2016.09.53

Dennis Trout, Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry. Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xxvi, 229. ISBN 9780198735373. $155.00.

Reviewed by Roald Dijkstra, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (r.dijkstra@let.ru.nl)

Version at BMCR home site

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Malgré l'abondance actuelle des publications sur l'antiquité tardive et les textes écrits dans cette période, il reste des lacunes remarquables.¹ Heureusement, une d'entre elles est comblée par la publication du livre fort recommandable de Dennis Trout sur les épigrammes de Damase. C'est un fait louable que Trout, déjà bien connu dans le domaine des études de l'antiquité tardive, notamment pour son important travail sur Paulin de Nole, a publié une traduction et commentaire extrêmement utile et agréable à l'usage des épigrammes de Damase, évêque de Rome dans les années 366–384 et peut-être le premier prêtre romain de son rang qu'il est légitime d'appeler pape.

L'introduction de Damasus of Rome est vaste et donne toute l'information qu'un lecteur veut y trouver. L'attention de Trout pour ses lecteurs se montre dans l'addition des choses utiles comme une liste d'évêques de Rome et un plan de la ville de Rome au temps de Damase. En plus de l'index de noms propres et de l'index général, il nous offre également un index d'expressions latines remarquables, qui présente brièvement les sujets-clés de la poésie damasienne et les expressions utilisées (souvent à maintes reprises) par Damase. Quoique l'ordre des expressions ne m'ait pas paru très raisonné, il s'agit là d'un instrument utile pour mieux comprendre la poésie de Damase. Trout donne à son lecteur beaucoup d'outils et il est certainement recommandé de lire le guide du lecteur avant d'aborder la lecture des poèmes (pp. 53–68).

Dans l'introduction, le rôle de Damase dans l'église de Rome du dernier tiers du quatrième siècle est discuté et les particularités des vocabulaire, style et métrique de ses épigrammes sont clairement exposées. La paternité damasienne du Carmen contra paganos est également débattue. Trout réussit à présenter clairement les opinions divergentes des savants modernes, sans nécessairement pousser sa propre opinion sur le sujet ou favoriser l'une ou l'autre hypothèse d'un(e) de ses collègues (ce qui dans le cas du Carmen contra paganos semble une approche particulièrement justifiée).

Vraisemblablement, la collection des épigrammes de Damase intéressera la plupart des lecteurs plutôt pour sa valeur de document historique que pour son importance littéraire. Pourtant, l'auteur s'efforce de souligner que les poèmes peuvent être appréciés aussi pour leur ingéniosité littéraire (il mentionne l'ingenium de Damase à p. 19). Évidemment, Trout connaît toutes les réserves des savants et amateurs de poésie qui ont été exprimées depuis que les épigrammes ont été éditées à l'époque moderne et il les explique amplement, mais son jugement sur la poésie papale est plus positif : « amid the regularity and seeming predictability of these verses lurk surprises and variety » (p. 24). Il est juste de signaler que nos éditions modernes tendent à nous faire oublier que ces poèmes étaient dispersés à travers la cité de Rome et n'étaient jamais lus d'une seule traite dans l'antiquité tardive. En fait, le fonctionnement de ces vers était tout autre et ne semble pas suffisamment considéré comme tel dans la littérature moderne. Pourtant, il faut dire qu'il semble que Damase lui-même ait espéré avoir un plus grand public que les visiteurs des églises et catacombes où se trouvaient ses trouvailles poétiques, ce qui rend le jugement général et sévère de nos jours peut-être un peu plus justifié que Trout nous le présente.

La discussion de la valeur des épigrammes est un bon exemple du mode de travail de Trout dans le livre entier : le contexte de la production, de la lecture et de la réception des vers damasiens est central. La métrique reçoit beaucoup d'attention à travers tout le livre, tout comme la transmission des poèmes. La discussion moderne sur tous les aspects de l'œuvre et de la vie de Damase est très bien présentée aussi, ce qui rend le livre accessible aussi à ceux encore novices en la matière. De plus, Trout a choisi une présentation pratique : pour l'ordre des poèmes il a suivi celui des lieux où ils étaient appliqués, tout en gardant le numérotage généralement suivi de Ferrua. Chaque rue où des épigrammes de Damase ont été placées est introduite par une sélection de textes tardo-antiques et médiévaux en traduction (avec le latin original dans des notes), comme la Depositio martyrum, le Liber Pontificalis et la Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae.

Bien sûr, Trout n'est pas le premier savant contemporain à s'occuper des épigrammes. Déjà en 1942, Antonio Ferrua avait publié une édition qui est restée la référence pour toutes les études sur Damase jusqu'à nos jours. Cependant, même si la qualité de ce livre est toujours impressionnante, le fait que le commentaire soit écrit en latin ne contribue pas à la connaissance générale de la poésie damasienne. De plus, il y a eu du progrès dans les études damasiennes depuis cette édition, ce qui peut être vu clairement dans le traitement du poème sur David (no. 60), qui était considéré pseudo-damasien par Ferrua, mais qui est, grâce au travail d'Antonio Salvatore et Jean-Louis Charlet, de nouveau accepté comme l'œuvre de Damase ; toutefois, on accepte maintenant qu'il s'agit non pas d'un mais de deux poèmes, ce qui aboutit au double numéro 60a et 60b dans l'édition de Trout. Il y a sept ans, Ursula Reutter a publié une traduction allemande avec commentaire (le texte latin est basé sur celui de Ferrua), mais les poèmes ne sont pas centraux à cet ouvrage, ce qui est plutôt une biographie de Damase. L'édition récente d'Antonio Aste ne semble pas encore avoir atteint un grand public ; dans sa préface, Trout regrette d'ailleurs de ne pas avoir pu la voir avant l'achèvement de son propre ouvrage.² En bref, le livre de Trout—diffusé par l'Oxford University Press—est le bienvenu.

Évidemment, le livre de Trout ne peut pas—et ne cherche pas à (voir p. vii)—remplacer les éditions précédentes. Les commentaires sur les poèmes sont bons, précis et satisfaisants, mais ne peut pas traiter profondément tous les aspects. Trout l'annonce clairement dans sa préface : « The commentary (...) is representative rather than exhaustive » (p. vii). Sa modestie est toutefois excessive. S'il profite certainement du travail fait par d'autres savants, le cas particulier de la poésie damasienne, dans lequel des aspects et problèmes de tant de domaines (de la littérature, de l'archéologie, de l'histoire ancienne et ecclésiastique, de l'épigraphie) s'assemblent, fait d'un commentaire comme celui-ci un tour de force qui mérite être fortement apprécié par tous.

Les restrictions du commentaire sont bien visibles dans la discussion du poème le plus célèbre de la collection, épigramme 20 (Hic habitasse prius...) sur Pierre et Paul, pour lequel la bibliographie est extrêmement riche. Trout se contente de donner des références les plus importantes pour ceux qui ont un intérêt particulier dans ces vers fascinants de la basilique de Saint Sébastien. De même, dans le commentaire d'un épigramme contesté comme no. 3 (Cingebant latices montem...) il manque des références importantes.³ Mais ceci semble à la fois inévitable et tout à fait compréhensible étant donnée l'entreprise dont Trout s'est chargé. En comparaison, le commentaire de Reutter nous donne plus de références littéraires, mais celui de Trout est plus complet (il faut dire que Reutter commente aussi les poèmes dans le texte courant de son œuvre, qui a d'ailleurs une nature différente). Les traductions sont bonnes et plutôt littérales (dans les mots de Trout lui-même : « the translations tend toward the workmanlike rather than the elegant », p. vii).

Le seul défaut du livre de Trout que je peux signaler est d'une nature pratique. Il concerne la mise en page : l'auteur a choisi de distinguer entre le commentaire littéraire en bas de page et le commentaire plutôt historique en texte courant dans une police un peu plus large. Toutefois, en l'absence de retour à la ligne pour l'annotation de chaque vers, le commentaire littéraire ne se reconnaît pas comme tel à première vue. On peut se demander si un commentaire complet discutant à la fois le contexte historique et littéraire n'aurait pas été préférable.

En somme, le livre de Trout est vivement recommandé à tous ceux intéressés par la poésie de Damase et l'histoire ecclésiastique du quatrième siècle. Le livre est très bien produit et écrit avec soin.⁴ Cependant, puisque le livre est destiné aussi à un public plus large (cf. l'auteur à la p. vii : « this study's aim of making Damasus' carmina epigraphica more available to scholars and students » ), il est très regrettable qu'il soit aussi coûteux (£95). Il est à espérer que l'éditeur se rangera vite du côté de l'auteur et publiera une édition abordable à un plus grand nombre de lecteurs.

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Notes:

1.   Je remercie le dr. Stéphane Martin (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) pour ses corrections et ses conseils.
2.   Le recenseur admet ne pas avoir vu non plus le livre d'Aste, publié en 2014 (Gli epigrammi di papa Damaso I. Traduzione e commento a cura di Antonio Aste, Libellula Edizioni), qui manque au catalogue collectif des bibliothèques universitaires des Pays-Bas. Les éditions de Damase mentionnées sont : Ferrua, A. (1942). Epigrammata Damasiana. Roma, Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana et Reutter, U. (2009). Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384). Leben und Werk. Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
3.   Notamment Gnilka, C. (2005). "Prudentius über den colymbus bei St. Peter." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 152: 61–88 et Tränkle, H. (1999). "Der Brunnen im Atrium der Petersbasilika und der Zeitpunkt von Prudentius' Romaufenthalt." Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 3: 97–112.
4.   Comme erreurs mineures, je n'ai pu trouver que fosssores (p. 7) et l'insertion malheureuse d'un adjectif allemand pour un substantif anglais dans la note 104 (p. 24).

2016.09.52

Karl Shuve, The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xix, 236. ISBN 9780198766445. $105.00.

Reviewed by Dries De Crom, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology (D.J.L.A.DeCrom@uvt.nl)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

The history of Christian exegesis of the Song of Songs, one of the most intriguing pieces of biblical poetry, is dominated by the legacy of Origen of Alexandria. Though preserved only indirectly,¹ his Homilies and Commentary described the Song as a complex work of narrative poetry, evoking on multiple levels of meaning the dialectical relationship between Christ and the church, as well as between Christ and the individual soul. Origen's allegorical exegesis left an indelible mark both in Greek patristic authors (notably Gregory of Nyssa) and in the Latin-speaking church. In many overviews of the history of interpretation of the Song of Songs, a direct line is drawn from Origen to Bernard of Clairvaux and the mystical traditions of the Middle Ages, while the intervening exegetical traditions of early Latin Christianity receive only cursory treatment.²

Karl Shuve's volume on precisely this understudied topic is, therefore, a welcome addition to the history of interpretation of the Song of Songs. He focuses on Latin authors from the third to the early fifth century, which has repercussions on the nature of the available sources. From the relevant period, we know of only three running commentaries on the Song of Songs – by Reticius of Autun, Victorinus of Poetovio, and Gregory of Elvira – only the last of which is still extant. This means that the analysis is built on hundreds of quotations from and allusions to the Song of Songs in the writings of several early Christian authors. From this disparate material, Shuve successfully paints a nuanced picture of how the Song of Songs fits (or is made to fit) into the various topics and contexts dealt with by the patristic sources under discussion.

