2019.11.47

Nicholas Denyer (ed.), Plato: 'The Apology of Socrates' and Xenophon: 'The Apology of Socrates'. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xi, 148. ISBN 9780521145824. $25.99 (pb).

Reviewed by Orestis Karavas, University of the Peloponnese (okaravas@hotmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Publisher's Preview

Le nouveau livre de Nicholas Denyer appartient à la célèbre collection "Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics", où l'auteur a déjà publié des commentaires de deux dialogues de Platon: de l'Alcibiade majeur (2001, compte-rendu par Mark Joyal, BMCR 2003.01.28) et du Protagoras (2008, compte-rendu par James H. Collins II, BMCR 2009.05.09). Cette fois-ci il a choisi de comparer les Apologies de Socrate composées par Platon et Xénophon.

Après une courte Préface (p. vii) et la liste des Abréviations et la Bibliographie (pp. viii-xi), suivent une dense Introduction (pp. 1-26), le texte grec des deux Apologies (pp. 27-49 celle de Platon et pp. 50-5 celle de Xénophon) et leur commentaires (pp. 56-125 et 126-46 respectivement). Le livre se termine par trois Index (général, des noms propres et des mots grecs) (pp. 147-8).

L'Introduction est constituée par sept parties et contient tous les thèmes majeurs du sujet: Socrate (physique, comportement, érotisme, pauvreté, sagesse, ses disciples intimes, l'oracle de Delphes), l'histoire des accusations et des autres Apologies, les procédures de la législation athénienne, les deux parties de l'accusation officielle (la religiosité de Socrate et Socrate corrupteur des jeunes), une esquisse des vies parallèles de Platon et de Xénophon, leur style d'auteur/narrateur, leur relation avec Socrate, sa personnalité dans leur œuvre et, enfin, une brève présentation de la tradition manuscrite des deux textes. Denyer s'adresse également aux connaisseurs et aux novices quant aux deux opuscules et propose des analyses nouvelles: voir, par exemple, l'interprétation de l'oracle de Delphes (p. 3), la comparaison des deux Apologies avec d'autres textes apologétiques anciens (pp. 6-7) ou la remarque "both Xenophon and Plato could therefore be seen, by the standards of the Athenian democracy that condemned Socrates to death for corrupting the young, as among the young whom he had corrupted" (p. 25). Le texte grec est accompagné par un laconique apparat critique. Le riche commentaire représente presque le triple de l'original: Denyer divise chaque opuscule en sections (quinze pour le texte de Platon et neuf pour celui de Xénophon) dont il propose un bref résumé avant d'avancer sa propre analyse du texte. Son commentaire contient des remarques sur la grammaire et la syntaxe (surtout l'emploi des particules), le style et la langue de chaque auteur, et témoigne d'une connaissance exceptionnelle des œuvres de Platon, de Xénophon et des orateurs dont il cite plusieurs passages. Denyer montre la cohérence interne qui existe entre les deux Apologies et n'oublie jamais qu'il s'agit d'un discours judiciaire où Socrate doit prouver son innocence. C'est pourquoi abondent les citations de textes rhétoriques classiques. Denyer traduit les extraits grecs quand il veut rendre ses syllogismes plus clairs ou élucider et souligner les points communs parmi les passages cités. Il révèle le caractère rhétorique du texte en osant, aussi, faire des connexions avec la théorie de la relativité d'Einstein (p. 85) ou Alice au pays des merveilles (p. 143), ce qui rend son commentaire attirant pour les non spécialistes. On a particulièrement apprécié l'explication de la négation μηδένα dans l'oracle de Delphes et l'interprétation de σοφός et de ἀπορία (pp. 71-2). Parfois, cependant, à notre avis, son analyse peut prêter à discussion, comme par exemple lorsqu'il explique que la φωνή τις du démon de Socrate était une sorte de voix (p. 100), sans envisager qu'il puisse s'agir d'une espèce de son ("sound").

La présentation typographique du livre est très soignée. On a guère trouvé des coquilles.¹ Le livre de Denyer représente une contribution remarquable aux études socratiques.²

---

Notes:

1.   On n'a compté qu'une douzaine de mots fautivement coupés (dont le plus gênant est le πλημμ-έλεια, dans la p. 31) et une douzaine d'accents manqués ou mal placés, mais qui n'altèrent pas la lecture. Il faut lire "multiple" (p. 12 ligne 25), "response" (p. 90 l. 6) et Kühn (p. 122 l. 21), ajouter une virgule avant τοῦτο (p. 57 l. 4) et corriger ΧΕΝΟΦΩΝΤΟΣ en ΞΕΝΟΦΩΝΤΟΣ en haut des pp. 50, 52, 54 et aussi dans la Table des Matières, p. v. Enfin, il vaudrait mieux imprimer ὅ τι au lieu de ὅτι au début du texte de Platon, p. 27 (17a1) et dans les pp. 30 (21a3), 32 (23d3) (bis), 50 l. 11, 51 l. 23, 52 l. 21, 54 l. 11, 56 (17a1), 68 (20c5-6), 70 (21a2-3), 77 (23d3) (bis), 132 (§12.23-24), 135 (§16.21) et 148.
2.   J'aimerais remercier mon cher collègue et précieux ami Jean-Luc Vix pour son aide et ses remarques utiles.

2019.11.46

Anne-Maria Wittke (ed.), The Early Mediterranean World, 1200-600 BC. Brill's New Pauly. Supplements, 9. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018. Pp. xxi, 593. ISBN 9789004339323. €299,00.

Reviewed by Aren M. Maeir, Bar-Ilan University (arenmaeir@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of contents

The volume under review is yet another excellent volume in supplement series of Brill's New Pauly, an indespensible tool for scholars of classical antiquity. This volume was originally published in German in 2015 by Metzler Verlag (Der Neue Pauly Supplemente 10: Frühgeschichte der Mittelmeerkulturen) and is an English translation of the German original.

The period covered in the volume, 1200-600 BCE, is more or less the Iron Age of the eastern Mediterranean, the period preceding the floruit of Classical Greek culture and history. That said, as the volume deals with cultures around the Mediterranean in which periodization is not always uniform, it is not the Iron Age per se in all regions. In addition, the title might be a bit misleading, as this hardly represents the "early Mediterranean world", as there are a broad range of earlier cultures of the Mediterranean region, which also were of relevance for the study of the later Graeco-Roman world, which of course is the main focus of the entire New Pauly series.

Quite a few excellent synthetic overviews of the Mediterranean have appeared in recent years.¹ These have been much broader in coverage, however, and written by one or two authors, and thus are of a very different character than the volume under review. The current volume, with contributions by ca. 70 authors, deals with a much more limited time frame (ca. 1200-600 BCE; though it should also be noted that in some cases, the surveys go beyond, both a bit earlier and/or later, than this). Anne Marie Wittke is to be admired and congratulated for the excellent choice of writers and the topics and chapters that were chosen, undoubtedly quite a difficult task. The volume commences with several chapters covering various theoretical and methodological issues, then goes on to deal with the cultural history of the various sub-regions of the Mediterranean, and concludes with a section with studies on choice aspects of interaction between the various cultures. All told, the volume is an impressive collection of first-rate studies, providing for the most part superb overviews of most of the relevant issues in the study of the Mediterranean region during this period. While experts in specific topics may have comments on specific details in the various chapters, I'm not aware of a better general overview on the cultures of the Mediterranean during this time frame, one that serves well as introduction and to a large extent, a statement of the state of research, in these various fields. Each chapter has a very useful bibliography, which easily enables the interested reader to delve deeper in the relevant topics. In some cases, the bibliography is predominantly in German, which might make it less useful for an English-reading constituency that the English translation of the original German of this volume might be aimed for. This is useful for advanced scholars wishing to get a feeling about areas not within their expertise, as well as advanced students who want to get a broad overview of this region during this period.

Following the front matter, including the introduction (pp. 1-13), which explains the volume and its aims, the volume has three sections:

1. "The Mediterranean region, ca. 1200-600 BC" (pp. 21-62), provides introductory essays on central methodological issues relating to this region and period. The chapters in this section are: "Landscapes of the Mediterranean World", "Chronological Contexts", "Cultures and Culture contacts", and "Sources". These chapters very nicely set the stage for the two larger sections of the volume.

2. In "Regions of the Mediterranean world" (pp. 65-391), which is the major part of this volume, overviews of eight major regions are presented:

2.1. The Iberian Peninsula (and related islands);
2.2. Southern France and Central Europe;
2.3. Italy with Sardinia and Sicily (but do note that unfortunately, there is no separate discussion of the island of Corsica);
2.4. Continental Southern Europe;
2.5. Greece and the Greek Islands;
2.6. Asia Minor;
2.7. Eastern Mediterranean World: Syria, Palaestina, northern Arabia and Cyprus;
2.8. North Africa and Canary Islands.

3. "Aspects of cultural contact" (pp. 395-509) are choice overviews of various issues relating, broadly speaking, to culture contact. Importantly, each section begins with a theoretical background, and then provides the overview of the topic. These are the chapters in this section:

3.1. Settlement and Mobility;
3.2. Society and Authority;
3.3. Religion;
3.4. War and Warfare;
3.5. Economy and Raw Materials;
3.6. History of Law in the Eastern Mediterranean World;
3.7. Cultural Technologies and Knowledge.

Following these three sections, the Appendix (pp. 513-561) offers very nice and useful chronological charts of the various regions (with important relevant bibliography), and well-made regional maps of the various parts of the Mediterranean. The volume ends with detailed indices.

As stated in the beginning, experts in the various fields, cultures and methodologies covered in the various chapters will undoubtedly have comments and criticisms of various points that were raised (or not). As an expert on eastern Mediterranean cultures, I clearly saw some of these lacunae. Examples of topics on the ancient Levant which I believe the volume would have benefited from are: a discussion of the complex transition between the Late Bronze and Iron Ages and the processes and issues involved; a more specific discussion of the so-called "Sea Peoples" phenomemon; a more detailed discussion of the thorny issues of the relationship between archaeological and various ancient texts, such as the Bible. That said, the combinations of overviews written by experts in their respective fields in a well-written, accessible and mostly up-to-date manner overrides these issues. As we live in a time of increasing micro-specialization, any attempt, and especially one as impressive as this, to bridge the gaps between the various micro-expertises and present a meta- perspective on the Mediterranean in any period is an important and noteworthy achievement. Scholars dealing with specific cultures and regions have an easy and accessible tool to see the state of the art research relating to the cultures of other regions during this period, and without a doubt gain insights for their research. To this I can add that students in the early and middle stages of their career will have in this volume an excellent overview and starting point for further study of the Mediterranean during this timeframe. This will enable them to choose topics for their study and provide comparative materials as they advance in their studies.

