posted with permission:

Verity Platt, Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 482. Hardcover, £75.00/$130.00. ISBN 978-0521-86171-7.

Reviewed by Francesca Tronchin, Rhodes College

In our age of IMAX movies, skyscrapers, and colossal billboards, it is hard to imagine seeing a statue and believing it to be a manifestation of a divinity. Yet when seeing Alan LeQuire’s scale replica of the Athena Parthenos in Nashville, Tennessee, one of my companions started and gasped audibly. How could a plaster statue have evoked such a physical response, in a scholar of Greek sculpture no less? Was this a kind of epiphany? Clearly this is no mere depiction of a goddess; the factor of size is heightened by workmanship, setting, and materials (even if mundane compared with Phidias’ gold and ivory). Yet it is an extreme case of cognitive dissonance to feel Athena’s presence inside a building in central Tennessee (all due respect to Mr. LeQuire). And now that I have seen the replica a number of times, I continue to be surprised by the awesome (in the truest sense of the word) presence of this statue.

Transforming an epiphanic encounter into either image or text requires the highest levels of technē and enargeia (54). Such qualities of both ancient sculpture and ancient texts (hymns, ekphrasis, epigrams) are Verity Platt’s subject. In an extended and revised version of a doctoral thesis written under the guidance of Jaś Elsner, Platt explores the formal means by which Greeks and Romans made “the gods present through acts of human creativity” (2). She expresses her thesis perhaps best at the end of Chapter 2: depictions of the gods “reveal how an active and self-conscious engagement with the ontological and theological problems raised by the mutual dependence of epiphany and representation was fundamental to religious art and its literary reception” (122). Such representations are, naturally, not unproblematic and Platt deals deftly with the ways in which artificial creations can sometimes undercut the spectacular aspects of epiphany.

Speaking most generally, this volume’s argument lies in a variety of binaries regarding supernatural and “man-made,” carried over different media or textual types. The book is divided into three Parts, arranged chronologically (Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece; the Second Sophistic; Roman sarcophagi). Part III (Chapter 8) is the most narrowly defined, examining “how the relationship between epiphany, representation and paideia” on mythological sarcophagi was addressed in ways different from the Second Sophistic philosophical and literary evidence (27), which is explored in Part II. Individual chapters deal with epiphany in assorted settings/media: votive reliefs and early Greek poetry (Chapter 1); Hellenistic politics and sculptural production (Chapter 3); Callimachus and epigrams on sculpture (Chapter 4, in particular the Aphrodite of Knidos); Dio Chrysostom (Chapter 5); dreams and cult statues in the Second Sophistic (Chapter 6); and a discussion of Hellenic anthropomorphism in book 6 of Philostratus’ biography of Apollonius of Tyana (Chapter 7).

One of the clearest and best case-studies in Platt’s collection of visual analyses is that of Phidias’ colossal Athena Parthenos and the more ancient Athena Polias (Chapter 2, especially pp. 83–100). The question of which image was more potent to ancient viewers, which was “closer” to Athena in appearance or sacredness has been an issue since at least Herrington 1955[[1]]. While more recent studies[[2]] have mostly assigned numinous qualities to Parthenos and Polias based upon expensive materials and miraculous appearance, respectively, Platt more carefully articulates the shared functions of these two statues with respect to the variety of possible epiphanic qualities. Indeed these two statues illustrate the conceptual crisis of sacred images in Greek culture, the tension between “their phenomenological effect (when they are experienced as a form of epiphany) and their ontological status (that is, their material … nature, their existence as objects)” (82, Platt’s emphasis). Phidias’ Parthenos might have been the very definition of agalma, blending as it did luxurious materials, essential iconography, Classical naturalism, and a high level of technē. This was essentially a hand-crafted divine manifestation. Viewers lucky enough to actually lay eyes on the Parthenos[[3]] would have been charmed into thinking they had witnessed an actual epiphany as “cognitive reliability” surpassed “cognitive dissonance” (83). That is to say that the accuracy of the statue as a real depiction of the goddess (as described in literature or reinforced through common knowledge) was more apparent to viewers than the statue’s status as a man-made object. Yet the mysterious origins of the Athena Polias, combined with a (purported) aniconic appearance and olive-wood material, might have positioned it as something theologically “closer” to the goddess. The fantastic advent of the Polias, having fallen from heaven,[[4]] confirms “the gods’ power to materialize” (97) in the physical world. The epiphanic nature of the more formally humble Polias was also bound up in its status of not being worked by hand, according to Platt, as well as its olive-wood material, a metonym for the goddess’ gift to the city (98).

