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Hazel Dodge, Spectacle in the Roman World. Classical World Series. London and New York: Bristol Classical Press/Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. Pp. 96. Paperback, £12.99/$19.95. ISBN 978-1-8539-9696-2.

Reviewed by Linda Maria Gigante, University of Louisville

Hazel Dodge, the Louis Claude Purser Senior Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at Trinity College, Dublin, has published extensively on topics related to the ancient city and building technology in the Roman Empire. In this small but highly informative book, she presents a concise overview of spectacles in the Roman world from the later Republic through the first two centuries of the Imperial age. There are seven chapters, each averaging between 10–15 pages in length, that include information on various types of entertainments and the structures where they were presented. Dodge illustrates her key points by presenting recent archaeological discoveries and modern perspectives on Roman entertainment, and, while her primary focus is the city of Rome, she also includes evidence from both the eastern and western Empire.

In Chapter 1, which serves as the general introduction, Dodge sets forth the types of evidence for various Roman spectacles, highlighting new discoveries of entertainment structures (like the amphitheater in Sofia, Bulgaria, found in 2006) and ancient sources like Martial’s Epigrams, and other evidence including gladiator tombstones and floor mosaics. Chapters 2 through 5 focus on the types of spectacles, such as the circus and chariot racing (2); gladiators and gladiatorial displays (3); animal hunts (4); and naumachiae and aquatic displays (5). In Chapter 6 Dodge considers the fragmentary nature of the evidence for spectacles in late antiquity, noting that, while we know a considerable amount about chariot-racing, a full complement of events continued to take place in Rome into the 4th century CE, with the last chariot races held in the Circus Maximus in the mid 6th century. Chapter 7, which serves as the conclusion, is concerned with the ancient context for spectacles in Roman society and our perceptions of them today. Dodge reminds the reader that, regardless of the nature of these public entertainments, they all were meant to enhance the political authority of the person paying for them and reinforced the Romans’ social and gender hierarchy. In the Appendix there are definitions of entertainment building-types, the types of events associated with them, as well as well-preserved examples and plans. “Further Reading” consists of a list of secondary sources, most of them in English and dated from the 1980s to the present, that are organized according to headings that parallel the titles of the book’s chapters.

Dodge’s expertise in the field of Roman spectacles is evident throughout the text in her insightful interpretations of the literary and archaeological evidence and in her recognition that there is still much to be learned about the topic. In Chapter 5, for example, she acknowledges that there is no consensus regarding the flooding of the Colosseum and points out that the necessary water-source has yet to be found. And in Chapter 3, on gladiators and gladiatorial displays, she points out that the 20 or so different costumes worn by gladiators had their origins in the battle-gear worn by Rome’s early enemies (including Samnites and Thracians), underscoring the professional fighters’ popularity as exemplars of virtus. Dodge also discusses the 1993 discovery of a gladiators’ necropolis near the stadium at Ephesus, where the remains of 68 gladiators revealed that the deceased had received relatively good medical care and consumed a diet high in carbohydrates.

The stated objective of the Classical World Series is to explore the culture and achievements of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome by publishing affordable books designed for advanced high school and introductory level university students. Dodge makes an important contribution to this Series by writing on a topic of particular interest to all students of Roman civilization: public spectacles. She strikes a good balance between art, archaeology, social history, and literary sources by discussing the buildings where these events took place, the identity of the people who were involved with them, and the Romans’ comments about them. Dodge obviously took great care in selecting a manageable number of black and white illustrations for the text, to include plans and photos of specific entertainment structures, as well as mosaics, coins, graffiti, and reliefs. Additionally, the ancient authors she discusses cover a wide scope, ranging from Pliny the Elder and Suetonius to Tertullian and Augustine. In presenting the evidence for spectacles in this fashion, Dodge provides students with an important perspective on the multidisciplinary nature of scholarship in Roman studies. This book will surely inspire them to pursue further study in the field.

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Rune Frederiksen, Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period, 900–480 BC. Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xxx + 238. Hardcover, £100.00/$170.00. ISBN 978-0-19-957812-2.

