2019.07.66

Pietro Pucci, The Iliad: The Poem of Zeus. Trends in classics. Supplementary volumes, 66. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Pp. x, 289. ISBN 9783110601374. €119,95.

Reviewed by Sylvain Lebreton, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès (sylvain.lebreton@univ-tlse2.fr)

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Dans le cadre d'un intérêt pour les dieux homériques constamment renouvelé par des approches aussi variées que complémentaires,¹ Pietro Pucci propose une lecture de l'Iliade à travers la figure de Zeus, offrant ainsi un pendant à l'ouvrage que Jim Marks avait consacré à l'Odyssée (BMCR 2009.05.36).

Cet ouvrage s'inscrit délibérément dans le débat relatif aux agencies humaines et divines dans l'Iliade qui oppose une vision essentiellement poétique, symbolique ou allégorique des dieux, à une lecture de leurs interventions comme des évènements « réels ». Dès l'introduction, l'auteur affirme son penchant pour la seconde tendance : selon lui, Zeus incarne précisément la « voûte » divine qui entoure les actions humaines. Toutefois, le dieu éprouve aussi des sentiments humains. Cette tension, ce paradoxe, entre motivations surhumaines et anthropomorphiques, l'Iliade ne les résout pas, sinon par l'élaboration d'un hybridism des actions humaines et divines. Ce serait là son originalité, son caractère novateur, choquant même, au regard de son contexte de production (cet hypertext dont on ne sait rien d'autre que ce que l'on peut tirer de l'Iliade même, et à partir duquel Pucci échafaude nombre de spéculations). Cet hybridism n'est pas sans lien avec l'opacité des motivations de Zeus et la théologie négative qui en découle, le dieu personnifiant le destin aveugle.

Le corps de l'ouvrage prend la forme d'un parcours de lecture au sein des différents épisodes de l'Iliade mettant en scène Zeus et illustrant cette tension entre motivations surhumaines et humaines des actions du dieu. Le premier chapitre est consacré à la supplication de Thétis et à l'assemblée divine qui s'ensuit (I, 494-604). Avec des arguments émotionnels, et non éthiques (de fait, plutôt fondés sur le do ut des qui structure les relations sociales homériques), la mère d'Achille parvient à convaincre Zeus, qui doit alors faire face à la suspicion d'Héra. La brutalité avec laquelle il y répond n'est dissipée que par la légèreté de l'intervention d'Héphaïstos, dont Pucci ne manque pas de souligner le caractère comique. Cette assemblée des dieux se termine par un banquet, comme ce Chant I se finit en chanson.

Le chapitre 2 souligne à quel point Zeus, en dépit de l'affection particulière qu'il peut avoir pour certains mortels, ne peut les soustraire à leur mortelle destinée. L'analyse des morts de Sarpédon (XVI, 431-460) et d'Hector (XXII, avec un détour par l'épisode de l'armement du héros en XVII, 201-210) montre même que c'est sans doute parce que Zeus est le plus puissant des dieux qu'il n'a pas le pouvoir de les sauver. Et si la gloire est la compensation de la mort héroïque, l'auteur ne manque pas de souligner la distinction entre le kudos qu'Achille reçoit des dieux et le kleos que la production poétique confère à Hector.

L'étude du Chant XVI, qui occupe la totalité du troisième chapitre, permet de mettre en relief l'interaction entre la volonté des héros et la Dios boulê. En ce sens, la geste de Patrocle s'inscrit dans les plans de Zeus en ce qu'elle est celle d'un « suppléant » derridien : elle préfigure celle d'Achille, dont la destinée fait, logiquement, l'objet du chapitre 4.

Dans celui-ci, Pucci montre comment, en cherchant à venger Patrocle, Achille scelle son destin et s'accorde ainsi avec la Dios boulê (XXIV). Le héros explique lui-même l'attitude d'Agamemnon à son égard (et, partant, sa propre colère) par l'atê que Zeus a mis dans son esprit (XIX). L'action de cette « ruinous blindness or madness » est toujours perçue par les héros : elle n'apparaît jamais dans la bouche des Muses – autrement dit dans la diégèse. Ce quatrième chapitre se referme sur une comparaison entre le Zeus de l'Iliade et celui de l'Odyssée : le second, éthique, garantissant la juste rétribution des actes d'hommes responsables, s'oppose au premier, tout-puissant maître du destin ne pouvant être fléchi par les sacrifices qui lui sont adressés.

Le chapitre 5 est consacré au positionnement des Olympiens à l'égard de la Dios boulê, à laquelle s'opposent notamment Athéna (VIII), Poséidon (XV) ou encore Héra. Le célèbre épisode de la séduction que cette dernière entreprend au chant XIV n'empêche pas Zeus de rétablir son ordre et d'imposer ses plans aux autres dieux, y compris en recourant à la menace physique pour imposer ses plans. En l'absence de délibération, il n'y a pas de politique possible dans les assemblées divines – contrairement aux assemblées humaines, où l'une et l'autre sont permises par la reconnaissance d'une part de vérité chez toutes les parties.²

Le sixième et dernier chapitre poursuit cette réflexion, avec pour terrain d'exploration le duel entre Ménélas et Pâris, puis la décision des dieux de rompre la trêve entre Troyens et Achéens (III-IV). On passe ensuite directement au chant XXIV, dans lequel Zeus, par l'intermédiaire de Thétis, parvient à convaincre Achille de rendre le corps d'Hector à Priam. De façon judicieuse, Pucci donne sens à la composition circulaire de l'Iliade : cet épisode final, en tant que reflet inversé du chant I, permet en effet de mettre fin à la violence de la colère d'Achille.

Dans ses remarques conclusives (toujours dans le chapitre 6), Pucci revient sur les principales caractéristiques du Zeus de l'Iliade : maître du destin, il est tiraillé entre son rôle de monarque de l'Olympe et son action à l'endroit des mortels ; il ne peut sauver ceux qui lui sont chers et/ou qui lui offrent les plus beaux sacrifices ; il constitue le modèle le plus abouti de l'impossible collaboration entre humain et divin. Zeus, et plus généralement les dieux, immortels, sont indifférents à l'expérience humaine ; inversement, ils sont incompréhensibles aux hommes. Pucci n'en insiste pas moins sur la singularité du Zeus de l'Iliade, à la fois au sein des Olympiens – à l'égard desquels il serait un « exotic stranger » – qu'en regard de celui que dépeignent l'Odyssée, Hésiode, ou même les Tragiques.

Des deux appendices que comporte The Iliad – The Poem of Zeus, le premier est consacré à l'épithète dios lorsqu'elle est attribuée aux héros (Achille en premier lieu). Si, selon les contextes, elle peut signifier « brillant », « divin » ou « jovien », elle indique toujours que la proximité des héros avec le divin est partielle et fugace : l'Homme ne peut échapper à sa condition mortelle. Le second appendice, consacré à la relation entre les Muses et le Poète, souligne que ce dernier surestime l'inspiration des Muses alors que les héros épiques sous-évaluent les interventions divines.

En refermant l'ouvrage, le lecteur aura apprécié la maîtrise que l'auteur a de l'Iliade, ainsi que la finesse de ses analyses littéraires. L'attention portée à l'économie narrative de l'œuvre, à ses registres d'énonciation, est particulièrement aigüe et génère des propositions et/ou intuitions stimulantes. La lecture de l'Iliade comme un anti-Cogito (p. 122) en est une : alors que pour Descartes, la conscience est source de toute connaissance, chez Homère, toute information vient du monde, et non d'une quelconque élaboration humaine. L'insistance sur l'humour, récurrente dans l'ouvrage, constitue sans conteste un autre point fort, notamment lorsqu'elle permet d'éclairer certains épisodes en mettant aux jours leurs ressorts en regard du public de l'œuvre (p. 156).

Toutefois, la lecture de The Iliad – The Poem of Zeus pourra frustrer certains lecteurs – les historiens du polythéisme hellénique en premier lieu. Certes, l'auteur ne manque pas de mettre le doigt sur des questions cruciales en la matière, telles que la tension entre le rôle « théologique » des dieux (i.e. comme puissances agissantes) et leur fonction dramatique (comme personnages acteurs du récit), ou encore la compatibilité entre une société des dieux fondée sur le partage des moirai d'une part et la supériorité de Zeus au sein de celle-ci d'autre part. Mais il ne les traite jamais de front. L'organisation de l'ouvrage, il est vrai, n'aide pas à la clarté de l'exposition – même en faisant abstraction du manque de rigueur dans le découpage des chapitres (certains comportent des titres, d'autres non ; la conclusion générale est intégrée au dernier chapitre…). Consistant essentiellement en un commentaire d'extraits choisis de l'Iliade, mais parcourus de façon erratique, l'ouvrage n'a ni l'exhaustivité d'un line-by-line commentary, ni la force argumentative d'une synthèse thématique. D'autre part, si l'on appréciera tout particulièrement la mise à contribution d'études ayant contribué à renouveler l'approche des dieux homériques ³, on regrettera que leur prise en compte n'ait été que superficielle. A vrai dire, Pucci semble peiner à se situer dans ce champ. Alors qu'il met en exergue dans son premier chapitre deux phrases-clés de l'œuvre de Vernant (« les dieux helléniques sont des puissances, non des personnes », p. 9) et de celle de Gernet (« Positivement un dieu [grec] est un système de notions », p. 21), il affirme, à la suite de Burkert, que « The Greek gods are persons with arbitrary names » (p. 266)…

Le lecteur pourra relever quelques erreurs typographiques, simples coquilles (« snd » au lieu de « and », p. 112) ou fautes malheureuses (« Liddle-Scott » au lieu de « Liddell-Scott », p. 16, note 29 ; « Delforge » au lieu de « Pirenne-Delforge », p. 24, note 59 ; « Euristheus » au lieu de « Eurystheus », p. 144) : elles n'entachent pas la qualité générale de l'ouvrage. On attendrait cependant davantage de soin dans l'édition d'un livre vendu si cher alors qu'il ne comporte ni iconographie, ni reproduction.

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Notes:

1.   En dernier lieu Renaud Gagné, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui (ed.), Les dieux d'Homère II. Anthropomorphismes. Kernos Supplément, 33, Liège : Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2019, qui envisage précisément la question de l'anthropomorphisme, centrale au propos de Pucci.
2.   Ce contraste était déjà souligné par Corinne Bonnet, « Les dieux en assemblée », in Gabriella Pironti, Corinne Bonnet (ed.), Les dieux d'Homère : Polythéisme et poésie en Grèce ancienne. Kernos Supplément, 31, Liège : Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2017, p. 87‑112.
3.   En plus des Dieux d'Homère mentionnés ci-dessus, on pense ici à Claude Calame, Qu'est-ce que la mythologie grecque ?, Paris : Gallimard, 2015 ou Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Gabriella Pironti, L'Héra de Zeus : Ennemie intime, épouse définitive, Paris : Les Belles lettres, 2016.

2019.07.65

Matthieu Gazeau, Le tombeau de Cynthia : mythes, fictions et ironie dans le livre IV des "Élégies" de Properce. Collection d'études anciennes. Série latine 81. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017. Pp. 357. ISBN 9782251447421. €55,00.