Platt’s deftness with both literary and visual analysis, across a broad chronological range, is impressive. Yet this reviewer found Platt’s writing style to be syntactically abstruse and heavy-laden with the jargon of critical theory. While Platt’s theoretical approaches could be of tremendous help to graduate students approaching textual and visual material with similar hermeneutic aims, such students might be alienated by her dense prose and use of trendy buzzwords. One thinks of the maxim attributed to Albert Einstein: “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

To conclude, two technical observations and one more general: The bibliography is comprehensive and up-to-date.[[5]] The illustrations are of generally good—not excellent—quality; the fifty-odd photographs are all black and white. In short, this book is ultimately a valuable exploration of an under-studied phenomenon worthy of attention, yet this reviewer fears Platt’s style will be a hindrance to its receiving broad appeal.

NOTES

[[1]] C. J. Herrington, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias (Manchester, 1955).

[[2]] E.g. A. A. Donohue, “The Greek Images of the Gods. Considerations on Terminology and Methodology,” Hephaistos 14 (1997) 31-45;K. D. S. Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford, 2001).

[[3]] One compelling question not raised by Platt’s book is the functional accessibility of ancient cult statues. How many viewers would have had the opportunity to study these statues with the same kind of diligent eye with which modern scholars can conjure up even now-lost images? Moreover, the volume takes for granted an intellectually elite viewer, one with vast knowledge of literature and art history.

[[4]] Paus. 1.26.6.

[[5]] I was surprised not to find the following volume in the bibliography, as it seems relevant to Platt’s aims: James I. Porter, The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2010).

posted with permission:

Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone, eds. A Companion to Greek Mythology. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Pp. xxvii + 643. Hardcover, $199.95/£110.00. ISBN: 978-1-4051-1178-2.

Reviewed by Hugh Bowden, King’s College London

What is the difference between a guide and a companion? On an expedition, you might employ a guide if you know where you want to get to, but are not certain about which way to go. You would bring along a companion, on the other hand, if you were less concerned about getting to the destination by the shortest route, and instead were interested in learning more about what you might see on the way; a companion might encourage you to go down by-ways, pause to see the view, and possibly even persuade you that your original destination was not really where you should be going. On this basis, Dowden and Livingstone’s volume is very much a companion, and distinctly not a guide.

The book is made up of twenty-eight chapters, which, after the introduction, are arranged in six parts. The titles of the parts (“Establishing the Canon,” “Myth Performed, Myth Believed,” “New Traditions,” “Older Traditions,” “Interpretation,” “Conspectus”) do not immediately make clear what the individual chapters discuss, and chapters within sections take very different approaches to superficially similar material. Two examples must suffice. Part I, “Establishing the Canon,” consist of three chapters: in “Homer’s Use of Myth” (27–45) Françoise Létoublon identifies references in the Iliad and Odyssey to stories known from the Epic Cycle, and then discusses how these stories and some others, are used in the poems. Ken Dowden, in “Telling the Mythology: From Hesiod to the Fifth Century” (47–72), gives a brief history of mythography, that is, concentrating on works that compile stories of gods and heroes, and despite the chronological limits suggested by the title, he ends with an analysis of Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Library. Radcliffe Edmonds starts his chapter on “Orphic Mythology” (73–106) with the statement that “there was no such thing as Orphic mythology in the classical world,” before going on to discuss the various stories that, in antiquity or more recently, have been attributed to Orpheus and “Orphic tradition,” which are bound together more by their exoticness than by their sharing any distinctive doctrine. Létoublon provides a page of notes, Dowden half a page and Edmonds fourteen pages.

