Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Laurens E. Tacoma, Moving Romans. Migration in Rome in the Principate. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. x, 304. ISBN 9780198768050. $110.00.

Reviewed by Anthony Álvarez Melero, Universidad de Sevilla (aalvamel@us.es)

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L'ouvrage magistral de L. E. Tacoma aborde une problématique complexe et pleinement d'actualité, la migration, centrée sur la ville de Rome durant le Principat. Ce thème s'inscrit dans un courant de recherche en vogue, comme le démontrent les deux autres volumes auxquels l'auteur a pris part en tant qu'éditeur et contributeur, traitant du même sujet, mais selon des perspectives différentes et qui ont fait l'objet de recensions déjà parues¹ ou en cours de publication dans cette revue. Quoi qu'il en soit, dans le cadre plus spécifique de ce livre, l'auteur a organisé son propos en sept chapitres que clôturent les conclusions où tous les aspects de la migration sont abordés.

En guise d'introduction (p. 1-29), l'auteur réfléchit sur la validité de la « mobility transition » défendue par le géographe américain W. Zelinsky (cf. p. 1-5), dont il reprend certaines idées, tandis qu'il passe en revue l'historiographie du sujet, où effleurent les préconceptions sur la migration, pour ne rien dire de l'absence de définition claire du phénomène. Fort heureusement, le récent accroissement de publications sur la mobilité, examinée selon une variété de thèmes parfois liés entre eux, facilite la rédaction d'un ouvrage spécifique sur la migration. En outre, l'auteur est pleinement conscient de la limitation des sources, qu'elles soient littéraires, juridiques ou épigraphiques, mais aussi des potentialités que fournissent les analyses isotopiques. L'objectif sera donc d'étudier la migration urbaine vers Rome, en laissant de côté Ostie et Portus, tout en étant conscient de l'existence d'autres mouvements de population qui n'étaient pas forcément dirigés vers les villes.

Après cette section liminaire, le premier chapitre est tout entier consacré à la définition de migration de l'auteur (p. 30-74), qui serait, selon lui, un mouvement de personnes en direction ou en provenance de Rome, qui implique un changement de résidence pendant au minimum quelques mois. En outre, des individus de tout statut social sont pris en compte, sans que le maintien, ou non, de leurs liens avec leur cité d'origine importe. De plus, tout type de mobilité, volontaire, forcée (celle des esclaves importés) ou à l'instigation de l'État (comme dans le cas des soldats), selon une subdivision que l'on verra apparaître en filigrane tout au long de l'ouvrage, est prise en considération. Sont en revanche exclus les déplacements post mortem, les mouvements à l'intérieur de la ville de Rome et les migrants au-delà de la première génération. Après ces précisions, L. E. Tacoma envisage dix types de migration, parfois concomitants sans être équivalents, qui lui permettent de revoir la typologie de Ch. Tilly (cf. p. 35-36) et de constater que le système de migration romain était particulièrement complexe : migration des élites, migration pour motifs liés à l'administration de l'Empire, à l'éducation, les déplacements d'intellectuels vers Rome, celles d'artistes, celles pour raison de travail saisonnier ou temporaire, l'immigration de pauvres, migration de commerçants, l'immigration d'esclaves et les migrations de soldats. Quoi qu'il en soit, l'immense majorité de ces individus provenaient de tous les recoins de l'Empire, faisant de l'Vrbs un pôle d'attraction très fort, sans qu'il soit toujours possible de déterminer leur origine. En revanche, si les analyses isotopiques peuvent nous fournir des indications quant au nombre de migrants, en l'absence de données statistiques, tout au plus devra-t-on compter sur des ordres de grandeur, dont la valeur pourra toujours être contestée. Ce qui ne peut faire l'objet d'aucune discussion, malgré tout, c'est la multiplicité des causes de la migration, qui prend par ailleurs, une variété de formes.

Le chapitre suivant aborde le régime migratoire romain (p. 75-105). Il s'agit donc d'examiner les questions juridiques liées à la migration. Dans quelle mesure le droit romain a-t-il favorisé, contrôlé, ou au contraire entravé, la mobilité des individus ? Quel est leur statut légal ? Comment l'acquisition de la citoyenneté romaine en Italie ou ailleurs a-t-elle pu impliquer un déplacement à Rome ? Existait-il des barrières ou fallait-il remplir des démarches imposées par l'État pour pouvoir se mouvoir librement dans l'Empire ? En quoi les expulsions de personnes considérées indésirables contribuaient-elles à contrôler les migrations et sur la base de quels critères les jugeait-on de la sorte ? Telles sont les problématiques abordées dans cette partie de l'ouvrage, qui permettent de conclure que Rome ne disposait pas de politique migratoire et que l'origine ne constituait en aucun cas un marqueur d'identité.

La famille est au cœur du chapitre 4 (p. 106-141). Puisqu'elle participe aussi au phénomène de migration, l'analyse du noyau familial ainsi que des pratiques matrimoniales fournit des clés de compréhension fort utiles. Pour ce faire, l'auteur prend pour point de départ le modèle établi par J. Hajnal (cf. p. 107-113) pour conclure que celui-ci n'est pas valide pour le monde romain, car les jeunes filles épousaient des hommes plus âgés, plus prompts à se mouvoir (entre 15-30 ans), à la différence des femmes qui le faisaient à l'occasion de leur mariage, pour se rendre auprès de leurs futurs conjoints, ou suite à un divorce et au veuvage. En effet, l'examen du « marriage market », pour lequel on dispose davantage d'information pour les soldats et les esclaves, confirme des unions au sein de la population locale ou entre immigrants. En outre, une proportion non négligeable de soldats et d'esclaves devait être restée célibataire, mais lorsqu'ils se mariaient sur le tard, ils le faisaient avec des épouses issues du même milieu. Ces noces célébrées à Rome n'empêchaient pas un retour des individus chez eux, même si ces mouvements devaient être plus fréquents pour les militaires que les autres groupes. On ne peut donc nier l'existence de déplacements individuels, y compris de femmes, qu'il est possible de nuancer selon le type de migration envisagé (forcée, volontaire ou organisée par l'État).

La forte relation qui existe entre migration et urbanisation fait l'objet du chapitre 5 (p. 142-169). C'est d'ailleurs l'occasion pour l'auteur d'établir dans quelle mesure on peut considérer comme valide la « urban migration theory » (cf. p. 144-148) formulée sous la forme d'« urban graveyard theory » par E. A. Wrigley ou de « depressed fertility theory » par A. Sharlin, conçues pour l'époque moderne, mais qu'on ne peut que partiellement appliquer à la Rome ancienne, en raison de l'absence de données et de la défaillance des sources. Pour ne prendre qu'un exemple, déterminer la taille et la composition de la population de Rome, estimée à environ 800.000 à 1.000.000 d'habitants, pose beaucoup de problèmes. Il en va de même quand il s'agit d'évaluer le taux de mortalité ou de fertilité, car des différences pouvaient se faire jour en fonction, d'une part de la densité de population et des conditions de vie des migrants, davantage sujets à une fécondité moindre. La prudence doit donc constamment être de mise.

Le lien entre migration et travail fait l'objet du chapitre 6 (p. 170-203). D'emblée, l'auteur fait face à un grand obstacle, puisqu'il est difficile d'identifier les migrants dans les sources relatives au marché du travail. En outre, ce dernier était-il suffisamment ouvert pour permettre leur inclusion dans la vie active ? Tour à tour, il examine donc la relation entre les métiers, destinés à des travailleurs qualifiés ou non, de condition libre ou servile, ainsi que la répartition entre sexes et la durée des contrats. À la vue des données collectées, concernant principalement les esclaves, on peut conclure que si les femmes migrantes semblent avoir eu moins de possibilités de se faire engager, il était relativement facile pour un nouveau venu de trouver du travail, bien que cela ait contraint à une migration temporaire.

Le chapitre 7, quant à lui, aborde le rapport entre la migration et l'acculturation (p. 204-240). Contrairement à ce que l'on pourrait penser, dans une cité cosmopolite comme l'était Rome, il n'y a pas de signe de formation de communautés fermées de migrants, hormis peut-être pour les Juifs. Il convient plutôt de parler de réseaux. De plus, l'auteur, tout en rappelant que les identités sont subjectives, souligne que cela n'empêche nullement l'existence de groupes ethniques aux limites bien définies, en fonction également de la société d'accueil. Qui plus est, si l'on s'intéresse à la langue parlée comme marqueur d'identité, on doit constater l'emploi généralisé en public du latin et du grec, dans une moindre mesure, dont la connaissance contribue grandement à se mouvoir et à s'intégrer, tandis que le nabatéen, le syriaque ou le punique l'étaient dans un contexte privé. Du point de vue religieux, en revanche, il subsistait davantage de cas de figure, avec certains cultes qui semblent davantage ouverts aux migrants, en l'absence de collegia d'étrangers. En raison du faible sens de communauté des immigrants, on peut avoir recours à la « network theory » de M. Granovetter (cf. p. 238-240) pour décrire la nature des liens, étroits ou non, crées entre ceux-ci, et qui s'appliquent mieux aux commerçants, dont les rapports sont forts, car basés nécessairement, en raison de leurs activités, sur la confiance.

Enfin, le dernier chapitre (p. 241-267) fait le récapitulatif des thématiques envisagées dans l'ouvrage, tout en soulignant les limites et les perspectives, telles que, par exemple, celles liées à la « transport transition », que l'auteur développe davantage ici. C'est l'occasion pour lui de rappeler que la mobilité était rendue possible grâce aux transports, avec leurs problèmes liés aux techniques, malgré les risques inhérents au voyage, mais avec des infrastructures de grande qualité, qui favorisaient les déplacements par voie terrestre et maritime.

En conclusion, L. E. Tacoma offre au lecteur une réflexion pénétrante sur la migration à Rome, fondée sur un socle historiographique solide et un examen attentif et soigné d'ouvrages ou d'articles, certes consacrés à des époques plus récentes et très souvent rédigés en langue anglaise, mais qui permettent d'entrevoir la richesse du sujet. En outre, la méthodologie cohérente et rigoureuse pour étudier cette problématique dans le cadre de l'Vrbs durant le Principat, grâce à une connaissance approfondie des sources anciennes, mais aussi des apports des analyses isotopiques, contribue également à rendre l'ouvrage désormais incontournable pour toute future publication sur ce thème. Pour toutes ces raisons, on peut en recommander la lecture, profitable et stimulante, à tous ceux qui souhaitent s'intéresser à cette thématique pour d'autres régions du monde romain.

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Notes:

1.   BMCR 2016.10.43.

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Don Adams, Socrates Mystagogos: Initiation into Inquiry. London; New York: Routledge, 2016. Pp. x, 189. ISBN 9781472484833. $150.00.

