posted with permission:

A Culture of Freedom: Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe. By Christian Meier. Translated by Jefferson Chase. With a Foreword by Kurt Raaflaub. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 315. Hardcover, £18.99/$29.95. ISBN 978-0-19-958803-9.

Reviewed by Paul Cartledge, Clare College, Cambridge (pac1001 AT cam.ac.uk)

There was, we are assured by the highly distinguished author, an unbridgeable divide between antiquity and the middle ages and so by extension modernity—and yet Greece was the “origin” of “Europe.” Is this a paradox? Or a contradiction? Meier too likes posing questions, as a matter of principled method. Indeed, it’s his constant self-reflexive alertness to problems of method, and of theory—most unusual in an ancient historian—that makes all his work such a challenge and at the same time a delight to read.

The present book, though, is a head minus the body, being the first two parts of a seven-part German series on the history of Europe. It was originally published in 2009, under the characteristically “winged formulation” title of Kultur, um der Freiheit willen: Griechische Anfänge—Anfang Europas?, and has been on the whole very well rendered into English by Jefferson Chase and brilliantly introduced by Meier’s former student Kurt Raaflaub (to whom is owed the phrase “winged formulation”). Professor Meier’s treatment of the somewhat forced origins-of-Europe problematic is also often brilliant, being both highly stimulating (even to a somewhat jaded reviewer) and surprisingly original in its empathetic penetration. Which makes the shortcomings on the technical production side only all the more regrettable—and hopefully corrigible in a swiftly to be issued paperback version. Examples of inadequacy or error are rather frequent—I mention only “Acharnians” for “Acarnanians” (Map 1), “Mars” for “Ares” (37), and most amusingly “Caledonian” for “Calydonian” (86).

The author’s freely chosen emphasis on freedom, which is highlighted in the title both of the German original and of the English translation, could hardly be an original leitmotif. Orlando Patterson, for example, another great comparativist historian, sees it as key to understanding ancient Greek culture and its world-historical contribution. But though it is regularly flagged up throughout (e.g. 58, it was “truly from a foundation of freedom” that “Greek culture was to arise”), it is not always flagged up as it might or surely should have been. For instance, it is seriously underplayed in connection with Solon’s abolition of debt-slavery at Athens in c. 600 bce and his outlawing for the future of the securing of loans on the person, thereby drawing the sharpest possible line between slavery (highly developed by the Athenians in the ultimate form of chattel slavery) and citizen freedom. This was in the city which was, not coincidentally, to go on to invent the world’s earliest version of direct citizen democracy, and about which Meier has himself written tellingly for a wide public. That freedom for some was bought at the heavy price of unfreedom for many others is not perhaps as inspiring a message as could ideally be wished.

On the other hand, the emphasis on culture is properly strong throughout. This is above all an admirable cultural history of early Greece, from the pre-polis world of the Mycenaean Bronze Age through the early or proto-polis world of Homer and Hesiod down to the early 5th century bce, although it is also a discontinuous history since “There is no road that leads from Mycenaean to polis-based culture” (49, unnumbered). Hence the major emphasis is placed on trying to understand and to assess the world-historical significance of the emergence of precisely that uniquely innovative and influential social-political formation. Given the available sources of evidence, the exercise of reconstruction necessitates a very great deal of informed empathetic speculation—but fortunately this is something at which Professor Meier excels.

So too does he address the dominant “Greece and its debt to the Orient” problematic with great adroitness. On the one hand, “The Greeks obviously pored over the narrative treasures of the Orient, appropriating elements at will”; on the other hand, “no matter what individuals may have dreamt of, or even tried to achieve, very little of it could become reality in the world of the Greek poleis” (both quotations from 71); thus the “influence of the Orient on Greece was less a matter of imitation than inspiration” (73). That seems to me to get the balance just right, and if there is one quality that pervades the book as whole it is precisely balance, what the Greeks might have called, in great praise, harmonia or summetria. I echo that laudation.

posted with permission:

Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor. By Karl Galinsky. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. xxiv + 221. 22 black-and-white illustrations; 3 maps. Hardcover, $90.00/£55.00. ISBN 978-0-521-76797-2. Paper, $27.99/£17.99. ISBN 978-0-521-74442-3.