The volume opens with a methodological section, including a brief but elucidating overview of recent interpretative work on the Song of Songs. Shuve's interpretative stance is conceptually related to the work of Naomi Koltun-Fromm and Mary Douglas on the symbolic relations between sexual and bodily boundaries, on the one hand, and communal or social boundaries, on the other. ³ Thus, Shuve's primary interest lies in how the Song of Songs was deployed in ongoing debates on Christian identity. Shuve focuses on periods in which this identity came under pressure from the inside out: the Donatist and Novatianist controversies, Ambrose's early period as bishop of Milan, and the Jovinianist dispute. These topics are always contextualized both historically and theologically, which enhances the usefulness of the volume as an introduction to important themes in early Latin Christianity.

The first chapter focuses on the third-century rebaptism crisis in North African Christian communities, and the ensuing Donatist schism. Pride of place is given to Cyprian, who "established the parameters according to which the poem would be read and interpreted for over a century" (37). His is the first attested usage of verses from the Song of Songs to define the church as a bounded community, with clear distinctions between insiders and outsiders. The second chapter builds upon the first, but shifts focus to authors who view the church as "a diverse and mixed temporal body of believers" (52), for example, Pacian of Barcelona, Tyconius, and Augustine of Hippo (who in the context of this study does not merit a chapter all by himself). It is shown that these authors continued to mine the Song of Songs for scriptural arguments in the context of anti-Novatianist, anti-Donatist, and anti-Manichean writings. Shuve stresses that the influence of Cyprian remained very strong. No matter how different his views were, even Augustine was, in the end, required to deal with Cyprian's use of the Song of Songs.

The most valuable part of the study appears to be the third chapter, on Gregory of Elvira's Tractatus de Epithalamio, the only extant commentary on (part of) the Song of Songs from the fourth century. Shuve engages thoroughly with several fundamental questions, such as the dating of the writing. For this, he convincingly proposes sometime in the 350s, an earlier date than is generally assumed, on the basis of evidence both text-critical and historical. Also in focus is the Tractatus's relation to Origen's exegetical works. In view of the earlier date of the Tractatus, Shuve argues that Gregory of Elvira was unfamiliar with Origen's Homilies on the Song of Songs, which were not available in Latin before Jerome translated them in the early 380s. There are, however, unmistakable traces of Origen's Commentary on the Song, to which Gregory certainly could not have had direct access. Shuve points to Victorinus of Poetovio as a possible source for these similarities (83-86). Most importantly, Gregory depicts the church as a vulnerable woman and raises the issue of her integritas. Thus, his exegesis occupies a key position between the ecclesiological themes of the authors from Africa and Spain, and the issues of gender, virginity, and asceticsm raised by Ambrose and Jerome.

The fourth chapter discusses Ambrose's use of the Song of Songs during his early period as bishop of Milan. The chapter contains many fine insights on both the political and theological dimensions of Ambrose's stance on virginity. For him, virgins are "signifiers of the divine economy" (127). This thought is further developed in the fifth chapter, which discusses Ambrose's later works. Here, the influence of Origen is undeniable in the double application of the Song of Songs to the collective and the individual, i.e., to ecclesiology and to mysticism. Yet Shuve takes great care to identify the difference between Origen's exegesis, which is pedagogical and altogether more positive towards the body and physical beauty, and Ambrose's, which has a more dualistic and ascetic mind-set (145–50).

Jerome is the focus of the sixth and final chapter. One of the leading insights in this part of the book is that the ascetic interpretation of the Song of Songs, announced already in Gregory of Elvira and carried through by both Ambrose and Jerome, was not a reactionary response to more "natural" readings of the poem. Rather, Shuve argues that a more "literal" interpretation of the Song, as a poem about human love that is essentially "pro-marriage" (178), emerged in reaction to the ascetic readings of Ambrose and Jerome. It may be difficult for us, modern-day readers, to imagine anyone not understanding the Song of Songs primarily as a poem on human love, with clear erotic undertones at that. Yet it is striking that the erotic character of the Song did not become an issue in early Latin Christianity until the time of Gregory of Elvira, Ambrose, and Jerome — until, that is, Origen's exegetical works were translated from Greek and started to pervade Western interpretations of the Song. In this respect, Shuve rightly asks "whether the Song would have sounded as carnal to late antique Christian ears as it does to our own" (5).

Throughout the volume, the share of Origen of Alexandria, the mainstay in any work on the Song's history of interpretation, is deliberately downsized, though of course never entirely absent. This is perhaps one of the most refreshing aspects of the book: it attempts to take the interpretative traditions of early Latin Christianity seriously, without viewing them as afterthoughts to Origen's seminal work. At various points, Shuve argues for the early Latin writers' independence from Origen. For instance, Shuve contends that Ambrose's interpretation of the Song of Songs, rather than owing almost everything to Origen, "was shaped even more profoundly by the ascetic corpus of Athanasius" (17). Sometimes this point is made somewhat less convincingly: Victorinus of Poetovio is tentatively suggested as a common source for both Tyconius and Gregory of Elvira, rather than Origen (66); yet Victorinus is also suggested as a possible source for spreading bits of Origen's exegesis in the West, before any of his works had been translated into Latin (82–83).

Another intriguing question raised by Shuve's analysis concerns the origins of the Western, non–Origenist ecclesiological interpretation of the Song of Songs. As important as Cyprian was for the Song's history of interpretation, Shuve makes it very clear that his work was not entirely innovative. His quotations already point towards a pre-existing tradition of interpretation, with two salient features: (1) the Song of Songs was read as a dialogue, with portions of the text assigned to different characters; (2) one of these characters was the church, indicating an early and "natural" ecclesiological interpretation of the Song. Exactly how this interpretative tradition came to be in (we must assume) second-century Latin Christianity, remains one of the unanswered questions of scholarship on the Song of Songs. Shuve suggests the answer may lie in the liturgical function of the text in the early church (p. 36), but with the current state of the evidence this remains entirely hypothetical.

Throughout the volume, Shuve's analysis highlights the question of intertextuality. Verses from the Song of Songs are often quoted in conjunction with verses from, for instance, the corpus Paulinum. Both Eph 5:27 and Ps 44 repeatedly appear in correlation with certain verses from the Song of Songs. It is clear that, when cited together, these texts are meant to be mutually enlightening. Together, they create a subtext that is, in most cases, more significant for the exegete's immediate purpose than the Song of Songs by itself — indeed, at certain points in the book the Song disappears almost entirely from view. These hermeneutical processes are not in themselves the object of Shuve's study. It would be interesting to see how and where intertextual links arise in the history of the Song's interpretation. For instance, Augustine innovatively links Song 4:12 to Ez 8:12–13, or Song 2:1 to the parables in Mt 13 — an innovation that, in the context of Shuve's study, is not extensively commented upon.

While the volume has otherwise been excellently edited, there are a number of unfortunate typos in Latin quotations, some of which look suspiciously like autocorrect mistakes (e.g. permanent for permanet, terrarium for terrarum, meridian for meridia, necessaries for necessarios), in addition to a small number of oversights: p. 47 occidentali surely is "western," not "eastern" as printed; p. 198 butyro "butter", not "bread".

In short, Shuve has succeeded in drawing the early Latin interpreters of the Song of Songs out from under the shadow of Origen, in a well-organized and pleasantly written volume that deserves a wide readership.

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Notes:

1.   The Homilies were translated into Latin by Jerome, the Commentary only partially and not very accurately by Rufinus of Aquileia. Of the original Greek, only fragments have survived in catenaric manuscripts.
2.   For instance, M.H. Pope, Song of Songs. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible Commentary; Garden City: Doubleday, 1977).
3.   Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Hermeneutics of Holiness. Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality and Religious Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Praeger, 1966).

2016.09.51

Esteban Bérchez Castaño, El destierro de Ovidio en Tomis: realidad y ficción. Estudis clàssics, 11. Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2015. Pp. 334. ISBN 9788478226627. €17.00.

Reviewed by Cecilia Criado, University of Santiago de Compostela (cecilia.criado@usc.es)

Version at BMCR home site

[The Table of Contents is reproduced at the end of the review.]

This stimulating book is the result of the reworking of E. Bérchez Castaño's doctoral thesis, directed by J.L. Vidal and X. Ballester, and read in 2008 at the Complutense University of Madrid. Bérchez Castaño addresses a question that remains one of the most attractive in classical philology, the exile of Ovid in Tomis. The author argues that if Ovid was indeed banished, he did not suffer this relegatio in Tomis. After analyzing the exaggerations, untruths and inconsistencies of the information provided by Ovid, Bérchez Castaño concludes that not only is it unlikely that the poet had been exiled in Tomis, but that he might not even have known the region. Although some authors had already defended this thesis (see Chapter One), the documentation provided by Bérchez Castaño is so impressive and his evidence so persuasive that the reader succumbs to the temptation to contemplate more seriously than first thought the possibility that the exile of Ovid in fact took place in a location other than Tomis; ultimately, that everything has been a beautiful lie on the part of the poet in order to enhance the pathos of his relegatio. Really, the supremacy of rhetoric (i.e., that which the poet learned, read or studied) over experience seems to point in this direction. The truth is that if Ovid did indeed simulate his place of confinement, in his exile poetry we meet again in its purest form one of the defining characteristics of his prior poetic production, that is, its constant emphasis on the fictional nature of literary creation. This aspect is developed in the latter part of the book (Chapters Nine and Ten).

