin at the beginning, go on until you come to the end, then stop. Fontaine is well aware of the different audiences he's reaching for in his book and makes a conscious and quite convincing distinction between those parts of his argument that engage with textual criticism and the more inferential arguments that depend on the kind of insights critics learned to draw from Freud and other thinkers of the twentieth century.

There are also just as likely to be major discoveries in a footnote as in the main text. As arresting example of this design is the way Truculentus' very name is called into serious question in a footnote. In keeping with his argument that the names of characters in Plautine comedy were regularly Greek names, not Latin or a hybrid of the two languages, Fontaine argues that the slave who gave his name to Plautus' Truculentus was actually called "Stratilax," not "Truculentus." You will discover this only if you go to Chapter 2 ("Parapraxis and Parechesis," 37-89) and keep your eye alert for signs of another of his main arguments, that scribes in antiquity as well as some modern editors of Plautus have emended many of his jokes out of existence.

At the same time Fontaine is scrupulous about how far he can go with his claim about the name Stratilax: "As the name is not certified by the text, it is impossible to determine whether or not it is original, and I retain it in this book only as an economically convenient designation" (39 note 5). Economical and convenient it may well be, but in its own way this renaming of what we have taken to be the namesake of the Truculentus is as intricately planned and unsettling as the use of Gérôme's Phryne before the Areopagus. And you won't get the last word about Stratilax a.k.a. Truculentus until you read the section "Countrification in Truculentus in Chapter 3 ("Equivocation and Other Ambiguities," 98-102). The title of the play remains the same, and maybe even the moral that I once drew from it—it's a disturbing work by a playwright at his most savage about the human comedy—but it now seems more than a simple reference to a slave who does not dominate the stage nearly as much as Diniarchus, Phronesium, or her capable assistant Astaphium.

After Diniarchus has appeared as well as the slave Stratilax a.k.a. Truculentus Plautus lets things build up—tension, wonderment, prurient suspicions— until Phrynesium finally makes her grand entrance, one-third of the way through the play. Diniarchus has vivid lines to cue her entry.

(aside) But there! There go those seething doors
that gulp down anything that comes within their bolts! (25)

Fontaine comments in a rather detached manner, "This 'engulfing' imagery is, of course, something of a commonplace in Greek comedy" but takes no notice of Phronesium's spectacular entrance lines (emphasis added).

Why, bless your heart, you don't think my door will bite you,
Darling, so that you're afraid to enter it?

At first reading I thought this was a return of the repressed, a raising of the critical eyes to heaven. Not at all. This passage and much else gets a full discussion in Chapter 5 ("Double Entendre"), in the forthrightly named section "Comedic Courtesans and Fear of the Vagina Dentata" (208-213). Thus the opening chapter's way with mixed-up, twisted words and the three chapters that follow constitute a single sustained argument, as Fontaine demonstrates how much we have misunderstood Plautus' special ways with puns and word play. These first four chapters culminate in a comprehensive reassessment of what Plautus' original audiences were like: who was in them, what they could understand, and how familiar they could be with the Greek playwrights whose texts and traditions he barbarously subverted into something rich and strange—and Roman (Chapter 4, "Innuendo and the Audience").

The author regards his fifth and final chapter "Double Entendre"as a separate essay that deals with "puns and jokes that involved a sexual component" (201-248). He must be right. My own view is that Plautus is a master of what might be termed the single entendre, that unavoidable word or phrase that draws you into an obscene meaning you were hoping to find in the first place. In any case the discussion of double entendre more than lived up to my expectations, and while the author regards this last chapter as a separate essay that can be read apart from the rest, to me at least it was integral to the design of the book. I don't see how you could do it justice if you hadn't read all that came before.

Funny Words in Plautus is an accessible, densely argued work that will inspire future commentators at more than one point to rethink whatever Plautine text is the target of their labors. It's also a deft and engaging work of literary criticism, teaching its readers how much can be achieved by engaging in the kind of discursive philological and theoretical arguments that Michael Fontaine handles so well.³ ​

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Notes:

1.   Jean-Léon Gérôme, Phryne Revealed before the Areopagus (1861), Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Phryne
2.   Jean Léon Gérôme, The Snake Charmer (1850) Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Ma. The Snake Charmer
3.   While reading our library's copy of this book I checked online to see what the BMCR made of it, only to discover to my surprise that it hadn't yet been reviewed. I am grateful to the editors for giving me a chance to alert BMCR's readers to this important book. ​

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Peter Eich, Eike Faber (ed.), Religiöser Alltag in der Spätantike. Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge, Bd. 44. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013. Pp. 293. ISBN 783515104425. €58.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Robin Whelan, Corpus Christi College (rew47@cam.ac.uk)

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Table of Contents

Late antiquity has always been seen by historians of religion as a thrillingly formative period. As Peter Brown – der große Meister dieses Sujets, in the words of the editors (16) – elegantly puts it in the opening line of his paper: 'One of the joys of the study of Religiöser Alltag in der Spätantike is the fact that… Alltag had not yet become grauer Alltag' (23). There is little humdrum in the diverse themes surveyed by this collection – taken from a 2010 conference at the Universität Potsdam – which range from synods and imperial victory ideology to the Pirenne thesis and oracular literature. Still, there is a sense that the participants could have dared to be more boring. For it is precisely in the intersection between religion and the mundane – in both senses of that word – that this volume tends to fall short.

An introduction considers briefly the methodological problems of 'religion' and 'the everyday' in late antiquity (7-16). The editors do not seek to impose a particular definition of these terms or their combination, although they do gesture strongly towards Clifford Geertz's classic conceptualisation of religion as a cultural system (9) and more generally advocate an approach that takes into account the linguistic turn (12-16). As so often, scholars of the ancient world cannot afford to be too picky in their choice of evidence: 'Althistoriker sind Allesfresser' (12).

Peter Brown's chapter is a short rumination on the shift from traditional civic forms of largesse to the Christian mode of charity, covering in brief the material of his recent magnum opus.¹ Brown suggests both that these two types of giving remained compatible in Augustine's Africa – despite episcopal protestations – and that the broad cultural change which eventually led one to replace the other was neither simple continuity nor rupture, but 'the emergence of a vivid tertium quid' (27). He emphasises the need to capture the 'sociological untidiness in the Christian communities of around 400 AD' (29).

Christiane Kunst considers the Christianisation of marriage ceremonies in late antiquity. A closing sententia schematises her argument: 'Pagane Kultelemente werden profanisiert, profane sakralisiert' (50). If this could all seem a little neat, Kunst's survey of how this process affected each of the traditional elements of Roman wedding customs does permit greater ideological messiness. Her analysis of the ambiguities of a sixth-century Syrian wedding belt is particularly nice: would a viewer interpret its Greek inscription as '"aus Gott [Christus] kommt Eintracht, Glück und Gesundheit,"' or '"Von Gott kommen Concordia, Venus und Hygieia"'? (42-44)

Eike Faber lays out the evidence for Christian influence on fourth-century imperial victory celebrations, summarising the 'pre-history' of the late-antique triumph from the Republic to Constantine (53-59), the four fourth-century entries into Rome (59-65), the limited and often much later evidence for Christian prayers for imperial victory (65-67), and the fourth-century coin issues which contained triumphal imagery (67-69). His conclusion – that the process of Christianisation affected the army in a similarly gradual way to the rest of society (69) – is sensible, but it is difficult to see how it connects to the previous discussion.

The next four papers tackle the consequences of ecclesiastical controversy. Pedro Barceló narrates the involvement of Athanasius of Alexandria in the conciliar conflicts of the fourth century, from the synod of Tyre in 335 through to the bishop's death in 373. Following this narrative, he concludes that Athanasius was a pathfinder for later political bishops like Ambrose of Milan, Theophilos and Cyril of Alexandria, and others in the main metropoleis of the empire. Claudia Tiersch turns to the politics of the See of Constantinople between Gregory Nazianzus and Proclus. Taking its holders one-by-one, she tracks a shift from a hair-splittingly dialectical theological culture to one of unity rooted in Marian piety. If this overarching narrative might be questioned,² Tiersch's contribution nonetheless takes a sophisticated approach to the policies of these bishops and their consequences within the court city. Manfred Clauss' wonderfully titled 'Kein Bad für Häretiker' briefly sketches the colourful Christian politics of the city of Alexandria in the second half of the fifth century and its implications for everyday life. Drawing heavily on analogous material from the Donatist schism, Clauss sees uncompromising sectarian division as patterning society. Claudia Rammelt uses the extraordinary evidence of the acclamations from the city of Edessa against its bishop Ibas, transmitted in the Acts of Ephesus (449), to suggest something similar. 'Die christologische Frage bleibt somit im Alltagsgeschäft verwurzelt, ja wird zur identitätsstiftenden Größe für jeden Einzelnen' (143). These papers rightly highlight the potential for Christian conflicts to intersect with everyday life; it might be questioned whether day-to-day interactions were so deeply influenced by them – especially to the extent that Clauss suggests – or whether that is simply the impression contemporary clerics gave.

