2017.02.57

Margaret M. Miles (ed.), Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica. Oxford; Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2015. Pp. xii, 186. ISBN 9781782978565. $120.00.

Reviewed by Elisa Bazzechi, University of Lipsia (elisa.bazzechi@libero.it)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Il volume edito da Margaret M. Miles raccoglie 15 contributi redatti dall'editrice stessa e da un gruppo di studiosi, che comprende dottorandi, ricercatori e professori, attivi principalmente in università statunitensi e legati a vario titolo all'American School of Classical Studies at Athens. La pubblicazione si apre con l'indice dei contributi e una lista degli autori, corredata da informazioni sulla loro attività scientifica. Segue un'introduzione in cui l'editrice traccia la storia della riscoperta e dello studio dei monumenti antichi di Atene partendo da Ciriaco d'Ancona, attraverso Le Roy e Stuart e Revett, l'attività della Società archeologica greca e delle diverse scuole straniere fondate ad Atene, con particolare attenzione alla scuola americana e alle sue ricerche, e terminando con una descrizione degli attuali progetti in corso ad Atene da parte di diverse istituzioni greche ed internazionali. La Miles identifica il filo conduttore dei contributi raccolti nell'esame autoptico dell'evidenza archeologica, che fin dalla riscoperta delle antichità ateniesi con Ciriaco d'Ancona ha caratterizzato l'approccio di molti studiosi e appassionati nei confronti del patrimonio della città. L'editrice sottolinea come tale esame, da sempre coltivato dall'American School of Classical Studies at Athens nella sua attività di ricerca, possa portare a nuovi risultati anche riguardo materiali già conosciuti e studiati.

I contributi, eccetto quelli di Jacob Morton e di Marya Fisher, hanno un preciso focus geografico ad Atene e in Attica. Menzionerò solo brevemente gli articoli che, a mio avviso, non necessitano di un commento critico e mi soffermerò, invece, su quelli in cui ho trovato aspetti problematici.

Il primo contributo di Nancy L. Klein, esamina alcuni elementi architettonici in calcare appartenuti a problematici edifici del VI e V sec. a.C. sull'acropoli di Atene, individuando diversi metodi di riparazione, che si servivano di grappe o integrazioni in piombo fuso, adottati in antico per far fronte a problemi di stabilità.

Barbara Tsakirgis riesamina i ritrovamenti provenienti da una struttura scavata nell'angolo sud-occidentale dell'agora di Atene e rafforza l'interpretazione tradizionale come casa-bottega degli scultori Mikion e Menon, mettendo in relazione alcuni degli utensili trovati con determinate attività della lavorazione scultorea. Gli utensili trattati sono corredati da un catalogo con le informazioni tecniche essenziali. Più difficile, a causa dello stato parziale delle indagini, appare, a mio avviso, la dimostrazione che la struttura abbia funzionato contemporaneamente come abitazione e come laboratorio.

L'articolo di Jenifer Neils, Derek Reinbold e Rachel Sternberg discute l'interpretazione tradizionale che vede nella rappresentazione di Elio nella quattordicesima metopa orientale del Partenone un'indicazione temporale, ovvero il sorgere del sole che pone fine alla gigantomachia notturna, tema delle metope orientali del tempio. Gli autori suggeriscono che Elio sia, invece, rappresentato mentre corre in aiuto di Efesto, raffigurato in combattimento nella metopa adiacente. L'interpretazione proposta mi sembra convincente per diversi motivi: manca qui la controparte di Elio, Selene, che caratterizza solitamente le indicazioni temporali; inoltre, ci sono altri personaggi sul carro rappresentati nelle metope orientali non impegnati nella lotta, per i quali l'interpretazione come aiutanti di altre divinità pare probabile.

L'articolo di Carol L. Lawton esamina evidenze archeologiche, letterarie ed epigrafiche a sostegno della presenza di un luogo di culto di Asclepio e Igea all'interno dell'Eleusinion ateniese, precedente al santuario alle pendici meridionali dell'Acropoli. Il ben ricercato contributo risulta convincente per il coinvolgimento del clero eleusinio nel culto di Asclepio e per il fatto che le feste Epidauria venivano celebrate durante i Grandi Misteri Eleusini. Tuttavia si nota una mancanza di trasparenza nel trattamento delle evidenze archeologiche: le carte con le mappature dei ritrovamenti mostrano solo quelli effettuati vicino all'Eleusinion, che appoggiano l'ipotesi dell'autrice, e non tutte le evidenze collegabili al culto di Asclepio provenienti dall'agorà.

Il contributo di Jessica Lamont riesamina la documentazione archeologica, letteraria ed epigrafica relativa all'Asklepieion del Pireo per seguire le dinamiche di assimilazione della divinità peloponnesiaca nel pantheon attico. Sembra convincente che il culto straniero si sia inizialmente insediato in un'area liminare come quella del porto. Non condivido, invece, la proposta che l'assimilazione sia stata facilitata dalla condivisione dell'altare tra Asclepio e altre divinità: l'argomentazione funzionerebbe se si trattasse di divinità già presenti nel pantheon attico, invece, abbiamo a che fare con divinità strettamente legate ad Asclepio e alla pratica dell'incubazione.

L'articolo di Brian A. Martens riesamina una statuetta in marmo dall'agorà di Atene interpretata come Asclepio, suggerendo che si tratti di Serapide. Essa testimonierebbe la "iconografic hybridity" (p 51) delle due divinità, entrambe guaritrici. Condivido l'identificazione con Serapide per l'abbigliamento; tuttavia questo singolo ritrovamento non consente, a mio avviso, di trarre conclusioni sull'introduzione del culto di Serapide ad Atene come divinità guaritrice: mancano del tutto altre evidenze in questo senso.

Jacob Morton introduce nel volume un nuovo approccio metodologico, quello dell'archeologia sperimentale, per cercare di capire quale tipo di grasso veniva usato per avvolgere i femori delle vittime sacrificate, che, secondo le testimonianze letterarie, venivano bruciati sull'altare doppiamente avvolti.

Il contributo di Rachel Kousser si occupa della mutilazione delle Erme, avvenuta ad Atene nel 415 a.C. L'autrice esamina l'evidenza archeologica legata a questo episodio, per capire la reazione della città nei confronti dell'empio atto. Piuttosto esigue sono, però, le testimonianze di riparazione delle erme: si conoscono pochi esempi di epoca arcaica e classica, solo uno mostra segni di riparazione, ma non tracce di mutilazione. Convincente sembra, invece, l'osservazione secondo la quale, attraverso l'erezione delle stele con l'elenco delle confische effettuate nei confronti dei profanatori in luoghi ben frequentati della città, la democrazia volesse affermare visivamente il suo potere nel delicato contesto della guerra del Peloponneso.

Angele Rosenberg-Dimitracopoulou esamina quattro lekythoi inedite a figure nere, rinvenute nella necropoli di Merenda, a 3 m di distanza dalla fossa in cui erano stati deposti la kore Phrasikleia e il kouros suo "fratello". Le lekythoi, che l'autrice tratta dettagliatamente in un catalogo in fondo al contributo, facevano parte di una pira funeraria. Viene ipotizzato che la pira, rinvenuta allineata con la fossa delle due sculture, a circa la stessa profondità, costituisse un'offerta compiuta in occasione della deposizione rituale delle statue; la datazione delle lekythoi al 480-460 a.C. consentirebbe, inoltre, l'associazione della deposizione con il sacco persiano. L'ipotesi, per quanto interessante, mi sembra problematica: mancano diretti confronti per l'associazione a statue di una pira, di solito offerta a sepolture di individui; la pratica stessa sembra diradarsi dopo il VI sec. a.C.; la pira è stata, inoltre, trovata a una distanza considerevole dalle sculture e lo scavo parziale del cimitero non consente di escludere la sua associazione con un'altra sepoltura.

Johanna Best analizza il fenomeno della religiosità quotidiana rispetto a piccoli luoghi di culto posti ai lati delle strade sulla base di fonti letterarie, epigrafiche e di tre complessi archeologici ateniesi: il santuario delle Ninfe alle pendici meridionali dell'Acropoli, il naiskos di via Poulopoulou 29 e l'altare per Zeus Herkeios, Hermes e Akamas nel Dipylon. A parte il caso del santuario delle Ninfe, la scarsità del materiale votivo associato agli altri due complessi li rende molto elusivi e poco rappresentativi per i fini dell'autrice. Nel caso del naiskos anche la sua connessione alla strada non è chiarita.

Il contributo di Jessica Paga esamina la strategia adottata dalla neonata democrazia ateniese per l'appropriazione del territorio dell'Attica. La metodologia d'indagine, chiaramente definita in apertura, prende in considerazione i demi di Eleusi, Sunio e Ramnunte per la loro posizione ai confini del territorio controllato da Atene. Attraverso la datazione all'ultimo decennio del VI sec./ primi due decenni del V sec. a.C. delle mura di fortificazione e del Telesterion tardo arcaici di Eleusi — già, tuttavia, suggerita da Lippolis ¹—, del predecessore del tempio classico per Nemesi a Ramnunte e del tempio in calcare per Poseidone a Sunio, l'autrice considera i monumenti come una manifestazione monumentale del potere della democrazia in via di affermazione. Nonostante alcune perplessità relative alla poco motivata datazione delle mura di Eleusi e alle dimensioni davvero non monumentali del tempio in calcare per Nemesi a Ramnunte, l'argomentazione è, a mio avviso, stringente e convincente.

Kristian Lorenzo esamina la dedica dopo la vittoria di Salamina di tre triremi persiane nei santuari di Istmia, Sunio e Salamina. Interessanti e ben argomentati sono gli aspetti tecnici relativi allo smontaggio, trasporto e ri-montaggio delle navi; piuttosto scarna è, invece, l'evidenza riguardo alla loro collocazione all'interno dei santuari.

Sylvian Fachard e Daniele Pirisino analizzano le vie che mettevano in comunicazione Atene con le principali città vicine. Alla funzione militare delle strade, tradizionalmente ritenuta preponderante, gli autori affiancano il significato politico, economico e religioso. Il contributo è ben documentato; valide sono, a mio avviso, le osservazioni relative alla multifunzionalità delle vie, in particolare al significato politico che la rete stradale assunse per la neonata democrazia, permettendo la partecipazione alla vita politica dei cittadini residenti nei demi periferici. Quello che sembra a volte mancare è un collegamento più stretto tra le teorie formulate e il dato archeologico, che offra esempi concreti e cronologicamente diversificati.

Marya Fisher offre l'unico contributo che poco ha a che fare con l'esame autoptico. L'autrice espone, anche troppo dettagliatamente, gli approcci di studio ai templi non peripteri adottati nelle sintesi sull'architettura greca a partire da Le Roy e Stuart e Revett. Suggerisce poi accanto agli approcci evoluzionistico e documentario quello che considera la connessione tra forma architettonica e attività cultuale. Il suggerimento non viene però concretamente messo in atto e il contributo si caratterizza come una breve dichiarazione di metodo preliminare alla conduzione di una ricerca.

Il volume si chiude con l'articolo dell'editrice, che riesamina la storia della scoperta della doppia stoa di Thorikos. Alla luce delle più recenti indagini sul monumento, che hanno rivelato l'esistenza di un muro divisorio tra le due stoai (purtroppo riprodotto nell'articolo solo in ricostruzione), l'autrice propone alcuni confronti per la tipologia architettonica e suggerisce di attribuirle la doppia funzione di stoa e propylon, sul modello dell'accesso al santuario di Atene Lindia a Lindos. L'ipotesi, a mio avviso un po' azzardata per il paragone tra una struttura tardo classica e un santuario su terrazze ellenistico, di forte impatto scenografico, può essere confermata solo dallo scavo dell'area intorno alla struttura, finora rimasta non indagata.

