• 2013.04.55:  Edward McCrorie, Homer. The Iliad. Johns Hopkins new translations from antiquity.
• 2013.04.54:  Nils Rücker, Ausonius an Paulinus von Nola: Textgeschichte und literarische Form der Briefgedichte 21 und 22 des Decimus Magnus Ausonius. Hypomnemeta, Bd 190.
• 2013.04.53:  Jacqueline de Romilly, The Mind of Thucydides (first published 1956). Cornell studies in classical philology.
• 2013.04.52:  Marco Beretta, Francesco Citti, Lucia Pasetti, Seneca e le scienze naturali. Biblioteca di Nuncius. Studi e testi, 68.
• 2013.04.51:  Marco Rocco, L’esercito romano tardoantico: persistenze e cesure dai Severi a Teodosio I. Studi e progetti.
• 2013.04.50:  Yelena Baraz, A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical Politics.
• 2013.04.49:  Adeline Grand-Clément, La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens (VIIIedébut du Ve siècle av. n. è.). De l’archéologie à l’histoire.
• 2013.04.48:  Basil Dufallo, The Captor’s Image: Greek Culture in Roman Ecphrasis. Classical culture and society.
• 2013.04.47:  Benjamin Fourlas, Die Mosaiken der Acheiropoietos-Basilika in Thessaloniki. Eine vergleichende Analyse dekorativer Mosaiken des 5. und 6. Jahrhunderts (2 vols.). Millennium-Studien 35.
• 2013.04.46:  Nicolas Monteix, Les lieux de métier: boutiques et ateliers d’Herculanum. Collection du Centre Jean Bérard, 34.
• 2013.04.45:  Henry Maguire, Nectar and Illusion: Nature in Byzantine Art and Literature. Onassis series in Hellenic culture.
• 2013.04.44:  Christopher A. Faraone, F.S. Naiden, Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers.
• 2013.04.43:  Ray Laurence, Roman Archaeology for Historians.
• 2013.04.42:  Christian Mann, Peter Scholz, “Demokratie” im Hellenismus: Von der Herrschaft des Volkes zur Herrschaft der Honoratioren? Die hellenistische Polis als Lebensform, 2.
• 2013.04.41:  Anna Bonifazi, Homer’s Versicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Word-Making. Hellenic studies, 50.
• 2013.04.40:  Erika Manders, Coining Images of Power: Patterns in the Representation of Roman Emperors on Imperial Coinage, A.D. 193-284. Impact of empire, 15.
• 2013.04.39:  Jolivet on Sewell on Jolivet on Sewell, The Formation of Roman Urbanism.
  Response by Vincent Jolivet.

• 2013.04.38:  Gabrielle Frija, Les Prêtres des empereurs: le culte impérial civique dans la province romaine d’Asie. Histoire.
• 2013.04.37:  Angela Maria Andrisano, Ritmo, parola, immagine: il teatro classico e la sua tradizione. Atti del Convegno Internazionale e Interdottorale (Ferrara, 17-18 dicembre 2009). Dionysus ex machina.
• 2013.04.36:  Bonnie Maclachlan, Women in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook. Bloomsbury sources in ancient history.
• 2013.04.35:  Gerard O’Daly, Days Linked by Song: Prudentius’ Cathemerinon.
• 2013.04.34:  Jacques Jouanna, Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers. Studies in ancient medicine, 40.
• 2013.04.33:  Pascal Payen, Les revers de la guerre en Grèce ancienne: histoire et historiographie. L’Antiquité au présent.
• 2013.04.32:  T. M. Hickey, Wine, Wealth, and the State in Late Antique Egypt: The House of Apion at Oxyrhynchus. New texts from ancient cultures.
• 2013.04.31:  Calum Alasdair Maciver, Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica: Engaging Homer in Late Antiquity. Mnemosyne supplements. Monographs on Greek and Latin language and literature, 343.
• 2013.04.30:  Eugene Garver, Aristotle’s Politics: Living Well and Living Together.
• 2013.04.29:  Howard J. Curzer, Aristotle and the Virtues.
• 2013.04.28:  Rachel Feig Vishnia, Roman Elections in the Age of Cicero: Society, Government, and Voting. Routledge studies in ancient history, 3.

posted with permission:

Orosius and the Rhetoric of History. By Peter Van Nuffelen. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 252. £60.00/$110.00. ISBN 978-0-19-965527-4.

