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A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Edited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester and Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Pp. xxvi + 668; 16 pp. of plates. Hardcover, £120.00/$199.95. ISBN 978-1-4051-7936-2.

Reviewed by Lee L. Brice, Western Illinois University

That we have a Companion devoted to Ancient Macedonia is hardly surprising. Alexander the Great remains a cottage industry, but the field of Macedonian studies is currently thriving on its own. Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington, the editors of this Companion, set out to demonstrate this vitality by including a wide range of topics all written for readers who are new to the field, whether as students or general readers. They have succeeded in assembling a large helping of the current state of the field and have drawn on an international array of authors. However, the omission of any discussion of archaeology is even more surprising than the failure to include a single chapter by a Greek or other Balkan scholar. As a result of these gaps, readers who want more comprehensive coverage of the field should supplement this volume with several other surveys and Companions.

Because of space constraints I will briefly summarize each chapter and discuss the merits of the whole. Edward Anson opens the volume with an introductory chapter that places the field as a whole and the Companion’s chapters in a context. P. J. Rhodes opens the section on evidence by covering the literary and epigraphic evidence, such as it is, for pre-Roman Macedonia. Karsten Dahmen provides a well-organized discussion of the numismatic evidence arranged by tribes, cities, kings, and province. He closes with a case study examination of Roman coinage in the province. Two chapters on evidence may highlight how few the sources are for the region, but to omit archaeology is inexplicable and leaves the volume deeply flawed.

Physical environment and ethnicity are the focus of the following part. Carol Thomas considers the physical environment and early population movements in a chapter that is clear, but needs a better map. Johannes Engels addresses the topic of ethnicity relating to Greeks and Macedonians. Sulochana Asirvatham continues the ethnicity theme, in part, by addressing Greek, Roman, Persian, and Egyptian perspectives on Macedonians. Engel’s observation, “ancient identities and concepts of ethnicity are historically and socially complex and fluid constructions,” (82) is worth remembering when reading the chapters focused on ethnicity.

The editors divided the historical narrative into convenient, useful chapters: early Temenid kings down to Alexander I (Slawomir Sprawski), Alexander I to Perdiccas III (Joseph Roisman), Philip II (Sabine Müller), Alexander III (Ian Worthington and Dawn Gilley), 323–221 BCE (W. Lindsay Adams), Macedonia and Rome to 146 (Arthur Eckstein), and provincial Macedonia to 3rd century CE (John Vanderspoel). The chapters are clear and provide good coverage. The only jarring aspect is that Carolyn Snively’s chapter on Late Antique Macedonia is separated from the rest of the history by more than ten chapters. Late Antiquity should be included. Segregating this chapter was an unfortunate choice.

Several of Macedonia’s ancient neighbors receive attention. Bill Greenwalt takes on Illyria and Epirus, Denver Graninger covers Thessaly, Zosia Archibald handles Thrace, and Marek Jan Olbrycht cleans up with Persia. Each of these chapters provides readers with a good introduction to the periphery in relation to the Macedonian center. Such a center–periphery view is useful (and necessary in the context of this Companion), but such an approach is entirely in contrast to the viewpoint of most of our literary sources.

Readers in search of chapters on institutions, society, and culture find them in the penultimate section. Topics included here are kingship and politics (Carol King), elite society (Noriko Sawada), women (Elizabeth Carney), religion (Paul Christesen and Sarah Murray), army (Nicholas Sekunda), economy (Paul Millett), art to 221 BCE (Craig Hardiman), and art to 337 CE (Rachel Kousser). These authors necessarily deal with elite Macedonians primarily and, given the space limits, must be selective in the evidence and historiography they include. As with so many of the other chapters, readers will find in these useful introductions to the material.

The final section of the Companion carries the title “After Rome” and includes only two chapters. As noted previously, Snively’s informative chapter on Late Antique Macedonia to 586 CE belongs with the rest of the historical narrative since to do otherwise conveys to the intended audience the impression that this history is somehow different or exceptional. The concluding chapter, by Loring Danforth, is an extended discussion of how ancient Macedonia is embroiled in modern Balkan politics. This chapter on a modern topic is out of place in a Companion otherwise focused on ancient Macedonia.

