posted with permission:

Caesar’s De Analogia: Edition, Translation, and Commentary. By Alessandro Garcea. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv + 304. Hardcover, £70.00/$150.00. ISBN 978-0-19-960397-8.

Reviewed by James E. G. Zetzel, Columbia University

When one thinks of Julius Caesar, what comes to mind immediately is the politician/dictator/god, or perhaps the author of the Commentaries. We do not so rapidly think of Caesar the intellectual, Caesar the scholar and poet, or Caesar the expert on Latin grammar. And yet, although the actual fragments of Caesar’s De Analogia are fairly sparse, they can, and in Alessandro Garcea’s important book do, provide valuable insights into the intellectual politics and polemics of the middle of the first century bce.

Although I would hesitate to push as far as Garcea does in finding political and imperial resonances in Caesar’s concern with proper Latinity—his encounters with less-than-fluent Latinists in Gaul is not very likely to have affected his views of the proper form of the genitive of various declensions—Garcea’s acumen in teasing out the implications and context of Caesar’s book is admirable. Written rapidly, probably in the spring of 54 bce while Caesar was returning to Gallia Comata from his winter rounds of the conventus of Cisalpina, the two books of De Analogia dealt with the perennial problem, not unique to Latin, of the relationship between regularity and usage in speech and writing. The tortured and tortuous arguments in Books 8–10 of Varro’s De Lingua Latina on analogy and anomaly reveal the complexity of the issues: not only was the organization of Latin still taking shape in Caesar’s day (the declensions, conjugations, and even the parts of speech were not fixed in standard grammar for at least another century), but there was much more variation in the forms of words than we sometimes realize. Normalization was clearly a desideratum, and Caesar’s work, the fragments of which show his interest in regularity, order, and clarity, was important enough to be cited in the grammatical tradition for centuries.

Where Caesar’s work on analogy fits into the broader debate on language that was clearly active in the 50s and 40s bce is not always clear, but Garcea does a very good job in sorting out the issues. The first half of his book deals with the larger context of De Analogia: it was dedicated to Cicero and at least in part it is a response to the discussion of rhetorical ornament and linguistic purity in Book 3 of De Oratore. What is more, the fragments of the preface of De Analogia quoted by Cicero in Brutus show Cicero trying to put a good face on what was, in fact, a fairly critical attitude on Caesar’s part: by praising Cicero for his literary and linguistic contributions to the Roman people (F1 Garcea; Brutus 253), Caesar was obliquely suggesting that his other contributions (political) were not quite so valuable. Garcea untangles the various threads of this encounter carefully: the political differences between the two men; the choice of styles; and the more technical but no less important question whether Latinitas as a linguistic virtue is more properly a part of rhetoric or of grammar. I am not convinced by all his arguments (particularly on the relationship between De Analogia and the Anticato), but Garcea is scrupulous in presenting all the evidence clearly enough to allow the reader to judge for herself.

The second half of the book consists of a very detailed commentary on the exiguous fragments of De Analogia, which goes far beyond the necessary exegesis of the words themselves to offer learned and wide-ranging discussion of a range of issues raised by Caesar’s words: the history of the alphabet in Roman grammatical theory; the problems of declining i-stem and consonant-stem nouns of the third declension; orthographical difficulties of various kinds; grammatical and natural gender and number; and more. If at times one has the sensation the Garcea is pulling in each and every thing that might conceivably be relevant to the elucidation of these meager fragments, that does not detract from the skill with which he does so, or the impressive range of topics, both linguistic and cultural, that can be coaxed out of Caesar’s little book. My own sense is that there is slightly less to De Analogia than meets Garcea’s eye; with Hendrickson, I think of it as a rapidly composed pamphlet, not the result of long and careful research or reflection. That does not diminish my admiration for Garcea’s book: it is a work of great intelligence, and its value goes far beyond the elucidation of the fragments of De Analogia. Anyone interested in the intellectual history of the late Republic or in the history of Roman thought about the Latin language will profit from it.

posted with permission:

The Romans and Germany: Selections from Tacitus, Caesar, Suetonius, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Pomponius Mela, Frontinus. Edited with introduction, notes, and vocabulary by Herbert W. Benario. Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2012. Pp. x + 71. Paper, $13.95. ISBN 978-1-4772-4066-3 (paper); 978-1-4772-4065-6 (e-book).