Gli articoli sono corredati all'inizio da un breve abstract  l'apparato fotografico è generalmente ottimo. Ad ogni contributo seguono le note e la bibliografia di riferimento. La sistemazione delle note in fondo agli articoli non agevola, a mio avviso, la consultazione. I contributi mi sembrano generalmente ben documentati; a parte alcune eccezioni (un contributo di Lippolis nell'articolo di Martens ², la pubblicazione della Costaki ³ in quello di Fachard e Pirisino), i titoli citati rispecchiano le principali ricerche svolte in ambito internazionale. Gli errori di stampa da me notati sono piuttosto isolati. Più frequenti sono, invece, le incongruenze relative alla citazione di pagine consecutive nelle note. Nel contributo della Kousser mancano le indicazioni alle figure nel testo; nel contributo della Best le citazioni bibliografiche in nota seguono a volte un ordine alfabetico, a volte un ordine cronologico.

Il volume offre sicuramente un'interessante scorcio sulle ricerche in corso ad Atene e in Attica, nonostante la partecipazione di soli studiosi statunitensi e una certa concentrazione dei contributi sull'epoca classica diano l'impressione di una visione piuttosto parziale. Gli articoli restano prevalentemente fedeli al filo conduttore dichiarato nell'introduzione e ribadiscono accanto a nuove e moderne tecnologie la validità del metodo autoptico. Quest'ultimo, tuttavia, non può dirsi davvero innovativo nella ricerca archeologica e costituisce di per sé un legante piuttosto debole: la scelta dei contributi non viene, a mio avviso, sufficientemente giustificata nell'introduzione e appare quasi casuale. Ci si può chiedere, inoltre, se sia stato necessario mettere insieme articoli così eterogenei, la cui raccolta in un volume non produce un valore aggiunto e che sarebbero stati ugualmente recepiti come singoli anche nelle riviste scientifiche. ​

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Notes:

1.   E. Lippolis, Mysteria: archeologia e culto del santuario di Demetra a Eleusi, Milano 2006, p. 180.
2.   E. Lippolis, "Tra il ginnasio di Tolomeo ed il Serapeion. La ricostruzione topografica di un quartiere monumentale di Atene, Ostraka" Rivista di antichità 4, 1995, pp. 43-67.
3.   L. Costaki, "The intra muros road system of ancient Athens" (PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto 2006). ​

2017.02.56

Frank Kolb (ed.), Forschungen in Tlos und im Yavu-Bergland. Lykische Studien, 10. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 2016. Pp. xiv, 74; 40 p. of plates. ISBN 9783774939578. €79.00.

Reviewed by Matthias R. Nöth, Münnerstadt-Reichenbach (matthias.noeth@gmx.de)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

Der von Frank Kolb in der Reihe Tübinger althistorische Studien herausgegebene aktuelle Band der Lykische Studien umfasst drei Beiträge. Diese befassen sich einerseits mit den vorhellenistischen Befunden und der Keramik des im Xanthos-Tal gelegenen Tlos, andererseits mit einem im Yavu-Bergland gelegenen Gehöftkomplex; letzterer Beitrag stellt einen Nachtrag zu den Tübinger Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der zentrallykischen Polis Kyaneia dar.

Der erste, von Ulf Hailer und Hilmar Klinkott verfasste Beitrag (S. 1-30) widmet sich den vorhellenistisch-lykischen Befunden von Tlos, einem in Tübingen angesiedelten Projekt, der vorhellenistischen Siedlungsausdehnung und dem außerstädtischen Wegenetz. Ein einführender Teil informiert über Zielsetzung und Durchführung der Arbeiten, zugleich werden Forschungsdesiderate zur Wohnbebauung von Tlos aufgezeigt. Die jüngsten Untersuchungen bauen auf Überlegungen auf, die Wolfgang Wurster bereits 1976 zur lykischen Siedlung von Tlos anstellte.

Es folgt eine ausführliche Beschreibung der vorhellenistischen Befunde. Die Hauptbefunde liegen dabei auf dem mehrfach überbauten Akropolisfelsen. Dort konnten drei hintereinanderliegende Räume, eine große Felstreppe sowie ein großes Felshaus festgestellt werden. Aufgrund entsprechender Balkenlöcher gehen Hailer und Klinkott von einer Erweiterung des auf dem Akropolisfelsen nur begrenzt zur Verfügung stehenden Platzes für Wohnraum durch „hängende Häuser" an den Felswänden aus. Weitere vorhellenistische Befunde finden sich nördlich und nordwestlich der Burg. Es handelt sich im Norden um einen Raumkomplex mit fünf Räumen und einen seiner Lage an der Nordostecke der Akropolis nach möglicherweise dem fortifikatorischen Bereich zuzurechnenden Felsraum; im Nordwesten finden sich weitere Felsräume, Felstreppen, ein Felsrelief nahe eines vermuteten Zuganges und einen als Grablege zu identifizierenden „eingetieften 'Raum' ". In den vorhellenistischen Bereich zählt auch eine große, in polygonaler Mauertechnik errichtete Mauer am Osthang der Akropolis, bei der es sich um die klassisch-lykische Siedlungsmauer handelt, der im Mittelbereich eine parallel verlaufende Treppe vorgesetzt ist. An ihr festgestellte mauertechnische Unterschiede erklären Hailer und Klinkott mit der Neuerrichtung eines Teilstückes in (früh)hellenistischer Zeit. Mit einer Ecke im Südosten der Akropolis ist die südliche Grenze der klassisch-lykischen Siedlung zu fassen. Unklar bleibt der Anschluss der Siedlungsmauer an das wohl interessanteste vorhellenistische Element, einer großen, westlich unterhalb der Akropolis gelegenen Toranlage, die zu den größten Stadttoren Lykiens gehört. Die Toranlage wurde unter Einbeziehung der natürlichen Gegebenheiten angelegt und zeigt eine von 14 Räumen und einem Brunnenhaus gesäumte, sich zum Innern verengende, rechtwinklig von Norden nach Osten führende Torgasse.

Im Umfeld von Tlos konnten Hailer und Klinkott vier antike Wegtrassen feststellen, die die Siedlung in vier Himmelsrichtungen mit dem Umland verbanden und von antiken Gräbern gesäumt werden. Durch die Wege konnten vereinzelt Rückschlüsse auf die Lage von Toren gezogen werden: so muss es ein Tor am Osthang der Akropolis gegeben haben, welches Hailer und Klinkott wohl in einer künstlich bearbeiteten und verbreiterten Felsöffnung fassen konnten. Als ein Forschungsdesiderat sehen Hailer und Klinkott sowohl den von Osten – aus dem Massiktos-Gebirge – herführenden Weg, da die ihn flankierenden archäologischen Reste „zahlreich und eindrucksvoll sind", als auch die Erforschung des antiken Wegenetzes im Umland von Tlos.

Die Zielsetzungen des Projektes wurden einigermaßen erreicht. So lassen sich die von Hailer und Klinkott beschriebenen Felsraumkomplexe unter technischen Gesichtspunkten in die klassische Zeit datieren, gehören also zur vorhellenistischen Siedlung. Deren Ausdehnung lässt sich anhand natürlicher Geländeformationen, der lykischen Siedlungsmauer und dem Westtor gut fassen. Tlos biete, so Hailer und Klinkott, durch die singulär hier auftretenden 'hängenden Häuser' ein gutes Beispiel für die Beeinflussung der lokalen Bauformen durch die Topographie des Siedlungsgebietes. Mit ihrem Beitrag füllen Hailer und Klinkott eine Lücke in der Erforschung des antiken Tlos.

Birgit Rückert behandelt im zweiten Beitrag (S. 31-43) Keramik, die während des Tlos-Survey mit dem Ziel dokumentiert worden war, „Anhaltspunkte für die Ausdehnung und unter Umständen für die zeitliche Nutzung der untersuchten Siedlungsareale zu erhalten". Nach Beschreibung von Lage und Ausdehnung der insgesamt sechs Sammelareale, die sich besonders auf den Burgberg und das unmittelbar umgebende Gebiet (Areale I-IV) sowie auf zwei nordöstlich davon gelegene Bereiche (Areale V und VI) verteilen, gibt Rückert Informationen zu den Sammelkriterien und der Geländebegehung. Es folgt eine zusammenfassende, nach Arealen getrennte Übersicht über Funddichte und zeitliche Verteilung der dort gefundenen Keramiken. Diese datieren v.a. in die spätklassische, hellenistische, frühkaiserzeitliche oder osmanische Epoche. Das Fundspektrum der insgesamt 542 inventarisierten Stücke reicht von Feinkeramik, Sigillata über Ziegel, Küchengeschirr, Vorratsgefäße und Transportamphoren. Die Mehrheit davon stellen früh- bis mittelkaiserzeitliche Sigillata, während sich auffallend wenige Stücke aus klassischer Zeit fanden. Es folgt ein chronologisch aufsteigend angelegter Katalog mit (nur) 48 Nummern, die – bis auf fünf Stücke – in Zeichnung oder Photo wiedergegeben sind. Leider bietet die Autorin keine konkrete Aussage, die ihren eingangs formulierten Fragestellungen entspricht. Ein Ansatz findet sich allenfalls auf S. 33, wenn sie bzgl. der Areale V und VI sagt: „Vielleicht dürfen die Scherben als Indiz gewertet werden, daß sich entlang der antiken Straße mit Blick auf die Felsengräber am Nordhang klassische bis hellenistische Bauten befanden – mithin in einem Gebiet, das bisher für die Siedlung in dieser Zeit noch nicht in Betracht gezogen wurde […]". Auch ist anzumerken, dass die Verwendung des Begriffes „Firnis" in Fachkreisen als überholt angesehen wird.

Der dritte Beitrag (S. 46-79) ist wiederum von Hilmar Klinkott. Hier stellt er den im Yavu-Bergland gelegenen Gehöftkomplex von Taşlıburun vor. Dieser liegt im Grenzgebiet der lykischen Poleis Kyaneia und Phellos, westlich des Kırandağı Tepesi, dessen Gebiet sich jedoch durch Bestattungsfunde aus benachbarten Siedlungen dem Polisgebiet von Phellos zurechnen lässt. Der Gehöftkomplex selbst liegt auf einem „kleinen Geländekamm mit zwei Hügelkuppen", wobei die Befunde sich auf die östliche Hügelkuppe und auf den zwischen dieser und der unbebauten westlichen Hügelkuppe liegenden Geländesattel erstrecken und zwei getrennte bauliche Anlagen erkennen lassen. (S. 45 f.)