Reviewed by Marie-Pierre Bussières, Université d'Ottawa (mbussier@uottawa.ca)

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Propertius' fourth book attracts scholars because as the last of a work titled Elegies it does not fit with our conception of Augustan love poetry. Had it stood alone and been titled Epigrams, very likely it would not be so popular in scholarly research. Matthieu Gazeau's study shows that the last book of Propertius' Elegies does in fact contain elegies and claims the poet's fidelity to the genre (11), especially by the presence of Cynthia's 'tomb' in its – slightly displaced – center (4.7). Gazeau explains that book 4 not only has internal cohesion (a fact often disputed) but is also consistent with the rest of the poet's work, since it stages the poet's conscience resisting any form of enlistment, be it the pressure to write epic or to sing the new Augustan era.

The book is organised in three parts and divided into nine chapters. Gazeau first aims to explain the "poetics of irony" in Propertius. Chapter 1 proposes a review of the different approaches used by scholars to explain the construction of book 4, and Chapter 2 uses the polymorphic god Vertumnus (present in 4.2) as a representation of the concomitant possible readings of fiction in order to explain that the many characters speaking in book 4 cannot – and should not be expected – to express a unequivocal thought. Chapter 3 explains Propertius' interpretation of History leading to a recusatio of epic poetry. The poet, Gazeau argues, questions the interpretation of myths legitimized by historiography and epic poetry, and proposes an elegiac reading of Rome's past.

Once the workings of irony in Propertius have been set, Gazeau elaborates on the "poetics of recusatio", first by examining the elements of Callimachean emulation in Propertius, not only because the Response to the Telchines is the reference for all poetic recusationes, but also because of the correspondance of themes in the epigrammatic genre and Propertius' fourth book. Gazeau argues that Propertius explores the generic delimitations to turn a genus tenuis into the conqueror of epic poetry and the elegiac poet into an epic hero (Chapter 4): the recusatio of epic poetry is a feast worthy of an epic hero (150). From Propertius' inspiration and models, Gazeau then judiciously turns to the way that our reading of Propertius has long been skewed by the prism of Ovid's work and fate (Chapter 5). He warns that Propertius' refusal of the "poetical career" (160) should not be read through a historical lens of elegiac poets turning their back to the high road of epic and nationalist poetry in order to sing personal and intimate battles. This linear perspective was used by Ovid as a judicial argument to plea for his return to Rome, in order to show that he had merely followed his predecessors in the genre. Propertius's stance is rather a moral battle against the hierarchy of genres (162-171). After showing Propertius' position in epigrammatic and elegiac poetry, Gazeau explores how, by inviting concurring readings of his poems, the poet opens a dialogue with Horace's conception of the purpose of poetry and refuses the social role attributed to the poet/uates of fulfilling a social function called for by the times and the collectivity (202) : under the patriotic and etiologic overtones of the fourth book, Propertius' elegies remain committed to their original vocation to sing Cynthia, and her immortalisation in this 'mausoleum' – that is book 4 – is the ultimate recusatio of the poetical career (211).

The third section explores the "poetics of subjectivity" and Propertius' ambition to turn elegy into an all-encompassing genre (the French phrase "genre total" [224] smacks of Richard Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk), including and surpassing epigram, comedy, epic and lyric poetry. The subordination of Apollo to Bacchus and of power/Augustus to poetry was already explored at the end of the second section (184-193). Here, Gazeau claims that the originality of elegiac love resides in its relations with situations characteristic of New Roman comedy and its capacity to redefine heroic stature. In this perspective, Gazeau claims that book 4 is a comic staging of the relationship of the poet to power, where Augustus is the senex-obstacle between the poet-iuuenis and Cynthia (220-231). But more than a mute lover, like the puella of comedy, Cynthia is an elegiac hero worthy to stand beside Augustus at the center of the book (4.6 and 4.7). This construction creates an ironic reading of the depiction of Actium on Aeneas' shield in Virgil, where Apollo is located at the center, while Propertius puts him at the center beside Cynthia (259-271). With such a heroisation of the puella, Propertius in fact lauds the power of poetry. The last chapter of the book insists on the poet's fides to his genre, in an echo of elegiac fides to his love.

The book aims to revisit the intellectual deadlock created by the reading of certain elegies in book 4 as "ironic", in order to explain the apparent variations in tone and topics (47). Gazeau explains that "despite a new importance attributed to irony, it operates, in Paul Veyne and Boucher like a deus ex machina or a 'clandestine passenger' of the demonstration" (53 my translation, my underscore). The adjective 'new' to qualify studies respectively almost forty- and over fifty-year old (P. Veyne, L'élégie érotique romaine. Paris: Seuil, 1983 and J.-P. Boucher, Études sur Properce. Paris: De Boccard, 1965) leaves the reader perplexed. Of course these studies are fundamental, and Veyne's has enjoyed a widespread and lasting influence, but, while it may be slightly unfair to blame a thesis defended in 2008 for being content to update the bibliography without making good use of the studies published since the defense, the argumentation does tend to build from these older studies and to ignore more recent works from non-French scholars. They appear in the bibliography but are scantily referenced in the pages. This is especially true of T. S. Welch's Tarpeia: Workings of a Roman Myth (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015), not once cited in the substantial section opening the third chapter "L'ironie de l'Histoire: le paradoxe de Tarpeia" (79-89), but mostly of J. Debrohun's Roman Propertius and the Reinvention of Elegy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003, reviewed by Stacie Raucci in BMCR 2004.02.31), cited a mere three times (including once only to allude to its title, 77). I quote from Raucci's review that DeBrohun "argues that Propertius designed book 4 as a site of conflict between elegiac discourse and aetiological concerns, constructing a collection which is neither simple elegy nor simple aetiology (…) that allows the poet to expand his elegiac themes, while participating in present moral and political discourses and engaging with the poetry of his contemporaries."

It is obvious that a conversation between her analyses and Gazeau's would have added depth to the discussion on the roles of Apollo and Cleopatra at Actium or on the symbolism of the door in elegiac poetry. She is cited only twice in the section on the exclusus amator and no mention is made of her reading of the limen as a symbol of the poet-lover, while Gazeau himself terms the motif of the exclusus amator a "metonymy for elegy" (234) and devotes a few pages to the numerous portae in book 4 (234-246). Propertius' staging of the battle of Actium, which she treats at length, also leaves DeBrohun exclusa, while a study by R. Pichon in Mélanges Boissier, Paris: Fontemoing 1903 is cited three times.

All in all, this is a good study. It shines a literary light on the poet's aim and composition, and it adds interesting analyses to previous scholarship on Propertius. However, in this reviewer's mind, the absence of ideas presented in more recent scholarly works to the profit of frequently cited older French works is detrimental and represents a certain trend of conservatism.

2019.07.64

Lesel Dawson, Fiona McHardy (ed.), Revenge and Gender in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Pp. 339. ISBN 9781474414098. £85.00​. ISBN 9781474414111. ebook.

Reviewed by Melissa Ridley Elmes, Lindenwood University (MElmes@lindenwood.edu)

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[Authors and titles are listed below.]

This absorbing collection of essays originated at the "Female Fury and the Masculine Spirit of Vengeance" conference held at Bristol University in 2012 and has been ably and thoughtfully shepherded into print by the editors. Featuring chapters by an international roster of scholars working across the Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern/ Renaissance periods, this volume offers a sustained cross-period examination of the subject of revenge and gender. As Dawson notes in her introduction, the collection "prob[es] revenge's gendering, its role in consolidating and contesting gender norms, and its relation to friendship, family roles, and kinship structures" (2). Focusing on the Western tradition (Greco-Roman, Norse, and English) the various essays work together to illuminate how medieval and early modern writers "respond to and reimagine inherited plots and characters [from the Classical world]" and to explore "continuities between historical periods as well as the ways in which the texts and traditions diverge" (2). Readers interested in the representation of women in Classical literature, in the history of emotion, in Classical reception in medieval and early modern / Renaissance literature, and in gender and premodern drama studies, will find much in this collection worth consideration.

Dawson's introduction features a concise review of the relationship of revenge to masculinity, its role in family concerns, particularly regarding questions of inheritance, the figure of the female avenger, women's weapons (focusing specifically on words—goading, inciting, cursing, and gossiping) and the role of lamentation in women's participation in vengeance, setting up the overall volume's contents. Each subsequent part of the book is anchored by an essay with a Classical Greek or Roman focus, paired with one or more studies on later works. In part 1, Edith Hall proposes that the Erinyes in the Classical literary tradition were far more gender-ambivalent than their dramatic constructions and later cultural transmission suggest, and Alison Findlay extends her discussion of the affective power of performance in shaping cultural views of women and vengeance through the early modern dramatic tradition.

Part 2 brings the overarching subject of revenge and gender to bear in terms of its effect on, and how it is affected by, questions of kinship and friendship. Ian Folce examines vengeance and the homosocial bonds of men in medieval Old Norse/ Icelandic sagas. Kathrin Winter pulls us back into an examination of the origins of revenge in Seneca's Medea, arguing that the play emphasizes the process of reconfiguration of Medea's femininity from the quintessentially feminine mother figure into the vengeful female. Marguerite Tassi reads Shakespeare's King Lear as an unidentified instance of a daughter's revenge tragedy, placing Cordelia in the position usually occupied by an avenging son to heighten the dramatic intensity of her failure to reinstate her family's position by turning it into an instance of failed vengeance. Sara Eaton concludes this section of the book with a discussion of "the logic of sexual revenge cast in a courtly love scenario" in the incestuous relationship between brother and sister in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore 122).

In part 3, Lydia Matthews and Irene Salvo examine women's curses as an explicitly female vehicle for vengeance in Ancient Greece, and Fiona McHardy discusses the efficacy of gossip for the same purpose. Chloe Kathleen Preedy follows up with an interesting examination of how "Jacobean revengers invite audiences to reflect on the relationship between humanist learning, with an emphasis on proper governance and moral education, and the violent retribution that they enact upon corrupt rulers and unjust societies" (181). Where typically women are not centered in the revenge action of early modern plays, as many of the essays in this collection point out, Preedy argues that when women's education is featured in the plot, "women's literacy and classical knowledge play a crucial role in scripting vengeance, enabling educated women to participate actively in the process of revenge rather than being banished to the margins" (182).

Part 4 considers how vengeful women are transformed in Greek literature and its afterlives. Focusing on the woman-as-lioness metaphor prevalent in works from Homer's Odyssey to the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides and beyond, Alessandra Abbattista offers a posthumanist analysis of the dramatic significance of lioness imagery in ancient Greek texts. Abbattista follows Rosi Braidotti's idea that an empathic turn in critical study of the non-human permits us to identify not reason, but emotion, as the central expression of humanity, and to view violence as an evolutionary tool, demonstrating how being figured as a lioness permits the blurring of masculine and feminine attributes within these women avengers, and pushing for a "non-dualistic understanding of human dichotomies" (215). Janet Clare examines the figure of Hecuba in early modern plays, arguing that the dichotomous roles she plays in Greek tragedy—those of lamenting mother and of ferocious revenger—bifurcate on the early modern stage, serving as evidence that positive female avenging figures did not have a place in early modern drama. She attributes this to "a culture that condemned revenge and saw it as a last resort to which only a male should have recourse" (227) concluding that "To stage a Hecuba [ as she was staged in Classical tragedy] would be to stage rebellion" (234).

