posted with permission:

REVIEW–DISCUSSION

New Histories of Slaves and Freed

The Cambridge World History of Slavery. Volume 1: The Ancient Mediterranean World. Edited by Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 620. Hardcover, £116.00/ $192.00. ISBN 978-0-521-84066-8.

Slavery in the Late Roman World AD 275–425. By Kyle Harper. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xiv + 611. Hardcover, £85.00/$140.00. ISBN 978-0-521-19861-5.

The Freedman in the Roman World. By Henrik Mouritsen. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. vi + 344. Hardcover, £63.00/$107.00. ISBN 978-0-521-85613-3.

Free at Last: The Impact of Freed Slaves on the Roman Empire. Edited by Sinclair Bell and Teresa Ramsby. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2012. Distributed in the United States by International Publishers Marketing. Pp. xii + 212. Hardcover, £70.00/$130.00. ISBN 978-1-85399-751-8.

Reviewed by Elizabeth A. Meyer, University of Virginia (eam2n).

The study of ancient slavery is, rightly, of enduring interest. From Wallon to Weber to Marx (Engels, really) to Finley and beyond, ancient slavery has never been neglected, either by ancient historians or by students of comparative slavery. Its study thrives not just because it is a subject where grand theory and tantalizing evidence intertwine; not just because the surviving sources do not allow slaves to speak for themselves, thus posing irresistible challenges to historians; not just because slaves made important economic contributions to their societies. It fascinates, above all, because ancient slavery as a system of human exploitation was a central institution of ancient life that endured for centuries despite the violence, and the instability of violence as a form of control, at its heart; and because, at some point and without voices challenging its existence or necessity, it declined.

The recent books here under review are only components of the most recent wave of ancient slavery studies. One is the first of a four-part world history of slavery, The Cambridge World History of Slavery (CWHS), with twenty-two chapters by different authors; two are outstanding scholarly monographs, Harper’s and Mouritsen’s; and one is a set of collected essays on Roman freedmen. And yet another wave is on the way, the furl of its crest The Oxford Companion to Ancient Slavery, rising in 2013. From each of these contributions we can all learn something, and advanced students could well profit from having individual chapters of the CWHS assigned in appropriate classes: the quality, and clarity, are high. But here a chapter-by-chapter or even book-by-book survey of this much material is less valuable than the opportunity to contemplate the patterns this work makes together: what is striking, new and old, in this work. Perhaps the major pattern is how often these authors find (or summarize the finding of) new ways of fleshing out, or responding to, issues highlighted or generalizations magisterially presented by Moses Finley in Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology more than thirty years ago: demography, slaves’ location in the economy, and work and labor-power are prominent examples. But another is how often these authors are also interested in the social, ideological, and cultural bases (and ramifications) of slavery, and their intersections with status and honor; these approaches in turn deepen our understanding of ancient slavery and broaden Finley’s definition of a slave society.

Among the old issues, a basic problem of great importance cannot be solved, and was indeed dismissed as insoluble by Finley. The demographic basis of slavery—numbers, source of supply, distribution by household—in Athens and Rome is still a highly disputed subject. Estimates of numbers in Athens depend on late and unverifiable sources, and even if slave-numbers were known their proportion of the total population of the city would still be in question, or at least subject to argument; estimates range between 15% and 40%. It would probably be at least as important to know how slaves were distributed among owners, but even here two of the authors in CWHS disagree on whether most Athenians in the fourth century owned at least one slave (Rihll (49), no; Kyrtatas (98), yes). Seizure of the defeated (often barbarians) and their property in war, along with purchase (of barbarians, in trade for wine), were major sources of both Greek and Roman slaves (although defeated Greeks of the classical period, highlighted by Rihll (53–4), may have been ransomed or sold abroad, since they rarely appear as slaves, Braund in CWHS (116–20)). Slave-breeding is also a possible source, after the end of the fifth century (Rihll (53)), but its contribution minimal (Kyrtatas (93)) or hard to estimate (Braund (126)). Similar controversy and contradiction characterize the Roman discussion. Numbers of slaves (and of the population in general) have risen and fallen according to ferocious argument and cunning deployment of competing models. Where others had argued for high numbers and a high proportion (up to 40%) of the population of Roman Republican Italy, Scheidel (in CWHS and elsewhere) argues for lower slave numbers in a lower Italian population overall, and a proportion between 15% and 25% at its peak, falling to between 7% and 13% of the population under the Empire (and empire-wide; also Bradley (251 and 263), but Morley at one point (265) ventures 35%; both in CWHS). Scheidel also argues that the exposure of free infants (who became slaves when picked up) and slave-breeding were far greater contributors to the Roman slave supply under the mature empire than others have thought, contributing perhaps as much as 80% biological replacement (298, 306-8): as he notes, this argument “has met with criticism but no plausible alternative” (308). Reducing numbers and re-evaluating sources should not, however, soften our view of the phenomenon: he estimates that during the millennium of Rome’s history, at least 100 million people were seized or sold as slaves, “one of the darkest chapters of human history” (309).