Es folgt eine ausführliche Beschreibung der Befunde. Die „östliche Gipfelanlage" besteht nach der Befundanalyse aus einem an der höchsten Stelle der östlichen Hügelkuppe liegenden Turm, zwei Raumkomplexen und zwei Höfen sowie vier, die Bauten gestaffelt umgebende Terrassen sowie aus einer inneren und einer äußeren Umfassungsmauer. Der langrechteckige Turm verfügt jeweils im Süden und Norden über eine Tür. Nordöstlich des Turmes befindet sich Raumkomplex I mit den Räumen I A 1, I A 2, I B und I C. Diesem sind im Osten und Süden die jeweils L-förmig angelegten Terrassen 1 und 2 vorgelagert. An der Südostecke von Terrasse 2 ist außen ein Annexraum angesetzt. Westlich an Raumkomplex I schließt sich Hof 1 sowie ein kleiner, dem Turm vorgelagerter Raum an. Die Ost-, Nord- und Westwand, die Anschluss an die nördliche Turmmauer hat, von Raumkomplex I werden von der inneren Umfassungsmauer gebildet, die zugleich auch Stützfunktion hatte. Ihr nördlicher Bereich setzt sich als Hangmauer nach Westen fort und umschließt auch Hof 1. Westlich von Hof 1 und zugleich nordwestlich des Turmes liegt Raumkomplex II. Der Ost-West orientierte Bau verfügt über drei parallel nebeneinander angeordnete Raumeinheiten (II A, II B und III C), wobei die mittlere nochmals in einen nördlichen und einen südlichen Raum (II B 1 und II B 2) unterteilt ist. Die Räume sind untereinander nicht mit Türen verbunden, lediglich der im Osten gelegene Raum II A verfügt über eine Tür, über die der südlich von Raumkomplex II liegende Hof 2 und von diesem aus die südliche Turmtür zu erreichen sind. Südlich des Hofes 2, durch eine starke Hangmauer getrennt, haben sich Ansätze der Stützmauer von Terrasse 3 erhalten (mit einem Tor in der Westmauer); ihr Verlauf nach Osten lässt sich allerdings anhand von Abarbeitungen nachvollziehen. Diese Mauer stellt den südlichen Teil der äußeren Umfassungsmauer („große Umfassungsmauer") dar, deren nördlicher Teil die den Raumkomplexen I und II sowie der Terrasse 2 nördlich vorgelagerte Terrasse 4 abschließt. Im Osten ist sie nur noch partiell zu fassen, umgab aber einst die gesamte Gehöftanlage. Auf Terrasse 3 konnten eine Mahltasse, eine Zisterne und eine Pressanlage festgestellt werden, woraus Klinkott hier die Verarbeitung der angebauten Produkte ansiedelt; Terrasse 4, die nichts dergleichen aufweist, sieht er aufgrund ihres großen Tores für die Viehhaltung. Aufgrund diverser Charakteristika – z.B. Höhenlage, Bautechnik, Eckgestaltung bei den Terrassen –, die sich an mehreren der von Ulf Hailer¹ untersuchten Gehöften im Yavu-Bergland wiederfinden, scheint für Klinkott eine Datierung der „östliche Gipfelanlage" in die klassische Zeit naheliegend. Er revidiert seine Aussage jedoch aufgrund der An- und Umbauten wieder, welche die Anlage erfuhr, und lässt, auch aufgrund fehlender Keramikfunde, eine „genauere zeitliche Einordnung" offen. Lediglich eine relative Chronologie stellt Klinkott auf. Demnach sieht er in der Südmauer von Raumkomplex II den ältesten Kern der Anlage, der zwei (?) Erweiterungsphasen erfuhr, von denen er die letzte in „(spät)klassisch-(früh)hellenistischer Zeit" ansetzt.

Die Befunde der „westliche Anlage" finden sich nur 10 m von der „östlichen Gipfelanlage" entfernt. Der Komplex ist im Süden, Osten und Norden von einer Umfassungsmauer umgeben und bildet dadurch eine geschlossene Einheit. Im Osten der Anlage liegt Hof 3, der im Süden und Norden über ein Tor verfügt; das nördliche war nach Klinkott mit dem Wagen zu befahren. Westlich des Südtores liegt, außerhalb der Umfassungsmauer, ein kleiner Felsraum, in dem Klinkott wohl zu Recht einen Wachraum für dieses Tor sieht. Auch diese Anlage verfügt über einen Raumkomplex (III). Er schließt unmittelbar westlich an Hof 3 an und besteht aus fünf Räumen. Zugang zu diesem erfolgte über eine Tür in der nördlichen Umfassungsmauer, über die ein zentraler Verteilerraum (III A) zu erreichen war, an den parataktisch rechts und links jeweils ein großer und ein kleinerer Raum anschließen (im Osten: III B, III C; im Westen: III D und III E).² Aufgrund der Befundlage geht Klinkott davon aus, dass der Zugang zu den Räumen jeweils nur von III A aus erfolgte. Westlich an den Raumkomplex III schließt ein kleiner, im Westen und Süden durch den Fels der westlichen Hügelkuppe begrenzter „Hinterhof" an. Auch er war, wie Hof 3, nicht direkt von Raumkomplex III aus zu betreten.

Im Anschluss an die Beschreibung der „westlichen Anlage" geht Klinkott auf „Typus und Datierung der Gesamtanlage" ein. Die Befunde der „östlichen Gipfelanlage" gehören zu einem Turmgehöft, das aufgrund des Grundrisses des wohl mehrstöckig zu rekonstruierenden Turmes von Klinkott dem Typus des „Turmgehöft mit gelängtem Kernbau" zugeordnet wird. Diesen umgeben „in agglutinierender Bauweise" die beiden Raumkomplexe, die gestaffelten Terrassen und die Höfe. Ein ganz anderes Bild ergeben die Befunde der „westlichen Anlage", bei der der parataktisch aufgebaute Raumkomplex III das beherrschende Bauwerk ist. Aufgrund des dort vorhandenen Verteilerraumes ordnet Klinkott diese Anlage daher plausibel im Ausschlussverfahren den Reihenraum-Gehöften zu, deren wichtigste Charakteristika sich in Raumkomplex III wiederfänden. Nach Abgleich mit anderen Reihenraum-Gehöften der Region aus klassischer, hellenistischer und römischer Kaiserzeit erscheint ihm eine Datierung in (spät-?)klassische Zeit am wahrscheinlichsten. Da jedoch auch hier Ziegel- und sonstige Keramikfunde fehlen, lässt Klinkott wiederum die Datierung offen.

Am Schluss bringt Klinkott nochmals Überlegungen zur zeitlichen Bauabfolge der beiden Anlagen und könnte sich vorstellen, dass das östliche „Turmgehöft Taşlıburun mit seinem klassischen Kern in hellenistischer Zeit ausgebaut" und in „spätklassisch-hellenistische Zeit (?)" durch die „westliche Anlage" erweitert wurde. Allerdings lässt er offen, ob diese – als Erweiterung – unmittelbar zum Turmgehöft gehörte oder ob es sich um ein Doppelgehöft handelt, welches wegen der gemeinsamen Nutzung der Wirtschaftsflächen nur von einem Familienmitglied (Erbteilung?) errichtet worden sein konnte. Der in der Gesamtkonzeption der Anlage von Taşlıburun festzustellende Sicherheitsaspekt („Torsicherungen, verstärkte Gehöftmauer") diente nicht, wie bei ihrer geographischen Lage zu vermuten wäre, der Kontrolle des Grenzgebietes, sondern es stand der des „eigenen landwirtschaftlichen Besitzes mit den zugehörigen Wirtschaftsanlagen" im Vordergrund.

Der gut gemachte und reich bebilderte Band liefert neue Erkenntnisse zum antiken Tlos und ergänzt die von Hailer untersuchten Gehöfte Lykiens um ein weiteres Beispiel. Dennoch sind einige Kritikpunkte zu nennen: So finden sich im ersten Beitrag mehrere Platzhalter für Abbildungs- und Seitenverweis oder falsche Seitenverweise sowohl im Text als auch in den Anmerkungen; auf einigen Tafeln finden sich Flüchtigkeitsfehler (gespiegelter Nordpfeil, fehlender Maßstab). Zudem hätten einige zusätzliche Beschriftungen auf einzelnen Tafeln beim Lesen der Befundbeschreibung die Orientierung erleichtert, besonders bei den zahlreichen genannten Felskanten. Beim dritten Artikel stimmen einige Abbildungen nicht mit den Bildunterschriften überein, was leider offensichtlich zu erkennen ist.

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Notes:

1.   Das für diesen Beitrag wichtigste Werk, auf das sich Klinkott bezieht, ist die 2008 publizierte Dissertation von Ulf Hailer zu den Gehöften Yavu-Bergland: U. Hailer, Einzelgehöfte im Bergland von Yavu, Teil 1 und Teil 2. Antiquitas R., Bd. 46 (Bonn 2008).
2.   Auf den im Plan eingetragenen Raum II-f wird nicht eingegangen.

2017.02.55

Roald Dijkstra, The Apostles in Early Christian Art and Poetry. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 134. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2016. Pp. xv, 552. ISBN 9789004298040. $218.00 (hc).

Reviewed by Robin M. Jensen, University of Notre Dame (rjensen3@nd.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

The back cover of this work describes it as "the first in-depth analysis of the origins of the representations of the apostles (the twelve disciples and Paul) in verse and image in the late antique Greco-Roman world." Without question the text—a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation—is thorough and useful, and in most regards an unprecedented summary of the various ways early Christian poets represented the apostles. To a more modest degree, it also contains a summary of the ways these figures also appeared in early Christian art even though, as the author acknowledges, there have been earlier studies of the apostles in visual art, although perhaps not as intentionally of all twelve as a group (p.12).

Although the word "art" takes first place in the book's title and elsewhere in the body of the text, the initial—and most developed—section of the study analyzes the ways the apostles are represented in Christian poetry of the third and fourth centuries. Actually, the work has only two chapters, framed by an introduction and a conclusion. The first chapter is significantly longer than the second; its roughly 225 pages are divided into 13 sections that primarily consider one ancient Christian poet at a time. The second chapter is less than half its length (about 95 pages) and has only 3 subsections. It also opens with a fairly detailed discussion of the formation of the New Testament canon and the places where the apostles appear in the texts of the gospels and Acts. The author acknowledges the different ways these chapters are structured (chapter 1 according to poet and chapter 2 according to apostle), which seems a sensible way to organize the material.

In his introduction, Dijkstra explains that he uses the both words "disciples" and "apostles" to refer to the "group of twelve who stayed with Christ when he was on earth" (p. 3). Some New Testament scholars might take issue with this blurring of categories, and Dijkstra acknowledges this, although he allows that common usage tends to do the same. Similarly, as ancient and modern tradition both regularly include Paul among the twelve, Dijkstra does as well. Of course, this number thus adds up to more than twelve, which, he grants, is mainly a "terminus technicus."

Dijkstra then turns to an introductory survey of the secondary literature and accurately notes that few modern studies have treated Christian poetry independently of ancient poetry in general, or investigated the ways that ancient Christian poets treated the apostles as a group (rather than primarily concentrating on the representations of Rome's founding saints, Peter and Paul). Similarly, he argues that, besides Peter, Paul, and to some extent Andrew, individual apostles are seldom studied in early Christian art, largely because their features are mostly indistinguishable. However, just after he raises this point, he returns to studies of the apostles' representation in literature. He quickly returns to the subject of early Christian art, and turns his attention to broad, theoretical questions of interpretation, classification, and context. Interestingly, while Dijkstra regretfully comments that Christian poetry "has not become a discipline of its own but remains part of studies on late antique poetry in general" (p. 9), he takes a positive view of the current scholarly trend to perceive Christian visual art as a subcategory of Roman art rather than as a distinct corpus (p. 12). His introduction also includes a brief analysis of the value of including non-canonical (apocryphal) sources and an outline of what Dijkstra has defined as his functioning corpus of textual and material evidence, and a condensed commentary on their mode of production (with a lengthy excursus on the 1981 work of Klaus Eichner on the manufacture of Roman sarcophagi compared to a mere paragraph each on the craft of painters and mosaicists). While these relatively brief treatments are interesting, this reader was left wishing they seemed less randomly selected, underdeveloped, and oddly organized.

Dijkstra raises some significant questions, but his treatment of them can often seem garbled. For example he begins his discussion of possible ecclesial regulation of Christian poetry and visual art by asserting that church officials would have had motivation to regulate the ways the apostles were represented and that such regulation would have been possible. However, he then notes the lack of evidence for any such official regulation, at least in regard to the production of sarcophagi or any literary reference to such censorship. Sarcophagus manufacture and catacomb painting, he reasonably asserts, were highly private activities, yet he also argues for a restricted (controlled) number of workshops. Moreover, he asserts that art-making activities "driven by economical motives that turned out to oppose orthodoxy" or to deviate "from official ecclesiastical doctrine" would have been inhibited (pp. 32-33). It seems Dijkstra means to differentiate funerary art from objects made for liturgical use (e.g., reliquaries), but his argument is unclear and his apparent conclusions confusingly presented. Earlier, he makes the odd and contentious judgments that fossores painted the catacombs and that there were no innovations in catacomb painting during the fourth century. He also asserts an unverifiable claim that objects' craftsmen were illiterate and did not fully understand the imagery they worked out (p. 29).

