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Horace’s Iambic Criticism: Casting Blame (Iambikê Poiêsis). By Timothy S. Johnson. Mnemosyne Supplement 334. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Pp. xii + 314. Hardcover, €119.00/$163.00. ISBN 978-90-04-21523-8.

Reviewed by Erika Zimmermann Damer, University of Richmond

Although Horace’s Epodes were frequently dismissed by earlier generations as an uneven poetic collection of obscenity and juvenalia, more recently critics have begun to seriously engage with his first lyric collection. Johnson’s important new study offers the first comprehensive English-language monograph on the Epodes since R. W. Carrubba’s study of poetic arrangement in 1969. As such, Johnson’s study makes a vital new companion to Watson’s (2003) Oxford commentary, and his serial reading of Epodes 1–17 provide students and researchers with a novel interpretation of Horace’s triumviral collection. Johnson’s engagement with Horace’s iambic practice springs from taking seriously Horace’s claim at Epistles 1.19.24–5 to follow the spirit and meter of Archilochus, but not the words hunting down Lykambes. Over the course of six chapters focused on Horace’s iambic criticism in the Epistles (Chapter 1), Epodes 1–7 (Chapter 2), Epodes 8–15 (Chapter 3), Epodes 16–17 (Chapter 4), Odes Book I (Chapter 5), and the Ars Poetica (Chapter 6), Johnson argues that Horace rejects a narrow Archilochean–Lykambid iambos that is aimed at domination, rage, and social disruption in Epodes 1–7 in favor of a poetics of polyeideia, or diversified unity, aimed at creating poetic and social harmony from disparate elements in Epodes 8–17, continued in Odes Book I and ultimately reflected in the theory of poetic unity in the Ars Poetica.

Horace’s iambic poetics are characterized by “transgression–responsion–fusion” (8–15), where his poems transgress assumed literary and social limits and can include abuse and obscenity. Transgression here makes opposing characters, perspectives, and emotions coexist within a single song or poetry book. By allowing divergences to be heard and brought into a relationship, iambic transgression can unify. The result is poetry characterized by the fusion of reciprocal song. Johnson thus argues for the positive social value of Horatian iambos. His poems, through their relationship to ritual, festive, and comic models of iambos exemplified in the stories of Iambe in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Archilochus’ mocking encounter with the Muses, employ transgression to achieve community rather than to shame a target. Across the span of his reading of the Epodes themselves, Johnson builds a persuasive case that iambos can create positive social and poetic outcomes.

Much as ritual creates community, Johnson argues, Horace’s iambics replace the singular domination of the Lykambid iambic tradition with a multivocal poetry that negotiates a sense of community. Yet the precise linkage to the ritual side is weak and it is unclear how Horace’s Epodes relate to the story of Iambe or to the story of Archilochus and his cow from the Parian Mnesiepes inscription. While Johnson cites (64–74) a connection between the ritual exchange of lampoons in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Horace’s resounding lyre in his own Hymn to Hermes (Odes 3.11.3–4) and points to Horace’s suitcase packed with Archilochus and the Greek comedians at Satires 2.3.11–12, this evidence does not make a substantive connection between Horace’s poetics and the Hymn to Demeter or to the post-Archaic testimonia of Archilochus’ life.

Chapter 3 (on Epodes 8–15) and Chapter 4 (on Epodes 16–17) offer Johnson’s most compelling new arguments. In Chapter 3, Johnson argues for the strength of the iambist in contrast with a dominant critical strand of reading Horace’s iambi as characterized by literary, physical, and political impotentia, seen in Fitzgerald, Oliensis, Barchiesi, and Harrison.[[1]] In the second half of his Epodes book, Horace defends the power of his poetry by “putting doubts about his iambic power into the mouths of others, patrons (epode 1, 14) and enraged lovers (epode 8, 12) and … defends himself … placing the charges that he is weak within the context of his most potent attacks” (41). For Johnson, Epodes 11–15 demonstrate how Horace incorporates alternate literary types and their multiple outlooks into his iambics. Epode 11, for example, becomes a fusion of two competing poetic modes, the “hardness” of invective iambos and the “softness” of erotic elegiac modes (139–42). Iambic becomes more than “hard” invective poetry, restricted to Archilochean abusive retaliation, but instead creates unity out of competing perspectives. This reading greatly expands the ideas proposed by Luck, Barchiesi, and Harrison in terms of Horace’s generic enrichment of iambos.[[2]] Where earlier criticism examined individual poems, Johnson sees such generic interactions as a broad trend giving shape to the second half of the Epode book, and leading to his newly synthetic view of Horatian iambos as polyphonic polyeideia.