The next four papers are case studies of everyday religious life at particular sites. Armin Eich considers the evidence from Sagalassos in western Asia Minor. There is not a great deal to go on, but Eich uses what there is – the incorporation of earlier temples into the walls c. 400 and the survival from the sixth and seventh centuries of ceramics and a silver amulet – to integrate the city into broader narratives of transformation and Christianisation.

Norbert Zimmermann sketches the religious life of the Roman catacombs from the second to the ninth century, narrating their move from a largely private burial space to an ecclesiastical pilgrimage site, with the interventions of bishop Damasus as the key turning point. Zimmermann's main focus is on the burial customs of the early period. In Zimmermann's view the third-century catacombs were dominated by the interests of families and the activities of fossores. This is an image compatible with other important recent work,³ although episcopal oversight is perhaps given more credence here as a potential factor (171-73). One rather curious decision Zimmermann makes is to illustrate the everyday life of the catacombs with a series of black and white photos of early twentieth-century re- enactors, in which grieving men and women in togas pose with officiating priests before loculi (194-98).

Peter Eich's paper on late Roman Cologne begins with a pointed observation: the problem of telling whether the statements of a high-profile religious intellectual represent the views of his community pale in comparison to the methodological difficulties for sites without such literary texts (201). For Cologne, this problem is exacerbated by the lack of helpful archaeological material for late antiquity, even in the form of late phases at imperial sites or early activity at early medieval ones (201-203). After surveying what evidence can be used for religious life in late-antique Cologne – predominantly inscriptions and cursory appearances of bishops in the historical record – Eich comes to an important conclusion: religious communities which are not the focus of literary debates over correct doctrine or practice in late antiquity can only be considered schematically (223).

Johann Ev. Hafner uses two such texts – the letter on the martyrs of Vienne and Lyon from Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History and Irenaeus' Against Heresies – to consider the Christian community in Lyon c. 200. He argues that the 'pogrom' (as he calls it) of the year 177 described in the former text was a crucial moment of group definition which made Christians in the city begin to see themselves as distinct from adherents of other cults. Further, he suggests that this led Irenaeus and his community to oppose the Gnostics, who seemed like a return to an earlier syncretism that had since become a source of suspicion. Hafner's chapter could perhaps have profited from a more critical approach to 'Gnosticism.'⁴ He rightly notes that what was orthodox and what was heretical was unclear in this period, but still identifies Irenaeus' community as the 'Normalgemeinde' (237).

David Hernández de la Fuente examines appearances of oracular statements in late-antique Greek epic poetry. He emphasises that these were not simply traditional elements since poets like Nonnus also appropriated prophecies from 'external' literary traditions. Hernández de la Fuente argues that these statements were used both because of and in spite of various cultural fault-lines in the later Roman Empire: notably, between Christians and pagans and centre and periphery.

Finally, Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis asks – channelling Pierre Veyne (257 n. 1) – 'how did the Mediterranean world become Islamic?' He sketches a brief narrative of seventh-century history from the Roman-Persian war through to the Muslim conquest of Spain before considering the polemical descriptions of the new religion written by John of Damascus, Theodore Abu Qurrah, and Nicetas of Byzantium.

As is often the case with such Sammelbände, the extent to which these papers tackle the central theme of the collection varies greatly. It is not entirely clear that, for example, imperial triumphs or church councils belonged to the sphere of everyday life in the fourth century. (Barceló himself suggests that the latter were certainly marginal to broader society and possibly of exaggerated importance to the Christian community [79-80].) Implicit throughout is that Religion in der Spätantike was Christian or, at least, on its way there (see the revealing formulations of 'eine… Politisierung des christlichen Alltags' at p. 91, 'die alltägliche Arbeit in den Kirchen und Klöstern' at p. 125, and the editors' statement at p. 16: 'Religiöser Alltag in spätrömischer Zeit weist selbstredend Kontinuitäten zur vorhergehenden Zeit auf. Interessanter aber sind die Brüche, die zu verzeichnen sind und die in besonderem Maße mit dem Aufstieg des Christentums zusammenhängen.')

There is perhaps a more central problem that one of the most sophisticated contributions in the volume highlights. Claudia Tiersch suggests that everyday religiosity should be seen as its own sphere in the lives of the inhabitants of late-antique Constantinople, but must also be connected with other spheres such as power interests, patronage structures, political ideologies, and the interests of broader groups within the population (97). In so doing, she highlights a tension implicit in the book's title and ignored by most of the other contributions. Are we seeking simply to study the facets of religious life which could be characterised as 'everyday' – and thus, as the introduction notes, as constitutive for religions in late antiquity (10)? Or are we seeking to understand the role of religion and the extent of its consequences within 'everyday life' broadly conceived? The danger of considering the former without careful reflection upon the latter is that this 'process of routinisation' (10) becomes self-fulfilling. The space for alternative interests in everyday life is discounted. In recent times, historians have convincingly read surviving late-antique Christian texts as attempts to make religious practices or beliefs alltäglich, and thus to create a sense of group solidarity, as opposed to windows on a world where this had already happened.⁵ If the religious diversity of late antiquity is not to be narrated as an inevitable process of streamlining towards a uniformly Christian medieval society, this sense of 'sociological untidiness' (to return to Brown) must come to the fore in future research. Religiöser Alltag in der Spätantike provides a useful starting point.

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Notes:

1.   P.R.L. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton, NJ, 2012).
2.   See now Averil Cameron, 'Can Christians do dialogue?', Studia Patristica 63 (2013), 103-20.
3.   See É. Rebillard, The care of the dead in late antiquity, (trans.) E. Trapnell Rawlings and J. Routier-Pucci, Cornell studies in classical philology 59 (Ithaca, NY, 2009) and J. Bodel, 'From columbaria to catacombs: collective burial in pagan and Christian Rome', in L. Brink and D. Green (edd.) Commemorating the dead: texts and artifacts in context (Berlin, 2008), 177-242.
4.   E.g. A. Le Boulluec, La notion d'hérésie dans la littérature grecque, II^e-III^e siècles, 2 vols. (Paris, 1985), 113-253. K.L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA, 2003).
5.   See esp. I. Sandwell, Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews and Christians in Antioch (Cambridge, 2007); T. Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia, PA, 2009); É. Rebillard, Christians and their many identities in late antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE (Ithaca, NY, 2012).

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Justin St P. Walsh, Consumerism in the Ancient World: Imports and Identity Construction. Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies, 17. London; New York: Routledge, 2014. Pp. xx, 218. ISBN 9780415893794. $125.00.

Reviewed by S. Rebecca Martin, Boston University (srmartin@bu.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

This is one of several recent Greek pottery studies that aim explicitly to understand context.¹ It is clear from the beginning that Walsh is not interested in Greek pottery for the sake of Greek pottery, but rather for what can be done with it. The question he asks at the beginning is timely—Why Greek pottery?—and the answers are compelling. Rather than focus on a specific Greek institution, such as the symposion, Walsh frames his study in terms of consumption. That is to say, his focus is not on artistic intention but on the motivations of buyers—especially non-Greek buyers—and how they used Greek pottery to construct locally meaningful identities. His specific subject is Greek pottery made between 800 and 300 BCE and found in the western Mediterranean and trans-Alpine Europe (the regions of modern Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Germany). Walsh brings a new approach to this topic and from the start it is clear that he will not follow the well-worn grooves of a field long committed to cataloguing and Beazleyan attribution. Moreover, the region in which Walsh conducts his work is one that has not received much attention from Anglo-American Greek pottery specialists, with the notable exception of the late Brian Shefton. It is not for lack of Greek vases, either, as some 24,000 fragments from over 230 sites were available to Walsh through publication, and a synthetic study of the role of Greek ceramics in the West is overdue.