After an initial chapter that it serves as an introduction, in which Bérchez Castaño outlines the structure of the book with great clarity, Chapter Two provides a comprehensive status quaestionis in which the agenda for the book and part of its conclusions are anticipated. The hypothesis of the false banishment was raised by J.J. Hartman in 1911 and accepted by O. Janssen (1951) and C. Verhoeven (1979). Based on the number of historical, ethnographic and geographical errors that Ovid makes in his work in exile, E. Lozovan (1959), although not denying that the exile had taken place, said that it did not take place in Tomis. More recently, F. Brown (1985) and H. Hofmann (2001) provided conclusive documentation in favour of Ovid having never been in Tomis and that his exile in fact never happened. G. Williams (1994) analyzed how Ovid mixes non-erroneous facts about Tomis with other, fictitious ones, these being highly literary in nature, and echoing the topics used in ancient literature for the description of the loca horribilia. This led him to suggest that the poet, in his exile, could have created an unreality. Finally, J.-M. Claassen (1986 and 1994) was reluctant to accept the thesis of the falsity of the banishment; however, in her 2004 collection of previous studies, while insisting that the hypothesis of fictitious exile cannot be proven, she does admit the omnipresence of the recourse to invention and exaggeration with which Ovid appears to seek to increase the pathos of the place in which passed his final years.

Prior to Berchez Castaño's book, the topic had also received attention by Spanish scholars. A. Alvar (1997 and 2010) highlights the high dose of imagination in Ovid and his capacity for combining pre-existing poetic arguments; in Alvar's opinion, the Ovidian testimony about his exile is unreliable but this in no way renders it a falsehood. X. Ballester (2002) also holds that the exile took place but provides new ethnographic, geographic, and linguistic data that demonstrate the impossibility that it had happened in Tomis.

In the following chapters, the author compares what Ovid relates in Tristia, Epistula ex Ponto and Ibis with sources of all kinds, that is, with information about ancient Tomis provided by ancient and modern historians and geographers, with material sources (archaeological, numismatic and epigraphic), with literary and historiographical sources predating or contemporary with Ovid, with sources written after the poet, and with Ovid's pre-exilic poety.

Thus, in Chapter Three Bérchez Castaño focuses on the information provided by the poet in Book I of Tristia on his farewell in Rome, the starting point and route of travel, the length of this, plus the storm that took place during the voyage. For all of this, Bérchez Castaño finds hypotexts that Ovid undoubtedly used and which therefore cast doubt on the veracity of what he narrates. Specifically, the sadness that Ovid feels before his departure (Tr. 1.3.1-4) has strong reminiscences of Aeneas's pain when he recalls the fall of Troy (Aen. 2.3-7); the desperation of Ovid's wife (Tr. 1.3.81-6) echoes the words of Creusa in Aen. 2.675-8 and in passages of Heroides and Metamorphoses. Similarly, apart from the similarities with the voyage of the Argonauts and the phaselus of Catullus, the imprecision of the route that the poet describes (for example, he says that he headed to the Hellespont then turned back toward Samothrace; strangely he also claims, although denying it on other occasions, that he made the last part of the journey on foot while the ship went on to Tomis with his luggage) is faithful to Ovid's tendency of listing cities in the wrong order (cf. Met. 2.214-59 and 15.697- 718). In the same way, the description of the storm seems to be a rhetorical product of his bookish erudition rather than the embodiment of a lived experience.

In Chapter Four, Berchez Castaño confronts the historical data on Tomis with the information allegedly omitted or invented by Ovid. The poet's constant confusion between the Thracians and Scythians, present in many authors, is hard to explain if he really did live in Scythia Minor. Tomis, apart from being an important port enclave (a fact that Bérchez Castaño documents with epigraphic and numismatic material), had attained a high degree of hellenization prior to becoming part of the Roman Empire in 29 BC. This suggests that, when Ovid arrived in Tomis in year 9 CE, the city must have had not only quite a large community of Roman citizens but the administrative structure that such a place demanded. Neither should we forget that Pliny considered Tomis to be one of the most beautiful cities of the region (Nat. 4.44) and the variety of gods whose cults were practiced there points towards the cosmopolitanism of the place. None of these facts coincide with the way in which Ovid paints Tomis as a city isolated from the civilised world, or with the claim that he, Ovid, is the only Roman on the city's soil.

The cold weather, the characteristic of Tomis most vividly underlined in the exile poetry, is the subject of Chapter Five. The intensity of the low temperatures is sufficient to freeze wine (Trist. 3.10.23-4) and even the Pontus Euxinus itself (Trist. 3.10.37-8, Pont 4.10.31-4, etc.). The icy winter damages the poet's health, a situation that Ovid describes with the same words that Propertius had used to convey the physical discomfort of the lover (2.1.57-8). Equally, as is well known, for the description of the Scythic winter Ovid uses a diversity of pre-existing material, recurring to the Georgics 3 of Virgil, who for his part had turned to Hippocrates and Herodotus, and perhaps also to Homer (Od.11.14-9). Obviously, concludes Bérchez Castaño, both Ovid and Virgil fall into the error of "atribuir iguales características climáticas a toda la Escitia, uno de los territorios más vastos de Europa" (p. 134) ("attributing the same climatic characteristics to all of Escitia, one of the most extensive territories of Europe") in assigning to Tomis the same climate as that found in the northern part of Scythia.

Chapter Six moves on to the residents of the city. Ovid claims that the people of Tomis have horrific, bloody and primitive customs. He states that they were unaware of the art of weaving, engaged in almost no agriculture, their only law was force, and that they lacked a written culture. This ethnography, argues Berchez Castaño, has the strong taste of a literary topic, that is, it sounds more like a literary image than a real one. Indeed, characteristics that Ovid points out coincide suspiciously with those which Greek and Roman authors used to employ in describing the inhumanity of any barbarian people. In any case, reliable historiographical sources discredit the ethopoeia that Ovid presents of the people of Tomis and, as Berchez Castaño brings to light and carefully analyzes, he commits notable errors (for example, in the ethnonyms) that, although frequent in the historiographic sources, Ovid would have not have made were he to have had a direct and genuine knowledge of this region of Scythia.

The Getic language is the subject of Chapter Seven. Ovid states again and again that almost no Latin or Greek is spoken in the region. This is hard to believe, since as has been already said, the territory was under Roman rule from the year 29 BC and had previously been a Greek colony (indeed, inscriptions preserved from the first century CE demonstrate the use of Greek). On the other hand, Ovid boasts of having learned in just three years four indigenous languages of the region—Getic, Thracian, Sarmatic and Scythian. Given that these languages belong to linguistic groups far removed from Italic and Hellenic ones, learning them would have been a difficult task for a native Latin speaker. Thus, Ovid's talent for rapid language acquisition would have exceeded that of Persicus, Publius Crasus Mucianus, Cyrus and Mithridates, all of whom were legendary in terms of their multilingualism. Yet more absurd still seems Ovid's assertion that he wrote a poem in the Getic language with a Latin metre in honour of the imperial family (Pont. 4.13.33-6), when quite possibly this language did not distinguished long and short syllables.

In the preceding chapters, Bérchez Castaño compared information provided by Ovid about Tomis with data from archaeological, epigraphic, historical, geographical and ethnological sources. In Chapter Eight he continues to explore the picture that Ovid paints of the region and its inhabitants, but now from an exclusively literary perspective. He concludes that Ovid, in addition to employing the topics that literary tradition used to describe Scythia and other remote places, identifies Tomis with places or literary times that provoked repulsion, specifically the Iron Age and the Kingdom of Hades. The aim of Ovid, in Bérchez Castaño's opinion, is to emphasize the contrast between an idealized Rome and an exaggeratedly debased Tomis in order that, with this fiction, the reader feels the reality of his exile with palpable drama.

The final two chapters of the book are dedicated to the epistolary elegy in exile (Chapter Nine) and the art of fiction in Ovid (Chapter Ten). In the first of these, Bérchez Castaño begins by analyzing the debt that Ovid, creator of the epistle of the exile written in verse, owes to the epistolary genre as practiced in prose by Cicero and Seneca. It then moves on to focus on an aspect that, although already the subject of brief attention by previous scholars, Bérchez Castaño develops magnificently; he shows the continuity that the poet establishes between his "elegies of exile" and the elegiac topics developed by Tibullus, Propertius and also by himself. As was already the case in his amatory works, in his production during exile the unbearable pain leads him to wish for death, causes insomnia, loss of appetite and physical disorders; tears stain what he writes and the journey itself is the cause of painful separation; the verses will immortalise the protagonists and, finally, the militia exulis (Tr. 4.1.71-4 and Pont. 1.8.7) inevitably echoes the militia amoris.

The truth is that, as discussed in the final chapter ("The art of fiction in Ovid. Magnaque pars mendax operum ficta et est tune "), the emphasis of Ovid on the fictionality of what is recounted remains as present in his work in exile as in what comes before, though in the case of work in exile, the poet strives (unsuccessfully it seems, in opinion of Bérchez Castaño) to hide his lie with all the resources at his disposal to make his fiction not only plausible but true.

Since the author himself indicates his use of previous scholarship (see Chapter Two), I will limit myself here to stress the importance of this book in Spanish scholarship on Ovid, an author who is the subject of very significant studies by Spanish scholars.¹ Specifically, the issue of the exile of Ovid has recently been revisited and has caused pointed disagreement. Thus, while X. Ballester shows the unreality of the exile in Tomis, B. Segura Ramos forcefully defends the opposing view.² The depth and breadth of the arguments provided by Bérchez Castaño in El destierro de Ovidio en Tomis: realidad y ficción seem to tip the balance in favour of Ovid's Tomis being an invention.

Bérchez Castaño not only reveals himself to be a profound connoisseur of Graeco-Roman literature, but also a passionate lover of literary creation and, therefore, of fiction itself, whether it be that of Ovid or not.

Indice general

Preface 9
Aspectos formales 11
1. Introucción. Exulis haec vox est 15
2. Status quaestionis. Quidium omnino non esse relegatum 25
3. Despedida y travesía. El libro I de Tristezas 45
4. Tomis: locus horribilis 89
5. El clima escítico. Sempter hiems 119
6. Los Tomitanos. Vix sunt homines hoc nomine digni 145
7. La lengua y el poema géticos. Non patria Camena 175
8. Tomis topicalizada. Laeta fere laetus cecini, cano tristia tristis 191
9. La poética innovadora del exilio. La elegía epistolar del exilio 209
10. El arte de la ficción en Ovidio. Magnaque pars mendax operum est et ficta meorum 229
11. Conclusiones 253
12. Bibliografia 263
13. Index nominum 285
14. Index locorum 301
15. Indice de autores modernos 327
16. Indice de fotografías, tablas e illustraciones 333

---

Notes:

1.   The contributions of the following scholars merit attention: M.^ª C. Álvarez Morán, E.F. Baez Angulo, X. Ballester, V. Cristobal, J.C. Fernández Corte, J. Gómez Pallarés, R. Guarino, R.M.^ª Iglesias Montiel, F. Moya del Baño, A. Ramírez de Verger, L. Rivero García, M. Rodríguez Pantoja and A. Ruiz de Elvira. For exhaustive information on research into Ovid by Spanish scholars, see M. von Albrecht, Ovidio: Una introducción, Murcia, 2014, pp. 398-449.
2.   Ballester, X., "El geta de Ovidio", in M.A. Coronel Ramos (ed.), El espacio: ficción y realidad en el mundo clásico, Valencia, 2002, pp. 131-74; Segura Ramos, B., "El destierro de Ovidio: ¿Realidad o ficción?", Miscelánea de Estudios Filológicos en la jubilación del prof. B. Segura Ramos, Sevilla 2010, pp. 135-54. See also Cristobal, V., "Tempestades épicas", CIF 14, 1988, pp. 125-48 and "Ulises y la Odisea en la literatura latina", Actas del VIII Congreso Español de Estudios Clásicos, Madrid, 1994, pp. 497-51, and Alvar Ezquerra, A., "Ovid in Exil: Fact or Fiction?",Annals of Ovidius University Constanta, 2010, pp. 107-26.