Reviewed by Roger T. Macfarlane, Brigham Young University

Scholarship on Tacitus and on Roman Germany has gained much from Benario’s long and careful stewardship. From his Introduction to Tacitus to Gildersleeve, Benario’s books and articles have and shall serve scholars and students for decades past and future.[[1]] Generous contributions of time and talent have allowed Benario’s legacy to extend well beyond the scope of his own classroom. Now, many years beyond his retirement from teaching, Benario equips intermediate Latin students with a reader on Romans in Germany.

This reader offers one dozen short passages in unretouched Latin from seven authors: Caesar (2), Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Pomponius Mela, Frontinus, Tacitus (3), and Suetonius (2). Passages range in length from around 40 words (Fron. Strat. 1.3.10) to around 400 (Tac. Ann. 1.60–2). The book’s apparatus is very lean. Textual accuracy is typical of Benario’s meticulous attention to detail. I found no typos. Source-editions are not credited; and no selection matched fully with the Teubner, PHI, or OCT I compared.

A Preface explains the book’s relation to Ecce Romani: that series’ applicable vocabulary serves as this book’s glossary. The Introduction involves bare-bones statements about the authors selected: the half-page statement on Tacitus’ life and works is the most detailed by far. Back matter is solely the Vocabulary. The book achieves its purpose purely: it provides the dozen right passages for introducing Roman Germania.

In the facing-page annotations vocabulary reigns, though some geographical and historical details arise. These notes deal predominantly with vocabulary, offering principal parts and the single-choice meaning the author prefers. Almost no grammatical help intrudes: for Caes. B. Gal. 4.1 (non longe a mari quo Rhenus influit) the author offers this: “nōn longē: probably in the area between Vetera and Kleve. / quō = in quod / influō, -ere, -uxī, -uxus, flow.” Teachers who are looking to assign a book that will replace them in the students’ reading experience will not have found that in this book. Later in that passage the tantalizing grammatical gems that are typically mined in other approaches are untouched here: atque in eam se consuetudinem adduxerunt ut locis frigidissimis neque vestitus praeter pelles haberent quicquam … et lavantur in fluminibus. A teacher might linger on the placement of se and of quicquam, its usage with the genitive; and here both the voice and mood of lavantur seem to make it too ripe to warrant instructor’s silence. None of these elements, however, receives notice above vocabulary level. An instructor will need to help answer—or, indeed, raise—such issues for students, since the book remains silent.

Much white space occurs, due to set-up of texts always on versos. Many pages are fully blank. This in itself is not a bad choice, for the text is the thing here. Yet the press might have contrived graphic replacements for the voids, e.g. more maps or even illustrations for the texts.

One miserly map scowls on p. x. Lacking legend, scale, and contrast, the map is hardly useful in this volume. Benario’s notes translate the sources’ place names, ad loc., into modern anglophone terms (e.g., ad Vell. 2.95.1, Raetos Vindelicosque glossed with “The Raeti and Vindelici are tribes who lived in the general area of modern Bavaria, in southeastern Germany”). Patient hawkeyes will eventually find “Vindeliker.” As is, the bleary map is almost useless.[[2]]

Useful for precocious scholars who are finishing Ecce Romani or an intermediate course and need free-time readings, this book offers reliable texts. Ancillaria are so sparsely provided that most young students will make little headway here on their own. The teacher will be augmenting with grammatical analysis. All students below advanced undergraduates will benefit from the facing-page vocabulary. I will consider its use for sight-readings in my intermediate college classroom.

NOTES

[[1]] E.g., from among a long bibliography, H. W. Benario, An Introduction to Tacitus (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975); W.W. Briggs and H. W. Benario, edd., Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve: an American Classicist (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); H. W. Benario, Thusnelda: a German Princess in Ancient Rome [historical fiction] (New York: Vantage, 1993); and now id., ed., Caesar’s Gallic War: a Commentary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012).