In the preface the author spells out his intellectual debt to the post-colonial approaches to the study of western Europe found in the work of Michael Dietler, a connection apparent also from the book's title and its emphasis on consumption.[2] The first two-thirds of the book, chapters 1-5, set up the project's subject and analytical structure. The book's last third, chapters 6 and 7, analyzes the data and offers brief conclusions. The conclusions are followed by an appendix of all surveyed sites recording artifact counts by function (more on this below), bibliography, and a very brief (two-page) index.

Chapter one gives a short introduction in which the author lays out his overall approach, explaining the unique value of Greek pottery for a study of this sort. Even very small fragments of Greek pottery recovered in the areas under study tend to be collected and published; he will use this archaeological bias toward things Greek to his advantage —to create his large database. Walsh proposes to use the anthropological theory of "consumerism" (consumption) to guide the statistical analysis of these data. For the unfamiliar, consumption theory can be employed in studies of culture-contact that reject acculturation teleologies (such as Hellenization). A consumption-based approach to foreign objects shifts focus from what the objects mean at the site of their manufacture to perceptions and functions of imports at the site of their consumption. The chapter includes detailed maps of the study area including all 233 sites and, critically, a map of the entire survey area with the major rivers labeled (figure 1.1). The reader will need to refer back frequently to this section. Unfortunately none of these maps is labeled according to cultural groups, which creates some difficulties as the analysis proceeds for those unfamiliar with this region.

An introduction to Greek colonization in western Europe is found in the second chapter. The author discusses the first and second waves of Greek settlers in the West and the groups that they encountered: besides Phoenicians and Etruscans, the indigenous peoples represented by the Hallstatt and La Téne cultures and the mixed occupants of the Iberian Peninsula (Ibero-Languedoc and Tartessos cultures). The discussion is uneven, with some sites, such as Cerro del Villar (p. 21), getting the bulk of the attention. One assumes that this choice is deliberate, although, as a reader who specializes in the Mediterranean East, I could not always understand the reasons behind it and wished for more guidance.

Some interpretive problems present themselves already here, such as whether or not Greek pottery even signals the activity of Greek traders (p. 18 versus p. 31). The tendency to view this area through the Greco-Roman record — from a colonialist perspective — is raised, a problem that extends even to the naming of regions such as Iberia/Hispania. Of course this "geographic violence" (after Said, p. 25) is a real challenge, but a parallel one is found in the way that virtually all comparative studies use the term "Greek" to describe both the people and the pottery of the late Archaic-Hellenistic periods. In other words, it is important to acknowledge the reductiveness of the word "Greek", and I craved more insight into the author's understanding of that term in these colonial contexts (see also p. 90 where Walsh makes it clear that "Greek" does not refer to a monoculture).

Chapter three describes the key sites. Here it was not always clear what mattered most or how the site descriptions fit within the study's fairly broad chronological range. I found myself skeptical of the cultural parsing offered in the summary on pages 62-3, which is quite brief and seemed somewhat reductive, even though some reduction in nuance is to be expect as one distills the description of an unruly corpus of archaeological material down to something more useable. A thematic or issue-based approach (with more illuminating images or plans) would have been helpful here.

The author outlines his theoretical approach in chapter four. In the course of setting out his interest in consumption, Walsh touches on many big topics — historiography, identity, Hellenization, ethnicity, and so forth. I was a little perplexed by the rapid and light treatment of these major topics and wonder if it might not have been a better choice to signal the massive bibliographies on each in the context of discussing the focus of this particular project —consumption. Of course Walsh rightly uses this discussion to locate himself intellectually. He creates some distance between what he is doing and other approaches, both essentialist (e.g., John Boardman's; p. 70 and n. 1) and theoretical (specifically network theory and the work of Irad Malkin).

Walsh characterizes network theory as simply descriptive and uninterested in interpretations that tell us what these networks mean — why it is that agents in a network do what they do. While this criticism has some validity, it assumes that meaning matters more than systems-based interpretation (cannot these be seen as two of many ways to interpret the past?). It implies also that Malkin's Middle Ground approach (which builds in a sophisticated way on the work of historian Richard White —who is not cited here) ignores what matters most (I would disagree). Nonetheless, this chapter achieves a clear explanation of three points critical to the study: objects have meaning; post-colonialist models can help correct for the bias in the ancient and modern records; and consumption, acquisition, and "costly signaling" (a theory of consumerism that explores how goods enhance social prestige) were significant cultural activities in antiquity.

An overview of Greek pottery is offered in chapter five, touching on many topics, from trade to art history to anthropology to the many difficulties that one faces when attempting to quantify archaeological material. Some of the treatment of these topics is perhaps too basic and not strictly relevant to the project at hand, but other subjects, such as Greek texts describing non-Greek banquets, are illuminating despite the bias of that record. I wished that the discussion of the intended function of Greek vases had been given more extensive treatment, since the emphasis on interpreting vessels by function -- how modern scholars think the vessels were meant to be used at their place of manufacture or consumption—is relatively recent and therefore not yet established firmly. Function is also very important to the author's analysis, and some tensions exist between how modern scholars go about determining intended function, a practice that relies still on a combination of archaeological contexts and ancient texts, and how imports might have been used. In general, Walsh is perhaps too uncritical of some of the publications from which his data is drawn; comment on their quality and character would have been welcome. The rush to precision in analyzing sometimes tiny fragments of Greek pottery encourages hastiness or leaps in attribution that are likely to undermine even the most careful statistical analysis.

Information about quantification strategies and the data set is the most important part of this chapter. Walsh promises to attack the data in three ways. First, by presence/absence analysis according to one of five intended functions: eating, drinking, household, storage, and transport. Of course some vessels could fall into more than one of these groups, but Walsh has chosen what he believes to be the most common functions. Second, by sherd counts (a still necessary evil, as the author makes clear). And third, according to diversity, for which Walsh employs a variation of Simpson's Index of Diversity, a widely used statistical formula developed originally to measure ecological diversity.

In chapter six the data are analyzed. The chapter begins with an invaluable list of twelve clear observations ("characteristics"). Some highlights include the predominance of drinking vessels, the uneven distribution of the pottery (89% was found in South Hallstatt, Greek, and Iberian sites), and the fact that almost all of the pottery was found within 100km of the coast. The chapter includes several tables and figures to help understand these data. The pie charts showing distribution were not printed with enough contrast between sections, making them less useful than one would hope.

At the core of Walsh's approach is a complex form of distribution mapping that will be unfamiliar to many readers. Walsh employs a geostatistical method called kriging in order to plot known data and to predict and map diversity for areas without data. The results are compelling and go far to illustrate how geographic information systems can be exploited to interpret large, but of course incomplete, archaeological data sets. It is here that the book calls in its eResources. Routledge and Walsh have made the data and kriging maps available to the reader, who must download them in order to follow the discussion. The electronic database includes various spreadsheets as well as maps in a variety of formats, including some very accessible ones (PDFs). Instructions for manipulation of these maps appear in note 3. These data are available for public use through Creative Commons licensing. This is a promising development and one that we should hope signals a new trend of open access in archaeological publishing.

To decipher the maps, the reader will need to follow the instructions given on p. 133. In general this system works, although some of the file names given in the text are not identical to what is found on the PDFs. What I missed here most of all were cross-references back to the maps in chapter one, where all the sites and key rivers are plotted. When mapping a data set of this size, tough decisions must be made, but this critical section could have been made more user-friendly by increasing the number of layers on each map to include, at minimum, labels of regions, key rivers (which are used frequently to orient the reader), and key sites.

Brief conclusions are given in the book's seventh and final chapter. Some are familiar but are strengthened by this study. The local populations were not somehow Hellenized through the use of Greek pottery and did not practice the Greek symposion or some version thereof. (We would do well to remind ourselves that not all wine drinking, even among Greek males, took place in a sympotic setting.) Instead, Greek pottery was used to satisfy local social needs. One misses here address to iconography, which might have had some bearing on how these objects were used to signal identity. The discussion for the most part remains on the same macro-level as the data, so, although regional and site variations are pointed out, the specific address of the consumption of Greek pottery within these communities is a topic left for another study.

There are other questions that could have been raised here, such as what the pots signaled as imports — was it their Greekness, scarcity, or other qualities that non-Greeks admired? Is "Greek" even the right word to use for this pottery coming from many productions sites over such a long range of time? It was a bit frustrating to have so little information about the specific characteristics of the corpus at individual sites. I found myself wishing, too, that I knew more about the local pottery in order to understand the extent to which these imports were introducing new functional possibilities or just new shapes/colors/techniques/etc. More images would have helped clarify some of these points.