One of the things that I felt would have improved the volume, although it would have made this project more expensive, is been the inclusion of representative illustrations of choice aspects (sites, finds, etc.) relating to the various cultures and topics that were surveyed. Due to the broad coverage of the volume, many of the readers are undoubtedly unfamiliar with aspects of the various cultures discussed, and some illustrations might have assisted in this. Perhaps, if the publisher is interested in improving this lacuna, an online supplement to the volume, with relevant illustrations, could be produced.

Without a doubt, this volume should be on the shelf of all academic institutions in which study of the ancient Mediterranean and neighboring cultures is studied and researched. Moreover, I believe it should be on the personal bookshelves of scholars as well. That said, the very expensive price (ca. 300 Euros for ca. 600 pages) would make this somewhat difficult for many libraries and of course, for personal libraries. This though is a known-problem with many books produced by European publishing houses. Finally, I believe it will be of interest to interested lay people. In summary, I highly recommend it and I believe it will be of use for many years to come.

---

Notes:

1.   E.g.: Horden, P., and Purcell, N. 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Blackwell; Harris, W., ed. 2005. Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Abulafia, D., 2011. The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean. Oxford University Press; Broodbank, C. 2013. The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Horden, P., and Kinoshita, S., eds. 2014. A Companion to Mediterranean History. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.

2019.11.45

Astrid Möller (ed.), Historiographie und Vergangenheitsvorstellungen in der Antike: Beiträge zur Tagung aus Anlass des 70. Geburtstages von Hans-Joachim Gehrke. Alte Geschichte. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019. Pp. xiv, 183. ISBN 9783515122696. €44,00.

Reviewed by Martin Szoke, University of Cambridge (mns36@cam.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

[Chapter titles and contributors are listed at the end of the review.]

This volume collects ten papers which were originally delivered at a colloquium on ancient historiography held in October 2015 at the University of Freiburg, on the occasion of the 70^th birthday of Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Professor Emeritus at the same university. Gehrke, who has made many significant contributions in the fields of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, is perhaps best known for coining the term "Intentionale Geschichte", or intentional history, which is "the projection in time of the elements of subjective, self-conscious self-categorization which construct the identity of a group as a group".¹ The concept of intentional history, then, naturally plays a central role in several of the contributions of the volume, which will therefore be of particular interest to scholars working on the topic.

Yet the book should also be of great interest to anyone working on ancient historiography in general, and indeed to anyone studying how (ancient and modern) societies engage with the past. Its greatest strength is perhaps that it covers an impressive scope. Apart from discussions of 'traditional' historiographical texts, it also contains examinations of representations of the past in epic and art; and while there is a rather strong focus on the Greek world, the volume also takes us to Rome, Jerusalem, Mesopotamia and the China of the Han dynasty. At the same time, the volume reads well from front to cover. The editor should be congratulated for having done an admirable job of assembling very diverse pieces into a coherent whole.

The individual contributions are no less satisfying, all of them shedding intriguing new light on a number of well-studied and not so well-studied aspects of ancient historiography. Kurt Raaflaub leads the way in what must have been a very entertaining Festvortrag.² His piece starts with the observation that one of the distinctive features of Greek historiography is the implicit or explicit discernibility of the author's critical intention in the text; it then sets out to investigate whether parallels to this genre of "critical historiography" can be found in other ancient societies. After making a brief detour to Mesopotamia, where no such critical historiography existed (history there was mostly written by the rulers), Raaflaub finds an example comparable to Herodotus' Histories or Thucydides' Peloponnesian War in one of the most significant texts of Chinese literature, the monumental Shiji of Sima Qian. However, Chinese critical historiography, as Raaflaub shows, came into being under very different circumstances: whereas in Greece, a world of city states that knew no fixed hierarchies, the critical examination of the past was fostered by a climate of political competition, Sima Qian was an astronomer who lived and worked at the court of the Chinese emperor. Yet, there was one thing that he had in common with his Greek colleagues: just like the "political refugee" Herodotus and the exiled Thucydides, Sima Qian was a political outsider (due to negative personal experiences with the Chinese rulers), making him critical towards established opinions and ideologies. Raaflaub therefore postulates that it was the intellectual independence of these three "fathers of history" which led to the parallel emergence of critical historiography in Greece and China; Raaflaub's piercing observations offer much food for thought and might also provide an incentive for further comparative study on Greek and Chinese historiography. The only drawback of his very stimulating piece is perhaps that it lacks footnotes and a bibliography; his Festvortrag was printed in its unaltered, unedited form, which is a bit of a pity for anyone who would like to read up on the wide range of topics discussed.³

There follow two articles that provide some new angles on the concept of "intentional history". Marek Węcowski argues that, in the false tales of Odysseus, the poet of the Odyssey inserts elements of his own contemporary reality into the epic, contrasting its world view and system of values with that of the mythical past and thus creating an "intentional present". To the original audience of the epic, Węcowski suggests, this could have provided a way of self-identification similar to – and arguably subtler than – that of intentional history, "going far beyond conceivable self-identifications of particular groups or communities", and offering them a "sense of fellowship with other humans as living their lives kept at a distance by the capricious and ultimately unfathomable gods".

Massimo Nafissi takes a closer look at some of the mythological scenes which once adorned the throne of Amyklai and which are described in Pausanias, and proposes that these scenes, depicting some of the earliest events of the Spartan past, present a case of pictorial intentional history. The central argument of his very insightful piece is that one of the scenes on the throne, portraying a group of Phaiakian dancers and a singing Demodokos, provides us with a local perspective on the early development of Spartan austerity, about which we otherwise only know from later, non-Spartan sources.

The next section, entitled "Herodotus and his legacy", is made up of four articles.⁴ Maurizio Giangiulio argues against attempts to make out a historical truth behind the oral traditional stories found in the Histories . In oral traditions, Giangiulio argues, facts are not conceived independently from storytelling, so that, in an oral culture, there exists no reality outside story-telling; consequently, "tradition can be true, but not factual". Trying to strip down the oral stories to a bare historical truth would mean discarding their narrative form in itself, and thus the very nature of the tradition as well. Giangiulio advocates that instead, we "should establish themes in the tradition, and try to put them into a historical perspective".

In a carefully argued piece, Nino Luraghi examines if and how Herodotus' Egyptian logos, which, as is well known, ends with the Achaemenid conquest, might have been influenced by the historian's awareness of the history of Egypt after the conquest. Demonstrating that Herodotus must have known about the revolt of the Libyan king Inaros against Artaxerxes, which had seen the intervention of an Athenian expeditionary force on the side of the rebels, Luraghi conjectures that this revolt might have formed an implicit background and frame of reference for the historian. He ends by making the – very intriguing and very qualified – speculation that the underlying presence of the Athenian expedition in aid of Inaros in Herodotus' narrative could give us a glimpse at a stand-alone project that originally underlay the extraordinarily self-contained Egyptian logos, and whose latter part was then given up in order to fit it into the much broader project of the Histories.

Johannes C. Bernhardt then turns to Herodotus' legacy. He proposes that the Histories served as a model for the author of the Second Book of the Maccabees, which not only follows the conventions of contemporary Greek historiography, but also portrays the Maccabean revolt in the tradition of the Persian Wars: in 2 Maccabees, Bernhardt argues, the Judaeans take on the role of Herodotus' Greeks, whereas the Seleucids, the actual Greeks, become barbarians. Although Bernhardt sets himself emphatically apart from recent scholarly efforts to interpret 2 Maccabees as belonging either to the western, Greek or to the eastern, oriental tradition, he suggests that it is precisely through its engagement with the Greek tradition that the text writes itself into the oriental tradition. In the next article, Alexander Free poses the tantalising question as to why the Romans read history. He argues that, historiography at Rome did not, as is often assumed, exclusively serve as a quarry of information for students of rhetoric, but was also of especial interest to intellectually curious individuals. Using Pseudo-Lucian's Macrobii, which records the lives of men who reached an advanced old age, as a starting point for his discussion, he suggests that texts with historical contents such as the Macrobii, could on the one hand serve pragmatic purposes, e.g. the providing of exempla for one's speech; they could also, however, simply be read for personal pleasure or for acquiring knowledge without any immediate practical use.

The volume's last section focusses on "Forgetting and Remembering". Katharina Wojciech draws on Paul Ricœur's theories to identify four manifestations of collective forgetting in the Attic Orators: the explicit renunciation of memories that threaten the internal peace, the cultivation and further development of (mythical) screen-memories (memories that have been substituted for earlier memories of a violent historical past), the conferral of taboo status on problematic memories, and the functionally and context-dependent prioritisation of one memory over another.

Verena Schulz discusses the question of how 'forgetting' is created in and through texts by looking at the example of the Roman historiographical and biographical accounts of the so-called 'bad Roman emperors'. Building on both cultural semiotics and systems theory, she argues that these accounts use three main strategies to create forgetting: the strategy of removal, which deletes an object and so leaves a visible trace of its process of operation, of focussing, which emphasises one element of a group of objects to such an extent that the other objects fade out of vision, and of replacement, which substitutes one object with another. Wojciech's and Schulze's theories should not only be interesting to ancient historians, but also to those working in the field of memory studies.

In the volume's epilogue, Felix K. Maier reflects on the ways in which literature can help us to develop a deeper understanding of history. Taking us on an excursion through some of the great works of world literature, he shows us that they allow us to grasp something that theory alone does not: the essence, the metaphysical aspects of history. He concludes by putting a new spin on Mommsen's dictum that "[d]er Geschichtsschreiber gehört vielleicht mehr zu den Künstlern als zu den Gelehrten": Maier suggests that the historian should be an artist not so much because he creates art, but because he must comprehend history through art, in this case literature, thus providing excellent closing thoughts to an extraordinarily stimulating volume.

All in all, this volume and its individual contributions provide many new impulses for the study of ancient historiography and its related fields. Its editing is exemplary, and there are only a few negligible typos. The quality of its print and binding meets the high standards of the publishing house.

Authors and titles

1. Raaflaub, K. A., Patres historiae? Die Anfänge kritischer Geschichtsschreibung in vergleichender Perspektive.
2. Węcowski, M., An Intentionale Gegenwart? Odysseus' 'False Tales' and the Intellectual Context of the Odyssey.
3. Nafissi, M., Spartan Heroic Ancestry and Austere Virtues. Herakles, Theseus, and the Phaeakians on the Throne of Amyklai.
4. Giangiulio, M., Traditional Narratives, Historiography, and Truth. On the Historicity of Herodotus' Histories.
5. Luraghi, N., Herodotus, Egypt, and the Athenian Expedition.
6. Bernhardt, J. C., Das zweite Makkabäerbuch und die Tradition der Perserkriege.
7. Free, A., Geschichte zum Geschenk und als Zeitvertreib: Lukians Macrobii und die Frage, warum liest man Geschichte?
8. Wojciech, K., Kollektives Vergessen in Athen. Paul Ricoeur und die attische Rhetorik.
9. Schulz, V., Die Erzeugung von ‚Vergessen' in der römischen Historiographie.
10. Maier, F. K., Literatur als Erkennens-Erfahrung: Gedanken zur Wesenhaftigkeit von Geschichte.