2016.09.50

Gabriella Albanese, Claudio Ciociola, Mariarosa Cortesi, Claudia Villa (ed.), Il ritorno dei classici nell'Umanesimo: studi in memoria di Gianvito Resta. Firenze: SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2015. Pp. xxxi, 699. ISBN 9788884504777. €75.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Ioannis Deligiannis, Democritus University of Thrace (inteligi@helit.duth.gr)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

This rich and varied volume in memory of Gianvito Resta consists of thirty-one essays, outstandingly edited by the presidents of the four scientific committees working under a single project envisioned by Resta: "Il Ritorno dei Classici nell'Umanesimo." It opens with a justifiably long and detailed introduction to Resta's contribution to the establishment of the project, the history of the editorial production and research results of the individual committees, their missions and purposes, as well as a justification for preserving and continuing their contribution to the humanities. All the essays, written by leading scholars in the areas covered by the project, provide a detailed and comprehensive study of various aspects related to the humanistic reception of classical Greek and Latin authors and texts, as well as to Renaissance historiography.

For the purpose of this review, the essays will be discussed according to their content and inclusion in one of the project committees, though the boundaries are not always distinct (in the book, the essays are arranged in alphabetical order by author). The first group of essays deals with aspects related to humanist and Renaissance commentaries on Latin texts. V. Cotza outlines the manuscript tradition and circulation of Giovanni de Virgilio's Allegorie Ovidii, especially in Lombardy, and closely examines certain manuscripts that shed light on scribal and textual interrelations. The origins and history of two Greek manuscripts copied by Peter the Cretan in the milieu of Vittorino da Feltre's school in Mantua are discussed in S. Martinelli Tempesta's essay. The discussion includes detailed descriptions of the manuscripts under discussion, identifies Gian Pietro da Lucca as the author of the marginalia in one of them, and provides exhaustive documentation of the author's argument. L.C. Rossi's fascinating contribution discusses Domenico da Peccioli's use of Dante as an authoritative source of quotations in his commentary on Seneca's Epistulae Morales. C. Villa and F. Lo Monaco present an important discussion of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Florentine reception of Martianus Capella's De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Villa and Lo Monaco discuss the work's reception not only on a textual level, but also on an educational and artistic level in the city's ruling family. Botticelli's Spring and G. Budé's philological apprenticeship in Florence also become part of the story. To the same group of essays should be ascribed the late M. Geymonat's "Virgilio fra Scilla e Cariddi". Almost equal in number are the essays dedicated to the area of vernacular/Italian translations of classical and medieval texts. On the basis of the dedicatory manuscript of G. Brevio's Italian version of Isocrates' Ad Nicoclem to Alessandro de' Medici, C. Ciociola re-establishes the date of this translation and provides an exemplary study of the manuscript and the text. A. D'Agostino offers a fine analysis of the linguistic and stylistic value of the Istorietta troiana, an anonymous partial version of the French medieval romance Roman de Troie into Florentine dialect, and its relation to a vernacular version of Ovid's Heroides; he also attempts to identify its translator. E. Guadagnini and C. Lorenzi discuss two works by Brunetto Latini: his Rettorica, a partial Italian version of Cicero's De inventione, and an Italian version of Cicero's In Catilinam I, attributed to Latini. The former essay deals with some quite interesting aspects of the manuscript tradition of Latini's text, while the latter provides a close examination of the translation techniques and the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of the translation in comparison with those of the original; the author concludes that its attribution to Latini is rather doubtful. C. Lorenzi Biondi's article is concerned with the life and work of the copyist Gherardo di Tura Pugliesi; the author makes a careful palaeographical analysis in order to secure the attribution of certain manuscripts to Gherardo, and provides a comprehensive list of the manuscripts of vernacular texts and translations copied by him. L. Sacchi studies the remarkable vernacular poetic adaptation of the Latin Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri in a cantari collection from the middle of the fifteenth century and considers attributing the work to various poets active at Sigismondo Malatesta's court. G. Vaccaro focuses on the thirteenth-century Italian translation of Vegetius' Epitoma rei militaris by B. Giamboni; the author briefly discusses the manuscripts preserving the text and their interrelations, and points out the need for a new edition of the text.

E. Berti's article is the first of the essays fully dedicated to the third scientific area of the volume, humanist and Renaissance Latin translations of Greek texts. Its principal focus is a manuscript of L. Bruni's Latin version of Plato's Phaedo copied in the middle of the fifteenth century by B. Bembo and its place in the manuscript tradition of the translation. In the course of the discussion Berti arrives at new conclusions regarding other copies deriving from a lost intermediary from which Bembo's manuscript originated. The Greek manuscripts used by M. Ficino for his Latin versions of Pythagoras' Aurea verba (Laur.Conv.Soppr.180) and the Definitiones (Laur.85.9) ascribed to Speusippus are the focus of A. Carlini's essay; he is able to show how Ficino consulted the former manuscript to supplement and correct the Greek text of Plato in the latter, which he used for his translation of some of Plato's dialogues. C. Cocco offers an exhaustive analysis and a critical edition of the Latin translation of Aesop's fables attributed to Guarino Veronese. Using information extracted from Guarino's letters, other sources and textual evidence, she convincingly discusses this authorial attribution and the textual relations of this translation with another version of the same text made by Guarino. M. Cortesi discusses the Latin version of Plutarch's Quaestiones romanae et graecae made by Gian Pietro da Lucca in the middle of the fifteenth century. The author traces its textual tradition and offers some significant conclusions on a version revised and corrected by G. Calfurnio that was used for the translation's editio princeps. R. Ferri's article is related to late antique lexicography rather than the humanistic translations from Greek into Latin. The two bilingual papyrus fragments examined reveal important aspects related to their role as didactic texts. By exploring possible links between the two fragments and later bilingual dictionaries, the author draws some speculative conclusions on the interrelations between Eastern and Western bilingual lexicography. S. Fiaschi writes about F. Filelfo's Latin translation of the Hippocratic De flatibus and De passionibus, dedicated to F. Maria Visconti. She shows how the translator's choice of the original Greek texts is related to the dedicatee of these versions. She also meticulously examines the manuscript tradition of the Latin texts, identifying the dedication copy, and traces their circulation, especially among students of medicine. In addition, she offers a hypothesis regarding the Greek manuscript probably used by Filelfo for his translations. The article contains an edition of Filelfo's prefatory letters to Visconti. Likewise, P.B. Rossi examines the first humanistic Latin translations of Aristotle's Analytica Posteriora, which were made by R. de' Rossi and G. Tortelli during the first half of the fifteenth century. After outlining the conditions in which the translations were produced, Rossi lists their manuscripts, publishes their dedicatory epistles, and compares sections of them with the corresponding ones from the twelfth-century version by James of Venice, attempting to identify their interrelations. P. Viti discusses the Latin translation of the Enchiridion of Epictetus by A. Poliziano. The article contains a close examination of Poliziano's dedicatory letter to Lorenzo dei Medici and of his epistle/response to B. Scala's criticism, in which Poliziano emphasised the pedagogical and educational purpose of his translation. D. Amendola's article has been left last in the discussion of the essays under this group because it presents various aspects of a historical work by L. Bruni, the Commentarium rerum Graecarum, which derives from Xenophon's Hellenica. It is not a clear case of translation of a Greek text into Latin, but, as the author shows, Bruni abridged and reshaped the Greek text to produce a new Latin one. Amendola outlines the historical circumstances of its production and attempts to identify the Greek manuscript used by Bruni for his work. It is a valuable contribution to the study of the reception of Greek authors in the Italian Renaissance, showing how some humanists departed from the path of traditional translation, adapting the original to new genres and purposes.

The last group of essays discusses various topics of humanistic history and historiography. G. Albanese's article deals with the life, the historical work and the library of Ludovico Saccano. By presenting and discussing new documents, she securely re-establishes the dates of Saccano's life, his intellectual relations with L. Valla, Cardinal Bessarion and C. Lascaris, and his dedicated interest in classical Greek and Latin texts and manuscripts. Enea Silvio Piccolomini's embassies for the Emperor Frederick III to Milan between 1447 and 1449 are the focus of G. Chittolini's article; the author methodically examines the historical and political circumstances that led Milan from F.M. Visconti's signoria to that of F. Sforza as well as the emperor's attempts to place the city under his authority. Piccolomini's Historia Bohemica is the subject of M.G. Fadiga's article; the author's systematic and thorough analysis reveals how the future pope used this historical work to support and promote his ideas on how Papacy and Empire could act together to create a stronger Europe, under threat from the Ottoman Empire. F. Delle Donne examines possible connections between politics and historiography in Gaspar Pelegrí's Historia Alphonsi primi regis and makes some interesting observations on the humanistic ideas of historiography and its theories. B. Figliuolo publishes and discusses all the documents and letters concerning Antonio Beccadelli's embassy for King Alfonso the Magnanimus to Venice; these reveal not only aspects of the political history of the time, but also some cultural aspects as well, related to manuscript trading. G.M. Gianola offers a critical edition with Italian translation of Albertino Mussato's prologue to De gestis Henrici VII Caesaris; the edition is preceded by a discussion of its textual tradition, its content and purpose, and other aspects of this text. L. Gualdo Rosa presents the desperate attempts made by Lapo da Castiglionchio the younger to secure a place in the Papal Curia, as revealed from a letter of his to Biondo Flavio; the author offers an edition of the letter and a brief discussion of the relations between the two men. R. Modonutti focuses on Giovanni Colonna's use of Historia Augusta for his Mare historiarum; the author methodically and persuasively re-evaluates and refutes previous conclusions on the relations of the two texts. A well-documented historical approach of some of Poggio Bracciolini's facetiae is the topic of discussion in S. Pittaluga's essay. P. Pontari offers a detailed analysis of the historical work De origine urbium Italiae et eius primo incolatu, attributed either to Riccobaldo da Ferrara or to Leonardo Bruni; the author rejects both attributions and proves that the work should be considered anonymous until there are secure proofs for its authorial attribution.