In sum, one answer to the question Why Greek pottery? is that this over-emphasized class of objects makes an excellent data set for fresh analysis. Walsh shows us that we can take advantage of this particular bias in archaeological publication by using this material in new and creative ways that challenge outdated ideas about the imperfect emulation of Greek practices through the use of Greek products. Objections to Walsh's approach can be put aside to commend him for asking the right kinds of new questions about Greek pottery.

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Notes:

1.   For example, K.M. Lynch , The Symposium in Context: Pottery from a Late Archaic House near the Athenian Agora. Hesperia suppl. 36. Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies, Athens, 2011. BMCR 2012.07.40
2.   M. Dietler. Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. See also M. Dietler and C. López-Ruiz, eds. Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia: Phoenician, Greek, and Indigenous Relations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

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Fabio Gasti, Profilo storico della letteratura tardolatina. Didattica e formazione; Letteratura latina, 3.7. Pavia: Pavia University Press, 2013. Pp. xiv, 322. ISBN 9788896764091. €25.00.

Reviewed by Roberto Chiappiniello, St Mary's College, UK (rchiappiniello@stmaryscalne.org)

Version at BMCR home site

L'esplosione d'interesse per il mondo tardo antico su cui, alcuni anni fa, si soffermava l'analisi attenta di Andrea Giardina¹ non accusa momenti di pausa. Solo negli ultimi mesi sono apparsi studi che sicuramente contribuiranno a comprendere ancora meglio quel periodo complesso (così a lungo tacciato di decadenza), attraversato da un carsico senso di "ansia"² che va sotto il nome di tardoantico. Si pensi solo, ad esempio, all'ultimo documentatissimo opus di Peter Brown,³ al voluminoso Handbook on Late Antiquity edito da Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford 2012, recensito in BMCR 2013.07.29) oppure al Companion to Late Antiquity edito da Philip Rousseau (Oxford 2012, recensito in BMCR 2010.02.45).

Fabio Gasti, che ha recentemente pubblicato un saggio sul libro ottavo delle Confessioni di Agostino (recensito in BMCR 2012.10.33), ha da poco pubblicato un lavoro di ampio respiro sul mondo letterario tardoantico. Il manuale offre un chiaro studio introduttivo alla letteratura tardolatina, indirizzato principalmente a studenti universitari e a tutti coloro che cercassero un testo propedeutico, snello ma nel contempo esauriente, che li guidasse alla scoperta dei testi ed i gusti letterari della letteratura tardoantica. Profilo Storico, come lo definisce l'autore stesso in prefazione,—"nasce dalle ceneri" di un progetto iniziale il cui scopo era quello di preparare un manuale introduttivo a testi e scrittori tardoantichi per gli studenti delle scuole secondarie italiane.

Gasti si prefige come compito principale quello di esaminare olisticamente la letteratura tardolatina come un corpus di documenti che illustrino la trasformazione della società tardo romana sia dal punto di vista della poetica che dello Zeitgeist socio-culturale. Il manuale racchiude un arco temporale che va dalla crisi socio-economica del III secolo, e la fioritura dei primi scrittori cristiani, sino al VI secolo e la cosiddetta letteratura romanobarbarica. Il volume si chiude con l'esposizione delle Etimologie di Isidoro.

Il Profilo storico si snoda in 33 capitoli teoricamente racchiudibili in 2 sezioni: nella prima sezione (pp. 1-222) si illustra la produzione letteraria nel terzo e quarto secolo, la seconda sezione, più breve e meno sviluppata (pp. 223-322), si incentra sul quinto e il sesto secolo.⁴

Nei primi quattro capitoli introduttivi sul terzo e quarto secolo, i frequenti scricchiolii nell'impalcatura dell'Impero romano e la diffusione del cristianesimo fanno da cornice ad un diffuso e crescente stato di crisi di identità e di insicurezza, causata questa dalle frequenti incursioni di tribù barbare nel corpo dell'Impero. In questo stesso periodo inizia ad affermarsi il ruolo, che sarà sempre più influente, dei grammatici, prosperano gli studi antiquari ed il gusto letterario per le storie romanzate. Contemporaneamente, vede la luce la prima apologetica cristiana (che Gasti definisce "conciliante") di Minucio e la vis polemica di Arnobio.

Nei successivi nove capitoli Gasti passa in rassegna le figure chiave della letteratura cristiana del quarto secolo: il "ciceroniano" Lattanzio (cap. 7); l'intransigenza di Commodiano nella sua battaglia contro la cultura pagana; i pastiches centoniani e la rieleborazione in chiave cristiana del genere bucolico classico sperimentata da Nemesiano (cap. 8); l'epica cristiana di Giovenco (cap. 9); il virtuosismo nugatorio e lo sperimentalismo di Ausonio (cap. 11); la propaganda imperiale, la ripresa dell'epica e dell'invettiva nei testi di Claudiano (cap. 12); il modello dell'epica virgiliana colorata di un gusto 'barocco' per il truce e il patetico in Prudenzio (cap. 13); la trasformazione in chiave cristiana di una vasta gamma di generi e motivi (dall'epitalamio alla consolatio, dal genetliaco all'elegia) operata da Paolino da Nola (cap. 14); l'oratoria di Simmaco e la ricerca storica di Ammiano Marcellino (cc. 15-16).

Nella seconda parte del volume (cc. 18-22) Gasti si sofferma sulla diffusione del genere della manualistica come i trattati di arte militare, giornali di viaggio (come l'Itinerarium Egeriae) e l'affermazione delle scuole di grammatica grazie all'operato di influenti grammatici come Elio Donato, Nonio Marcello e Servio. Questa sezione termina con tre capitoli dedicati ai testi di tre figure cardine della letteratura cristiana latina tra la fine del quarto e l'inizio del quinto secolo: Ambrogio, Gerolamo e Agostino. Per ognuno di questi autori Gasti offre un'esposizione abbastanza dettagliata del contenuto dei loro testi, una sezione sul milieu storico- culturale, brevi analisi stilistiche seguite da discussioni sui modelli letterari di riferimento. Gli ultimi capitoli (cc. 23-33) sono dedicati a quegli scrittori che operarono sul crinale tra mondo romano e società romano-barbariche: dalla letteratura della nostalgia (Namaziano) alla cultura monastica (Cassiano), dal lusus meramente letterario di Sidonio alle rivisitazioni dei testi classici in chiave epica e/o allegorica da parte di Fulgenzio, Venanzio, Corippo e Draconzio.

L'analisi di ogni autore termina con un paragrafo sui modelli letterari e le idiosincrasie stilistiche. Lo stile è chiaro e pressocché privo di tecnicismi, numerose sono le citazioni in latino (con traduzione italiana) di passi che esemplificano il taglio ideologico di un testo oppure lo stile dell'autore stesso. Tuttavia, i sussidi bibliografici sono la parte debole del manuale. Sebbene, come detto in precedenza, Gasti si rivolga ad un pubblico di studenti italiani che abbiano poca o scarsa conoscenza della Spätantike, sarebbe stato comunque molto utile corredare il manuale con una sezione bibliografica in coda, che fosse non solo aggiornata ma che ponesse all'attenzione di chi legge riferimenti a importanti studi pubblicati in questi ultimi anni da studiosi italiani e soprattutto stranieri anche se questi non siano stati (non ancora) tradotti in italiano.

Ad ogni buon conto, il lavoro di sintesi di Gasti è ammirevole, il manuale riesce bene nel suo proposito di introdurre la letteratura tardolatina ed invogliare i suoi lettori ad esplorare i testi tardo-antichi. Lo stile discorsivo è omogeneo, piano e ricco di rimandi. Particolarmente riusciti sono, su tutti, i capitoli su Agostino, scorrevoli le pagini su Rutilio e il suo viaggio 'tra le rovine' romane, puntuali i capitoli sullo stile adorno di Prudenzio e quello sincopato di Paolino, buone le sezioni sull'erudizione di Ausonio e il metodo storiografico di Ammiano. Studiosi e appassionati del Tardo Antico troveranno il manuale un utile strumento di compendio da cui poi partire per esplorare specifici generi, testi o autori.

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Notes:

1.   A. Giardina, 'Esplosione di tradoantico' in Studi Storici 40, 1999, pp. 157-80.
2.   Così E.R. Dodds, Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety, Cambridge 1965.
3.   P. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle. Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, Princeton 2012.
4.   Si noti, ad esempio, che un autore come Sidonio Apollinare, fondamentale incrocio per la comprensione dello stile "precieux" della letteratura del quinto secolo, è liquidato in sole tre pagine!