---

Notes:

1.   Foxhall, L., Gehrke, H.-J and N. Luraghi (eds.), Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010, p. 9.
2.   The contribution is accompanied by a photomontage of Gehrke as Herodotus, Thucydides and Sima Qian.
3.   I for one was particularly intrigued by Raaflaub's discussion of Sima Qian and would have wished for at least a bit of further reading on a topic that will probably be unfamiliar to most Western Classicists.
4.   The fourth article in the section, however, only tangentially touches on the father of history and his afterlife.

2019.11.44

Richard Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xvi, 263. ISBN 9781108471077. $99.99.

Reviewed by Peter Aronoff, Trinity School (peter.aronoff@trinityschoolnyc.org)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Richard Bett has devoted over thirty years to the study of ancient skepticism. Since the 1980s, he has written steadily on every branch of this important philosophical tradition: Pyrrho, the Academics, and Sextus Empiricus. Bett is known for meticulous scholarship, comprehensive knowledge of primary texts, and controversial views.¹ As a result, his articles and books are required reading for anyone who cares about skepticism in Greece and Rome. The book under review collects twelve essays: one is new, two are forthcoming, and the remaining nine were published between 2005 and 2016. Bett discusses Sextus Empiricus in every chapter, but he also touches on Pyrrho, Academic skepticism, Aenesidemus, Nietzsche, and several themes and thinkers in contemporary philosophy.

In a word, the book is excellent. These are specialist essays, and so the audience will be accordingly limited, but everyone working on these topics will want to study these essays carefully. Bett balances a historian's understanding of ancient philosophy with a healthy appreciation for contemporary insights. In addition, Bett writes clearly and engagingly, and the book is well edited.² At $100, however, the book is expensive, and I hope that Cambridge University Press issues a paperback version.

Bett divides the essays into four broad groups, each of which contains three essays. According to Bett, Sextus has a difficult problem for a philosopher: he has no views to advance. As such, the first group of essays investigates how Sextus writes despite that void. Each essay in the second group discusses a topic from the history of skepticism: the debate about signs, Aenesidemus's attack on physics, and the skeptical modes. In the third group, Bett considers the skeptic's self, ethics, and life. These essays ask whether the skeptics make good on their promise to present a life worth pursuing. The final essays look at ancient skepticism in the light of contemporary theories and concerns. Even if we find the skeptics reasonable from a historical point of view, can they genuinely appeal to us or teach us anything now?

Rather than look at individual essays, I will consider two criticisms that Bett makes across several chapters. These criticisms deserve our attention because they suggest that we should not take the skeptics seriously or at their word. After I describe Bett's arguments, I will say a little in response. Although I cannot settle these large questions here, I hope to show that Bett's essays are good to think with. Like Bett himself, I will focus on Sextus Empiricus and his neo-Pyrrhonian version of skepticism. As such, when I refer below to "skepticism" or "skeptics," I mean the school and people as Sextus understands them.

First, Bett argues that Sextus misrepresents the skeptics when he describes them as inquirers. On the one hand, Sextus insists that skeptics are benevolent and impartial inquirers who pursue the truth with open minds. It just so happens, according to Sextus, that the skeptics repeatedly fail to find answers. Instead, they settle for suspension of judgment and continue to inquire. On the other hand, Bett argues that skeptics have settled on a goal, namely ataraxia or tranquility, and on a way to achieve that goal, namely epochê or universal suspension of judgment. Thus, according to Bett, skeptics do not follow arguments wherever they lead, and if Sextus says otherwise, he is mistaken and possibly lying. Bett also claims that skeptics are willing to make arguments end in suspension of judgment in order to achieve tranquility. If Bett is right, skeptics do not necessarily care whether they reach tranquility by means of rational arguments or true premises. They want to reach tranquility—the route is less important.³

Second, Bett makes a two-pronged attack on the practical results of skepticism. Sextus claims that skeptics suspend judgment and then, by a lucky accident, tranquility follows. In addition, Sextus says that this tranquility is, or provides, eudaimonia—a happy, successful life. As a first response, Bett describes the skeptical life as radically passive: skeptics live without factual beliefs and without beliefs about value. As a result, they become alienated from everyone and everything they encounter, and even from themselves. Bett argues that such a person cannot have the kinds of desires, attachments, and projects that a good life requires.⁴ Second, Bett argues that skeptics are unlikely to be ethical people. Bett employs an objection that comes from Sextus himself: what will skeptics do if a tyrant forces them to choose between "some unspeakable deed" or death by torture?⁵ Bett worries that the person Sextus describes will be far more likely to "take the easier course" (161). Bett acknowledges that Sextus has an answer to this charge, but the answer does not impress Bett. Sextus believes that skeptics can rely on appearances and their society's customs and laws, even in ethically challenging situations. Bett replies that such skeptics are still intolerably passive and detached. For Bett, skeptics lack the kind of attachments and commitments that help people make ethical decisions in difficult situations. Bett believes, therefore, that skeptics are unlikely to be or remain good people.

I think we can blunt the force of Bett's first criticism. Bett seems especially concerned that Sextus is not being honest: he repeatedly says or implies that it is not plausible that skeptics find all issues undecidable. Bett believes that they are not genuinely inquiring since many answers are available if we look at the evidence in a disinterested manner. However, I think Sextus can reply that he is describing an ideal. Perhaps very few people are adept enough at arguing to pick holes in every argument, but, in theory at least, nothing prevents that outcome. If Bett objects that Sextus has promised a method that we can actually live by, Sextus can reply that he is no worse off than the Stoics, as far as this goes. The Stoics demand an enormous amount from their sage both ethically and cognitively. When other schools challenge the Stoics and ask who can live up to such demands, the Stoics grant that the sage may be "as rare as the phoenix." Nevertheless, they insist, the sage represents an ideal towards which we should strive. I think that if we interpret skepticism in the same fashion, we remove much of the motivation for Bett's first complaint.

When Bett accuses skeptics of being too passive, he makes an initially strong case because many people agree that a passive life is undesirable. For example, Susan Wolf claims that "a meaningful life must satisfy two criteria, suitably linked. First, there must be active engagement, and second, it must be engagement in (or with) projects of worth. A life is meaningless if it lacks active engagement with anything. A person who is bored or alienated from most of what she spends her life doing is one whose life can be said to lack meaning."⁶ Closer to home, Gisela Striker writes that skeptical ataraxia "is mere detachment—a calm state indeed, but one that might in the end turn out to be also profoundly boring."⁷

To assess this challenge, however, I think we need a better understanding of skeptical passivity. Bett and others appeal to Sextus himself, who says, for example, that skeptics go along with "passive appearance" (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.19), but I wonder if Bett interprets "passive" here too broadly. Sextus may use "passive appearance" in implicit contrast with a specific Stoic theory, according to which we actively assent to the truth of statements such as "honey is sweet." Sextus says that skeptics do not actively make such judgments; instead they accept whatever appearance they happen to have, i.e. their "passive appearance." But skeptics can perfectly well be passive in this restricted sense but still quite active in their lives. Sextus argues that skeptics pursue and avoid things, follow the customs of their family and country, and engage in careers all while following appearances that are passive in his sense. In addition, Svavar Svavarsson has recently argued that skeptics can be persuaded by argument.⁸ If Svavarsson is right, skeptics can actively engage in argument, and they can live according to appearances they have as a result of argument. Again, such appearances are passive insofar as the skeptics do not decide which appearance they are left with—they do not pick one over another—but nevertheless the appearance is the result of something they do—namely, argue—and the appearance guides the skeptic who has it. I hope that Bett inspires further study of these questions because I think we need a deeper understanding of the interplay between activity and passivity in skepticism.

What about Bett's other criticism of skeptical practice: are skeptics ethically unreliable? Bett argues that we cannot rely on people who merely do "the kinds of things [their] society dictates" (159). Unless people have deeper commitments—commitments that require beliefs—then they will behave badly in challenging circumstances. I am not sure what to make of this argument. It sounds initially plausible, but then I remember that all sorts of people, many of them not remotely skeptical, behave badly in challenging circumstances. Although this is perfectly consistent with Bett's argument—these non-skeptics may behave badly for other reasons—I cannot help but wonder whether Bett relies on assumptions that he hasn't argued for sufficiently. First, do commitments require beliefs? Sextus can reply that skeptics take on commitments as a result of appearances. I grant this seems implausible, but I am not sure that it is false. Second, if skeptics lack all commitments, as Bett claims, but also lack any concern with death or torture, as Sextus claims, why should we believe Bett that they will necessarily yield to the tyrant's threat? As in the case of passivity and the good life, I hope that Bett's criticisms lead to further discussion of skeptical ethics.

In closing, everyone who works on ancient skepticism will want to spend time with these essays. Bett has a sure instinct for questions that matter, and he knows the works of Sextus backwards and forwards. Cambridge University has done scholars a great service with this volume.⁹

---

Notes:

1.   It is no wonder that Bett knows Sextus's works so well. As of 2018, Bett has personally translated all the extant works of Sextus except Pyrrhonian Outlines. (Bett probably skipped this work because the excellent translation of Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes was already available.)
2.   I noticed only one typo, and a very small one at that: the bibliographical entry for Moller 2004 lacks page numbers, contrary to the practice of the rest of the bibliography. The pages are 425-41.
3.   This reconstruction appears throughout the book, but see especially Essays 1, 6, 8, 9, and 12.
4.   Again, these arguments appear throughout the book, but see especially Essays 7, 8, 9, and 10.
5.   Sextus offers this example at Adversus Dogmaticos 11.164-6, and Bett discusses the problem at 159-61. I quote the translation from Richard Bett, trans., Sextus Empiricus: Against the Ethicists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 27.
6.  Susan Wolf "Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life" in The Variety of Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 107-26, on p. 111.
7.   Gisela Striker, "Ataraxia: Happiness as tranquility" in Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 183-95, on p. 193.
8.   Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson, "Sextus Empiricus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence," in Strategies of Argument: Essays in Ancient Ethics, Epistemology, and Logic, edited by Mi-Kyoung Lee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 356-73.
9.   I could not have written this review without the help of Nathan Nicol. We have discussed skepticism and these essays again and again over many months, and he has helped me to understand these questions far better than I would have alone.

2019.11.43

Seth Bernard, Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 315. ISBN 9780190878788. $85.00.