Another instance where the reader may be confused comes in Dijkstra's investigation of the nature of representation itself, in both images and texts. He calls upon the work of Du Gay, Hall, et al., who identified representation as a key element in the their "circuit of culture."¹ The method of cultural analysis could prove to be illuminating but Dijkstra's explication is not especially helpful. According to him "representation" refers to "the form in which a cultural artifact is molded and the way in which it is given meaning" (p. 21). This makes some sense, but he continues with the rather incoherent and arguably circular statement that, "meaning is of course dependent of various aspects given through language and images" (p. 22). He then attempts to clarify by saying that "both texts and images refer to an existing concept expressed in the Bible," which he calls the "mimetic part" but does not actually explain what that might be, unless it is simply that certain narrative details were taken as authoritative (e.g., the apostles were followers of Christ). The discussion winds down to a vague claim that "several factors are of influence in the process of representation and at the same time representation exerts influence on other processes" (p. 22). Unfortunately, Dijkstra does not return to the method at any other place in the volume to show how it actually shapes his analysis of any particular poem or object of art.

Overall, the bulk of the monograph focuses, catalogue-style, on the work of twelve poets (an appropriately apostolic number) from the third and fourth century in chronological order. Part one begins with the works of Commodianus Juvencus and continues through Prudentius and Paulinus of Nola (no. 11). Dijkstra introduces each author in turn, takes up relevant scholarly discussions about the biographies of the authors, their historical and literary contexts, and any debate about dating their work. He then laboriously works through each of their treatments of the apostles as a group, then of each individual apostle one after the other, followed some concluding remarks. He caps this section with a synthesis, once again considering each apostle in turn both to review and consolidate his previous work. These summaries will constitute a useful resource for future scholars of this genre of literature, especially as the section is enhanced by some tables, for example one in which the author traces the verses in Vergil's Aeneid that the poet Proba used to structure her Cento on the life of Christ (p. 107). An overview table in the volume's appendix 1 also also assists the reader to see the distinctions and patterns in the authors' references to various passages of scripture.

The volume's particular attention to (and the author's primary interest in) early Christian poetry is evident in the relatively little space given to visual art. In this considerably shorter section of the book, he considers the depiction of the apostles in early Christian iconography, although he still frequently refers to their appearance in poetry, which additionally reduces his exclusive attention to the material evidence. Here Dijkstra appropriately concentrates his study on the main categories of surviving data: sarcophagus reliefs, catacomb paintings, selected mosaics (including the apse at Rome's Santa Pudenziana), and assorted "minor arts" (ivories, gold glasses and reliquaries). Once again, Dijkstra notes that, apart from the easily recognizable portraits of Peter and Paul, identifying facial features of the other apostles are lacking. These may be the anonymous male witnesses often worked into the backgrounds of visual compositions, particularly in healing and miracle scenes. The relatively recent discovery of the Catacomb of Thecla in Rome with its busts of Andrew and John along with Peter and Paul is one notable exception, but as a rule, viewers rely on inscribed names to distinguish one from another. Dijkstra observes the differences between poetry and visual art in regard to the kinds of symbols or narratives each depicts (or is capable of depicting). He also attends to the inclusion of non-canonical and apocryphal narratives and themes (e.g., Christ giving the law to Peter and Paul) that frequently appear in the early Christian visual corpus.

Dijkstra's volume concludes with a summary review and conclusion. This opens with a succinct reference to Arnold Provoost's quantitative analysis and reproduces Provoost's chart diagramming the content of Christian iconography from the second through the early sixth century (p. 391). I am not sure that the author's use of this chart adds much to his argument, since (as he notes), the diagram does not consider much of the existing repertoire, nor does it distinguish among different categories of objects. The reader is left wondering what to make of it all. A striking comment occurs in the final two pages, where Dijkstra offers the cautious but perhaps disappointing argument that, in the final analysis, "It has turned out to be difficult to precise [sic] the relation between the creative activities of poets and craftsmen via the representation of the apostles" (p. 410).

In conclusion, this work has much to commend it. It is both ambitious and, as regards a study of early Christian poetry, admirably thorough. It is accompanied by an extensive bibliography, appendices, and 50 illustrations, most in color. It should be a useful resource for scholars interested in that poetry; it will be less valuable for those who study the content, context, and function of early Christian art. The work is primarily descriptive; a guiding or clearly outlined thesis is not obvious or easy to discern, although there are many points in which Dijkstra offers helpful conclusions and synthesizes his findings. Yet, the book is difficult to read in many sections and would have been much improved by vigorous editing.

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Notes:

1.   Du Gay P., S. Hall et al. (1997). Doing Cultural Studies, The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications, 1-4.

2017.02.54

Stéphane Ratti (ed.), Une antiquité tardive noire ou heureuse? Actes du colloque international de Besançon (12 et 13 novembre 2014). Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l'Antiquité. Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2015. Pp. 270. ISBN 9782848675282. €23.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Mischa Meier, University of Tübingen (mischa.meier@uni-tuebingen.de)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

Der Tagungsband, der die Referate eines im November 2014 in Besançon veranstalteten Kolloquiums zusammenführt, ordnet sich in die Debatten ein, die seit einigen Jahren verstärkt um die Frage nach der Eigenständigkeit der Spätantike als Epoche sowie ihrer (insbesondere zeitlichen) Grenzen geführt werden. Es nimmt daher nicht Wunder, dass die Einleitung des Herausgebers unmittelbar mit einem Hinweis auf die Arbeiten Peter Browns und die von ihnen ausgehenden Impulse (bis hin zu den Gegenreaktionen, für die u.a. der Name Bryan Ward-Perkins steht) einsetzt, um von dort aus insbesondere das 4. (und partiell auch das 5.) Jahrhundert als Phase der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Christen und Altgläubigen zu charakterisieren und diesen Faden mit der Diskussion um das Ende der Antike als Untergang der römischen Zivilisation zu verweben. Ratti kommt zu dem Schluss, dass beide Diskussionskomplexe sich über einen Blick auf die Ereignisse der Jahre 376/78 miteinander verknüpfen lassen, insofern diese ausgerechnet von Ammian und Hieronymus und damit von zentralen Repräsentanten der religiösen Gegensätze dokumentiert und kommentiert worden seien (22f.).

Die Beiträge wurden in drei Sektionen angeordnet, die sich von generalisierenden Perspektiven auf die Mikroebene zubewegen. Teil I behandelt „Historiographie et questions de périodisation" (29-102), Teil II „Païens et chrétiens: violences, polémiques et appropriations" (103-176), der letzte Abschnitt (177-250) schließlich „La dernière Antiquité tardive: les Ve et VIe siècles" (dort findet sich allerdings nur ein Beitrag, der dezidiert über das 5. Jh. hinausgreift). Eine systematisierende Klammer schaffen die Schlussbemerkungen von Jean-Michel Carrié, der ein Frageraster vorlegt, unter das die einzelnen Referate gefasst werden können. In Anlehnung an den Titel des Bandes sortiert Carrié die vorgebrachten Argumente für die Spätantike als „une periode noire" oder „un âge heureux" und präsentiert größere Fragekomplexe, die zum weiteren Nachdenken herausfordern: die chronologische Ausdehnung der Spätantike, verbunden mit der Frage nach Kontinuitäten und Zäsuren; die Debatten über (religiöse) Toleranz bzw. Intoleranz in dieser Phase; und schließlich die sich mit Blick auf die Forschungsgeschichte ergebende Frage nach der Möglichkeit einer „réhabilitation de l'Antiquité tardive" (256).

Bereits Giuseppe Zecchinis instruktiver Überblick über Spätantike-Konzeptionen seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, der neben der Eingrenzungsproblematik vor allem die unterschiedlichen Bewertungen der Spätantike zwischen dem Dekadenz-Paradigma und dem Ansatz der Brown-Schule diskutiert, verweist darauf, dass ein größerer Teil der Beiträger erkennbare Probleme mit dem Paradigma der ‚Long Late Antiquity' hat. ¹ Zecchini möchte die Spätantike weiterhin ganz im antiken Kontext verankern, d.h. als eine Periode definieren, die sich vollständig über eine Analyse typisch antiker Strukturen erfassen lässt (39). Damit gelangt er zu einer Kernphase von Konstantin bis Justinian, auf die eine Phase der „décomposition" 565-636 gefolgt sei: „L'Antiquité tardive couvre donc, à mon avis, la période 312-636, soit à peu près trois siècles; cette extension exclut en amont le IIIe siècle (Dioclétien compris), mais se prolonge en aval au-delà de Justinien" (40).

Ausgehend von der Beobachtung, dass die kulturellen Differenzen zwischen dem griechischen Osten und dem lateinischen Westen verstärkt in der Spätantike zutage traten und der Okzident ab dem 5. Jh. einen eigenen, „europäischen" Weg gegangen sei (67), entwirft Polymnia Athanassiadi ein Gegenkonzept, das allerdings lediglich den Osten in den Blick nimmt (und sich insofern für eine konzeptuelle Erfassung der Spätantike insgesamt nur partiell eignet). Ihr Vorschlag, aufgrund langfristiger orientalischer Traditionen, die sowohl den östlichen Teil des Imperium Romanum als auch das Sāsānidenreich umfasst hätten, von einer longue époque hellénistique zu sprechen, die sich von ca. 300 v. Chr. bis zum frühen Islam erstreckt habe (68), weist enge Berührungen mit dem jüngst von Garth Fowden in die Debatte eingebrachten Konzept eines übergreifenden „First Millennium" auf (vgl. 65) und wird von der Verfasserin im Folgenden anhand der Person des Damaskios exemplarisch erprobt. ²

Ausgehend von dem wichtigen Hinweis, dass die Geschichte der Christianisierung des Römischen Reiches auf einem seit der Antike im Wesentlichen fortgeschriebenen Narrativ beruhe (44), problematisiert Hervé Ingelbert die literarischen Quellen, die sich seiner Ansicht nach nicht in die bisher vorgestellten Modelle fügen (für deren Extrempositionen Alan Cameron und Polymnia Athanassiadi angeführt werden, vgl. 46). ³ Stattdessen gelte es, ein integratives Modell zu entwickeln, das unterschiedlichen methodischen Schwierigkeiten, insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit dem Quellenmaterial, gerecht werde und davon absehe, literarisch fassbare Intoleranz-Diskurse linear mit einer aggressiven kaiserlichen Politik oder gar staatlichen Gewaltmaßnahmen zusammenzubringen – eine Frage, die jüngst auch von Dirk Rohmann ausführlich thematisiert worden ist. ⁴

Der Beitrag von Paolo Mastandrea, in dem nach intertextuellen Bezügen zwischen Macrobius und Augustin vor dem Hintergrund der gotischen Eroberung Roms 410 gefahndet und der Verzicht des Macrobius auf antichristliche Polemik hervorgehoben wird, hätte eher in die zweite Sektion gepasst, die anhand von Einzelstudien das Verhältnis von Christen und Altgläubigen im 4. Jh. zu bestimmen sucht. Während Bassir Amiri den Umgang mit paganen Kulten in der Stadt Rom während des 4. Jh. untersucht und einen „compromis Romain" (108) herausarbeitet, der sich z.B. im Ausbleiben systematischer Tempelzerstörungen zeige und auf eine mehr oder weniger stillschweigende Übereinkunft zwischen den städtischen Eliten und den Kaisern zurückgeführt werden könne (woraus die Konsequenz zu ziehen sei, dass in jedem Einzelfall zunächst die spezifischen lokalen Verhältnisse untersucht werden müssten), verfolgt Aude Busine den traditionsgeschichtlichen Weg des dux Aegypti Artemios vom (hingerichteten) römischen Amtsträger bis hin zu einem seit dem 7. Jh. in Konstantinopel verehrten Heiligen – eine systematische Quellenanalyse, die einen Überblick über die verfügbaren Informationen zu seiner Exekution verschafft, die These einer möglichen Existenz eines ‚arianischen' Artemios-Kultes in Antiocheia widerlegt und die spätere Funktion des Artemios als Heiliger auf einen älteren Kult der Artemis Phosphoros zurückführt. Gegen Kritik an seinen Thesen zu Verfasserschaft und Datierung der Collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum sowie neuere Vorschläge argumentiert Robert M. Frakes, der davon ausgeht, „that a Christian Collator familiar with Roman law might have designed his work the way he did in order to reach out to pagans during the dynamic period of the 390s" (154). Demgegenüber präsentiert Stéphane Ratti ein Kabinettstück, indem er einen Vorschlag unterbreitet, Passagen aus Augustins Gottesstadt, Rutilius' Gedicht De reditu suo sowie die anonyme Komödie Querolus (die er als antichristliche Parodie aktueller sozialer und politischer Zustände insbesondere in Nordwestgallien deutet) miteinander in Zusammenhang zu bringen.