Reviewed by Benjamin Sullivan, Cornell University

The archaeology of Early Iron Age (EIA, 900–700 BCE) and archaic (700–480 BCE) fortification walls is a relatively obscure subject, yet as Rune Frederiksen demonstrates, it deserves much more of our attention. Frederiksen’s book derives from a dissertation produced under the auspices of the Copenhagen Polis Centre, and the painstakingly elaborated rubrics characteristic of the Centre’s work can be observed throughout. It is a skillfully assembled and judiciously synthesized contribution that will be an invaluable help to researchers whose work touches on aspects of early Greece. The thesis Frederiksen develops from his research, namely that EIA and archaic Greek communities were usually fortified, may be counted a somewhat less successful effort.

Eight chapters of discussion precede a 78-page catalogue of 132 walled sites. In the catalogue and throughout the book, the primary categorizing is into three groups, categories A (walls dated by excavation evidence), B (walls dated by masonry style) and C (walls attested by literary sources). Catalogue entries provide summaries of the walls at each site, subdivided under various headings (location, construction, date, etc.), and include essential bibliography. Many entries are accompanied by photographs and plans. The latter vary in quality, since they are reproduced from a wide variety of sources, but are almost always informative. Fifteen tables summarize the catalogue findings and arrange them by categories such as geographic distribution, chronology, and the elements and dimensions of walls; four maps plot the tables’ most important categories.

A review this brief cannot do justice to the many problems illuminated in the text. Chapters include treatments of the “types” (i.e., the variety and character of spaces the walls enclosed) of fortification (Ch. 2); the Greek terminology of fortifications and their (meager) representation in the visual arts (Ch. 3); the destruction of early walls and the manifold ways walls were obscured by later settlement (Ch. 4); the physical characteristics and construction of walls (Ch. 5); and the notoriously difficult questions related to the dating of walls (Ch. 6). Chapter 7 is an attempt to answer how walls were constructed, how they developed over time, and how pre-classical walls differed from later walls. Here Frederiksen employs a periodization with divisions into EIA (C9–8), seventh century, middle archaic (600–550) and late archaic (550–479), each period analyzed under the headings of distribution and topography, and construction and architecture.

Chapter 8 presents final conclusions and includes a valuable discussion of the importance of city walls for establishing the shape and identity of a polis. Frederiksen importantly asserts the usefulness of walls as an urbanization metric, as against temples. Adopting admittedly optimistic interpretations of the data, he thus argues that walls were the most common monumental structures in early Greek towns, and tentatively concludes that the polis may have developed along more secular lines than usually supposed.

The basic flaw in Frederiksen’s thesis is that it often relies on evidence that does not yet exist and is likewise too sanguine about evidence that does exist. The former tendency is apparent in his discussion of what he calls the “problem of central Greece” (105–8). While Mycenaean urban centers concentrated in the Peloponnesos and central Greece, EIA concentrations shifted dramatically to the islands and Anatolian littoral, a phenomenon that seems to indicate that the mainland was isolated from eastern urbanization trends. Frederiksen implies, however, that the mainland walls of the Homeric poems have not been discovered because they have not been an archaeological priority, which may come as a surprise to Peloponnesian excavators. Frederiksen offers Lefkandi as a possible solution to the problem. While no fortifications have been found here, Frederiksen believes that their discovery will show that mainland EIA sites were fortified; yet this is to construct an argument for which there is at present no evidence.

Frederiksen’s interpretation of existing evidence can also be problematic. As he acknowledges (7), ethnicity is a slippery concept, and while he claims it will not affect his thesis, he includes Cypriot Paphos and Salamis as evidence for EIA fortification, since they developed into Greek poleis by the C5. Ethnicity aside, the size of the Cypriot and Cretan intramural spaces and the relative sophistication of their walls are so much greater than other EIA sites that they should probably be considered outliers. In fact, only ten EIA sites outside Crete and Cyprus were fortified. Even granting that these walls have been accurately identified and dated (by no means certain), the number is exiguous. Moreover, again excepting Cretan and Cypriot sites, the estimated intramural areas are tiny in comparison with later periods and at most of the sites it is possible that the walls enclosed refuges rather than settlements proper. The C7 evidence is no better, and it is perhaps significant that Frederiksen restructures his chronological analysis from four groupings in the penultimate chapter to only two in his final analysis, before and after 600, for polis fortification only really becomes widespread after this date.

None of these criticisms mean that Frederiksen is not cautious or lacking excellent judgment at every turn, and it should be stressed that he diligently exposes his findings to alternate interpretations. Whatever the validity of its thesis, the book is extremely well conceived and a trove of information about a neglected subject.