The volume concludes with four indices painstakingly compiled by P. Pontari. A selective reading and checking of entries of the indices was sufficient for me to confirm their comprehensiveness and accuracy.

Overall, this collection of essays brings together a number of established scholars in this field of studies, contributing significantly to the investigation and interpretation of the classical tradition and its reception in the Italian Renaissance. The authors successfully study and present new evidence, publishing new documents and texts and shedding light on less known aspects of the classical world. The only drawbacks one could observe, although they are unrelated to the content of the essays, are: a) the essay presentation in alphabetical order of the authors' last name; it would certainly be more helpful if they were distributed thematically according to their content and their attribution or relation to one of the four areas representing the committees, and b) the fact that there is a certain imbalance in the number of works dedicated to the four areas. However, these do not diminish the significance of the volume.

2016.09.49

Jonas Borsch, Laura Carrara (ed.), Erdbeben in der Antike: Deutungen - Folgen - Repräsentationen. Bedrohte Ordnungen, 4. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Pp. x, 278. ISBN 9783161541698. €59.00.

Reviewed by Jerker Blomqvist, Lund University (jerker.blomqvist@gmail.com)

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

As Borsch and Carrara point out in their introductory essay in the volume under review here, the advanced ancient civilizations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean area flourished in a region that, geologically speaking, is one of the most unstable ones of the earth. Plate tectonics explains the instability: The African continental plate is moving northwards, subducting under the Eurasian plate, and in Asia Minor and Greece with its islands two smaller plates, the Anatolian and the Aegean, with their independent movements, make the situation particularly complex. Earthquakes are common over the main part of the Mediterranean area but most frequent in Asia Minor, the Balkans and Italy, where the fault lines are dense and volcanism may, in some regions, add to the seismic instability.

These earthquakes are often powerful enough to have disastrous consequences for human lives, man-made installations and for the land itself. While the inhabitants of the rest of Europe are threatened to a much lesser degree by disasters of this sort, the peoples living around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East must adapt their way of life and their modes of thinking to the actuality of possibly imminent natural hazards and, when disasters strike, they must find strategies for controlling the consequences, practically and intellectually. Seismic events were part of life in antiquity as they are today, and that motivates the publication of a volume of studies on the ways in which the people of Greco-Roman antiquity reacted to major natural disasters of their time.

The volume contains the contributions to a conference at the University of Tübingen in March 2014 (plus a few additional items). The conference was part of a research project entitled Erdbeben als Bedrohung sozialer Ordnungen, in its turn affiliated with a comprehensive area of research on Bedrohte Ordnungen. The interdisciplinary character of the project is obvious. The interpretation of ancient texts on earthquakes belongs to classical philology, but societal consequences of these events can be fully understood only within the theoretical framework of today's social sciences, and modern seismology is both necessary for the interpretation of the texts and may itself profit from the study of historical earthquakes when it comes to assessing the risks for seismic events in the future. The possibility of mutual advantages for the humanities and natural sciences that a research project of this sort involves is emphasized in particular by Emanuela Guidoboni in the second introductory chapter of the volume. Descriptions of earthquakes in a pre-scientific era are useful in particular for the study of disastrous quakes in high-risk areas. In the last decades such interaction between seismologists and historians has become more common, according to Guidoboni, and has prompted the development of a new scientific discipline, historical seismology.

Professor Guidoboni's involvement in the project also demonstrates its international significance. Even if eleven out of fifteen contributors to the volume are affiliated with German universities and all contributions, except Dora Katsonopoulou's, have been written in or translated into German, scholars with a Greek and Italian background are represented among the contributors.

After two introductory chapters, the remaining contributions are arranged under three headings: Deutungen (scientific and unscientific ideas on the origin of quakes), Folgen (material destruction and other effects of quakes), and Repräsentationen (the thematization of earthquakes in literature).

Ulrike Ehmig introduces the first of these sections. She points out that a natural disaster never occurs in a vacuum but always affects human societies with their own ideas about nature, human and divine spheres and their interaction. Whereas earlier studies on invocations for divine assistance have focused on literary texts, Ehmig chooses to analyze Latin inscriptions that either invoke or thankfully acknowledge divine protection. Earthquakes and similar disasters that affect a whole community or society only exceptionally appear in these inscriptions. They normally concern the salvation of an individual or a small group of people from dangers of a more personal nature (sickness, imprisonment, perils of the sea, etc.) and are almost invariably addressed to specific gods. The literary evidence studied by others indicates that the Romans often collectively invoked divine assistance in the face of disasters and on those occasions applied to diis deabusque in general rather than to individual gods. Greek inscriptions, on the other hand, testify that Poseidon could be invoked as protector against earthquakes; according to the Latin inscriptions, Neptune never acquired a comparable function as a specialized earthquake god.

In the Roman Empire it was an apparently common idea that a natural disaster, in particular a devastating earthquake, was in some way connected to the death of a ruler that had occurred at approximately the same time. Stefano Conti studies how that idea reappeared with somewhat different nuances at different times and in the two halves of the empire. Conti uses predominantly literary evidence, and it is evident that the gradual establishment of Christianity as the dominant spiritual power exerted an influence in this context, too. Christian writers were in particular prone to explain a natural disaster as a sign of God's displeasure with a ruler whom the pagans would defend. Thus, when a series of severe earthquakes struck the eastern part of the Mediterranean in the mid-fourth century A.D., culminating with the devastation of 21 July 365, Libanios, in his funeral oration for Emperor Julian, claimed that the disasters occurred because the gods and Earth itself mourned the death of the defender of paganism, while Christian writers described the same events as punitive measures by God against the Apostate and his followers.

Gerhard Waldherr also elucidates the effects of Christianity on the understanding of natural disasters. Even before the advent of the new religion, ancient peoples tended to interpret those events as punishments sent by their gods. But gods also cared for the welfare of their worshippers and would send them signs that warned them not to continue an on-going enterprise that displeased the gods or could lead to unfortunate consequences. Thus, earthquakes were not only interpreted as punishments but also not infrequently as indicators of the will of gods. This latter, positive interpretation becomes more apparent in the Christian world: earthquakes and other natural disasters became the tools of divine providence and served the purpose of converting mankind to belief in the one and only God and to leading a life in accordance with His commandments.

In the second section of the volume Wolfram Martini addresses a problem often met with by excavators of ancient sites in seismologically active areas, viz., the distinguishing of destruction caused by earthquakes and other natural phenomena from deliberate demolition of buildings and other installations when a city was conquered by enemies or a new edifice was to be erected. Martini's discussion is mainly based on material from the excavations of Perge in Asia Minor, Samos, and Munigua in Spain. Perge flourished throughout antiquity but was eventually, after an unusually violent quake (or a series of them?), abandoned by the residents, and the remaining, virtually undisturbed destruction layer illustrates directly the impact of the final catastrophe. But cities were normally restored after earthquakes and, in order to understand what had happened in such cases, it is necessary to identify the primary damage caused immediately by the movements of the terrain and to distinguish them from those that were caused by secondary effects of the quake, e.g., land-slides and tsunamis. Martini shows how archaeological material could be used for such a distinction. He describes—modestly—his results as only tentative and emphasizes the need for a more systematic study of Schadensbilder at earthquake sites.

Richard Posamentir discusses the long-term effects of earthquakes. It has sometimes been assumed that series of devastating earthquakes have caused or been essentially contributive to the decline and eventual demise of whole civilizations, e.g., at the end of the Bronze Age or in late antiquity. With examples from Asia Minor, Posamentir demonstrates how difficult it is to link a specific quake attested by literary or epigraphic texts with archaeological evidence. His analysis of the development of Syrian Anazarbos supports the conclusion that an earthquake in itself rarely causes the collapse of a community but that political, social and economic factors in combination with one or more natural disasters may have that effect.

The earthquake, followed by a tsunami, that struck the Achaean cities of Helike and Boura in 373/2 B.C. is discussed by Dora Katsonopoulou, the director of the excavations there. The literary evidence testifies that Helike was never restored but ceased to exist as an independent city-state and as a member of the Achaean League. Katsonopoulou offers an account of the archaeological enterprise and its results. The Helike archaeologists claim to have identified and pinpointed chronologically a series of severe earthquakes ranging from c. 2000 B.C. onwards.

In the Roman Empire one of the duties of the emperor was to care for victims of natural disasters and other calamities. Philipp Deeg focuses on the activities of Nero in this field. This emperor's aid was, according to Deeg, not in the first place motivated by his caring for the unhappy victims but by the ambition to surpass his predecessors on the throne in his role as the benefactor of the citizens. Victims of earthquakes often sent their representatives to the imperial court in order to secure the ruler's assistance. The intervention of the famous orator Aelius Aristeides on behalf of Smyrna and Rhodes in the mid-second century is discussed by Christian Fron, who concludes that cities that were shrewd enough to engage an efficient ambassador could be fairly certain that their appeal would be successful.

Book VI of Seneca's Naturales quaestiones is the longest surviving discussion of seismicity in ancient literature. Two contributions in the third section of the volume are devoted to that text. The overall objective of Seneca's book was to liberate mankind from the terror induced by earthquakes. Claudia Wiener argues that Seneca's discussion on the origin of seismic events and his detailed account of the naturalists' theories serve that purpose: if men become aware that they have natural causes, the quakes will seem less frightening. Antje Wessels arrives at a different conclusion. According to her, Seneca emphasizes the inevitability of earthquakes, which differentiates them from other calamities, which may or may not happen. A scientific understanding of their causes will not reduce the terror, but it is the philosopher's task to console men and teach them resignation to the inescapable conditions of life.

Aelius Aristeides' Μονῳδία ἐπὶ Σμύρνης inspired Libanios to compose his own monody on Nikomedeia when that city was struck by an earthquake in 358 AD. That text is subject to a detailed analysis by Carlo Franco in his contribution to the volume. Apart from elucidating the historical background of the text, Franco, by applying both traditional and more recent analytical methods, clarifies its position in the literary tradition and its dependence on the model provided by Aristeides.

The last chapter of the volume provides a glance at earthquake literature outside the Greco-Roman world. Justine Walter compares the accounts of earthquakes in the Roman historians with corresponding narratives in ancient Chinese chronicles of the Han dynasty. The comparison reveals a number of differences, as might be expected, but also similarities, e.g., the tendency to associate seismic events with astronomical and meteorological phenomena and the understanding of earthquakes as portents of significance to the ruler.