Reviewed by Nathan Rosenstein, The Ohio State University (rosenstein.1@osu.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

In this innovative and impressive study, Seth Bernard examines public construction at Rome between the Gallic sack and the mid-third century BC in order to explore its social and economic consequences. He draws on archaeological, numismatic, and epigraphic evidence as well as literary sources to focus our attention on this neglected aspect of Republican economic history. His chapters marry often novel analyses of seemingly disparate developments to shed unexpectedly revealing light on them. The conclusions he draws boldly challenge much of what we thought we knew about developments in this period and are certain to provoke salutary debate and reevaluation among scholars of the mid- Republic (as they did for this one).

The first chapter lays out the case for approaching the development of urban Rome in the mid-Republic via new institutional economics, which emphasizes the role of social structures and ideology in shaping economic outcomes. This approach is particularly apt in this case because the decades around 300 BC were a period of critical institutional change as the divisions first began to form between urban workers and rural agriculturalists that would be central to the late Republic and Empire. Bernard acknowledges the challenges posed by the evidence for the period but holds that Livy and other historians, when used cautiously, can complement and be complemented by the archaeological record.

Chapter Two explores the sources and characteristics of the stone, clay, timber, metal and other items out of which the Romans constructed the mid-Republican city. Bernard offers a lengthy discussion of the various types of tuff (stone formed by consolidation of volcanic ash) available to builders, where these were quarried, and their physical properties as related to their usefulness in constructing monumental architecture. Similar discussions cover wood and metal, although the evidence here is scantier. More important is the question of how provision of building materials was organized, which Bernard argues operated through a fluid collaboration between the state and private enterprise.

The consequences of the Gallic sack are the focus of Chapter Three. Bernard argues that archaeology provides no support for Livy's and possibly earlier sources' depiction of massive destruction by fire of the built environment but indicates only limited damage to particular buildings. Yet the lack of temple building in the period after the sack reflects economic stagnation, and if the need to devote resources to rebuilding the entire city cannot account for it, some other explanation is required. Bernard finds it in a scarcity of labor attendant upon the acquisition of the ager Veientanus. While the conquest of Veii offered the potential for economic growth, it also thinned the supply of available labor relative to demand. There were simply not enough workers to utilize fully the productive potential of both the newly available farmland and the ager Romanus. Evidence for conflict over debt-bondage and the rise of chattel slavery likewise point to a manpower shortage.

Labor is also central to the following chapter, which examines how Rome's massive 4^th century circuit walls were built and models the economic and social consequences of their construction. Bernard calculates that the wall required nearly a million blocks of tufo giallo, each weighing in the vicinity of 624 kg, and around 45,000 blocks of tufo del Palatino at about 229 kg each. In addition, nearly 700,000 cubic meters of earth had to be excavated for the ditch in front of the wall, while on the order of 3,775,000 m³ of soil formed the agger enclosed between the exterior and interior stone faces of the fortifications. All of this required in Bernard's estimate some 6,800,000 person-days of skilled and unskilled labor performed by slaves and free citizens. The former, likely recently enslaved Veians put to work in nearby quarries, excavated the stone while free citizens shaped and transported the stone and constructed the walls, trench, and agger.

This workforce in Bernard's view comprised adult males aged 17 to 45, roughly between 16,300 and 32,000 men based on a total free Roman population of between 75,000 and 150,000. Hence, each man in his estimate would have had to perform on average between 246 and 123 days of work on the wall. Some of that work would have been spread over a considerable period, since loading the stones onto boats, transporting them down the Tiber, and then moving them into position had to be done piecemeal. In addition, blocks of tufo giallo had to be cured for several years before they could be used in construction. However assembling the stones into a wall could be accomplished relatively quickly: 36 meters of wall would take 200 men about 15 days to construct. All of this was accomplished using unpaid corveé labor extracted from the citizens. Based on models of the labor available to families on small farms, Bernard calculates that some of them disposed of so small a surplus beyond what they required to support themselves and to perform military service that if construction took only 4 or 5 years, the labor demanded from them would have exceeded that surplus and so caused many of their farms to fail or fall into debt. Here Bernard locates a second and much more critical cause of Rome's economic stagnation in the mid-fourth century.

This chapter is certainly the book's most provocative. Like many models, Bernard's is built on a number of assumptions, any one of which might be challenged and so alter the conclusions he draws. What is beyond question however is the larger point he makes, that building the wall was a heavy lift (so to speak) for the Republic's citizens, the effects of which must have been highly consequential for economic and social developments in the mid-fourth century. That is a conclusion that no future study of the period can afford to ignore. One might only have hoped for some discussion of what the ability to undertake a project of such magnitude can tell us about the development of the Republic's government and the progress of state formation, particularly since in the following chapter Bernard accepts that passage of the lex Ovinia ca. 335 constituted the foundational step in securing senatorial authority over the res publica. If so, then who or what organized and carried out this massive construction project over so many years? Answering this question is not of course the task that Bernard set himself in writing this book, but it is to be hoped that he might take up this important problem at some point in the future.

Chapter Five examines the intersection of censorial building and the appearance of both coinage and public contracts at Rome. Public construction resumed after 318 coincident with the rise in importance of the censorship following passage of the lex Ovinia, for both of which Ap. Claudius Caecus serves as the prime exemplar. Appius' road and aqueduct in Bernard's view were coincident with and supported by the rise in the senate of a new class of aristocrats, men who derived their wealth from commerce in contrast to those whose wealth came from status and their dependents. The importance of precious metal differed for each group: the latter saw its value as symbolic of their elite status; for the former, it was primarily a medium of exchange. Hence the late fourth and early third centuries witnessed a contest over the meaning of precious metal in relation to wealth and power. This provides the context for the first appearance of coinage at Rome. Bernard argues that it originated not from the need to pay for Appius' or any other building projects or Roman warfare but instead arose within this contest where its role was at least in part political, "an embodiment of the market-based exchanges that gave authority to a new group of Roman elites." (152-3) Finally, Bernard argues that contracts to facilitate public works, which permitted costs to be expressed via coinage, began to appear in this same period in the context of a competitive political elite eager to claim credit for constructing public monuments. Thus contracts, coinage, and censorial building all worked together to facilitate one another's continued development.

Changes in the labor supply during the first part of the third century form the focus of Chapter 6. Bernard argues that the numerous public buildings constructed in this period created a demand for labor in Rome that was met by a combination of chattel slavery, which developed as a consequence of the abolition of nexum and corveé, and free wage labor from across central Italy and elsewhere. The latter swelled the city's population as workers were drawn to Rome by the prospect of work, a development reflected in the appearance of aes grave coinage. This small denomination coinage arose from a demand for forms of money suitable for paying workers who in turn needed small value coins to buy food and other necessities. The establishment of food markets located in particular areas of the city confirms in Bernard's view the existence of a money economy for free urban workers as does the association of specific neighborhoods with particular crafts. Epigraphic and other evidence demonstrates the mobility of workers and their ability to switch jobs. The characteristics of the city's late Republican economy thus find their origins in developments two centuries earlier.

The final chapter argues for a considerable degree of innovation in mid-Republican building technology well before the advent of concrete. Bernard sees this developing in two areas, first in the increasingly sophisticated uses of particular types of stone in public construction projects, choices that related to the suitability of each type's physical characteristics for specific structural applications. Thus the use of tufo giallo gradually was restricted to non-load bearing parts of buildings where its physical deficiencies would not weaken the structure. The second area of innovation lay in the evolution of techniques for lifting stone blocks quarried in various parts of Central Italy. Their different physical characteristics required different mechanical means of gripping them as they were hoisted. Both of these advances arose as a consequence of master stone masons from various parts of Italy moving to Rome. They were drawn by work on public construction projects and brought with them their knowledge of their local stone and the appropriate techniques for working with it.

A brief conclusion summarizing the nature of economic developments during the mid-Republic and two appendices round out the volume.

Bernard has written an important and timely book, one that takes its place among a number of recent studies that are fundamentally reshaping our picture of early and mid-Republican Rome. He reminds us forcefully that land, while central, was not the only economic game in town and that study of the city's public buildings has much more to teach us than simply where they were or what they looked like.

2019.11.42

Kristine Bøggild Johannsen​, Jane Hjarl Petersen (ed.), Family Lives: Aspects of Life and Death in Ancient Families. Acta hyperborea, 15. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2019. Pp. 341. ISBN 9788763546393. $61.00.

Reviewed by Ada Nifosi, University of Kent (A.Nifosi@kent.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

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

The book Family Lives: Aspects of Life and Death in Ancient Families is the joint effort of a group of scholars from Nordic countries and originated with the seminar Families in the Ancient World, organised by the Danish Research Network Collegium Hyperboreum in 2015. The contributions to this volume are mostly related to the family: there are various discussions about the status of individuals within their family groups, personal relationships among family members, and family participation in religious and funerary rituals. Although the use of terms such as 'ancient world' or 'ancient families' suggests a broad cultural focus, it is clear from the contributions that the scope of the book is very much the Greco-Roman world, with a majority of papers on classical Greece and early imperial Rome. The fourteen contributions are divided into sections "according to their geographical and cultural adherence:" there are two long sections on 'Greece' and 'Etruria and Rome' respectively, and two shorter sections entitled 'Beyond Rome' and 'Forum.' The subdivision of the first three sections allows the editors to group together papers on very different themes, such as family economy, domestic religion, social status, age and gender, within the same geographical and cultural areas. A subdivision that is both geographical and cultural may not look entirely convincing for areas such as Etruria, which could be geographically and culturally paired with Rome but has strong links with Greek culture as well. Also, the section 'Beyond Rome' for papers on Palmyra and Greco-Roman Egypt works only if the title is intended in a geographical sense, but putting them together as a cultural grouping might suggest a Rome-centric bias. Finally, the section entitled 'Forum' presents two contributions on the collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen that are not related to the family in the ancient world.

The introduction clearly explains the scope and limits of the book and summarises each contribution in detail, which is extremely helpful for the reader. However, more could have been done in this first chapter to introduce and discuss the themes of the book, particularly considering the absence of conclusive remarks at the end of the book. Readers might wonder which common themes brought this particular group of authors together in the first place, and which conclusions were reached at the seminar in 2015. In particular, the reader looks in vain for a definition of 'family:' what do the different authors mean by 'family?' How can one compare Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Syrian and Egyptian families? Indeed, several common 'big themes' could have been emphasised. For instance, the social and religious role of funerary attendants is discussed in the contribution on Greek prosthesis by Birgitta Leppänen Sjöberg and in the paper on Etruscan funerary reliefs by Liv Carøe. At least two contributions examine the status of respectable Roman women and its representation in literature and iconography. Erika Lindgren Liljenstolpe describes Roman women's amateur musical skills as an example of respectable activity celebrated by fathers and husbands, while Bjare Purup notices that representations of young women on Romano-Egyptian mummy portraits were more frequent than those of other gender and age groupings. Other contributions focus on the status of men in relation to their family. Contributions on ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Syrian households observe the dynamics of male-dominated family hierarchies. Particularly interesting is Niels Bargfeldt's discussion of how Roman navy soldiers maintained a relationship with distant family members. Lisa Hagelin moves away from family relationships to discuss the status of Roman men in more ideal terms: masculine virtus was related to social status and not just wealth, and therefore it was only achievable by freeborn men.

