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Democracy Beyond Athens: Popular Government in the Greek Classical Age. By Eric W. Robinson. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011. Pp. ix + 275. Hardcover, £63.00/$103.00. ISBN 978-0-521-84331-7.

Reviewed by Sydnor Roy, Temple University

This book provides an overview of democracies that have some attestation in the Classical period (480–323). Robinson utilizes a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence to construct a convincing argument that democracy was wide-spread outside of Athens. He succeeds in revealing the problems of an Atheno-centric view of ancient democracy and opens the door for more work on how democracy functioned and spread.

The introduction offers a working definition of democracy that includes both institutional and ideological criteria. The primary principle he follows, however, is “whether or not contemporary Greeks did call or would have called (as best we can determine) such a state demokratia” (3). Robinson argues that each facet of his definition of democracy should be handled on a case-by-case basis in terms of the polis in question and the source material. He recognizes the potential for authorial bias and the multivalent connotations of several terms, but analysis of these problems does not feature strongly in his case studies of individual poleis. In addition, his definition of democracy includes the feature that “freedom and equality serve as guiding principles of the order” (4). This is a particularly vague criterion and it receives little attention. Robinson uses a cautious approach to identifying democracies. He collects corroborating data and presents strong “big picture” arguments for the democracies he identifies.

The first three chapters offer case studies of poleis that seem to have had some form of democratic government at some time in the Classical period. Each chapter covers a wide geographic area (the Greek mainland; western and northwestern Greece and Cyrene; and eastern Greece). The cities are organized alphabetically, although especially prominent (Syracuse) or closely linked (Abdera and Teos) cities break this schema. In each case he reviews and situates the evidence, and also offers brief conclusions about each democracy’s nature. When necessary, Robinson digresses into issues which are potentially distracting, such as the dispute over Syracuse’s constitution during the Sicilian Expedition and Athenian influence over the constitutions of eastern Greek cities. These three chapters build Robinson’s argument and will serve as a useful reference work for other scholars.

Chapter Four includes a number of informative tables and graphs which provide a picture of the geographic and temporal spread of democracy. Robinson tackles the argument that Athenian democracy was the model and motivating factor for democracy because of Athens’ role as a military and cultural power. His strongest argument is that the incidence of democracies in the Aegean did not increase at a greater rate than democracies outside of the Athenian sphere of influence. Given the assumption that Athens promoted or even installed democracies in its subject states, the evidence is surprising. I agree that this suggests that something more is at play in motivating democracy. Robinson then proposes two explanations for democracy’s expansion. First, he argues for the influence of regional democratic powers such as Argos and Syracuse and imperial pressures from Persia or Alexander. Second, Robinson offers peer polity interaction as an explanatory model. This model has been applied to both Archaic Greece and Hellenistic Greece to explain the development in parallel of similar structures in autonomous poleis. These kinds of interactions contributed to the spread of knowledge about democracy. It is difficult to see the difference between Athens’ role as cultural hegemon influencing the spread of democracy and Athens’ involvement in peer polity interaction, although his contention that the (primarily non-Athenian) early travelling sophists spread democratic ideology is another convincing argument that more factors than Athens alone are involved. He concludes that Athens played a role as a regional hegemon and as a participant in peer polity interaction, but claims that it is mistaken to see Athens as the chief cause of democratic expansion. What is missing here is a more overt discussion of Sparta, which could also have been a factor in spreading as well as inhibiting democracies.

In Chapter Five, Robinson draws provisional conclusions about the nature of democracies beyond Athens. He introduces the premise that Athens is the only “fully realized” democracy. He convincingly argues through primary source material that the Greeks at least did not consider Athens the sole true democracy. I was surprised, however, to see no mention of Polybius here, who explains why he rejects Athens as a model in his constitutional comparison (6.43). Robinson then reviews democratic commonalities. The problem here is that he finds as common practices the very elements he listed as criteria for democratic constitutions in the first place. Next he addresses some “false commonalities.” He argues against the position that sea power and democracy go hand in hand by examining prominent non-democratic naval powers, such as Minoan Crete, Corinth, Aegina, Samos, and Phocaea. It would have been much more convincing to emphasize democracies that were not naval powers. In his discussion of democratic peace, he uses the evidence of ancient democracies to refute the view, common in modern political thought, that democracies do not go to war against each other, although he acknowledges that constitutional form increasingly became a motivation for alliances during and after the Peloponnesian War. Robinson then presents variations between different democracies, such as differences in populist tendencies, the titles of officials and institutions, means of voting, and the education of citizens. The result is a complex picture of how ancient democracies may have functioned.