In addition to the chapters, there are twenty-eight color plates, four line drawings, ten maps, a bibliography, and index. Eleven of the plates are coins. These images are all well produced and they provide a taste of what is available for readers who dig into the topics. The maps are all together at the beginning of the volume, but the details and even the scales (when available) vary widely rendering them less effective as a group than they might have been.

Given the intended audience, the Companion is successful, as far as it goes. The volume was designed to introduce ancient Macedonia to students and other readers unfamiliar with the field. Except for the last chapter, the selected authors succeed in meeting that goal. They are clear and provide students with the information they need to explore aspects of the field. They also include numerous footnotes and bibliography so readers who wish to explore these topics in more depth can do so on their own. Teachers seeking material for writing introductory lectures will find some of it here, although those working on heavily debated topics, like Macedonian kingship, will need to supplement with works cited in footnotes and bibliography. Although it is expensive currently, the material will be available electronically and the paperback edition will be more affordable if it follows the trend of other Blackwell Companions.

There are some editorial choices that detract from the Companion’s overall success. Editors must naturally compromise in selecting authors and topics, but it is remarkable in a volume on ancient Macedonia that there are no Greek or other Balkan scholars from regional institutions represented among the authors. One expects that regional scholars have much to provide both in terms of content and point of view that would enrich the Companion. Archibald’s chapter has the distinction of being the only one to draw heavily on Greek-language work. This editorial choice in authors may be connected with the volume’s preoccupation with ethnicity. It is perhaps illuminating that a quarter of the introduction addresses ethnicity in one way or another while three of the internal chapters focus heavily on ethnicity. The emphasis placed on this topic gives the mistaken impression that it receives more attention from scholars than do other issues.

The focus on ethnicity is even more surprising when one finds the complete exclusion of an extended discussion of archaeology. Although Roisman and Worthington conclude (xiv), “we have covered as much as humanly can be within one set of covers and that the book,” such a over-statement seems intended to be tongue-in-cheek given the absence of archaeology. That omission is inexplicable given the importance of archaeological evidence. Some of the authors draw on prior archaeological work, but without an overarching examination it is difficult for the intended audience to appreciate the role of archaeology and archaeological evidence in our evolving understanding of the region. Every such volume involves many editorial choices, but in this case this omission resulted in numerous missed opportunities. This Companion is a useful volume, but should be supplemented with selected chapters from other sources such as the archaeological and regional perspectives in Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon.

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English Translation and Classical Reception: Towards a New Literary History. By Stuart Gillespie. Classical Receptions. Chichester and Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Pp. x + 208. Hardcover, £70.00/$110.95. ISBN 978-1-4051-9901-8.

Reviewed by Angeline C. Chiu, University of Vermont

In October of 1816, after an evening spent reading the Iliad with a friend, John Keats wrote one of English literature’s most famous sonnets, On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Within it he describes the powerful emotional epiphany of experiencing that immortal Greek epic, but Keats also explicitly refers to Homer mediated through George Chapman’s monumental English translation of 1616: “Yet did I never breathe its pure serene / Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold” (ll. 7-8). Embedded in the heart of the sonnet is not only the acknowledgment of the existence of classical translation, but also the praise of its literary effect and influence. It is an influence that has been all too frequently been forgotten or ignored in the study of both Classics and English; the result is a grave lapse in scholarship that Stuart Gillespie is determined first to highlight and then to rectify in his new book.

I begin with a caveat: This book is not a literary history per se, and Gillespie specifically notes this. The title is Towards a New Literary History, and that is the core of the book: the passionate presentation of—in fact, defense of—translation as a vital part of English literary history. He then bolsters this with the robust advocacy of a new assessment of that history and of what effects it has had and still has on the study of Classics and English both separately and together. In an academic world that too often both overspecializes and overcompartmentalizes, Gillespie’s cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach is a breath of fresh air. When he asks, “How does English literature look after classical translation is accorded its due in the record?” (181), he is actually prefacing his grand argument that such translation is central to the English literary canon.