The volume concludes with a series of five essays dealing with the intersections of lamentation, grief, gender, and vengeance. Andreas Michalopoulos reclassifies Oenone's letter to Jason mourning his betrayal of her (the fifth letter of Ovid's Heroides) as a letter not of grief but of revenge. Anne Baden-Daintree examines how individual and private grief serves in certain key points as the impetus and driving force for military action in the Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure. Tanya Pollard revisits the figure of Hecuba on the early modern stage, describing Hamlet's response to her in the eponymous play by Shakespeare as a way of understanding how he ultimately comes to replace Hecuba as "the icon of tragedy" (264). Rebecca Yearling reads John Marston's 1600—01 Antonio's Revenge as evidence that masculinity is performative, rather than inherent, arguing that in its intentional dismissal of "feminine" grief and its emphasis on "masculine" violent revenge, the play raises questions concerning the moral limitations of revenge tragedies as a genre. Lesel Dawson closes this section and the volume as a whole with a discussion of heroic dying as a means of countering the narrative control of the revenger in early modern drama, describing how gender inflects this "heroics of endurance" (320) as either essential masochistic self-sacrifice, in the case of a woman-figure, or problematic to one's characterization, in the case of a man.

One weakness in this collection is its emphasis on viewing gender as a binary, male/female and masculine/feminine construct, which (however inadvertently) perpetuates a sexist view of the Classical world and its medieval and early modern afterlives, despite much recent work on nonbinary gender in Classical studies (for example, several of the essays in the 2014 collection Sex in Antiquity) as well as in Medieval and Early Modern studies. In future work on this subject of revenge and gender, a number of the texts and figures examined in this volume could be re-visited through a non-binary lens with, I think, stunning results. As an initial foray in that direction by way of a feminist reconsideration of the subject, this collection provides a useful and important foundation to work from. Finally, while BMCR readers and subscribers in general might prefer volumes that focus specifically on the Classical world, this book is an important, and powerful, example of how interdisciplinary and cross-period studies can illuminate otherwise-overlooked points that lead to essential reconsiderations of subjects—like that of "gender and revenge"—that we have (clearly erroneously, as this volume shows) historically believed we understood well.

Authors and Titles

Introduction: Female Fury and the Masculine Spirit of Vengeance, Lesel Dawson
Part I: The Gendering of Revenge
1. Why are the Erinyes Female? or, What is so Feminine about Revenge?, Edith Hall
2. Re-marking Revenge in Early Modern Drama, Alison Findlay

Part II: Friends and Family: 'Revenging Home'
3. Vengeance and Male Devotion in Laxdæla saga and Njáls saga, Ian Felce
4. 'Now I am Medea': Gender, Identity and the Birth of Revenge in Seneca's Medea, Kathrin Winter
5. The Avenging Daughter in King Lear, Marguerite Tassi
6. 'Brother Unkind': Annabella's Heart in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Sara Eaton

Part III: Women's Weapons
7. Cursing-Prayers and Female Vengeance in the Ancient Greek World, Lydia Matthews and Irene Salvo
8. 'The Power of our Mouths': Gossip as a Female Mode of Revenge, Fiona McHardy
9. 'Women's Weapons': Education and Female Revenge on the Early Modern Stage, Chloe Preedy

Part IV: Women Transmogrified
10. The Vengeful Lioness in Greek Tragedy: A Posthumanist Perspective, Alessandra Abbattista
11. 'She's Turned Fury': Women Transmogrified in Revenge Plays, Janet Clare

Part V: Lamentation, Gender Roles and Vengeance
12. A Phrygian Tale of Love and Revenge: Oenone Paridi (Ovid Heroides 5), Andreas N. Michalopoulos
13. Lament and Vengeance in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Annie Baden-Danetree
14. What’s Hecuba to Shakespeare?, Tanya Pollard
15. ‘Nursed in Blood’: Masculinity and Grief in Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, Rebecca Yearling
16. Outfacing Vengeance: Heroic Dying in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Ford’s The Broken Heart, Lesel Dawson

2019.07.63

Stanley Lombardo (trans.), Gilgamesh. Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2019. Pp. Xxxvii, 91. ISBN 9781624667725. $13.00 (pb). Contributors: Gary Beckman, Introduction

Reviewed by Benjamin R. Foster, Yale University (benjamin.foster@yale.edu)

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Preview

The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, unlike the epics of Homer or Virgil, has been frequently turned into English by readers who enjoy the story but who do not read the original language. Perhaps this condemns Assyriologists for not making their own translations more readable; perhaps it is wishful thinking that this wonderful poem should be more understandable and better preserved than it presently is. In any case, Lombardo's version reads well and smoothly, the sober, elegant, and compelling style reminding the reader of translations from Greek and Latin by Richmond Lattimore or Robert Fagels. There are many inspired turns of phrase. Lombardo gives ample credit to the great 2003 text edition by Andrew George, but, strikingly, makes no reference to George's own translation of all versions of the Epic, including the Sumerian Gilgamesh poems, readily available in the Penguin Classics, not even in the "Suggestions for Further Reading," although this would surely be an obvious port of call for someone interested in knowing more about the Epic and its forerunners.¹

The reader familiar with the problems of the text will soon find himself wondering to what extent Lombardo actually made use of George's edition and commentary to which he pays tribute. All of us who have translated the Epic have been obliged to give up treasured renderings of the past in the face of George's work, so it is disconcerting to see the extent to which Lombardo hangs on to old translations that, since George's edition, have to be abandoned, however reluctantly, unless the translator believes that he has very good epigraphic reasons to maintain an older reading. In Tablet I line 7, for example, "carved" seems no longer possible, so too "gleaming like copper" in line 11, however appealing and hallowed by repetition they may be. Such instances of paying no heed to progress are liberally strewn throughout the work, e.g., Tablet VII line 87, where C. J. Gadd's old reading of "vomit," the basis for Lombardo's "puke," seems now ruled out, in favor of "dust," the meaning being that the harlot will lie down in the dirt even for a passing drunk, not that her client will throw up on her, or Tablet IX lines 31ff., where George's demonstration that the twin mountains were not in the same place has been ignored. In fact, one has the impression that older translations have more presence in this rendering than they should, given that none is acknowledged save Alexander Heidel's careful but now 70-year-old treatment.²

This reader, therefore, found himself admiring Lombardo's accomplishment in making a fine, readable new English poem out of the Epic but wishing, throughout, that his rendering had made better use of the authoritative modern edition of the text in doing so. This nicely designed and produced book is an attractive and tasteful addition to the imposing number of modernized versions of a great story, so should serve to bring more appreciative readers to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

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Notes:

1.   Andrew George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; The Epic of Gilgamesh, A New Translation. London: Penguin Books, 1999.
2.   Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. 2^nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949.

2019.07.62

Francesca Alesse, Aristotle on Prescription: Deliberation and Rule-Making in Aristotle's Practical Philosophy. Philosophia antiqua, 152. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. x, 273. ISBN 9789004385382. €151,00.

Reviewed by David J. Riesbeck (djriesbeck@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Studies of Aristotle do not often devote sustained attention to the idea of prescription. On the one hand, Aristotle does not focus explicitly on prescription as he does on deliberation, choice, practical wisdom, and other concepts. On the other hand, the idea of prescription seems to be associated with the ideas of concrete action-guidance and of rules or principles, and Aristotle's practical philosophy has struck many as uninterested in offering concrete, action-guiding rules or principles. One prominent strand of interpretation sees Aristotle as a committed particularist, holding that there are few or no universal principles or rules and that excellent practical reasoning most importantly consists not in applying such principles, but in exercising a finely attuned sensitivity to the particular features of particular contexts of choice. Francesca Alesse's rich and densely argued book seeks to give Aristotle's thoughts about prescription the attention they deserve and to demonstrate the inadequacy of particularist interpretations. In the process, it explores many important and controversial topics in Aristotle's ethics, psychology, and politics: practical reason and wisdom; desire, deliberation, and choice; akrasia and virtues of character; legislation, political deliberation, and authority. Scholars interested in these topics will want to spend time with this book.

Alesse's main aim is "to show that prescription, far from being a marginal and secondary theme, is a central issue in Aristotle's practical philosophy" (50). In fact, her thesis is quite strong: "Aristotle regards prescription as the essential character of practical reason" (158) and as "the most important function of practical reason" (52). 'Prescription,' for Alesse, names "the single and particular rule of conduct as well as the procedure of formulating rules of conduct" (1). The rules generated by this procedure have three characteristics: (i) they are conclusions of deliberative reasoning, (ii) they are particular insofar as they take into account the circumstances of the people for whom they are made, and (iii) they are "generally deliberated by someone for the conduct of someone else" (1). Prescription is, therefore, analogous to choice, but essentially involves rule-making and not simply decision-making; whereas decision-making may involve only "the individual, episodic choice to perform an action," prescription involves "the identification of an action that will be performed by someone other than the deliberating subject, in all those circumstances that seem to require the performance of that action." (51) For this reason, prescription and choice also bear different relations to desire; though both are the products of deliberation, the deliberation that issues in prescription need not proceed from any desire on the deliberating agent's part for the acts he prescribes or for the goal for the sake of which he prescribes them (51, 246). Along with their implications for Aristotle's psychology, these features of prescription shed light on his ethics and politics. Contrary to particularism, "Aristotle does aim to formulate a prescriptive ethics" (6), where prescription takes place at the level between universal but highly abstract norms and concrete decision-making; while universal norms tell us in highly abstract terms what to do, prescription answers questions about how to do it. Similarly, in politics prescription enters in most crucially not at the level of legislation, but in the application of laws as universal norms via the formulation of more specific practical rules to be applied in specific circumstances. The nature of prescription and its relation to deliberation also shapes Aristotle's understanding of political community and the different sorts of relationships between citizens. Alesse's investigation of prescription draws most of its evidence from the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics as well as the Politics, but also finds ample material in the De Anima, De Motu Animalium, and even the Protrepticus, among other texts. Whatever one thinks of the book's interpretations of these texts, it successfully shows that prescription plays a more important role in Aristotle's thought than most of us have recognized.

After introducing the book's central questions and outlining its main conclusions, Chapter 1 surveys Greek thought about prescription prior to Aristotle, beginning with didactic poetry and moving through the Sophistic movement towards Isocrates, Plato, and Xenophon. Though this survey attends duly to the language of prescription—ἐπιτάττειν, προστάττειν, and related terms—it is not narrowly lexical, but looks more broadly at debates about education and legislation. On Alesse's reading, Aristotle critically systematized this tradition, arriving at the view that "prescription, both as the regulation of desire on the part of individual reason and the regulation of others' conduct by an authority, is the act by which practical reason issues a given action or course of action as the best means to achieve an end or to apply in concreto a general norm" (50). Though he takes on much of Plato's framework for thinking about prescription, he also, adapting the arguments of Plato's Clitophon, criticizes Socrates for emphasizing exhortation in moral education to the neglect of prescription (29-45), and his reflections on the Republic lead him to view prescription not simply as a device for correcting flawed legislation, but as a necessary supplement to laws as universal norms.