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Alexander Sarantis, Neil Christie (ed.), War and Warfare in Late Antiquity (2 vols.). Late antique archaeology, 8. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013. Pp. xxxiii, 1084. ISBN 9789004252578. $329.00.

Reviewed by David Woods, University College Cork (d.woods@ucc.ie)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

This two-volume set originates in a conference entitled 'The Archaeology of War in Late Antiquity' organized by Alexander Sarantis (one of the editors of the set) and Luke Lavan (the series editor) and held at Oxford in 2007. However, the final outcome bears little resemblance to a conventional set of conference proceedings. The first volume (pp. 1-370) contains an introductory essay by Sarantis to the set as a whole followed by 8 large bibliographic essays devoted to such subjects as military equipment, tactics, organisation, strategy, and fortifications. The last subject is regarded as of such importance that it receives 3 large essays arranged according to geography (fortifications in the West, in Africa, and in the East). Most of these essays have been written by either Sarantis or Conor Whatley. The first volume is thus little more than a thematically arranged introduction to the bibliography of the late Roman army. The second volume (pp. 371- 1084) consists of 8 sections containing 19 essays. The majority of these are broad surveys dealing with developments over a period of several hundred years or in a large region of the empire. Few attempt to tackle some more precise problem in detail. Hence the second volume resembles some form of introductory or survey volume rather than a collection of research essays. About half of the essays have been written by widely published experts whose names will be familiar to anyone with even a vague interest in the late Roman army, the other half by relatively new figures. The majority of contributors are based in the United Kingdom, or have studied there, and all the essays are in English.

In an era of bibliographic databases and searches on the internet, one may entertain some doubt as to the value of thematic bibliographies such as occur in the first volume. In this case, each bibliographic essay contains several different minor bibliographies devoted to sub-topics within the larger theme, and the items are listed as they are mentioned rather than in alphabetical order. These minor bibliographies usually begin with a section devoted to key general works so that one can find the same item repeated at the start of several different bibliographies, even within the same bibliographic essay, with full publication details each time. Yet important research items can be omitted, as when the section on plumbatae (p. 169) omits two important papers by Estiot.¹ It would have been preferable to focus on genuine research works and to take greater pains to ensure completeness.

To focus on the second volume, therefore, the first section, 'Strategy and Intelligence', contains only one essay, by John Haldon, arguing that the defensive strategy adopted by the Byzantines in Anatolia from the seventh to the eleventh century was sophisticated and effective. The second section, 'Fortifications and Siege Warfare', consists of an essay by James Crow, who reviews some selected fortifications (primarily the walls of Antioch, the Anastasian wall, and the Haemus gates) in order to emphasize the number and importance of fortifications in Late Antiquity, and a second by Michael Whitby, who surveys the different tactics available to the besieged and besiegers during the late antique period, with particular attention to the change from torsion-powered to traction artillery.

The third section, 'Weaponry and Equipment', contains three essays, the first by J.C.N. Coulston, who surveys changes within several categories of Roman military equipment to argue that borrowing military technologies from elsewhere had been a constant feature within the Roman army, thus complicating the claim that the equipment of a late Roman soldier was any more 'barbarised' than that of his predecessors. The second essay by Michel Kazanski surveys change to the military equipment, and therefore tactics, used by various barbarian groups (those in the Germanic zone, the steppe zone, and Slavic groups) from the third to the fifth century. The third essay by John Conyard explains how attempts to reconstruct Roman equipment can lead to a better understanding of the use and effectiveness of such equipment.

The fourth section, 'Literary Sources and Topography', opens with an essay by Ian Colvin, who argues that Procopius and Agathias derive much of their information concerning Justinian's Lazican war (548-57) from imperial archives rather than oral sources. In the second essay, Christopher Lilington-Martin argues, first, that the battle of Dara in 530 occurred about 2-3 km south of that city rather than immediately outside its walls as traditionally thought and, secondly, that Wittigis marched on Rome by means of the Salarian rather than the Milvian Bridge in 537. The third essay, by Susannah Belcher, re-examines the significance to Ammianus Marcellinus of the emperor Jovian's surrender of Nisibis to the Persians in 363.

The fifth section, 'The West', consists of three essays. The first by Hugh Elton surveys the relevant archaeological evidence to see what it contributes to the understanding of imperial campaigns in the West between 284 and 423. The second by Michael Kulikowski re-examines what archaeology can really contribute to the understanding of the barbarian invasions of the Roman empire in the fifth-century. The third essay by a group of six Spanish archaeologists examines the significance of the burial of a macaque at Iulia Libica in the Pyrenees, arguing that he was a military pet.

The sixth section, 'The Balkans', begins with an essay by John Wilkes, who traces the rise of fortifications in the South-West Balkans (Roman Macedonia) from the third to the sixth century, followed by a study by Alexander Sarantis of the military history of the North Balkans during the period 491 to 565, with an emphasis on the role of fortifications. Finally, Florin Curta re- examines the archaeological evidence used to explain the nature of fortified sites in the sixth- and seventh-century Balkans to argue that no clear distinction can yet be made between military and civilian sites.

The seventh section, 'The East', contains two essays. The first by James Howard-Johnston surveys the development of the fortified defensive systems which the Romans constructed along their border with the Persian empire from the third to the sixth century. The second essay by Conor Whately re-examines the evidence to suggest that the fortress of el-Lejjūn in modern Jordan still contained a significant military presence during the first half of the sixth century. Finally, the eighth section, 'Civil War', consists of an essay by Neil Christie, who investigates what archaeology contributes to the understanding of the various civil wars that raged across the West between the third and the fifth century, followed by a second essay by Maria Kouroumali, who re-examines the evidence for the impact of the Justinianic war of re-conquest upon the native Italians from 535 to 553.

As far as the individual essays are concerned, there is little to quibble about. In the case of Colvin's essay, I am not entirely convinced that one can reject the possibility of an intermediate oral source for Procopius' apparent knowledge of the contents of imperial letters (p. 584). Some discussion of the mechanics of imperial letter writing — of who else might have been privy to their contents besides the emperor, and of the likelihood, or not, of any interactions between Procopius and these other officials — would have proved useful. In the case of Lilington-Martin's argument that Wittigis marched on Rome by the Salarian rather than the Milvian Bridge, it does not help his overarching argument that modern satellite imagery and cartography can help resolve this and other geographical problems, that, as he himself admits, he is arguing in support of a proposal already made by Gregorovius in the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, one can occasionally detect a certain amount of unnecessary padding which does not contribute to the main argument. For example, Belcher digresses too much and too often into the modern historiography of ancient Nisibis (modern Nusaybin). The overall quality of the individual essays nevertheless remains high. There are occasional careless slips, such as the claim that the second civil war between Constantine and Licinius lasted 322-24 (p. 110), or that Constantine took the throne in 312 and acquired sole rule in 324, and Julian's invasion of Persia lasted 362-63 (p. 129), but these are of no great significance in context.

The weaknesses in this set lie at the structural level rather than at the level of the individual essays. First, the editors have not been rigorous enough in excluding essays which do not relate closely to the relevant time period or subject matter. It is difficult to understand how one can justify including either Haldon's or Belcher's essay in a set of volumes on war in Late Antiquity, since the former's essay relates to the subsequent Middle Byzantine period while the latter's really has nothing at all to do with warfare. A similar lack of editorial rigour regarding chronology sometimes reveals itself at the level of individual essays, where some authors have been allowed to dwell too long and wishfully on the more abundant evidence from the first to the third century (e.g. pp. 139-41).

Second, there is a noticeable lack of co-ordination between and within the two volumes. This can cause some confusion to the reader as s/he searches for an order or connections that do not seem to exist. For example, one might have hoped that the subject-matter and order of the sections within the second volume would better reflect the subject-matter and order of the bibliographic essays in the first volume than they actually do. Hence the first bibliographic essay within the first volume deals with literary sources, but that represents the subject-matter of the fourth section within the second volume, while the first section within the second volume on strategy seems to correspond to the fifth bibliographic essay. Again, the final three bibliographic essays in the first volume deal with fortifications in the West, Africa, and the East, but the three regionally themed sections in the second volume deal with the West, the Balkans, and the East. More importantly, the bibliographies at the end of essays in the second volume can sometimes prove more informative and up to date than those in the corresponding bibliographic essays, and there seems to have been little attempt to cross-check for completeness and consistency. For example, various authors mention the importance of the Arch of Constantine as a source for the late Roman army and each refers the reader to a different set of secondary works (pp. 128, 671, 943-44).