The book is not organized as a seamless comprehensive history, though Chapter 1, “Making the Classics Belong: A Historical Introduction,” gives useful general context and presents with broad historical brushstrokes the phenomenon of translation between Classics and English. The rest of the book follows as a collection of what might be best called case studies of items plucked from various points in English literary history and here organized chronologically from the English Renaissance to the twentieth century. The chapters’ case studies range far and wide from widely recognized literary achievements such as Chapter 5, “Transformative Translation: Dryden’s Horatian Ode,” to writings forgotten today as in the case of Chapter 9, “Receiving Wordsworth, Receiving Juvenal: Wordsworth’s Suppressed Eighth Satire.” Out of the chapters, Chapter 2, “Creative Translation,” and Chapter 7, “Classical Translation and the Formation of the English Literary Canon,” together form perhaps the clearest distillation of Gillespie’s overall argument of the vitality of classical translation in English. The examination of canon formation is particularly noteworthy as it reminds us how very many canonical English writers were also subtle, gifted translators and vice versa, including luminaries like Marlowe, Jonson, Dryden, Pope, Shelley, Browning, Pound, and Housman. On the other hand, the chapter that might break the most ground is Chapter 8, “Evidence for an Alternative History: Manuscript Translations of the Long Eighteenth Century,” with its intriguing presentation of classical translations undertaken by enthusiasts who never intended their work for publication and public consumption. This much broadens the discussion of the widespread appeal of classics and translation in the 1700s, as well as sheds a fascinating light on the many forms of literary circulation of the day.

Overall as a collection, the book can seem occasionally desultory and impressionistic. This is doubtless a function of the disparate foci of the individual case studies, but I occasionally found myself wondering about the historical and literary gaps that exist, for instance, between Chapter 4’s Shakespeare and Chapter 5’s Dryden. If the chapters were screenshots taken from a film, one wonders about the film as a whole, regardless of—and perhaps even because of—how interesting the individual screenshots are in themselves. This effect may, however, be part of the point of the book as a whole. It means to be provocative in the best sense of the word; beyond presenting information, it piques the interest and stirs the desire to learn more. Gillespie’s undeniable command of the material on display also hints intriguingly at what has not been included.

Taken together, the various case studies of the book express an energetic engagement with the rich inheritance of classical literature and its complex role in and through English translation. In this vein, the most enlightening aspect that Gillespie highlights may not be translation as a means to introduce classics to readers who do not command Greek and Latin or the conduit through which English writers explored classical literary forms and genres to make such things their own. Instead, it may be about translation’s invigorating effect that motivated English writers not only to incorporate and interpret the classics, but also to innovate and create works of their own that have added to the rich texture of Anglophone literature. One need only think, for instance, of Shakespeare, whose engagement with Plutarch, Plautus, and Ovid in and out of translation proved so fruitful. Gillespie is absolutely right when he insists that the disciplines of Classics and English have much to learn from each other and that it could (and should) be a most productive collaboration.

Overall, Gillespie challenges the conventional wisdom and status quo of studies in English literary history, and he makes his case with energy and flair. His ultimate achievement, though, is even more stimulating. If Gillespie’s true goal is to encourage his audience to pursue further studies of translation in the ancient and English literary canons, then he has succeeded. By the time they reach the end of the book, readers will not only be surprised and intrigued by the scope of the material presented but also spurred on by the sense of discovery, of a brave new world opening and waiting to be explored. Indeed, thanks to Gillespie’s efforts, we may even feel, as Keats did after reading Chapman’s Homer (ll. 11–14):

like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

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Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose. By Leslie Kurke. Martin Classical Lectures. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010. Pp. xxiv + 495. Hardcover, $78.50/£55.00. ISBN 978-0-691-14457-3. Paper, $29.95/£24.95. ISBN 978-0-691-14458-0.