Chapter 2 surveys recent scholarship on a number of topics: deliberation, the practical syllogism, particularism, and moral education. This survey will prove helpful for those not already immersed in these debates, but the chapter's main work is to set out Alesse's own conceptual framework for the chapters that follow. Chapter 3 focuses on deliberation and defends a detailed account of its structure, the role of desire, and the relationship between deliberation and the practical syllogism: Aristotelian deliberation is essentially means-end reasoning with a hypothetical form and a 'problematic' structure, as these are set out in the Analytics and the Topics. As such, deliberation does not have a syllogistic form, but can be converted into a syllogism that deduces a prescriptive conclusion from the goodness of a major term as an end and the efficacy of a middle term as an efficient or material cause of the end. Contrary to some interpretations, then, the practical syllogism need not simply explain why someone acted as he did, but can explain the correctness of a prescription arrived at via deliberation. So too, the conclusion of a practical syllogism need not be an action or a decision to perform a particular action, but a prescription, a general rule governing action in specific types of circumstance.

Chapter 4 turns its attention to practical reason as a faculty of the soul, practical wisdom as the virtue of this faculty, and the relationship between practical wisdom and virtue of character. Though this chapter is especially wide-ranging, perhaps its central contention is that practical reason is essentially prescriptive and practical wisdom has an essentially prescriptive function. Practical reason prescribes to the desiring soul as well as to other people, and practical wisdom's excellence in prescription depends on its "argumentative and discursive nature" (181-2). Practical wisdom is "argumentative" in the sense that it enables its possessor not only to deliberate well and make good choices or prescriptions, but to argue for those choices and prescriptions by giving good reasons for them. On Alesse's view, this ability depends on the knowledge of causes: "final and formal causes are invoked to account for a prescribed conduct, when both the utility of the prescribed conduct and the general normative principle that inspired it are unclear . . . When the ultimate end that provided the starting-point for deliberation is known, those who choose to perform or who prescribe a certain action adduce the material or efficient causes justifying their preference of a practical option over other options" (182). Practical wisdom is "discursive" in the sense that "it can deduce particular rules from general norms" (186), but it remains non-demonstrative because its conclusions cannot achieve the same degree of necessity as strict demonstration. For this reason, prescriptive rules will have a flexibility that the conclusions of demonstrations do not, and it will be possible to adjust or even suspend those rules in some circumstances. This flexibility and context-sensitivity, so far from supporting a particularist interpretation, tell against it: the rules are adaptable to different cases and may occasionally be suspended, but they are not thereby violated and they do not lose their action-guiding role (186-7).

Chapter 5 turns to the role of prescription in politics and other relations of authority. It sets its discussion within the framework of Aristotle's distinctions between function (ἔργον), use (χρῆσις), action (πρᾶξις), and production (ποίησις), and between prescriptive and auxiliary sciences or arts. On Alesse's view, we can regard the same activity as both action and production, and likewise we can regard the same activity, science, or art as both auxiliary to a higher one and prescriptive to others. Hence, while political authority ultimately depends on causal knowledge and deliberative ability of a sort not likely to be widely shared, ordinary citizens will frequently engage in political deliberation and prescription at an intermediate level, rather than simply receiving prescriptions from their rulers. Political prescription itself has an auxiliary character even at the highest level, since it is undertaken for the sake of the common good. Politics crucially involves "architectonic order," the hierarchical arrangement of activities and ends, and there is a "basic consistency between the structure of deliberative reasoning and the architectonic arrangement of the ends" (241), one that is reflected in the division among citizens of tasks involving different levels of deliberation or prescription, from legislation to application and regulation to ad hoc prescriptions and judgments for particular cases. Prescription is thus at the center of political life.

This summary of the book's chapters does not adequately capture its complex, subtle, and wide-ranging analysis and argument. The book presents challenging and controversial interpretations of a variety of texts and issues, and for that reason will be of interest to specialists in Aristotle's practical philosophy. Yet the book poses difficulties as well. It is densely written, and it is at times difficult to keep hold of the guiding thread through its labyrinthine explorations of so many regions of the Aristotelian corpus. The book's interpretations at times seem less fully supported by argument than one might have hoped, and prominent alternative readings do not always receive the consideration that their proponents would wish for. The argument is also imprecise at times in ways that leave it unclear just what its claims are. To take one example, Alesse seems to hold quite explicitly that practical wisdom is essentially prescriptive (158), yet also to hold that prescription essentially involves deliberating for and guiding the conduct of others (e.g. 1, 51, 161, 181, 246). Yet surely practical reason does not essentially deliberate and prescribe for others; I can also deliberate and decide about what to do for myself. We are also told that within the soul practical reason prescribes to the desiring part (181), so perhaps individual deliberation preserves this other-directed feature of prescription. Yet Alesse's insistence that prescription is analogous but not identical to choice (1, 246) suggests that one can deliberate and choose without prescribing, and this conclusion seems to be sufficient to show that practical reason is not essentially prescriptive. Similarly, it is at times unclear what counts as a prescription and what does not; it would seem that law-making is prescriptive, but merely less prescriptive than political deliberation (3-4), yet we are also told that laws are universal norms, which are in turn contrasted with prescriptions (4-6, cf. 181). This sort of imprecision recurs throughout the book and makes it difficult to pin down exactly how to understand its claims. On the broader question of particularism, the book makes an impressive case that flexible rules play an essential role in Aristotle's thought, but it is not clear whether this poses a problem for particularism, especially because the book does not engage at length with particularist interpretations.

Despite these imperfections, the book largely achieves its goal of showing that prescription is central to Aristotle's thought. Specialists in Aristotle will learn from reading it.

2019.07.61

Robin Margaret Jensen, Mark D. Ellison (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. Pp. 398. ISBN 9781138857223. $220.00.

Reviewed by Georgi Parpulov, University of Birmingham (g.r.parpulov@bham.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

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

Anglophone readers who need a scholarly introduction to early Christian art are now presented with an array of useful options: the illustrated exhibition catalogue Picturing the Bible (2007), the three-volume Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology (2017), and the extensive Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology (2018). The work under review has the advantages of being more concise and more focused: buildings and other purely archaeological finds have been bracketed out, so that the emphasis lies squarely on visual culture. "Early Christian art", a special chapter (§ 23) thoughtfully reminds us, is far from a self-evident concept. To be sure, all categories of human knowledge are arbitrarily constructed—this particular one has a well-established pedigree.¹ An overview of the field's nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography² is the only notable omission in an otherwise exhaustive survey. In Part I, the material is grouped according to medium and/or setting; the shorter Part II discusses select overarching topics, mostly pertaining to function and iconography (§§ 17-20).

The authors faced the familiar choice of either touching briefly on a large number of objects or discussing in greater depth a few typical ones: some opted for the first (§§ 2-4, 6-9, 11-12, 14), others, for the second approach (§§ 5, 10, 13, 15-16). The photographic illustrations, all in black-and-white, are by no means limited to standard textbook examples, so that even an expert will see something unfamiliar (esp. in §§ 3-4, 8-9, 11, 14, 20, 22). The contributors belong to different generations, ranging from recent university graduates to emeriti/ae, and are active in a number of countries: the USA, UK, Germany, Israel. The bibliography is up-to-date;³ the text has been edited with diligence.⁴

Like any good handbook, this one reflects the methodological approaches predominant at the time of its publication. The two editors state, respectively, that early Christian art is demarcated by its subject matter, setting, context, or use (2), and that "an object is conventionally called Christian by reason of its iconography" (385). All contributors seem to acknowledge "more or less uncertain stylistic arguments" (22) as a taxonomical tool,⁵ but artistic form as such is of no great interest to them. By and large, attention is focused on function, either practical or symbolic. Baptistery buildings exemplify the connection between art and ritual actions (97, 279-80); most gold glass was made specifically for funerary purposes (131); wall mosaics served aesthetic, didactic, or devotional ends (89); mosaic floors "helped to clarify the symbolism of the church building, explain the liturgy, and intensify the religious experience" (115). "Cluster[s] of popular visual motifs" (279) are related to specific contexts, so that, for instance, portrait types encode social and gender roles (27, 328), images engraved on gemstones mark an individual's status and religious beliefs (141), catacomb murals "express in different ways the multiple expectations and hopes for the afterlife" (32). Several chapters (§§ 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 21) draw on recent technical research to discuss the materials and processes of artistic production. Another recurrent concern is the original reception of images: "due to the interactive nature of the viewing experience, one should discuss not only the creator but also the viewer" (114). Inscriptions or ekphrastic texts are assumed to document the viewers' historically conditioned mental or physical responses (51, 96, 115-7, 277, 334, 360). Current thinking of this kind can be contrasted with Max Dvořak's of exactly a hundred years ago: "Altchristliche Kunst" is not a conventional label for an assembly of archäologisch nach den Realien gegliederte artefacts but a Totalität des geschichtlichen Geschehens informed by a distinct system of thought and corresponding to distinct set of aesthetic principles.⁶ One wonders how early Christian art will be viewed by scholars a century from now.

Authors and titles

1. Introduction: The Emergence and Character of Early Christian Art (Robin M. Jensen)

Part I: Media
2. Catacomb Painting and the Rise of Christian Iconography in Funerary Art (Norbert Zimmermann)
3. Christian Sarcophagi from Rome (Jutta Dresken-Weiland)
4. Early Christian Sarcophagi outside of Rome (Guntram Koch)
5. Freestanding Sculpture (Heidi J. Hornik)
6. Christian Wall Mosaics and the Creation of Sacred Space (Sean V. Leatherbury)
7. Christian Floor Mosaics: Modes of Study and Potential Meanings (Rina Talgam)
8. Gold Glass in Late Antiquity (Susan Walker)
9. Engraved Gems and Amulets (Jeffrey Spier)
10. Reliquaries and the Cult of Relics in Late Antiquity (Erik Thunø)
11. Ceramics in the Early Christian World (John J. Herrmann, Jr. and Annewies van den Hoek)
12. Panel Paintings and Early Christian Icons (Katherine Marsengill)
13. Christian Ivories: Containment, Manipulation, and the Creation of Meaning (Niamh Bhalla)
14. Textiles: The Emergence of a Christian Identity in Cloth (Jennifer L. Ball)
15. Early Christian Silver: Sacred and Domestic (Ruth Leader-Newby)
16. Early Christian Illuminated Manuscripts (Dorothy Verkerk)

Part II: Themes
17. Early Christian Art and Ritual (Michael Peppard)
18. Picturing the Passion (Felicity Harley-McGowan)
19. Miracles and Art (Lee M. Jefferson)
20. "Secular" Portraits, Identity, and the Christianization of the Roman Household (Mark D. Ellison)
21. The Mosaics of Ravenna (Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis)
22. Early Christian Art and Archaeology in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Rome (Janet Huskinson)
23. "Early" "Christian" "Art" (Robert Couzin)

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Notes:

1.   A pedant might wonder why § 16 discusses a number of secular manuscripts, incl. illustrated copies of Dioscorides, Terence, and Virgil.
2.   The best account in English is William H. C. Frend, The Archaeology of Early Christianity: A History, London 1996.
3.   The omission a few recent publications was probably unavoidable. It would have been useful to cite (363) Dreksen-Weiland's book in English translation (cf. 103); to list (206) Mathews' and Muller's recent monograph on early icons (cf. 390); to mention (101) Benjamin Fourlas, Die Mosaiken der Acheiropoietos-Basilika in Thessaloniki: eine vergleichende Analyse dekorativer Mosaiken des 5. und 6. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2012, as well as (239) Petra Linscheid, Frühbyzantinische textile Kopfbedeckungen: Typologie, Verbreitung, Chronologie und soziologischer Kontext nach Originalfunden, Wiesbaden 2011. The citation in note 38 (238) should be corrected to "Byzance en Suisse (Geneva: Musées d'art et d'histoire, 2015)".
4.   I hope that I will be excused for pointing out a few infelicities: "funerary epitaphs" (4), "the walls of most Roman buildings have collapsed over the intervening centuries, eliminating our access to their decoration" (86), "[t]he physiognomy of the elephant's tusk determined the appearance of the objects made from it in terms of scale, shape, technique, style and finish" (207), "[t]rough decades of leadership, Byzantinist Gary Vikan has curated interpretation of the genre of early Christian pilgrimage art" (285), "[m]iracles additionally addressed the maladies of human existence that afflict the general population" (308).
5.   An ivory panel, for example, "has been matched" "[t]hrough its relatively flat abstract style" "to several other fragments in museums around the world" (216).
6.   Max Dvořak, "Katakombenmalerei: die Anfänge der christlichen Kunst," in: id., Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung, Munich 1924, 1-40. Dvořak's brilliant essay is hard to render in another language. For an English version of it, see The History of Art and the History of Ideas, tr. John Hardy, London 1984, 1-25.

2019.07.60

Andreas Hofeneder, Appians Keltiké: Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Tyche. Supplementband, 9​. Wien: Holzhausen, 2018. Pp. iii, 505. ISBN 9783903207042. €65,00.

Reviewed by Simon Lentzsch, Ruhr-Universität Bochum​ (simon.lentzsch@rub.de)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

Obgleich Appians Werk als historische Quelle, insbesondere für solche Perioden der römischen Geschichte, für die keine andere historiographische Überlieferung vorliegt, stets genutzt wurde, wurde seinem Œuvre in der altertumswissenschaftlichen Forschung verglichen mit den Werken anderer Historiographen der griechisch-römischen Antike oftmals ein relativ geringeres Interesse entgegenbracht. Für die jüngere Forschung kann indes eine Neubewertung und intensivere Auseinandersetzung mit Appians Werk konstatiert werden. Nach wie vor liegen jedoch für einige Teile keine philologischen und historischen Kommentare auf aktuellem Forschungsstand vor, die helfen könnten, die Texte einem größeren Fachpublikum zu erschließen.¹

Der hier zu besprechende Band aus der Feder Andreas Hofeneders stellt einen Beitrag dar, diese Lücken zu schließen. Hofeneder, der sich bereits in seinem dreibändigen Kommentar zu den literarisch überlieferten Quellen zur keltischen Religionsgeschichte als fachlich ausgewiesener Kommentator empfehlen konnte, hat sich hierzu der lediglich in Fragmenten überlieferten Keltiké angenommen.² Dies stellt bereits insofern einen Gewinn für die Forschung dar, da bisher kein historischer Kommentar zu diesem Teil von Appians Werk vorlag. Zudem legt Hofeneder eine neue deutsche Übersetzung der Fragmente vor, die insgesamt zu einem besseren Verständnis des Textes beiträgt.

Inhaltlich verteilen sich die Fragmente der Keltiké auf einen Zeitraum von etwa drei Jahrhunderten, beginnend mit der keltischen Einnahme Roms zu Beginn des vierten Jahrhunderts bis hin zu Caesars Gallischem Krieg in den Jahren 58- 51/50 v.Chr. Hierbei lassen sich zwei Schwerpunkte der Verteilung der Fragmente jeweils zu Beginn (‚Gallische Katastrophe') und am Ende (Bellum Gallicum) dieses Zeitraumes ausmachen, was wohl keinen reinen Zufall der Überlieferung darstellt, sondern noch einen ungefähren Eindruck der Anlage von Appians Werk vermittelt. Gesichert ist zudem die Behandlung der Keltenkriege des vierten und dritten Jahrhunderts in Italien sowie die Feldzüge der Kimbern und Teutonen, die dem alexandrinischen Historiker offenbar als Kelten galten.

Für die historische Forschung ist Appians Werk vor allem in denjenigen Passagen wertvoll, in denen der Alexandriner Detailinformationen nennt, die ansonsten nicht überliefert ist. Zu manchen, durchaus bedeutenden, Ereignissen, wie der Schlacht von Noreia (113 v.Chr.), bietet Appian sogar die einzige ausführliche Schilderung, die in den antiken Quellen erhalten ist (vgl. 273). An Stellen, an denen sich Appians Bericht mit den Versionen der sonstigen Überlieferung abgleichen lässt, fällt indes wiederum auf, dass der griechische Historiograph hier oft „eine eigentümliche Version der Ereignisse bietet" (119), der wohl jeweils lediglich ein geringer Wert für die historische Rekonstruktion zugesprochen werden kann. Aufschlussreich sind dennoch auch diese Passagen, da sie doch Hinweise auf den Umgang mit diplomatischen und militärischen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Römern und Kelten in der römischen und griechischen Historiographie bieten. Da es im Rahmen dieser Besprechung nicht möglich ist, auf sämtliche Punkte einzugehen, die in Hofeneders Kommentar auftauchen, werde ich im Folgenden nach einigen allgemeinen Anmerkungen zum Aufbau des Bandes lediglich auf einige Aspekte der Übersetzung sowie des Kommentars eingehen.

Das Buch ist in klar geordneter und nachvollziehbarer Weise aufgebaut. An eine Einleitung (1-14) schließt sich der bei weitem umfangreichste Abschnitt des Buches an, in dem Hofeneder die jeweilige Edition des Quellentextes mitsamt deutscher Übersetzung und umfangreichem Kommentar bietet (15-425). Hinweise zu Abkürzungen (426-428), eine Bibliographie von beachtlichem Umfang (429-472) sowie verschiedene Indices (473-505) schließen den Band ab.

In der pointierten Einleitung (1-14) stellt Hofeneder zunächst das Vorhaben vor und liefert zudem Erläuterungen zur Überlieferungs- und Editionsgeschichte der Fragmente der Keltiké. Eine neue Edition des Textes hat Hofeneder selbst nicht vorgenommen, sondern greift auf den der Teubner-Ausgabe von P. Viereck und A. Roos zurück.³ Dies ist auch deswegen nachvollziehbar, da, nach Auskunft Hofeneders, die „neue kritische Edition sämtlicher Werke Appians", die Kai Brodersen für die Oxford Classical Texts vorbereite, mit Blick auf die Keltiké keine „Abweichungen gegenüber der klassischen Teubner-Ausgabe" aufweisen werde (6). Die Zählung der Fragmente folgt ebenfalls im Wesentlichen der vorliegenden Teubner-Sammlung. Ein erst 2007 eindeutig Appian zugewiesenes Fragment hat Hofeneder unter der Nummer 8a in die etablierte Nummerierung integriert (vgl. 6f.). Diese Vorgehensweise kommt Nutzern entgegen, die mit der bisherigen Zählung vertraut sind, und dürfte die Handhabung des Kommentars erleichtern. Gleichwohl verdient die von Hofeneder am Ende des Kommentarteils (425) vorgeschlagene, wohl begründete, Neuordnung und damit verbundene neue Zählung der Fragmente durchaus Beachtung und könnte in neuen Editionen des Textes übernommen werden.

Die erhaltenen Fragmente der Keltiké nehmen in der Teubner-Ausgabe etwa 13 Seiten ein, denen Hofeneder nun also einen Kommentar von rund vierhundert Seiten gewidmet hat. Präziser formuliert kommen im Schnitt „auf jedes Wort Appians etwas mehr als hundert Worte an Erläuterung" (13). Diesen beachtlichen Umfang seines Kommentars begründet Hofeneder zum einen damit, dass Fragmente generell umfangreicher zu kommentieren seien als vollständig erhaltene Texte. Zum anderen sei es unumgänglich gewesen, besonders relevante Paralleltexte im Originaltext und in Übersetzung beizufügen, da „doch bei weitem nicht jeder Leser diese Texte bei der Hand oder gar im Kopf" habe. Schließlich habe Hofeneder, anders als dies nach seinen Worten oftmals üblich sei, nicht nur die neueste Forschungsliteratur berücksichtigt, sondern sich auch darum bemüht, Arbeiten „älterer Epochen" durchzuarbeiten und kritisch zu kommentieren.

Tatsächlich ist Hofeneder hinsichtlich der Aufnahme der Forschungsliteratur äußerst gründlich vorgegangen, indem er teilweise sehr alte Forschungsmeinungen auch in solchen Fällen (teils direkt) zitiert, kommentiert und einordnet, wenn die dort vertretenen Deutungen längst überholt scheinen. Es ist zu vermuten, dass diese Vorgehensweise nicht auf ungeteilte Zustimmung stoßen wird, da der Kommentar auf diese Weise erheblich umfangreicher ausgefallen ist, als es möglich gewesen wäre. Allerdings dürften nur wenige Leser Hofeneders Buch tatsächlich von der ersten bis zur letzten Seite durchlesen, sondern vielmehr gezielt einzelne Fragmente ‚ansteuern'. Die Kommentare am jeweiligen Ort bieten dann jedenfalls reichhaltige Informationen.

Die oft umfangreichen Zitate von Parallelstellen dürften in der alltäglichen Handhabung zudem eine nicht unwesentliche Erleichterung darstellen, da so schon mit vorliegendem Buch ein erster Abgleich zwischen der Darstellung anderer Autoren und derjenigen Appians ermöglicht wird. Eine knappere Kommentierung und damit ein deutlich kürzeres Buch wären zwar zweifellos möglich gewesen, doch überwiegen aus meiner Sicht die Vorteile, die Hofeneders Vorgehensweise hier bietet.

Die Neuübersetzung sämtlicher Fragmente ist gründlich, und wo Hofeneder signifikant von älteren Übertragungen abweicht, hat er dies jeweils detailliert begründet.

So ist die Übersetzung „Gallien" für Γαλατίαν in F 1,5 (40) sicher sinnvoll, da eine moderne Leserschaft mit „Galatien" (so die Übersetzung in der gängigen deutschen Übertragung von Otto Veh) sicher weniger das – hier aber gemeinte – südliche Frankreich, sondern vielmehr die Siedlungsgebiete der Galater in Kleinasien verstehen dürfte (siehe hierzu auch den klärenden Kommentar Hofeneders auf 40f.). Auch an anderer Stelle macht Hofeneder sinnvolle Übersetzungsvorschläge, die tatsächlich dazu beitragen, bislang nur schwer verständliche Passagen zu erschließen.⁴ Dem Rezenten etwas eigentümlich erscheint allerdings die Übersetzung der Schilderung eines Strategems des Dictators C. Sulpicius Peticus (für das Jahr 358) in F 1,3 mit „er befahl den in der ersten Reihe Stehenden, (ihre Speere) gleichzeitig abzuschießen (ἐξακοντίσαντας ὁμοῦ) […]" (16, Hervorhebung SL). Hier hätte vielleicht eher eine Übertragung mit „(ihre Speere) gleichzeitig zu schleudern" dem modernen Sprachgebrauch entsprochen.