Reviewed by Andreas Avgousti, Columbia University (aa2773@columbia.edu)

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How should we think about what Socrates is doing when he engages this or that youth in conversation? Don Adams' book offers an answer to this question, inspired by an ancient Greek religious ritual: Socrates is on a mystagogic mission to sting his interlocutor into an epistemological state of inquiry. Socrates, or more precisely, Plato's Socrates, does not dissemble when he says he knows nothing, for he is not the hierophant who reveals the knowledge of the mysteries to the initiated. For Adams, Socrates' mystagogic mission is sufficient: the initiated agent can now confront the world and uncover knowledge for himself, without needing the hierophant. Socrates Mystagogos: Initiation into Inquiry is a thought-provoking defense of Socratic practice that will be of interest to a mixed, if not quite well-defined, scholarly audience.

Following a short Preface, which I sketch for illustrative purposes below, Socrates Mystagogos is divided into four chapters, bookended by an Introduction that outlines the argument and a Conclusion that serves as an extension of the preceding chapter. Chapter 1, while titled 'Socratic skepticism', is mostly about Aristophanes and comedy; Socrates mystagogos in Plato's Apology appears in the chapter's last section and is intended as a response to Aristophanes' culturally conservative critique of Socratic practice. Chapter 2 delves deep into 'Socratic epistemology', as its title faithfully signals. Adams deals with some problems contemporary epistemologists attribute to Socrates and answers them both on their own ground and through the metaphor of Socrates mystagogos. Chapter 3, 'Socratic Method', is continuous with this effort. Adams defends 'a "constructivist" view of Socrates mystagogos' (4), which is to say that Socrates is both an elegant refuter of the moral beliefs of his interlocutor and someone who 'has made a good-faith effort to discover the truth' (4). Chapter 4, 'Socratic piety', argues that Socrates disobeys the state because he is pious and humble before the law (nomos). In this last chapter and in the Conclusion, Adams pulls Socrates close to Martin Luther King Jr., in order to, first, draw a contrast between their kind of civil disobedience with that of Thoreau and Gandhi, and, second, to offer Socrates' view as one that 'we not only can but should take seriously today' (5).

A worry for any author who, like Adams, puts forth Socrates as a figure worthy of imitation is that Socrates is inimitable. How are we supposed to imitate his example of, say, having injustice being done to us rather than doing it ourselves? How plausible is it that we would opt to stay in prison, rebuffing the offer of a way out by an influential and capable friend? By dressing Socrates in a role that makes sense only in the framework of an attested if under-described cult ritual, Adams' mystagogos metaphor guides the reader away from these worries, while also preserving Socrates' aura as a pious man on a mission from the Delphic oracle. Also successful is Adams' claim in Chapter 1 that subversion does not necessarily follow from transgression (8-9). Here he coins the term 'unversive' as an antonym of 'subversive' to describe Aristophanic comedy. Take, for example, the portrayal of Socrates and Chaerephon as being obsessed with fleas in the Clouds. 'They violate cultural norms of hygiene, but not in such a way as to undermine our own commitment to obeying those norms… in fact the effect is quite unversive since they make themselves look unhygienic and ridiculous' (21). This is especially salutary for contemporary readers of ancient texts who infer subversion from transgression.

Adams' breadth of knowledge is on show in Socrates Mystagogos. Adams ranges from modern psychology in his discussion of laughter and grief in Greek ritual (11, 25-6) to engagement with scholars in the analytic tradition working on Socrates, such as Vlastos, Irwin, and Benson in chapter 3, and from close philological attention to what he regards as Lamb's mistranslation of hupetethê as 'we assumed' at Charmides 160d (62) to his discussion of experimental reasoning in the philosophy of science to argue for the reasonableness of Socrates' refutations (90-94). Adams also treats his reader to several and frequent excursions to the poetry of archaic Greece and to texts from the Hebrew Bible (which, oddly, and unlike every other text from the archaic and classical world, are not mentioned in the book's Index locorum).

Yet the breadth of knowledge that Adams chooses to deploy gives the impression that the audience of the book is ad hoc; to put it differently, it is hard to see the inner logic of the varying demands Adams makes of his reader. Granted, a likely reader of Socrates Mystagogos will have some competence in ancient political thought and some interest in the figure of Socrates. To follow the heart of the book in chapters 2 and 3, however, the reader must also be familiar with contemporary debates in epistemology. For example, in Chapter 2 Adams frames his discussion of the Charmides using Geach, Wittgenstein, Pryor, and Audi (47, 53, 57-8). His concern is to show how what Geach dubs Socratic fallacy is only alleged. For someone who is unfamiliar with the stakes of contemporary debates, the book is hard to follow at such moments. There is an additional question about the purpose of Adams' discussion. Does the reader need the detour through the jargon and the acronyms of contemporary epistemology to establish that 'Socrates' skepticism consists in urging us to seek greater epistemic maturity with respect to our important beliefs about virtue' (80)? Presumably contemporary epistemologists are not concerned with the presentation of Socrates or even how Socrates argues, but with a fallacy that appears in the Socratic dialogues. These are not 'misconceptions of Socrates' philosophical activity' (43), but rather concerns about what a sound epistemological claim looks like. At other moments in the book, Adams speaks to a broader audience. Socrates embodies 'a critical and self-critical' enterprise or examination or questioning (33; thrice on 35, 41, 145, 166, 170 et passim). This turns out to be a kind of slogan in the book and a pithy way of communicating to the general reader the standard by which she should judge her life ("general" only by comparison to the reader who is competent in contemporary epistemology). The later comparisons of Socrates to Thoreau, Gandhi, and King convey a similar impression, for they do not presume a familiarity with their biography and body of work. Indeed, Adams gives no context for any of these authors. While these comparisons fare well in Chapter 4, Adams overlooks how one major assumption that Thoreau, Gandhi, and King share is questionable today: the sovereignty of the state over its boundaries and its resources in the face of worldwide problems such as global warming. How, if at all, does Socrates' mystagogic mission and the practice it suggests for us, change before such quandaries?

The apparent intention to make Socrates speak to a contemporary non-expert audience brings us to another drawback of Adams' book: its ambivalence about the gap between the ancients and the moderns, an ambivalence that, whatever else it does, gets in the way of its organizing metaphor of Socrates mystagogos. This ambivalence is compactly displayed in the four-paragraph-long Preface. Adams begins by telling his reader about the ancient cult ritual of hidden mysteries in which the initiate passes from the mystagogos to the hierophant, providing an etymology of these two words. Adams uses understatement to introduce the reader to the thesis of the book: 'The cult role of the mystagogos isn't a bad analogy for Socrates' philosophizing' (ix). For Adams, Socrates does not convert his interlocutor, but only urges him 'to take conventional wisdom about virtue and how we ought to live more, not less, seriously' (ix). Seizing on the disanalogy between the religious ritual and Socratic practices, namely that the hierophant is present only in the former, Adams transitions from ancient to contemporary terms: 'there is something "preservative" or "conservative" about the philosophizing of Socrates mystagogos…[but also] there is something "liberal" in his attempt to turn his initiates into their own hierophants. Each of us must make a good-faith effort to discover what is true, lawful, right and holy' (ix). The concluding short paragraph of the Preface restates this point, pinpointing the difficulty in the case Adams wants to make: 'Socrates mystagogos does not come easily into focus today because we tend to separate free-thinking liberals from dyed-in-the-wool conservatives' (x).

It is true that these descriptions make the hero of the book more familiar to the reader; she might even come to recognize 'Socrates' distinctively liberal conservatism' (43), itself a resolution of the puzzle of Socrates as 'individualistic or libertarian [in the Apology, by contrast to Socrates] in the Crito [where] he seems beyond Tory' (6). Socrates is a 'conservative/liberal mystagogue' (54). Yet, the meaning of the terms 'conservative' and 'liberal' is overly broad, often running together the political and cultural sense of the terms (see, for example, 5, 7, 13, 24, 26, et passim). In an endnote in the last chapter Adams writes, 'So far, I have used the liberal/conservative dichotomy to indicate the contrast between open-mindedly questioning as opposed to deferentially obeying traditional nomoi' (159n5). This caricatures both the liberal, who is not open-minded about the right to freedom of speech and thought, and the conservative, whose deference to the nomoi is at once owed and freely given. The endnote also serves as a warning that Adams will add a further distinction 'between a liberal "Cartesian" theory of civil disobedience and a conservative "Burkian" theory [after Edmund Burke]. On the liberal theory, we are free to judge by standards or our own choosing…on the conservative theory there is no legitimate standard higher than our inherited rights and liberties' (138). It is not clear what justifies this move. Adams writes: 'Socrates' focus [in the Crito] is relevantly similar to Burke's politico-epistemic humility: who am I to question the law?' (148) and describes Socrates as 'a pre-modern pre-Burkian conservative' (150). Here Adams comes perilously close to projecting modern ideologies onto Socrates' hermeneutic, which he describes as 'obedience to the law properly interpreted and applied' (150, emphasis in the original). More importantly, what purchase does it have for a reader that something is branded with the same, historically-insensitive dichotomous labels across several fields of inquiry?

I conclude with a demonstration of the thought-provoking character of the book. Its subtitle, 'Initiation into inquiry', stimulates timely questions for anyone involved in education. Is there a role for sanction or the threat thereof in such an initiation? Is sanction or the threat thereof either necessary or legitimate for inquiry to get started? Alternatively, what excludes the use of literal falsehoods, such as the true lie at the founding of Kallipolis in Plato's Republic? Or is a mystagogos permitted to use such stories? Adams successfully provokes these reflections in his reader. And rightly so, for it appears that he conceives of philosophy as a practical science or activity. As he didactically puts it in his conclusion to chapter 3: 'So do your homework, think carefully about your options, by all means listen to others who seem to you to have some wisdom, and when you make a responsible choice, go forward with hope, for with hope we can face even death itself with some serenity' (124). Upon reading this, I could not help but be reminded of the lesson of the myth of Er, the morality tale Socrates relates at the end of the Republic.

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Katharina Lorenz, Ancient Mythological Images and their Interpretation: An Introduction to Iconology, Semiotics, and Image Studies in Classical Art History. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 288. ISBN 9780521139724. $34.99 (pb).

Reviewed by Amanda Herring, Loyola Marymount University (amanda.herring@lmu.edu)

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Katharina Lorenz's book is a welcome addition to the field of classical art history. Aimed at students, the text functions as an introduction to the use of art historical theories and methodologies in the study of mythological imagery. Lorenz describes three methodologies, iconology, semiotics, and image studies, analyzes their use in previous scholarship, and applies them to the same three ancient artworks. Lorenz positions her book as an experiment. The goal of the book is to consider how we study ancient mythological imagery, rather than specific conclusions on Greek and Roman art.