Similar diversity is to be found in the three chapters that make up Part IV, “Older Traditions.” Nicholas Allen’s “The Indo-European Background to Greek Mythology” (341–56) is mainly about Dumézil’s methods, and is applied to four “case studies,” two of which are about early Roman history, while the other two make comparisons between Indian texts and Hesiod and the Epic Cycle. Alasdair Livingstone and Birgit Haskamp’s chapter on “Near Eastern Mythologies” (357–82) presents the basic features of Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Ugaritic mythologies, essentially as comparative material. In contrast Nanno Marinatos and Nicolas Wyatt, in “Levantine, Egyptian, and Greek Mythological Conceptions of the Beyond” (383–410), are much more ready to engage in comparisons, amongst other things offering a distinctive interpretation of the location of Hades in the Odyssey on the basis of Egyptian comparanda, illustrated with helpful diagrams.

Sometimes the allocation of chapters to parts might appear a little arbitrary. Susan Woodford’s study of visual material, “Displaying Myth: The Visual Arts” (157–78), a useful guide to what was depicted where, which includes an appendix on “how to identify myths depicted in images,” is placed in Part II, “Myth Performed, Myth Believed,” but in Part V, “Interpretation,” Woodford contributes, “Interpreting Images: Mysteries, Mistakes, and Misunderstandings” (413–23), which discusses a number of case-studies of misinterpretation, and is effectively a coda to the earlier chapter. Here it sits alongside chapters by Sian Lewis on “Woman and Myth” (443–58), which mainly discusses women in myth, but also myth in women’s (or gender) studies, and Richard Armstrong on “Psychoanalysis: The Wellspring of Myth?” (471–85), a critical, but sympathetic, discussion of the place of myth in Freud and Jung, among others. All these chapters are in some sense about interpretation, although not necessarily interpretation of myths: and all scholarship is interpretation of something. Dieter Hertel’s “The Myth of History: The Case of Troy” (425–41), a clearly presented revisiting of the age-old question of the historicity of the Trojan War, has also been put under the “Interpretation,” while Alan Griffiths’ similarly titled, but considerably more wide-ranging “Myth in History” (195–207), has been placed in “Myth Performed, Myth Believed.”

This slightly haphazard organization contributes to the character of the book. The editors make no claims to completeness in the areas they cover, and in the introduction, “Thinking through Myth, Thinking Myth Through,” happily identify a number of topics they were unable to include. Above all, anyone looking for discussion of the reception of Greek myth in modern literature should look elsewhere. Nor is it the case that all the contributions are of equal quality, although most have something to interest the inquisitive reader. Although many volumes in the Wiley-Blackwell series of companions may set out to provide a single place for students or general readers to get an introduction to the subject, and an indication of current trends in scholarship, Dowden and Livingstone have recognized that this would be impossible to achieve in a manageable volume on Greek mythology. So this is a book to dip into, rather than to read through from cover to cover. But that is equally a way of saying that it is a volume to which the reader can return often with profit.

posted with permission:

Björn C. Ewald and Carlos F. Noreña, eds. The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual. Yale Classical Studies 35. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 365. Hardcover, £60.00/$99.00. ISBN 978-0-521-51953-3.

Reviewed by Jennifer E. Thomas, Hamilton College

(Note: The Table of Contents of this volume appears at the end of the review.)

In September 2005, I had the pleasure of attending a conference in New Haven on “the Emperor and Rome.” It stood out for excellence in two categories: the high quality of the papers and the frequency with which Yale’s caterers brought out meals, snacks and coffee—perfect panem et circenses for a grad student. Over the years I have frequently consulted my notes from the conference for both research and teaching. I was pleased to see that those excellent papers have not only now been published, but also supplemented by two additional essays. The result is a thought-provoking collection that will benefit readers in a number of disciplines.

The essays examine “the relationship between … the Roman imperial monarchy, as a particular configuration of power, and the nexus of actors, practices, images, and spaces” of the city of Rome (xxi). Imperial presentation and the interconnection of place and politics in Rome are trendy topics, but this book goes beyond the normal focus on monuments to include factors like the urban plebs, public rituals and “ephemeral” structures, and private commemorations. The essays examine a city beyond concrete and marble, one that was not just built by emperors, but grew together with them. They also weave together different disciplines and methodologies, mixing theoretical approaches with the more positivist style of traditional topographic studies. Some of the ideas expressed here are not new, but several are presented in English for the first time, either as a new translation of an article or a revisiting of work previously published in German, French, or Spanish, a welcome development on both counts.