Reviewed by Page duBois, University of California at San Diego

This book is a monumental achievement, and a great pleasure to read as well. The author painstakingly shepherds the argument—forecasting what is to come, then proving what is to be proven, then recapitulating and moving forward,

generously leading the reader onward.

The first, diachronic, half of the book focuses on the figure of Aesop himself , and demonstrates with great care and convincing attention to detail that much of the Life of Aesop called Vita G, of uncertain late date, not only preserves very ancient traditions, but can be read backwards into moments of the classical period, to confirm or illuminate insights Kurke untangles from the welter of material concerning Aesop. She considers the story of his engagement with the Delphic oracle and the Delphians, and shows how an opposition between Apollo and Aesop serves to demystify the claims and privileges of the oracular site. She lays out the characteristics of a prephilosophical or even antiphilosophical, popular tradition of sophia that includes the Seven Sages, some preSocratics, and religious figures such as Epimenides. This enduring system features forms of competition, a typical life trajectory that moves from rhetorical and verbal skill deployed for political effects, often in a competitive context, to religious expertise and to journeys of theoria. Aesop emerges as a critical or parodic figure in relation to the high wisdom traditions, moving between sage and parodist, and this ambiguity persists even into the late biography of Vita G, which reveals many historical strata.

The second, synchronic half of the book concerns the role of an Aesopic element at the beginnings of Greek prose. Here we encounter the paradoxical deployment and disavowal of Aesopic techniques of fabulation and refutation, especially in Kurke’s brilliant and convincing argument for the Hippias Major as an atypical but canonical and revelatory Platonic dialogue. She then moves to Herodotus, and makes the claim, after carefully preparing for this dénouement, that the Histories are “a bouleutic fable writ large.” Throughout this section, she reminds the reader that both Plato and Herodotus have been familiarized, made inevitable as philosopher and historian, as writers of prose, and that we need to awaken to the strangeness of their writerly strategies.

Kurke’s theory and method draw on a complex synthesis. She relies on the work of the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson, especially The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981). Although Jameson has moved on to analyses of postmodernism and contemporary culture, this early text served as a manifesto for a politically engaged, historicizing analysis of formal and aesthetic questions. Following Julia Kristeva’s use of the term, he described the ideologeme, or “the smallest intelligible unit of the essentially antagonistic collective discourses of social classes,” and this notion serves Kurke well in her analysis of Aesop. Kurke also relies on Claude Lévi-Strauss’ use of the term “bricolage,” to characterize cultural production. And she follows the fascinating comparative work of Mary Helms, in Ulysses’ Sail, and Craft and the Kingly Ideal, to give shape to the archaic sage’s life trajectory. She also draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism, and his recognition of the political potency of the textualized low, obscene, unruly body: the book unflinchingly confronts, and relishes, Aesopic vomit, urine and other bodily emissions. In every section of the book, Kurke demonstrates an impressive command of the scholarship underpinning specific debates in which she engages. One of the compelling and convincing undercurrents throughout the book is an ongoing critique of the field of classics, especially of the narrowness and hermeticism of subdisciplines that can hinder the sort of sweeping and exemplary study this is. She also calls out classical scholars too focused on continuity, insufficiently aware of historicity and change, insensitive to conflict.

Kurke does “deconstruct,” but for her deconstruction means taking apart a text, or a tradition, to see what makes it tick, with no Derridean implications. There are moments when the author’s commitment to detail may frustrate, as when she rehearses a disagreement between M. L. West and Noel Robertson concerning the translation of a passage from the Works and Days where their differing interpretations have no effect on Kurke’s point concerning the prohibition on criticizing diversity in local sacrificial rites. It may be too that her arguments might have been better served with two books, one building on the other’s insights, since the second half especially leaves one wanting more. Furthermore, I continue to believe that the beast fable, rather than undermining hierarchy, reinforces aristocratic domination, reifying and naturalizing class difference. And here Hegel’s insight “im Sklaven fängt die Prosa an” recedes from view. I would have liked an epilogue to the whole.