Detailuntersuchungen zu einzelnen Autoren bzw. Texten stehen im Zentrum des dritten Hauptabschnitts. Auf Jean-Yves Guillaumins Untersuchung zum Gebrauch von felix bei Servius folgen Pierre Jailettes Überlegungen zu Kontext und Entstehung des Codex Theodosianus, bevor Lucie Desbrosses in einer aufschlussreichen Analyse den widersprüchlichen Umgang des Sidonius Apollinaris mit paganen Mythen und Traditionen analysiert. Stellten diese zunächst noch in ganz üblicher Weise einen wichtigen Bestandteil seines literarischen Werkes dar (im Sinne einer „cohabitation", vgl. 217), so änderte sich dies mit der Bischofswahl. Von nun an, so die Verfasserin, habe sich Sidonius der strengen christlichen Disziplin unterworfen – freilich nicht aus voller Überzeugung (vgl. 225). Im abschließenden Beitrag schließlich präsentiert Bruno Bleckmann den fragmentarisch erhaltenen Historiographen Menander Protektor nicht nur als herausragende Figur zwischen Agathias und Theophylakt, sondern zugleich auch als typischen Vertreter der ‚klassizistischen' Profangeschichtsschreibung, der genuin christliche Termini zwar in traditioneller Manier umschreibe, deshalb aber keineswegs als religiös indifferent angesehen werden müsse, sondern – im Gegenteil – dem Christentum sogar eine Überlegenheit gegenüber anderen Religionen und Kulten zuspreche und traditionell antike (Tyche, Nemesis) sowie christliche Geschichtsdeutungen ohne Schwierigkeiten miteinander zu verbinden vermochte.

Mit Ausnahme des letztgenannten Beitrags konzentriert sich der Sammelband im Wesentlichen auf die Geschichte des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts, und darin liegt seine wesentliche Stärke und Schwäche zugleich: Die einzelnen Studien diskutieren wichtige und interessante Einzelprobleme und bieten vielfach erwägenswerte Lösungen an. In den großen, die Konzeption der Spätantike als eigenständiger Epoche betreffenden Fragen, bietet der Sammelband indes kaum Fortschritte. Hier erweist sich die doppelte Beschränkung auf zwei Jahrhunderte einerseits sowie andererseits die Eingrenzung des Fragehorizontes im Wesentlichen auf die Christen-Heiden-Problematik (die wohl allzu sehr zugespitzt wird, vgl. etwa 18: „Nicomaque Flavien, ce grand païen qui avait pris les armes au Frigidus en 394 pour défendre la paideia classique contre Théodose") als Hemmnis.

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Notes:

1.   Vgl. dazu Averil Cameron, "The ‚Long' Late Antiquity: A Late Twentieth-Century Model", in: Timothy P. Wiseman (Hg.), Classics in Progress. Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome, Oxford 2002, 165-191.
2.   Garth Fowden, Before and after Muḥammad. The First Millennium Refocused, Princeton 2014.
3.   Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome, Oxford 2011; Polymnia Athanassiadi, Vers la pensée unique: la montée de l'intolérance dans l'Antiquité tardive, Paris 2010.
4.   Dirk Rohmann, Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission, Berlin; Boston 2016.

2017.02.53

Barbara Levick, Vespasian. Second Edition. Roman Imperial Biographies. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. xxvi, 345. ISBN 9780415708890. $140.00/£90.00​.

Reviewed by Christopher Mallan, St. Benet's Hall, University of Oxford (christopher.mallan@stb.ox.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

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This is a biography for those who prefer their biographies to be more about the times than the man. Levick's Vespasian is a political history of mid-first century AD structured around the figure of Vespasian. Within these parameters, Levick's book remains an important and useful contribution to scholarship. As the greater part of Vespasian is unchanged from its first incarnation, it is sufficient to provide a brief summary of its contents before turning to the question of whether the second edition represents a substantial improvement on the first.¹

Levick opens with a discussion of Vespasian's origins, familial connections, and career (Chapter 1). This is the phase of Vespasian's life that we know least about, and Levick's sensible and cautious reconstruction is grafted onto the known framework of a typical senatorial career under the early empire. Chapters 2 and 3 consider Vespasian's career under Claudius and his role in the Claudian invasion of Britain, and the campaign in Judaea in 66-69. Chapter 4 covers the complex events of AD 69 with admirable dexterity.

Concatenations of proper names (as Syme might have put it) infuse these early chapters. While the effect of this might be overwhelming for readers not fully versed in their Tacitus, it does show Levick's command of material as well as serving as a tacit reminder that emperors or would-be emperors were not lone agents operating in a vacuum: a theme Levick returns to in Chapter 11 (Elites). But given the nature of the book one does wonder if some of these named individuals might not have been omitted for the sake of clarity. Some peripheral players disappear entirely after one appearance, and one wonders if we really do need their full identification at all. At other times there are prosopographical snares for the unwary, or for the uninitiated. One individual who appears more than once, Ti. Claudius Balbillus (no mere nonentity by any estimation), is styled Barbillus at his first appearance (p. 80) and Balbillus at his second (p. 190), but with no indication in the text or the notes that this is one and the same man. This is surprising in a book where detailed endnotes abound; similarly, nothing is said about the games instituted in Balbillus' honour at Ephesus by Vespasian himself.

The second half of the book is arranged thematically. There are complementary chapters on the ideology of Vespasian's regime (Chapter 5) and the opposition to the new dynasty (Chapter 6). These chapters are followed by discussion of what may be termed Vespasianic success stories – namely how Vespasian and his administration sought to pacify the rebellious elements in the Empire (Chapter 8), achieve financial stability after the economic doldrums of the later Julio-Claudian period (Chapter 7), develop the physical environs of Rome and enhance the infrastructure of the Empire (Chapter 9), and consolidate the military position on the imperial frontiers (Chapter 10). The succession of Titus and Domitian is the theme of the last of the original chapters (Chapter 12). The new Chapter 13 takes the form of a survey of Flavian literature by genre. Verse authors get the most attention, prose authors far less: oratory is dealt with in a single paragraph.

A second edition offers an author a chance to make corrections, revise arguments, or even add new material. The publisher's preface states that this volume has been "updated to take account of the past fifteen years of scholarship, and with a new chapter on literature under the Flavians". It is perhaps on these terms that the work needs to be assessed.

Changes to the body text are scarce. Where additions have been made, they tend to be in places which serve to augment Levick's existing argument (e.g. pp. 76, 128). One feels that more could have been done on this front. Certainly, there are some areas which have not aged well, or which now require further justification. Levick's description of "Tiberius' housewifely attitude [to the economy]", was quaint in 1999, but strikes a discordant note in our (admittedly) po-faced times. Pettifogging aside, repeated casual references to class, "Marxist class" (p. 4), "class war" (pp. 30 and 117), "class hatred" (p. 30), as a key factor in historical causation is less likely to be accepted uncritically by many historians today. Moreover, there is a certain degree of inconsistency here. Levick is surely right in her demolition of Rostovtzeff's assertion that it was a proletarian hatred of the civic bourgeoisie that led to the bloodletting in Cremona in 69 (p. 166). But the same could be said of her own ascription of "class war" as "a central factor" in the outbreak of the Judaean revolt in 66 (pp. 29-30). On this point, there seems to have been a missed opportunity to incorporate or even contest some more recent views on the causes of the revolt.²

Most problematical is the addition of the new chapter on Flavian literature (Chapter 13). It is not helped by the general impression that the chapter has been shoe-horned into the main narrative. This seems clear from the Introduction, which has not been adequately revised to include the new material. Indeed, the only place in the introduction where Chapter 13 (but not its content) is mentioned is in a general statement pertaining to the structure of the second half of the book (p. 2) –which in fact is unchanged from the first edition. There also seems to have been some uncertainty as to where the new Chapter 13 would appear. A new, somewhat incongruous paragraph at the end of Chapter 11 (p. 200) seems to function as a segue to the new material of Chapter 13, only for it to be followed by Chapter 12, "Vespasian and His Sons". This reader was left wondering if it had been originally planned for the new material to have been included as Chapter 12.

The underlying question of what exactly is Flavian about Flavian literature is never addressed. Yet this is surely an important question to address; not least in order to give some sort of structure to what Levick styles as a "survey" of Flavian literature. What is clear is that Flavian literature for Levick means Latin literature. Only one major Greek author is mentioned, Dio Chrysostom, thus leaving unconsidered perhaps the most successful and influential of all authors of the Flavian period, Plutarch.³

More importantly, we have to ask whether or not this survey-style chapter adds anything to our knowledge of Vespasian or his reign. The answer has to be in the negative. Such a chapter might be justified in a biography of Domitian, certainly in a general History of Flavian Rome, but in a biography of Vespasian it seems out of place. Indeed, throughout these pages the founder of the Flavian dynasty all but disappears from view. It could be argued that the most salient points about the political aspects of Flavian poetry had already been made (pp. 86-9). But there is more. The direction of Levick's analysis seems off the mark. Levick's initial preoccupation with the 'place' of Silver Age Latin poets in the "canon" appears tangential, or worse, irrelevant. Does it really matter that Silius Italicus is not as great a poet as Vergil?

There are omissions in the bibliography, which is unfortunate for a book which purports to take into account the past fifteen years of scholarship. Leslie Murison's valuable commentary on Cassius Dio's post-Neronian and Flavian narratives, which appeared too late for its use in the first edition, remains unused (or at least uncited) in the second edition. Pat Southern's biography of Domitian is mentioned in the body text but appears in neither the endnotes nor the bibliography. Even more surprisingly, the important second volume of acta arising from Italian-led project on Vespasian in 2009 does not appear in the bibliography.⁴ The bulk of the newer works of scholarship which are cited are from the two major Anglophone volumes which appeared since the publication of Levick's first edition, namely, Boyle and Dominik's Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text , and Edmondson, Mason, and Rives' Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome . It may be noted at this point that some bibliographical slips from the first edition have not been rectified. The references to 'Hind' (p. 263) appear without indication of the relevant publication in either the notes or the bibliography.⁵

Minor, yet not infrequent blemishes in the form of typographical errors (introduced subsequent to the first edition) do not reflect well upon the publisher's copyediting processes. Some are careless: "IIIvir momtalts" for IIIvir monetalis (p.11), "ordmarius" for ordinarius (p. 16), or "Iuventuth" for Iuventutis (p. 205); others are simply execrable: "Gyrene" for Cyrene (p. 145), "suthentic" for authentic (p. 128), or "Jerusalellm" for Jerusalem (p. 256). Errors of attribution, not the responsibility of the publisher, are mercifully rare; although in one instance the scholar Rashna Taraporewalla becomes "R. Tarepoewalla" (p. 297 n. 10). Of course, such errors do not diminish the quality of Levick's scholarship, but they do dull the lustre of what is, at £90/$140, an expensive book. It is hoped that these and other typographical errors be excised from future printings of this work.