So, with twists of the kaleidoscope, the numbers, proportions, sources, and distributions change. An insoluble problem, yes, but even these twists and turns matter. Once they mattered because a proportion of slaves between 20% and 35%, accompanied by a hefty representation in the agricultural sector, was thought essential to identifying a “slave society.” Now, these factors matter because their combination lays some foundation for how representative all the scattered references to slaves are; and because an appreciation of numbers and scale has always affected (despite protestations) how we think about the impact and dynamic of ancient slavery, no doubt one reason why Scheidel ended his essay on the grim note he did. We are far beyond the point at which we prefer to deny extensive Athenian slave-holding merely in order to maintain an unstained view of Athenian democracy. But small numbers and wide distributions of small holdings of slaves nonetheless encourage the view that Athenians had servants rather than slaves, as small purchases push the dirty acquisition of captives into the hands of unnamed middlemen, away from the Athenian markets, and Athenian inclinations, that made such trade profitable. It is possible, with smaller numbers, to imagine, and teach, an Athens without slaves. On the Roman side, high volume and concentrated, plantation-style usage were never disputed, but the extensive focus (in both ancient and modern sources) on the single great source of slaves—the slave-taking enabled and justified by immense military victories—produced an entire theory of how Rome became a slave society that in turn necessitated Rome’s disintegration as a slave society when Rome, in the third century, ceased to win wars. How could there be slaves, when there were no victories? The logic seemed clear: slavery had to disappear, and perhaps then Stoicism and Christianity contributed to its decline. But as Kyle Harper shows, emphatically and impressively, slavery in the long fourth century AD (275–425) neither disappeared nor diminished, and indeed he demonstrates (3-10) how trivially easy it was to assume only one real source of slaves and, for decades, to construct theories on its basis, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.

To be alert to the consequences of adjusting the size and dynamic of the demographic bases of slavery—to watch colors and patterns change—thus adds another dimension, a heuristic tool, to our understanding: sometimes to great effect, as in the dismissal of the conquest theory as central to the entire history of Roman slavery. But scholars long troubled by the unreliability of numbers, by simplifying assumptions, and by the airy plausibilities of modeling had already given considered thought to how to measure slavery’s impact and significance without relying on demographic certainties, and it is the newer assessment of slavery’s economic impact without any reliable economic data that these works showcase most impressively. Archaeological evidence and careful logic construct a growing consensus that chattel slavery, long-distance trade, markets, and economic complexity are linked: archaic Chios with its wine trade, classical Athens with its port and markets, and the Black Sea; the coastal plains and harbors of Republican Italy, the city of Rome, and Gaul beyond Provence; Rome, Delos, and peoples to the east of the Roman protectorates in Asia—these are all prominent points in networks of trade, production, and consumption in which not just grain and wine and cloth but also thousands of slaves are moved, by multiple, small-scale dealers (Rihll (71); Kyrtatas (94-96); Braund (113, 121); Bradley (249)). Indeed, the unequal development of interconnectedness and complexity may explain why some classical city-states (Athens, Corinth, Aegina)—at least allegedly—came to have many more chattel slaves than other city-states, and why coasts and river-valleys and territories within easy reach of Rome became more thickly encrusted with slave labor than other areas in Republican Italy. Markets, such as big cities, create hinterlands of production that can use slaves. Under the empire, this phenomenon probably extends itself to other coasts within easy sailing distance of Rome (Gaul, Spain, Africa), places where we can see thriving exports and deduce intensified investment in a slave labor force (Morley (274)). And Harper convincingly argues that it was not late Rome’s reduced slave-taking in war but its loss of economic complexity—“bulk exchange, middling consumers, the integration of markets, currencies, and laws” (15)—that in the fifth century AD caused Roman slavery to recede, especially in the West.