[[2]] H. W. Benario, ed., Tacitus Annals 11 and 12, Classical World Special Series (Lanham: University Press of America, 1983) 105.

Kenneth Atkinson. Queen Salome: Jerusalem’s Warrior Monarch of the
First Century B.C.E. Jefferson McFarland and Company, 2012. 296
pp. $45.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7864-7002-0.

Reviewed by Karl C. Randall
Published on H-War (February, 2013)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

Queen Salome is an interesting but long-overlooked figure in ancient
history. Kenneth Atkinson has finally redressed this oversight in his
work _Queen Salome__._ Atkinson has taken great pains to gather every
source of information on Salome Alexandra, making it the only
comprehensive work about her life. The author’s evaluation and
collation of sources relating the same event are both careful and
clear. Some materials, such as Josephus, are stripped of their bias
while others, such as sections of the _Gemara_, which are often
discounted as non-contemporary, have been included–but only after
proving that they are either clearly based on or match earlier works.
In short, Atkinson has done a masterful job of gathering and vetting
his source material.

Given the topic of the book and the fact that a number of the primary
sources take a strongly patriarchal slant, it is only natural that
_Queen Salome_ includes a fair amount of information regarding the
life and lot of females during the first century BCE and female
rulers in particular to provide contextual balance not shown in
source material. Atkinson skillfully teases out the truth hidden
behind the almost complete purge of Queen Salome’s accomplishments
that has occurred with the passage of time. At times, however,
Atkinson pushes the issue somewhat harder than necessary and his tone
occasionally takes on a decidedly feminist slant.

The sum total of information directly mentioning or alluding to Queen
Salome, however, remains woefully small, a fact that will remain
unchanged unless new sources come to light. To compensate for such a
narrow array of sources, Atkinson wisely chose to expand his focus to
include Queen Salome’s immediate family, ancestors and descendants,
and other female rulers of her time. While this expansion is well
done and natural given the dearth of source material, the finished
work is somewhat less of a biography of a single person than a
history of Hasmonean-ruled Judea. That being said, Atkinson’s work
remains the first and only unified work on Queen Salome and as such
it is worthy of praise.

The book provides sufficient amount of background information on
early Jewish beliefs that adds a layer of depth and understanding to
not only the Jewish religion and its early beliefs, but also to how
those beliefs affected the relationship of first-century Judea with
foreign influences and foreign nationals and others in the region.
The inclusion of this background information is vital to anyone not
conversant with Jewish customs and traditions of the period, making
it a boon to both laymen and professional historians not specialized
in biblical or Judean studies.

_Queen Salome_ does have its flaws though. Atkinson’s prose
occasionally becomes slightly repetitive, and transitions are choppy
early on–most particularly in the preface. This flaw largely
subsides as the work progresses, as the author becomes more
comfortable with his task. The book also contains upward of a dozen
typographical errors. While none of the errors are critical, the
combination of these two problems gives the impression that _Queen
Salome_ could have benefited from a slightly more stringent editorial
process prior to release.

It is my sincere hope that the lack of polish does not deter
prospective readers, for Atkinson has managed to create a volume that
is both comprehensive and original in focus, a rare accomplishment
indeed. For anyone wishing to learn more about Queen Salome’s
remarkable life and accomplishments, Atkinson’s volume is the first
and only source on the subject. Of interest for anyone in gender
studies, or classical or biblical history, it manages to be of use to
both the layman and the serious scholar alike.

Citation: Karl C. Randall. Review of Atkinson, Kenneth, _Queen
Salome: Jerusalem’s Warrior Monarch of the First Century B.C.E._.
H-War, H-Net Reviews. February, 2013.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=37106

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

posted with permission:

Slaves Tell Tales. And Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture in Ancient Greece. By Sara Forsdyke. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012. Pp. xiii + 265. Hardcover, $39.95/£27.95. ISBN 978­-0-14005–6.