In Chapter 4, the reading of Epode 16 is also compelling and original. In response to the dystopian vision of a Rome once again overwhelmed by civil war, the poem most overtly represents iambic as ritual and the poet becomes an Iambe figure, who offers a vision of hopefulness, and becomes “the one who knows how to confront Rome and lead her out of her warring mentality and pain” (162). The iambist does not doubt the power of his song, but instead offers it up in order to reconstruct Roman society.

Johnson’s readings speak to a sophisticated reader who has spent many years at work on Horatian criticism, and he contributes a valuable discussion of the Roman reception of Archilochus, not found in other recent critics of iambos who have largely concentrated upon the Greek evidence. Moreover, Johnson’s work shows exemplary control over the frequently obscure Epodes bibliography, and his serial approach to each of the Epodes allows for him to engage fully with his fellow critics. A final notable feature is Johnson’s use of the scholarly note. The generous notes often carry on an entire second line of argument in which Johnson engages prior Horatian critics from Heinze to Lowrie (2009). While it is challenging to restate Johnson’s complex arguments concisely, his many original readings of the Epodes warrant the serious attention of students and scholars alike interested in Horace’s poetry.

NOTES

[[1]] W. Fitzgerald, “Power and Impotence in Horace’s Epodes,” Ramus 17 (1988) 176–91; E. Oliensis, “Canidia, Canicula, and the Decorum of Horace’s Epodes,” Arethusa 24 (1991) 107–38; A. Barchiesi, “Horace and Iambos: The Poet as Literary Historian,” in A. Cávarzere, A. Aloni, and A. Barchiesi (eds.), Iambic Ideas: Essays on a Poetic Tradition from Archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire (Lanham, MD, 2001) 141–64; S. Harrison, “Some Generic Problems in Horace’s Epodes: Or, On (Not) Being Archilochus,” ibid. 165–86.

[[2]] G. Luck, “An Interpretation of Horace’s Eleventh Epode,” ICS 1 (1976) 122–6; A. Barchiesi, “Alcune difficoltà nella carriera di un poeta giambico: Giambo ed elegia nell’epodo XI,” in R. Cortès Tovar and J. C. Fernandez Corte (eds.) Bimilenario de Horacio (Salamanca, 1994); id., “Final Difficulties in an Iambic Poet’s Career: Epode 17,” in M. Lowrie, ed. Horace: Odes and Epodes (Oxford, 2009), 232–46; S. Harrison (above, n. 1).

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Cyrene to Chaeronea: Selected Essays on Ancient Greek History. By George Cawkwell. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 485. Hardcover, £80.00/$150.00. ISBN 978-0-19-959328-6.

Reviewed by Jeremy Trevett, York University, Toronto

George Cawkwell is by any reckoning a major historian of classical Greece. From the early 1960s to the 1980s he produced a series of penetrating articles, most of which are included here, in which he put forward a distinctive and compelling view of fourth-century history in the years down to the triumph of Philip. The chapters covering this period (IX–XIX) constitute the core of the book. Four more recent chapters on Archaic Greece (I–IV), and a further four on fifth-century topics (V–VIII) precede them. It should be said at the outset that the quality and interest of the individual chapters are uniformly high, and that the book as a whole represents a master class in a particular, distinctly traditional, kind of Greek history. Insofar as the publication of a scholar’s kleine Schriften is a tribute to the importance of his or her work, the appearance of this book is not only well deserved but also, since the latest article was published in 1997, more than a little belated.