In their introduction, Ewald and Noreña connect the dots between the diverse topics and approaches of the volume and contextualize it in current scholarship. Their nuanced, rapid discussion may leave non-specialists a bit confused, but there are rewards here for anyone interested in the Principate’s public guise. In particular, their argument that the term “propaganda” “should ideally be given up altogether” (33) is cogent and ought to be read by anyone considering using it in the context of the emperors’ public representation.

Although the introduction deals individually with the themes of the subtitle (space, representation, and ritual), the volume is not similarly subdivided, and each essay combines the themes. The first is the only one not written for the volume; instead, Zanker’s Der Kaiser baut fürs Volk (1997) is offered in English as “By the Emperor, For the People” with updated bibliography. His examination of leisure, liberalitas, and urban space remains pertinent after 15 years, and his discussion of amusement parks complements recent scholarship, for instance, Spencer 2005 [[1]] on Nero’s “Disneyfication” of Rome, but with a more positive, less condemning conclusion.

Similarly, although written for this volume, Flaig’s essay on Nero presents in English arguments he has previously published in French and German. Although his treatment of the plebs tends to create a political monolith of a group that must have been fragmented and inconsistent, his reading of Tacitus offers a convincing case for his model of the Principate as an “acceptance” system with no real legitimacy. Arce’s examination of imperial funerals in effigie also revisits a topic from his previous work in Spanish, but its presentation here in English allows him to respond to recent work on the imperial cult, notably Gradel.[[2]] Fittschen’s essay on portraits focuses on the issue of Kopienkritik and offers Anglophone readers a snapshot of his four decades of publication in German on the subject. I found his chapter an engaging introduction to the subject.

The other essays feature original work on smaller areas of research. Eck focuses on the ways in which the elite adapted to new rules of public display under the Caesars, and his discussion of small equestrian statues and trapezophora was particularly fascinating. Mayer emphasizes that social roles limited the choices Romans had in praising the emperor and offers an alternative to viewing the uniformity of praise as centrally determined propaganda. Both chapters valuably give other Roman actors more of a voice in the representation of the emperor.

The next essays shift the focus from the people back to the buildings. Packer links Pompey’s theater with the Temple of Concord, as restored by Tiberius, showing how Pompey offered the Julio-Claudians a model for imperial behavior; this chapter is notable for beautiful illustrations, particularly the digital models of the theater. Boatwright’s title puns on “homeland security” to argue that Antonine monuments reflect a mood of anxiety, but her focus is mainly on the period’s temples, columns, and funerary monuments. Marlowe argues that Constantine usurped not only Maxentius’ throne, but also his building program, which had emphasized the conservation of Rome after a period of neglect. These chapters masterfully illustrate how exemplum-minded emperors exploited the palimpsest of the Roman cityscape.

The concluding chapters, including Fittschen, Flaig, and Arce, focus on the emperor himself. Koortbojian examines statues depicting Caesar and Augustus as imperatores, as opposed to traditional triumphator statues, and argues for anti-triumphal imagery in these innovative public portraits. D’Ambra, like Arce, focuses on imperial funerals, particularly the pyre and the sensory stimulation provided by the cremation, including the running colors of encaustic paintings, the burning of incense and other fragrant offerings as a buffer from the smell of the burning corpse, and the loud snaps and hisses as the massive wooden pyre collapsed. She marshals evidence from both literature and material sources to provides vivid testimony to how memorable these ephemeral monuments would have been to witnesses.

In sum, The Emperor and Rome brings together an impressive roster of experts from different fields, resulting in a well-rounded exploration of the complex relationships between Rome and its residents. The book contains many high-quality illustrations and is generally free from errors. I enjoyed reading it very much and find it a fitting monument to the equally enjoyable, albeit ephemeral gathering of seven years ago.

Table of Contents

Björn C. Ewald and Carlos F. Noreña, “Introduction.”
1. Paul Zanker, “By the emperor, for the people: ‘popular’ architecture in Rome.”
2. Werner Eck, “The emperor and senatorial aristocracy in competition for public space.”
3. Emanuel Mayer, “Propaganda, staged applause, or local politics? Public monuments from Augustus to Septimius Severus.”
4. James E. Packer, “Pompey’s Theater and Tiberius’ Temple of Concord: a Late Republican primer for an early Imperial patron.”
5. Mary T. Boatwright, “Antonine Rome: security in the homeland.”
6. Elizabeth Marlowe, “Liberator urbis suae: Constantine and the ghost of Maxentius.”
7. Klaus Fittschen, “The portraits of Roman emperors and their families: controversial positions and unresolved problems.”
8. Michael Koortbojian, “Crossing the pomerium: the armed ruler at Rome .”