In the introduction, "The experiment: methods–images–objects," Lorenz outlines her approach to the material and highlights a number of current issues facing the discipline, including how to position the study of classical imagery within the larger field of art history. As she emphasizes, there exist methodological and disciplinary divides between scholars of ancient and modern art. Most current texts on art historical theory examine the art of the post-antique world; relatively few publications analyze these theories specifically in regards to ancient Greek or Roman art. Arguing for the value of art historical methodologies as a tool for the interpretation of ancient art, Lorenz encourages a greater engagement between scholars of classical art and the wider discipline. At the same time, she argues against an exclusive study of theory at the expense of the image. Lorenz's introduction is timely, and an important addition to current discussions among classical art historians as we determine the future direction of our field.

In the first chapter, "Introducing iconology," Lorenz outlines the main tenets of iconology as well as tracing the development of the methodology through the works of its major writers. She begins with Erwin Panofsky, summarizing his three-stage process of iconological analysis before moving on to a discussion of other thinkers, including notably Alois Riegl, Aby Warburg, and Ernst Cassirer, and their influence on Panofsky and his development of iconology. She ends the chapter with a study of iconology after Panofsky, highlighting the critiques of Georges Didi-Huberman, who argues that Panofsky's iconology ignores the viewer and the process of viewing.

While Lorenz's direct engagement with the primary source material is thorough, since Lorenz does not tailor her summary of iconology specifically for ancient art, the chapter covers material that can be found in a number of other texts on art historical theories. It is not until Chapter 3, and the sections on semiotics and image studies follow the same organizational format, that she discusses iconology in terms of ancient art and examines how iconology has been used in classical scholarship. In addition, while the introductory nature of the material covered in the book clearly indicates that it is aimed at students, the language and syntax she utilizes complicate her explanations of the methodologies, and may make the book difficult reading for students at the undergraduate, and perhaps even graduate, level.

The chapter introducing iconology is followed by "Iconology in action," in which Lorenz applies iconological analysis three well-chosen and well-known artworks: a fifth-century BCE Attic red-figure hydria depicting the Judgment of Paris now housed in Karlsruhe, the Hellenistic gigantomachy frieze from the Great Altar at Pergamon, and a second-century CE Roman sarcophagus depicting Meleager on his deathbed (Louvre, Ma 539). Each case study is self-contained. Lorenz's discussion of the Karlsruhe hydria considers the Oriental dress of Paris in light of its production in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Her analysis of the Pergamon frieze compares the frieze to earlier representations of the gigantomachy, focusing on classical Athenian compositions. Finally, her discussion of the Louvre sarcophagus considers how the depiction of Meleager as both hunter and warrior evokes Roman virtues.

In "Narratives of object and meaning," Lorenz unpacks how she utilized iconology in each case study. Using specific examples from the case studies, she considers how iconology can be used to elucidate meaning in the artwork, examining its strengths and challenges. For example, she highlights iconology's contextualization of an image within historical context — the hydria in relation to Athenian social practices, the Great Altar frieze in light of Pergamon's relationship with Athens, and the Louvre sarcophagus as a commemoration of a Roman life during a period of political instability. Lorenz's evaluation of iconology is both thoughtful and thought-provoking, and along with the later reflections on semiotics and image studies, serves as one of the most valuable sections of the book.

Next, Lorenz creates a historiography of iconology specifically for ancient art, considering how previous scholars have utilized the methodology. Lorenz begins with examinations of two books with similar goals to her own: Looking at Greek Art by Mark Stansbury-O'Donnell and Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths: an Introduction by Klaus Junker. Lorenz then analyzes specific scholarly studies in relation to the chosen methodology, including notably the work of Otto Brendel.

Lorenz then moves onto the next methodology: semiotics. The section follows the same format as that on iconology with three similarly titled and formatted chapters. "Introducing semiotics" describes the methodology as developed in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce before giving a short introduction to structuralism and post-structuralism focusing on the work of Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Mieke Bal.

In "Semiotics in action," Lorenz considers the same three artworks. Lorenz's semiotic analysis of each object focuses on how the interactions between the figures and their arrangement within the composition communicate specific thematic messages. With the Karlsruhe hydria, she focuses on how the theme of desire is conveyed. Her examination of the Pergamon frieze considers how the familial relationships between the gods are shown, and how an overall theme of the gods as a unified group who enforce order in the universe is indicated. Finally, with the Louvre sarcophagus, she analyzes how the interwoven ideas of love, loss, and vengeance are communicated.

In "Narratives of sign and signification," she examines how the ahistorical nature of semiotics can be utilized within a historical framework. She also compares semiotics to iconology, considering how each approach differs and how the utilization of each methodology led to different insights in the case studies. For instance, she argues that semiotics' focus on the production of meaning allowed for a greater understanding of the roles of age and gender in Roman concepts of mourning displayed on the Louvre sarcophagus. The second half of the chapter's considers how scholars of classical art including Tonio Hölscher, Jas Elsner, and Luca Giulani utilize semiotics in their work and consider questions of form and style, the gaze, and narrative.

In chapter 7, "Introducing image studies." Lorenz begins by defining the parameters of image studies as broader than that of traditional art history with its incorporation wider variety of visual imagery. She then includes an explanation of her use of the term image studies, arguing that it encompasses both Anglo-American visual culture studies and German Bildwissenschaft, before tracing the development of the two approaches, focusing on the work of William J. T. Mitchell, Gottfied Boehm, and Hans Belting.

In Chapter 8, "Image studies in action," Lorenz compares the Karlsruhe hydria to other depictions of the Judgment of Paris and analyzes how the hydria communicated narrative visually. The Pergamon frieze case study is Lorenz's first examination of the sculpture within its architectural framework. She analyzes the physical process of viewing, arguing that it was key to the communication of messages of both divine and Attalid power. Finally, her examination of the Louvre sarcophagus focuses on Atalanta, arguing that she plays a central role in the construction of a narrative that asks a Roman viewer to ignore certain aspects of the well-known myth to communicate specific allegorical meanings.

In "Narratives of space and perspective," Lorenz argues that image studies overcomes some of the limitations of iconology and semiotics by both treating the artwork as an object as considered by iconology and as a social process as examined by semiotics. She then examines the usage of image studies in classical art scholarship considering the work of Bettina Bergmann and Richard Neer.

In the final chapter, "The study of mythological images as a threesome – assessing the experiment," Lorenz analyzes the strengths and limitations of the methodologies and their application in the case studies. She brings together the conclusions made in each case study and considers both how the interaction of the methodologies can produce further insights. This conclusion provides a model for how to use multiple methodologies in tandem, and reemphasizes the importance of considering the process as well as the conclusions in the study of ancient art.

Overall, Lorenz's book is successful. The case studies exemplifying effective applications of art historical methodologies, as well as the well-researched footnotes and bibliography, make the book a valuable resource for students. In addition, it is important that we as scholars continue to reflect on the discipline and ask ourselves and our students how we study ancient art and why these methodologies are valuable. Lorenz's book not only asks these questions, but helps students to answer them.

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Nicole Belayche, Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge (ed.), Fabriquer du divin: Constructions et ajustements de la répresentation des dieux dans l'Antiquité. Collection Religions : 5. Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2015. Pp. 239; 22 p. of plates. ISBN 9782875620712. €30.00.

Reviewed by Ennio Sanzi (enniosanzi@libero.it)

Version at BMCR home site

[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

Il mondo degli dei è una costruzione umana, certamente organizzata ma instabile. Costantemente messo in questione e riconfigurato, allo sguardo dello storico offre una plasticità che si manifesta al massimo grado proprio in un contesto politeistico. Dal momento che questi sistemi religiosi, che rubrichiamo sotto la comune definizione di politeismo, non si basano su rappresentazioni dogmatiche elaborate alla luce di testi rivelati o emanate da un'indiscutibile autorità centrale, elaborazioni di innovazione e/o messa a punto si susseguono senza soluzione di continuità dando luogo a veri e propri ateliers in cui vengono a realizzarsi azioni di "bricolage". Il compito dello storico, allora, sarà rivolto alla comprensione dei diversi modi (plastici, letterari, rituali...) di "fabbricare" la/le divinità e di coglierne la specifica portata in relazione alla struttura e al funzionamento dei sistemi religiosi complessi, quali quelli attestati nel bacino del Mediterraneo (compreso il cristianesimo) e nei quali esse ricoprono "funzioni" proprie.

Con un programma così accattivante, N. Belayche e V. Pirenne-Delforge introducono immediatamente il lettore in quello che è lo spirito inspiratore (ci si perdoni il gioco di parole) dell'intero volume. Esso, infatti, è la pubblicazione delle comunicazioni presentate in occasione dell'ultimo colloquio del progetto "FIGVRA. La représentation du divin dans les mondes grec et romain", tenutosi a Parigi tra 15 e il 17 marzo 2012; un progetto realizzato sotto l'egida di N. Belayche grazie al finanziamento del Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) e che ha visto il costituirsi tra il 2008 e il 2012 di una vera comunità scientifica internazionale composta da specialisti delle diverse scienze dell'antichità; in occasione numerosi incontri di studio che hanno avuto luogo a Parigi come a Tolosa, a Liegi come ad Atene e Rennes questa équipe ha analizzato la "fabbricazione" del divino e delle divinità attraversando alcuni fra i più significativi terreni dell'indagine storico-religiosa quali la magia, l'iconografia, il sacrificio, il rapporto con gli dèi stranieri, sempre con un occhio attento al dibattito in corso nel seno della comunità scientifica internazionale e al costante progresso bibliografico.

Il volume è ripartito in tre sezioni, precedute da un'introduzione, e seguite da un indice generale e ventidue tavole di immagini che corredano alcuni contributi. Nell'introduzione, "«Fabriquer du divin»: en guise de prélude...", le curatrici, oltre a quanto riportato all'inizio di questa recensione, sottolineano come lo scopo dell'intero volume sia quello di riflettere sulla costruzione del divino, e che in tale chiave analitica confluiscano a pari titolo tutti quei processi di modificazione e di rielaborazione che determinano una reinterpretazione del divino e della/e divinità. A tal fine vengono presi in considerazione e ritenuti di pari dignità tanto la produzione letteraria ed il genere a cui essa è di volta in volta riconducibile, quanto i momenti rituali, nella legittima convinzione che lo studio dei due fenomeni (uno speculativo, l'altro "applicativo"), se intesi in chiave di reciprocità, conduca a una migliore ricostruzione della "fabbricazione" del divino.