Martini's, Posamentir's and Katsonopoulou's texts are illustrated by informative gray-scale photos or plans. The volume is supplied with seemingly complete indexes of ancient personal names, toponyms and text passages (and a shorter one of topics). There is no comprehensive bibliography but all contributions contain copious references to relevant literature in footnotes.

As is apparent from this survey, the contents of the volume are of a mixed character; the individual contributions cannot easily be subsumed under a common heading. However, most of them report on competent and, in some cases, innovative research. The book undoubtedly has something to offer to anyone interested in the ways in which humans react to the natural disasters that have an impact on the world we live in.

2016.09.48

Marjorie Susan Venit, Visualizing the Afterlife in the Tombs of Graeco-Roman Egypt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xviii, 268. ISBN 9781107048089. $99.99.

Reviewed by Jónatan​ Ortiz-García​, University of Valencia (jonatan.ortiz@uv.es)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

El presente libro de M. S. Venit se plantea como un estudio que busca ahondar en las creencias funerarias que pueblan la religiosamente compleja sociedad del Egipto grecorromano, a través de las manifestaciones visuales de las tumbas monumentales. La autora publica el volumen como una ampliación del análisis de los sepulcros alejandrinos que protagonizaron su anterior monografía.¹ Nuestra intención en esta reseña es evaluar su importancia dentro de la investigación de la interacción religiosa y sus manifestaciones artísticas en el ámbito funerario del mencionado periodo.

Tras la lista de ilustraciones, las expresiones de gratitud (pp. xi-xv) y un mapa que sitúa los enclaves mencionados en el texto, nos encontramos con una sección (pp. 1-4) que presenta el estudio y lo sitúa tanto histórica- como historiográficamente. En primer lugar, llama la atención que el exiguo recorrido cronológico, casi un listado de eventos, se detenga en la conquista egipcia de Alejandro III de Macedonia, precisamente en un libro cuyos testimonios se enmarcan en el Egipto ptolemaico y romano. El breve tratamiento de la investigación precedente no menoscaba la contextualización de los aspectos centrales del estudio, puesto que los distintos temas que irán apareciendo más adelante en el texto tendrán su propia introducción. Sin embargo, sí que constituye una ausencia importante, no solo en este apartado sino en todo el libro, la no inclusión de la publicación de G. Cartron, aparecida en 2012, sobre arquitectura funeraria en el Egipto romano,² que incluye también las tumbas tratadas por la autora, aunque sin centrarse en el análisis iconográfico de las mismas.

El corazón del libro se divide en seis capítulos que muestran el planteamiento temático de la autora, basado en la mayor o menor presencia de rasgos egipcios y griegos en los monumentos funerarios. El capítulo 1 (Death, Bilingualism, and Biography in the 'Eventide' of Egypt: The Tomb of Petosiris and Its Afterlife, pp. 5-49) es dedicado a la tumba de Petosiris (necrópolis de Tuna el-Gebel) que podríamos definir como muestra paradigmática de los complicados procesos de convivencia y transmisión entre las creencias y prácticas funerarias grecoegipcias. El capítulo comienza con un apartado que esboza la estrecha relación entre ambos grupos, que se adentra cronológicamente en el Periodo Tardío dinástico, para posteriormente centrarse en un tratamiento pormenorizado de la decoración de la tumba, con un manejo excelente de fuentes primarias egipcias y griegas. Se trata de un monumento sobre el que se ha investigado mucho y es difícil incluir toda la bibliografía al respecto, pero quizás se echa en falta un trabajo publicado por J. d. C. Sales en 2011 sobre el texto principal que nos informa del propio dueño del sepulcro.³ Lógicamente, por cercanía cronológica, no pudo incluirse una reciente publicación alemana con siete trabajos sobre la necrópolis donde se haya la tumba de Petosiris.⁴

En el capítulo 2 (Egypt as Metaphor: Visual Bilingualism in the Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria, pp. 59-86) la autora resume su investigación previa acerca de las tumbas alejandrinas monumentales de las épocas ptolemaica y romana, que fueron ampliamente tratadas en su anterior monografía.¹ En este capítulo puede añadirse una obra reciente sobre las "tumbas de Perséfone" que no se pudo utilizar por fecha de aparición,⁵ pero que sí que es conocida por la autora.⁶ Es a partir del capítulo 3 (Greek Myth as Metaphor in the Chora of Egypt, pp. 87-108) donde se retoma la chora egipcia ya tratada en el caso de la tumba de Petosiris. Dicha parte se centra en las presencia de los mitos griegos en contextos de tradición egipcia y cristiana (denominada judía por la autora). Aunque se agradece la excepción de incluir una serie de epitafios cristianos de Leontópolis, el uso de un mayor grupo de fuentes funerarias cristianas similares habría enriquecido aún más el trabajo, e igualmente ocurre con otros textos como los de la tumba de Isidora en Tuna el-Gebel. De esta necrópolis son las tumbas con decoración religiosa griega que constituyen la mayor parte de este tercer capítulo. Aunque fuera como mera referencia, se hubieran podido incluir en este capítulo (o el 5 incluso) las tumbas con pequeñas pirámides que encontró W. M. F. Petrie en Hawara ⁷ y que incluyen decoraciones con aves que recuerdan a las pintadas en la tumba-casa 16 de Tuna el-Gebel que estudia la autora (pp. 100-101, lám. 3.7).

El tamaño del capítulo 4 (Tradition and Innovation in the Tombs of the Egyptian Chora, pp. 109-156) y el capítulo 5 (Bricolage and Greek-Collage in the Tombs of the Egyptian Chora, pp. 157-195) dan fe de su importancia en el libro. Respectivamente, son los apartados dedicados a las tumbas con decoraciones arraigadas en la tradición egipcia dinástica y aquellas que se muestran como testimonios del hibridismo religioso greco-egipcio. Es un grupo de monumentos bien estudiados con anterioridad, con alguna excepción como la tumba Bissing 1897 de Ajmin (pp. 185-192). La convivencia e intercambio entre lo griego y lo egipcio en la chora queda patente en estos dos capítulos, aunque es una conclusión que ya había sido alcanzada en estudios previos sobre ajuares mortuorios, que además ofrecen una mayor representatividad regional y cronológica.⁸ Un apunte bibliográfico puede ser hecho, por ejemplo, para la n. 899 referida a la red de fayenza osiriana, en la que hubiera sido conveniente citar el siguiente trabajo como referencia: Flora Silvano, "Le reticelle funerarie nell'antico Egitto: proposte di interpretazione", Egitto e Vicino Oriente 3, 1980, pp. 83-97.

El capítulo 6 (Intersection and Interconnection in the Visualization of the Afterlife in Tombs of Graeco-Roman Egypt, pp. 196-201) funciona a modo de conclusiones generales, que giran en torno a remarcar que se produce un intercambio religioso-funerario entre "griegos, egipcios y judíos" en lo que concierne a la religiosidad funeraria del difunto y su plasmación en las tumbas monumentales. A nuestro parecer resulta problemática la relación que la autora establece entre la iconografía de inspiración regia y la voluntad de expresar un estatus elevado (p. 197), especialmente porque, por ejemplo, se constata el uso de motivos de coronas en objetos a priori más modestos (p. ej. el sudario Berlín ÄM 11656). Al tratar cuestiones socio-económicas desde la documentación mortuoria es importante situar el objeto o la construcción dentro de los parámetros de la época y ser conscientes de cuán representativo era en la época, especialmente para un repertorio como el estudiado por la autora.

Las notas críticas (pp. 203-238), situadas tras el capítulo sexto, se utilizan en su justa medida y profundidad en relación con los objetivos del libro. En cuanto a la bibliografía final (pp. 239-253), el optar por seguir estrictamente el listado de la American Journal of Archaeology provoca que algunas revistas se queden sin acrónimos ampliamente aceptados: p. ej. GM por Göttinger Miszellen en Lerstrup, A. 1992; SAK por Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur en Wells, R. A. 1985. Pero, en cualquier caso, son algunos errores formales los que hacen que la cuidada edición del volumen quede algo deslucida al final.

El libro termina con un índice temático (pp. 255-268) de gran utilidad.

Las múltiples ilustraciones de alta calidad suponen un punto muy favorable al libro, que presenta un formato muy manejable. Sin embargo, a pesar de que también se ofrecen planos de tumbas, se echan en falta algunos que sitúen los sepulcros en su entorno inmediato, un contexto más local respecto a otros monumentos similares o de otro tipo.

Este libro es una obra de referencia necesaria que deriva directamente de las importantes investigaciones ya realizadas y publicadas, principalmente por M. S. Venit. El volumen se erige como un trabajo de conjunto actualizado y con generoso aparato crítico e ilustrativo, representativo de la excelente labor realizada por la autora en el ámbito de los intercambios culturales greco-egipcios en general, y las tumbas monumentales del Egipto grecorromano en particular. Para futuras investigaciones al respecto, y para lograr una dimensión geográfica y cronológica más extensiva e intensiva, se requeriría dotar al tratamiento de un mayor foco en la documentación textual, como de forma testimonial hace la autora en el capítulo 3 (estelas de Leontópolis y tumba de Isidora en Tuna el-Gebel), pero también a otros testimonios iconográficos (p. ej. los abundantes ajuares) y otros eminentemente arquitectónicos (p. ej. las tumbas no monumentales). ​

---

Notes:

1.   Marjorie Susan Venit, Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria: The Theater of the Dead. Nueva York: Cambridge University Press, 2002 (BMCR 2003.02.12).
2.   Gaël Cartron, L'architecture et les pratiques funéraires dans l'Égypte romaine. Volume I. Synthèse. Volume II. Catalogue. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012.
3.   José das Candeias Sales, "Petosiris – un activo constructor de la memoria egipcia del inicio del período ptolemaico", Studia historica. Historia antigua 29, 2011, pp. 17-38 (artículo completo).
4.   Katja Lembke y Silvia Prell (eds.), Tuna el-Gebel - Band 6. Die Petosiris-Nekropole von Tuna el-Gebel. Band 1. Vaterstetten: Patrick Brose, 2015 (índice).
5.   Anne-Marie Guimier-Sorbets, André Pelle, Mervat Seif el-Din, Renaître avec Osiris et Perséphone: Alexandrie, les tombes peintes de Kôm el-Chougafa. Alejandría: Centre d'Études Alexandrines, 2015.
6.   Ella misma escribió una reseña de la obra aquí: BMCR 2015.12.17.
7.   William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe. Londres: Field & Tuer, 1889, p. 11 y láms. XVII.1-4; William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Roman Portraits and Memphis (IV). Londres: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1911, p. 19, láms. VI, XVII y XXII.1.
8.   Véase por ejemplo: Christina Riggs, The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. (BMCR 2007.06.37). ​

2016.09.47

Jens Dolata, Römische Ziegelstempel aus Mainz. Teil I: Militärische Ziegelstempel des 1. Jahrhunderts (Materialvorlage). Mainzer Archäologische Schriften, 13. Mainz: Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe, Direktion Landesarchäologie, 2014. Pp. xi, 420. ISBN 9783935970167. €85,00.