Reviewed by Alden Smith, Baylor University

Karl Galinsky’s handsomely produced new biographical study of Augustus lives up to its subtitle very well. This book, which consists of eight chapters, offers the reader a complete introduction to the topic, rich with explanation of sources, and contains useful maps, a genealogical chart and a chronological synopsis. These are followed by Galinsky’s exposition of and commentary on important sources for the life of Rome’s first emperor, including evidence from material culture such as coins, inscriptions and papyri (e.g., 116).

The book largely follows Augustus’ life chronologically, beginning with his earliest days and carrying on through his death (ch. 8). Welcome details of the emperor’s private life, such as his marriages (40–1) and his personality/character (37–9) are not neglected. Galinsky’s approach is balanced. For example, he discusses Octavian’s shortcomings and mistakes, such as his handling of Perusia (43). Galinsky also cites Martial 11.20, which poem purports to contain verses of Augustus written against Fulvia (Antony’s wife); as the “author” of those lines Octavian does not come off very well. Galinsky also does a good job of presenting Octavian from Antony’s point of view (sc. as “a lowborn coward, Caesar’s boy toy,” 47) and thus reveals insights about how Octavian’s enemies regarded him.

The major events of Octavian/Augustus’ reign are, of course, not neglected. Galinsky’s presentation of Actium is excellent, with a useful map on p. 54. Further, the description of the principate as an experiment (ch. 3), too, is apt, as Galinsky demonstrates clearly that there was (certainly by the time Octavian has taken the name “Augustus”) no way back to the notion of the res publica as it had been constituted hitherto. His discussion, too, of the cast of characters around the emperor—Livia, Agrippa, Tiberius, Julia, Maecenas, Virgil, Horace, et al.—is first rate and helps the reader to understand the first emperor in the context of his own times.

Lest this review should be unqualifiedly positive, one or two quasi-distracting peculiarities of the book might be mentioned. First, the preface seems to me to be oddly placed, coming, as it does, only after Galinsky’s discussion of the sources. Was this idea that of the series editor? Secondly, in that preface, Galinsky speaks of a “welcome emphasis in this series to illustrate how we know what we know; hence the incorporation of a good number of ‘boxes’.” While I affirm Galinsky’s desire to explain “how” and not simply “what,” the idea of “boxes” seems to me a bit distracting. Although I am possibly just old-fashioned and too enamored of Grafton’s The Footnote: A Curious History, I am not fully convinced that the peculiarity of boxes enhances the volume’s otherwise excellent presentation of the material. This is especially noticeable when the boxes are oddly spaced (for example when two occur in immediate succession, as on pp. 23–4). Perhaps the series editor has adopted this new approach for a generation of viewers accustomed to links (a term that once better befit evolutionary species, chains or sausages)? De gustibus non …; but I prefer sausages and footnotes.

Quibbles aside, this is an excellent book, packed with information. Galinsky has done it again, offering a superbly useful volume for a new generation of readers hungering for knowledge about the Augustan milieu and the life of Augustus. This book offers both of those features, for it is much more than a biography. As he had in Augustan Culture, Galinsky interprets the context of the Augustan experience, adding fresh information about that period that is not found in the larger volume. Thus this book will be useful not only to those who are studying the emperor but also to those who are considering the wider context, i.e. those studying Augustan poetry or other aspects of that period. For teachers of Roman Civilization or seminars on the Augustan experience, this book is a sine qua non and could be ordered as a textbook, as it is seems to me the finest concise overview of Rome’s first emperor. I recommend it highly.

posted with permission:

The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Fourth Edition. General Editors, Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth; Assistant Editor, Esther Eidinow. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. lv + 1592. Hardcover, £100.00/$175.00. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.