Another newer element prominent in these chapters and books is the recasting of our understanding of work, both slave and free. Where we in the twenty-first century can assert that what we do is not what we are, which identifies work conceptually as an independent activity, ancients thought not so much in terms of “work” but “work for”: work was not an activity separable from the person doing it, nor from the person for whom you were doing it. A free man worked for himself, his familia members for him and for the family. A slave’s work, as Finley had emphasized, belonged to his master. But where Finley had drawn a distinction between property and labor power in order to “locate” slavery in the economy, the emphasis is now on how this understanding of “work” as a social relationship—one of domination, and studied in ancient works on politics or ethics, not economics—prevails over economic thinking (Kyrtatas (106)). For example, it explains why no Athenian would be surprised to find slaves doing all sorts of work, and for the same pay as free men: that a slave was a slave, not the “work” he did, was the defining element, and masters had every reason to want slaves, i.e. the master himself, recompensed at the same level as free workers, as indeed we see in the Athenian Erechtheion accounts. Nasty work, like mining, was done by slaves, but because free people did not care to do it. But while this attitude released slaves to do all sorts of “work,” slaves also worked in a world in which a countervailing tension could arise, since at Athens, famously, one could not (by sight) tell slaves apart from free men. This might prompt both ostentatious performance of free and citizen status (in assembly and gymnasium) and, if possible, avoidance of activities visibly and often performed by slaves, as well as some “hostility to craft and service work” (Rihll (50)). This tension over work existed at Rome as well, where the perhaps inevitable next step was taken (at least at the highest levels, represented by Cicero in particular, of course) of deeming virtually all work servile because of the relationship of dependency (Bodel, in CWHS (312, 314-15, 317)), while not identifying any type of work as “peculiarly” servile. Yet Harper provides numerous references to specific types of work contemptuously referred to as servile in late-antique authors. Are we in fact seeing expansion over time not only in the fact that “work” was considered servile, but in the specific categories of work deemed servile, indexed to levels of wealth and social hierarchy and (as always) who was writing? This would again suggest a growing complexity, but this time of status gradations and attitudes rather than of the economy.

Another way of responding to the exiguities of hard economic data has been the increasingly sophisticated assessment of the social, legal, and imaginative impact of slavery: the frank adjustment of the law to acknowledge slave status, the dominance of the idiom of slavery and freedom, and the necessity of slave ownership for social standing and the economy of honor are all subjects well treated in these books. Thus although slaves were important members of the oikos and the familia, making important contributions to the functioning of the household as well as making the lives of the “families” to which they belonged “very much more complicated” (Edmondson (360), also Golden (151), both in CWHS), slaves were also implicated in the honor of their families, both by keeping secrets (Golden (140)) and as escorts in public and servers within the house (Edmondson (354-5)). Indeed, as Harper emphasizes, the relationship of slaves to (others’) honor was one of the deep structures of Roman society: slave-ownership, the practice of mastery, and the display of both generated honor and status for the master, while the institutionalized accessibility of slaves’ bodies preserved the honor of the women of a slave-holding family (281-348). This whole way of seeing slavery discards the “productive/unproductive” and “cruel/benevolent” dichotomies once used to evaluate Roman slave and master roles—the first an economic distinction, again—and replaces them with a more unified-field theory of Roman slavery that privileges ancient concepts and practices. This must be right. Just as Greek ideas of “work” moved the heuristic usefulness of the term out of the economic realm, so—when it comes to defining a slave society or assessing the impact of slavery—what Romans thought most important about slaves and slavery, especially their fundamental implication in Roman dominance, honor, and status, should supersede abstract economic judgments.