As for co-ordination within the volumes, it is noteworthy that Elton's and Christie's essays cover much of the same ground, resulting in repetition and the occasional contradiction. For example, Elton states that the tombstone of Viatorinus cannot be dated more precisely than at some point between the third and the fifth century (p. 661), but Christie dates it 'probably' to the mid-fourth century (p. 942). Again, Elton claims that recent dendrochronological work firmly dates the fort at Pevensey to 293/4 (p. 670), whereas Christie states that the dendrochronological evidence dates it to 280-300, while it is the numismatic evidence that dates it to 293 in particular (p. 937).

While these two volumes will undoubtedly interest all those seeking to learn more about war and warfare during Late Antiquity, and I doubt that there is anyone who will not learn something new by reading the set, the fact remains that the dominant subject within both volumes is that of fortifications. Hence this set will be of most interest to those seeking an introduction to the subject of fortifications and defensive systems during Late Antiquity. Indeed, one could easily re-assemble most of the essays here to produce the larger part of a very good book on this subject.

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Notes:

1.   S. Estiot, 'Sine arcu sagittae: la représentation numismatique de plumbatae/mattiobarbuli aux IIIe – IVe siècles (279-307 de n. è.)', Numismatische Zeitschrift 116/117 (2008), 177-21; V. Drost and S. Estiot, 'Maxence et le portrait de l'empereur en Mattiobarbulus', Revue Numismatique 166 (2010), 435-45. ​

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Annemarie Weyl Carr, Andréas Nicolaïdès (ed.), Asinou across Time: Studies in the Architecture and Murals of the Panagia Phorbiotissa, Cyprus. Dumbarton Oaks studies, 43. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2012. Pp. xii, 431. ISBN 9780884023494. $75.00.

Reviewed by James G. Schryver, University of Minnesota, Morris (schryver@morris.umn.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

As the preface by Alice-Mary Talbot notes, this book marks another step in publishing the work carried out by Dumbarton Oaks on the monuments of Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s. For those readers wishing to know more, progress reports for this more general work are clearly referenced in the current volume and can be found in the Dumbarton Oaks Papers volumes 18, 20-6, and 30 and in the (Annual) Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus volumes from the 1960s.

Asinou, the church, was built around 1100 CE in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains, currently a pleasant hour's drive or so from Nicosia. This location is not only extremely picturesque, but provided a protective (or at least cushioning) isolation at the same time as the church reveals strong connections with both the local and the wider world. In fact, it is exactly this combination of local and regional networks, as well as how this situation changed over time that emerges as a theme across this volume. As a whole, Asinou across Time reveals a building whose overall history may have been relatively unaffected by certain larger events occurring around it, but whose patrons and artists were nevertheless aware of trends within the island's shores as well as beyond them. Dedicated to the Panagia Phorbiotissa, or the Mother of God of the Spurges (the Panagia ton Phorbion), the church came to serve a rich array of functions over its life including those related to its associations with healing. At some time after its initial founding, but before 1115, the church became the katholikon of a monastery whose long history through the nineteenth century is pieced together in chapter 1. The earliest photos of the church from the twentieth century show that it alone remained standing, though in a state of disrepair. Throughout the twentieth century, numerous interventions, including the work carried out by Dumbarton Oaks (1965-7) that serves as the basis for this publication, helped to conserve and preserve both the building and its decoration. In 1985 all of these efforts came to fruition when, together with nine other churches in the Troodos range, the Panagia Phorbiotissa was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites on Cyprus. Today, the church is, in the words of Annemarie Weyl Carr, "among the most regularly cited monuments of Middle Byzantine art" (8).

Although the church is famous to many for its original fresco program (1105/6) by the so-called Asinou Master, Asinou across Time focuses on the history and decorative campaigns of the later phases of painting (twelfth to sixteenth centuries). In addition to an up-to-date analysis that confirms and solidifies many of David Winfield's published conclusions ¹, the book introduces a new level of technical analysis into the world of Byzantine painting (chapter 7) and represents a number of other firsts: the first attempt at a comprehensive history for the church and monastery (chapter 1), the first illustrated inventory of its paleographic forms (appendix), and the first monograph on one of the island's major diachronic churches. As such, Asinou across Time is both a foundational work for this particular church, and sets a high bar for future monographs on Cypriot monuments.

One of the most laudable aspects of this book is the authors' and editors' straightforwardness concerning what they were and were not able to accomplish in their work. This is especially evident in the chapters written by Annemarie Weyl Carr, where she is very careful to describe the things that we now know about the later decorative programs of the Panagia Phorbiotissa, the things that still remain a challenge, and the things that we may never know for sure. These clear admissions are not only important for helping to make this work the starting point for future studies of Asinou, but are also necessary in a field where the (sometimes many) different readings of monuments and works of art on Cyprus make it difficult for newcomers to study them. Though many of the chapters were originally written in the early 2000s, the authors are forthright about both this fact and their subsequent additions of relevant bibliographies. In addition to the generally high quality of the illustrations, this book has also been very well copy-edited and as such serves as a model for future interdisciplinary studies of this kind. With the exception of the more technical analysis of chapter 7 the various authors speak with one voice, and the editors are to be congratulated for both this smooth presentation and the consistently correct cross-referencing both within and between chapters. This is especially useful where the authors disagree or seek to disentangle existing scholarship, such as in the case of the dedicatory inscription (17-19 and 53-54), or to build off one another's arguments (93 referring to 54-57 and 19, for instance). Although the chapter on technical analysis may seem daunting to many readers, it is written in an accessible style and will prove rewarding to those who persevere, as its conclusions were fundamental for many interpretations in other chapters. Moreover, some results, like those of the raking light examinations, are extremely interesting on their own. At a time when scholars are constantly urged to be more interdisciplinary and to model this for their students, this chapter provides a wonderful example of scientific applications to a humanities-based topic.

Chapter 1, by Gilles Grivaud, provides an impressively thorough historical sketch of the church and monastery, especially considering the paucity of evidence available. The themes that emerge from this sketch reveal the ways in which the complex was rooted in the local context. It was from the surrounding area that worshippers would have come, and it is in the same local region that most of Asinou's known assets were located. This local focus also shielded the church and monastery from the winds of change in some aspects, as Grivaud notes that the transitions from Lusignan to Venetian rule and later to Ottoman rule did not really leave imprints. And yet, one of the fascinating things about Asinou, and something that this book is very careful to point out, is the ways in which it also displays the influences of a wider eastern Mediterranean world. Some of these impacts, such as the imagery traceable to Latin devotion, echo regional or Cypriot phenomena. Others, however, point to contacts with the world beyond the island's coastlines, such as the headdress worn in the donor portrait of Anastasia Saramalina, which is described as having been "quite prevalent in the Mediterranean East in the second half of the thirteenth century" (119).

The next two chapters set the stage for the later analysis of the mural paintings. Chapter 2, by Athanasios Papageorgiou, analyzes the architectural layout of the church and places this layout in its local and regional context. Like the volume as a whole, this chapter takes a sober approach to what we can know and what we can only speculate or assume. Chapter 3, by Nancy Patterson Ševčenko turns to the metrical inscriptions examining the question of whether they are typical or an aberration. Important for our reading of the church is her conclusion that the "church decoration is more like an inscribed object offered privately to God than a work that addresses a large community" (90).

The analysis of the wall paintings begins in part 1 of chapter 4 by Andréas Nicolaïdès. Because only fragments of the 1332/3 decorative campaign program of the narthex survive, this chapter, divided into two parts, focuses on the mural icon of St. George, found on the wall of the southern apse. The second part of chapter 4, by David Winfield, examines the technique and conservation of the icon, beginning with a descriptive analysis of the painting. This discussion provides some interesting insights for those not completely immersed in Byzantine painting techniques including a very interesting technical discussion of the buildup of flesh tones and other modeling. As Nicolaïdès acknowledges, the dating of the icon is both clouded and controversial. Both authors here place it in the last decades of the twelfth century, with Winfield drawing parallels with the paintings of St. Neophytus and Lagoudera.

Chapter 5, by Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, is the first of two longer chapters that focus on the late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century mural programs of the narthex and the naos. The various layers of relationships visible in the history of Asinou are present here as well, for example, in the apse of the narthex where one sees the "strong bonds with the Syrian mainland and the interaction of Orthodox and Latin traditions in the multicultural milieu of Cyprus" (130). At the same time, many of the individual punishments of the Last Judgement seem calibrated to local historical and social conditions and Kalopissi-Verti argues for the didactic aim of these agriculturally focused tortures.