Als Kommentator zeigt sich Hofeneder gut informiert und aufmerksam, so dass seine Anmerkungen dazu geeignet sind, für jeden an der Beschäftigung mit Appians Überlieferung und den ihr zugrundeliegenden historischen Ereignissen Interessierten nützliche Hilfestellung zu bieten. Hofeneders umfassende Belesenheit und seine Kenntnis auch entlegener Quellenstellen sowie der internationalen altphilologischen wie althistorischen Forschung der (mindestens) letzten zwei Jahrhunderte zu Appians Keltengeschichte sind beeindruckend. Allerdings gehen seine Ausführungen an der einen oder anderen Stelle vielleicht doch recht weit vom eigentlichen Thema ab (etwa die Hinweise auf mehr oder weniger ähnliche Passsagen aus der antiken Literatur auf den Seiten 50-51). An der einen oder anderen Stelle wären daher auch in dieser Hinsicht Kürzungen gut vertretbar gewesen.

Positiv hervorzuheben ist es, dass sich Hofeneder in strittigen Fragen in der Regel klar positioniert bzw. darlegt, weshalb er sich zu einer deutlichen Positionierung nicht in der Lage sieht. Es liegt in der Natur der Sache, dass nicht jeder Leser mit jeder Schlussfolgerung einverstanden sein wird, doch scheinen mir Hofeneders Positionen in den meisten Fällen nachvollziehbar. Die Existenz einer abweichenden „bei Ennius und einigen weiteren Autoren bezeugten Version der keltischen Belagerung des Kapitols im Jahre 387/386, derzufolge die Kelten auch das Kapitol erobert haben", die „von A. demnach nicht übernommen" (21) worden sei, ist allerdings durchaus nicht gesichert, worauf Hofeneder im entsprechenden Kommentar zu F 1,1 hätte hinweisen können.⁵

In formaler Hinsicht ist Hofeneders Buch sehr gelungen. Trotz des beachtlichen Umfanges sind mir kaum Tippfehler aufgefallen, und trotz der an zahlreichen Stellen durchaus komplexen Überlieferungsverhältnisse und damit verbundener Forschungsprobleme lässt sich der stilistisch weitgehend ansprechende Text gut lesen. Gerade in den Abschnitten, in denen Hofeneder detailliert auf topographische Fragen eingeht, etwa in Hinsicht auf die umstrittene Lokalisierung des Ortes der Schlacht von Noreia im Jahr 113 v.Chr. (295-298), wäre allerdings eine Implementierung von Landkarten in den Kommentar sehr hilfreich gewesen.

Insgesamt stellt Hofeneders Übersetzung von Appians Keltiké mitsamt der hier erstmals erfolgten umfangreichen Kommentierung der Fragmente einen Gewinn dar und dürfte für zahlreiche Forschungsvorhaben zur römisch-keltischen Geschichte, zu frühen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Römern und Germanen sowie zur kaiserzeitlichen Historiographie ein nützliches Nachschlagewerk bieten. ​

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Notes:

1.   Siehe etwa Kathryn Welch (Hg.), Appian's Roman History. Empire and Civil War, Swansea 2015, und außerdem die Hinweise Hofeneders im vorliegenden Band (S. 2-4).
2.   Andreas Hofeneder, Die Religion der Kelten in den antiken literarischen Zeugnissen. Sammlung, Übersetzung und Kommentierung. 3 Bände, Wien 2005-2011. Gemäß den Ausführungen auf Hofeneders Homepage bereitet er gegenwärtig Publikationen mit Neuedition, Übersetzung und Kommentar zu Appians Basiliké, Italiké, Sikeliké vor.
3.   dAppiani Historia Romana. Vol. I. Prooemium. Iberica. Annibaica. Libyca. Illyrica. Syriaca. Mithridatica. Fragmenta, ediderunt P. Viereck et A. G. Roos. Editio stereotypa correctior addenda et corrigenda adiecit E. Gabba, Leipzig 1962.
4.   Nachvollziehbare und gut begründete Übersetzungsvorschläge zu einzelnen Passagen finden sich etwa auf den Seiten 120-121 (zu den diplomatischen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Römern und Kelten im Vorspann zur Schlacht an der Allia), 296 (zur Topographie des Feldzuges der der Schlacht von Noreia vorangeht), 299 (zu völkerrechtlichen Begrifflichkeiten), sowie auf den Seiten 363 und 374.
5.   Siehe hierzu bereits die Hinweise bei Timothy Cornell, The Annals of Q. Ennius (Rev. Skutsch 1985), in: Journal of Roman Studies 76 (1986), S. 244-250, hier 247f. ​

2019.07.59

Hans-Peter Nill, Gewalt und Unmaking in Lucans Bellum Civile: Textanalysen aus narratologischer, wirkungsasthetischer und gewaltsoziologischer Perspektive. Amsterdam studies in classical philology 27. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. viii, 404. ISBN 9789004379442. $148.00.

Reviewed by Markus Kersten, Universität Basel (markus.kersten@unibas.ch)

Version at BMCR home site

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Lucans Bellum Ciuile (BC) ist zwar vor allem für die Scheußlichkeit der in ihm dargestellten Gewalttaten berüchtigt, allerdings gehören die Verwundungen und Verletzungen zu den durchaus unpopulären Teilen des Gedichts. Weit mehr Aufmerksamkeit haben etwa die politische, die formale, die philosophische und die literarhistorische Dimension des Gedichts erfahren. Hans-Peter Nill erkennt darin ein Desiderat und bekräftigt somit das Interesse, der Gewalt in der römischen Epik eigene Studien zu widmen.¹ In seiner Tübinger Dissertation unternimmt Nill also den Versuch, die Gewaltdarstellungen des Gedichts systematisch zu betrachten und hierfür literaturwissenschaftliche, soziologische und narratologische Methoden miteinander zu verbinden. Er selbst spricht diesbezüglich von einer Probebohrung (S. 3). Was hier zutage gefördert wird, ist in der Tat vielversprechendes Material: In fünf aufeinanderfolgenden Analysen (zu Marius Gratidianus, zum Massensterben und der Tiberflut, zur Seeschlacht von Massilia, zum Kampf zwischen Hercules und Antaeus und zur Schlacht bei Pharsalus) zeigt der Autor, wie die lucanische Gewalt literarisch dargestellt ist, und skizziert, wie sie aufgefasst werden kann. Aussagen wie die, dass die Gewalt des BC letztlich als bloßes Ornament die Schrecken des Krieges illustriere, sind damit ein für alle Mal als unzureichend erwiesen.

Das Hauptverdienst der Untersuchung besteht darin, im Anschluss vor allem an das von A. J. Greimas entwickelte strukturalistische Konzept literarischer Aktanten ein theoretisch fundiertes Modell zur Beschreibung der relevanten Passagen entwickelt zu haben.² Nills umfangreiche Einleitung (1–86) dient im Wesentlichen der Darlegung dieses Modells; es umfasst etwa 20 verschiedene Gesichtspunkte, darunter Täter (in Nills Terminologie agens) und Opfer (patiens), aber auch Dritte (u.a. Helfer, Zuschauer, Auftraggeber), Waffen, Verwundung, Sterben usw. (S. 54–59, eine instruktive Grafik auf S. 56 bzw. 350 dient der Veranschaulichung). Überdies wird die Analyse des Erzählraums als wichtiger Schlüssel zur Untersuchung der Gewaltdarstellungen erwiesen (59–66). All das trägt Nill mit großer Sorgfalt vor, und viele der allgemeinen Ausführungen zur Gewaltsoziologie (30–47) sind interessant und lehrreich. Jedoch: So wichtig bei einem interdisziplinären Zugang die Darlegung der gewählten Methodik auch ist, sie erscheint zuweilen etwas unhandlich. Eine gewisse Straffung (etwa bei den Ausführungen zur Postmoderne, S. 80-83) hätte hier nützlich sein können, ebenso ein etwas ausführlicheres Inhaltsverzeichnis, um die Argumentationsstruktur zu veranschaulichen und damit einige Redundanzen (etwa S. 49f.) zu vermeiden

Zu loben ist indessen Nills Systematik und, damit verbunden, die klare Gliederung der Arbeit. Alle diskutierten Passagen werden nach demselben Muster behandelt: Auf eine Übersetzung folgen Ausführungen zu Kontext, Inhalt und Aufbau,³ dann ein Referat zum Forschungsstand und schließlich, unter Anwendung des entwickelten Modells, die Interpretation. Dem Autor geht es hierbei dezidiert nicht um das Werk als Ganzes oder gar die Intentionen seines Autors, sondern um die exemplarische Betrachtung der Einzelszene (die zwar durchaus nicht problemlose kinematographische Metapher erweist sich für den Autor oft als erkenntnisleitend) und deren Bedeutung für die Gewalterfahrung der Leser, wobei hier nicht notwendig zwischen antikem und modernem Publikum unterschieden werden muss. Diese Beschränkung auf das Mikroskopische ist—jedenfalls für den Moment—sinnvoll, denn Nill macht viele wichtige Beobachtungen, die nicht ohne weiteres interpretativ vereinbar erscheinen. Das betrifft ebenso sehr einzelne Details der Komposition (etwa S. 282 zur Semantisierung des Raums in der Antaeusepisode) wie auch insgesamt den Deutungsrahmen der betrachteten Passagen. Zwei der von Nill erhobenen Befunde sind besonders hervorzuheben, weil sie auch über die Gewaltdarstellungen hinaus für das BC aussagekräftig sind:

Unschärfe und Illusionsdurchbrechung. Die grausame Hinrichtung des Marius Gratidianus ist zwar ästhetisch eindrucksvoll, in ihrem Verlauf ist sie jedoch nicht vollständig nachzuvollziehen. Die einzelnen Gewalttaten werden unanschaulich erzählt oder ostentativ verschwiegen; die insofern namenlose Gewalt symbolisiert innerhalb und außerhalb der Fiktion einen vollständigen Sinnverlust (S. 117–119). Die Verwundung des Catus dagegen ist bereits an sich auffällig unwahrscheinlich (er wird von vorn und von hinten von Pfeilen getroffen, so dass das Blut zunächst 'nicht sicher ist', wohin es fließen soll). Die Unschärfe zwischen Schrecken, Befremden und dem Unterhaltungswert des Spektakulären reflektiert hintersinnig die Fiktionalität der Darstellung (S. 177–179).

Die Ästhetik der Abwesenheit. Lucan reflektiert Abwesenheit nicht nur dadurch, dass er immer wieder erzählt, wie die Überlebenden den Verlust ihrer Angehörigen erfahren (S. 233–235), sondern, auf anderen diegetischen Ebenen, auch dadurch, dass alternative Handlungsverläufe angedeutet, narrative Strukturen durchbrochen oder literarische Referenzen anders als erwartet ausgeführt werden; dies wird vor allem deutlich mit Blick auf die Archetypen epischer Verwundungen bei Homer (S. 314–318).

