• 2012.10.09:  Heather Jackson, John Tidmarsh, Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates, volume 3: the pottery. Mediterranean archaeology supplement, 7.
• 2012.10.08:  Michael Decker, Tilling the Hateful Earth: Agricultural Production and Trade in the Late Antique East. Oxford studies in Byzantium.
• 2012.10.07:  Joseph Roisman, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander: the Evidence (translations by J. C. Yardley). Blackwell sourcebooks in ancient history.
• 2012.10.06:  Enzo Lippolis, Giorgio Rocco, Archeologia greca: cultura, società, politica e produzione. Sintesi.
• 2012.10.05:  Patrizia Arena, Feste e rituali a Roma: il principe incontra il popolo nel Circo Massimo. Documenti e studi, 45.
• 2012.10.04:  Richmond Lattimore, Richard Martin, The Iliad of Homer (new introduction and notes by Richard Martin; first published 1951).
• 2012.10.03:  Evan Hayes, Stephen Nimis, Plutarch’s Dialogue on Love: An Intermediate Greek Reader.
• 2012.10.02:  Javier Martínez, Mundus vult decipi: estudios interdisciplinares sobre falsificación textual y literaria.
• 2012.09.60:  Claudio De Stefani, Galeni, De differentiis febrium libri duo arabice conversi. Altera, 1.

• 2012.09.59:  Marcello Spanu, The Theatre of Diokaisareia. Diokaisareia in Kilikien: ergebnisse des Surveys 2001-2006, Bd 2.
• 2012.09.58:  B. Richard Page, Aaron D. Rubin, Studies in Classical Linguistics in Honor of Philip Baldi. Amsterdam studies in classical philology, 17.
• 2012.09.57:  Andrew Robinson, Cracking the Egyptian Code: the Revolutionary Life of Jean-François Champollion.
• 2012.09.56:  Tomasz Mojsik, Between Tradition and Innovation: Genealogy, Names and the Number of the Muses. Akme. Studia historica, 9.
• 2012.09.55:  Evan Hayes, Stephen Nimis, Lucian’s The Ass: an Intermediate Greek Reader. Greek text with running vocabulary and commentary.
• 2012.09.54:  Keith Bradley, Apuleius and Antonine Rome: Historical Essays. Phoenix supplementary volumes, 50.
• 2012.09.53:  Jürgen Franssen, Votiv und Repräsentation: statuarische Weihungen archaischer Zeit aus Samos und Attika. Archäologie und Geschichte, Bd 13.
• 2012.09.52:  Emma Stafford, Herakles. Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World.
• 2012.09.51:  Stephen Hodkinson, Ian Macgregor Morris, Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History and Culture.
• 2012.09.50:  Klaus Junker, Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths. An Introduction.
• 2012.09.49:  Eleanor Cowan, Velleius Paterculus: Making History.
• 2012.09.48:  Daniel H. Garrison, The Student’s Catullus. Fourth edition (first edition published 1989). Oklahoma series in classical culture, 5.
• 2012.09.47:  Stephen Mitchell, David French, The Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Ankara (Ancyra), Vol. I: From Augustus to the end of the third century AD.
  

posted with permission:

Homer and the Politics of Authority in Renaissance France. By Marc Bizer. Classical Presences. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 245. Hardcover, $85.00/£55.00. ISBN 978-0-19-973156-5.

Reviewed by Timothy Wutrich, Case Western Reserve University

Marc Bizer presents a compelling argument regarding the reception of Homer in sixteenth-century France in his book Homer and the Politics of Authority in Renaissance France. However, Classicists and others who are not well-read in French literature and who lack a firm command of sixteenth-century France’s complex history may find this book difficult. Bizer’s book makes an important contribution to the field of Classical reception studies as part of a dialogue with specialists, but it is not the best point of entry for someone casually interested in the topic or interested in an introduction.

Bizer writes well: his prose is clear and jargon-free. His book has two main parts. Part I, “Making Homer French, 1530–1560” describes in three chapters how French Renaissance humanists like Guillaume Budé and Jean Dorat helped promulgate Homeric studies in France, especially as a means of instructing French monarchs. Bizer begins by revealing the long tradition of Neoplatonic allegorical interpretation of Homer. Then he considers Pseudo-Plutarch’s Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer, which presented Homer as a polymath with special authority in politics, and shows that the essay had a strong impact on Budé. Finally, Bizer recounts the persistent sixteenth-century myth that France’s royalty could trace its roots to the Trojan royal family. Bizer goes on to argue that Budé’s interpretation of Homer for François I was designed to instruct the French king in philology and statesmanship while simultaneously presenting the work of the humanists as essential for the monarchy. Bizer surveys three of Budé’s treatises which “illustrate the important connections between Greek learning, humanism, and royal power” (33).

From Budé, Bizer turns to Jean Dorat, a remarkable figure, who, although he did not publish a book, is known from his lectures on Homer and his influence on members of the group of French Renaissance poets known as the Pléiade. The Dorat chapter also features an excursus on the influence exerted by both Budé and Dorat on artists working for the French court, particularly in the Château of Fontainebleau’s “Ulysses Gallery.”