Space precludes detailed discussion of the individual chapters, but some general observations can be made. First, the book is almost exclusively concerned with political, diplomatic and military history (the first chapter on archaic colonization is an exception). Thucydides, Xenophon and Demosthenes all feature very prominently, and indeed Cawkwell, in these papers and elsewhere, has made an important contribution to our understanding of each of these authors. Second, the articles included here are almost all on ‘core’ topics. Taken together, chapters IX–XIX constitute a pretty thorough survey of the main issues of fourth-century Greek history. Third, as Simon Hornblower notes in his introduction, many of the chapters are framed as challenges to commonly held views, such as that overpopulation was the main cause of Greek colonization (I), or that early Greek tyrants rose to power through the support of the people (II), or that hoplite battles involved pushing and shoving analogous to scrimmaging in rugby (XVIII). Whether or not one is always persuaded by his arguments, Cawkwell’s advocacy is highly effective. Finally, Cawkwell shows a strong interest in military matters, both tactics (XVIII on hoplite battles) and strategy (most explicitly in VII and XVI), and sees military superiority as a decisive factor in shaping the history of the fourth century. Thus Spartan power collapsed, in his view, not because of demographic problems or the belligerent policies of Agesilaus, but because the Spartans had the misfortune to come up against a “military genius” in Epaminondas (XII–XIV). Similarly, Demosthenes was misguided to advocate war with Philip, since the latter’s wealth and power made such a war unwinnable by the Athenians (XVI). In all this there is a hardheaded realism that is almost Thucydidean in character.

The principle of selection employed in compiling this volume is somewhat obliquely discussed in the preface, where Cawkwell justifies the omission of articles “primarily concerned with Peace of Philocrates” on the ground that the evidence of Demosthenes and Aeschines is too slippery to allow firm conclusions to be reached. More generally, he has chosen to include only “a small number of Demosthenica, mainly concerned to explore his strategic judgement” (viii). Connoisseurs of the age of Demosthenes, a period that Cawkwell has made his own, may feel a little short-changed. Several major articles are included, but not the long piece on “Demosthenes’ Policy after the Peace of Philocrates,” an important discussion of relations between Philip and the Greeks in the second half of the 340s. Clearly it was decided to include only longer pieces of more general interest; I wish nevertheless that space could have been found for the short article on “The Power of Persia” that appeared in 1968 in a now-defunct Oxford student journal. As for the chapters dealing with the fifth century and earlier, Cawkwell writes that these have been included “partly out of Tarn-like defiance” (the allusion escapes me) “partly to draw the fire of critics and partly to encourage readers to read” (x). This should be taken with a substantial pinch of salt: these are all important contributions to scholarship.

Some minor corrections have been made, but the chapters are otherwise unaltered from their original publication, except that in the citing of inscriptions references have been added to the collections of Rhodes and Osborne, Fornara, and Harding. The volume is attractively produced, but the re-setting of the articles has introduced some errors. Most will cause no trouble, but on p. 240 n. 61 the obviously wrong “([Dem.] 16” should read “[Dem.] l 6” (i.e. pseudo-Demosthenes speech 50, section 6), and at p. 323 n. 86 the deletion of the word “the” from “He then goes on to attach the special significance … of meaning …” renders the sentence unintelligible.

In short, the articles collected in this volume are all fine examples of scholarship, and the book as a whole represents a formidable body of work. Any Greek historian will learn a lot from reading it. My only reservation arises not from the book’s content, but from the fact that the original articles are almost all easily accessible electronically. Of the nineteen chapters in Cyrene to Chaeronea, no fewer than fifteen were originally published in either JHS or CQ, whilst two others appeared in Mnemosyne and Phoenix, all journals that are available through JSTOR. In the absence of much by way of “added value,” I hope it is not churlish to raise the question whether such collections of previously published material are as valuable now as they undoubtedly once were. That apart, this is a splendid book.