One status-gradation that appears only rarely in CWHS is that of the freed, although manumission is mentioned frequently, if in passing, and the role of manumission as an incentive to good behavior is often acknowledged. In contrast, Mouritsen[[1]] and several of the essays in Free at Last make compelling arguments for the centrality of manumission and freed status for our understanding of Roman slavery itself. In particular, Mouritsen argues that Romans thought that slavery, by inflicting dishonor, damaged slaves morally, some irreparably. Yet a slave could show his potential for moral rehabilitation through good behavior, and manumission could then reward that gradual progress, placing the freed slave, now a citizen, in a patron-client relationship in which this moral education could continue. The primary Roman axis of understanding freedmen, and therefore also slaves, is therefore (anticipating Harper) one of gradated (dis)honor and morality: this is why self-purchase and testamentary manumission, both leaving the slave without a supervising master, were actually unusual and legally of great (and often hostile) interest to the jurists; why the peculium was an incentivizing nest-egg that stayed with the slave after freedom rather than a savings-account for freedom (Mouritsen (180-183)); and why imitation of the master’s manners and morals, and even of his sculptured likeness (as Borg argues in Free at Last), was, in this calculus, to be expected. The point of manumission was a continuing close relationship, not freedom as the twenty-first century valorizes it. One consequence of this was, as Verboven points out in an essay in Free pugnaciously entitled “The Freedman Economy of Italy,” that manumission created “trust networks” for both patrons and freed, generating social capital, creditworthiness, and business potential (98), and suggesting the pay-off for the training of at least some slaves in which we know Roman masters invested (94). Thus although manumission, like slavery itself, could be economically profitable to Roman masters, such profitability in either case “was not their main interest” (Bodel (315)): the social relationship was. Again, an appreciation of the primacy of social over economic ways of thinking illuminates the lives not only of the freed but of slaves as well.

Manumission thus appears as a crucial node in Roman slavery: not merely an incentive or a vehicle by which an investment was amortized, but a moral and political act with significant honor consequences. It was therefore deeply implicated in Romans’ views of themselves and of how the relationships that constituted their society worked, and therefore in the success of slavery as an institution. It must also have been crucial, one would speculate, in slavery’s longevity. Did attitudes toward it change in Late Antiquity? Harper emphasizes the absolute domination of the master and the reinforcement of that domination that the gift of manumission represented; it was, on the darker evidence he provides, merely one stop “on a spectrum of punishments and rewards” (238-46 at 242) and “fundamentally rooted in disciplinary practices” (485). Given the apparent withering of Junian Latin status (which gave the former master the entire estate of the freedman upon his death)—perhaps attributable to economic decline (467)—and new laws that permitted the re-enslavement of the freed (487-9) for slight offences, there were indeed significant, harsh changes starting with Constantine. This momentous and as-of-yet unexplained shift suggests an abandonment of the world-view so fundamental to the smooth functioning of Roman slavery in the classical era. Given its timing, it also suggests that this new harshness contributed to the demise of slavery as a working system, rather than serving as a consequence of it: a harshness, and inflexibility, that helped to bring down the longest-lasting slave system known. But this would repay further study.

A volume like CWHS cannot hope to do everything, and we are fortunate that Mouritsen’s monograph complements it and that Harper’s, treating in 610 magisterial pages what CWHS had to cover in twenty-seven, expands it. But CWHS also offers one last opportunity for thought. It proceeds chronologically and, within those divisions, topically, with many intentionally balanced pairings such as chapters on slavery in Greek (Hunt) and Roman (Joshel) literary culture, in the Greek (Golden) and Roman (Edmondson) family, in Greek (Morris) and Roman (George) material culture; and on Greek (McKeown) and Roman (Bradley) slave resistance and the Greek (Braund) and Roman (Scheidel) slave supply. These chapters invite comparisons; other works, by contrast, have combined the study of Greek and Roman slavery into the topical study of ancient slavery (most recently, J. Andreau and R. Descat’s The Slave in Greece and Rome (2006; Engl. trans., 2011)). But what has not yet been attempted, to my knowledge, is a study of the historical interaction of the “systems” of Greek and Roman slavery. CWHS provides many of the pieces but does not put them together; the chapter that could probably have done this the best, “Slavery in the Hellenistic World” (194–213), tracks the introduction of chattel slavery into the East following Alexander’s conquests but otherwise opts for a static approach, and concentrates on Egypt (194). To undertake an historical approach one would have to be convinced, of course, that enough difference existed for the interplay to be significant, and that such interplay happened. But surely this should be the case? Slave training, manumission practices, manumission rates, domestic slavery roles, slave burial, and slave laws are all areas in which the two societies, or at least Rome and Hellenistic Greek cities, were markedly different, and where the possibility of cross-cultural influence should be explored. Thanks to these works, we now can see that they can be.

NOTE

[[1]] Which I have reviewed more fully elsewhere: http://www.sehepunkte.de/2011/07/19593.html.