Reviewed by Carl A. Anderson, Michigan State University

In this original and imaginative study, Sara Forsdyke seeks to understand the ways that ordinary farmers, craftsmen and slaves in ancient Greece made sense of their world and their place in it. Following an introduction, the book is organized into two major sections, Discourses and Practices, each of which contains two chapters. Endnotes for the individual chapters are followed by the Epilogue. The bibliography, index locorum and general index round out the work.

The introductory chapter, “Peasants, Politics, and Popular Culture,” asks how historians of ancient Greece might begin to recover a world view of non-elites given the paucity of surviving evidence. For the perspectives and experiences of these groups Forsdyke suggests going beyond the confines of ancient Greek history to examine comparative studies of popular culture from later historical periods, and argues how such an approach might be used to produce an analysis of non-elite culture in ancient Greece. She is careful to stress the importance of recognizing the distinct social and cultural context of ancient Greece in the study. Forsdyke offers a brief survey of relevant research of cultural historians, political theorists and anthropologists of popular culture and concludes with an overview of her key assumptions before moving on to a more detailed discussion comparing the economy, social structure and political institutions of the Greek city state with those of the other societies that she surveys.

Part One: Discourses

This part begins with Chapter 2, the longest chapter in the book, “Slaves Tell Tales: The Culture of Subordinate Groups in Ancient Greece.” Forsdyke draws on the political scientist James Scott’s model of the “hidden transcript” and the “public transcript” in popular culture to show how oral story-telling, folk tales, fables and proverbs can appeal to non-elite audiences, but also function to affirm the ideology of the dominant social class.[[1]] The “hidden transcript” is defined as the ways peasants and disempowered groups talk about and understand their place in the world among themselves when those in authority are not present. The “public transcript” concerns the ways such groups present themselves before their social superiors.

The first case study is the tale of the Chian slave-hero Drimakos, whom both masters and slaves honored in cult (Athen. 265d–266e). Drimakos ran away to the mountains, established a refuge for slaves fleeing cruel uncaring masters, conducted raids on the local landowners, and negotiated a treaty and armistice. Surprisingly, the story also presents Drimakos advocating the return of slaves who fled their owners without justification, and appearing in dreams after his death to warn certain masters of the plots their slaves were making against them. Forsdyke points to the tale of the Roman bandit hero Bulla Felix as another example of a marginal figure negotiating benefits for his followers by engaging the ruling class. The author links these two tales as well as other forms of story telling, such as proverbs, animal fables, and tricksters tales, to the themes of role reversal, fantasies of magical abundance, and revenge of the weak against the strong common to popular culture. Whether they circulated in ancient Greece or Rome, early modern Europe, the slave experience of the antebellum United States, or modern peasant society in Malaysia, these informal modes of communication, the author suggests, are key to uncovering the hidden perspectives and world views of non-elite groups in ancient Greece.

The remainder of this chapter concerns the ways in which the story of Drimakos can be understood as a collaborative creation of slaves and masters. Forsdyke begins with a proverb attributed to a comedy of Eupolis: “A Chian has bought himself a master” (PCG 5: 296). What matters is that the proverb shows that slaves (at least in fantasy) could be “on top.” Advancing this observation, she suggests that the proverb in Eupolis’ comedy may have something to do with the fact that “there was something about the slaves of Chios that made them a fertile source of the popular imagination, even in Athens” (85). This has some support in the historical record (cf. Thuc, 8.39.3, 8.40.2), inviting Forsdyke to speculate that slaves and masters invented the tale of Drimakos “to stabilize their relations: a dual hero-cult and corresponding aetiological legend through which slaves and masters enacted and articulated the terms of their mutual accommodation” (87). This strikes the reader as a fresh and original interpretation that explains what appears merely to be an entertaining story. It also invites the reader to reflect anew on the ways in which stories told by or about slaves in Greek literature might be understood by enslaved populations in the ancient Greek world.

