• 2013.01.63:  Robin Osborne, The History Written on the Classical Greek Body.
• 2013.01.62:  Tamiolaki on Maffi on Tamiolaki, Liberté et esclavage​.
  Response by Melina Tamiolaki.
• 2013.01.61:  Emeri Farinetti, Boeotian Landscapes: A GIS-based study for the reconstruction and interpretation of the archaeological datasets of ancient Boeotia. BAR international series, S2195.
• 2013.01.60:  Tomas Hägg, The Art of Biography in Antiquity.
• 2013.01.59:  Andrew B. Gallia, Remembering the Roman Republic: Culture, Politics and History under the Principate.
• 2013.01.58:  Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity.
• 2013.01.57:  Javier Andreu, David Espinosa, Simone Pastor, Mors omnibus instat: aspectos arqueológicos, epigráficos y rituales de la muerte en el Occidente Romano. Colección Estudios.
• 2013.01.56:  Matthew S. Rindge, Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool: Luke 12:13-34 among Ancient Conversations on Death and Possessions. Early Christianity and its literature, 6.
• 2013.01.55:  Alberto Bernabé, Platón y el orfismo: diálogos entre religión y filosofía. Referencias de religión.

posted with permission:

Daily Life in the Hellenistic Age: From Alexander to Cleopatra. By James Allan Evans. Revised edition. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. Pp. xli + 196. $19.95. ISBN 978-0-8061-4255-5.

Reviewed by Thomas R. Keith, Loyola University Chicago

Those who are charged with teaching undergraduate-level courses on Hellenistic history will appreciate the virtue of James Allan Evans’ goals in Daily Life in the Hellenistic Age. His text, first published in hardcover in 2008, seeks to bridge the gap between most introductory Greek history textbooks, which tend to give the Hellenistic age short shrift compared to the Archaic and Classical periods, and masterful but unwieldy tomes like Peter Green’s Alexander to Actium. The intended result is a book accessible to those with no background in ancient history, yet with sufficient detail to serve as the core text for an entire course on the period. If Daily Life falls short in these aims, this is a consequence not of any flaws in its construction, but of a cumulative lack of attention to detail.

The book’s strongest suit, without question, is its impressive breadth. Evans does a capable job of working around the problem of the paucity of literary evidence for certain aspects of Hellenistic history; he is particularly skilled at mining non-historiographical sources such as New Comedy, Theocritus, and Herondas for insight into details of mundane life. Consequently, close attention is paid throughout to the issues of gender, class and ethnicity that more traditionally minded historical surveys sometimes neglect, as well as to such matters as diet and dress. Compliments are also due to Evans’ in-depth treatment of the complexities of Hellenistic religion in Chapter 14. As is reasonable for a book aimed at a non-specialist audience, he largely downplays abstract questions of theology in favor of a focus on the details of “on-the-ground” practice. The resulting analysis communicates ably the sheer vibrancy and diversity that pulsated beneath the uniform veneer of Greek culture.

The text also casts a wide geographical net. In particular, Evans devotes much attention to Ptolemaic Egypt, and ably demonstrates its unique status as both Greek and “other,” with all the attendant interpretive difficulties that status poses. Judaea, too, is well-treated, and undergraduates interested in the interaction between the classical world and Judaism will find much of interest. Political affairs in mainland Greece itself are dealt with more cursorily—the growth of federal states, for example, passes largely undiscussed—but any shortcomings in this regard are made up for by the lengthy Chapter 13, “Hellenistic Kingdoms,” an intelligent and incisive summary of the competing power blocs in the Hellenistic world and the ideologies of rulership that prevailed in each.

However, the pedagogical value of the text is undercut by its sloppy production. Errors, both typographical and factual, occur with unsettling frequency. This is perhaps most obvious in the realm of dates: at various points, the battles of Chaeronea (p. x), Lake Trasimene (p. xxv), and Cannae (ibid.), the Peace of Apamea (p. xxxvii), the death of Hadrian (bis, p. 133 and photo 11), and the reigns of every Antigonid monarch save Philip V (p. 182) are dated incorrectly. The text is also often confused on fundamental matters of geography (e.g. the Lydian empire is described as Asia Minor “east of the Halys,” rather than west (p. x); Attica is referred to as Greece’s “western peninsula” (p. 15)). Transliterations of Greek names are variable and sloppy (e.g. p. 112 “Amphiareus” for “Amphiaraus”; p. 119 “didaskoloi” for “didaskaloi”). For whatever reason, these problems are most acute in the preface, but they are by no means confined to it.