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Creating a Hellenistic World. Edited by Andrew Erskine and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Swansea and London: The Classical Press of Wales, 2011. Pp. xx + 355. Hardcover, £55.00/$110.00. ISBN 978-1-905125-43-2.

Reviewed by Scott Farrington, University of Miami

The studies in this book represent the kind of innovation driving the study of the Hellenistic world. For instance, most of the articles eschew traditional delineations to highlight the Hellenistic appropriation of Athenian history, culture, and art. On the other hand, in these studies the Hellenistic world belongs to Alexander and his successors. Perhaps one cannot expect to find Rome or Carthage in a book about the creation of the Hellenistic world, but even Agathocles’ Syracuse and the Aitolian and Achaean Leagues rate scant mention. In the end, these studies present innovative and provocative views of the world of the Antigonids, the Seleucids, and the Ptolemies.

Robin Lane Fox opens the collection with “The First Hellenistic Man.” He argues that the archetypical Hellenistic man, like Alexander or Hieronymos of Kardia, embodies “a new ‘Machiavellian’ ethic” (18). Lane Fox raises an interesting question: Polybius has long been charged with Machiavellian tendencies, and Arthur Eckstein has provided a thorough study of their relationship to the morality of the Hellenistic age.[[1]] It would be interesting to see Lane Fox consider Polybius’ morality in light of the (Machiavellian) Hellenistic man.

Several interesting studies in the book can only be summarized in the space given here: Stephen Colvin illustrates how, though the koine represents a standard that corresponds to no single spoken or written variety, speakers come to view the standard as their own mother tongue and consider the vernacular a corrupted version of it. Richard Hunter considers The Letter of Aristeas an imaginative reconstruction of Alexandria and the exercise of Alexandrian power in its heyday; though not historiography, the Letter creates a Hellenistic world and its “knowing anxiety about genre” establishes it within the mainstream of Hellenistic literature. Joseph Roisman identifies Hieronymos’ “elitist approach to history” as the origin of the favorable view of Eumenes in the sources and the opinion that the Silver Shields were traitorous mutineers. Such an argument could address whether the Silver Shields’ disregard of the soldier’s duty was a distinctive element of the Hellenistic world, but Roisman does not go far in that direction.

Alan B. Lloyd tracks Egypt’s development from satrapy to Hellenistic kingdom through oppressive Persian rule and the mediation between local tradition and governmental authority of Alexander and Ptolemy. Josef Wieshöfer reacts to Momigliano’s arguments in Alien Wisdom and argues that the silence of the sources reflect the success the fratarakā enjoyed by limiting their goals to present no obstacle to the Seleucids who in turn adopted a benevolent attitude towards unthreatening subjects. Hans-Ulrich Wiemer employs new evidence from Posidippus to reconsider the Colossus and the pillar at Delphi as Rhodian expressions of a desire for hegemony that began soon after 323. Shane Wallace examines how the memory of Plataia and its association with unity, eleutheria, and anti-barbarianism was appropriated by Philip and Alexander in their conquest, avoided by Hyperides in the Hellenic War, and revived again in the Chremonidean War. Andrew Erskine’s contribution explores the Macedonian court through the experience of Persaios of Kition, “a credible if not especially impressive” (180) philosopher to illustrate the tension between philosophy and the court. James I. Porter attempts to revise the “current ideology” which describes Hellenistic poetry as “miniaturist, pointillist, and precious” (272). Peter Schultz picks up the unstated theme of the collection by arguing that primary features of the Hellenistic baroque are rooted in the tradition of fifth-century Athenian sculpture.

Particularly interesting are three considerations of royal women. Elizabeth D. Carney defines the appearance of the title basilissa, a device used to legitimize the authority of royal women, as the critical event in the evolution of the position of royal women. The marriages between courtesans and kings in the Macedonian courts provides the subject of Daniel Ogden’s contribution. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Stephanie Winder explore Berenike II’s construction of her royal image through associations with the Egpytian goddess Hathor: the lock of hair is only one of many appropriations of Hathor’s public imagery. Unfortunately, there is some confusion here regarding the coins Berenike II struck. The authors maintain that these coins bear the superscription “Queen Berenike and King Ptolemy,” but the coins in the figures read only ΒΕΡΕΝΙΚΗΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΣΣΗΣ (249, 253).