Besides discussing many common themes, the authors of another group of excellent contributions also use similar terminology in slightly different ways, and it is not clear whether they would agree with each other. In the section on 'Greece,' for instance, Jens Krasilnikoff defines the Athenian oikos as a working community primarily engaged with agriculture, while Synnøve des Bouvrie presents the Greek oikos in a more 'traditional' way as the family household. Also, it would be interesting to know why the introduction chooses to translate the word oikos into domus.

One fine quality of this book is the authors' multidisciplinary approach to the topic of ancient family. Despite their common provenance from Nordic institutions, this group of archaeologists, classicists and historians uses varying sources and methodologies to demonstrate their arguments with interesting and refreshing results. The papers that deal with issues related to age and gender build on theoretical scholarship, and their authors make the effort to consider all relevant studies without losing sight of their own arguments. The papers concerned with material culture and iconography are based on a well-defined body of evidence: when the focus is on a small number of objects, the studies combine in-depth analysis of the specific materials with broader comparisons; when the body of evidence is larger, the studies use well-presented statistical data and tables. Only a few papers are either too descriptive or push their arguments beyond credibility based on the available evidence. However, despite the variable quality of the arguments, all the contributions are clearly written and present the materials in an original fashion.

The format of this edited book is more thematically homogeneous than a collection of conference proceedings, but its lack of thematic sections means that it is not (and does not intend to be) a companion, so readers should really not expect it to fulfill the same functions as Beryl Rawson's A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Wiley-Blackwell 2010. The contributions all focus on various aspects, more or less loosely related, to the central theme of family, and this is the reason why the editors chose the subtitle Aspects of Life and Death in Ancient Families. One of the greatest advantages of this choice is that the authors were not asked to adapt their interests to a common theme and were allowed to write extensive (often up to 30 pages long) original contributions based on their current research. The result is that many contributions have the same quality as a good journal article, and some are even of ground-breaking importance. Some of the best works are from early career researchers, and the visibility afforded by this book will no doubt benefit their future careers.

The appearance of the book is very good overall, although a few photos are not of acceptable quality, and some of the captions should have been justified. More importantly though, none of the contributions presents any formal or factual errors. Even when arguments are brought slightly too far for the evidence available, no statements are blatantly wrong. The proof-reading and proof-editing were extremely rigorous: although the contributions were all written by non-native speakers, the English was excellent and I could not find any typos.

This book brings new excellent contributions to the study of the family in the ancient world and should be welcomed as an important updateto this field. While the absence of an in-depth critical discussion of the book's topics is notable, the significant themes nevertheless emerge clearly from the contributions. Also, most readers will probably 'cherry-pick' the contributions according to their research interests, so they will not pay much attention to this aspect. I have no doubt that these studies will be inspiring and thought-provoking for many.

Authors and titles

Jens Krasilnikoff, The farming Oikos as place: reflections on economy, social interaction and gender in Classical Attica.
Synnøve des Bouvrie, Family disaster on stage: polis orchestration of Greek tragedy.
Sanne Hoffmann, Terracotta figurines as votive offerings for both the individual and the family.
Birgitta Leppänen Sjöberg, The prothesis: a ritualized construction of everyday social space in Ancient Greek society.
Anna Sofie S. Ahlén, Children in Etruscan funeral iconography: representations of families on urns, sarcophagi and in wall paintings.
Liv Carøe, Human or divine?: a new interpretation of a female image on the lid of Velthur Partunu's sarcophagus.
Niels Bargfeldt, Almost invisible: the familes of the marines stationed in Rome.
Lisa Hagelin, Roman freedmen and virtus: constructing masculinity in the public sphere.
Erika Lindgren Liljenstolpe, Women's music-making in the Roman family context: an expression of social status.
Sanna Joska, Defining social power through family: the iconography of imperial siblinghood in 2nd century Rome.
Rubina Raja, Family matters: family constellations in Palmyrene funerary sculpture.
Bjare B. Purup, A social approach to the sex and age distribution in mummy portraits.
Christina Hildebrandt, A Roman man's best friend: an exploration of the meaning of a small dog on a funerary monument in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
Amalie Skovmøller, Painting Roman portraits: colour-coding social and cultural identities.

2019.11.41

Paul Woodruff (ed.), The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles: Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford studies in philosophy and literature. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xvi, 242. ISBN 9780190669454. $24.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Adam Lecznar, University of Leeds (a.lecznar@leeds.ac.uk)

Version at BMCR home site

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

The book under review commences with an 'Editor's Introduction' by Paul Woodruff that offers a lucid introduction to both Sophocles and his plays about Oedipus, Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus, henceforth OT and OC respectively. Woodruff contextualises the study by offering a short description of Plato's antipathy towards tragedy as a moment of genesis for the separation of tragedy and philosophy as well as the arguments against this division to be found in the works of Bernard Williams and Martha Nussbaum. Woodruff then posits the following rationale for the volume: 'We have chosen to write about the Oedipus plays because … these plays can enrich our concept of self- understanding if we read them closely and with attention to philosophical issues' (2). Woodruff continues, 'In staging Oedipus's progress toward self-understanding in the two plays, Sophocles has dramatized insights into the process by which we all come to see our place in larger narratives. The result is more complex and more faithful to human experience than most of what we find in the philosophical tradition' (3).

Following this confident opening, the first main essay by Noël Carroll begins on a more tentative note: 'A central question in the philosophy of literature concerns where or not literature can possess cognitive value. That is, is it possible for literature to communicate or convey knowledge to audiences?' (17). In terms of Oedipus this question of 'knowledge' is fraught: the entirety of OT is concerned with the issue of the protagonist's incomplete knowledge of his identity and his actions. It is welcome, then, that after listing various 'arguments' against the relationship of literature and knowledge, such as the 'no-evidence argument', the 'banality argument' and the 'no-argument argument', Carroll offers a positive answer to his opening question. Concerning the cognitive value of catharsis, he declares that '[the] gut-wrenching experience that tragedy provokes is part of the data that we need to reflect upon in order to philosophically analyze the emotions in question' (36); he follows this with the idea that 'we are able to carry off this process of reflection/comprehension with respect to the tragic emotions that a work like OT enjoins in a way that we cannot with everyday emotions, because our emotion system is decoupled from the pressure of having to react immediately' (37). The subsequent essay, by C. D. C. Reeve, takes the form of an extended second-person address to the reader qua Oedipus: 'You are, as you think, the Prince of Corinth, heir apparent to the throne' (41). The philosophical issue at stake here is the question of evidence, and the degree to which Oedipus is able to correctly understand the evidence he is presented with on his way to the realisation of who he is. Reeve distinguishes between religious and secular evidence, between claims presented by the gods and prophets and those presented by humans, to examine the different forms of irrationality that Oedipus manifests (see esp. 46). Reeve concludes that the play 'is reverent in the true sense by showing us the disasters we mortals bring upon ourselves when we are insufficiently sensitive to such evidence as we have, and by making us complicit in its neglect' (63). Sigmund Freud is mentioned only briefly in this second essay, and it seems that one philosophical conclusion that both essays might have taken from his psychoanalytic theories is the significance of the human unconscious and its impact on action, feeling, experience and decision-making. If any simple lesson can be drawn from the multifarious traditions of modern philosophy and its relationship to culture and the world, then it could be that philosophy ought to associate itself as much with the irrational as with the rational parts of experience in order to have any true 'cognitive' value.

The following three essays, by Garry L. Hagberg, Peter J. Ahrensdorf, and the editor Paul Woodruff, continue the focus on OT. Hagberg examines how Sophocles' play models the process of 'introspection' as a way of achieving insight into the self. This essay points out the dangers inherent in considering the self to have a similarly stable ontological status to any other object that can be examined externally, like a leaf or a spoon, and points the way, via Sophocles' drama, to the apprehension of 'a kind of narratively emergent spectral presence—a possible self that begins as other and then, with steadily increasing detail and specification, grows into an image of oneself that finally allows an isomorphic match' (95). Ahrensdorf presents the most historically oriented essay of the collection, arguing that Sophocles' innovative decision to mark Oedipus as a tyrant is determined by the memory of Pericles. The idea that Oedipus and Pericles represented two rational rulers trying to escape the thickets of superstition and religion in their leadership is given clear form by Ahrensdorf when he suggests that Oedipus' main sin was to consult the Delphic oracle regarding the plague in the first place: 'What destroys Oedipus …is not his rationalism but his abandonment of his rationalism' (120). As he continues, 'Throughout the play … Sophocles warns Athenians specifically against the danger that their immoderate rationalism will provoke an extreme self-destructive religious backlash' (121).

Finally, Woodruff explores the philosophical significance of three major themes in the play: the gods, the idea of fate, and the concept of character. He argues compellingly that the theatrical context of the play explains the way that seemingly incompatible ideas like divine foreknowledge, divine agency, human agency and fate can co-exist in the myth and drama of Oedipus (129); 'The story that frames the Oedipus plays is indeed one of ineluctable fate, but the actions the playwright puts on stage have not all been foretold and are not presented as the product of fate' (131). For Woodruff, as I understand it, Sophocles' major philosophical achievement is to have created a work of literature that pulls together such antagonistic explanations of the way the world works, and to have emblematised the intensely human difficulties of managing these conflicting spheres of agency in the character of Oedipus the King.

The concluding three essays, by Philip Kitcher, Grace Ledbetter, and Franco V. Trivigno, focus on OC. Philip Kitcher brings together a range of poetical and literary attitudes towards old age. Juxtaposing depictions of old age and its experiences that range from Simeon in the Gospel of Luke to the poetry of Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, Kitcher argues that Sophocles includes a humanist philosophical insight into issues of coming to terms with old age and death that is not limited to a more overtly supernatural and religious reading of OC: a quasi-philosophical serenity is described which is deeply human and not reliant on resignation to the power of the gods. As he says, he wishes to 'view these plays as human tragedies, works that vividly present how the value of what we do and strive for is hostage to forces beyond our control' (157). Kitcher concludes his reading of Sophocles with a further hopeful note: 'The power of Sophocles' final play consists in its ability to make hope possible, grounding it in the establishment of human relations, even for those who are vividly aware of the horrific disruptions that can beset our lives' (175–6).