Levick's Vespasian has been a staple of undergraduate reading lists since its first appearance in 1999. It will remain so for years to come – and with good reason. As a work of scholarship it is solid, cautious, and frequently illuminating. Levick is a sound guide for any student or scholar approaching Roman politics during the years of Vespasian's ascent and political supremacy. But as to whether this second edition offers any positive advance on the first, this reviewer is unconvinced. Given the nature of the changes, and the superfluous Chapter 13, one may wonder if it would have been better had the first edition been reprinted with the addition of an updated bibliography. To invoke a commonplace: why fix something that is not broken? ​

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Notes:

1.   Reviewed here BMCR 2001.01.20.
2.   E.g. M. Goodman's popular yet scholarly Rome and Jerusalem: A Clash of Ancient Civilisations is a surprising omission. S. Mason's A History of the Jewish War, AD 66-74 (Cambridge 2016) appeared too late to have been consulted by Levick.
3.   For the Vespasianic date of Plutarch's Caesares see P.A. Stadter, Plutarch and His Roman Readers (Oxford 2014), 65ff.
4.   Capogrossi Colognesi, L. and Tassi Scandone, E. (edd), Vespasiano e l'impero dei Flavi: atti del convegno, Roma, Palazzo Massimo, 18-20 novembre 2009 (Rome 2012).
5.   The correct reference is J.G.F. Hind, "The invasion of Britain in A.D. 43. An Alternative Strategy for Aulus Plautius", Britannia 20 (1989), 1-21. Given that Levick gives attention to the strategy of Claudius' generals in Britain, one might expect a reference to Hind's more recent, "A. Plautius' campaign in Britain: an alternative reading of the narrative in Cassius Dio (60.19.5-21.2)", Britannia 38 (2007), 93-106.

2017.02.52

François Lerouxel, Anne-Valérie Pont (ed.), Propriétaires et citoyens dans l'Orient romain. Scripta Antiqua, 84. Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions, 2016. Pp. 364. ISBN 9782356131522. €25.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Georgy Kantor, St John's College, Oxford (georgy.kantor@classics.ox.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

[Authors and titles are listed below.]

The last decade has witnessed an explosion of studies of the role of local laws and legal institutions in the eastern part of the Roman world; while initially these mostly addressed the law of procedure and the law of status, scholarly attention is now expanding into other areas of substantive law, most notably the law of property (I have to declare a sympathetic interest here, as I am co-editing an interdisciplinary volume on legalistic aspects of property and ownership from historical and anthropological perspectives).

The fine volume edited by Lerouxel and Pont is an important contribution that takes its own distinct route through this expanding field. Unlike the recent volume on Roman property edited by P. Erdkamp, K. Verboven and A. Zuiderhoek, which also contained contributions on the situation in the eastern provinces,¹ it takes a more (though certainly not entirely) 'emic' approach and proceeds not from the New Institutional Economics or other modern models but from immersion in the minutiae of ancient evidence. Insofar as the editorial introduction (pp. 9–13) makes a reference to theory, it is to Aristotle (Pol. 1318b), and only one chapter (Andrew Monson on Augustan tax reforms in Egypt) contains any graphs. All chapters, in their different ways, explore the connections between property regimes and citizen status, and the impact of Rome in this sphere, with particular attention devoted to the enfranchisement of provincials and the settlement of Italians in the Greek East, and to the introduction of new fiscal systems (a topic for which we now also expect the forthcoming monograph of Lisa Eberle, based on her Berkeley thesis).²

Insofar as the volume speaks to contemporary concerns, the overriding one is that of wealth inequality: this is, implicitly, the world of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, rather than of the search for minimising transaction costs. A 'prologue' by Olivier Picard (pp. 15–21), following the introduction, puts wealth inequality into the broader context of the transition to a more stratified structure of the polis society with the coming of Rome, with particular emphasis on the institutional transformation of city councils, and the emergence of philosebastoi and philokaisares as a category of 'super-citoyens', as a possible index of changes in the relationship between (to coin a phrase) the 'haves' and 'have-a-lots'.³ This emphasis on the Hellenistic background is significant: the volume takes on the topic from the Greek rather than the Roman perspective, and the authors are more concerned about social implications of property regimes and property distribution than about the minutiae of legal interpretations. The passages of Gaius on the status of provincial land are mentioned just once in a footnote (p. 167).

Geographically, the volume covers all the main regions of the Greek East under Rome: mainland Greece, both coastal and inland Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, and even the landholdings of Greek senators in Italy and Sicily; chronologically, it sometimes extends into the late antiquity, with Julien Aliquot (p. 111–138) adducing evidence from the Notitia Dignitatum and early Byzantine hagiography, François Chausson (p. 289) starting his study of senatorial properties from a letter of Celestine I, and Ilias Anagnostakis and Thibaut Boulay looking at early Byzantine evidence in their study of Bithynian viticulture (pp. 25–49). If there is a deficiency, it is that neither the organization of the volume nor the editors' concluding remarks convey a very clear sense of evolution over time beyond the initial impact of Rome, perhaps deliberately: this is Fergus Millar's empire, changing very slowly indeed after Augustus, but without much discussion of that assumption. It is perhaps telling that the index to a volume on property regimes and citizenship does not contain a single reference to P.Giss. 40. Most chapters address the themes of the volume on the level of a particular region or locality, but there are two important exceptions: Cédric Brélaz's contribution on communities of Roman citizens in the territory of Greek cities (pp. 69–85), and Béatrice Le Teuff's careful study of land registries in the cities of the Roman East in the High Empire (pp. 157–173).⁴

The studies are grouped in three large sections: on 'changements agraires' (which includes both changes in the nature of the landowners and changes in agricultural practices) in the imperial period; on the relation between property and fiscal regimes; and on inequality of ownership and its effect on the city, picking up on the problems raised in Picard's prologue, if not directly on his chosen examples.

Any general study of property in the Eastern Mediterranean in this period will now utilise the admirable richness of detail in this volume and the fine detective work in tracing the patterns of land ownership: for Iasos (A.-V. Pont), Kibyra (T. Corsten), Dorylaion (A. Avram), Bithynia (T. Corsten), the Hermopolite Nome (R.-L . Chang), the Levant (J. Aliquot), the Anatolian estates of the Claudii Severi (M. Christol), the estates of oriental senators in the Roman West (F. Chausson). Two connected themes particularly stand out: the role of Roman citizens as landowners within or alongside Greek communities (somewhat unreliably reflected in the subject index) and the changes in the status and role of local landowning elite.

The pervasiveness of absentee Roman citizen ownership of polis land is striking, despite the difficulty of tracing it, stressed by Avram for Dorylaion (pp. 106–107), and obvious problems with any attempts at quantification where land registers or detailed papyrological evidence are absent. Of the texts attesting estate managers assembled by Corsten, at least seven out of eleven from Nikaia, probably three out of four at Nikomedeia (assuming Reglianus to be a Roman cognomen), one of the two at Prusa, and two out of three at Kios refer to Roman citizens (pp. 266–268). This context is important for one of the conceptually most important contributions to the volume, a rich study of the elite of Iasos in Karia, a subject community with a significant presence of Italian negotiatores, by Anne-Valérie Pont, one of the volume's editors (pp. 233–260). She argues convincingly for the emergence of a 'depoliticised', supra-polis elite of absentee landowners, with a certain degree of homogeneity among themselves, that no longer placed the civic community at the centre of their activities. Their exact legal status appears to become a secondary consideration, with the example of a local benefactor (eloquently named Potens: epigraphic dossier on pp. 251–252) being particularly interesting in this regard. This is connected to changes in imperial treatment of status, and the emergence of the category of honestiores, a theme of wider significance.

The theme of status is apparent (if not brought out as explicitly) in other contributions to the volume, and over a longer term the impact of the development of new elites on agricultural patterns is meticulously explored by Ilias Anagnostakis and Thibaut Boulay for Bithynian vineyards (pp. 25–49) and by Athanasios Rizakis for the province of Achaia, building on his own earlier work (pp. 51–67). One should note his emphasis on the survival of small and medium landowners alongside the grand families of Roman Athens (p. 55), and on rather limited attestation in Greece of landowning on a genuinely big scale by Italian standards (p. 57): these are points of significance for anyone exploring the elite capture of the Roman polis.

Cédric Brélaz's persuasive attempt to see κόλωνες in Pisidian Apollonia and in Neapolis in Phrygia Paroreios not as Roman colonists within the polis, but as Hellenistic katoikoi from Lycia and Thrace adopting a new Latinising title (pp. 76–78), is of considerable significance both for Roman property in Greek cities and more widely for presence of Roman settlers in Asia Minor, demolishing as it does one of the key planks in the idea of 'non-colonial coloni' that goes back to T.R.S. Broughton. I am less persuaded by Brélaz's neat suggestion that communities of sympoleteuomenoi Rhomaioi in cities such as Attaleia and Amisos should be treated not as communities of resident Romans given citizenship in their city of residence as a group, but rather as recognized politeumata (pp. 70–73). Evidence usually adduced for the use of the latter term (which attracted considerable literature in the context of the status of Jewish communities) in Roman Asia Minor is essentially limited to the somewhat uncertain text of a Sardian decree in favour of the local Jewish community quoted by Josephus (AJ 14.259–260). The decree refers to οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐν τῇ πόλει Ἰουδαῖοι πολῖται (an unusual construction, where the word 'citizens' may have been interpolated) and to the right of the community members πολιτεύωνται (the word is not in all manuscripts); it is, in any case, possible that Sardian Jews did have local citizenship.

Among papers dealing with the fiscal aspects of property, Andrew Monson's argument for Augustan fiscal reforms lowering the Ptolemaic tax burden on property and particularly benefitting the metropolite group (with obvious repercussions for wealth inequality, linking it to François Lerouxel's piece on the wealthy in Roman Egypt that follows it), stood out for this reviewer; it provides a good introduction to themes explored in his recent monograph (pp. 187–210).⁵ In a paper which perhaps shares the common concerns of the volume to a lesser degree, Ségolène Demougin (pp. 141–155) explores active imperial policy in the fiscal sphere, offering an imporant new survey of the growing competences of procurators in the province of Asia.

This is a carefully edited and genuinely important volume, with a uniformly very high level of contributions. Anyone interested in the socio-economic history of the Greek East in the Roman period, in the spread of Roman citizenship before the Constitutio Antoniniana or in the impact of Rome on provincial law and institutions will be well advised to consult it. It is a pleasure to note in this context that French academic publishers still manage to keep their books affordable.