Even in light of this study and the discussion of archaic democracies in this book and discussed in more detail in Robinson’s The First Democracies (1997), it is difficult not to view Athens as the paradigm for ancient democracy. The overwhelming amount of Athenian primary source material provides us with the fullest picture of a working democracy. But this should not lead us to develop political theory from a singular example of political practice. What this book succeeds in doing is to remind us that we should not use the institutions and ideology of the Athenian paradigm alone to set the rules for what constitutes a democracy nor should we conflate it with Greek democracy in general. Rather, we should cast a wider net and be more flexible when examining and proposing arguments about ancient constitutions.

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Italy’s Lost Greece: Magna Graecia and the Making of Modern Archaeology. By Giovanna Ceserani. Greeks Overseas. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. x + 348. Hardcover, $74.00/£45.00. ISBN 978-0-19-974427-5.

Reviewed by Alun D. Williams, Cardiff University.

The study of Greek colonization has seen something of a resurgence in recent years, and as this revival was stimulated in no small part by a re-examination of traditional scholarly assumptions, Ceserani’s intellectual history of European responses to Magna Graecia is both timely and much needed.

The introduction engages with the relative neglect of Magna Graecia in understandings of the development of classical scholarship and outlines the aim of enabling a more “intricate” and “nuanced” understanding of the history of classical archaeology and modern Hellenism. The first chapter begins by discussing early work from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, when for a short period Southern Italy became the place to experience “Greece.” We are then introduced to the tension between local and foreign perceptions of Magna Graecia, before moving on to the second chapter and the marginalization of Magna Graecia by Northern Europeans. Underwhelmed by its relative lack of visible material remains and influenced by contemporary colonial ideas, they came to focus on the region’s exoticism and primitivism instead of its classicism. Local scholars, contrastingly, created work to serve the needs of a Southern Italian intellectual milieu, yet wider interest in Magna Graecia saw a revival with the coming of the American Revolution, when it gained importance as an example of colonization and finally took a major place in the histories of Gillies and Mitford.

The third chapter focuses on the important but overlooked role played by Magna Graecia and Rome-based institutions in the formation of classical archaeology during the early nineteenth century. Although indebted to Neapolitan intellectual circles, foreigners working from Rome—in the context of growing German domination of the new discipline of archaeology and also an incipient division of scholarship along national lines—would progressively seek to distance themselves from local scholarship even as they exploited its knowledge and adopted its practices. The fourth chapter demonstrates how national differences came to be ever more pronounced later in the century with the emergence of national archaeological institutions. The author stresses the interrelationship between scholarship and political or intellectual developments – for instance the latest scholarly methods, colonial ideology and an often underplayed English nationalism, in shaping George Grote’s great History of Greece, a work which would further marginalize Magna Graecia. Focus then shifts to Paolo Orsi and the nationalistic Ettore Pais, neither of whom could prevent the region’s marginalization into the Fascist era.

With the fifth and final chapter, the discussion moves into the interwar period with an analysis of the pro-Fascist Emanuele Ciaceri, who sought to make the history of the Greek colonies speak to his hyper nationalist concerns, and the anti-Fascist Zanotti Bianco, who by contrast was indebted more to Orsi than Pais. In this same chapter comes the conclusion: an outline of trends in the study of Magna Graecia since that period and a consideration of its future in an age in which Hellenocentrism no longer prevails and where different perspectives, such as cultural interaction, have replaced Athenian classicism as the prism through which to see the region. The book ends by stressing the role of Magna Graecia in making, asserting and interrogating the identity of the modern west.