Reviewed by Peter Green, University of Iowa

First, some comparative figures. The fourth edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (henceforward OCD4) has about 6,700 articles as against the 6,250 of OCD3. Surprisingly, it runs to only 1,593 pages against its predecessor’s 1,640, but makes up for this by having a larger page format. There are 72 new entries, and 19 replacements, the nature of which corresponds pretty well in most cases to recent discoveries and developments—by no means always the same thing—in classical scholarship. New articles are of three kinds. First, there are primarily factual items, previously either overlooked or held of insufficient importance to be included: e.g. Aegospotami, Apollodorus (the mythographer), Centuripe, Helena Augusta, and Xenion. Secondly, we find new areas of interest: e.g. aetiology, creolization, emotions, film, materiality, opera, popular culture, reception of tragedy, and a religious group including Jewish art and catacombs, sacred and cultic books, circumcision, and the Sabbath. Thirdly, and overlapping with the replacements, are areas where existing treatment has developed to a degree that demands a separate entry: e.g. Latin anthologies, ancient perceptions of color, eudaimonism, historical explanation, Hellenistic (also Presocratic) philosophy, Luwian, migration, cognitive anthropological approaches to ancient religions, and the Socratic dialogues.

It is less than a decade since the publication of a revised OCD3, but the number of articles replaced, rather than revised, in OCD4 is a striking testimony to the rapid advance of innovative scholarship, methodologies, and archaeological or related discoveries during that period. With some it is primarily a new way of looking at familiar material: hence replacements for atomism, Catullus, literary theory and the classics, kinship, or the triumph. For others, in particular Troy, it is a case of cumulative new discoveries, with Homer being a classic case of discoveries and changing approaches. Here I have to register a disappointment: in neither replacement article (on “Troy” and “Homer”) is the key issue raised of how far the new discoveries seriously affect the much-debated matter of Homer’s historicity. It is as though the historical background was off-limits for literary theorists. Professor Latacz’s brilliant synthesis of recent key discoveries in this area, Troy and Homer (2004: updated and translated from the German original Troia und Homer, 2001) may be cited under “Criticism” in the bibliography to the replacement article on Homer, but its findings, and basic topic, are carefully ignored in the article itself.

How, overall, does OCD4 serve as a useful working tool? Here one has to make a careful distinction between the needs of the specialist, of the classicist outside his or her own area, and of the general intelligent reader. I have been (as a user, variously, in the first two categories) testing this new volume for the past four or five months, and have to report mixed results. For example, Peter Parsons’ measured, and happily unadventurous, article on Callimachus is repeated unchanged from OCD3, a boon primarily for the general reader; why then do both editions studiously ignore Frank Nisetich’s useful and comprehensive book The Poems of Callimachus (2001), which provides that reader (and others) with what has for long been a prime desiderandum, i.e. a complete annotated and reasonably up-to-date translation of all available Callimachean material, including the (then) latest papyrus fragments of the Aitia, Hecale, and Iambi? When, as Callimacheans do, we turn to Cyrene, once again we find an unchanged general article, that by Joyce Reynolds, which is fair enough; but pursuit of the Battiad dynasty, while yielding the same short scrappy note on the four rulers named Arcesilas, finds, once more, no entry either on the Battiad dynasty as such, or on the four other kings named Battos who, after all, gave the dynasty its name. This seems arbitrary to a degree.

It also raises a general question of some importance. An English-language reader frustrated by OCD4 while in pursuit of the Battiads has two immediate options. The first, and most obvious, is Wikipedia. This offers both a general article on the dynasty, and separate entries on every individual king (including, for good measure, both the would-be usurper Learchos, and subsequent rulers —between periods of republicanism—such as Magas and Demetrius the Fair. Its disadvantages are, in this particular case, lack of essential documentation, and in general, inadequate professional gatekeeping. The second option is William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, published in London as long ago as 1853, but still surprisingly useful over factual matters that depend more or less exclusively on ancient literary sources, where its entries tend to be both thorough and accurate. (This is also true, though obviously to a lesser extent, of Smith’s companion Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (London 1856), where, for instance, the article on Cyrene, though outdated archaeologically, is far fuller and more detailed on the historical side than that of Joyce Reynolds.)