La prima sezione, "Traditions mythiques et images" si compone di tre contributi. Il primo, "De la steppe au bateau céleste ou comment Inanna accomplit son destin entre mythe et rite", di C. Bonnet e I. Slobodzianek, si concentra sul mondo mesopotamico e analizza, da una parte, il mito di Inanna ed Enki legato alla vicenda della dea che sottrae al dio Enki quei poteri che le permetteranno di avere ad Uruk il suo luogo di culto, dall'altra le lamentazioni che commemorano la distruzione delle città sumere; il confronto tra questi due tipi di documenti permette agli autori di mettere bene in luce il rapporto tra la dimensione mitica e quella rituale col fine di comprendere meglio la "fabbricazione" di un divino reso stabile dalla ritualità. Il secondo contributo, "Héra et les enfants de Zeus: la 'fabrique' de l'Olympe entre textes et images", di G. Pironti e V. Pirenne-Delforge, si concentra sull'interazione tra la dimensione iconografica e testuale. Il campione preso in esame è identificato nel rapporto tra Era, da una parte, e Atena, Dioniso ed Eracle, dall'altra; si tratta di figli "illegittimi" messi al mondo da Zeus, il suo sposo. La nota gelosia della dea eternata dalle fonti letterarie viene messa in discussione alla luce di alcune rappresentazioni vascolari dove la stessa Era con il suo atteggiamento materno legittima fin dalla nascita il ruolo "olimpico" proprio delle tre figure divine. La dimensione iconografica diviene centrale nel terzo contributo, "Créer en images l'identité divine? Achille – Dionysos – Jésus: le bain du nouveau-né", di A.-Fr. Jacottet, dove a farla da padrone è l'immagine della lavatio che segue la nascita di Achille, Dioniso e Gesù. Se nel primo caso, tale azione, segna l'entrata nella vita umana del nuovo nato e in qualche modo evoca anche la fine della vita stessa, negli altri due, invece, il bagno definisce la natura umana tanto di Dioniso che di Gesù, e si rivela una premessa necessaria per esprimerne la dimensione divina.

La seconda sezione, "Spéculations érudites et dynamiques visuelles en contexte romain", già dal titolo lascia comprendere che si tratterà di momento analitico dedicato esclusivamente al mondo religioso romano. Il primo contributo, "The Role of Priests in Constructing the Divine in Ancient Rome", di J. Rüpke, si concentra sul ruolo svolto dai sacerdoti a Roma a cavallo tra la fine della cosiddetta età repubblicana e l'inizio di quella imperiale per mettere in luce come in forza delle rispettive e specifiche conoscenze proprio loro abbiano contribuito alla costruzione del divino anche in relazione serrato allo stretto rapporto nei confronti delle magistrature urbane. Nel secondo contributo, "Spéculation érudite et religion. L'interaction entre l'érudition et les reformes religieuses à Rome", J. Scheid torna sul rapporto che intercorre tra la pratica e la speculazione in ambito religioso con particolare attenzione al ruolo dei sacerdoti e della loro erudizione, i culti arcaicizzanti e i ludi saeculares frutto della volontà politica di Augusto; è proprio grazie all'intervento erudito, infatti, che si riesce a sostenere quanto possa essere riutilizzato a livello cultuale, anche quando tale ri-attualizzazione risponda ad esigenze non sempre nel solco del mos maiorum. Nel terzo contributo, "La construction du divin au prisme des processions à Rome", S. Estienne si concentra sul ruolo giocato dalle processioni nella "fabbricazione" del divino, particolarmente sulla pompa circensis che all'inizio del principato contempla la presenza del divus Giulio Cesare; d'ora in poi, ci sarà sempre uno spazio in tale tipo di cerimonia religiosa per gli imperatori divinizzati. Il quarto contributo, "Points de vue sur les dieux. Temples et théâtres, problèmes de visibilité", di O. de Cazanove e Fr. Fouriaux, indaga sulle modalità di "fabbricazione" del divino che possono essere sottese alla connessione spaziale tra tempio e teatro. Partendo dalle realtà archeologiche di Cicognier ad Avenches e di alcuni siti dell'Italia repubblicana gli studiosi mettono bene in luce come l'interconnessione che lega i due luoghi abbia la funzione di stabilire un rapporto tra le divinità e i fedeli mettendo in luce la superiorità delle prime ma anche la loro presenza in occasione delle rappresentazioni.

La terza sezione "Dynamiques narratives et performances" si concentra soprattutto sulla produzione testuale e l'eventuale vincolo imposto dal genere letterario di riferimento. Il primo contributo, "Voir et entendre le dieu apo mêkanês d'Euripide", di P. Brulé, è relativo all'escamotage del deus ex machina tipico della produzione dell'ultimo periodo dei tragediografi . Prendendo come punto di riferimento l'apparizione di Atena nell'Eretteo, dei Dioscuri nell'Elena e ancora di Atena nell'Ifigenia in Tauride, si dimostra come per gli spettatori convenuti la prova della veridicità di quanto "rivelato" dagli dèi stia soprattutto nella realtà di quanto annunciato, nelle esigenze di composizione imposte dalla drammaticità della guerra in corso, nel bisogno di un futuro migliore per la città. Il secondo contributo, "Les performances hymniques, un 'lieu' de fabrique de la représentation du divin", di N. Belayche, si concentra su esempi di produzione innodica datati tra il II e il V secolo d.C. per verificare come nel milieu di tale genere letterario la tendenza generale relativa alla "fabbricazione" del divino si connoti piuttosto per una tendenza conservatrice non estranea, da una parte, alla ricerca del consenso generale (non ultimo quello del potere politico), dall'altra, fondata su una compartecipazione tra la rappresentazione della/e divinità e il condiviso immaginario collettivo. Il terzo contributo, "Chanter les dieux dans la société chrétienne: les Hymnes de Proclus dans le contexte culturel et religieux de leur temps", di G. Agosti, prende in esame la produzione innodica del noto filosofo neoplatonico del V sec. d.C., per sostenere come in forza di precise strategie testuali tale produzione, si ricolleghi al più ampio e ben attestato progetto della produzione poetica contemporanea di entrare in "competizione" con la religione cristiana oramai affermata e con la sua ottica di rappresentazione del divino. Il quarto e ultimo contributo, "Les représentations valentiniennes du divin sont-elles modelées par le rituel gnostique?", di J.-D. Dubois, si concentra sulla dimensione rituale delle diverse comunità riconducibili alla speculazione di Valentino per dimostrare, attraverso un'analisi puntuale fondata sulle testimonianze eresiologiche come sulla documentazione diretta in copto, come il battesimo valentiniano non sia esente dalla costruzione "mitica" della figura di Sofia e per auspicare un approfondimento in tale direzione al fine di recuperare meglio il sostrato medio-platonico che ha ben contribuito alle speculazioni teosofiche di stampo valentiniano.

Tutti i contributi, seppur così distanti per temi e relative cronologie, còlti nella loro specificità e nella dialettica che li connota, nel loro insieme mettono lo studioso in condizione di sensibilizzarsi nei confronti di una tematica tanto significativa quanto trasversale quale è la "fabbricazione" del divino.

Table of Contents

N. Belayche, V. Pirenne-Delforge, 'Fabriquer du divin' : en guise de prélude 7
Traditions mythiques et images
C. Bonnet, I. Slobodzianek, De la steppe au bateau céleste ou comment Inanna accomplit son destin entre mythe et rite 21
G. Pironti, V. Pirenne-Delforge, Héra et les enfants de Zeus : la 'fabrique' de l'Olympe entre textes et images 41
A.-Fr. Jacottet, Créer en images l'identité divine ? Achille – Dionysos – Jésus : le bain du nouveau né 59
Spéculations érudites et dynamiques visuelles en contexte romain
J. Rüpke, The Role of Priests in Constructing the Divine in Ancient Rome 79
J. Scheid, Spéculation érudite et religion. L'interaction entre l'érudition et les reformes religieuses à Rome 93
S. Estienne, La construction du divin au prisme des processions à Rome 105
O. de Cazanove, Fr. Fouriaux, Points de vue sur les dieux. Temples et théâtres, problèmes de visibilité 127
Dynamiques narratives et performances
P. Brulé, Voir et entendre le dieu apo mêkanês d'Euripide 143
N. Belayche, Les performances hymniques, un 'lieu' de fabrique de la représentation du divin 167
G. Agosti, Chanter les dieux dans la société chrétienne: les Hymnes de Proclus dans le contexte culturel et religieux de leur temps 183
J.-D. Dubois, Les représentations valentiniennes du divin sont-elles modelées par le rituel gnostique? 213
Index 227
List des planches 237
Planches 240
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Guy G. Stroumsa, The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. 184. ISBN 9780674545137. $39.95.

Reviewed by Philip Burton, University of Birmingham (P.H.Burton@bham.ac.uk)

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Guy G. Stroumsa has over recent years done as much as anyone to bring together people engaged in the general study of late-antique Mediterranean culture and religion, whose work might otherwise have been pigeonholed into disparate academic disciplines. Such titles as Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Christianity and Early Judaism (co-edited with Graham Stanton, 1998), Dream Cultures: Towards a Comparative History of Dreaming (co-edited with David Shulman, 1999), and Homer, the Bible, and Beyond (with Margalit Finkelberg, 2003) tell their own story. The present volume is offered as 'a sequel of sorts' to Stroumsa's 2005 monograph La fin du sacrifice. Mutations religieuses dans l'antiquité tardive (English translation The End of Sacrifice, 2009).

In the Introduction to this work, Stroumsa outlines what he means by 'scriptural universe'. It is the rise of a book-based model of religion in late antiquity, common to Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam. He intends to approach this not with reference to matters such as canon-formation and hermeneutics, but rather looking at 'patterns of reading … performative and emotional aspects of books' (p. 2).

Chapter one ('A Scriptural Galaxy') looks at the general role of books in late-antique religion, considering briefly such matters as the availability and circulation of books, the development of 'helps for readers', and the rise of religious education as 'a scholarly venture, rather than a praxis-based skill' (p. 5), leading to the rise of communities defined by their shared books.

Chapter two ('A Divine Palimpsest') is a brief consideration of the relationship between memory, individual and collective, and books. Stroumsa introduces also the concept of implicit and explicit religious memory. Christianity is presented as a palimpsest, an overwriting of the existing Jewish tradition which 'never fully efface[s] the ancient text.' Reference is made to Sigmund Freud.

Chapter three ('Religious Revolution and Cultural Change') address the rather portentous question of 'what will be revealed when religion and culture are written anew' (p. 40). The answer is that under the new dispensation 'a single scriptural corpus constituted the core of the new religious education', and that the ethical implementation of this education 'explains the basic Christian attitude to pagans books and to traditional paideia' (p. 54).

Chapter four ('Scripture and Culture') deals with hermeneutical communities in late antiquity, that is, 'secondary canons and hermeneutical writings', and the ways in early Christian communities engaged with Greek intellectual traditions.

Chapter five ('The New Self and Reading Practices') reverts to Stroumsa's Foucaultian concern with Christianity as a form of care for the self, and considers the question (now familiar through the work of Brian Stock and others) of how far this is caused and reflected by the new reading practices in Christianity, especially in monasticism. Augustine is invoked as the apostle of the 'reflexive self'.

Chapter six ('Communities of Knowledge') addresses the relationship between gnōsis, specifically 'soteriological knowledge' (p. 90), and epistemē (sic), the 'factual' religious knowledge taught in the public schools of late antiquity.