Nicht alle dieser Beobachtungen mögen angesichts der Diskussion um Lucans Antiphrasen überraschend scheinen, aber ihre systematische Darbietung ist sehr nützlich. Ausgehend alsovon der solchermaßen dokumentierten Vielfältigkeit und Subtilität der Gewaltdarstellungen—oder vielleicht sogar Gewaltanwendungen—Lucans gelangt der Autor zu der These, dass der Gewalt im BC eine widersprüchliche, Strukturen auflösende Wirkung zukomme, die den Rezipienten in herausfordernder Weise daran beteilige, dem Gedicht (und seinem Thema) einen Sinn abzugewinnen. Nill spricht diesbezüglich von „Unmaking". Der neue, in seiner Kürze attraktive Terminus, mit dem sich Phänomene wie Unanschaulichkeit, Realismus, Fiktionalität und Referentialität gleichzeitig fassen lassen, erscheint insofern zu Recht im Buchtitel. Dort ist er allerdings nicht unmittelbar verständlich, so dass es bequemer wäre, ihn gleich zu Anfang und nicht erst auf S. 83 ausführlicher erklärt zu finden. Entsprechend willkommen ist das übersichtliche Schlusskapitel („Narrative Gewalt als Unmaking", S. 337–349).

Im Fazit der Arbeit konstatiert der Autor mit Bezug auf Eco: „Infolge der vielfältigen, mehrdimensionalen und fragmentarischen werkimmanenten Strukturen kann das Bürgerkriegsepos vom Leser aus verschiedenen, auch widersprüchlichen Perspektiven betrachtet und konkretisiert werden, ‚ohne jemals aufzuhören (es) selbst zu sein.'" (S. 348). Dem ist absolut zuzustimmen. Nicht alle Mehrdimensionalitätsdiagnosen des Autors sind jedoch in gleicher Weise überzeugend. Hier geht es womöglich um etwas Grundsätzliches: Die jüngere Forschung zu Lucan hat gezeigt, wie unbedingt nötig es ist, die zahlreichen Schwierigkeiten des BC, die zu so erstaunlich gegensätzlichen Interpretationen geführt haben, im Blick zu behalten. Insofern ist es zwar legitim, wenn Nill mit postmodernen Ansätzen konsequent das Dekonstruktive im BC offenzulegen versucht. Allerdings ist das Gedicht selbst, um es provozierend simpel zu sagen, nicht postmodern. Im Ganzen scheint mir daher doch die Frage unumgänglich, in welchem Verhältnis das BC Auflösung bzw. Verunklärung und Bekräftigung von Strukturen bewirkt und ob es womöglich auch ein Antonym zu „Unmaking" gibt, sozusagen das Heile im Fragmentarischen. Diese Frage steht, eingestandenermaßen, nicht im Fokus von Nills Untersuchung, sie ist aber hinsichtlich der von ihm angestoßenen Methodendiskussion wichtig. Ich möchte daher mit Blick auf die Weiterbeschäftigung mit der lucanischen Gewalt auf zwei Stellen näher eingehen, wo aus meiner Sicht keine Uneindeutigkeit und Absurdität festzustellen sind bzw. wo das Werkganze etwas mehr in Betracht kommen sollte.

1. Lucan. 2, 203–206. Der Kontext ist, dass sich die Soldaten Sullas bei der Massenhinrichtung auf dem Marsfeld im Gedränge kaum mehr bewegen können (bzw. müssen?):

[sc. uix] uictores mouere manus; uix caede peracta
procumbunt, dubiaque labant ceruice; sed illos
magna premit strages peraguntque cadauera partem
caedis: uiua graues elidunt corpora trunci.

Die Bezüge sind hier nicht unmittelbar deutlich; man hat aber, unter anderem ausgehend von einer Bemerkung in den adnotationes angenommen,⁴ dass die schon getöteten Delinquenten die noch lebenden erdrücken.⁵ Dieser Ansicht sind—meines Erachtens zu Recht—fast alle modernen Interpreten gefolgt. Nill sieht das anders,⁶ verzichtet jedoch auf eine Auswertung der Kommentartradition und erklärt: „Die Getöteten … erdrücken ihre Mörder durch ihr Gewicht" (S. 135 u.ö.), um hier „Unmaking" am Werk zu sehen: „Verdichtung zeigt sich bei der Ausführung der Gewalt selbst: aus patientes werden agentes und in verkehrter Richtung aus agentes patientes. Die Distanz zwischen Getötetwerden und Töten verringert sich auf ein Minimum … [sc. so konstituiert sich] das Unmaking Lucanischer Gewalt, das nicht auf räumliche Entitäten begrenzt ist, sondern auch in der Transformation semantischer Codes, wie beispielsweise in der Verdichtung semantischer Oppositionen wie Gewalttat— Gewalterleiden oder Leben—Tod zum Ausdruck kommt." (S. 152). Sind die Grenzen hier aber wirklich so unklar, gewinnt die Passage an Eindringlichkeit, wenn wir Sullas Schergen ihrerseits als Opfer auffassen? Eine ausführliche Diskussion des Textes und Überlegungen dazu, wie Ambivalenzen auf der Ebene des Textes sich zu bestimmten Erwartungen an die Narration verhalten, wäre gerade hier wünschenswert gewesen.

2. Lucan. 4, 593–653. In der Erzählung von Hercules und Antaeus, die ein libyscher Einwohner dem neugierigen Curio vorträgt, erkennt Nill eine besondere Spannung („suspense"): Den Lesern, die sich mit Hercules identifizieren, müsse ein Sieg des Helden immer unwahrscheinlicher vorkommen (S. 295), bis die Spannung durch „Unmaking" abrupt aufgelöst werde (S. 303). Die Argumente, die Nill hierzu anführt (das Spannungspotential der story, S. 291, der Verlauf des Kampfes, S. 295, die scheinbar suggestive Rede von den regna Antaei, S. 296), sind für sich genommen überzeugend—wären da nicht die populären Namen, also der Mythos. Obschon Nill sowohl die intertextuelle Dimension der Passage als auch ihre diegetische Einbettung tadellos darstellt (S. 260–266), äußert er sich kaum zum Verhältnis von Spannung und Intertextualität: Kann man wirklich für einen Moment an Hercules' Sieg zweifeln? Hier müsste wohl eine Untersuchung des narrativen Arrangements anknüpfen: Was bedeutet es, dass der Adressat dieser Mythenparaphrase gerade Curio ist, der sich mehr für Scipio als für Sagenhelden zu interessieren scheint?

Wie gesagt: Ob die angedeuteten Arbeitsschritte auch noch zur „Probebohrung" gehören, kann man wohl unterschiedlich beurteilen. Eine solche hat ja ihren Zweck auch dann erfüllt, wenn sie Ergebnisse liefert, die künftig noch weiter aufbereitet werden müssen. Und gut gesichert sind Nills Proben in jedem Fall: Das Buch ist sorgfältig redigiert, sehr hilfreich sind die Indizes zu Stellen, Namen und verwendeten Begriffen (lediglich einen Eintrag zu „Dynamik" habe ich vermisst), unbedingt erwähnenswert ist die vorbildhafte Typografie.

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Notes:

1.   Cf. Franchet d'Espèrey, Sylvie (1999). Conflit, violence et non-violence dans la Thébaïde de Stace, Paris: Les belles lettres. Syré, Evelyn (2017). Gewalt und soziale Bindung in Silius Italicus' Punica, Rahden: Marie Leidorf.
2.   Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1966). Sémantique structurale. Paris: Larousse [dt. (1971): Strukturale Semantik. Braunschweig: Vieweg].
3.   Angesichts der Fragestellung ist es nicht nur berechtigt, sondern sinnvoll, nicht systematisch die Textkritik der behandelten Passagen zu behandeln; an einigen Stellen (etwa Lucan. 2, 213; 7, 627) hätte eine entsprechende Diskussion Nills Thesen aber vielleicht noch weiter bekräftigen können.
4.   Endt, Johannes (ed. 1909). Adnotationes super Lucanum, Leipzig: Teubner.
5.   Siehe etwa Housmans Bemerkung zur Stelle: „multitudo locique angustiae faciunt ut uix procumbant etiam quorum caedes peracta est, tantum labent ac nutent …; alios uero non uictorum manus sed caesorum corporum pondus interimit."
6.   Eine ähnliche Übersetzung findet sich auch bei Hoffmann, D.; Schliebitz, C.; Stocker, H. (2011). Lucan, Der Bürgerkrieg, eingeleitet, übersetzt und kommentiert, Darmstadt: WBG.

2019.07.58

Lauren Kinnee, The Greek and Roman Trophy: From Battlefield Marker to Icon of Power. Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. Pp. xiii, 161. ISBN 9780415788380. $140.00.

Reviewed by Kristan Ewin Foust, University of Texas at Arlington (kristan.foust@uta.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

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To investigate the use, role, and evolution of the trophy, Kinnee has employed art, semiotics, philology, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and history. She argues against common assumptions about the trophy: that the Greek and Roman trophies served the same objective, that the Roman trophy duplicated its Greek predecessor, and that the Greek implementation was rare compared to the Roman. She unfurls the chronological transition of the trophy among all Greek periods as well as the Roman Republic and the Augustan Principate. The first chapter introduces the topic and historiography. Chapter two covers trophy definitions and etymology. The third through fifth chapters introduce the use of Greek trophies and the transition of their use over time. Chapters six through eight handle the Roman application of trophies from origin and adaptation to the introduction of the tableau.

Lauren Kinnee contributes to the recent scholarship on the Greek and Roman trophies, which includes a book by Britta Rabe (2008) on the Greek trophy, two short articles¬—one on the votive dedication of weapons noted in archaeological finds by Thomas Fischer (2012) and the other on trophy images on coins by Anton Höck (2012)—, a chapter by Matthew Trundle (2013), and a short discussion by Peter Meineck and David Konstan (2014).¹ While most of Kinnee's sections start with an individual historiography relevant to the chapter, she has omitted Trundle, Fischer, Höck, and Meineck and Konstan. Rabe appears in the bibliography, but not the historiography sections or endnotes where Rabe's arguments were relevant. Furthermore, Kinnee's conclusions differ drastically from Rabe's, though Kinnee does not discuss or explain this. Despite these historiographical oversights, Kinnee's work provides a necessary and detailed treatment of the raison d'etre of the trophy (she initially describes the trophy's function as not merely a victory icon, but a symbol of power, a Greek necromantic and apotropaic talisman, and a Roman tool for empire building) with a chronological approach that explains major differences and shifts in the way the Greeks and Romans used trophies (1-2). Kinnee sees multiple functions for the trophy, which differs from the psychological purpose assigned by David Konstan and Peter Meineck, who claim that "the tropaion merely allowed the individual a means to confront the trauma of battle by allowing him to say, in relation to this object, that he was victorious."² Kinnee does not address Rabe's conclusion that the Greeks' trophy was not merely about victory, but more closely connected to the concept of areté.³

The first struggle the reader will find in Kinnee's work is nailing down a working definition for the trophy. Kinnee provides several contradicting definitions with no reconciliation or explanation for the discrepancies. In the first chapter, Kinnee maintains that the true definition of the trophy is the mannequin, which she defines as "a tree stump dressed in arms and armour stripped from the battlefield dead" (1). In chapter two, Kinnee rejects towers, tombs, monuments, war booty, and other depictions of the mannequin, as well as piles of armor as trophies (14-15); however, confusingly and without explanation, she heavily (and almost exclusively) includes towers, tombs, monuments, and naval rams in chapters five through eight. This also make her narrow definition that rejected monuments and armor problematic. In chapter four Kinnee looks through the written accounts of the Greek term τρόπαιον (trophy), finding the denotation was a bit more fluid (34). She further muddies the definition of trophy by revealing that Greek sources unanimously understood the trophy as an item that marked victory, placed in an important location on the battlefield, constructed from armor of the opponent and a support structure, specifically dedicated to Zeus, and clearly distinct from other war booty (36-37). This is one of many examples of contradictions in Kinnee's understanding of the trophy. To be fair to Kinnee, the primary sources disagree on the definition of trophies, but her multiple conflicting definitions sprinkled throughout the manuscript introduce more confusion than clarity.