This is a work which leaves the reader with a much deeper appreciation of Magna Graecia’s place in the development of classical scholarship, yet certain opportunities were missed. Focusing on the region’s marginalization, this book is ideally placed to comment on recent debates surrounding the study of Greek colonization—not least the influence of contemporary colonial experiences in creating a vision of Greek ascendancy over native peoples and the superiority of mainland Greeks over those of the colonies. Here it is worth noting the only bibliographic omission of note—various useful contributions in Hurst and Owen, Ancient Colonisations: Analogy, Similarity and Difference (2005).

The book might also have made more of how ideas concerning political freedom (or liberalism) informed approaches to ancient Greece and underpinned the Athenocentrism which exerted such a defining impact on accounts of Magna Graecia and indeed Sicily, not least in the histories of Grote and E. A. Freeman. The exclusion of Sicily is at first glance glaring, yet considering the wealth of material that Ceserani has revealed for Southern Italy alone, entirely understandable. Nonetheless it would benefit the reader to know, in greater detail, how Ceserani sees the dynamics at play in Sicily.

With the exception of one or two typographical errors, this book is well presented. Its chronological approach works well in conveying the development of ideas, although a separate, concluding chapter, summarizing the key themes and findings, would have been helpful. As it is, the conclusion seems rather abrupt.

All in all, and most importantly, this book is well conceived and well executed. One of the best aspects is how Ceserani traces the debt of ideas from scholar to scholar and the depth of the context (personal, cultural and political) in which so great a range of scholars are placed. To conclude, this is a much needed work which accomplishes what it sets out to achieve. Regardless of the fact that it does not very directly engage with recent work on Greek colonization, it will undoubtedly prove of value to scholars specializing in that field and classical studies more broadly, in addition to appealing to those wider audiences interested in the history of classical scholarship and modern European intellectual history.

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The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: A Commentary for Students. By David Raeburn and Oliver Thomas. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. lxxiv + 289. Paperback, £29.99/$55.00. ISBN 978-0-19-959561-7. Hardcover, £65.00/$135.00, ISBN 978-0-19-959560-0.

Reviewed by Eric Dugdale, Gustavus Adolphus College

David Raeburn and Oliver Thomas have made a difficult but rewarding play accessible to students with this the first commentary on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon to be published in English since 1958. It offers an impressively wide-ranging introduction to the play that also sets it in the broader context of the Oresteia as a whole. Raeburn and Thomas prove to be dependable guides who offer judicious readings of difficult passages; they are even-handed in presenting variant readings or interpretations, and provide the resources necessary for readers to engage with scholarly debate.

Introduction: In 60 pages, the introduction covers the following topics: (1) an introduction to the tetralogy and its playwright, with a synopsis of the storyline of the plays and their mythical background; (2) the historical context of the Oresteia, especially recent political events such as Ephialtes’ reform; (3) prior versions of the Orestes myth and distinctive attributes of Aeschylus’ treatment; (4) ideas in Agamemnon (justice, religion, causation and responsibility, learning through suffering, gender); (5) Aeschylus’ dramaturgy (use of theater space, performers, stage action, and the structure of the play); (6) the power of words (performative language); (7) the chorus; (8) the characters (referred to as the “solo characters”); (9) language, imagery, and themes; and (10) the textual transmission of Agamemnon.

The range of topics covered in the introduction is exemplary, with an overview of the structural elements of Greek tragedy (i.e. what is a parodos, episode, stasimon etc.) and discussion of the biographical tradition about Aeschylus and Nachleben of the play being perhaps the only significant omissions. The section treating the distinctive elements of the staging of the play and the way its structure builds suspense is especially insightful, as is the discussion of causation, responsibility and the principle of “multiple determination.” Readers about to grapple with Aeschylus’ difficult style are given a sympathetic portrayal of the artistry of his language, including an extended case study of dog metaphors. Throughout, Raeburn & Thomas adduce a wealth of relevant secondary scholarship, cited in footnotes and in suggested reading at the end of sections, often accompanied by annotations. They have restricted citations to scholarship written in English, an understandable arrangement given their intended audience.