Chapter seven ('Eastern Wisdom') revisits a topic Stroumsa has made his own elsewhere, namely that of 'the fascination, even infatuation, with the East and its traditions of wisdom' (p. 7). Chapter eight ('A World Full of Letters') develops a particular aspect of this, namely the widespread 'ontological status given to the letters of the alphabet' (p. 107). This is, I think, the most successful chapter of the book, in which Stroumsa deploys his wide linguistic knowledge to good effect in demonstrating a tradition common to different parts of the eastern Mediterranean and its hinterland; it is only surprising that much consideration is not given to the Greek magical papyri.

Chapter nine ('Scriptural and Personal Authority') considers another familiar issue in early Christian studies, namely the tension between institutional and individual forms of leadership. Both sorts, Stroumsa argues, can use literacy to reinforce status: institutional leaders as shapers of canons and as gatekeepers of interpretation, holy men and women as 'scribe and subjects of hagiographical works' (p. 127, citing Rapp). Conclusions, notes, acknowledgements, and index conclude.

This, then, is a book by a leading international scholar, on a wide-ranging whose role in shaping the modern world—for better or for worse —cannot be doubted. It is also a book with an avowedly irenic purpose, aiming to bring the Abrahamic religions into a single compass, and break down old oriental/occidental divisions. Yet I find it difficult to be as enthusiastic as I would like, for three main reasons.

First, there is a marked tendency to paint in bold strokes and bright colours. Consider, for instance, the early programmatic statement we are told that 'traditional approaches to early Christianity (studied, almost, as if it had grown in a vacuum) are fraught with theological preconceptions and methodological misperceptions' (p. 2). It is true that there are many books with the phrase 'the early church' in the title, and that such phrases may reveal a central concern with the institutions of early Christianity, perceived as a single whole. But how far does this reflect recent scholarship? Even if we go back half a century, to Chadwick's or Frend's The Early Church, it is hard to say that either author considers the matter in a vacuum. I am not suggesting that Stroumsa has Chadwick or Frend in mind, but he must have someone—if this 'traditional approach' is not merely a straw man. As for his 'methodological misperceptions', we are all against sin—but how, precisely, do we distinguish a misperception from any other sort of perception? Elsewhere, there is a tendency to somewhat woolly truism ('The ethos of a society, its essential character, guides its beliefs and ideals and constitutes the foundation of its ethics', p. 41), and to statements which might be true but which really need some grounding in the data ('For the Christians, memory is essentially "the memory of God" (mnēmē theou …'). This broad-brush style may be inevitable in a book with ambitious intellectual goals. It may be a side-effect of the genesis of at least some chapters in his 2011 Birkbeck Lectures in Trinity College, Cambridge. It may be exacerbated by the use of endnotes rather than footnotes or in-text references. But in any case, a more documented argument might have been more persuasive.¹

Secondly, there is a notably prominent version of a feature typical of all Stroumsa's writing, namely his desire to locate his interpretations of late-antique culture within a wider modern intellectual framework. Admirable in itself, it here approaches a stylistic tic. Thus in the course of a few pages (30-2) we are introduced to 'the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs', whose 'Bergsonian taxonomy' of memory in turn leads to a 'Halbwachsian reduction of religion to memory', which is then elucidated with reference to the views of 'the French sociologist Danielle Hervieu-Léger'; at which point the torch is taken up by 'the Oxford social anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse' and his neo-Weberian approach, and so on. Often the impression is less that of close engagement with the sources, and more that of a very powerful telescope trained on an immensely distant object.

At times the theoretica overshadow the data. To take one example, in Chapter nine Stroumsa attempts to identify 'types of authority' by appealing to Weber's tripartite distinction between 1) 'rational-legal authority', 2) 'legitimacy [based] upon a complex system of written rules, traditional authority, including customs, habits, and social structures, and 3) charismatic authority.' We are then re-introduced to Harvey Whitehouse and his distinction between 'doctrinal' and 'imagistic' modes of religiosity, which are 'found in all societies', even if this distinction is 'nonradical' and cannot 'reflect fully the complexities of historical reality' (pp. 124-5). We might at this point pause to reflect whether Weber's second class of authority, as formulated by Stroumsa, is not couched in such general terms as to engross an unduly large part of all human experience, or whether Whitehouse's doctrinal/imagistic distinction is not hedged about with so many caveats as to lose much of its heuristic power. All this leads us to the conclusion that 'In Patristic Latin, "authority" and "power" imply different things' (p. 126). This is, of course, hard to deny, once one has noted the obvious fact that 'authority' and 'power' are English words, not Latin, and substituted the terms auctoritas and potestas. But these words too at least overlap in meaning, in both Patristic and other Latin; against the examples of the auctoritas pontificum and the regalis postestas that Stroumsa quotes from Gelasius, we might set Cyprian's reference to sacerdotalis potestas and Augustine's to regalis auctoritas. Moreover, in Greek both 'authority' and 'power' might be expressed by ἐξουσία, which we might subdivide into 'charismatic' and 'institutional' types; but then why point to the existence of two Latin words as evidence for two different concepts in early Christianity, when in Greek there is but one word? Such a philological approach might not be to everyone's taste. But if philology is to be invoked at all, it should not be simply as the ancilla sociologiae. I am not advocating an opportunist sort of eclecticism, or suggesting we should just 'let the facts speak for themselves'. But theoretical approaches need to pay their way.

My third observation may be seem a paradoxical one. Despite Stroumsa's concern to locate his thought within wider philosophical and sociological contexts, his coverage of the secondary literature more immediately relevant to his thesis is curiously uneven. Thus Harry Y. Gamble's influential Books and Readers in the Early Church (1997) is summarized in one paragraph, in which the author is criticized for arguing that 'Christian attitudes … to their holy books … reflected those of the surrounding society.' But that is hardly a good ground for criticism; and it is far from clear whether, in drawing out these commonalities, Gamble excluded the possibility of anything distinctive and original in Christian book culture. Klingshirn and Safran's edited volume The Early Christian Book (2007) gets several passing references, but no detailed treatment. Elsewhere there seemed to me some major omissions both of some standard and some recent works. Thus Stroumsa's chapter on scriptural and personal authority makes no use of Rousseau's Ascetics, Authority, and the Church, first published in 1978. His discussion of letter-magic contains no allusion to Cox Miller's evergreen chapter 'In Praise of Nonsense,' from 1986. His treatment of 'oral Torah' in Judaism omits any reference to Jaffee's Torah in the Mouth (2001). In a volume on book culture in late-antiquity Christianity, one might expect to find a mention of Alexander's (1990) essay on 'The Living Voice: Skepticism towards the Written Word in Early Christian and in Graeco-Roman Texts,' or of Holmes' magisterial survey (plus bibliography) of 'The Biblical Canon' (2008). A study of the 'performative and emotional aspects' of Scripture might have found cited Grig's fascinating study of 'The Bible in Popular and Non-literary Culture' (2013). Hunting out bibliographical omissions can easily become a sort of low-grade academic parlour game; but these are, I think, works which really do pose and seek to answer questions important for Stroumsa's thesis.

Overall, then, this book is one that seems to fall between several genres. Reading the endnotes one learns that seven of the nine chapters here have been published, in 'a former version' vel sim., before (some more than once). The publishers might, perhaps, have been more forthcoming about this; the collected papers of an acknowledged expert in a given field may, of course, be very useful for other researchers. We have noted also that some at least of these chapters began life as public lectures. Now again, a public lecture series may be reach out beyond the usual academic ghettoization to create new and exciting syntheses; rereading Stroumsa's chapter on 'The Rise of Religions of the Book' in The End of Sacrifice, also conceived originally as a lecture, I was struck by precisely this. Such books may also be frustratingly lacking in focus, shifting uncomfortably between different target groups within the audience. More than once I felt this had happened here; as, for instance, where we have the retelling of familiar material (Jerome's Ciceronianus es dream, Augustine's marvelling at Ambrose's silent reading), alongside abundant theoretical discussion whose immediate import may be unclear. It was always unlikely that a book by Stroumsa would be anything other than thoughtful, well-informed, and intelligent. But what works brilliantly as a series of lectures by a distinguished scholar does not necessarily work so well as a monograph.

The work is very well presented on the whole. Quotations from Greek, Hebrew, Arabic etc. are all transliterated. There are no maps, or illustrations.

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Notes:

1.   Where references are supplied, they may need to be followed up carefully. Thus on p. 12 the author refers to 'new categories of readers (referred to as uulgus, plebs, media plebs, and plebeia manus, in which Ovid includes women' (a passage partly recycled from his chapter 'On the Status of Books in Early Christianity,' in C. Harrison, C. Humfress, and I. Sandwell (edd), Being Christian in Late Antiquity (2014)). I assume the Ovidian passage is Tristia 3.1.82, but can detect no specific allusion there to women as readers.

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Christian Laes, Ville Vuolanto (ed.), Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. xiv, 390. ISBN 9781472464804. $149.95.

Reviewed by Anna Lucille Boozer, Baruch College, City University of New York (anna.boozer@baruch.cuny.edu)

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[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto have collected a group of scholars who have been steadily reshaping the study of ancient children. The co-editors should be well known to anyone with wide-ranging interests in social history and, particularly, the ancient family. Laes has authored numerous articles and books on childhood, often combining these studies with his expertise on disabilities in antiquity.¹ Vuolanto has also written prolifically on ancient childhood, with a particular focus on the intersections between childhood and Christianity.² The current edited book devotes considerable attention to childhood agency and the overlap between childhood and other aspects of social life such as gender, religion, disability, and so on, the phenomenon of "intersectionality." The volume's emphasis upon childhood agency and intersectionality is an innovation found throughout this edited volume, although individual contributions also experiment with other new approaches to childhood studies.

The volume has four main parts that focus on the settings, activities, religions, and negative aspects of childhood (see Table of Contents below), but the book begins and ends with chapters addressing broader themes. The two introductory chapters, by Laes and Vuolanto, contextualize the volume. The first reviews the history of childhood studies, explains the volume's aims, and provides definitions for terminology and chapter summaries. The second tackles the theme of children's agency and the methodological challenges to understanding the motives and experiences of ancient children. Vuolanto argues fluidly and persuasively that childhood should be understood as more than a preparatory phase for adulthood and that an agent-centered approach to the study of childhood enables us to understand children acting purposefully and making a difference in their worlds (17). Together, these two introductory chapters demonstrate a strong grasp of the historiography, methodology, and theory of recent works on children and antiquity.

Part I contains four chapters that focus on the physical places and objects within children's lives. Ray Laurence begins with an agent-centered, embodied exploration of children living in the urban environment of Pompeii. In particular, he redefines urban space from the perspective of changing childhood height, exploring routinized action and interactions with religion and power through altars and statues. In the next chapter Mary Harlow considers the clothing worn by Roman children, examining the material, clothing type, and appearance, and asking how the garments would affect movement. She concludes that the strong gender messages encoded within clothing can influence social behavior (57). In Chapter 5 Christian Laes looks at the impact of physical tenderness—manifested, e.g., in breastfeeding, touching, and kissing—on family life in the Roman Empire. This approach serves as a welcome counterweight to the myriad studies of child-beating and domestic abuse that have dominated discourse about physical contact within ancient families.³ April Pudsey and Ville Vuolanto complete Part I with a chapter on the relationships between children and their aunts and uncles in Roman Oxyrhynchos. They argue convincingly that the demographic household patterns in Roman Egypt indicate that children had strong relationships with people other than their parents. Papyrological evidence suggests that fatherless boys, in particular, relied upon their uncles to help them form links between their own family and the wider local community.