Reviewed by Ulrike Ehmig, Ruprecht Karls-Universität Heidelberg (ulrike.ehmig@uni-heidelberg.de)

Version at BMCR home site

Nach mittlerweile mehr als 25 Jahren eingehender Auseinandersetzung mit den gestempelten römischen Ziegeln aus der Provinzhauptstadt und dem Legionsstandort Mogontiacum / Mainz hat Jens Dolata 2014 eine erste umfangreiche Monographie vorgelegt. Der 420 Seiten starke Band ist explizit als Materialvorlage deklariert und hat die 1.775 gestempelten Ziegel des 1. Jahrhunderts n.Chr. zum Gegenstand.

Im einleitenden Kapitel „Typologie und Chronologie militärischer Ziegelstempel und Editionszweck" (1–19) unterstreicht Dolata die in der einschlägigen Forschung wiederholt formulierte Mahnung, die Typisierung von Ziegelstempeln auf eindeutige, in Text und Feldform gleichartige Grundtypen zu reduzieren. Zur Erläuterung der Problematik, die im Idealfall in der Vergangenheit darauf zielte, stempelgleiche Stücke zu identifizieren, gibt Dolata einen mit Abbildungen untermauerten, überzeugenden Überblick über jene Faktoren, die den Stempelabdruck bestimmen konnten. Unter anderem sind das die Holzmaserung der signacula, überlagernde Wischmarken, Pfoten- und Fingerabdrücke, das ungleichmäßige Aufsetzen und Eindrücken des Stempels, das Überstreichen beim Ausformen des Ziegels aus dem Holzrahmen, ferner die Beschaffenheit der Tonmasse und eine zu schnelle Brandentwicklung bis hin zum Abnutzungsgrad des Stempelwerkzeugs.

Für das 1. Jahrhundert gibt im nördlichen Obergermanien der Stationierungszeitraum der stempelnden Truppen Anhaltspunkte für die relativ-chronologische Abfolge ihrer Stempelrepertoires. Vor diesem Hintergrund nimmt Dolata für die in Mainz vertretenen keramischen Produkte der legiones XII Primigenia, IV Macedonica, I Adiutrix, XIV Gemina, VII Gemina und XXI Rapax eine quantitative Aufteilung vor, differenziert nach claudisch-neronischer respektive flavischer Zeit (14–15, Tab. 2–4). Ferner konstatiert er, dass die verschiedenen gestempelten Baukeramiktypen nur bedingt ein Bild der Bauanwendungen der betreffenden Zeit zeichnen (11). Angesichts der nach Baukeramiktypen aufgeschlüsselten Stempelzahlen (12 Tab. 1 und 15–16 Tab. 5–6) wüsste man jedoch natürlich gerne, ob und in welcher Weise spezielle Truppenverbände arbeitsteilig, das heißt produktspezialisiert, arbeiteten. Die Konzentration der Stempel auf nur wenige Ziegeltypen einerseits und ihr Fehlen auf einer Reihe von Spezial- und Zierziegeln (11) andererseits machen jedoch deutlich, dass derartige, bei Dolata auch gar nicht erst gestellte Fragen allein anhand des gestempelten Materials nicht zu beantworten sind. Gleichwohl möchte man—wie lange etwa auch in der Amphorenforschung—den Gedanken noch nicht aufgeben, mit den gestempelten Funden übergeordnete, den Fundort betreffende, wirtschaftshistorische Überlegungen verfolgen zu können. Dies gilt umso mehr angesichts von Beobachtungen wie den Verschiebungen der Stempelanteile über den untersuchten Zeitraum hinweg: Der Anteil der gestempelten tegulae sinkt von 77 % in claudisch-neronischer auf 47 % in flavischer Zeit. Bei den imbrices geht der Wert von 15 % auf 9 % zurück. Umgekehrt steigt er bei den lateres von zunächst nur 1 % auf 31 %. Die Veränderungen implizieren eine Reihe von Fragen, etwa inwieweit der Befund Neuregelungen in Produktionsstrukturen spiegeln könnte, die ihren Niederschlag in einer modifizierten Stempelungssitte fanden. Lassen sie sich, wie es erste Beobachtungen implizieren (20–21 und v.a. 134) mit dem Wechsel der stempelnden Truppen in Mainz und verschiedenen, für sie typischen Stempelsitten in Verbindung bringen? Ein Phänomen, das ebenfalls besonderes Interesse weckt, ist jenes mehrerer Stempel auf einem Ziegel (17 sowie 260–263). Die gängige Interpretation als Kontrollstempelung wirft die Frage auf, inwieweit derartige Stempelkoppelungen, die ähnlich auf anderen Objekten auftreten, zu denken ist insbesondere an Bleibarren, vergleichbare Mechanismen darstellen.

Auf den Seiten 20–277 erfolgt die eigentliche Vorlage der Ziegelstempel des 1. Jahrhunderts aus Mainz. Die einzelnen Kapitel entsprechen einander im Aufbau und in der Wortwahl: Auf einen kurzen Abriss der Truppengeschichte mit Fokus auf ihre Mainzer Dislokation folgen eine Aufschlüsselung und kurze Charakterisierung der Ziegelstempeltypen der jeweiligen Truppe, ferner Hinweise auf ihre Produktionsorte sowie eine tabellarische Darstellung der Verteilung der Stempel auf die verschiedenen Baukeramiktypen. Es schließen sehr gute Umzeichnungen der Stempeltypen im Maßstab 1:2 an. Darauf folgt der eigentliche Katalog mit Angaben zu Fund- und Aufbewahrungsort sowie eventueller Literatur. Alle Stempel sind in planparallelen Schwarzweißfotos im Maßstab 1:2 abgebildet.

Zwei spezielle Befunde aus dem betrachteten zeitlichen Horizont des 1. Jahrhunderts schließen an: eine archäologisch nicht näher beobachtete Ziegeldeponierung unweit der Therme bei Sankt Stephan (278–280) sowie die gestempelten Rohre und Ziegel aus dem Kontext des Zahlbacher Aquädukts (281–292).

Das Literaturverzeichnis (378–394), eine Erläuterung verwendeter Abkürzungen (395–396), Abbildungsnachweise (397–399) sowie inventar- und fundmeldeaktenorientierte Konkordanzen (400–420) beschließen den Band, der von einer CD-ROM mit vier pdf-Dateien begleitet wird. Darauf zusammengefasst sind 1. die Abbildungen aller Ziegelstempeltypen, 2. die Karten, die dadurch erweitert sind, dass alle Fundpunkte durch die Nummer der Topo-Daten (374–377), auf denen die Bilder der Dichteschätzungen beruhen, ersetzt sind, 3. die Tabellen. Die vierte Datei ist eine gesamte pdf-Version des vorliegenden Bandes.

Die Publikation hinterlässt eine gewisse Ratlosigkeit. Zum einen ist die Qualität der Materialvorlage völlig unstrittig, die gespannt auf weitere entsprechende Editionen warten lässt. Dies gilt umso mehr, als seit dem Erscheinen des Bandes neuerlich hunderte Ziegel mit militärischen Stempeln aus dem 1. Jahrhundert in Mainz zutage kamen und der gesamte zeitlich übrige Fundbestand nochmals den doppelten bis nahezu dreifachen Umfang des hier vorgelegten hat. Darüber hinaus verdient die Publikation deshalb besondere Beachtung, weil das römische Mainz in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten, von wenigen Ausnahmen abgesehen, mehr und mehr zu einem weißen Fleck in der wissenschaftlichen (Publikations-) Landschaft geworden ist (in diesem Zusammenhang 13 Anm. 70).

Zum anderen aber stellt eine mit derartigem Einsatz betriebene Materialedition ganz explizit die Frage nach ihrem historischen Wert, der über jenen eines exzellenten Bestimmungscorpus hinausgeht. Anders und konkret formuliert: Worin liegt der spezifische Gewinn für Archäologie und Geschichte des römischen Mainz, den gestempelten militärischen Ziegeln eine dergestalte Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen? Die Frage rührt, ähnlich wie bei der Beschäftigung mit Stempeln auf römischen Amphoren, an den Grundfesten der Idee, gestempeltem Material einen höheren Aussagewert für einen Fundort zuzuschreiben als ungestempeltem, beziehungsweise es für geeignet zu erachten, stellvertretend übergeordnete Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen.

Für die Orte, an denen die Ziegel verbaut wurden, das heißt üblicherweise ihre Fundorte, waren die im Produktionskontext relevanten Stempel nicht mehr in ihrer genuinen Funktion von Bedeutung. Gleichwohl sind gerade auch für das römische Mainz bis in jüngste Zeit Versuche unternommen worden, aus der Verteilung der militärischen Ziegelstempel insbesondere im Bereich des Legionslagers weitgehende Schlüsse für die Gestaltung seiner Architektur zu ziehen. Dabei wurde die Argumentation jedoch anhand von Ergebnissen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts geführt, die bereits schon revidiert waren und dabei dem Ziegelstempelbefund widersprechen (320–321). Dazu weist Dolata wiederholt darauf hin, dass gestempelte Ziegel in aller Regel nicht aus ihrem primären Bauzusammenhang stammen, sondern aus Sekundärverwendungen und speziell aus Schuttplanien (2 und 20).

Über die Problematik eines Funktionszusammenhangs von gestempeltem Ziegel und Fundort hinaus aber lassen sich aus dem Spektrum der in möglichst geschlossenen Kontexten vergesellschafteten Ziegelstempeltypen übergeordnete relativchronologische Anhaltspunkte gewinnen, deren detaillierte Analyse vorschnellen Schlüssen den Boden entzieht. Beispiele hierfür versteckt Dolata bedauerlicherweise weitgehend in Anmerkungen. Sie manifestieren sich etwa in den Stempelgruppen aus dem Bad des Kastells Zugmantel. Diese liefern für entsprechende Funde an anderen Orten begründete Anhaltspunkte für eine Datierung. Diese auszuhebeln bedarf guter Argumente auf breiter Materialbasis (13 Anm. 67). Ein weiteres Beispiel ist die problematische Neudatierung militärischer Ziegelstempel des späten 3. bis 5. Jahrhunderts auf der Grundlage von Trierer Funden. Nicht durchdacht wurden die Konsequenzen für die Bewertung der gesamten militärischen Bauaktivitäten der betreffenden Zeit am Rhein und der breiten ihr zugrunde liegenden Quellenbasis (299 Anm. 199).