However, I had a mixed response to the introduction. Certain sections (e.g. 1 and 5 above) were a model of clarity—as, for example, the discussion of the textual transmission, which equips readers to engage with later discussion of textual cruxes. Others failed to fully spell out the implications of an issue (e.g. by setting the Areopagus reform within the shift to broader-based democratic participation) or to define key terms (e.g. δαίμων is a term used throughout the introduction, but not defined until notes ad 768-71 (“evil genius”), 1663 (“luck”), and 1667 (“the guardian spirit of the house”); so too δίκη needs a clearer definition than that adumbrated at xxxi – it would help to note that Dike is often personified, and that she is the daughter of Zeus). Hubris is referenced extensively in the introduction and commentary, but never properly explained—especially problematic given the term’s imprecise vernacular use; references to the “hubris syndrome” are even more opaque. Frequent references to Aeschylus’ “theology” and to “sin” are likely to give students a skewed impression of religious thought in 5th-century Athens. The main problem, though, is one of intelligibility, sometimes stemming from prior knowledge assumed, other times from allusive or opaque wording.

Commentary: The commentary itself is pitched at just the right level. Grammatical and linguistic assistance is provided at the right moments, including cross-references to Smyth, Denniston, and the LSJ where appropriate. English translations of difficult phrases are provided. Over the course of the book, students are introduced to a wide range of aspects of the classical world. So, for example, students are introduced to the use of Doric vowels in choral odes and are reminded to distinguish between words that look the same but for their accent. Notes offer excellent treatment of the semantic range of individual words; religious and socio-political aspects are also illuminated. Each new episode is given an introduction that treats issues of staging, interpretation, meter, characterization, and plot trajectory. There are welcome references to famous modern echoes of the Oresteia (e.g., Robert Kennedy’s quotation of Ag. 179-83 in his speech after the assassination of Martin Luther King; the use of the beacon sequence in Peter Jackson’s 2003 film version of Tolkien’s The Return of the King). Such references should be a standard element of commentaries for students; that this is not yet the case is indicated by the fact that these references are relegated to the bottom of the page as footnotes on notes! Rather broad understandings of what constitutes performative language and ritual and a propensity to spot dark resonances in every utterance are idiosyncrasies of the commentary rather than major faults.

The decision to reprint the Greek text of Page’s OCT means that on dozens of occasions Raeburn and Thomas (rightly) take issue with their published text. They handle this problem adroitly, using it as an opportunity to introduce students to textual criticism as they lay out the grounds on which one reading is preferred over another. The text has an attractive layout and font, and is free of typos but for a couple of minor slips. End matter includes a bibliography, index locorum, and general index, as well as a 29-page appendix, titled “Sound and Rhythm,” introducing readers to the meters of the play. This appendix includes tips on delivery as well as discussion of the effects of various meters, and a general introduction to metra and cola. It concludes with a metrical analysis of the play’s choral passages, which indicates rests as well as posits which syllables correspond with footfall. Thus the reader benefits from David Raeburn’s considerable experience in the performance of Greek drama in the original language. In summary, Raeburn and Thomas have provided a comprehensive and reliable guide to the Agamemnon that will be of use to students and scholars alike.

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Athenian Myths and Festivals. By Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 377. Hardback, £83.00/$150.00. ISBN 978-0-19-959207-4.

Reviewed by William Blake Tyrrell, Michigan State University

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood’s attention was turned to aristocratic religious associations (genê) in Athenian festivals through Stephen Lambert’s claim that the genos Bakchiadai played an extensive role in the City Dionysia.[[1]] Her response found its way into the penultimate chapter of Athenian Myths and Festivals but not before inspiring a lengthy study. Sourvinou-Inwood traced the part played by these associations and the peplos of Athena Polias in the Plynteria and the Kallynteria. She pursued the peplos into the Panathenaia and the frieze of the Parthenon. Her methodology led to exhaustive studies of the myths of early Athenian history and the cults of Athena at the Palladion and Dionysus Eleuthereus. The result was a lengthy manuscript which her editor, Robert Parker, has reduced to one sixth in producing Athenian Myths and Festivals. Sourvinou-Inwood was writing her second mystery novel, Murder at the City Dionysia, while she was working on genê.[[2]] It may be my fancy, but Athenian Myths and Festivals conveys the impression of a detective story: the scholar traces the actions and whereabouts of dead aristocrats like her hero, Chloe, the story of the corpse in Dionysus’ sanctuary. Sourvinou-Inwood’s book is not for the faint-hearted, but it has many rewards, for example, her observations on the Chalkeia (268–70).