In Part I’s final chapter, Bizer offers a contrasting view of Homeric exegesis, showing that in the 1550s both the poet Joachim Du Bellay and the essayist Etienne de la Boétie used Homeric poetry to challenge the French Trojan myth. Bizer compares Du Bellay’s work with the court-sanctioned poetry of Ronsard who continued to celebrate the French monarchy. Bizer then turns to La Boétie’s essay De la servitude volontaire as the first example of a text that challenged Homeric authority in politics, particularly Homer’s apparent approval of monarchy in Iliad 2.204–5. However, the Wars of Religion and the ensuing chaos caused La Boétie to refine his views in the essay Memoire sur le pacification des troubles, which, Bizer asserts, while lacking specific Homeric reference, “constructs a pragmatic argument for one religion by insisting on the real dangers of two” (108).

Part II, “Homer and the Problem of Authority During the Wars of Religion (1560–1592),” includes four chapters that explore the ways in which Catholic and Protestant writers used Homer in polemical works. In Chapter 4 Bizer examines texts by Catholic and Huguenot writers to argue that in the 1560s “Homer continued to be invaluable in authorizing discourses on sovereignty, if ultimately he could no longer authorize sovereignty itself” (154). In Chapter 5 Bizer reveals that as the crisis in France worsened the use of Homer by both Catholic and Huguenot polemicists began to change. He observes that a writer like Jean de Sponde, who began by hoping that Henri IV would be like the Homeric heroes, ultimately wondered whether Homer should or could be used in discourse about the monarchy. In Chapter 6 Bizer turns from his study of polemical tracts to offer a reading of Garnier’s tragedy La Troade (1579) which, while indebted to Homer, Euripides, and Seneca, nevertheless draws didactic historical and political parallels with the religious wars in France. Chapter 7 argues that Montaigne felt obliged to react to the chaos in French society and politics since La Boétie’s death, especially to the extent that his friend’s writings were thought to have incited conflict. Bizer argues that while Montaigne acknowledged the authority of Homer, he questioned “the unconditional authority … [of] ancient authors, finding that they contradict themselves” (209). Bizer states that Montaigne’s assertion was that “Homer’s exegetes use Homer merely to ventriloquize themselves” and that “an end to the religious wars can only come from a monarchy whose authority is absolute, derived from itself and from no other source” (212–3). In the Conclusion Bizer asserts that he has recounted “the story of a political hermeneutics” in which Homeric exegesis “became inseparable from engaging in a politics of authority, of debating the nature of that sovereignty and eventually questioning that sovereignty itself” (215).

Scholars working on the Classical Tradition and Classical Reception will find Bizer’s arguments engaging and his methodology attractive. However, much material will be new to non-specialists in French literary or political history; the fact that Bizer does not translate everything will be an obstacle to those unused to sixteenth-century French. He also assumes that his readers know the succession of sixteenth-century French monarchs and the background of events like the Placard Affair and the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Yet overall the book is informative and offers a thought-provoking take on the capacity of Homer to exert influence on political action in sixteenth-century France.

• 2012.09.46:  Thomas Bénatouïl, Mauro Bonazzi, Theoria, Praxis, and the Contemplative Life after Plato and Aristotle. Philosophia Antiqua, 131.
• 2012.09.45:  J.S. Richardson, Augustan Rome 44 BC to AD 14: the Restoration of the Republic and The Establishment of the Empire. The Edinburgh History of Ancient Rome.
• 2012.09.44:  Néstor-Luis Cordero, Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome (Plato, Theaetetus 183e). Proceedings of the international symposium, Buenos Aires, October 29-November 2, 2007.
• 2012.09.43:  Laura Danile, La ceramica grigia di Efestia dagli inizi dell’età del ferro all’alto-arcaica. Monografie della Scuola archeologica di Atene e delle missioni italiane in Oriente, XX, 2/1.
• 2012.09.42:  Christophe Cusset, Cyclopodie: édition critique et commentée de l’Idylle VI de Théocrite, Collection de la maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 46, Série littéraire et philosophique, 15.
• 2012.09.41:  Sophie Minon, Dion de Pruse. Ilion n’a pas été prise: Discours troyen 11. La roue à livres, 61.
• 2012.09.40:  Emanuel Mayer, The Ancient Middle Classes: Urban Life and Aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE-250 CE.
• 2012.09.39:  Felix Arnold, Alexandra Busch, Rudolf Haensch, Ulrike Wulf-Rheidt, ForschungsCluster 3. Orte der Herrschaft: Charakteristika von antiken Machtzentren. Menschen – Kulturen – Traditionen, Bd 3.
• 2012.09.38:  James Ker, A Seneca Reader: Selections from Prose and Tragedy. BC Latin readers.
• 2012.09.37:  Response: Ambrosini on Mastrocinque on Ambrosini.
• 2012.09.36:  Diego E. Machuca, New Essays on Ancient Pyrrhonism. Philosophia Antiqua 126.
• 2012.09.35:  Karin Mayet, Chrysipps Logik in Ciceros philosophischen Schriften. Classica Monacensia 41.
• 2012.09.34:  Alan Bowman, Andrew Wilson, Settlement, Urbanization, and Population. Oxford studies on the Roman economy.
• 2012.09.33:  Matthew Reynolds, The Poetry of Translation: from Chaucer and Petrarch to Homer and Logue.

posted with permission:

Plutarch Against Colotes: A Lesson in History of Philosophy. By Eleni Kechagia. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 359. £70.00/$135.00. ISBN 978-0-19-959723-9.