Yet Kurke’s arguments make the reader want to re-read Plato and Herodotus from new perspectives; she gives these texts a three-dimensionality, a dynamism that only these exhaustively intricate close readings can unleash. Implicating dialectically both diachronic and synchronic, popular oral tradition and elite written text, this is a ground-breaking work about Aesop, about the fable, about Plato, about Herodotus, the inventions of philosophy and history, about popular culture and the class struggle, and should be read by everyone interested in Greek antiquity, even by philosophers.

The ambition of the book is arresting; its audacity and risk-taking are firmly supported by the great density and detail of its readings and argumentation. Although its aims may seem hubristic, in fact its consequences may be understated by the author. With its historical sweep, from the works of Homer and Hesiod to the Life of Aesop, its bringing to all this stretch of time a dynamism and sense of class struggle, and with its subtle claims for the necessity to read differently canonical texts, all the while considering genre hierarchy and its sociopolitical implications, this is a bold and admirable recasting of all of Greek cultural history.

μέγα βιβλίον, μέγα καλόν.

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The Age of Titans: The Rise and Fall of the Great Hellenistic Navies. By William M. Murray. Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xxv + 356. Hardcover, $45.00/£30.00. ISBN 978-0-19-538864-0 .

Reviewed by Anthony J. Papalas, East Carolina University

The trireme, a “three,” was a ship approximately 121 feet long and about 19 feet wide. Propelled by 170 oarsmen placed at three levels and supported by 30 men on deck, it was the preeminent war vessel of the 5th century BC. Generally, its most effective deployment was as a missile ramming the enemy ship on the beam or stern.

In the following century larger vessels, polyremes, ranging from “fours” to “sixteens,” emerged and became the top war vessels of the Hellenistic Period. The rowing arrangements for these vessels are a matter of scholarly debate but it is most likely that the rowers worked from two levels. In the triremes there was one man to an oar but in polyremes there were several, the number depending on the class of ship. Vessels larger than “sixteens” were catamarans, double-hulled ships. The aim of Murray’s book is to demonstrate that the Greeks developed these vessels specifically for harbor warfare.

For Murray the trireme engagements of 413 BC between the Athenians and Syracusans in the harbor of Syracuse marked the “appearance” of tactics that would become standard in subsequent naval warfare. The Syracusans defeated the Athenians in part by diverging from customary procedures and following a recent Corinthian innovation of strengthening the bows of their triremes, specifically the catheads, for frontal ramming. Archers, javelin men, and hoplites with the aid of boarding equipment contributed to the defeat of the once invincible Athenian trireme navy. The polyreme emerged about a decade later. Dionysius I (432–362 BC), tyrant of Syracuse, probably built “fours” and certainly “fives” in small numbers as prestige ships and apparently for frontal ramming in harbor battles. Alexander the Great during the siege of Tyre (332 BC), an off-shore island, deployed polyremes as platforms for artillery and Alexander’s successors built larger polyremes as siege-winning weapons.

Murray, who has an admirable knowledge of ancient galleys and the naval history of classical antiquity, makes a persuasive case for his thesis. But some tactics associated with polyremes were part of early trireme battles. Herodotus (8.84–95) in his perfunctory description of the battle of Salamis in 480 BC downplays trireme ramming attacks. But he reports that javelin men on a Samothracian trireme fighting in the Persian navy cleared the deck of an Aeginetan trireme and then took possession of it. The Greeks probably countered with similar tactics during the battle. This is implied by Herodotus (9.98.2) who mentions that in 479 BC the Greeks sailed to Ionia with boarding gangways.