The local also appears in the identities of some of the saints depicted as well as in the donor portraits where the monks seem to be wearing their work clothes. In a similar fashion, the author argues that the style of the frescoes dated to the 1332/3 program reflect a provincial version of the Palaiologan artistic evolution. The subsequent stylistic comparison with other Cypriot churches is particularly well-documented. Still, this chapter also provides an important reminder of the range of reactions and opinions possible regarding the Latin presence on the island and in the valley. For example, how might we reconcile the donor portrait of the Latin lady with the images of the Orthodox bishops who pledged to Rome in the fiery stream?

Chapter 6, by Annemarie Weyl Carr, moves on to discuss the late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century murals that decorate the bema and the naos. Images such as the Sacrifice of Isaac seem to indicate influences from the mainland rather than from Byzantium; however it is important to note, as Weyl Carr does, that these contacts reached beyond the borders of the contemporary Crusader states and are intimately intertwined with the particular thirteenth-century contexts present on Cyprus and seen to overlap at Asinou.

Regarding the fourteenth-century paintings in the naos, the author proposes a date in the 1340s for the program in the central bay. A portion of these frescoes covers new masonry, while another section covers an earlier twelfth-century decorative program. This phasing poses some interesting questions regarding the relationship of the later program to the earlier, which are also explored. Connections with the mainland (this time the Syro-Palestinian mainland) seem to inform the unique characteristics of the program decorating the transverse arches. Meanwhile, Byzantine influences, together with those from the Syro-Egyptian mainland, seem behind the focus on Mary. Still, as is so clear throughout this book, the local, agricultural context was never far away, and seems represented in the depiction of the anti-crop infestation saints Eustathios, Memnon, and Tryphon in the sanctorial cycle.

Chapter 7, by Ioanna Kakoulli, Michael Schilling, and Joy Mazurek, provides a technical examination of the relevant paintings (including pigments and binding media) treated elsewhere in the book, beginning with a very helpful introduction to the subject of technical analysis in Byzantine wall painting as a whole. Nevertheless, many readers may find it more helpful to begin with the final section "Conclusion and Further Research" (344) and then turn to the discussion of the methodologies employed and the results achieved. The chapter is followed by five appendices that provide details of sample location and the various analyses undertaken. The significance of this portion of the book is large, as Kakoulli's study is "the first such analysis of a frescoed Cypriot church to be published" (363).

As a whole, Asinou across Time provides a perfect parallel for the monument it examines. Both are multi-layered, beautifully decorated with high-quality images, and collaborative, well-funded works whose complex wholes comprise equally interesting individual parts.

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Notes:

1.   David Winfield, The Church of the Panagia Phorviotissa at Asinou. Nicosia: Antiquities department of the Republic of Cyprus, 1969; also found as Winfield, Asinou: A Guide. Nicosia, 1969. Windfield's conclusions were adopted in C. Hadjichristodoulou and D. Myrianthefs, The Church of Our Lady of Asinou. Nicosia, 2002.

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Guido Paduano, Alessandro Russo (ed.), Alessandro Perutelli. Studi sul teatro latino. Testi e studi di cultura classica, 51. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2013. Pp. 186. ISBN 9788846729897. €23.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Giuseppe Aricò, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano (giuseppe.arico@unicatt.it)

Version at BMCR home site

In questo volume sono raccolti tutti i contributi dedicati da Alessandro Perutelli al teatro latino: un ambito nel quale lo studioso – noto soprattutto per i suoi lavori su Virgilio, sull'epica (valeriana in particolare), sull'epillio, sulla poesia neoterica, e ancora su Sisenna, Ovidio, Petronio, e per il bel libro su Ulisse nella cultura latina – ha pure lasciato una traccia significativa.¹

Si tratta di dodici lavori, di cui tre inediti, e i rimanenti scritti tra il 1989 e il 2003. Nove, in particolare, riguardano la commedia: dedicati a problemi di struttura, di lingua e stile e ad analisi di singole commedie con specifica attenzione alla caratterizzazione dei personaggi.

Il primo studio, 'L'uso del greco nella Palliata latina' (pp.9-15), prende in esame il diverso atteggiamento adottato dai singoli commediografi nella scelta dei loro titoli: un atteggiamento che s'inserisce "nello sviluppo linguistico-culturale del rapporto tra letteratura latina e greca" (p. 9). Plauto risente ancora del senso d'inferiorità nei confronti della grecità che caratterizza gli esordi della letteratura romana, e per questo adotta o conia titoli latini, tranne che nel caso di nomi propri. Le cose cambiano dopo la sua morte: la minore diffidenza nei confronti della cultura greca autorizza la scelta di titoli greci, totale in Terenzio, ma ancora parziale in Cecilio. La considerazione della produzione (sia pur frammentaria) di quest'ultimo, "poeta di frontiera tra due scelte linguistiche e culturali", consente di ipotizzare che "la novità del titolo greco" corrisponda "a una diversa stilizzazione complessiva della commedia, tale da incrementare il carattere grecizzante dell'opera ed estendere l'uso di espressioni greche" (p. 13).

Segue una breve nota, 'Il significato di una pubblicazione. La cosiddetta contaminazione nell'antica commedia romanadi Pietro Ferrarino' (pp. 17-22), che riproduce il contributo fornito dall'A. alla Giornata triestina sulla contaminatio del 7 aprile 2003. Lo studioso non si limita a illustrare la tesi di Ferrarino ma ne definisce la personalità scientifica, lumeggiandone il rapporto (e i limiti di questo rapporto) col maestro Gino Funaioli e tratteggiando i caratteri di un'attività critica aperta ad ampie prospettive storico-culturali e appassionatamente impegnata nel perseguire una "filologia totale". I successivi tre studi riguardano altrettante commedie plautine. Il primo, 'Il tema della casa nella Mostellaria' (pp. 23-41) fornisce un'acuta lettura della commedia alla luce di un tema, quello appunto della casa, intorno al quale si intesse l'ordito dell'inganno. Il tema si presenta fin dall'inizio, nell'acceso contrasto tra i due servi Tranione e Grumione; poi si sviluppa nel lungo canticum di Filolachete, che assume una funzione metateatrale, cui anche il padroncino è chiamato a collaborare, fornendo l'immagine sulla quale il servo costruirà la trama della commedia. Gli altri due saggi, 'Una commedia doppia' (pp. 43-55) e 'Un autore alla ricerca del nuovo' (pp. 57-68), costituiscono le introduzioni alle edizioni (tuttora inedite) nella B.U.R., rispettivamente della Rudens e del Truculentus. La destinazione al vasto pubblico non pregiudica la qualità e l'importanza dei due contributi. La Rudens è una commedia bipartita, le cui due sezioni – il naufragio che coinvolge il lenone Labrace e le due giovani da lui sfruttate e il ritrovamento in mare di una cassetta che porterà al riconoscimento di Palestra – restano distinte, raccordate soltanto dal coro col quale i pescatori, in termini inusuali in Plauto, lamentano l'angoscia della loro povertà. Questo coro risale probabilmente al modello greco, ma "ha un'interferenza nella struttura dell'azione, che lo porta vicino alla funzione svolta nella tragedia o nella commedia antica" (p. 47). Il saggio sul Truculentus, invece, prende in esame lo "statuto eccezionale" di questo personaggio, marginale nella vicenda e tuttavia chiamato a dare il titolo alla commedia. Un fatto che si spiega probabilmente con l'interesse che poteva suscitare nel pubblico il suo carattere rozzo e volgare, che imprevedibilmente si evolve in una improbabile urbanitas. Questa, del resto, non è la sola singolarità della commedia: anche altre innovazioni, come la funzione demiurgica assegnata alla cortigiana, il carattere del giovane Dinarco e il ruolo del denaro, inducono a definirla una "commedia sperimentale, protesa verso soluzioni differenti e più articolate di quanto suggerisse la tradizione" (p. 69).