There is, surely, a lesson to be learned here. What Wikipedia demonstrates is the unrivalled ability of on-line media to incorporate up-to-the-minute new information; what emerges as its great weakness is lack of effective scholarly control over the matter thus disseminated. What compilations such as Smith make abundantly clear is that research primarily dependent on unchanging ancient sources has a far longer shelf-life than that which seeks to chart the course of evolving intellectual thought. To take obvious examples from the instances mentioned above: 2012 has seen several key publications in Callimachean studies—Annette Harder’s great edition of the Aitia, the omnium gatherum of important new research collected in Brill’s Companion to Callimachus, the particularly innovative work by two of that Companion’s editors, Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan Stephens, in Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets—that at once make the OCD4 entry look dated. Here is where on-line publication scores heavily.

At the same time the understandable recent trend of print encyclopedias and similar reference works to pursue new interests and cutting-edge theories at the expense of well-established factual matters looks as though it may, in fact, have got its preferences back to front. The Smith dictionaries are long out of copyright: that on Biography and Mythology is available, free, on-line, and that on Geography soon will be. Publishers have, understandably, shied from reprinting them because of their obsoleteness: Robert Graves’ documentation of his Greek Myths is a standing reminder, and awful warning, of the traps they contain, not only through occasional errors, but in the way of long-abandoned editions (and, thus, references: old theories are fewer, but do occur) for the non-professional reader. Yet in many respects, for scholars who can take account of such pitfalls, they remain extremely useful. As the Ancient Library website understandably claims, “In detail, depth, and particularly citation of ancient texts, Smith’s work compares very favorably with its contemporary equivalent, the Oxford Classical Dictionary.” What all this suggests, very strongly, is that the future for printed classical reference works of the OCD4 type lies with the old-fashioned, slow-changing kind of text-based entry pursued (with considerable thoroughness and skill: they are well worth studying) by Smith and his contributors, while the new trends (and discoveries) so clearly evinced (and so quickly in need of updating) in OCD4 would be far more efficiently dealt with by a stable website, with stringent gatekeeping controls, but open to continuous on-line rolling revisions, updating, and editing. (This would also be a good testing-ground for potential new items—which might, or might not, prove lasting.) Meanwhile, each print edition of OCD gets a little heavier (this one came in just short of five pounds on my bathroom scales) without ever managing to stay ahead of the game for more than a year or two, if that.