Part II focuses on children's activities over the course of five chapters. Jerry Toner begins this section with a study on leisure as a locus for children's agency. Toner carefully nuances his study by discussing disparities in wealth, gender, religion, and age among children at leisure. He demonstrates convincingly that child-play is a form of both resistance and socialization, indeed, that the two go hand-in-hand and the irreconcilable dichotomy is a critical part of childhood experiences. In Chapter 8 Fanny Dolansky draws from visual and archaeological evidence to describe Roman girls and boys at play. The material she discusses comes from a wide range of regions and time periods (118), a contrast to the contextual specificity that most of the other contributors strive for. Nevertheless, her argument that toys might be gender-neutral and subject to children's imaginations is worth testing with contextual data. Katherin V. Huntley explores children's graffiti at Pompeii and Herculaneum through the lens of theories of developmental psychology. She argues that most of this graffiti (over 40 per cent) derives from less-formal and less-dangerous rooms in houses (144). Other graffiti can be found in public areas that adults also used for graffiti. Her evidence, which indicates that children's social worlds were not necessarily tied to those of their adult caregivers, clearly demonstrates both childhood development and agency. In Chapter 10 Konrad Vössing provides a careful re-examination of misinterpreted texts to show that there is no evidence of a long vacation in Roman education regimes and elucidates the social perceptions of education as a privilege. In the final chapter of Part II W. Martin Bloomer describes how Roman children came to think of themselves as students and the social meanings attributed to being a student. He collects evidence of the suffering found in education, but also of a sense of pride among pupils relating to these difficult experiences.

The five chapters of Part III address the role of children within various religions and religious settings. Jacob L. Mackey begins with an account of how children exert cognitive agency in their religious learning. Children learned both practice and belief from imitating those around them, participating in rituals and learning choral hymns. Hagith Sivan provides a sustained example of "faction"—the creation of a narrative out of historical facts—by vividly bringing to life a Jewish boy, Eleazar, in Roman Galilee. We follow Eleazar through the Sabbath schedule for children, including his experiences of public and private places. "Factions" are relatively new to the study of ancient childhood and the contributions by Sivan and Cojocaru (see below), which adopt different approaches to this narrative device, are welcome presences in this volume. In Chapter 14 Béatrice Caseau explores children's resistance and agency through hagiographical late antique texts, focusing on how children behave during church services, how they rebel against decisions made about their future, and how they relate to food within an ascetic culture. Her final example is a particularly poignant exploration of how children's agency intersects with their social worlds and a powerful reminder that childhood agency can only be understood in context. Maria Chiara Giorda explores the lives of children within Egyptian monasteries, including the circumstances that brought them there. Her discussion demonstrates that there was perpetual tension between the positive and negative aspects of having children within monasteries among both the children and their caregivers. The final chapter in Part III, by Oana Maria Cojocaru, provides another example of "faction". Cojocaru takes a different approach from Sivan: she interweaves explanations between her short factions about a boy and a girl living in monasteries. Her "factions" illustrate how children living in monasteries maintain agency in their habitual activities. She also demonstrates how monastic life created an abrupt transition between childhood and adulthood.

Finally, in Part IV, three chapters expose negative experiences during childhood. Lutz Alexander Graumann's contribution provides insights into children's accidents in the ancient world. As both a medical historian and a pediatric traumatologist, Graumann provides a vivid account of childhood traumas in the ancient world, which ranged from trivial to fatal. In Chapter 18 Anna Rebecca Solevåg uses insights from intersectionality to explore agency among two disabled girls in early Christian literature. Although her evidence for agency is thin, Solevåg argues that we must explore the meaning of a text, not simply the words of the text. Her reading allows us to assume that the two girls from her case studies talked about their experiences with disability, which is a form of agency. Such imaginative leaps are crucial for opening up new conversations about antiquity. Solevåg's careful demarcation between evidence and supposition is a model for those who would take on similar challenges. The final chapter in Part IV, by Cornelia Horn, focuses on how adults experienced the death of children and how children worked through the deaths of people in the world around them. We know much more about grieving parents than we do about grieving children.

The epilogue, by Reidar Aasgaard, reviews the volume's contributions and suggests directions for future research on ancient childhood. In particular, Aasgaard underscores that the first step for advancing childhood studies is to take children into account. This step remains rare in studies of the ancient family, although great strides have been made over the last twenty years. Aasgaard advocates for interdisciplinarity in order to make up for the inherent weakness of the data and for scholarly gaps in study. Intersectionality, such as Solevåg's contribution on disabled girls, is also critical because children's experiences differed across the vectors of gender, wealth, time, religion, ability, and location. Aasgaard's observations underscore the need for more archaeological, art historical, and paleopathological accounts of ancient childhood to counterbalance the dominance of literary and documentary approaches. For this reason, it would have been advantageous for the editors to include a broader suite of methodological approaches to childhood. This lapse is to some degree due to the comparative rarity of childhood studies in these other disciplines and should serve as a call to action for more archaeologists, art historians, and paleopathologists to join conversations about childhood in the ancient world.

As a whole the contributions to this volume are written in fluid prose with appropriate illustrations. The book is well edited with few typographical errors. Individual contributions would be appropriate for upper-level undergraduate teaching and certainly for graduate teaching and scholarship. The volume advocates forcefully for an agent-centered approach and, as such, represents a productive new direction for the study of children in antiquity.

Table of Contents

List of figures viii
List of contributors x
Notes on abbreviations xiv
1. A new paradigm for the social history of childhood and children in antiquity (Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto) 1
2. Experience, agency, and children in the past: The case of Roman childhood (Ville Vuolanto) 11
Part I. Setting the scene: Experiences and environments 25
3. Children and the urban environment: Agency in Pompeii (Ray Laurence) 27
4. Little tunics for little people: The problems of visualising the wardrobe of the Roman child (Mary Harlow) 43
5. Touching children in Roman antiquity: The sentimental discourse and the family (Christian Laes) 60
6. Being a niece or nephew: Children's social environment in Roman Oxyrhynchos (April Pudsey and Ville Vuolanto) 79
Part II. What did the Roman children actually do? 97
7. Leisure as a site of child socialization, agency and resistance in the Roman empire (Jerry Toner) 99
8. Roman girls and boys at play: Realities and representations (Fanny Dolansky) 116
9. The writing on the wall: Age, agency, and material culture in Roman Campania (Katherine V. Huntley) 137
10. Why Roman pupils lacked a long vacation (Konrad Vössing) 155
11. Becoming a Roman student (W. Martin Bloomer) 166
Part III. Religious practices and sacred spaces 177
12. Roman children as religious agents: The cognitive foundations of cult (Jacob L. Mackey) 179
13. Jewish childhood in the Roman Galilee: Sabbath in Tiberias (c. 300 CE) (Hagith Sivan) 198
14. Resistance and agency in the everyday life of Late Antique children (third-eighth century CE) (Béatrice Caseau) 217
15. Children in monastic families in Egypt at the end of antiquity (Maria Chiara Giorda) 232
16. Everyday lives of children in ninth-century Byzantine monasteries (Oana Maria Cojocaru) 247
Part IV. A cruel world: Accidents, disabilities, and death 265
17. Children's accidents in the Roman empire: The medical eye on 500 years of mishaps in injured children (Lutz Alexander Graumann) 267
18. Listening for the voices of two disabled girls in early Christian literature (Anna Rebecca Solevåg) 287
19. Children and the experience of death in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine world (Cornelia Horn) 300 Epilogue
20. How close can we get to ancient childhood? Methodological achievements and new advances (Reidar Aasgaard) 318
Bibliography 332
Index 383

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Notes:

1.   C. Laes (2011). Children in the Roman Empire: Outsiders Within Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, BMCR 2011.10.46.
2.   V. Vuolanto (2015). Children and Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Continuity, Family Dynamics and the Rise of Christianity Farnham, Ashgate.
3.   C. Laes (2005). "Child Beating in Roman Antiquity: Some Reconsiderations." In K. Mustakillio, J. Hanska, H.-L. Sainio and V. Vuolanto, eds., Hoping for Continuity. Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.. Rome, Institutum Romanum Finlandiae: 75-89; K. Mustakallio and C. Laes, eds. (2011). The Dark Side of Childhood in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Unwanted, Disabled or Lost. Oxford, Oxbow; S. M. Wheeler et al. (2013). "Shattered Lives: Evidence for Physical Child Abuse from Ancient Egypt." International Journal of Paleopathology 3: 71-82.

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Dmitri Nikulin, The Concept of History: How Ideas are Constituted, Transmitted and Interpreted. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Pp. xiii, 228. ISBN 9781474269117. $114.00.

Reviewed by John V. Garner, University of West Georgia (jgarner@westga.edu)

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Dmitri Nikulin offers a complex and compelling account of the structure, purpose, and history of historical narrative. Above all, he aims to reject teleological, unidirectional, or theodical depictions of history while avoiding relativism or historicism. While seeking to represent the wide range of Nikulin's concerns, I will focus on his distinctive views of truth, freedom, and loss in history.

Nikulin begins by arguing that historical narrative presupposes certain invariant features of human existence and ontology. History stems from our "attempt at self-preservation" in the face of possible non-existence (2). While we make other attempts at self-preservation—e.g. through progeny or soteriological hopes—they fail to satisfy the deep need to overcome loss and to persist "for others" (5). Soteriology especially tends to morph into modern theodical history, seeking to justify history's losses as for a greater "progress" (ix). Even if one thinks "need" is not the sole driver of our historical narration, Nikulin's main point here is compelling: there are good reasons for histories to exist—e.g. ontological and anthropological explainers—even if there is no "Reason in History" in the modern sense (15-18).

Chapter 1 shifts from history's prerequisites to its structure. Absent any single, all-encompassing History, all histories nevertheless have an identifiable "constitution" (xi). Each history posits, firstly, a core fabula, i.e. an easy-to-transmit story, e.g. "The French Revolution took place in Paris in 1789" (12). Evidently, this story needs a second element, namely "the historical," i.e. the more or less complete, usually long list of relevant names, places, and events that really existed (10-11). Nikulin sometimes compares these elements to plot and characters, respectively. Importantly, however, fabulae are open-ended and not just fictional, if one provides historical details (8). If details are absent or invented, however, or if a fabula is inconsistent, then one is left with myth, not history. Ultimately, whether mythical or historical, each person lives within many fabulae (11). As Nikulin's entire project relies on this two-sided structure, close study of these sections is necessary for grasping many of his other claims.¹

Chapter two finds the clue to this structure in early Greek histories, which explicitly segregated "the historical" from the fabula. Once we grasp this separation, historical writings can be seen to have begun with Hecataeus and Hellanicus, before Herodotus or Thucydides (21). Hecataeus both inaugurated writing in prose—i.e. history's (and philosophy's) style—and recorded the details through geographical and genealogical lists (21-34). Another tension in histories is also already present in the ancients, indeed one found in the very term histōr (34-37). Referring either to a witness or a judge of others' witnesses of an event, the term already suggests that direct perception is filtered through the dominant fabulae, and critical "distance" is needed to arrive at truth (36). Thus, so-called "historical facts" are, Nikulin argues, really "made things," as the etymology of factum suggests: "In order that an event may become a fact" it must be "'judged' and 'sentenced'"; "corroborated by other witnesses"; and "fall under a 'logically' consistent reconstruction" (37).