In Chapter 3, “Pigs, Asses, and Swine: Obscenity and the Popular Imagination in Ancient Sicyon,” Forsdyke analyzes Herodotus’s story about how the tyrant Cleisthenes ridiculed the inhabitants of Sicyon by renaming the Dorian tribes of the city after lowly barnyard animals, pigs, asses, and swine, and about how he attempted to expel the cult of the Argive hero Adrastus in order to introduce the rival cult of Melanippus (5.67–8). She argues that these stories are in fact invented fifth-century anti-tyrannical traditions projected back into the past. She further suggests that the names of the Dorian tribes and introduction of the cult of Adrastus were not adopted at Sicyon until the late sixth century. She draws comparative evidence from Mikhail Bakhtin’s observation that the blurring of distinctions between the animal and human is a key characteristic of the popular attacks on officials of the Middle Ages,[[2]] and the model of “peer-polity interaction” centered on ethnic identity and inter-polis cultic competition to support her interpretations. Of necessity the arguments of this chapter are speculative.

Part Two: Practices

In Chapter 4, “Revelry and Riot in Ancient Megara: Democratic Disorder or Role Reversal?”[[3]] Forsdyke focuses on several accounts in Plutarch about the poor rioting and resorting to violence against the wealthy in archaic Megara (Moralia 295c–d, 304c–f). Modern historians have tended to regard Plutarch’s explanation of these incidents as evidence of a radical democracy in sixth-century Megara. Forsdyke rejects this view. Instead, she looks to accounts of rituals of temporary breakdowns and inversions of social hierarchies and norms from early modern Europe and elsewhere as a way to analyze the account in Plutarch. These comparative models, she argues, suggest a pattern across historical periods of ritualized violence and rioting as an informal, extra-legal, means for negotiating relief and reforms rather than as a form of revolutionary action. Thus the festive revelry by the poor of sixth-century Megara, apparently spinning out of control spontaneously, can be understood not as an example of the violent nature of radical democracy, a popular fourth-century critique, but as an expression of popular discontent aimed at forcing the wealthy elite to take responsibility for the distress of the poor.

In Chapter 5, “Street Theater and Popular Justice in Ancient Greece,” Forsdyke examines street theater and extra-judicial forms of punishment through practices of public shaming, particularly in cases of adultery, the collective razing of the houses of elites, and community stoning of those seen as public enemies. The author argues that these manifestations of informal extra-legal traditions overlapped and complemented institutional modes of justice, and “could also serve as a mechanism for the symbolic disciplining of the elites by the masses” (175). In both this chapter and the previous chapter of this section, Forsdyke argues that the poor as well as women and slaves participated in these rituals. She usefully summarizes the arguments of the case studies presented in the individual chapters in the epilogue.

This is a well argued and thoughtful book. Given the absence of written texts to illustrate the experiences and perspectives of common people in ancient Greece, Forsdyke must rely by necessity on inference and conjecture. Some readers may question aspects of her interpretations, as is the case with all comparative historical reconstructions, about the individual case studies and about the ways of using comparative evidence. But the fact remains that this study suggests largely unrecognized ways for ancient historians to draw on comparative history and social science research to construct a productive methodology for the study of ancient Greek popular culture.

The text is well edited. I noticed only two corrigenda, “another way…” p. 47, and “Athenaeus reminds…” p. 75.

NOTES

[[1]] J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990).

[[2]] M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, translated by Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington, 1984).

[[3]] This chapter contexualizes the author’s article of the same title, “Revelry and Riot in Ancient Megara: Democratic Disorder or Role Reversal?” JHS 125 (2005) 73–92.

posted with permission:

Demography and the Graeco-Roman World: New Insights and Approaches. Edited by Claire Holleran and April Pudsey. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. ix + 215. Hardcover, £58.00/$99.00. ISBN 978-1-107-01082-6.