Evans’ prose style is competent, but uninspired, and he is strikingly prone to repetition; in part this is a necessary consequence of the book’s thematic, rather than chronological, organizational schema, but it is less easy to excuse the multiple cases in which phrases are repeated almost verbatim, sometimes only a few paragraphs apart. (See e.g. p. 32: “[The chlamys] was the favorite costume for horsemen in Greece”; pg. 33: “The chlamys was also the favorite dress of horsemen in Greece”; pg. 95: “[The
krater] would be a fine example of the potter’s art …”; p. 96: “The krater was usually a splendid example of the potter’s art …”). The only illustrations provided are a folio of black-and-white photos, all but one of which are pictures of archaeological sites. Only one map is offered, a new addition to the paperback edition depicting the Hellenistic kingdoms in 280 bce; maps of the western Mediterranean and of mainland Greece in detail are definite desiderata for future editions. While the bibliography is full, the notes given at the end of each chapter are very sparing. Throughout, the text gives an impression of having been prepared in haste, which is surprising for a revised and updated edition.

This is all the more unfortunate, given the attractiveness of Daily Life’s comprehensive scope and low cost. It is to be hoped that future editions will correct the text’s flaws, after which it will be a worthy addition to the curriculum for undergraduate ancient history courses.

posted with permission:

A Commentary on the Rhesus Attributed to Euripides. By Vayos Liapis. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. lxxviii + 364. Hardcover, £90.00/$185.00. ISBN 978-0-19-959168-8.

Reviewed by Simon Perris, Victoria University of Wellington

Commentaries, like readers, come in all sorts. Vayos Liapis’ commentary on Rhesos is of the kind I prefer, for he dedicates it not only to explicating the text, but also to advancing an argument. “In order to establish whether Rhesus can or cannot be Euripidean, and (more importantly) in order to lay the groundwork for a proper appreciation of this idiosyncratic play, nothing less than a full-scale commentary is required” (v). Production meets the usual standards of the press: typographical errors are few enough;[[1]] binding is adequate; the reproduction of Diggle’s OCT text leaves a little to be desired. Liapis translates each lemma into English. End matter includes indices Graecitatis, Nominum et Rerum Potiorum, and Locorum Potiorum.

This is effectively a book about dramaturgy and authorship. Liapis’ introduction, now required reading for anyone working on Rhesos, thus introduces the main interpretative issues (“The Mythical Background,” “Dramaturgy and Stagecraft,” “Character-Portrayal,” “Language and Style; Metre,” “The Authenticity Question,” and “The Text”) and also outlines the argument: the Rhesos attributed to Euripides was composed by a man of the theatre imitating the style of the old master with limited success, probably in the fourth century, possibly for performance in Macedon.

Liapis does force the issue at times. At p. xxix, despite citing Pickard-Cambridge’s caveat on the matter, Liapis maintains that “kothornos-boots” on Apulian red-figure vases are “a tell-tale sign of theatrical influence.” Kenneth Dover (Aristophanes: Frogs (Oxford, 1993) ad 47) and, more recently, Rosie Wyles (Costume in Greek Tragedy (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011) 25) affirm that classical kothornoi—to be distinguished from post-classical cothurni—were not a synecdochic icon for tragedy.

On the one hand, Rhesos supposedly demonstrates its poet’s incompetence. On the other, while arguing for a fourth speaking actor in the Alexandros scene, Liapis claims that “no half-competent playwright” would have risked the failure of a very fast costume change (xliv). On that note, Liapis is very dismissive of the possibility of a fourth actor at Khoephoroi 886–90, calling it a “specious” example (xliv) and thus implying that the case is open-and-shut.

Due to the play’s depiction of Odysseus and Diomedes, we are told, “one is bound to conclude that the playwright is manifestly unsympathetic to the Greeks” (li). The most one can conclude is that the poet’s portrayal is manifestly unsympathetic.