Grace Ledbetter's essay takes as its starting point the uncertainty that Sophocles writes into OC about whether or not the incredible trauma that has dogged Oedipus' existence is in fact resolved at the end of the play. The truth, Ledbetter suggests, is much more complicated than that: 'the business of this play finds Oedipus defining and distinguishing multiple images of reality, or "truths," in an effort to meet the challenges to his conception of himself posed by his traumatic past' (184). Ledbetter characterizes the play as 'a therapeutic process that centers on [Oedipus] establishing a complex but ordered picture of his various images of truth and reality (184). These 'various images of truth and reality' that Ledbetter differentiates in Sophocles' depiction of Oedipus' sophisticated self-understanding are based on the psychoanalytic theory of Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot, and in particular her identification of particular regimes of truth that structure human psychic experience, including factual reality, coherent reality, interpersonal reality, and so on. The essay of Franco V. Trivigno focuses in great detail on the philosophical attitude towards death that Sophocles includes in the third choral ode of OC (1211–48): this reading suggests that the choral ode 'endorses the goodness of death using a quantitative framework, that calculates pleasures and pains and a narrative framework that sketches the trajectory … of a typical life' (221). Trivigno argues that, contrary to his view that most philosophers view death as a bad thing, Sophocles considers the death of Oedipus to be fundamentally good: 'the reason the ending is happy is because Oedipus finally gets to die' (231).

This is a successful book; the essays are well-written and the contributors have each done a good job in answering the questions they have been set or which they have set themselves. Its tone is that of an inexpensive undergraduate handbook, trying to set out the basics of Sophocles' Oedipus plays and their connections to philosophy (see especially p. 9). As a scholar of classical reception I was concerned at this apparently neutral 'handbook' style, which suggests that it offers an uncontroversial approach to the philosophical significance of the Oedipus plays. I understand this is fueled by a very different attitude towards the nature of philosophy from the one that I hold as someone who works on responses to antiquity in the writings of continental and postcolonial philosophers like Nietzsche and Fanon. However, at a time of increasing methodological heterogeneity within the discipline it seems important for a book so clearly aimed at undergraduates to present its target audience with a choice (or at least an awareness) of the various ways of approaching the conjunction of ancient literature and philosophy so as to encourage further debate and development. The philosophical legacies of the Sophoclean Oedipus are manifold and ever proliferating, and this book gives a glimpse into just one of the many ways in which they can and should be explored.

Authors and titles

Editor's Introduction – Paul Woodruff
1. Oedipus Tyrannus and the Cognitive Value of Literature - Noël Carroll
2. The Killing Feet: Evidence and Evidence Sensitivity in Oedipus Tyrannus – C. D. C. Reeve
3. In the Ruins of Self-Knowledge: Oedipus Unmade – Garry L. Hagberg
4. "Tyranny," Enlightenment, and Religion: Sophocles' Sympathetic Critique of Periclean Athens in Oedipus the Tyrant – Peter J. Ahrensdorf
5. Gods, Fate, and the Character of Oedipus – Paul Woodruff
6. Aging Oedipus – Philip Kitcher
7. Truth and Self at Colonus – Grace Ledbetter
8. The Goodness of Death in Oedipus at Colonus – Franco V. Trivigno

2019.11.40

Dorota Gorzelany, Macedonia - Alexandria: Monumental Funerary Complexes of the late Classical and Hellenistic Age. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2019. Pp. iv, 236. ISBN 9781789691368. £32.00.

Reviewed by Vincent Jolivet, CNRS, UMR 8546, Paris (vincent.jolivet@ens.fr)

Version at BMCR home site

Table of Contents

Ce volume se propose de comparer les pratiques funéraires en vigueur en Macédoine et à Alexandrie entre le milieu du IV^e siècle et celui du II^e siècle av. J.-C. en fonction d'une vision très ample, puisqu'il traite aussi bien de l'architecture que du mobilier des tombes, et de ce qu'ils nous apprennent des cultes rendus aux morts. En rapprochant ces deux régions, il pose donc la question de la transmission de l'héritage macédonien à Alexandrie après la création du royaume lagide.

Le corps de l'ouvrage est organisé en fonction de 5 chapitres proposant systématiquement une présentation paratactique de ces deux aires: synthèse historique (chapitre 1); types de complexes funéraires en Macédoine (chapitre 2) et à Alexandrie (chapitre 3); symbolisme des formes architecturales en Macédoine (chapitre 4) et à Alexandrie (chapitre 5). Ce choix de présentation a manifestement été conçu pour faciliter le rapprochement des données issues de ces deux contextes, mais il est probable qu'une division plus simple de l'ouvrage en deux parties (Macédoine, Alexandrie) en aurait rendu la lecture plus fluide. Achevé en 2004 (p. 10), le manuscrit du livre a fait l'objet par la suite d'intégrations bibliographiques dont les dernières références remontent à 2014. ¹ En dépit des inévitables lacunes relevant de l'écart entre ses dates de rédaction et de publication,² l'ouvrage se présente comme une véritable mine d'indications bibliographiques, avec un nombre total de références de l'ordre du millier (p. 200-232).

L'introduction propose un rappel utile de l'histoire de la recherche et esquisse une typologie des sépultures macédoniennes. L'auteur réserve la dénomination de « Macedonian tomb » à un type précis, propre à cette aire géographique: les tombes sous tumulus présentant un dromos et une façade plus ou moins monumentale, précédant une chambre carrée couverte en berceau, normalement à déposition unique, éventuellement dotée d'un vestibule. Ces tombeaux, qui apparaissent comme un véritable marqueur de la présence de l'aristocratie macédonienne dans le Nord de la Grèce, ont été imités ailleurs, en particulier en Italie méridionale. Ils sont manifestement aux antipodes des grands tombeaux collectifs d'Alexandrie, ce qui pose d'emblée la question de la pertinence du rapprochement de ces deux aires géographiques, ultérieurement compliquée par les problèmes de datation de la plupart des monuments considérés — notamment en contexte alexandrin —, faute d'études suffisamment approfondies, ou en raison des pillages dont ils ont fait l'objet.

Le premier chapitre apporte un éclairage historique bienvenu sur la période considérée, mais dont le suivi nécessite le recours aux plans publiés plus loin dans le volume (p. 26 et 89): pour la Macédoine, depuis le premier Âge du Fer jusqu'à la succession de défaites essuyées face à l'armée romaine qui aboutit, en 148 av. J.-C., à la fin de son indépendance; pour l'Égypte, où la présence grecque est bien attestée dès le début du VII^e siècle av. J.-C., et définitivement enracinée avec la fondation d'Alexandrie, en 331 av. J.-C., l'exposé s'achève sur la mort de Ptolémée V en 180 av. J.-C, d'une manière qui peut sembler d'autant plus abrupte que plusieurs tombes alexandrines présentées ici ne semblent pas antérieure à la seconde moitié du II^e siècle av. J.-C.

Le deuxième chapitre, au titre un peu réducteur (comme celui du troisième) — Types of funerary complexes in Macedonia —, présente les différents types de tombes attestés en Macédoine, puis le mobilier qui y a été découvert. Cet exposé distingue trois types propres à la seule élite macédonienne — il est question incidemment p. 47, de tombes à puits (« shaft tombs »), évidemment destinées à une classe sociale plus modeste. L'auteur retrace, à partir de l'époque archaïque, l'évolution des tombes à ciste, formées d'un simple caisson construit en dalles de pierre, surmonté par un tumulus, dont procède, à partir du milieu du IV^e siècle av. J.-C., ce qu'il est sans doute toutefois exagéré de qualifier (p. 25) d'« official Macedonian type of tomb »; à la différence des tombes à ciste, la chambre est dotée d'une façade précédée par un dromos. Ces deux types, indifféremment associés à l'inhumation ou à la crémation, apparaissent ensuite conjointement jusqu'au III^e siècle av. J.-C., et présentent un mobilier dont le niveau de richesse est comparable, comme le montre en particulier celui, spectaculaire, de la tombe à ciste de Derveni B (p. 37-42) — et ceci en dépit du biais induit par les pillages dont ils ont fait l'objet (je ne suis pas sûr, à cet égard, qu'une tombe à ciste soit plus difficile à piller qu'une « Macedonian tomb », p. 136). Le décor architectural, d'inspiration dorique ou ionique, les lits funéraires et le décor peint des tombes sont minutieusement décrits (note 138, à propos de la tombe du Jugement de Lefkadia, corriger « Ajax » en « Éaque »). Le soin apporté à la réalisation du monument contraste avec sa courte période de fréquentation, puisqu'il devait être définitivement remblayé après les cérémonies funéraires, même si l'auteur conserve une certaine ambiguïté sur cette question: elle écrit (p. 68; aussi p. 160) que ce type de tombe «was not accessible», mais que sa réutilisation était possible en rouvrant son dromos. Certaines tombes étaient signalées par des stèles funéraires fichées dans le tumulus (traitées ici p. 80-82, avec le mobilier). Les tombes rupestres (« rock-cut tombs »), des hypogées familiaux accessibles par un dromos, et apparemment destinés à une classe sociale plus modeste, n'apparaîtraient qu'au début du III^e siècle av. J.-C.³

Le troisième chapitre — Types of funerary complexes in Alexandria — offre un panorama très large des sépultures conservées dans les différentes nécropoles alexandrines, aménagées dans une pierre tendre et dans du sable — ce qui, selon l'auteur, expliquerait qu'elles ne soient pas surmontées par des tumulus (p. 90; aussi p. 194). Elle en retient principalement deux types de tombes, à oikos et à péristyle ou pseudo-péristyle, dont le plan s'inspirerait de celui des maisons grecques (p. 99). Même si ces hypogées, du fait de leur décor, de leur aménagement ou du recours à la voûte en berceau, présentent des points de contacts avec l'architecture macédonienne — ou, plus largement, grecque — de même époque, leur plan et leurs fonctions (simple lieu de sépulture dans un cas, lieu de culte funéraire autour du tombeau dans l'autre) divergent clairement des modèles connus en Macédoine, et aucune de celles que nous connaissons n'était sûrement surmontée par un tumulus (le cas du « tombeau d'albâtre », dont les blocs ont été retrouvés hors contexte, est évoqué p. 102; voir aussi p. 168-169). Le mobilier de ces tombes, assez limité, et constitué principalement de céramiques (notamment les « hydries de Hadra », utilisées comme cinéraires), ne présente pas d'affinités significatives avec celui déposé dans les tombes macédoniennes.

Compte tenu de l'absence de sources écrites spécifiques, le corpus archéologique présenté dans ces deux chapitres constitue la base à partir de laquelle l'auteur entend dégager le symbolisme délivré par les formes architecturales, le décor peint et le mobilier des tombes concernées. Le quatrième chapitre — qui présente les rituels funéraires macédoniens comme dérivant de « long-evolving traditions rather than religious conditions » (p. 124) — s'interroge d'abord sur la source d'inspiration des « Macedonian tombs » qu'elle identifie, pour leur partie externe, dans l'architecture palatiale et domestique des élites macédoniennes et, pour leur partie interne, dans l'andron où se déroulaient les banquets (masculins), promesse d'une vie idéale dans l'Au-Delà (il est permis de douter qu'il soit pleinement justifié d'opposer le banquet macédonien, en tant que « political and social », à celui des Grecs, p. 136). L'accent est placé sur l'héroïsation du défunt, encouragée par la diffusion des croyances orphiques et des mystères dionysiaques et éleusiniens, et dont la mise en scène était favorisée par l'absence de lois somptuaires relatives au luxe funéraire, telles qu'elles existaient à la même époque en Grèce.