Ancora alla palliata sono dedicati altri tre lavori. Le 'Note a Cecilio Stazio' (pp. 83-98), di taglio rigorosamente filologico, vertono sui frammenti dell'Aethrio e sul problema, ricorrente nella critica a partire da Leonhard Spengel (1829), di una qualche affinità con la vicenda dell'Amphitruo di Plauto: un'ipotesi che un esame spregiudicato, attento anche alla problematica testuale, induce a ridimensionare. Gli altri frammenti ceciliani presi in considerazione sono quelli corrispondenti ai vv. 11-12, 56, 61, 90, 98 R³, sui quali sono avanzate plausibili proposte testuali ed esegetiche. I due saggi che seguono, 'Il prologo dell'Andria' (pp. 99-116) e 'La conclusione degli Adelphoe' (pp. 117-131), costituiscono due importanti contributi all'interpretazione di queste due pagine terenziane. Nel primo, dopo alcune puntualizzazioni filologiche (al v. 8 è da prediligere animum adtendite, difficilior rispetto ad a. advortite; al v. 11 pare da adottare, in quanto più economica, l'inversione delle parole dissimili sunt), Perutelli esprime la sua convinzione che il prologo, nella forma in cui lo leggiamo, non appartenga alla prima edizione dell'Andria ma sia stato scritto in un secondo momento, per rispondere alle critiche ricevute; e, riguardo al problema della "tradizione del prologo che contiene una polemica letteraria" (p. 109), ne ammette cautamente la presenza in Nevio e poi avanza l'ipotesi, suggestiva e tutt'altro che improbabile, di una suggestione del prologo degli Aitia callimachei. Il secondo contributo terenziano, invece, ha per argomento la crux esegetica riguardante l'improvviso rovesciamento, alla fine degli Adelphoe, del comportamento tenuto da Demea per tutto il corso del dramma. Perutelli fa sue le argomentazioni di Sandbach (basate sull'analisi delle citazioni terenziane in Donato) a favore di una innovazione di Terenzio rispetto al modello menandreo e le integra con altre considerazioni. Ogni qualvolta introduce mutamenti di un certo peso, Terenzio usa la contaminazione; ed è questo che sembra verificarsi anche nel caso di cui si tratta. Un frammento di Cecilio, il v. 91 R³ (dalla Hypobolimaeus rastraria, risalente anch'essa a Menandro), presenta una straordinaria somiglianza col v. 985 degli Adelphoe. Un rapporto, questo, che è stato da tempo segnalato nei commenti, ma che Perutelli estende al contenuto dei due drammi: "è ragionevole supporre che la contaminazione terenziana coinvolgesse stavolta anche un'altra commedia di Menandro nei modi in cui era stata vivacizzata da Cecilio" (p. 131).

Una menzione particolare merita, fra questi studi dedicati alla commedia romana, quello intitolato 'Pensieri sulla togata' (pp. 69-81): un "testo provvisorio che l'autore non fece in tempo a sviluppare e a rielaborare compiutamente" (così i Curatori in calce a p. 69) e che costituisce comunque un contributo fondamentale, per il metodo e le proposte critiche, destinato a fornire la base per ulteriori approfondimenti. Perutelli riprende in esame vari problemi riguardanti la togata, dalla cronologia all'esegesi di singoli frammenti (suggestiva, a p. 75, l'ipotesi che nel v. 7 R³ "il problematico spurius celi un Porcius con cui far concludere il verso giambico"), ma soprattutto si concentra sulla caratterizzazione di questo genere teatrale. La lettura dei frammenti del Barbatus di Titinio (in buon numero probabilmente riferentisi alla rivolta femminile del 195 per l'abrogazione della lex Oppia), ma anche della Fullonia (particolarmente 26 s. R³), dell'Hortensius (60 s. R³) e della Psaltria o Ferentinatis (85-90 R³) mette in evidenza un'accentuata attenzione ai temi di natura sociale, in particolare al ruolo della donna. Al "conflitto ... fra generazioni" che caratterizza la palliata si sostituisce, nella togata, "l'antagonismo fra marito e moglie, ... ma ancor di più la lotta che le donne conducono per la propria dignità e i propri diritti" (p. 79). Una commedia, quindi, impegnata in una riflessione civile e politica, che sembra presupporre, a differenza della palliata, un diretto influsso dell'archaia.

L'interesse per la tragedia è rappresentata, nel libro, da tre studi riguardanti Seneca. Nel primo, 'Il primo coro della Medea di Seneca' (pp. 135-150), l'A. si pone il problema del "significato drammatico o comunque patetico" (p. 135) di questo canto corale che non ha corrispondenza nel dramma euripideo. Le due linee interpretative prevalenti, che sottolineano rispettivamente il rapporto (antitetico) con l'inizio del dramma e quello col séguito della tragedia, appaiono unilaterali, e hanno altresì il difetto di considerare questo coro come un'unità indistinta, laddove esso è strutturato in quattro diverse sezioni, chiaramente differenziate anche dal metro. L'esame analitico di questa costruzione mette in luce un'articolazione complessa riconducibile a un preciso intento drammaturgico: Seneca ha probabilmente derivato lo spunto dalla Medea ovidiana, ma ha inteso "svolgere un epitalamio che rispecchiasse tutta la tradizione di tale componimento e dotarlo di una funzione drammatica nel testo, innestarlo insomma nella storia di Medea" (p. 148). All'Agamennone è dedicato il saggio dal titolo 'Il delitto ricorrente' (pp. 151-167), pensato e pubblicato come introduzione all'edizione della B.U.R. Il confronto col dramma di Eschilo – esordisce Perutelli – mette in luce una sostanziale identità contenutistica, ma anche "differenze ... talmente rimarcate, che Seneca potrebbe benissimo aver composto la sua opera senza tener presente quella di Eschilo" (p. 151). Un'affermazione che non ripete, come si vede, e tuttavia non supera del tutto, lo scetticismo talora espresso sulla conoscenza di Eschilo da parte di Seneca: un confronto tra i due drammi – scrive l'A. – si rivela utile, "come nessun altro punto di riferimento, a definire la costruzione del dramma senecano" (p. 152). Io credo che si possa andare ancora oltre, riconoscendo nell'Agamennone latino un vero e proprio dialogo con il precedente greco;² ma nei fatti le cose non cambiano, e la convinzione di Perutelli è più che idonea a garantire un approccio fecondo alla problematica. Opportunamente l'analisi si sviluppa a partire dalla funzione del coro: una funzione "apparentemente disgregante", più ancora che nelle altre tragedie di Seneca, ma che "si definisce meglio attraverso alcuni fili più sottili" che "guidano alla rivelazione dei conflitti su cui si costruisce la tragedia" (pp. 152-158, passim). È qui che emerge con chiarezza la distanza da Eschilo: l'azione appare segmentata, la narrazione spezzata e discontinua; la valutazione morale investe la figura di Agamennone e l'intera stirpe degli Atridi, che per suo mezzo rinnova gli antichi suoi scelera; e la morte del re non è presentata solo come vendetta di Egisto e Clitennestra, ma anche dei Troiani, che alla fine dichiarano, per bocca di Cassandra, la loro vittoria (v. 869). Infine, 'Antigone e Giocasta da Seneca a Stazio' (pp. 169- 178): una rivisitazione dei passi delle Phoenissae (427 ss.; ma non manca qualche cenno all'Oedipus) e della Tebaide (7, 470 ss.; 11, 315 ss.), riguardanti i tentativi delle due donne di scongiurare la lotta fratricida. I rapporti tra questi due testi sono noti da tempo; Perutelli illustra efficacemente la loro struttura narrativa e la caratterizzazione dei personaggi attraverso una lettura comparata che tiene conto delle premesse culturali e ideologiche da cui nascono le rispettive opere. Felici le notazioni sulla 'follia' di Giocasta nei due poeti e sulla similitudine con la Eumenidum ... antiquissima (Theb. 7, 477) e, più in generale, la caratterizzazione della diversa drammaticità delle due elaborazioni poetiche.

Tre indici, rerum et verborum, locorum e "degli studiosi moderni", chiudono il volume.

La (ri)lettura degli studi qui raccolti consente di apprezzare ancora una volta le doti di uno studioso che seppe far convivere in sé, in una sintesi intelligente e feconda, le istanze del rigore filologico con una curiositas vivace e appassionata e con una straordinaria ampiezza di interessi; e in più ci testimonia una vigorosa capacità di leggere il testo drammatico interpretandone anche la specificità teatrale, la dimensione spettacolare implicita nella scrittura. Anche per queste ragioni dobbiamo essere grati ai curatori del volume e a quanti ne hanno favorito la pubblicazione.

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Notes:

1.   Un'accurata Bibliografia di Alessandro Perutelli, curata da Alessandro Russo, si può leggere negli Studi offerti ad Alessandro Perutelli, I, ed. P. Arduini et al., Roma 2008, pp. XIII-XXI.
2.   In tal senso mi sono espresso in Le morti di Agamennone, Aevum(ant) 3, 1990, pp. 29-41.

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