Authors and titles

François Lerouxel et Anne-Valérie Pont, Introduction
Olivier Picard, Prologue
I. Changements agraires induits par l'intégration à l'empire
Ilias Anagnostakis et Thibaut Boulay, Les grands vignobles bithyniens aux époques romaine et protobyzantine
Athanase Rizakis, Statut foncier, habitat rural et pratiques agricoles en Grèce sous l'Empire
Cédric Brélaz, Des communautés de citoyens romains sur le territoire des cités grecques : statut politico-administratif et régime des terres
Alexandru Avram, Propriétaires et citoyens à Dorylaion : enquête sur les citoyens romains et les villages sur le territoire
Julien Aliquot, Le domaine d'Untel. Toponymie et propriété foncière dans le Proche-Orient romain et protobyzantin
II. Propriété foncière et fiscalité
Ségolène Demougin, "Rien n'est insuffisant pour le secours des cités" : procurateurs en Asie
Béatrice Le Teuff, Enregistrer les propriétés dans les cités de l'Orient romain : archives civiques et documents cadastraux sous le Haut-Empire
Ruey-Lin Chang, Fiscalité et propriété foncière dans le nome hermopolitain au iie s. à partir de trois rouleaux fiscaux d'époque romaine conservés à la BNU de Strasbourg (P. Stras. 901-903)
Andrew Monson, Landowners and Metropolites: The Benefits of Augustus's Tax Reforms in Egypt
III. Inégalités foncières et relation à la cité François Lerouxel, Y a-t-il des riches en Égypte romaine au i er s.?
Anne-Valérie Pont, Élites civiques et propriété foncière: les effets de l'intégration à l'empire sur une cité grecque moyenne, à partir de l'exemple d'Iasos
Thomas Corsten, Bauer und Bürger: Einflußmöglichkeiten von Landbesitzern auf das städtische Leben im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien
Michel Christol, Les domaines des Claudii Seueri en Asie Mineure
François Chausson, Pour une histoire des patrimoines des sénateurs orientaux en Occident (Rome, Italie, Sicile)
Conclusion
François Lerouxel et Anne-Valérie Pont, Inégalités foncières, évolution des cités grecques et intégration dans l'empire

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Notes:

1.   P. Erdkamp, K. Verboven, A. Zuiderhoek (ed.), Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World (Oxford 2015).
2.   See, for the time being, L.P. Eberle, 'Law, Empire, and the Making of Roman Estates in the Provinces', Critical Analysis of Law 3.1 (2016), 50–69.
3.   For the transformation of city councils, M. Piérart, 'Une nouvelle proxénie argienne de la basse époque hellénistique et les synèdres d'Argos', in A.I. Ivantchik (ed.), Monumentum Gregorianum (Moscow 2013), 275–89, significantly bears on the themes raised by Picard. I wonder whether the title philosebastoi was everywhere as socially divisive as Picard seems to suggest: see recently G.M. Rogers, The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos (New Haven 2012), 145–204, for a somewhat different usage.
4.   For the Tetrarchic land registers, not touched upon in this volume, compare P. Thonemann, Chiron 37 (2007), 435–78; 39 (2009), 363–93; K. Harper, JRS 98 (2008), 83–119.
5.   A. Monson, From the Ptolemies to the Romans: Political and Economic Change in Egypt (Cambridge 2012), reviewed by P. Nadig, BMCR 2013.06.03.

2017.02.51

Steve Mason, A History of the Jewish War, A.D. 66-74. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 689. ISBN 9780521853293. $150.00.

Reviewed by Matthew V. Novenson, University of Edinburgh (matthew.novenson@ed.ac.uk)

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When I discovered the package containing Steve Mason's A History of the Jewish War, A.D. 66-74 in my office mailbox, my first response was excitement, since I, like many scholars of Judaism in antiquity, had known about and been anticipating Mason's summa on the war for some years now. My second response, upon opening the package, was surprise at the book's title, since one of Mason's professional calling cards is his insistence upon using "Judaean" rather than "Jew" or "Jewish" for Greek Ἰουδαῖος and Latin Iudaeus. (I can only guess that the title represents a compromise between author and publisher, since in the pages of the book Mason uses his customary "Judaean" throughout.) My third and lasting response, upon reading the book, was deep appreciation for Mason's encyclopaedic knowledge of the contexts of the war and his nimble handling of numerous historiographical problems. Mason's Jewish War was originally commissioned for Cambridge University Press's Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity series, a match made in publishing heaven. But whereas the previous entries in that series—Michael Kulikowski's Rome's Gothic Wars and Waldemar Heckel's Conquests of Alexander the Great—weigh in at about 240 pages, Mason's Jewish War runs to nearly 700. While a series-appropriate 240-page "foundation for undergraduates with no background in ancient history" (as per the series description in the CUP catalogue) on the Jewish War from Mason would be very welcome, the book that he has in fact produced is a far more interesting one.

This book undertakes two discrete tasks, corresponding to parts I and II of its table of contents. Part I, "Contexts," treats several key conceptual and methodological issues over three chapters. Chapter 1, "A Famous and Unknown War," does some initial de-mystifying of the war, showing how modern perceptions of it, both popular and academic, are unwittingly in thrall to Flavian propaganda and Christian (and latterly also Jewish) mythmaking: "Flavian propagandists conjured up Jews as a foreign enemy with a great army, or as a nation in revolt. Christians portrayed them as the people that had crucified God and so faced eternal punishment. That was all anyone needed to know" (58). Chapter 2, "Understanding Historical Evidence: Josephus' Judean War in Context," situates Josephus's War as a work of Roman literary art, warning against the modern temptation to approach it as a trove of data: "It should now be clear why [Josephus's] literary effort could never be reliable for us. We might as well ask whether a song or a mountain is reliable… [The modern] longing for safe, unskewed data is not only a mirage but a recipe for misery. A realistic approach to Josephus' work is far more interesting" (136). Here Mason also briefly but efficiently theorises the concept of history: "I shall use history to mean simply the investigation of the human past" (69). Chapter 3, "Parthian Saviours, Sieges, and Morale: Ancient Warfare in Human Perspective," explicates a number of unspectacular but nonetheless important factors in the conduct of the war on both sides. Mason writes, "Rome's legions have acquired the mystique of an unstoppable machine driven by a cool, purely military discipline, whereas Jewish-Judaean rebels appear in film (Ben-Hur, Life of Brian) as motivated by wide-eyed, religious-nationalist fervour. On both sides, we easily forget the human conditions that affected both and their largely shared values" (138), namely: pragmatism regarding loss of life and potential strategic gains, the hope or fear of Parthian intervention, the awarding of military commands to men of high status but no competence, the high rate of infectious disease in military camps, and the psychological appeal of desertion, inter alia.

The longer Part II, "Investigations," effectively comprises Mason's history of the war as such. It is organised as a series of topical studies rather than a march through the war year by year, but it manages pretty well to cover the waterfront. In chapter 4, "Why Did They Do It? Antecedents, Circumstances, and 'Causes' of the Revolt," Mason roundly rejects the old idea that the Judaeans were uniquely intolerant of Roman rule and so inevitably rose up. He writes, "The beginnings of this war had little to do with long-term antagonism… Judaea's real, and finally existential threats, were local" (200). And again, "The Judaean War was not the revolt of a 'province of Judaea' against Roman rule. Judaea was not a province but the ethnic zone around world-famous Jerusalem. Its people and elite found themselves in the autumn of 66 awaiting Roman retribution because they had recently acted against the local apparatus of administration—Caesarea, its resident prefect, and the auxiliary force" (278). Chapter 5, "Nero's War I: The Blunder of Cestius Gallus?" analyses the particular event that kindled the war: the expedition of the legate C. Cestius Gallus to Jerusalem in autumn of 66 C.E. Against the received view that Cestius found Judaea already in revolt and went to Jerusalem to crush it, Mason argues, "[It is] unlikely that he ever imagined Jerusalem or Judaeans to be in revolt against him or Rome. Certainly he seems not [to] have known about a province of Judaea or an independent rebel state. Nor could he have intended his reluctant expedition… to culminate in an assault on Jerusalem" (327). Ironically, Mason suggests, Cestius's expedition to Jerusalem created new enemies of Rome among Judaeans who had not hitherto been thus inclined. Chapter 6, "Nero's War II: Flavians in Galilee," poses the question why Vespasian spent the year 67 fighting in Galilee. Against the common view, read off the surface of Josephus, that his Galilean campaign was phase one of a grand plan to crush a nation-wide revolt, Mason argues, "[War book 3] is simply not the story of a 'Judaean-Roman war in Galilee,' much less of Vespasian's scorched- earth destruction en route to Jerusalem. The Roman general has no expectation of fighting after Sepphoris' pre-emptive submission, which leaves his confident army with only patrols, confidence-building exercises, [and so on]" (377). At any number of points, events could have unfolded very differently than they did. But Josephus, looking back after the war's end, invests these early episodes in Galilee—especially the ones in which he himself had participated—with world-historical importance.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 of the "Investigations" examine the Romans campaigns at Jerusalem and in the Judaean desert. In chapter 7, "Jerusalem I: Josephus and the Education of Titus," Mason treats the events recounted in War books 4-6, reconstructing what happened in and around Jerusalem from 68 to 70. Taking a cue from Josephus's emphasis on intra-Judaean stasis—and noting how Josephus parallels this to the Roman civil war of 69—Mason characterizes the several parties who occupied Jerusalem during the siege: the partisans of Simon bar Giora, those of John of Gischala, priestly Zelotai ("Disciples" in Mason's rendering), Adiabenians, and Idumeans. As most of these were not native Jerusalemites but wartime refugees, Mason suggests that perhaps "Jerusalem itself would have capitulated, had it not been for the large numbers of desperate men who fled to Jerusalem from elsewhere and who could not surrender" (465). Chapter 8, "Jerusalem II: Coins, Councils, Constructions," is a companion-piece to chapter 7. It adduces evidence for the siege of Jerusalem from sources other than Josephus, in particular, first, the numerous and diverse wartime coins excavated in Jerusalem and, second, the account of Titus's council of war related by Sulpicius Severus. An especial burden of the chapter is to account for Titus's decision to raze the the temple, about which Mason concludes, "There seems no reason to imagine that Titus had a policy concerning the city or temple, any more than Vespasian had one in 68… Titus was happy to exploit what had happened, as part of the myth of Flavian origins. But he could not have planned it" (513). Finally, chapter 9, "A Tale of Two Eleazars: Machaerus and Masada," treats the sieges of the Judaean desert strongholds, some three years after Titus's victory in Jerusalem, as related in War book 7. Masada, Mason argues, was not the last stand of the most heroic Judaean rebels, but a refugee camp for families which operated on its own bandit economy and so, from a Roman perspective, needed eventually to be shuttered. Reasoning from Josephus's account, Mason argues, "Masada's wartime Judaean inhabitants [were] family men seeking the security of the former royal refuge for their women and children. Fearing the bloody factionalism in Jerusalem… they remove themselves from the fray to this remote, fortified site… [hoping to] ride out the storm in security" (534). He finds corroboration in Ronny Reich's account of the archaeology of Masada: "From 66 until the final siege, Masada was 'a camp of displaced persons.' It was not a 'Zealot' stronghold but rather a place for different kinds of refugees" (550).

The book ends with 15 or so pages of "Conclusions," which include a pithy statement of Mason's realist and "human" account of the war: "The Judaean-Roman conflict broke out… not from anti-Roman ideas or dreams among the uniquely favoured Judaean population, but from the sort of thing that more commonly drives nations to arms: injury, threats of more injury, perceived helplessness, the closure of avenues of redress, and ultimately the concern for survival" (584). Mason's resolutely realist account of the war is in most respects a triumph. Given the disproportionately elaborate mythology that has grown up around this war ("the greatest not only of the wars of our own time, but well nigh of all that ever broke out between cities or nations" [Josephus, War 1.1]), the task of writing its history requires not only a thorough command of the mass of relevant evidence but also a tough-minded demythologizing programme, both of which Mason amply provides. There is one theme, however, on which, it seems to me, Mason mishandles his own method, namely, the religion of the Judaeans: their god, temple, priests, oracles, and so on. On the Judaean side of the conflict, Mason treats religion as an anomaly: extreme, irrational, and unusual, not to be invoked by way of explanation if simpler, more realist, more human factors (e.g., ambition, self-preservation) are on offer, as they always are. But I would argue that for the Jews, as for ancient peoples generally (though not for us moderns), nothing was more realist or more human than religion. For just this reason, they often expressed other, ostensibly more realist ideas in the language of religion. By their lights, military intervention by the Parthians was not a different, simpler outcome than salvation by a god. The former just was the latter. Interestingly, on the Roman side, Mason does allow for the tremendous importance of gods, priests, and sacrifices as social facts (see 139-155, especially 152-153). But he does not extend this courtesy to the Judaeans, perhaps on the assumption that their god has been given rather too much credit for the war already (see 199).