Like many collections, the final product could have benefitted from more collaboration and consideration by each author of the others’ arguments. For instance, Wieshöfer’s arguments of Achaemenid protocol and custom at Peukestas’ feast in honor of Eumenes (108–9) clash with Roisman’s assertions about Eumenes’ selfishness, lack of confidence in the Silver Shields, and the rationale behind his battle order (esp. 72). More jarring are the various definitions of βασίλισσα. For Carney, the term is “unclear, ambiguous,” and because it refers variously to royal wives or daughters and female regents or monarchs is best translated as “royal woman” (202). The authority of her statement is dissonant with Ogden’s assertion that Harpalos required Pythionike be addressed as “βασίλισσα (queen)” (225), but it positively undermines Llewellyn-Jones and Winder’s assertion that the superscription of Berenike II’s coins, ΒΕΡΕΝΙΚΗΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΛΙΣΗΣ, must have read to Ptolemy as “love letters” (249). If we are convinced by Carney’s arguments, the coins could have had a very different message from that.

Despite any shortcomings, this collection should stimulate and encourage new explorations of the successor kingdoms of the early Hellenistic period. It provides fresh considerations of the world of the successors directed at the scholar, not the student, and therefore fills a need more often felt than addressed.

NOTE

[[1]] A. Eckstein, Moral Vision in the Histories of Polybius (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1995).

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A Little Latin Reader. By Mary C. English and Georgia L. Irby. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xvii + 187. Paper, $15.95. ISBN 978-0-19-984622-1.

Reviewed by Jaime Claymore, Gainesville State College of the University of North Georgia/Mountain View HS, Gwinnett County Public Schools

English and Irby have collected excerpts from ancient texts and aligned them with typical modern grammatical assignations in this supplementary textbook. Designed for an enthusiastic high-school teacher or for a lower-level college grammar or survey course, the edition allows students to jump into un-adapted Latin from either inscriptional sources or from major Golden- and Silver-age authors. A majority of the text is devoted to excerpts organized by grammatical categories. The authors have nominally forged forty-six grammar topics, which cover a wide range: from simple case uses, tenses and clauses to more complex indirect statement, gerunds and conditionals. Each topic contains at least three (and as many as eight) excerpts ranging from Martial’s two-line epigrammatic jabs to lengthier periods of Ciceronian speech. The passages are prefaced by contextual remarks or a brief summary and heavily annotated for students lacking background knowledge or an extensive vocabulary. (Glossed text also can be found in the book’s glossary.) They also are formatted with macrons which may help with grammatical identification and Latin pronunciation for students and teachers who wish to read aloud.

For those students and teachers looking to supplement heavily adapted material of Latin for Americans, or the brief snippets of practice found in Wheelock’s Latin, the range of sources used for the grammar topics is very useful. This range is exemplified by use of texts usually absent from most classrooms: Virgil’s Georgics, Ovid’s Tristia, and Cicero’s Pro Milone. Nevertheless, the customary authors and works are present: Virgil’s Aeneid, poems of Catullus, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. As Caesar enters the AP Latin curriculum with the 2013 series of exams, the text offers a most-useful exposure to (syllabus) selections from Caesar’s de Bello Gallico. Further, the AP teacher will be able to utilize the selections for sight reading practice, as often various authors are utilized for the same grammar topic.

The second half of the text is divided equally for intermediate and advanced readers. Selections from Livy, Petronius, and Pliny fulfill the call for prose practice and Virgil and Ovid are tapped for poetry practice. Also included are selections from Sulpicia. The advanced prose selections borrow from Sallust, Tacitus, and Suetonius; the poetry from Horace, Germanicus and Statius.

In addition to a gradual increase in difficulty based on a typical grammar introduction to Latin, the text offers six excellent appendices. The authors have provided brief biographical sketches on Latin authors found in the text, a basic guide to Latin meter and scansion, a guide to Latin epigraphy (necessary for the numerous inscriptional excerpts), an index of Latin grammar, and a compilation of other supplemental Latin readers. Most impressive is the inclusion of an index to people and places as well as subjects utilized in the passages found in the text. Teachers will be able to quickly reference the brief, authentic sources to enhance classroom cultural experiences for students of any level. There is not present in the text any explanation of the grammar topics nor of the passages. The student or teacher should not use the text as a replacement for a textual commentary or grammar book.