Materialanalytische und geochemische Untersuchungen, wie Dolata sie in den vergangenen Jahren in sehr großer Zahl durchgeführt hat (16–17), haben die Möglichkeiten der Lokalisierung keramischer Produktionen auf ein neues Niveau gebracht. Mittels Referenzen konnten einerseits für Obergermanien Standorte von Heeresziegeleien, die bisher aufgrund archäologisch-historischer Indizien vermutet worden waren, bestätigt beziehungsweise ausgeschlossen werden. Andererseits erlauben sie, beliebige Ziegelfunde, gleich an welchen Orten, Produktionen zuzuweisen. Makroskopisch ist eine derartige Gruppierung nach Herstellungsprovenienzen nur sehr schwer beziehungsweise in aller Regel gar nicht möglich. Es ist verständlich, dass derart zeit- und geldintensive Analysen vor allem an gestempeltem Material durchgeführt worden sind. Gleichwohl sind die Ergebnisse, und das gilt für Ziegel gleichermaßen wie für Amphoren, nicht geeignet, Verallgemeinerungen für die um ein Vielfaches zahlreicheren ungestempelten Funde zu treffen. Bis heute nämlich werden insbesondere Ziegel nur aufbewahrt, wenn sie gestempelt oder zumindest vollständig erhalten sind. Zur Problematik der Fundüberlieferung kommen weitere methodische Hürden: Es ist nicht zu beantworten, jeder wievielte Ziegel gestempelt wurde, ob die Praxis für alle Baukeramiktypen gleichermaßen galt und von allen militärischen Einheiten übereinstimmend gehandhabt wurde. Entsprechend lassen sich aus der Analyse der gestempelten Ziegel kaum überzeugende Rückschlüsse für die quantitative wie qualitative Verteilung der Ziegelstempel an einem Fundort ziehen. Die von Dolata für jede Einheit erstellten Fundkarten (329–371) illustrieren das Dilemma: Die Fundverteilung erscheint entweder identisch, ist jedenfalls ohne detaillierte archäologische Differenzierung nicht unterscheidbar (Karten 3–8), oder die Zahl der gestempelten Ziegel ist für eine überzeugende Erklärung der Fundbilder zu gering (Karten 9–11, auch 15, 16).

Als Fazit ist festzuhalten: Die Vorlage der militärischen Ziegelstempel des 1. Jahrhunderts n.Chr. aus Mainz ist ein Bestimmungswerk par excellence. Die unterschiedenen Stempeltypen sind mit ihrer hervorragenden Dokumentation als Grundlage einer künftigen Definition von Ziegelstempelgruppen für den betreffenden Zeitraum geeignet. Die historische Aussage für den Fundort selbst bleibt beschränkt. Es lassen sich keine überzeugenden Faktoren benennen, die den Verteilungsbildern der gestempelten Ziegel eine höhere Signifikanz beimessen als der Fundverteilung der gesamten Materialgruppe. Funktion und Bedeutung der Stempel liegen im Bereich der Ziegelproduktion. Hier wäre Forschungsleistung zu investieren, um die Mechanismen dieser epigraphischen Kennzeichnung zu durchdringen. Die übergeordneten historisch relevanten Früchte der Kärrnerarbeit manifestieren sich in Anmerkungen. Es bleibt zu wünschen, dass diese Berücksichtigung finden und in der Lage sind, leichtgewichtige, hochfliegende Ideen auf den (Ziegel-)Boden zurückholen.

2016.09.46

Charles Guérin, La voix de la vérité: témoin et témoignage dans les tribunaux romains du Ier siècle avant J.-C. Mondes anciens. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2015. Pp. 424. ISBN 9782251300023. €27.50 (pb).

Reviewed by Andrew M. Riggsby, University of Texas at Austin (ariggsby@mail.utexas.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Publisher's Preview

Giving testimony as a witness was an important act in Roman culture. It could be revelatory of individual character, and Cicero was even able to exploit the notion that proper testimony was a collective feature of Romans in opposition to their various supposedly over- and under-civilized neighbors (Flacc. 11-12, Font. 21). In part for evidentiary reasons, however, trial testimony has not received the scholarly attention it deserves, particularly from the broadly "rhetorical" point of view. Guérin does much to redress the balance in this monograph on "witnesses and testimony in the Roman courts [mostly, but not entirely the public courts] of the first century B.C."

In Guérin's persuasive account, witness testimony is both like and unlike the much better attested and studied part of trials, the oratio continua. On the one hand, witness testimony is not solely concerned with the orator's logical means of persuasion, but with character and emotion as well. In fact, the character component is particularly interesting because the advocate has to construct both his own and the witnesses' simultaneously. On the other hand, testimony is obviously different because it is collaborative/competitive and, as Quintilian stresses, unpredictable.

Testimony is also different in being much more poorly attested, both in terms of actual exemplars being preserved and of rhetorical theory. Thus Guérin performs an exhaustive collection and analysis of several types of evidence: our two distorted representations of interrogatio (In Vatinium and the fragmentary In Cornelium II); scattered testimonia embedded in speeches from other Ciceronian cases; what discussion there is in our rhetorical sources (especially ad Herennium and Quintilian); and judicious use of comparative models, particularly Greek and American. It should be noted that even some of the Latin rhetorical evidence properly falls under this last heading, as in the case of passages that are strictly about the plausibility of a narratio (not testimony) or the auctoritas of the speaker (not witness).

Chapter 1 characterizes the trial witness, particularly by comparison with both the advocates in the process and by other kinds of testis. In contrast to the advocates, the witness needs to maintain a posture of neutrality, and unlike them he is meant to be directly connected to the events about which he testifies by sense-perception. (Though in principle women can be witnesses in certain circumstances, my pronoun here represents both the normal and the normative case.) In contrast to witnesses of, say, a will or transfer by mancipatio, a trial witness is not an invited or necessarily willing participant. The events are normally something that just happened to him. Despite his detachment with respect to the parties, the person of the witness is not independent of his social being more generally. Evaluation of his testimony will depend on evaluation of his character and vice versa. This discussion foreshadows the final chapter on the conversion of testimony to argument in the course of trial.

Chapter 2 discusses the procedures through which testimony is given. In contrast to many other historical systems, the Roman procedure has few formal restrictions either on who may testify or on what may be asked/answered. The constraints, especially in the iudicia publica, lie rather in what kinds of people and what kinds of arguments the jurors are willing to be persuaded by. The chapter also treats some more specialized topics such as the double hearing of reptetundae trials, the opportunity for subpoena in some cases, and the testimony of slaves under torture.

Chapter 3 treats the sources for testimony and for its importance. There is a long argument here that, despite considerable literary reshaping, Vat. and Corn. II do ultimately represent the course of interrogationes. The fact of publishing them despite obstacles of genre, the amount of trial time devoted to witnesses (hypothetically, but plausibly, calculated), and the amount of time even in speeches devoted to discussion of witness testimony, all point to its importance in the trial process.

Chapter 4 moves into more granular detail about how witness testimony was produced. An advocate had to decide how to prepare his own witnesses and what to say in their speeches about all the witnesses that were to come. One important thing that emerges from reading Guérin, but that does not leap out of any individual source, is the fact that every advocate in every case would have had to deal simultaneously with both friendly and hostile witnesses (even ignoring the possibility of mistaking one for the other). For the friendly witness, the advocate must make sure that he is on-message, but not over prepared, prepare him for cross-examination by simulation, and make the interrogatio as seemingly dialogic as possible. For a hostile one he must, for instance, decide between ridicule, refutation, and mere destabilization, between attempting to defeat the witness in detail or scoring a particular point and withdrawing quickly.

Chapter 5 discusses how in practice Roman advocates deal with a problem that has deep philosophical roots. How do the little bits of fact (or at least "fact") provided by testimony fit into a process of argument and persuasion? Though Guérin does not quite put it this way, the process seems to mark the ultimate victory of the advocate over the witness. The witness and his testimony are evaluated together, for instance, on grounds of internal coherence of the testimony (though excess consistency can be made a sign of conspiracy), its general "plausibility," or the deportment of the witness. It was perhaps ideal to offer deductive proof that testimony is false, but the more normal case involves an array of signs and probabilities. For instance, witnesses could be impeached both for deficient and for excessive coherence. That is to say, extrinsic proof is thoroughly absorbed into the world of intrinsic proof.

As can be discerned from the above, Guérin's project is more of a survey than an essay. (It appears to derive from his habilitation.) He systematically investigates and lays out the various steps that different actors might take at each stage of the process. The most general point he makes probably comes in the context of the last chapter. Our corpus of evidence seems not to include any cases of alleged witness error. Witnesses who are wrong are always said to be lying out of some combination of poor character and immediate profit. This suppression of local factual questions in favor of (supposedly) publicly available character is the same thing we see in the treatment of the character of defendants.¹ And both phenomena seem to me to mark that ultimate triumph of the orator over the witness.

This book is somewhat reminiscent of Michael Alexander's reconstruction of Cicero's opponents in its meticulous combing and combining of limited evidence.² It is hard to imagine anyone overthrowing Guérin's account in general; if one wanted to pursue these matters further, I think the most promising line of approach would be to disaggregate some of that evidence and ask whether there are patterned differences in it. In particular, Guérin's discussion leans very heavily on repetundae cases. Procedural peculiarities of that charge seem to make witnesses more prominent in the surviving record, and it could be argued that the substance of the offense makes it more dependent on "factual" testimony than some others (a possibility that Guérin himself seems to hint at).³ Another possibility would be a more direct comparison of one or both of two phenomena that Guérin discusses but (rightly) puts aside as distinct: character laudationes and written testimony. In particular, it would be interesting to see Guérin's conclusions put into dialog with Elizabeth Meyer's work on the authority with which Romans invested certain forms of tablet.⁴

Guérin's monograph is thoroughly researched, clearly argued, and offers insights into all aspects of witness testimony in the Republic courts. It will be a valuable contribution to the literature on the Republican courts, on oratory, and Roman rhetoric.

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Notes:

1.   See my, "Character in Roman Oratory and Rhetoric," pp. 165-85 in J. Powell and J. Paterson, edd. Cicero the Advocate (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004).
2.   Michael C. Alexander, The Case for the Prosecution in the Ciceronian Era. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003).
3.   For instance in my Crime and Community in Ciceronian Rome. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999).
4.   Elizabeth A. Meyer, Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).