The above claims raise questions about how to conceive of the truth of history. Nikulin's view is neither naïvely realist nor simply constructivist. For one, there is no single correct way to construe the fabulae accompanying any set of events (38). The details limit what can be said, but narratives still multiply. Furthermore, any basic fabula may bear endless, always slightly different retellings and may contain numerous, disputable sub-fabulae. Thus, histories are never final; they are always "corrigible according to the particulars of the historical" (38). Yet, since these particulars are themselves gathered by people influenced by fabulae, Nikulin takes pains to clarify: "I am not denying that it may be possible to recover what has happened" (38). Instead, he argues we can recover it by "thinking critically through the existing narratives…" (38, my italics). This tension surrounding historical truth impacts the whole work, and Nikulin's view of historical reality seems, at minimum, committed to a form of "correlationism."²

Chapters three and four deepen the fiction/reality question by arguing that epic poetry, an important neighbor of history, impacts the fabulae operative in history-making contexts (48). Yet epic differs in that its narrative contains sub-narratives "paratactically" rather than "hypotactically"; its narratives are "incorrigible" by new facts or styles; and they are transmitted without the interpretive freedom of history (51-53). Nikulin hints that this unfree mode of transmission may link up with epic's content, which is governed by "destiny" (49). History, by contrast, permits persons to attain an identity in a meaningful "inner theater," i.e. in a "mesh" of inner yet always also somewhat public and alterable meanings (60). Precisely owing to its hypotactic structure, this inner theater renders all minutiae "relevant and meaningful"; even small affairs can cause us to "rethink the whole story" (60). Thus, for Nikulin, freedom in history seems possible, but only as "the freedom to create a new history" (106).

This question of freedom arises non-systematically in other chapters. For example, history allows freedom of "autobiography," which Nikulin argues is an ancient genre (64; 82; 95). We can share in our own narration, even if we cannot do so absolutely or apart from extant, public narratives (94). Further, while historical fabulae are transmitted by involuntary memory, Nikulin carefully clarifies that even this involuntary transmission is accomplished by our individual and social "productive imagination" (141). This power creatively preserves inherited fabulae always with slight differences, thus making narrative transmission non-mechanistic. Moreover, we can then use our "reproductive imagination" to critically improve inherited history, through either re-narration or technical-institutional practices (mnemotechnics, archives, etc.) that preserve or uncover more details (140). Here, Nikulin makes admirable efforts not to leave us buried unfreely within inherited thinking. While the inherited fabulae are involuntarily received, they are inherently creative; and while the critical-rational power is limited to reshaping, we have a degree of autonomy in this labor.³ In this sense, history's freedom inverts epic poetry's: the latter may fill in details fictitiously; but its transmission must involve rigorous repetition of inherited narratives as if unalterable (83).

Furthermore, Nikulin does not place any internal normative constraints on how narratives should be (re)told (except consistency and adherence to historical details). Indeed, he argues narratives should freely change given "new political visions" (173). If we then seek the measure of this politics, Nikulin directs us elsewhere, to "social and political science, which goes beyond the scope of the present work" (7).⁴ By contrast, the work of "the historical" does, for Nikulin, contain inherent norms: "that a name must be preserved in and for history is itself a historical imperative" (109). Thus, "The historical should be conservative but the narrative of history should be progressive" (173). Indeed, conservation assists the kind of narrative progressivism he promotes, since truthful testimony needs distance from events (174).

Even so, not all historical details will be retained, and chapter five clarifies that even retained details must be grasped in light of the "principle" governing their arrangement. This logos may be as simple as alphabetization, ordering by profession, etc. (99-100). But it may also be more complex and difficult to decipher; and indeed several principles might govern any set of events (even within the same fabula) (104). Furthermore, any text can be seen as such an ordered set of details (107). Thus, the upshot here is that any valid hermeneutics must grasp a text's logos in order to interpret it. Theories that reduce texts to mere collections of contingent signs or "images" thus artificially reduce them to meaninglessness, and their history is ultimately lost (114-117).⁵

The question of loss and memory continues in chapter six, which develops a theory of individual and collective memory (in conversation with Koselleck, Nora, Collingwood, Assmann, etc.). Nikulin persuasively argues that collective and individual memories are not merely sources to be tapped by histories but are also constructed by how one preserves historical details (122). Memory and "the historical" are mutually mediating; and thus institutions, monuments, archives, etc.—and their structuring logoi—significantly impact the powers of memory and discursive thinking (130). In this light, Nikulin even interestingly interprets Platonic (and Aristotelian) anamnēsis as seeking to draw (supposedly) ahistorical intelligence into the role of rendering historical being meaningful (127). Here we find a welcome corrective to simplistic, anti-historical interpretations of Plato's forms.⁶

Importantly, Nikulin qualifies our preservative imperative by defending, following Hans Jonas, the goodness of certain kinds of losses (142). Indeed, memory's function requires "a sui generis trauma" (143-5). Losses can even beneficially prepare one "for a new start in a new life"; make room for the higher capacity of "recollection"; and mitigate "excessive," imprecise remembering (143-4). Here, one might worry that, while Nikulin's account avoids teleology, it seems to retain the "justificatory" side of historical theodicy. The emphasis on the benefit of loss might be taken to justify intentional destructions (cf. Nikulin's "art of forgetting") (145). If, however, humans are always already subject to enough immense destruction—since historical details incessantly and inevitably fall unpreserved into "historical non-being"—then one might argue that such losses are so pervasive, frequent, and inexhaustible that we never, in truth, need to justify making more of them.⁷

Nikulin's final chapter distinguishes, among diachronic orderings, ancient genealogy from "pedigree." The latter inherently justifies power claims by reference to a valued "origin," while true genealogy is not inherently political or value-oriented but rather gets used politically (159; 163-4). If Nietzsche's modern genealogy remains beholden to an implicitly normative "origin," Foucault at least moves toward a "no-origin" understanding of genealogy, closer to what Nikulin seeks (152-4; 168). Ultimately, however, for Nikulin genealogy should simply order the historical details into hypotactic dependency- or causality-sequences regressing from the present (156). This sequence should be kept distinct from normative interpretation (though all genealogies still need interpretations) (156; 172). Thus, genealogy will always be oriented importantly by "present" concerns; it can only begin from, and reshape, "a listener's history" (169-70). Thus, Nikulin returns in the end to the constructivist worry, but he assures us again that history is truly "about the past," albeit a past ultimately "for the sake of the present" (174).

In the end, Nikulin offers a wide-ranging and compelling treatment of the philosophy of history. The book's implications are philosophically significant and will interest a range of readers, even if they are sometimes stated suggestively or paradoxically. This style seems intently designed to encourage further inquiry and dialogue. It appropriates the reader into a critical performance of "reconstruction," which also just happens to be the very same practice the book persuasively locates at the center of our historical perseverance.

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Notes:

1.   E.g., Nikulin later analyzes Western histories into "historiographic," favoring an overarching fabula, and "antiquarian," preserving many narratives and details (69-70).
2.   See Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier, London: Bloomsbury, 2008, p. 5: "By 'correlation' we mean the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other."
3.   Restricting rational control to the re-productive imagination, Nikulin inscribes any social autonomy within a grander social heteronomy. Apparently, he excludes the possibility of an original autonomy of the "instituting" social power, as defended by Cornelius Castoriadis, "Power, Politics, Autonomy," in Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, trans. David A. Curtis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
4.   However, Nikulin later seems to valorize traditions of "rational scrutiny and justification" which employ apparently ahistorical norms, e.g. "freedom, human equality, and universal worth of any human being" (172).
5.   Compare this argument to Giorgio Agamben, "Theory of Signatures," in The Signature of All Things, trans. Luca D'Isanto and Kevin Attell, New York: Zone Books, 2009.
6.   However, Nikulin's constructivism ambiguity arises again here: Plato's forms are said to be "invented" (not discovered), though they also enfold "chains of reasoning" that seem not merely invented (138).
7.   Cf. Emmanuel Levinas, "Useless Suffering" (1982), in Entre Nous: Thinking of the Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

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Bruno Bleckmann, Jonathan Groß (ed.), Historiker der Reichskrise des 3. Jahrhunderts, I. Kleine und fragmentarische Historiker der Spätantike. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016. Pp. xxviii, 165. ISBN 9783506784902. €49.90.

Reviewed by Philip Rance, Freie Universität Berlin (rance@zedat.fu-berlin.de)

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

This first instalment of the two-part Historiker der Reichskrise des 3. Jahrhunderts by Bruno Bleckmann and Jonathan Groß is the latest addition to Kleine und fragmentarische Historiker der Spätantike or KFHist. As this acronym may yet be unfamiliar to some readers of BMCR, the ambitious new series warrants formal introduction. This long-term (initially fifteen-year) project is overseen by series editors Bruno Bleckmann and Markus Stein, based at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, and generously funded by the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste.¹ Dedicated to 'minor' and/or fragmentary (or reconstitutable) Greek and Latin historical writing from the third to sixth centuries, KFHist aims to publish newly edited texts, with facing German translations and philological-historical commentaries. Self-consciously Jacoby-esque in conception, the publishing schedule embraces nearly 90 Christian and pagan authors and anonymous works, variously categorised and subdivided into nine modules (A-I) according to period, (sub)genre and/or language. Historiker der Reichskrise I-II will constitute A1-8.² Each volume, published by Ferdinand Schöningh, is available as a well-produced hardback and e-book. A two-part treatment of Philostorgios (E7) inaugurated KFHist towards the end of 2015 (BMCR 2016.10.38). The present volume is the fifth to appear.³ Within current scholarship on late antiquity, the dimensions of KFHist are without parallel in any language or national academe. The project will undoubtedly strengthen the textual foundations of the study of this era, expand knowledge of and access to source materials and provide ongoing stimuli to textual, historiographical and historical research over future decades.