It was at the Chalkeia that the loom was set up for weaving Athena’s peplos. Girls (Arrhephoroi), nubile young women (Ergastinai), and the married priestess of Athena were involved in weaving. Scholars dutifully note that the Chalkeia was celebrated nine months before the Panathenaia, but Sourvinou-Inwood points out that the females involved represent “the three stages of women’s lives as perceived by the Greeks” (268), that this symbolically relates their participation to that of all Athenian females, and that the process of weaving this important gift to the goddess, symbol and emblem of the polis’ relationship with its tutelary goddess and all the gods, took nine months to create so that “the biologically based, and therefore universal, association of nine months with human pregnancy could not but have imbued the enterprise of weaving the new peplos with the metaphorical colouring of the production of a child …” (270).

Chapter One sets out the course and explains her methods. They are basically structuralist, emphasizing in-depth probing of the data for patterns. “Meaning is created … with the help of relationships of similarities to, and differences from, the other elements in the system of which each element is part” (289). I found her explanation in terms of “Greek ritual logic” (13) illuminating and her use of “parameter,” a favorite word, a bother, perhaps because of its one-time status as the buzz word.

Sourvinou-Inwood’s first “investigation” (72) delves into the myths of early Athenian history. She bedrocks her “arguments” upon the Homeric Erechtheus (Il. 2.546–51; Ody. 7.80–1). He is her “complex” Erechtheus; with him is associated a nexus of elements that defines primordial times of first beginnings, namely, earthborn, nursling of Athena, Athenian king, definer of the land and its inhabitants as Erechtheidai, and the Eleusinian War. In the fifth century, mythmakers distributed these elements to create Erichthonios and a second Erechtheus. In turn, they made Aglauros, daughter of “complex” Erechtheus and savior of Athens, into Kekrops’ silly disobedient daughter who takes her own life. Sourvinou-Inwood argues convincingly for her reconstruction. The motive behind the later mythmaking, which she mentions (37, 40, 65) without development, is to widen the impact of autochthony and extend it to all Athenians in the way of orators at public funerals.[[3]] The inevitable inconsistencies, she suggests, were “narcotized” (48).

In Chapters Three and Five, Sourvinou-Inwood reconstructs how rites of the Plynteria, Kallynteria, and Panathenaia dovetail around Athena’s peplos. In the Plynteria, the soiled peplos and the abnormality of closing the goddess’ temple evoke, respectively, pollution and primordiality. The washing of the peplos in fresh water by the girls of the genos Praxiergidai on the Acropolis and its escorting by procession from Athens to Phaleron set in motion the return to purity and contemporary times. At Phaleron, women of the genos washed the statue in sea water and redressed it on the beach. The festival complex is organized around, and embodies the Greek religious ideology of, pollution giving way to purification, primordiality to the present, and the movement out in the Plynteria and back in the Kallynteria. In the Panathenaia, all Athenians present their goddess with a new peplos that is an “intensification” (281–3) of the clean peplos.

Throughout her investigations, Sourvinou-Inwood illustrates the various ways and degrees of gentilicial involvement in festivals from the high density of the Eleusinian Mysteries to the minimal in supplying the priestess of Athena Polias in the Panathenaia. With her characteristic panoply of arguments that converge like panzer columns upon Lambert’s hypothesis, she deftly prevents its becoming “orthodoxy by default” (313). Like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, she commands the final scene where she sets out succinctly that aristocratic genê were most prominent in festivals that entailed secrets, e.g., the mysteries and secret sacrifices of the Plynteria. Secrets could be managed, guarded, and transmitted by families whose members were born to their service.