To my mind, a concentration on minor, unnamed characters is anything but paradoxical (liii) in a drama which owes so much to Euripidean style.[[2]]

I resist any assumption that “late” stylistic features are necessarily late-Euripidean, and I am thus wary of the conclusion, “That one and the same play can combine metrical and linguistic features both from early and from late Euripides can mean one thing, and one thing only: Rhesus is the work of a later imitator” (lvii).

Nevertheless, Liapis’s sensible and cogent argument has real explanatory power. I, for one, am persuaded. Moreover, Liapis’s commitment to his argument (if not his author) also supports the other goal of the commentary—to understand Rhesos as a piece of theater. He meticulously unpacks the play, qua verse drama, such that even a reader convinced of Euripidean authorship should still come away from the book enlightened about how Rhesos works or does not work, as the case may be.

I was gratified to discover that Liapis and I came independently to the same conclusion regarding the staging of Rhesos: neither the stage-building nor its door(s) represent anything, and Hektor sleeps not in a Homeric hut (klisiê) but in a bivouac (69–70).[[3]] On a related note, Liapis makes astute observations on Odysseus and Diomedes’ entrance to an empty stage (xxxvii–viii). Further, I approve of Liapis’s forthright approach to the problem of the chorus, and now agree entirely that “The chorus’ identity as soldiers on guard duty proves to be an exceedingly bad idea” (xli).

As his own entries in the bibliography illustrate, Liapis has spent some years now working on Rhesos, and in the commentary proper we reap the fruits of that labor on points of detail as well as wider issues. See, for example, the exemplary treatment of the Rhesos-poet’s (ab)use of the word ἄντυξ (instances of which may be found in the index Graecitatis); the explanation of λῦσον βλεφάρων γοργωπὸν ἕδραν (Rh. 8); or the lucid account of the Hypotheseis to the play. On the other hand, I strongly disagree that “it is doubtful … that [δαίμων] is ever used as a mere synonym for ‘god’” (87). Compare, for example, Bakkhai 22, 417, 498, et cetera.

Rhesos is probably our only extant fourth-century tragedy and, some would say, the weakest extant tragedy. Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this book, then, is that Liapis implicitly stakes a claim for the play’s importance without apologizing for its (lack of) quality. This excellent commentary deservedly takes its place as the standard reference work on Rhesos for scholars and graduate students alike.

NOTES

[[1]] xxii: “n.*”. xliv n. 126: “n.*” (twice). lxvii with n. 226: Liapis repeats (not verbatim) an earlier assertion (p. lvi with n. 175) about the poet’s lax approach to interlinear hiatus. 57: παρέμβολήν [sic]. 62: “or later hypotheseis-collection[s] were falsely attributed.” 70: references to both “Popp” and “H. Popp.” 102: ὅ,τι [sic]. 110: “Fraenkel.;”. passim: the editor of tragic fragments is sometimes “Radt,” sometimes “R.”

[[2]] See now F. Yoon, The Use of Anonymous Characters in Greek Tragedy: The Shaping of Heroes (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

[[3]] S. Perris, “Stagecraft and the Stage Building in Rhesus,” G&Rome 59 (2012) 151–64.

posted with permission:

A Commentary on the Rhesus Attributed to Euripides. By Vayos Liapis. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. lxxviii + 364. Hardcover, £90.00/$185.00. ISBN 978-0-19-959168-8.

Reviewed by Simon Perris, Victoria University of Wellington

Commentaries, like readers, come in all sorts. Vayos Liapis’ commentary on Rhesos is of the kind I prefer, for he dedicates it not only to explicating the text, but also to advancing an argument. “In order to establish whether Rhesus can or cannot be Euripidean, and (more importantly) in order to lay the groundwork for a proper appreciation of this idiosyncratic play, nothing less than a full-scale commentary is required” (v). Production meets the usual standards of the press: typographical errors are few enough;[[1]] binding is adequate; the reproduction of Diggle’s OCT text leaves a little to be desired. Liapis translates each lemma into English. End matter includes indices Graecitatis, Nominum et Rerum Potiorum, and Locorum Potiorum.

This is effectively a book about dramaturgy and authorship. Liapis’ introduction, now required reading for anyone working on Rhesos, thus introduces the main interpretative issues (“The Mythical Background,” “Dramaturgy and Stagecraft,” “Character-Portrayal,” “Language and Style; Metre,” “The Authenticity Question,” and “The Text”) and also outlines the argument: the Rhesos attributed to Euripides was composed by a man of the theatre imitating the style of the old master with limited success, probably in the fourth century, possibly for performance in Macedon.