Historiker der Reichskrise I contains seven historians, distinguished according to the attested Greek and/or Latin form(s) of their names: Asinius Quadratus, Nikostratos of Trapezos, Philostratos of Athens, Ephoros of Kyme 'the Younger', Eusebios, Eusebius of Nantes, and Onasimos/Onesimus (respectively A1-4, 6-8). Volume II will be devoted solely to Dexippos (A5). While his more extensive remains invite monographic treatment, recent discoveries have also significantly expanded the available sample of his Scythica and required its reappraisal. In light of the identification of palimpsested fragments assignable to Dexippos in Vindobonensis hist. gr. 73 (192r-195v), published in instalments and revisions by Gunther Martin and Jana Grusková since 2010, it seemed sensible to await final publication of this new material and allow the ensuing scholarly dust to settle, before incorporating 'Dexippus Vindobonensis' into KFHist.⁴ Collectively, the testimonia and fragments of these eight authors represent the merest residue of third-century Greek historical literature, ranging in date from near-contemporaries of Cassius Dio and Herodian across the subsequent two generations of 'crisis'—a term whose empire-wide applicability is often questioned but which is surely valid for the predominantly Balkan and Near Eastern cultural-geographical orientation of these works. Exclusion of other authors is justified (v-vi) on grounds of doubtful historicity, period of composition, chronological coverage and/or genre, accepting that in some cases further textual research is required, especially in Armenian historiographic traditions.

A short foreword explains that an 'exhaustive (erschöpfende)' historical and philological commentary was not deemed desirable, partly because the primary function of KFHist is to present accessible Greek texts with critical apparatus and, often for the first time, German translations, but also because these third-century authors have recently been the subject of commentaries, specifically in Brill's New Jacoby (BNJ), as well as extended discussion in wider scholarship, notably Paweł Janiszewski's monograph.⁵ Nevertheless, allowing for authorial modesty, the commentaries in this volume easily stand comparison and are in some respects superior. The texts are edited by Groß and translated mostly by Bleckmann; responsibility for introductions is shared. The organizational principles of the commentary follow the approach of preceding volumes of KFHist: Greek/Latin lemmata introduce a philological commentary by Groß; citations from German translations initiate historical discussion by Bleckmann. This sequencing entails occasional overlap or cross-referencing but is nonetheless successful. Groß's commentary often exhibits deeper philological insight than comparable projects, while Bleckmann's extensive prior research on third-century historiography informs his analysis. Particularly admirable is the editors' understanding and exposition of the codicological basis of the fragments, in which respect some recent studies have struggled to escape the shadow of outdated nineteenth-century scholarship, specifically Müller's FHG.

Almost all the testimonia and fragments have been previously assembled, principally by Jacoby in FGrHist, and thus revisited in BNJ. By far the most numerous are those of Asinius Quadratus (A1), which occupy around one-third of the volume. Recently Quadratus has also attracted the most editorial interest—this is the third such treatment, after BNJ 97 (Meckler [2009]) and The Fragments of the Roman Historians (FRHist) 102 (Levick/Cornell [2013]). A concordance of KFHist and FRHist reaffirms Jacoby's numeration and signals differing classifications of 'testimonium' and 'fragment'. The editors also include as spuria a historical epigram from the Palatine Anthology (7.312 = fr. {31}), which a corrector/lemmatist ascribed or connected to Quadatus, an item not fully integrated into previous editions. To what extent Quadratus' writings—reportedly a 15-book millennial Roman history and a monograph on Roman-Parthian wars—reached a contemporary third-century horizon remains unclear. According to the Suda, the former concluded in the reign of Severus Alexander. Most of the fragments are preserved as ethno-geographical citations by Stephanus of Byzantium, whose lexical interests may create a distorting lens, though presumably Stephanus cited Quadratus' works because they were rich in this type of material. From these textual splinters, one can hardly guess content and contexts, even where reported book numbers indicate relative positions: what possible role might the Oxybii (fr. 4), an obscure Ligurian tribe, have played in the narrative of penultimate Book 14 (if the figure is correctly transmitted), even allowing for possible antiquarian digressions or archaizing ethnonyms? In truth, the surviving fragments have limited or tangential value for historical research on the third century, with the notable exception of remarks on the ethnogenesis of the Alamanni, transmitted in a single Agathias-derived fragment (fr. 21), which Bleckmann discusses at length (55-59). Overall, the remains of Quadratus are of greater potential value in gauging the character of historical production in this period, especially given his choice of Ionic over Attic, and evident interest in ethnography within a universal- historical framework, seemingly reflective of a predilection for Herodotos over the Thucydidean tastes of his contemporaries.

Other historians in this volume are effectively 'lost'. Three are known only through a single terse testimonium: Nikostratos (A2), Ephoros 'the Younger' (A4), and Eusebius of Nantes (A7, if not to be identified with homonymous A6). In the case of Ephoros, his third-century dating, name/pseudonym and authorship of a 27-book work about Gallienus–indeed even his existence–have been doubted. Similarly uncertain is the identification of Onasimos (A8) reported in the Suda with Onesimus cited in the Historia Augusta, where the authenticity of source notices is disputed. The editors' introductions judiciously leave open some questions of identification, authorship and date, rather than press interpretations. In contrast, Philostratos of Athens (A3), whatever his relationship to several near-contemporary Philostrati, emerges as a potentially interesting historical figure and author of a somewhat more clearly characterised narrative of the 250s-270s. A recently identified citation (fr. 2 = Evagrios, HE 4.29), overlooked by Jacoby (and BNJ 99) and first signalled by Christopher Jones,⁶ has implications for the dating, scope and Nachleben of Philostratos' work. A possible new testimonium in 'Dexippus Vindobonensis' (192v-r) documents an Athenian Philostratos, 'a man excellent in word and counsel', as a leading figure in the self-defensive measures undertaken by Greek cities against 'Scythian' incursions in 253-4 or c.262, and thus possibly a historian-commander, analogous to Dexippos in 267/8, who may have likewise infused his historical composition with personal reportage.⁷ A similar milieu is mooted also for Nikostratos (pp. 68-69).

Perhaps the most valuable section is the exposition of two fragments ascribed to a Eusebios (A6), preserved in a Byzantine anthology of siege-related historical excerpts, which is incorporated into the tenth-century core of composite Parisinus suppl. gr. 607. One concerns a 'Scythian' assault on Thessalonica, usually dated to 253-4; the other narrates an unidentified siege of Tours by 'Keltoi'. This Eusebios has accrued an extensive literary-historical bibliography and a wide range of datings, partly by inconclusive association with one or more of at least five documented Eusebii, two of whom were reportedly historical authors. The more easily linked is a Eusebios who wrote a lost history from Octavian to Carus, whom Evagrios (HE 5.24) lists alongside secular historians. One strand of modern scholarship favours Eusebius of Nantes (for some, possibly identical with the historian mentioned by Evagrios), a compiler of apparently Latin imperial biographies, which Ausonius used as a source for a now-lost historico-didactic poem, at least according to a catalogue of the poet's oeuvre preserved in fourteenth-century marginalia. Both the tenacity and tenuity of this association induced the editors to re-examine the exiguous evidence for 'Eusebius Nanneticus' (A7) directly after the two Eusebios-ascribed excerpts; one can only concur with Bleckmann that a connection is 'alles andere als zwingend' (146; cf. 112: 'unwahrscheinlich'). Within volume I, these two fragments uniquely provide a substantial sample of third-century Greek historical writing, which, insofar as they are excerpta, rather than citations, allusions or paraphrases, offer a more hopeful prospect of near-verbatim testimony to the author's diction and style. Eusebios' excessive but inconsistent Ionicizing exacerbates the difficulties of reconstituting his original wording, beyond the challenges posed by indirect transmission and technical content. Groß's edition and translation take account of successive strata of editorial conjectures and all (plausible) textual possibilities, while the philological-historical commentaries are alert to the occasional fragility of the text.

Criticisms are few and slight. Analysis of Anth. Pal. 7.312 seemingly transposes the significance of wounds received 'am Rücken' and 'von vorn' (p. 65). The term σφενδόβολον is not 'nur bei Malalas belegt' (p. 93), see e.g., Maurice, Strategicon 12.B.3-5, 18 and derivative Middle Byzantine texts, though Malalas is the earliest instance. The 'Königliche Bibliothek' in Paris (p. 113) had become 'Kaiserliche' by the time it acquired suppl. gr. 607 in 1864. The Hellenistic/early Roman poliorcetic (ballistic-mechanical) texts in this codex (fols. 18-80, 82) are not 'Exzerpten' (p. 113) but a copy of a pre-existing corpus of complete treatises, in contrast to the certainly tenth-century collection of siege-related historical excerpts (fols. 88-103 + 17-16), presumably appended as illustrative exempla to the preceding theoretical works. It is not certain that folios 16 and 17 are strictly 'Einzelblätter' (p. 113); although now conjoined owing to a sixteenth-century repair, an identical intervention by the same binder at folios 81-82 reconnected two sheets that had demonstrably formed an original (if now disarranged) bifolium. The supposition of Janiszewski, cited with neither approval nor denial (p. 111), that this excerpt collection is one of the lost and unattested books of the 53-volume Excerpta Constantiniana does not appreciate the significant codicological, textual, and text-historical obstacles. More generally, as the Suda is often the main or sole witness to testimonia, consideration of the source(s) and compositional history of its bio-bibliographical lemmata (briefly p. 104) would have been instructive.⁸

This volume is in several respects more ambitious and authoritative than comparable collections of period-specific historical 'testimonia et fragmenta', especially by virtue of the philological acumen displayed in the constitution of new texts and the critical depth of the commentary. The assembled material offers a glimpse of the quantity, scope and diversity of contemporary Greek historiography devoted to the early phase of Roman-Sasanian conflict, including the Palmyrene ascendency, and events of the third-century crisis. At a broader literary-cultural level, these authors testify to a historiographic current of 'Second Sophistic' scholarship deeply concerned with the recording and (self-)portrayal of an era traditionally deemed a hiatus in historical literature.

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Notes:

1.   See the Projektvorstellung: Kleine und Fragmentarische Historiker der Spätantike (KFHist).
2.   See Kleine und Fragmentarische Historiker der Spätantike.
3.   For available volumes: Ferdinand Schöningh​.
4.   See the project website of Wichtige Textzeugen in Wiener griechischen Palimpsesten: Institut für Mittelalterforschung: FWF Projeckt P 24523-G19.
5.   P. Janiszewski, The Missing Link: Greek Pagan Historiography in the Second Half of the Third Century and in the Fourth Century AD (Warsaw 2006).
6.   C.P. Jones, 'The Historian Philostratus of Athens', CQ 61 (2011) 320-22.
7.   G. Martin/J. Grusková, '"Dexippus Vindobonensis"(?) Ein neues Handschriftenfragment zum sog. Herulereinfall der Jahre 267/268', WS 127 (2014) 101-120; C. Mallan/C. Davenport, 'Dexippus and the Gothic Invasions: Interpreting the New Vienna Fragment', JRS 105 (2015) 203-25.
8.   E.g. the contributions of, among others, V. Costa and V. Foderà in G. Vanotti (ed.), Il lessico Suda e gli storici greci in frammenti (Tivoli 2010).

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