Mason's History of the Jewish War is, as I have said, a triumph. The physical artefact is a handsome and substantial hardback, well suited for a magisterial volume such as this. The back matter includes an appendix on distance measurements in Josephus's War and thorough indices of modern authors, historical persons, groups, and places, and ancient texts, inscriptions, and papyri. The main text is complemented by some 40 high-quality illustrations (maps, coins, inscriptions, archaeological site plans, landscape photographs, and the like) and four tables. There are a few inconsistences of style, for instance, the occasional "Judean" for "Judaean." I spotted only a very few typos, including the running page header for chapter 2, which reads "in Contest" for "in Context" throughout. On the whole, however, the Press's production values live up to contents of the book. This is as it should be, since it seems clear to the present reviewer, at least, that Mason's Jewish War is now the definitive treatment of the subject.

2017.02.50

Vernon L. Provencal, Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Pp. ix, 330. ISBN 9781780936130. $112.00.

Reviewed by Joel Alden Schlosser, Bryn Mawr College (jschlosser@brynmawr.edu)

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Who are Herodotus's Persians? Interpreters of Herodotus's Histories have long wrangled over the extent to which Herodotus's account can be trusted – whether it is factually inaccurate, overly flattering, or an example of objectionable "othering." Leaping into this still-simmering agon, Vernon Provencal's Sophist Kings offers a provocative thesis: Herodotus depicts the Persians as sophists, positioning them on one side of a cultural polarity with the Greeks on the other. On this reading, the Persians represent an implicit understanding of the law of nature that anticipates arguments by Sophists such as Protagoras, Gorgias, and the Callicles and Thrasymachus of Plato's dialogues, while the Greeks represent the rule of law grounded in pious recognition of the subjection of human affairs to divine retribution. For Provencal, Herodotus thus confronts his readers with an ideological division at the heart of human affairs, one that culminates in a split between the erotic tyranny toward which the sophistic Persians strive and the Greek ideal of isonomia or equality under laws. Original and stirring, this argument has moments of brilliance, yet its rigid categories seem to omit too many of the details that give the Histories their wondrous amplitude. Herodotus's Persians may not be as singular as Sophist Kings claims them to be.

Drawing on his own interpretations of Herodotus's text as well as secondary literature on the broader contexts of the period, Provencal's argument mostly restricts itself to claims about the meaning of the Histories. First Provencal tracks the arc of Herodotus's life (Chapter 1) and its intersection with the rise of sophistic thought (Chapter 2). Provencal then steps back from the details of the Histories to show crucial aspects of Persian history missing from its account (Chapter 3). The absence of "real Persia" creates a gap that Herodotus fills with a sophistic other and the Persians become the cultural other for the Greeks (Chapter 4). In contrast to the Greeks' lives of freedom under rule of law, the Persians play the role of "Persosophists" in the Histories (Chapter 5). Herodotus ascribes sophistic ideology not only to the Persian kings and empire but also to the whole way of life of the Persians.

Why would Herodotus depict the Persians as sophistic others? For Provencal, Herodotus sought to commemorate the birth of national consciousness among the Greeks, a birth that began in the inherent conflict of opposed ideologies. On this argument, Herodotus views the conflict between the Persians and the Greeks as rooted in the rivalry between monarchic despotism and the Greek polis. By representing the Persians as sophistic others, Herodotus reminds the Athenians of the defenders of freedom they once were, and the degree to which tyranny is the cultural antithesis to isonomia, the equality under the laws established only with the end of tyranny in Athens. The ideology of despotism and imperialism attributed to the Persians is a simulacrum of the Athenian ideology of the sophists, the intellectual movement that Provencal sees Herodotus opposing. Herodotus intends his Histories to call the Athenians (and the Greeks more broadly) back to their better selves.

Echoes of the sophists abound in Herodotus. Different parties offer opposing logoi for the conflict between the Persians and the Greeks. The Constitutional Debate presents an antilogy. Xerxes adopts eristic argumentation on the eve of his invasion. As narrator, Herodotus appears to employ a number of sophistic approaches: an interest in language and the precise use of words; a sense of humanity as universal; agnosticism and skepticism about religion; a distinction between phusis and nomos; incipient relativism about moral responsibility as well as truth and responsibility; and the use of theoretical categories for describing politics. Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, and Critias may not appear in the Histories but their imprint is undeniable.

For Provencal, these examples of sophistic techniques or approaches do not merely amount to echoes or anticipations. They instead suggest a project within the Histories. While previous interpreters of Herodotus have suggested that the different justifications offered for the conflict between the Persians and the Greeks in the Proem are Herodotean invention or parody, Provencal argues that Herodotus begins with the Persian justification for their conflict with the Greeks to show the fundamental difference between Greek and Persian ideology. The Greeks offer an account of mythic nomos transgressed, but Herodotus presents the Persians as justifying their invasion with interpretations of legends which cannot be verified or falsified. The Persians, in other words, engage in spin. Herodotus reports the story under protest, but marks this rhetorical use of myth as distinctly Persian – an example, according to Provencal, of Persian sophistry.

The depiction of the Persians as sophists does not correspond to the reality of the Persians as far as we know it. Provencal surveys the Elamite empire to highlight the "astonishing neglect" by Herodotus of evidence available in his time. Provencal calls particular attention to the distinctive development of Persia as a diverse and largely tolerant empire. Persian sovereignty was less a matter of conquest, as in Herodotus's account, than gradual acculturation. As many different religions as distinct peoples coexisted within the empire. Herodotus appears unacquainted with the distinctive Achaemenid theology of empire. Appointed by Ahuramazda the creator, the Achaemenid ideal king possessed excellence of mind and body; royal wisdom meant knowing and practicing justice. The king and the people were united in a harmonious relationship within this theology and Persia functioned as the "perfect, still center" around which the periphery of the empire, Greece included, extended. Yet the Medo-Persian kings portrayed in Herodotus lack these virtues and the world instead centers on the Hellenes.

With the "real Persians" largely omitted from the Histories, Provencal argues that Herodotus placed his constructed Persians in a Hellenocentric cultural grid. Here Provencal extends previous studies on Herodotus's "map of the world" and its organization of the world's inhabitants in terms of polarities: the Egyptian-Scythian axis of south-north and the Greek-Persian axis of west-east. Along these axes differences in religion, morality, society and education, kingship, and ideology define themselves. Yet between the Greeks and the Persians, unlike the Egyptians and the Scythians, these polarities are antagonistic. On the one hand, the natural lust for power among the Persians gives rise to their ideology of nomos phuseôs, the rule of natural instincts. On the other hand, the cultural unity that emerges among the Greeks in reaction to the Persians is organized around nomos basileus, the rule of law. This basic polarity extends to every aspect of the ideology: Persocentrism versus Hellenocentrism; Persian hierarchism versus Greek egalitarianism; Persian determinism versus Greek providence; and Persian naturalism versus Greek idealism. These differences culminate in different political constitutions: despotic tyranny among the Persians and isonomia, or equality of law, among the Greeks.

While not all of the Persian kings chronicled by Herodotus count as archetypal sophist kings, Provencal treats them as variations on a theme. For the Persians, according to Provencal, "sophia serves erôs turannidos in founding a constitution in which nomos is founded upon phusis" (224). Thus Deioces uses his knowledge to establish himself as the measure of all things political, first as a judge and then as a tyrant. The Median sophist kings Phraortes, Cyaxares, and Astyages refashion nomos to serve their imperialistic desires. Cyrus "manipulates the Persians" with "rhetoric crafted to awaken erôs turannidos" (229). Cambyses shows how reason is a slave to erôs, violating nomoi without restraint. Darius is a "master sophist king," a conspirator who wins the Constitutional Debate with sophistries and maintains law and justice for the sake of absolute power. Xerxes takes the homo mensura attitude of the sophist kings one step farther by making himself into a god.

The Greeks themselves exhibit certain similarities to the "Persosophists" that serve to associate tyranny in Greece with Asian despotism. Pisistratus and Thrasybulus are classic examples. Polycrates of Samos demonstrates unremitting erôs turannidos and the inevitable fate it entails. For Provencal, Herodotus also creates echoes between Periander of Corinth and Cambyses (with Periander's necrophilia and Cambyses's marrying and murdering of his sister) as well as Themistocles and Darius (with their "Odyssean intelligence"). These parallels heighten the contrast between Persians and Greeks by showing how the Greeks "become Persian" when they act tyrannically.

On Provencal's argument, Herodotus places himself on the side of the Greeks. While the Histories evince a constant dialogue between the sophistic conventionalism (and all it allows) of the Persians and the arkhaioi nomoi realized in the unity of the Greeks, the resolution comes not with synthesis but rather with victory of one side over another. Herodotus sides with the victors. The writing of the Histories is meant, according to Provencal, to remind these victors of what they fought for and thus what is worth preserving of Hellenism.

In many ways Provencal's study remains within the general framework developed by François Hartog in Le miroir d'Hérodote. Like Hartog, Provencal focuses on a particular set of relationships that have strong structural elements. Yet also like Hartog, Provencal downplays (or completely ignores) parts of the Histories that do not fit his model. What about the differences among the Hellenes, for example? Provencal speaks of isonomia and nomos despotês as if these were held by all parties. Both are far trickier. Isonomia is never applied to the Athenians or the Spartans: the Athenians are distinguished by their isêgoria (5.78); the Spartans by their isokratia (5.92). These characterizations also come in the mouths of different characters: Otanes proclaims isonomia which the Herodotean narrator redescribes as dêmokratia; the narrator also praises the Athenians' isêgoria, which might suggest a consistency of judgment of implicit differences. What explains these different concepts? They seem to complicate any generalizations about to Hellenikon.

The matter of who says what (and to whom) also has significance for nomos despotês. Does it make a difference that Demaratus uses this phrase? That he has been cast out of Sparta? That he is speaking to Xerxes? Provencal does not say. Abstracted from its particular context, the concept comes to mean "rule of law" in a quite general sense, but Herodotus has already called our attention to the quite different developments of nomoi in the Athenian and Spartan cases. Is it correct to say that the Athenians treat nomos as a despotês when the laws are regarded as products of the will of the dêmos?

Taking account of the complexity within the Hellenes also raises questions about why Herodotus would portray Persians as "sophist kings." While Provencal sets his argument against readings of Herodotus as a "relativist," he does not offer reasons for Herodotus's preference of isonomia and nomos despotês beyond their being what unified the Hellenes. Yet if this unity cannot be attributed directly to a coherent ideology, then where do we put Herodotus? Was he a partisan of Pericles or a critic? Are the Histories a paean to Greek freedom or to Athenian democracy more specifically?

The chief contribution of Sophist Kings lies in the range of evidence it adduces for the sophistry of the Persians. Yet one could draw the opposite conclusions from Provencal on the basis of the same evidence. The Persians are the heroes of the Histories, after all, and the portrayals of Cyrus and Xerxes are especially complex. Yes, they may exhibit sophistic characteristics but they are also psychologically nuanced in ways that many non-Persians are not. Provencal ends Sophist Kings by suggesting that Herodotus may well have engaged in "prolonged dialogue" with Protagoras as much as with Sophocles. Yet the dialogue with Sophocles, the sense of tragic characters struggling with their fate, seems missing. In dialogue with both Protagoras and with Sophocles, Herodotus is reducible neither to their mouthpiece nor to their antithesis. We have yet to comprehend the complexities of Herodotus's Persians – and the Histories more generally.