• 2012.09.32:  Thomas A. Schmitz, Nicolas Wiater, The Struggle for Identity: Greeks and their Past in the First Century BCE.
• 2012.09.31:  Philippe Gauthier, Études d’histoire et d’institutions grecques: choix d’écrits (édité et indexé par Denis Rousset). École pratique des hautes études, sciences historiques et philologiques – III. Hautes études du monde gréco-romain, 47.
• 2012.09.30:  Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, Die Entstehung der Nobilität: Studien zur sozialen und politischen Geschichte der Römischen Republik im 4. Jh. v. Chr. 2., erweiterte Auflage (first edition published 1987).
• 2012.09.29:  Alberto Canobbio, M. Valerii Martialis. Epigrammaton liber quintus. Studi latini, 75.
• 2012.09.28:  A. M. Juster, Tibullus. Elegies, with Parallel Latin Text (with an Introduction and Notes by Robert Maltby). Oxford world’s classics.
• 2012.09.27:  Karlsruhe Badisches Landesmuseum, Kykladen: Lebenswelten einer frühgriechischen Kultur. Darmstadt: 2011.
• 2012.09.26:  Richard Brilliant, Dale Kinney, Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine.
• 2012.09.25:  Robert Mayhew, Prodicus the Sophist: Texts, Translations, and Commentary.
• 2012.09.24:  Luis Unceta Gómez, La Petición verbal en Latín: estudio léxico, semántico y pragmatico. Bibliotheca Linguae Latinae, no 6.
• 2012.09.23:  Luc Brisson, Alain Philippe Segonds, Jamblique, Vie de Pythagore. 2e tirage revu et corrigé. (First Edition Published 1996). La roue à livres 29.
• 2012.09.22:  Yves Duhoux, Anna Morpurgo Davies, A Companion to Linear B, Mycenaen Greek Texts and their World, Volume 2. Bibliothèque des Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain (BCILL), 127.
• 2012.09.21:  Robert M. Frakes, Compiling the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum in Late Antiquity. Oxford studies in Roman society and law.
• 2012.09.20:  Béatrice Bakhouche, Calcidius: Commentaire au Timée de Platon. 2 vols. Histoire des doctrines de l’antiquité classique 42.
• 2012.09.19:  Yvan Nadeau, A Commentary on the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. Collection Latomus, 329.

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From Logos to Trinity: The Evolution of Religious Beliefs from Pythagoras to Tertullian. By Marian Hillar. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. xi + 320. $99.00/£60.00. ISBN 978-1-107-1330-8.

Reviewed by Patricia Johnston, Brandeis University

In this sweeping review, Marian Hillar attempts to trace the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, from the early pre-Socratic philosophers to Tertullian, with a special focus on Philo (20 BCE–50 CE), Justin Martyr (115–165 CE), and Tertullian (160–225 CE).

To explore the philosophical foundations of Christianity, Hillar begins with the pre-Socratic Logos, which he attributes to Pythagoras’ theory of the cosmic intelligible principle embodying three principles, the Monad, the Dyad, and Harmony, and its influence on the thinking of Plato and Aristotle. He then proceeds to Heraclitus (with whom, he finally acknowledges, the Logos is usually associated) and to Anaxagoras. He attributes to Kirk the conclusion that “Heraclitus believed in resurrection and the judgment of the world” (10–12). He then traces the fundamentals of “the three main religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—focusing on the “metaphysics of the divinity.” His main focus, however, is on the development of Christian thought, beginning with the influence of Judaism and its evolution from a theocratic monolithic system into a more democratic rabbinical system after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

In Ch. 2 (36–70) Hillar discusses the Logos in Jerusalem and, in particular, in the theories of Philo of Alexandria. In the Septuagint, the Logos is used to describe God’s utterances, actions, or spoken voice, and messages of prophets by means of which God communicated with his people. In the ancient Near East, there was a wide-spread “conceptual anthropomorphic device to express the action of a supreme divinity or a divine principle” (36). The Hebrew Logos will later be expressed, in the Fourth Gospel, as the man, Jesus (38). He argues that Jewish Wisdom literature “is the closest approximation to the reflective thought that the Greeks described as philosophy.” In Philo of Alexandria, who was both Greek and Hebrew, Hillar sees a synthesis of both traditions, which laid the formulations for development of Christ in today’s western and eastern worlds, but the Greek metaphysical concept of the Logos contrasted sharply with the concept of a personal God described in anthropomorphic terms, as was typical of Hebrew thought (39). Philo, like other Jewish scholars, identified Moses with Musaeus and Orpheus. Philo “considered Moses the teacher of Pythagoras and of all Greek philosophers and lawgivers. … For Philo, Greek philosophy was a natural development of the revelatory teachings of Moses” (41).

Hillar then pauses in his discussion of Philo to turn back to Aristobulous (2nd c. BCE), Philo’s antecedent (41–4) and “the first Jewish philosopher,” who concluded that “Plato and Pythagoras developed their ideas from Jewish Law, which was allegedly known from a pre-Alexandrian translation. Similarly, Philo claimed Jewish Law as the source of Heraclitus’s theory of opposites…” But a problem remained, namely, how to explain the anthropomorphic representation of the divinity in the Jewish tradition. Hillar argues that Philo also believed that time was formed as a part of Creation and did not exist until Aristobulus made the number 7 a governing principle of the universe, and thereby introduced Order. Hence the Sabbath “is a visible manifestation of cosmic order, Wisdom” (43).