Reviewed by David Rohrbacher, New College of Florida

Orosius and the Rhetoric of History is an exciting book about the fifth-century ce historian Orosius, an author who very rarely evokes excitement. Van Nuffelen provides not only a reevaluation of the nature and purpose of Orosius’ seven-book Historiae adversus paganos, but also sets a productive new direction for future work in the Christian authors of late antiquity.

It has always been difficult to classify Orosius among late antique historians. He is not a breviarist like Eutropius, or a historian of the church, like Eusebius, but his focus on the distant past and his Christian apologetics differentiate him from a pagan historian like Ammianus. Scholars have often concluded that he was not really a historian at all, but rather a theologian of history, offering a triumphalist vision of Christian empire.

In contrast to this traditional “theological” reading, Van Nuffelen argues for a “rhetorical” reading, which includes the study of Orosius’ use of literary allusion and other elements of eloquence, and also Orosius’ direct engagement with the exempla-tradition of the rhetorical schools. When Orosius is read rhetorically, we can see that he is not a radical innovator but a classicizing historian after all, in the mold not of Ammianus or Tacitus, but of the “tragic” Hellenistic historians.

Orosius and the Rhetoric of History argues for the historian’s classicism in two ways. First, Van Nuffelen demonstrates that scholars have failed to recognize Orosius’ extensive use of traditional historiographical tropes. Second, he argues that the apparently unusual features of the text which have dominated the critical commentary can actually be assimilated to traditional historiography.

The earlier chapters of the book are dominated by demonstrations of Orosius’ use of allusion and exempla. In the first chapter, Van Nuffelen shows how the historian uses Vergilian allusions in his preface as a purposeful literary strategy to enhance his authority. Intertextual engagement with Vergil is also highlighted in Chapter 2; in particular, Orosius’ linguistic parallels with Vergilian descriptions of the fall of Troy serve to remind the reader that Rome would have shared Troy’s fate in the recent sack if not for God’s help. In Chapter 3, Van Nuffelen emphasizes Orosius’ use of classical, rather than Christian, exempla. The historian aims to defeat his rivals on their own turf, by contrasting negative exempla drawn from Roman rhetorical practice with the more commonly deployed positive exempla. In Chapter 4, Van Nuffelen makes it clear that Orosius is not a simple transcriber of his sources. Instead, he amplifies, conflates, and at times distorts sources for his own purposes.

More bold are Van Nuffelen’s attempts to show that those elements of the Historiae which have been traditionally considered striking innovations can better be interpreted as variations of classicizing themes. For example, in the beginning of Book 2, Orosius offers his own version of the “four empires” theory found in other Christian works. Van Nuffelen argues that the extensive but somewhat incoherent parallels Orosius proposes between Rome and Babylon should be understood in the context of earlier examples of synchronism, such as that of Timaeus between east and west Greeks. The panegyrical elements at the end of Orosius’ work, Van Nuffelen argues in Chapter 6, do not present a radical new vision of Christian empire, as has been suggested. Instead, the use of panegyric in late antique historiography is typical, and Orosius’ innovation lies only in Christianizing its subject. Van Nuffelen also shows in Chapter 7 that Orosius’ claims of universalism are more rhetorical than realistic, and do not represent a new, Christianized view of history. The Historiae remain strongly Romanocentric, and while the figure of the barbarian is used at times to “destabilize” the perspective of the audience, Orosius’ manipulation of the barbarian to achieve his narrative aims is not uncommon in late antique historiography.

Sometimes Van Nuffelen seems too intent on denying the unusual features of Orosius’ work. The Christianization of traditional historiographical elements and the theological presuppositions that undergird the work do point the way to a new type of history. But Van Nuffelen is convincing in his systematic argument for the importance of reading Orosius as a classical historian, not as a Christian apologist. He shows that Orosius’ explicit insistence that he would not to rely on biblical authority but would remain within limits of classical historiography (1.1, 7.1) is more than mere rhetoric. Students and scholars of all periods of ancient historiography have much to learn from this important book.

Fred Eugene Ray Jr.  Greek and Macedonian Land Battles of the 4th
Century B.C.: A History and Analysis of 187 Engagements.  Jefferson
McFarland, 2012.  244 pp.  $45.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7864-6973-4.