Ptolemy IV Philopator (224–204 BC) built a great polyreme navy, including a “forty, in his competition with the Seleucids to control ports along the Syrian-Palestine coast and the Aegean. The purpose of the “forty,” the ultimate of the polyremes, with its 4,000 oarsmen and 25,800 marines, is baffling. Murray suggests that Philopator built it to celebrate his victory at Raphia (217 BC) over Antiochus IV. This behemoth, whose seven rams were designed specifically for defensive purposes, apparently never appeared in battle and Murray makes the reasonable suggestions that Ptolemy wished to impress those who witnessed its launching. There were doubtless other factors as well. It may be suggested that beyond its propaganda value such an expensive weapon must have been designed for a practical purpose, perhaps to block the mouth of the Nile precluding any seaborne attack on Egypt. The “forty” was a sort of Star Wars project. There could also have been a security issue. The Ptolemies relied on their oppressed subjects for naval service. After the battle of Raphia the Egyptians, who had been for the first time conscripted in large numbers into the Ptolemaic army and had proved effective in battle, had become rebellious. It may have been too risky to man the “forty” with a potentially problematic crew.

The polyremes proved of little use to the Hellenistic Kingdoms against the Romans who defeated them in a series of land battles. The Romans were nonetheless fascinated with these large vessels and may have made good use of them in harbor sieges during the First and Second Punic Wars but the Roman senate, Murray maintains, would not allocate funds for such expensive weapons. Marc Antony, however, built polyremes for the final confrontation with Octavian at Actium in 31 BC. After the battle the victorious Octavian embedded some of the rams from Antony’s polyremes in the Actian victory monument at Nicopolis. The rams are long gone but Murray’s careful study of the sockets indicates the large number of polyremes in Antony’s navy. Murray is surely right in arguing that the larger polyremes, which were of little use in the naval battle, were intended to take harbors in Italy.

The half-ton Athlit ram discovered in 1980 remains an enigma. Some scholars maintain that it belonged to a great polyreme but Murray, assessing the ram in the context of the sockets in the Actium monument, argues that it was fitted to a “four.” But the possibility that it was from a trireme cannot be excluded. While Murray has not ended the debate on some issues of ancient Greek naval warfare he has shed much light on the subject. This is an original work of sound scholarship. Specialists in ancient naval history will benefit from this book and students of classical antiquity will also profit from it.

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Manuel Baumbach, Andrej Petrovic and Ivana Petrovic, eds. Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Hardcover, £63.00/$104.00. ISBN 978-0-521-11805-7.

Reviewed by Deborah Boedeker, Brown University

In his renowned handbook of Greek literature, first published in 1957, Albin Lesky devoted a scant page to pre-Hellenistic Greek epigrams (a corpus of some 900 verse inscriptions dating from 800 to 300 BCE). Lesky felt it necessary to justify even this much attention, given the genre’s status as “craft” rather than “art.” Recent decades have been more hospitable to the topic, thanks in part to Peter Allan Hansen’s two-volume edition of Carmina Epigraphica Graeca (Berlin and New York, 1983/89). In addition to many articles, not a few of them by contributors to the present volume, two monographs on archaic and classical epigrams have recently appeared: Christos Tsagalis, Inscribing Sorrow: Fourth-Century Attic Funerary Epigrams (Berlin and New York, 2008) and Joseph W. Day, Archaic Greek Epigram and Dedication (Cambridge, 2010). The present edited volume, based on a conference on Greek epigram held in Castle Rauischholzhausen, Germany in 2005, provides the most comprehensive introduction to early elegy. The useful bibliography generally extends through 2007, with scattered citations of some later scholarship.

The volume incorporates a wide range of approaches. In particular, the anthropological turn in Hellenic studies, as well as the integration of material culture and philology, have had a great and profitable impact on the study of early inscriptions. The editors introduce the volume with a substantial essay, valuable not least for its succinct summary of the history of scholarship on Greek epigrams. The rest of the book is divided into two parts of unequal length, Contextualization (Chapters 2–13) and Literarization (Chapters 14–17), with further sub-groupings within these divisions. I will address the chapters in each sub-section, and conclude with a few general comments.