• 2012.12.04:  A. J. S. Spawforth, Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution. Greek culture in the Roman world. 
• 2012.12.03:  Gian Luca Gregori, Ludi e munera. 25 anni di ricerche sugli spettacoli d’età romana. Scritti vari rielaborati e aggiornati con la collaborazione di Giorgio Crimi e Maurizio Giovagnoli.
• 2012.12.02:  Martina Seifert, Dazugehören: Kinder in Kulten und Festen von Oikos und Phratrie: Bildanalysen zu attischen Sozialisationsstufen des 6. bis 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.
• 2012.11.65:  Ulrich Gehn, Ehrenstatuen in der Spätantike: Chlamydati und Togati. Spätantike – frühes Christentum – Byzanz. Reihe B, Studien und Perspektiven, Bd 34.
• 2012.11.64:  Paolo Mastandrea, Linda Spinazzè, Nuovi archivi e mezzi d’analisi per i testi poetici. I lavori del progetto Musisque Deoque. Sottotitolo, Venezia 21 – 23 giugno 2010./ Supplementi di Lexis, 60.
• 2012.11.63:  Vassilios P. Vertoudakis, Το όγδοο βιβλίο της Παλατινής Ανθολογίας. Μια μελέτη των επιγραμμάτων του Γρηγορίου του Ναζιανζηνού.
• 2012.11.62:  Giovanni A. Cecconi, Chantal Gabrielli, Politiche religiose nel mondo antico e tardoantico: poteri e indirizzi, forme del controllo, idee e prassi di tolleranza. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Firenze, 24-26 settembre 2009. Munera, 33.
• 2012.11.61:  Anne Lykke, Friedrich Schipper, Kult und Macht: Religion und Herrschaft im syro-palästinischen Raum Studien zu ihrer Wechselbeziehung in hellenistisch-römischer Zeit. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe, 319.
• 2012.11.60:  Hadrien Bru, Le pouvoir impérial dans les provinces syriennes: représentations et célébrations d’Auguste à Constantin (31 av. J.-C.-337 ap. J.-C.). Culture and history of the ancient Near East, 49.
• 2012.11.59:  Christopher Allmand, The ‘De Re Militari’ of Vegetius. The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages.
• 2012.11.58:  Maggie Kilgour, Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid. Classical presences.
• 2012.11.57:  Lucy Grig, Gavin Kelly, Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity. Oxford studies in late antiquity.
• 2012.11.56:  Wim M. J. van Binsbergen, Eric Venbrux, New Perspectives on Myth. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, Ravenstein (The Netherlands), 19-21 August, 2008. PIP-TraCS – Papers in intercultural philosophy and transcontinental comparative studies, 5.
• 2012.11.55:  Christophe Bocherens, Nani in festa: iconografia, religione e politica a Ostia durante il secondo triumvirato.
• 2012.11.54:  Theodosia Stephanidou-Tiveriou, Pavlina Karanastase, Demetres Damaskos, Κλασική παράδοση και νεωτερικά στοιχεία στην πλαστική της ρωμαϊκής Ελλάδας. Proceedings of the International Conference in Thessaloniki, 7-9 May 2009.
• 2012.11.53:  Michael Squire, Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity.
• 2012.11.52:  Carlos F. Noreña, Imperial Ideals in the Roman West: Representation, Circulation, Power.
• 2012.11.51:  Giulia Caneva, Il codice botanico di Augusto: Roma, Ara Pacis: parlare al popolo attraverso le immagini della natura = The Augustus botanical code: Rome, Ara Pacis: speaking to the people through the images of nature.
• 2012.11.50:  Roberta Stewart, Plautus and Roman Slavery.
• 2012.02.48:  Giovanni Parmeggiani, Eforo di Cuma: studi di storiografia greca. Studi di storia, 14.
• 2012.02.49:  Maria Caccamo Caltabiano, Carmela Raccuia, Elena Santagati, Tyrannis, Basileia, Imperium: forme, prassi e simboli del potere politico nel mondo greco e romano. Atti delle Giornate seminariali in onore di S. Nerina Consolo Langher, Messina, 17-19 dicembre 2007. Pelorias, 18.

 Lendon, J. E., Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins. H-War, H-Net Reviews. November, 2012.

Reviewed by Joseph Frechette (University of Maryland)
Published on H-War (November, 2012)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=35487

J. E. Lendon’s engaging new history of the Ten Years or Archidamian War, that is, the first phase of what we have come to refer to as the Peloponnesian War, sets itself to what seems at first glance a formidable task. Disdaining Thucydides’ analysis that the “truest cause” of the war was the fear that Athens’ increasing power was inspiring in the Spartans, Lendon looks instead to the aitiai (charges) and diaphoroi (disputes) that the great historian so famously eschewed. He builds here on an earlier article in which he posited that a Homeric concern for honor and revenge were driving factors in the outbreak of Greek wars and sets out to test the theory against the history of the Archidamian War.[1] In Lendon’s estimation, cities’ sense of timē (honor), whether stemming from a mythological past or practical accomplishments, could be totted up and compared with real-world results. Thus, Greek poleis acted out of anger and concern for timē as much as out of rational interest when they made war on each other. Tragically, what one city saw as the taking of just revenge for another’s hybris (insult), could in itself be viewed as a disproportionate act of hybris and treasured up as the cause of future conflict, inspiring and perpetuating interminable cycles of war. Concern for cities’ relative ranking with regard to timē and whether or not they were treated with the correct level of respect or deference in the fluid environment of interstate relations only created greater opportunity for hybris and revenge.