Following the "Introduction," Kinnee's second chapter, "Grappling with Definitions," clarifies the etymology of the Greek τρόπαιον and Latin tropaeum. The term came from the Greek word "turn" (τρέπω), which she contends, like some of the ancient authors, referred to the turning point in a battle. She links the term to both magic and hoplite tactics. Her argument is not particularly original here. Current scholarship has also proposed that trophies could be magical or practical, temporary or permanent, and Kinnee chimes in on this significant debate by providing examples of how they were deployed in all four ways simultaneously (11-13). Later, in chapter five, she explicates concurrent temporary and permanent trophies, noting the use of temporary trophies waned as hoplite phalanxes declined (55-57).

In chapter three, "Repairing Fractured Perspectives," Kinnee suggests that Greeks began setting up both temporary and permanent trophies in the fifth century BCE, but not before the Persian Wars (18-22). This contradicts her statement in the introduction that the Greek trophy developed gradually and concurrently with the hoplite phalanx (3, 36). Without citing any primary sources she proclaims: "the trophy cannot have existed in the 7th century because hoplite tactics prior to the 5th century involved no 'turning point'" (22). Kinnee further theorizes that trophies signified a strategic phalanx maneuver. This seems to conflict with other areas where she says that the trophy symbolized victory or the turning-tide of the battle, an event that could happen without a specific phalanx maneuver. While she states the trophy evolved with the turning point of phalanx battles, she also argues that it derived from an apotropaic talisman: Kinnee notices the similarity between early portrayals of Dionysus on vases, the trophies, and herms, leading her to theorize that the earliest (pre-phalanx) mannequin trophies were erected in liminal spaces like apotropaic herms (28). Kinnee postulates that trophies echo those who died in battle as a post-facto victory offering, demonstrating the original intent of the trophy was prehistoric, perhaps a gift to Zeus, as opposed to her (and other ancient and modern scholars') idea of the trophy's connection to hoplite warfare (25-28).⁴ The reader is left confused about the origin and purpose of the trophy. Another problem with Kinnee's hypothesis of the trophy representing the phalanx turning-point is that she fails to prove the claim with primary source evidence, and her cited secondary sources are ambiguous and dated. Kinnee does not reconcile or defend her argument against Rabe's more recent conclusion "that the currently accepted thesis stating that the tropaia emerged with the development of the hoplite phalanx no longer holds true."⁵ Several subsequent points —including this discussion in chapter four—hinge on this premise of the trophy as a phalanx turning-point which Kinnee has left unsubstantiated.

Chapter four, "The Greek Trophy: Written Sources," concentrates on the trophy in written sources from Homer to Lycurgus. Kinnee proceeds chronologically through the Greek authors, which proves to be a major strength of her research. First, Homer records some sort of proto-trophy, but does not describe the standard mannequin nor employ the term tropaion (35-36). In this account Odysseus killed a military enemy, hung his armor on a bush, and later dedicated the armor to Athena (Iliad 12.137-138; 23.795-804). While Kinnee sees the background of the trophy as one that is prehistoric in terms of its religious and magical connotations, she disagrees with Prichett's argument that when Odysseus hung a slain enemy's armor on a tree it was a religious dedication and trophy (8-9).⁶ Kinnee reiterates that the trophy could only be a phalanx turning point, though this conflicts with her previous assertion that trophies in the form of hanging the armor on a mannequin-tree may have been used to catch the dead spirits (25-27). Kinnee, like Trundle, further denies that Odysseus' hanging armor encompassed the function of the trophies, but it is unclear what function Kinnee means here because she previously ascribed many roles for the trophy: victory symbol, religious talisman, dedication to the gods, and turning point in battle (36).

Kinnee concludes that the term trophy became more metaphorical in the late fifth century and that by the early- to mid-fourth century, trophy references decreased (35-38, 40). Kinnee gives the primary sources chronologically to show this shift. However, her conclusion should be taken with caution. She categorizes Thucydides (not before 411 BCE) in the early to mid-fifth century, yet positioned Aristophanes's Wasps (422 BCE) in the subsequent Late Classical period. Kinnee skips from the fourth to the first century BCE with Diodorus Siculus, who did not expect his audience to know the reason for the trophy, although he attests they were still constructed in battle (40-41). With Diodorus Siculus alone, Kinnee determines trophies transformed from a battlefield sign to metaphors of military power (42-44).

The fifth chapter, "Visual Evidence and the History of the Greek Trophy," goes through the earliest illustrations of Greek trophies (vase painting, relief sculpture, coins, and permanent monuments). Kinnee offers some historiography of the visual representation, disputing common consensus on their dates (46-48). She covers three permanent trophy monuments commemorating the Persian War at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea, and one commemorating the victory of Thebes over Sparta (50-53). The monuments depict armor nailed to wooden structures as a sacrifice to the gods, and depicted the trophies receiving animal sacrifices (46-48).

In chapter six, "Roman Adoption and Adaptation of the Greek Trophy," Kinnee compiles visual and written evidence to examine the Roman implementation of the trophy. Rome first learned of the trophy from Syracuse, as evident through Rome's earliest representation of the trophy on a third-century BCE coin (61). Romans transformed the trophy into what Kinnee classifies as "high art" and "low art": "high art" via monuments and statues, moving away from "low art," wood and armor (65). Unlike the Greeks, Romans erected trophies in locations other than battle grounds and paraded them in triumphs (66). Kinnee distinguishes four unique features of the Roman trophy: that they are associated with triumphs, located near or in cities instead of at battle sites, elaborately sculpted, and dedicated to patron gods rather than exclusively to Zeus or Poseidon (66-67, 106-107). It should be noted that Kinnee specifies that Romans placed trophies inside of cities, but then later states the opposite, that trophies were located outside of cities (66-67, 96, 106). Kinnee provides examples of trophies erected by Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Marius (chapter six), and by Augustus (chapters seven and eight). Though she includes images of Trajan's trophy monument and column with two sentences of explanation, she does not treat the Roman trophy after Augustus (71, 121, 134).

Chapter seven covers the trophy tableau—the symbol of the trophy with bound captives flanking the mannequin—and the locations of Roman trophy monuments. Kinnee pinpoints the introduction of captives as a Roman innovation (74). She offers a new interpretation of the Tomb of Caecilia Metella (74-78) and examines the first coins with the tableau from 101 BCE (78-80). She also contextualizes the trophy tableau within the Marius-Sulla power struggle (80-82). Kinnee emphasizes how politically competitive Roman generals altered the use and meaning of the trophy. The final section describes the Lugdunum Convenarum (Saint Bertrand Trophy); unlike other Roman trophy depictions, it was not a proclamation of a specific victory, but rather a symbol of regional dominion (88-99). Regarding location, Kinnee shows that Greeks and Romans alike established trophies on an array of structures: arches, gates, sanctuaries, and other buildings. The Romans began to erect trophies in liminal spaces, proclaiming ownership of the vanquished land instead of marking a specific battle victory (14, 105, 115-116, 124).

The eighth chapter, "Development of the Landscape Trophy in the Republic under Augustus," delves into the architectural trophies in rural and frontier areas, like Nikopolis and La Turbie. Kinnee reasons that Octavian's trophies reorganized Actium, and his ship-ram trophies at Nikopolis (not mannequins, but included in the idea of trophies by both Kinnee and the ancient authors) exemplified typical Roman characteristics: architectural elaboration, placement between borders, dedication to a patron deity, and self-promotion (109-112). For all of the Roman chapters, Kinnee has missed the opportunity to go in as much depth on the primary sources as she did for the earlier Greek sources. For example, she considers parts of Virgil, but overlooks a key passage from Aeneid 11. 5-11. Her work on the Roman trophy focuses on a few artifact examples, sidestepping an investigation of written sources and the vast array of trophy images the Romans produced. While her introduction suggests Kinnee will cover the entire Roman period, her work cuts short with Augustus. She omits other Roman empire examples including the Temple of Hadrian on the Campus Martius and Minucius Felix's late second-century description of the Roman military trophies.⁷ She does unveil her interest in continuing her trophy research to the early modern period's revival of the trophy symbol, but does not address her lack of attention to the Roman empire (133).

The book is full of wonderful black and white images that underscore Kinnee's arguments. Unfortunately, the ink causes the pages to stick together, which has damaged some of the images in my copy. Also, the outside cover has a laminate protection that has already started to peel on my copy. Physical flaws aside, Kinnee's dissemination of a chronological approach to the trophy and valuable coverage of the development of the Greek trophy and Roman trophy tableau is a historiographical necessity. My critiques should not negate the merits of Kinnee's work. Her essential book brings new information to light on the trophy, but there are a few areas of ambiguity and neglected sources.

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Notes:

1.   Thomas Fischer. "Waffenweihungen und Tropaia im römischen Reich," in Waffen für die Gӧtter: Krieger, Trophӓen, Heiligtümer, edited by Wolfgang Meighörner and Wolfgang Sölder, 204-214. Innsbruck: Tiroler Landesmuseen, 2012. Anton Höck. "Tropaia auf Münzen—Darstellungen von Sieg und Niederlage," in Waffen für die Gӧtter: Krieger, Trophӓen, Heiligtümer, edited by Wolfgang Meighörner and Wolfgang Sölder, 217-220, Innsbruck: Tiroler Landesmuseen, 2012. David Konstan and Peter Meineck. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Britta Rabe. Tropaia τροπή und σκῦλα: Entstehung, Funktion und Bedeutung des griechischen Tropaions. Rahden/Westf: V.M. Leidorf, 2008. Matthew Trundle, "Commemorating Victory in Classical Greece: Why Greek Tropaia?" In Rituals of Triumph in the Mediterranean World, edited by Anthony Spalinger and Jeremy Armstrong, 123-138, Leiden: Brill, 2013.
2.   Meineck and Konstan, 175.
3.   Rabe, 166.
4.   e.g., Trundle, 123.
5.   Rabe, 165.
6.   William Kendrick Pritchett. The Greek State at War, vol 3. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, 277-278; Trundle, 126-127; Iliad 12.137-138, 23.795-804.
7.   Marcus Minucius Felix, Octavius, 29.