The first section, “Speaking and Reading: the Dialogue between Epigram and Passer-by,” plunges into a long-standing and still controversial debate. Thomas A. Schmitz (“Speaker and Addressee in early Greek Epigram and Lyric”) asks how written texts engage their audiences in comparison with performed texts. Focusing especially on the second-person discourse of Sappho and Alcaeus, he concludes that both kinds of discourse seek to “create a special space for communication that is clearly demarcated from pragmatic, everyday discourse.” Schmitz argues that both kinds of discourse feature a fictional addressee: epigrams establish an imaginary future reader, while the putative addressee of lyric (e.g. Alcaeus’ reviled Pittacus) is not actually present in the performance context. Michael A. Tueller continues the discussion with a catalogue and analysis of the developing role of the passer-by in early epigram—a figure mentioned only occasionally, and only in Attica, before 500 BCE. Gjert Vertrheim’s paper on “voice in sepulchral epigrams” again uses early lyric poetry as a comparandum. He notes that first- and second-person characters in both lyric and epigrams are poetic constructs, and points out that epigrams are more likely to affirm communal values than personal lyric, where the speaker is often given a counter-cultural persona.

A second group of papers deals with “Art and Viewing: the Spatial Context.” Barbara E. Borg writes on the elaborate sculpted and inscribed “chest of Kypselos” dedicated at Olympia, no longer extant but elaborately described by Pausanias (5.17.5–19.10). Borg argues persuasively that the scenes on the chest are accompanied by epic-influenced hexametric inscriptions which not only identify the scene but also “guide the viewer” in how to receive it. She hypothesizes that the chest was designed by/for the Kypselids of Corinth, but does not examine how their interests would connect with the content. A fine chapter by Catherine Keesling focuses on the Callimachus monument on the Athenian Acropolis. The inscriptions on this Nike-topped column include a problematic change of perspective that suggests they consist of two separate epigrams. Keesling argues that the entire monument was dedicated by the city of Athens to commemorate the battle of Marathon—the first public monument for a victory in a military “contest,” and one that already stresses the Hellenic component of the Persian Wars. Very different is Katharina Lorenz’ contribution, “‘Dialectics at a Standstill’: Archaic kouroi-cum-epigram as I-Box.” Lorenz adopts techniques of media-studies to discuss the ever-shifting relationship among the object inscribed, the text, and the audience. To the experience of viewing inscribed archaic kouroi she compares such self-consciously dialectical works as Robert Morris’ 1962 I-Box and Maya Lin’s 1982 acclaimed Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.

Chapters 8 and 9 make up the sub-section on “Epigram and Performance: the Religious Context.” William D. Furley contends that “a dedicatory epigram represents a symbolic caption to an act of worship” and does not attempt to record what was actually said at the occasion. In this context Furley also considers the function of korai and kouroi dedications; like Lorenz and other contributors, he focuses on the objects dedicated as well as the inscriptions. Catherine Trümpy’s chapter on the beginnings of dedicatory and sepulchral epigrams surveys the geographical range, themes, and functions of early inscriptions; in fact, her contribution would make a good introduction to the topic. Trümpy ends by comparing early epigram and choral lyric; she has good observations on their similarities, but might have given more attention to fundamental differences in how the two forms communicate (reading vs. performance).

The fourth section, “Propaganda and Memorial: the Historical and Political Context,” discusses material that has been much debated by historians as well as literary scholars. Carolyn Higbie provides a basic overview of inscriptions and other poetry about the Persian War, including the question of how this poetry might have been transmitted. She also pays special attention to inscriptions cited by Plutarch. In a lively essay on “True Lies of Athenian Public Epigrams,” Andrej Petrovic extends his earlier work on historical epigrams by placing them in the framework of “intentional” history. Inter alia, Petrovic suggests that an epigram was seen as more trustworthy when it was connected with the name of a famous author (usually Simonides), and analyzes the connection between the past deeds celebrated (typically introduced with ποτε “once upon a time”) and the future audience of citizens who should be inspired to emulate those deeds.