Liapis does force the issue at times. At p. xxix, despite citing Pickard-Cambridge’s caveat on the matter, Liapis maintains that “kothornos-boots” on Apulian red-figure vases are “a tell-tale sign of theatrical influence.” Kenneth Dover (Aristophanes: Frogs (Oxford, 1993) ad 47) and, more recently, Rosie Wyles (Costume in Greek Tragedy (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011) 25) affirm that classical kothornoi—to be distinguished from post-classical cothurni—were not a synecdochic icon for tragedy.

On the one hand, Rhesos supposedly demonstrates its poet’s incompetence. On the other, while arguing for a fourth speaking actor in the Alexandros scene, Liapis claims that “no half-competent playwright” would have risked the failure of a very fast costume change (xliv). On that note, Liapis is very dismissive of the possibility of a fourth actor at Khoephoroi 886–90, calling it a “specious” example (xliv) and thus implying that the case is open-and-shut.

Due to the play’s depiction of Odysseus and Diomedes, we are told, “one is bound to conclude that the playwright is manifestly unsympathetic to the Greeks” (li). The most one can conclude is that the poet’s portrayal is manifestly unsympathetic.

To my mind, a concentration on minor, unnamed characters is anything but paradoxical (liii) in a drama which owes so much to Euripidean style.[[2]]

I resist any assumption that “late” stylistic features are necessarily late-Euripidean, and I am thus wary of the conclusion, “That one and the same play can combine metrical and linguistic features both from early and from late Euripides can mean one thing, and one thing only: Rhesus is the work of a later imitator” (lvii).

Nevertheless, Liapis’s sensible and cogent argument has real explanatory power. I, for one, am persuaded. Moreover, Liapis’s commitment to his argument (if not his author) also supports the other goal of the commentary—to understand Rhesos as a piece of theater. He meticulously unpacks the play, qua verse drama, such that even a reader convinced of Euripidean authorship should still come away from the book enlightened about how Rhesos works or does not work, as the case may be.

I was gratified to discover that Liapis and I came independently to the same conclusion regarding the staging of Rhesos: neither the stage-building nor its door(s) represent anything, and Hektor sleeps not in a Homeric hut (klisiê) but in a bivouac (69–70).[[3]] On a related note, Liapis makes astute observations on Odysseus and Diomedes’ entrance to an empty stage (xxxvii–viii). Further, I approve of Liapis’s forthright approach to the problem of the chorus, and now agree entirely that “The chorus’ identity as soldiers on guard duty proves to be an exceedingly bad idea” (xli).

As his own entries in the bibliography illustrate, Liapis has spent some years now working on Rhesos, and in the commentary proper we reap the fruits of that labor on points of detail as well as wider issues. See, for example, the exemplary treatment of the Rhesos-poet’s (ab)use of the word ἄντυξ (instances of which may be found in the index Graecitatis); the explanation of λῦσον βλεφάρων γοργωπὸν ἕδραν (Rh. 8); or the lucid account of the Hypotheseis to the play. On the other hand, I strongly disagree that “it is doubtful … that [δαίμων] is ever used as a mere synonym for ‘god’” (87). Compare, for example, Bakkhai 22, 417, 498, et cetera.

Rhesos is probably our only extant fourth-century tragedy and, some would say, the weakest extant tragedy. Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this book, then, is that Liapis implicitly stakes a claim for the play’s importance without apologizing for its (lack of) quality. This excellent commentary deservedly takes its place as the standard reference work on Rhesos for scholars and graduate students alike.

NOTES

[[1]] xxii: “n.*”. xliv n. 126: “n.*” (twice). lxvii with n. 226: Liapis repeats (not verbatim) an earlier assertion (p. lvi with n. 175) about the poet’s lax approach to interlinear hiatus. 57: παρέμβολήν [sic]. 62: “or later hypotheseis-collection[s] were falsely attributed.” 70: references to both “Popp” and “H. Popp.” 102: ὅ,τι [sic]. 110: “Fraenkel.;”. passim: the editor of tragic fragments is sometimes “Radt,” sometimes “R.”