With a plethora of ancient texts formatted by grammatical features, A Little Latin Reader provides an opportunity for students of all levels to supplement heavily-edited elementary texts for authentic Latin. The high-school teacher may use the text to aid in the transition from textbook Latin to authentic Latin. The college professor may provide additional practice through use of this reader. It is an excellent addition to any student or teacher library.

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Land of Sikyon: Archaeology and History of a Greek City-State. By Yannis A. Lolos. Hesperia Supplement 39. Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2011. Pp. xxviii + 635, 6 maps in back pocket. Hardcover, $75.00. ISBN 978-0-87661-539-3.

Reviewed by Dimitri Nakassis, University of Toronto

This much-awaited book by Yannis Lolos is a detailed survey of the history and archaeology of ancient Sikyon. It represents a tremendous amount of work: the archaeological field survey alone took place over 6 years, covered an area of some 360 km2, and yielded 225 sites of different types. The survey is complemented by introductory chapters on Sikyon’s physical environment and history. All in all, then, Lolos provides in this book a rich study of what is known about a key region of the Peloponnese from prehistory to the Ottoman period.

Lolos’ survey is not of the modern, intensive type. Rather it is informed by traditional topographic and historical approaches made famous by Vanderpool, Pritchett, and others. Lolos’ work is clearly influenced by the strong tradition of topographic studies at Berkeley, and by the “kafeneion” method of Yannis Pikoulas, which involves close collaboration with locals to find ancient sites. In contrast to his predecessors, however, Lolos systematically and intensively documents each of his sites. The extensive technique allows the researcher to examine a large territory—an intensive survey would require significantly more time, money, and personnel to achieve the same coverage—and, by tapping into the memories of local inhabitants, has the potential to include sites that have been destroyed by modern construction, like asphalt roads built over ancient cart roads. There are drawbacks to this method, however. Extensive surveys are less systematic, find fewer sites, and produce less robust data than their intensive counterparts. The payoff is that Lolos is able to talk about the entirety of the Sikyonia, in contrast to the increasingly small territories of modern surveys.

The book’s organization is clear and logical. A short introduction focused on methodology is followed by two chapters that detail the Sikyonia’s environment (Chapter 1) and history (Chapter 2). Four thematic chapters report the results of the survey and provide an analytic framework for understanding the territory of Sikyon. These chapters treat land communication (Chapter 3), defenses (Chapter 4), settlements (Chapter 5), and sanctuaries (Chapter 6). A brief synoptic conclusion describes the limitations of the evidence and paints in broad brush-strokes a long-term history of the Sikyonia. The register of sites (Appendix I) provides a catalog of all the sites investigated by the survey. Other appendices deal with special topics: roof tiles, aqueducts, three inscriptions, and excavations at the cave of Lechova.

Lolos treats the archaeological and historical sources carefully and sensibly, although he has a tendency towards relating historical texts and material remains in a very direct way. Many may be uncomfortable with his argument (pp. 318–19) that very small sites discovered in the archaeological survey can be identified as the habitations of κατωνακοφόροι, a class of Sikyonian serf sharecroppers. Lolos’ attention to the ancient sources can also result in the privileging of military interpretations over socio-economic ones. For instance, while the military functions of cart roads are considered at great length, other potential purposes are largely dismissed (p. 96: “This is not the place to discuss at length the impact of these various [non-military] activities on road construction; indeed, in most cases our evidence is too fragmentary to be conclusive.”) While ancient sources on road construction, and indeed on movements through the landscape, certainly do emphasize military activities, it is also the case that there is unambiguous evidence for road-building and road repairs for industrial and sacred purposes (e.g., Plut. Per. 12.7, IG II2 1126.40–3). Lolos himself presents evidence for non-military uses for roads: for instance, he plausibly hypothesizes that a mountainous road in the southwest Sikyonia may have been used to acquire and transport timber (p. 166, cf. p. 416).