I know Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood only through her writings, but I venture that these writings will become an object of study in their own right. Her methodology is both irritating and compelling by its attention to detail as well as the breadth of its scope, but her small asides also demand attention. That myths are created through a process of “bricolage” (39), composites assembled from separate mythemes, heads off the assumption that the presence of one part of a myth implies the whole myth. Her most famous warning, that against cultural determination, holds true; classical studies has accumulated much “baggage” that someone once thought “felt so good that it had to be.”[[4]] Most Athenians would have accepted her judgment that Antigone is a “bad woman” [[5]] but surely not that of moderns that she was a Sophoclean hero.

Yet I’m left to wonder whether freedom from such contamination is possible.

NOTES

[[1]] S. D. Lambert, “The Attic Genos Bakchiadai and the City Dionysia,” Historia 42 (1998) 394–403. The article came to Sourvinou-Inwood’s attention “only rather later” (Robert Parker, Editor’s Preface, vi).

[[2]] Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, Murder at the City Dionysia, New York: Vanguard Press, 2008. Her novel is out-of-print and unavailable to me by interlibrary loan.

[[3]] For autochthony in funeral oratory, see Nicole Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City. Translated by Alan Sheridan. (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1986) 148–50.

[[4]] John Sandford’s Detective Lucas Davenport worries about cultural assumptions “that he was ‘locking in,’ a problem he saw with other cops, all the time, the sure sense that something was just so, when it wasn’t. Something felt so good that it had to be. You could build a great logical case out of pure bullshit, and it happened too frequently” (Mortal Prey [New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 2002] 305; Sandford’s italics).

[[5]] Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, “Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’Antigone,” JHS 109 (1989) 134–48; quotation is on p. 140; and “Sophocles’ Antigone as a ‘Bad Woman,’” in F. Dieteren and E. Kloek, eds., Writing Women into History (Amsterdam: Historisch Seminarium van de Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1990) 11–38.

• 2012.11.08:  Richard Stoneman, Kyle Erickson, Ian Netton, The Alexander Romance in Persia and the East. Ancient Narrative supplementum, 15.
• 2012.11.07:  Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio, On Old Age: Approaching Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The History of Daily Life 2.
• 2012.11.06:  Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity 395-700 AD. Second edition. Routledge History of the Ancient World
• 2012.11.05:  Robert A. Kaster, Macrobii Ambrosii Theodosii Saturnalia. Oxford Classical Texts.
• 2012.11.04:  Sandra Boehringer, L’homosexualité féminine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine. Collection d’Etudes Anciennes, 135. Série grecque.
• 2012.11.03:  Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths. Mnemosyne. Supplements, 337.
• 2012.11.02:  Eric M. Moormann, Divine Interiors: Mural Paintings in Greek and Roman Sanctuaries. Amsterdam Archaeological Studies, 16.
• 2012.10.61:  Martina Paul, Fibeln und Gürtelzubehör der späten römischen Kaiserzeit aus ‘Augusta Vindelicum’/ Augsburg. Münchner Beiträge zur Provinzialrömischen Archäologie, 3.
• 2012.10.60:  Eckart Olshausen, Vera Sauer, Die Schätze der Erde – Natürliche Ressourcen in der antiken Welt. Stuttgarter Kolloquium zur Historischen Geographie des Altertums 10, 2008. Geographica Historica, Bd. 28.
• 2012.10.59:  Rosario P.A. Patané​, Impero di Roma e passato troiano nella società del II secolo. Il punto di vista di una famiglia di Centuripe. Quaderni del Museo civico lanuvino 3​.
• 2012.10.58:  Laura Gawlinski, The Sacred Law of Andania: a New Text with Commentary. Sozomena, 11. B
• 2012.10.57:  Amanda Wrigley, Translation, Performance, and Reception of Greek Drama, 1900-1960: International Dialogues. Comparative drama, Special double issue, Vol. 44.4, Winter 2010; Vol. 45.1, Spring 2011.