Chapters 12 and 13 are grouped under the heading “Generic and Literary Contexts: the Rise and Reception of Epigrammatic Subgenera.” Kathryn Gutzwiller’s learned contribution highlights the relationship between inscribed and literary epigrams. She takes as a starting-point the “Aristotelian” Peplos, which she argues was a prose work that included a number of short sepulchral epigrams for panhellenic heroes. From this compilation and others, as well as from texts on vase paintings, Gutzwiller makes a strong case that there was cross-fertilization between inscribed and literary epitaphs as early as the fifth century. Both kinds of funerary epigrams increasingly memorialized even the ordinary dead in terms similar to hero-cult. Rudolf Wachter’s chapter uses linguistic and grammatical evidence to argue for a more differentiated interpretation of inscribed stones, pinakes, or pots (especially the famous Nestor’s cup) as “speaking objects.” Wachter maintains that as Greek literacy increases, dedications can be seen to shift from a more oral/formulaic to a more written style.

The book’s second and shorter division, “Literarization,” begins with an illuminating section called “Losing Context: Intertextuality and Poetic Variation.” Richard Hunter questions how certain stylistic traits of Hellenistic epigrams can usefully be compared to earlier Greek poems. He considers not only (indeed, not primarily) early epigrams, but also archaic lyrics to which the later works allude. Noting for example that the trope of a whole city mourning its dead is attested in the Iliad, archaic lyric, classical funerary epigrams, and Hellenistic poetry, Hunter asks provocatively how we are to recognize “the emergence of ‘the literary’” in a corpus that evidently is always interconnected and allusive. Marco Fantuzzi’s contribution focuses on classical monuments that bear more than one inscription. He concludes that “Hellenistic epigram most likely derived its taste for the art of variation from its non-book origins,” the highly repetitive language of archaic funerary and dedicatory inscriptions. Along the way Fantuzzi offers insightful observations on developments in the “slow” medium of stone vs. the “official” but quicker poetry composed for books.

The volume ends with two papers grouped under the title “Inventing Contexts: Ecphrasis and Narration.” Ewen Bowie’s essay, with over sixty pages the longest in the collection, deals with “Epigram as Narration” as part of the larger question of whether literary genres exist, and how they influence each other. Bowie observes that narration is an essential component of dedicatory epigrams, since the act of dedication must be communicated, but it is not necessary for funerary epigrams—and yet nearly all early epigrams include some narrative material. Bowie explores this fact in a detailed analysis, with welcome attention to meter among other criteria, and even an appendix on the length of all verse inscriptions 750–400 BC. Jon Steffen Bruss’ paper on ecphrasis in epigrams finishes off the collection. After reviewing the Homeric description of Achilles’ shield, Bruss uses reader-response criticism to examine the multiple functions of ecphrasis in classical inscriptions. He notes that inscribed epigrams by nature have an ecphrastic character, since they refer to the object of which they are a part. Bruss also addresses relationships between classical and Hellenistic epigrams, and ends the chapter with a clear summary of his points.

Altogether, this is a most timely and valuable collection of essays in a well-produced volume. The illustrations are few, but clear and varied. Greek text is generally translated, although this has been overlooked in a few passages (several examples on p. 32). Some typographical mistakes slipped through, most of them minor (e.g. Naeram for Neaeram, p. 203 n. 3; exstinguish on p. 345). Errors I spotted in the Greek include περιβάρναται for περιμάρναται and γα for τε on p. 86; phi for koppa in CEG 391 on p. 325; and on p. 234 βασίλεια is translated (nom.) “queen” instead of (acc.) “palace.” Two editorial decisions of larger scope would have made the volume more user-friendly: the absence of an index locorum is disconcerting, and more cross-references would have enriched the discussion of topics (e.g. future audiences, the first-person speaker) pursued by a number of contributors.

These quibbles aside, the editors deserve applause for producing a marvelous sampler of current work in a (still) under-studied area. While not a book for the casual reader, Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram is essential reading for scholars interested in Greek epigraphy, the beginnings of alphabetic writing, and early Greek poetry whether or not inscribed on stone.