These are just brief samplings of the theories Hillar discusses in this chapter, which concludes (69–70) with a summary of Philo’s Logos (which he defines as “the first begotten son of the uncreated Father, the Stoic nous.”

Chapter 3 (71–103) concerns the development of Jewish Messianic Traditions as the source of Christian scriptures and doctrine “The Jewish Messianic tradition was linked not to Hebrew or to the Greek Logos, but “probably first developed with the Fourth Gospel and later with speculations of the Christian Apologists in the period of Hellenistic influence. … Christianity originated as a Jewish messianic and political movement … with a group that believed that the Messiah <‘the anointed one’> had come” (71). Chapter 4 (104–37) then turns to the development of Hellenistic Christian Doctrine, which he argues began as Jewish Messianism, acquired Hellenistic elements, and developed in the second half of the 1st century CE and the beginning of the 2nd into Hellenistic Messianism with the Pauline and Gospel varieties. This stage, in Hillar’s thesis, represented the reformation movement within the old Judaism. The second pattern began around the first half of the 2nd century when the figure of the Savior Jesus was deified and Jewish Messianism changed into a Hellenistic triadic Christianity in its two forms. He shows how (119) the Fourth Gospel, ascribed to John, was used by Christian Apologists and theologians as a proof text for Trinitarian doctrine, leading to the deification of Jesus as Logos and true God (129), and the consequent evolution of the Trinity as the central doctrine of Christianity (132). Chapter 4 concludes with an appendix on the failure of the quest for the Historical Jesus (135–7).

Hillar then devotes two Chapters (5 and 6) to Justin Martyr (115–165 CE), “the first Christian Apologist who speculated on religious matters in the philosophic terms of his time.” Chapter 5 discusses Justin Martyr and the Logos (138–70), while Chapter 6 examines his position on the Metaphysical Triad (170–89). The next two Chapters (7 and 8) are devoted to Tertullian, whom Hillar considers the originator of the Trinity (190–220). Tertullian dealt with the Christian triadic doctrine by establishing the relative unity of substance (221). The book concludes with St. Thomas Aquinas’ formulation of the accepted concept of the Trinity in his Summa Theologiae. There are two appendices, one listing “Possible Sources for the Development of the Christian Trinitarian Concepts” (273–304), and one listing Egyptian Chronology.

This is a most interesting but complex work. Hillar covers a wide range of relevant materials for this complex subject, and brings them into an intriguing focus. The book accordingly really needs a better index. This could be done by incorporating more lists into the text, as when he lists the works of Philo (on. p. 44). But he would help the reader more, I believe, if he had standardized indices for each of the authors he discusses, with the abbreviations for each work clearly defined, as for example Q.G. on p. 54 presumably is Questions and Answers on Genesis (listed on p. 44), but to which of Philo’s works on p. 44 does Her. on p. 54 refer? Or Ebr.? Sometimes the same work is referred to with different abbreviations. Some abbreviations appear to be Latin abbreviations (Ebr.) (?), while others (Q.G.) are clearly English (he lists all of Philo’s titles on p. 44 in English.) It is clear that much more thorough lists are needed not only for Philo’s works, but for the other authors and subjects he discusses as well, ideally in a separate Index. The existing Index for the entire book is itself too limited. For example, he does not list there such basic parts of his discussion as the Mystery Cults, Isis, Osiris, Cybele (however much he scorns them, they are in his text); and even Augustine, Cyprian, Perpetua, and Paul are missing. Since he moves over such a wide array of subjects, and not always in a clear, logical sequence, he really owes it to his readers to provide a fuller Index. This would enhance the experience of reading this most interesting work.

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Homer Between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature. By Lawrence Kim. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xi + 246. £58.00/$99.00. ISBN 978-0-521-19449-5.

Reviewed by Robert Lamberton, Washington University in St. Louis

It is rather surprising that the project of a history of the reception and interpretation of Homer in antiquity began to be realized only in the latter part of the twentieth century, encouraged by the widespread interest in reception theory and the history of reception that emerged at that time (4–5). Lawrence Kim’s contribution to that history, which received the prestigious Goodwin Award of Merit of the American Philological Association in 2011, fills in an important chapter and provides at the same time a valuable and innovative perspective on a major tendency in the literature of the Roman Empire.