Reviewed by Nathan D. Wells (Quincy College)
Published on H-War (April, 2013)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

The fourth century BC was a seminal period in military history,
especially with regard to the Western way of war. From the period of
Spartan dominance in the wake of the Peloponnesian War to the initial
wars waged by Alexander the Great’s successors, the fourth century
saw multiple variations of the Doric phalanx on battlefields, in the
Greek heartland, in the Mediterranean, and on its border with India.
These formations were initially used by rival city-states, then
crafters of empires. Such a pivotal period deserves a thorough
analysis, and Fred Eugene Ray Jr., a retired geologist and oil
industry executive, has gamely accepted the challenge.

This is not the first time that Ray has explored the subject of
warfare in the classical Greek world. In his _Land Battles in 5th
Century B__.__C__.__ Greece: A History and Analysis of 173
Engagements_ (2008), Ray covered the century preceding the current
volume’s subject. Ray’s knowledge of geology and topography are
evident in both books.

While _Greek and Macedonian Land Battles of the 4th Century B.C._
provides an analysis of engagements and military developments, it is
also examines what led to those developments. Indeed, this may be the
strongest asset of Ray’s volume. When the fourth century began,
Sparta was the dominant land power in Greece, as it had been in the
previous century. Sparta had emerged victorious in the Peloponnesian
War, and the Greek world looked to be in for a long-term Lacedaemonic
hegemony. Yet, by mid-century, the fulcrum had shifted first to the
up-and-coming Thebans and then to the even more up-and-coming
Macedonians. This was a fascinating and critical period, and Philip
II’s time as a hostage in Thebes during the glory years of that polis
has rightly so often been remarked on. Ray recounts all of this, with
Philip, his son Alexander III (the Great), and the Theban strategists
Pelopidas and Epaminondas who inspired them each getting their due.
Ray also draws attention to a lesser-known Athenian general,
Iphicrates. While most historians look to Thebes, and especially to
Epaminondas as the inspiration for Philip’s reforms of the Doric
phalanx, Ray believes that Iphicrates was perhaps more deserving of
credit, especially with regard to tactical deployment of the oblique
assault. Learning strategy from Epaminondas and tactics from
Iphicrates would prove to be a deadly education, ironically so for
their native poleis. Ray also does an excellent job in discussing the
Persian kardakes, which was a stopgap attempt to deal with the
phalanxes, both mercenary and Macedonian.

This is a fine book overall, but I have three major criticisms. The
first is that the volume is strictly chronological. Given the nature
of warfare in the fourth century with hoplite armies, often mercenary
based, fighting simultaneous wars throughout the Mediterranean and
Near East, the same characters appear and reappear often. Focusing on
regions might have made the narrative less confusing. The second
criticism relates to citation. As noted above, this volume is a
companion to a work on the fifth century BC. In his review of _Land
Battles in 5th Century B__.__C__.__ Greece_, A. A. Nofi comments that
“the chief flaw of Ray’s book is that he fails to provide proper
foot-notes, using instead in-text ‘documentation’ which is often too
brief to permit easy checking of references, not to mention disrupts
the narrative flow.”[1] Ray follows the same pattern in this volume
and it is similarly distracting. His sources are also primarily drawn
from period material whose numbers must be used with caution. The
final criticism is the most glaring, though whether the blame goes to
Ray or the publisher is unknown. While the author clearly understands
the importance of geography and topography in military affairs, maps,
especially detailed maps, are few and far between in this book. This
is most acute in covering the “Sacred War” between city-states, as
well as trying to follow Alexander’s march from the Aegean to India.

All criticisms aside, I would certainly recommend the book to anyone
interested in ancient warfare or the classical and Hellenistic world.
Just make sure that you have an atlas within arm’s reach.

Note

[1]. A. A. Nofi, review of _Land Battles in 5th Century B__.__C__.__
Greece: A History and Analysis of 173 Engagements_, by Fred Eugene
Ray Jr., http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/395.asp.

Citation: Nathan D. Wells. Review of Ray Jr, Fred Eugene, _Greek and
Macedonian Land Battles of the 4th Century B.C.: A History and
Analysis of 187 Engagements_. H-War, H-Net Reviews. April, 2013.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=37499