Ironically, in such an environment, Lendon suggests that the appearance and rhythm of reprisal were as important as its reality. Poleis tried to carefully modulate their vengeance so as not to spiral out of control into hybris. Rather, the goal of this tit-for-tat cycle of violence was to either preserve or revise the combatants’ relative honor ranking in the eyes of the Greeks. Thus, Athens sought to force Sparta to accept her equality in honor while Sparta fought vindicate her superiority. To this end, Athens took care to retaliate for the annual Spartan ravages to Attica by amphibious raids around the Peloponnese and shaming the Spartans wherever possible. If Athens could not match Sparta in the virtue of andreia (bravery) in outright hoplite battle, they could surpass them in the competing virtues of charis (reciprocity) and mētis (guile). In essence, Lendon seeks to explain why the ancients approved of Pericles’ strategy, which, by modern lights, often seems half-hearted.

Lendon also seeks to rescue Thucydides from the realists and present a rereading of the Archidamian War in which honor, rather than fear or interest, is the dominant element in the remarkable trinity of Thuc. 1.75 and 1.76. Despite the comfortable familiarity that modern realists find in the importance of dynamis (power) in Thucydides’ analysis of the war’s outbreak, in the later sections of his history, such reasoning is generally placed in the mouths of reprehensible figures while Thucydides’ own analysis is more often expressed in terms of rank–that is, relative levels of timē. Whatever Thucydides’ theory behind the special case of the outbreak of the war, Lendon argues that Thucydides knew, and described in the rest of his work, a world in which honor and revenge rather than realist calculus governed affairs.

One is reminded of G. E. M. de Ste Croix’s assertion that, on occasion, Thucydides’ “editorials” are contradicted by his “news reports.”[2] Although other scholars have applied the notion of a pivot point away from the realism of Book 1, Lendon sets himself apart by suggesting this was not necessarily due to some literary or didactic strategy on Thucydides’ part, but cultural factors.[3] Thucydides simply described the world as he knew it and the events as he saw them. Once we relieve ourselves of the comfortable, but facile notion of Thucydides as a modern realist, and try to set him and his history in the context of his own times and ethos, Lendon believes that the cycle of anger and revenge leap into high relief. The notion of Thucydides’ archaic sensibilities is not new, but Lendon makes the case with specific reference to his analysis of Greek interstate politics.[4]

In order to emphasize this point, Lendon adopts an interesting and engaging rhetorical style. He provides the reader with a narrative of the Archidamian War as he imagines the romantic Herodotus would have composed it rather than the austere Thucydides. To that end, he not only writes with verve and panache, but includes local myths and legends, sometimes anachronistically, in order to give a sense of the traditional values he believes to have been at work. The result may be debated as a matter of taste. However, this reviewer was delighted. This is not the dreary tome that is so often the product of academic scholarship, but is in fact a joy to read. Lendon wears his erudition lightly, although his extensive endnotes and appendix on the source material will be read with profit in their own right. His facility with the English language is of the sort usually drubbed out of historians in graduate school.

Overall, undergraduates and the general public will be able to rely on an accessible and well-written synthesis of the current scholarship, while specialists will profit from an old tale retold very well with an engaging new perspective.

Notes

[1]. J. E. Lendon, “Homeric Vengeance and the Outbreak of Greek Wars,” in War and Violence in Ancient Greece, ed. Hans Van Wees (London: Duckworth, 2000), 1-30.

[2]. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, “The Character of the Athenian Empire,” Historia 3 (1954): 1–41.

[3]. For example, Robert W. Connor, Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 63-75; and Josiah Ober, “Thucydides Theoretikos/Thucydides Histor: Realist Theory and the Challenge of History,” in War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War, ed. D. R. McCann and B. S. Strauss (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 273-306.

4. Lowell Edmunds, “Thucydides’ Ethics as Reflected in the Description of Stasis,” HSCP 79 (1975) 73-92.