Le cinquième chapitre, reprenant les mêmes thèmes pour Alexandrie, offre sans surprise un cadre totalement différent, à l'exception de points de contact communs à une large partie du monde méditerranéen (la tombe conçue comme une maison, le défunt au banquet, les éléments de décor largement répandus au sein de la koinè hellénistique…). Il s'ouvre sur une évocation des vicissitudes du corps d'Alexandre (p. 166-168), transporté de Babylone à Memphis, puis à Alexandrie, en dernier lieu dans le sèma (ou sôma) aménagé par Ptolémée IV en 215 av. J.-C., où il reposait entouré de ceux des souverains lagides. Curieusement, l'auteur n'envisage pas que ces grandes tombes alexandrines, dont la chronologie demeure assez floue (un tableau synthétique des datations des différents monuments aurait été utile à cet égard), puissent avoir été inspirées par ce complexe funéraire: leur monumentalité, la présence fréquente d'une sépulture principale en position axiale, leur cour dotée d'un autel et de dispositifs destinés au déroulement du culte funéraire composent pourtant un cadre tout à fait conforme à celui que suggèrent les mentions de visites régulières de grands personnages romains, de César à Caracalla, au tombeau cosmopolite d'Alexandre. Compte tenu du brassage de populations à Alexandrie, la diversité des rites funéraires (y compris la momification, largement adoptée par les Grecs) et des croyances, profondément influencées par la religion égyptienne, complique ultérieurement le tableau, et rendait difficile la présentation d'une véritable synthèse.

La multiplicité des données présentées dans le texte, concernant un très large éventail de sujets complexes, et traités au travers de descriptions très minutieuses reposant sur un appareil de notes abondant, mais passablement desservies par une illustration trop rare, rendait donc particulièrement importante la conclusion de l'ouvrage, présentée aux pages 195-198. À partir d'un désir commun d'immortalité — très largement partagé dans le monde méditerranéen d'alors, et pas seulement —, l'auteur invite à distinguer la Macédoine, où les croyances eschatologiques liées à Dionysos et Déméter seraient centrées sur la recherche d'une forme de déification (qui ne concerne, cependant, qu'une frange limitée de la société), d'Alexandrie où, sous l'influence des croyances égyptiennes, on s'attacherait plutôt à la rédemption du défunt.⁴ Très schématiquement, d'un côté, la tombe est conçue comme un heroon individuel, de l'autre comme un tombeau familial: les éléments réunis dans cet ouvrage mettent donc davantage en évidence ce qui sépare radicalement ces deux aires culturelles, plutôt que ce qui les rapproche.

---

Notes:

1.   On s'explique mal par conséquent, pour la Macédoine, l'omission de la somme fondamentale de H. von Mangoldt, Makedonische Grabarchitektur: die makedonischen Kammergräber und ihre Vorläufer, Tübingen, 2012, ou celle de la synthèse figurant dans S. Descamps-Lequime et K. Charatzopoulou (dir.), Au royaume d'Alexandre le Grand. La Macédoine antique, cat. d'expo., Paris, 2011. Pour Alexandrie, il aurait été utile de faire figurer en bibliographie les deux volumes dirigés par J.-Y. Empereur et M. D. Nenna, Necropolis 1 et 2, Le Caire, 2001 et 2003 (Études Alexandrines 5 et 7), cités seulement à partir d'articles.
2.   Parmi les ouvrages récents qui pourraient aujourd'hui nourrir ultérieurement cette réflexion, je signalerai ici seulement M. D. Nenna, S. Huber et W. Van Andringa (dir.), Constituer la tombe, honorer les défunts en Méditerranée antique, Alexandrie, 2018 (Études Alexandrines 46).
3.   L'une des plus complexes et intéressantes d'entre elles, datée de la fin du IV^e siècle av. J.-C., aurait mérité d'être traitée ici: M. Lilibaki-Akamati, Ο πολυθάλαμος τάφος της Πέλλας, Thessalonique, 2008 (Πέλλης 2). Sa datation précoce, et son rapport planimétrique étroit avec les tombes d'Étrurie, pourraient en effet suggérer une influence de cette région sur la création de ce type en Macédoine (cf. V. Jolivet, Macedonia and Etruria at the Beginning of the Hellenistic period: A Direct Link, dans D. Katsonopoulou et E. Partida (dir.), ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝ/PHILHELLENE. Essays Presented to Stephen G. Miller, Athènes, 2016, p. 317-333.
4.   Sur cette question, voir en dernier lieu A.-M. Guimier-Sorbets, André Pelle et M. Seif el-Din, Renaître avec Osiris et Perséphone, Alexandrie, 2015 (Antiquités Alexandrines 1) = (Resurrection in Alexandria. The Painted Graeco- Roman Tombs of Kom al-Shuqafa, Alexandrie, 2017).

2019.11.39

Cinzia Arruzza, A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xi, 296. ISBN 9780190678852. £47.99.

Reviewed by Jakub Jirsa, Charles University (jakub.jirsa@ff.cuni.cz)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

Arruzza opens the book with considerations about the topic (skopos) of the Republic. She agrees with Proclus that the book is about both forms of government and individual moral psychology. Therefore, there is one subject matter, and not two (p. 2). Arruzza does not discuss these two aspects together but carefully distinguishes them, treating the political aspect in the first part of her book and moral psychology in the second part.

Arruzza observes that "Plato's critique of tyranny is not a critique of actual tyrannical regimes but, rather, should be understood as a key part of his critique of democracy" (p. 7). According to her, Plato's "treatment of tyranny is meant to show that popular rule 'naturally' breeds tyranny and creates tyrannical figures in the form of democratic leaders, both because of the corrupt ethos of the demos and because of the institutional mechanisms of democracy" (p. 253). That assertion sets her interpretation apart from interpretations that try to picture Plato as a hidden pro-democrat (she distances herself from these interpretations at the beginning of chapter 3). Yet could it not be a critique of the actual tyrannical regimes as well? And, if the Republic is not about actual tyrannical regimes, how much is it about actual democratic regimes?

In the first chapter Arruzza contends that the tyrannical tropos in literature served to underline the weakness of democracy. For Plato, according to her, tyranny is not a counterexample to democracy but actually its most natural outcome. This detailed literary and historical contextualization of the Republic is extremely useful and interesting. The second and third chapter continue in a similar vein. Arruzza argues that Plato uses the anti-tyrannical arguments to show tyranny's close relation to democracy. As she summarizes at page 63:

Plato's tyrant is the child of two main aspects of Athenian democracy. The first consists of the institutional mechanisms proper to democracy conferring, in the name of political equality, supreme political authority on the demos and its opinions. This makes political leaders subaltern to the democratic ethos, forcing them to become assimilated to it, rather than playing an educational role vis-à-vis the masses. The second is the content of this democratic ethos, which Plato takes to consist of appetitive and hedonistic self-interest conjoined with the identification of freedom with license.

In this part of the book, Arruzza discusses the historical framework of the Republic, including its speakers and possible targets, such as Critias or most importantly Alcibiades. History is an important aspect of interpretation that should not be neglected.³ Arruzza discusses pleonexia at pp. 105-108 and then refers to her discussion of greed in chapter 4, which deals with the tyrant's psychology. A longer account of pleonexia, which plays such an important role in the discussion of justice and injustice in the first book of the Republic and insinuates much about later discussion in the following books, would allow the author to articulate the social and political aspects of pleonexia more fully.⁴

The second part of the book (chapters 4-6) focuses on the moral psychology of the tyrant. Arruzza goes through the three parts of the soul and carefully analyses their roles in the formation of the tyrant's character and his actions. Chapter 4 is devoted to the tyrant's appetite and eros. Chapter 5 is reserved for the treatment of spirit, and chapter 6 shows the perversion of the tyrant's reason itself. The entire second half is a careful and detailed analysis of Plato's text. I have only two critical points: her analyses of the tyrant's eros and appetites (especially pp. 174-183) might be amplified by a discussion of resentment, which seems to be suggested by Plato in the formation of the oligarch (553a-b) and then the tyrant (572d-573a).⁶ Second, despite her claims about the unity of the Republic's skopos, there are not many links between the two parts of the book. One example is Arruzza's claim that the "main source of corruption identified by Socrates in this discussion is the political life of the city" (pp. 248). This is certainly true, and an explanation of the process of corruption could help to unify the book.

Arruzza's book is a fine and entirely commendable book on Plato's Republic. It provokes many questions and thoughts in interpreting Plato's political philosophy from a refreshingly new angle.

---

Notes:

1.   For earlier reviews see Richard Kraut at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews or Carter, J. W., 'A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic', The Philosophical Quarterly (2019).
2.   Richard Kraut in his review mentioned above claims that the discussion of the city is for the sake of clarifying psychological points.
3.   Cf. Strauss, Leo. The City and Man. University of Chicago Press, 1978 (1^st ed. 1964), esp. pp. 63-73.
4.   Cf. Algra, K., 'Observations on Plato's Thrasymachus: The Case for Pleonexia', in K. Algra, D. T. Runia, P. van der Horst (eds.), Polyhistor, Brill, 1996.
5.   See Krastev, Ivan, and Stephen Holmes. "Explaining Eastern Europe: Imitation and Its Discontents," Journal of Democracy, no. 3 (2018): 117-28.
6.   See her discussion of frustration coming from the enslavement to the appetites at pp. 199-200.
7.   One does not have to agree with Lilla's point about college education, but Plato's description of democracy and its failures in the Book eight (esp. see 557e-558a) corresponds to the situation of a state without civic awareness and identity as a citizen, which is substituted by particular interests and identities; cf. Lilla, Mark. The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, Harper, 2017.

2019.11.38

Justin Leidwanger, Carl Knappett (ed.), Maritime Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xiii, 261. ISBN 9781108429948. $105.00.

Reviewed by François Gerardin, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau (francois.gerardin@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de)

Version at BMCR home site

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

Networks are not objective historical entities, but rather a means for the analysis of historical data. As such, they constitute a powerful but easily misused tool.¹ In deploying network theory to analyze seaborne mobility in the ancient Mediterranean, contributors to the conference volume Maritime Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean World, edited by Justin Leidwanger and Carl Knappett, are all too aware of this problem.² The avowed aim of the volume is to "push forward the study of Mediterranean maritime interaction through explicit and accessible network approaches, which may be more or less mathematical, but are all 'models' in a basic sense and hence intellectually helpful if inevitably reductive" (p. 13). Overall, the eight conference papers, preceded by an introduction and followed by a conclusion, make good on this promise. The book represents a discourse on method in the fields of Mediterranean archaeology and ancient history, showcasing network theory. And it will surely find many readers among archaeologists and historians, whether they are looking to enter the realm of network theory or to improve their current use of these methods.