The chapter in question chronicles the demise of a long tradition, a mode of reading Homer that might be placed under the rubric Homer the Historian. The literary tendency to which that tradition fell victim was the fundamental and radical estheticism of the Second Sophistic, its rich appreciation of the power of fiction and the elusiveness of fact, and of the pleasure, cultivated by the rhetors of the high empire and clearly savored by their audiences, of experiencing the willful and self-referential dissolution of reality into fiction and fiction into reality as the voice of the orator worked its magic.

After a brief introduction, Kim plunges the reader into what should be the unquestioned domain of Homer the Historian: the classical historians Herodotus and Thucydides (Ch. 2). What Kim demonstrates in this chapter is that the tensions that were to fuel the Second Sophistic’s deconstruction of this idea of Homer are already abundantly visible here. The two historians repeatedly call attention to Homer’s lack of reliability (since he was a poet) but assume, with little basis or explanation, a fundamental historical reliability lying behind the Iliad’s representation of heroic warfare and its motivations. This anticipates a question that will emerge later: “Where did Homer get his information?” (206), a question that seems to be the elephant in the room throughout the developments recounted here. It is the final impossibility of answering this unasked question that resulted in the debunking of Homer the Historian in the Second Sophistic.

The third chapter, on Strabo, lays out the history of Homer the Geographer with admirable clarity, based largely on a contrast between the attitudes of Strabo and Eratosthenes (56–60). On one side, we have Strabo the Stoic with his stodgy commitment to the notion of Homer the Teacher; on the other, Eratosthenes, who is the exception in antiquity in dismissing this idea of the poet and asserting that Homer, like other poets, aims “at entertainment, not instruction” (56). Yet in both of these geographers we still encounter the unexplained notion that Homer knew the facts (including the geographical facts) and, properly read, can yield valid geographical information.

Kim’s reading of Dio Chrysostom’s “Trojan Oration” (Ch. 4) is, along with Ch. 5 on Lucian, the major accomplishment of the book. The effect of this slow and careful reading is to recreate what is surely Dio’s primary goal: the gradual rendering plausible of the absurd hypothesis that the true story of Troy is the opposite of what the Iliad delivers (Achilles, and not a disguised Patroclus, was really killed; the Trojans really won the war). This is an excellent illustration of the way the Second Sophistic orators turned reality on and off like a spigot, but the procedure is given a very special esthetic boost by the fact that the reality so treated here is a fiction (Homer’s) that had long had the status of “truth” among the Greeks.

From this point, it is clear how the chapter on Lucian’s True Stories will serve Kim’s program. The emphasis is on the episode situated on the Isle of the Blessed, where Homer is found living along with the characters he created and thus becomes, appropriately, an element of his own fiction. The world of the True Stories is “a literary world of Greek paideia” (174) and here Homer and his characters are situated entirely beyond history in a timeless sphere populated by figments of the imagination.

The Chapter on Philostratus’ Heroicus (“Ghosts at Troy,” Ch. 7) contextualizes that work with reference to the “true” pre-Homeric accounts of the Trojan war of Dares and Dictys (both several centuries later in their known literary form, though each trails a fabricated genealogy). The issue, again, is credibility, something the (fictional) eyewitness takes on as the Trojan war recedes back into the oral tradition in the Middle Ages. Philostratus’ dialogue, however, as it delves into Homeric criticism and lore, seems to mock even the credibility of an eyewitness account by invoking the evidence of “the ghost of Protesilaus,” who was, among those who figure in the Troy tale, the one who had the least opportunity to see the war. This is another way of distancing Homer and Homeric lore from history, of situating the “truth” of poet, characters, and events—and even the history of inquiry into all three—in a sphere accessible only by the intervention of the deceased—though it might be more accurate to call them something other than “ghosts” since both Protesilaus and Achilles (visited on a similar mission in Philostratus’ Apollonius of Tyana) are decidedly Hesiodic ὄλβιοι ἥρωες (W&D 172), and not run-of-the-mill εἴδωλα.

Kim’s study is thus a considerable contribution to the study of the literature of the high empire, as it is to that of the ancient reception of Homer. The Goodwin Committee has done us all a service in drawing attention to this book, which is built on genuinely original, interconnected readings of an underappreciated body of ancient literature.