Reviewed by Marco Maiuro, Columbia University

The eight essays contained in this volume are explicitly intended to explore the frontier of current historical research on matters of demography such as fertility, nuptiality, migration, and the use of model life tables in classical antiquity. With the exception of the opening and closing chapters, by Neville Morley and Tim Parkin respectively, the remaining six essays are the products of young scholars, in some cases in anticipation of or as a side product from their dissertations or post-doctoral research. Despite the fact that the volume originates from a conference held in Manchester in 2005, its scope goes far beyond what one would expect from the publication of conference proceedings. In fact, the architecture of the volume is well balanced: it is centered on key concepts, which serve as heuristic foci (mortality, nuptiality, fertility and mobility), and which are illustrated by case studies evenly distributed across Greek and Roman antiquity, in both the east and west of the Mediterranean.

No succinct summary can be offered here: the value of the volume rests on the many interesting points of detail made by the authors. I should emphasize that every chapter contributes to current debates with interesting insights and each one ought to be read separately with its unique salient attributes taken into consideration. If we are to evaluate the volume as such, we cannot but agree with Parkin’s remark that this collection of essays shows the extent to which the field is open to new research, rather than simply to providing varied responses to old questions. The reader is left with the impression that the real challenge in the study of ancient demography is to ask questions that can be framed within the limits of what the ancient evidence allows, rather than to give answers to traditional questions. As a consequence, a warning is repeated throughout the volume against easy solutions, broad generalizations, and the mechanical applicability of models (this is especially evident in the work of Akrigg on the demography of Athens, in the work of Pudsey on the demographic life cycle in Roman Egypt, and in that of Hin on fertility). The chapters devoted to mobility—an area of research that is understudied but is crucially important and one which this book addresses especially in the chapters of Taylor on Attica and Holleran on Rome—seek to problematize the concept of migration and elegantly refuse to play the numbers game. Temporary or permanent migration, social expectations and pull factors are, to my knowledge, for the first time clearly evinced as the crucial terms of any discussion about migration in antiquity. Fischer-Bovet’s chapter on the migration rate of Greeks and Macedonians in Ptolemaic Egypt stands out from the rest of the volume, inasmuch as she presents an ingenious new method to quantify the number of Greeks living in Hellenistic Egypt. This innovative study, beyond the reliability of its findings, will certainly make its way into the broader field of the general history of Ptolemaic Egypt. However, it is worth stressing that the methodological premises of this study are somewhat at odds with the extreme prudence and caution of the other chapters. In this respect, it is useful for the reader to note the wide spectrum of possible approaches that ancient demography may foster.

The tension between theory and evidence is nevertheless apparent in all of the chapters. The gap between what we wish to know and what is knowable to us is elegantly and effectively filled in by Pudsey’s chapter, which clearly makes extensive use of ancient evidence, in this case the census returns of Roman Egypt. It is, however, the exceptional nature of the evidence at hand that makes it possible to firmly embed the argument into that evidence. More often, the divide between models and historical reality is filled with imaginative—or rhetorical—recourse to “comparative evidence.” Here is a major methodological point that this book only partially addresses: to what extent is it legitimate and appropriate for a scholar to draw demographic scenarios and infer conclusions from more familiar societies and epochs? Or, to ask the same question from another point of view, what is peculiarly ancient about ancient demography? Akrigg and Parkin rekindle the dispute about the legitimacy of using the model life tables: Parkin concludes with a good dose of wisdom that they may serve our purposes if we look for orders of magnitude, not statistical precision. The resort to “comparative evidence” is, however, more systematic and not only confined to the biological aspects of the life-cycle in pre-modern societies. There is obviously nothing inherently wrong in invoking comparative scenarios in order to elucidate obscure points of ancient history; only this should be made with the awareness that it blurs our vision of culturally determined and specific phenomena, the same phenomena invoked to explain unexpected or anomalous patterns of migration and nuptiality, for example. Biology and culture, the socially and temporally determined interplay between nature and nurture, are the constituent factors of any analysis of demographic history.

In sum, the book here under review introduces the reader to the more systematic research that the contributors have under way in publication. The outcome is a complex web of possible paths of research. It is clear that a similar book could simply not have been written fifteen or twenty years ago and this testifies to the centrality that problems of ancient demography have acquired since.