In their introduction, Leidwanger and Knappett ("Maritime networks, connectivity, and mobility in the ancient Mediterranean") start from the relative dearth of archaeological data for maritime activities and the challenge this poses to network analysis to ask which models, under those conditions, are most useful and how to test them (question 1). This leads them to the question of temporal and spatial parameters, namely the pitfalls of periodization in regards to the persistence and memory of maritime networks over time (question 2) and the articulation of multiple operational scales in the analysis of ancient networks (question 3). Last come the problems raised by specific types of evidence such as isolated shipwreck cargoes (question 4) and the question of how certain categories of artifacts came to be differently distributed over the same maritime territory (question 5).

In their twin contributions, Tim Evans and Ray Rivers introduce "Ariadne" to the reader — not the mythical character stranded on Naxos, but a form of network analysis, of the stochastic variety, that best captures the effects of a great event on another Aegean island: the Bronze Age eruption of the volcano at Thera. Evans' quick and informative survey ("Robust spatial analysis") will initiate the layperson. Rivers' piece ("New approaches to the Theran eruption") explores a paradox: why did the eruption not lead to a drop but a boost in maritime connectivity in the south Aegean until exchange collapsed with the "burning of the palaces"? Both papers, which work very well as an inaugural case-study for the entire volume, also complement previous research done by the authors in collaboration with Carl Knappett on this topic.³ Mycenaean coastal landscapes were, according to Thomas Tartaron ("Geography matters: Defining small worlds of the Aegean Bronze Age"), "small worlds," i.e. "interaction spheres…constituted by habitual face-to-face interaction and cohesion" (p. 73). Zooming in on the Saronic Gulf, he interweaves the stories of two harbor sites, Kolonna on Aegina and Kalamianos in the Peloponnese, and their interactions with neighboring entities at various spatial scales. Mycenaean palace formation plays a prominent role in his narrative. The case-study ends with a sample of ethno-archaeology and how it can help reconstruct the lives of traditional coastal communities. His plea for a qualitative approach nicely contrasts with the preceding papers on the Late Bronze Age.

Moving to the Iron Age and the Greek Archaic and Classical periods, Barbara Kowalzig ("Cults, cabotage, and connectivity: Experimenting with religious and economic networks in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean") interprets Greek polytheistic religion as an epistemic and ritual network. She argues that cults, like that of Artemis in various sites around the Euboean Gulf, not only reflected mercantile ties but fundamentally supported economic exchange and, therefore, maritime mobility. From the perspective of historical interpretation, Kowalzig's paper thus proves most interesting. This conclusion, if true, runs counter to what economic historians currently affirm regarding the premodern Mediterranean, namely that religious networks did not necessarily map onto economic ones. Thus the so-called Maghribi traders of the Cairo Geniza kept tight confessional connections with their Jewish peers in Christian land, but did not trade with them.⁴ In the Greek world, do "religious networks of cabotage," by contrast, really explain, or at least foster, trade? Whatever the answer, this paper, like the previous one, nicely illustrates a qualitative, rather than quantitative, approach to network theory.

Elizabeth Greene ("Shipwrecks as indices of Archaic Mediterranean trade networks") successfully applies "ego-network" analysis to visualize the context of shipwreck cargoes and identify four "zones of maritime interaction" of increasing size. One hardly needs Foucault's elegant but somewhat superfluous concept of "other spaces" to understand that shipwrecks do not represent transparent windows onto the societies that produced them. Instead, following Greene's own conclusion (p. 155), it would be more fruitful to compare the zones of interaction identified through the material assemblages of shipwrecks with the cultic networks that Kowalzig discusses in the preceding chapter. Do they overlap? And, if so, does it mean that religion worked as a motivation for economic interaction? It is a far cry from Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis to the shipwrecks of the Archaic Mediterranean, both geographically and conceptually. Yet a commonly defined use of network analysis and visualization could have helped bridge the gap. Despite the intrinsic interest of both contributions as they currently stand, I believe there is something of a missed opportunity here and that both papers, which are fundamentally on the same topic, could have spoken to each other more.

Mark Lawall and Shawn Graham ("Netlogo simulations and the use of transport amphoras in Antiquity") are concerned with one type of evidence only: transport amphoras in the Aegean from the Iron Age to the Hellenistic period, including those found in the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Acrocorinth. They draw on two models, the mimicry model and the stylistic change model, both offered by the agent-based modelling (ABM) software NetLogo, to understand how network patterns in the organization of the consumer or producer group affect the selection and survival of amphora shapes. The analysis yields sophisticated results. Yet, rather than explain the models at such length, more room could have been made for the confrontation of the simulations with the actual amphora record. As the authors themselves acknowledge, "such proposals, of course, are only to be taken as hypotheses" (p. 164), and so one hopes that more work will verify those hypotheses. The late Hellenistic amphora trade, according to the authors (p. 181), constitutes a thought-provoking case study, but one also thinks of the example provided by Byzantine globular amphoras discussed in chapter 9 (see below).

Tom Brughmans ("Lessons learned from network science techniques") wonders what makes a network model relevant to a specific case-study. In keeping with the volume's emphasis on method and using a dataset of Roman tableware ceramic from the eastern Mediterranean, commonly referred to by archaeologists as eastern sigillata, he warns readers that network analysis does not always bring novel results. Negative, or "uninformative" results, he claims, should be published at this early stage of development in "network science." His contribution, with detailed appendix and explicit formulation of all intellectual premises, in his case the "dependency assumption," will prove most useful to experienced practitioners of network analysis, but less accessible to the uninitiated.

Paul Arthur, Marco Leo Imperiale, and Giuseppe Muci ("Amphoras, networks, and Byzantine maritime trade") approach the distribution of so-called globular amphoras in the eighth century Mediterranean with "affiliation networks." While addressing the same issues as Lawall and Graham, but for the Byzantine period, they move from a well-defined dataset to formulate the hypothesis that the state, in a period of economic straits, set out to control the circulation of goods that were moved in amphoras. The paper, written in a very accessible style, can be read before that of Lawall and Graham, which is more theoretically informed and provides further tools to discuss the transition from homogeneity to heterogeneity in the amphora record and vice versa.

In her concluding remarks, Barbara Mills ("Navigating Mediterranean archaeology's maritime networks") examines the difference between terrestrial and maritime networks and returns to some of the cross-cutting themes of the volume's papers. Among the avenues for further research that she identifies, the question of "power relationships" and the equation between centrality and power is certainly worth pursuing. As she also notes, the papers assembled in the volume mostly cover the northern Mediterranean, leaving aside North Africa and the Levant. The editors understandably had to make choices. Finally, the volume is strongly weighted toward both the beginning and the end of the ancient world, the Bronze Age and the late antique period (which is unsurprising, given the specializations of the volume's editors).

The production of the book is nearly flawless. I have found very few typos or inaccuracies: "of of values" in the key to table 2.2 p. 33; the Journal of Juristic Papyri cited in the bibliography p. 182 is really the Journal of Juristic Papyrology. I am wondering if there could have been a single bibliography for the entire book, since several shared references, such as Cyprian Broodbank's Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades, resurface at the end of virtually all essays. The index will prove particularly valuable to those digging for information on a particular kind of network analysis. Appropriate tables and illustrations always constitute an essential part of each paper's argument. They make the book both user-friendly and convincing.

To achieve a high degree of coherence among all contributions was no easy task. To a very large extent, the authors of the volume have succeeded in presenting a consistent sample of current research in Mediterranean archaeology and history, with networks given pride of place. Moving from the Late Bronze age to the late antique world, the reader learns how to choose not just any, but the most appropriate network models. The contributors are aware that networks cannot be their final word on ancient societies and use network theory accordingly to save the phenomena of human mobility in the ancient Mediterranean. This is arguably the greatest strength of the volume. Reading all contributions together, one gets a strong sense of what robust network analysis could and should be. There is a great deal that remains to be done, to be sure, but this is a major contribution to a promising field of inquiry.

Table of Contents

Justin Leidwanger & Carl Knappett. "Maritime Networks, Connectivity, and Mobility in the Ancient Mediterranean" (1-21)
Tim Evans. "Robust Spatial Network Analysis" (22-38)
Ray Rivers. "New Approaches to the Theran Eruption" (39-60)
Thomas F. Tartaron. "Geography Matters: Defining Maritime Small Worlds of the Aegean Bronze Age" (61-92)
Barbara Kowalzig. "Cults, Cabotage, and Connectivity: Experimenting With Religious and Economic Networks in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean" (93-131)
Elizabeth S. Greene. "Shipwrecks as Indices of Archaic Mediterranean Trade Networks" (132-162)
Mark L. Lawall & Shawn Graham. "Netlogo Simulations and the Use of Transport Amphoras in Antiquity" (163-183)
Tom Brughmans. "Lessons Learned from the Uninformative Use of Network Science Techniques: An Exploratory Analysis of Tableware Distribution in the Roman Eastern Mediterranean" (184-218)
Paul Arthur, Marco Leo Imperiale, & Giuseppe Muci. "Amphoras, Networks, and Byzantine Maritime Trade" (219-237)
Barbara J. Mills. "Navigating Mediterranean Archaeology's Maritime Networks" (238-256)

---

Notes:

1.   On the potentially injudicious use of network theory or the concept of network in the history and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean, see J. Zurbach, "Mobilités, réseaux, ethnicité: Bilan et perspectives," in J. Zurbach and L. Capdetrey (ed.), Mobilités grecques: mouvements, réseaux, contacts en Méditerranée, de l'époque archaïque à l'époque hellénistique (Bordeaux, 2012) 265-8. T. Brughmans, "Connecting the dots: towards archaeological network analysis," Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 29.3 (2010), 277–303, followed by id., "Thinking Through Networks: A Review of Formal Network Methods in Archaeology," Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 20.4 (2013), 623–662, has also called for a more critical attitude in the selection and application of network models.
2.   The meeting took the form of a workshop that took place in November 2013 in Toronto. A manifesto for the study of ancient Mediterranean maritime networks by the same group of authors had already appeared in Antiquity, giving a preview of the workshop's research goals and outcomes.
3.   See among others C. Knappett, R. Rivers, & T. Evans, "The Theran eruption and Minoan palatial collapse: New interpretations gained from modelling the maritime network," Antiquity, 85 (2011), 1008-1023.
4.   See the introduction of J. L. Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: the Geniza merchants and their business world (Cambridge, 2012).