This book occupies a distinctive place in the literature on Greek landscape archaeology. On the one hand, it clearly draws inspiration from topographic approaches and makes use of extensive methods for locating sites. On the other, the influence of intensive survey is evident from the use of the region as the lens of analysis and the detailed documentation of individual sites. These observations raise interesting questions about the wider impact of Lolos’ work. Certainly it will be crucial for historians and archaeologists of all types who are interested in Sikyon, and more broadly, the northeastern Peloponnese. This is already a significant achievement. But Land of Sikyon should have a much more far-reaching influence. Increasingly, archaeologists are interested in integrating data from different survey projects as the basis for regional and inter-regional studies. The northeastern Peloponnese is fertile ground for such work, thanks to the density of survey projects that have made it one of the best understood areas of Greece. Lolos’ work adds an important piece to this puzzle—the Sikyonia—and thus has the potential to contribute to comparative studies into Greek landscapes. Integrating Lolos’ extensive results with those from intensive surveys will be far from straightforward. Yet both intensive and extensive surveys are necessary if we are to understand the complexities of ancient settlement across time and space. By shedding new light on an important region of Greece, Lolos’ book takes a big step forward towards achieving that goal.

posted with permission:

Amber and the Ancient World. By Faya Causey. Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2012. Pp. 144. Hardcover, $25.00. ISBN 978-1-60606-082-7.

Reviewed by Rachael Goldman, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Faya Causey has studied the subject of ancient amber for a long time. Ever since her 1985 Berkeley dissertation, “Studies on Greek, Etruscan and Italic Carved Ambers,” she has engaged with the subject in a serious way, providing her well-trained eye to catalogue descriptions, analysis and re-evaluation of several major collections of major art. So it seems only fitting that she should have written this small but authoritative text on amber, prepared as an introduction to the online catalogue of Ancient Carved Amber in the J. Paul Getty Museum.

For some reason, amber exhibits evoke a natural curiosity that is not found in most ancient art. Causey’s book is divided into roughly three sections, ranging from the scientific properties of amber to its production and use in ancient Italic and Etruscan art.

Her first chapter deals with the creation and use of amber in ancient jewelry, defining what the scope of ornament and decoration had been for ancient men and women. She then deals with the employment of amber in magic and religious spells, commenting on Pliny the Elder’s lengthy list of uses for amber. She comments on how pieces of amber were also included in burial contexts. Here she discusses the composition of amber: unfortunately, as a resin produced from the bark of trees, there is no set way to determine how old a piece of amber is, because of variations in the composition of the resin. Most importantly Causey explains all the possible types of detritus that can be included in the hardened resin, such as bacteria, fungi, worms, snails, insects, spiders and even some small animals.

Her next section discusses the various geographical contexts in which amber is found, claiming that the sea beds of the Baltic Sea are most plentiful, but she also mentions the ancient sources that list Sicily, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan as places that were amber-rich. Her most illuminating chapter examines the scientific properties of amber, which includes its rare magnetic ability, which was used in the earliest experiments with electricity (which gets its name from the ancient Greek name for amber, elektron). For the enthusiast, the photographs on pages 42–3, showing two Etruscan examples of carved amber, a translucent portrait head with an archaic smile and an embracing satyr and maenad, beautifully illustrate the variety of carving in this delicate medium.

Causey next changes direction and focuses on amber in its ancient context, particularly the sources that name elektron in Greek or glaesum in Latin, sometimes slightly absurd, as when she cites a graphic illustration in a medieval bestiary showing amber as the product of lynx urine. She includes a useful compilation of ancient literary sources ranging from Pindar to Herodotus and Ovid to Martial. She discusses how amber was spread and how it was used, including attempts to deceive collectors; even Leonardo da Vinci knew the exact recipe of making fake amber from hardened egg whites. She explains the complex process of transporting amber through the Mediterranean, showing that there was no single route and that there is no literary evidence for the amber trade until the time of Pliny the Elder. If there is any fault to this chapter, it is that her discussion is relegated to Italian routes across the Adriatic Sea, when perhaps there were more developed routes along the silk route through Asia. She concludes with chapters on amber medicine and amulets, archaeological evidence for the use of figured amber, the working of amber, and the production of figured amber objects.

This is a text for a wide audience, ranging from ancient historians to enthusiastic collectors and educators. The sumptuous array of photographs is a feast for the eyes and also highlights the details that might ordinarily be overlooked in many of these tiny examples. A few minor critiques of the book are that it is slightly disorganized and the title is a little misleading since it focuses exclusively on Italic and Etruscan pieces. The bibliography and source citations are extensive and scholarly. Often the subject of amber is neglected in general surveys of ancient art and this is a welcome addition to anyone curious about this remarkable and beautiful material.