[[2]] See now F. Yoon, The Use of Anonymous Characters in Greek Tragedy: The Shaping of Heroes (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

[[3]] S. Perris, “Stagecraft and the Stage Building in Rhesus,” G&Rome 59 (2012) 151–64.

posted with permission:

Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompieus Trogus. Volume II: Books 13–15: The Successors to Alexander the Great. Translation and Appendices by J. C. Yardley, Commentary by Pat Wheatley and Waldemar Heckel. Clarendon Ancient History Series. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xxx + 342. Hardcover, £75.00/$135.00. ISBN 978-0-19-927759-9; Paper, £29.99/$99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-927760-5.

Reviewed by Charles E. Muntz, University of Arkansas

This excellent book is a follow-up to Heckel’s commentary on Books 11–12 of Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus. Books 13–15 cover the tumultuous period following the death of Alexander down to the Battle of Ipsos (301) and the death of Kassander (297). The translation is excerpted from Yardley’s 1994 translation of the entire Epitome of the Philippic History (Atlanta, 1994), along the with the so-called prologues (actually, tables of contents for individual books of Trogus) that have been preserved separately. This is a clear, straightforward translation. This edition also includes fragments of these books preserved by other sources, and translations of several texts relevant to the period that are not otherwise widely available, including entries from the Suda and the Heidelberg Epitome. No Latin text is included, but there is an appendix on the language of Trogus and Justin identifying particular word usage by each author.

The commentary is extensive—over 250 pages of notes on a mere 20 pages of text—and very well organized. The authors break it down into topical sections, which are further subdivided as needed. Individual sections are prefaced with a list of parallel ancient sources and modern bibliographies. Additional sources for tangential topics are frequently given in the notes. A unified bibliography at the end of the book would have been useful, given the sheer number of references made throughout the commentary. The commentary is detailed and thorough, a model of what an historical commentary should be. Obviously, it is impossible to highlight every outstanding feature, but I would note the level of detail about even some smaller issues in the text. For example, when Justin remarks that the successors were all good looking (13.1.11), Wheatley and Heckel note the importance of good looks in Hellenistic royal ideology, and then give an extensive list of ancient references to Leonnatos for comparison, along with citations of modern scholarship on Alexander’s own image.

I especially appreciated Wheatley and Yardley’s discussion of the knotty problems of chronology for the period. This is refreshingly undogmatic, and includes helpful lists of the major chronological events around which scholars try to date the period. The overview of the various types of evidence besides literary sources is admirably clear and accessible to a non-specialist, with extensive bibliography and suggestions of areas for future research. Ultimately, Wheatley and Heckel adopt a mixture of high and low dating, based largely on T. Boiy’s Between High and Low: A Chronology of the Early Hellenistic Period (Frankfurt am Main, 2007), but in both the introduction and the commentary they make clear the uncertainties and difficulties that remain and provide references to the various schools of thought.

In regards to the source issues, Wheatley and Heckel identify the main sources of Trogus as Hieronymus and Duris, and discuss in some detail the reasoning for the presence of Duris. However, they also suggest several times (pp. 2, 8, 255) that Trogus was relying extensively on Timagenes of Alexandria (FGrHist 88) rather than necessarily using the original historians. This hypothesis was argued in more detail in the volume on Books 11–12 (30–4, with detailed references), but Timagenes is so poorly attested (15 fragments in Jacoby) that this is somewhat speculative. All this is traditional Quellenforschung, but it does tend to downplay the creativity and ability of secondary historians like Trogus and epitomators like Justin to reinterpret their material in accordance with their own interests and concerns (see Bosworth, ClAnt 22 (2003) 167–97).

In this vein I was disappointed that Wheatley and Heckel do not discuss how the context of the late Republican/early Augustan period may have impacted Trogus’ presentation of history in more detail. For example, they note the similarity between Trogus’ remark that “one might have taken each of [the Diadochoi] for a king (13.1.10)” to the sentiment that “Rome was a city of kings” found in Plutarch, Appian, and Trogus himself (18.2.10). But nothing is made of this connection, or why Trogus might be making it. More and more I think it is important to consider an historian’s own context when interpreting his work rather than just to consult him for historical facts.

Ultimately, this are minor quibbles that should not distract from the high quality of this commentary. It both informs and stimulates further thought on the Diadochoi, while being accessible enough for advanced undergraduates to consult. Now can the authors perhaps tackle the next few books of Justin/Trogus?