Reviewed by Jan Opsomer, University of Leuven

Plutarch’s polemical text against the Epicurean Colotes is a precious source for fragments and testimonies from Colotes and from the philosophers attacked by the latter. Kechagia has produced the first book-length study that studies Plutarch’s “anti-Epicurean pamphlet” in its own right and not just as a source for other philosophers. She discusses Plutarch’s strategies in defending the other philosophers and attacking Colotes. Kechagia wants to do justice to Plutarch as a historian of philosophy, who teaches his readers “how (not) to do (history of) philosophy” (p. 12). Plutarch indeed exposes Colotes’ disingenuity and ignorance, and explains that a serious philosophical discussion should be based on careful reading and comparison of texts. Plutarch’s own treatise is meant to set a didactic example for his own pupils (p. 167). That is not to say, of course, that his account of his philosophical opponents would satisfy present-day scholarly standards.

Besides a fine general study of the work, Kechagia provides in-depth discussions of the sections on Democritus, Plato, and the Cyrenaics (for whose epistemology Plutarch is the principal source). Her reader is given precious insights into ancient philosophical polemics. Kechagia does a good job at disentangling different layers: (1) the philosophical doctrines attacked by Colotes; (2a) Colotes’ criticism of those doctrines, carried out against the background of (2b) his own, Epicurean, philosophical persuasion; (3a) Plutarch’s defence of the other philosophers against Colotes and (3b) his criticism of Colotes’ own views and tactics, carried out against the background of (3c) Plutarch’s own philosophical views. Plutarch not only vindicates the other philosophers by showing that Colotes has misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented them, but usually also turns the tables on Colotes (the “overturning argument”) by arguing that the Epicureans are themselves guilty of the charges they bring against others and do not even realize how inconsistent and shameless they are.

Kechagia lucidly explains Colotes’ philosophical reasons for criticising the views of the other philosophers: Colotes thinks that their doctrines make life impossible. This may seem grotesque, but becomes more understandable when seen in the context of the Epicurean idea that philosophy should serve life. Claims that neither the world as we know it nor we, human beings, really exist would indeed undermine the project of philosophy as therapy. For the same reason scepticism was perceived to be a threat. Hence the Epicureans require that our cognitive access to the world be fully reliable and informative. The main worry behind Colotes’ polemic would be that philosophy became insulated from life.

It is usually assumed that Arcesilaus was Colotes’ main target and that most if not all of the other philosophers included in Colotes’ attack were included because of the fact that Arcesilaus considered them as predecessors for his own brand of scepticism or because of perceived similarities with Arcesilaus’ position. Plutarch is fully aware of this situation and in defending the other philosophers also vindicates his own Academic roots. Kechagia acknowledges this background of the polemic, which only makes her choice not to subject the Arcesilaus section to a close study all the more surprising. For thus she deprives herself of the possibility to offer detailed comparisons with the polemical arguments and strategies deployed to attack and to defend Democritus, Plato, and the Cyrenaics.

There were some notorious omissions in Colotes’ pamphlets against the other philosophers: neither Aristotle and the Peripatetics nor the Stoics were targeted. The common view was that he left them out because the first were simply considered as Platonists and the second were not yet recognised as an important school, but rather as a sect branching of from the Cynics. Kechagia surmises that there may also be a more philosophical explanation: neither school was seen to threaten life. This is probably right, but the reason could also be that they could not be used for a polemic with Arcesilaus.

Kechagia offers useful discussions of Colotes’ attack on, and Plutarch’s vindication of, Platonic ontology; of Plutarch’s reading of Democritus’ νόμῳ-thesis as being eliminitavist about all sensible beings deriving from atoms (for which she cites some interesting parallels, pp. 191-2); of Cyrenaic epistemology (assessing Plutarch’s report slightly differently from the received view, p. 254). Kechagia’s ideas about the structuring principle of Plutarch’s text are interesting. Kechagia argues that by changing the order in which he defends the philosophers targeted by Colotes Plutarch has created a dialectical and a physical group. If we add the fact that Plutarch discusses ethical topics in the epilogue of the work, we can see that Plutarch structured his work in accordance with the traditional tripartition of philosophy. This interpretation requires Kechagia to claim that Plutarch considers Democritus’ theses as primarily ontological; and that Plutarch’s omits Melissus so as not to destroy the nice thematic arrangement (p. 163). Possibly a different explanation of the structure is called for: Plutarch wanted to create smaller thematic groups, the larger structure of two main parts being merely a by-product.

Kechagia provides a rich and thought-provoking study of an important text. The common view according to which Colotes’ book was merely anti-sceptical is rejected by her as being too narrow. Her analyses of the sections on Plato and Democritus convincingly show this assessment to be correct.