9. Egon Flaig, “How the Emperor Nero lost acceptance in Rome.”
10. Eve D’Ambra, “The imperial funerary pyre as a work of ephemeral architecture.”
11. Javier Arce, “Roman imperial funerals in effigie.”

NOTES

[[1]] D. Spencer, “Lucan’s Follies: Memory and Ruin in a Civil-War Landscape,” G&R 52 (2005) 46-69.

[[2]] I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford, 2002).

posted with permission:

Norbert H. O. Duckwitz, Reading the Gospel of St. Mark in Greek: A Beginning. Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2011. Pp. xxi + 333. Paper, $19.00 ISBN 978-0-86516-776-6.

Reviewed by Wilfrid E. Major, Louisiana State University

This latest reader for intermediate students of Greek will serve a niche in the 21st century, although it is fundamentally a throwback to much older textbooks.

Anyone who has seen the author’s previous reader on the Gospel of St. John [[1]] will find this offering familiar. The book comprises four components: an introduction (xiii–xxi) which surveys the Greek alphabet, pronunciation, and the structure of Greek nouns and verbs; the text of the Gospel of Mark (1–257), with vocabulary and plentiful notes below the text on each page; a reference grammar (258–308); and full vocabulary section (309–33). This arrangement repeats that of the John reader, and, indeed, the introduction and grammatical appendix are identical to those in the earlier one.

A brief preface explains the genesis and intended learning strategy of the book. Duckwitz developed both the John and Mark readers at Brigham Young University to enable students to read a substantial amount of the New Testament in Greek at the beginning and intermediate levels. Such a goal can at first seem as if he is providing a “reading approach” in contrast to a “grammar approach,” but such a categorization misrepresents his method, for Duckwitz intends students to build their comprehension of the text using quite traditional building blocks. Every few lines of text (no page reaches even ten lines of text) are followed by vocabulary entries, detailed information about the morphology and syntax, and some exegesis.

Insofar as Duckwitz’s goal is to have all the information students need at hand in a single volume, so that they do not have to consult a lexicon or grammar separately, his presentation is successful, valuable, and sure to be treasured by novice readers, who tend to approach large swaths of Greek text with trepidation. Although unstated, Duckwitz seems to have constructed his reader in opposition to textbooks like William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek, the textbook used most widely for introducing students to Biblical Greek.[[2]] No one would deny the virtues of Mounce’s materials: precision of detail and clarity of presentation. The knock on Mounce comes with syntax and comprehension, or rather the near absence of them. Despite the presence of short passages and brief examples of exegesis, Mounce’s book is dominated by phonology and morphology. Students can thus legitimately feel that they come to master an extraordinary amount of detail and still walk away with only a tender feeling for a simple Greek sentence or clause. Duckwitz’s readers are a welcome counterbalance.

Teachers and students should nevertheless be aware of blemishes and missed opportunities in the current volume. In the setting of the Greek text, stray spaces all too often split words, which can easily confuse novice readers who might think the two parts are separate words (e.g., on p. 28, Mk 1:34, ᾔδεισαν is split across lines as ᾔ and δεισαν, with no hyphen). The wealth of information provided in the notes on each page will be a substantial part of the book’s appeal, but sometimes Duckwitz and his editors seem to lose track of what they are saying (e.g., on p. 32, twice in a long paragraph comes the note that the verb governs the genitive), and there are errors (e.g., on p. 18, ὀλίγον is an accusative of duration, so the detailed explanation of it as a cognate accusative will confuse inexperienced readers).

Furthermore, while Duckwitz understandably wants to retain the features of his previous reader, he misses opportunities to capitalize on advances in Greek pedagogy over the last decade. Vocabulary is one such area. Duckwitz is to be commended for providing a vocabulary section for each page, but his strategy could be improved. At first, the vocabulary is complete for every word, and then lemmas drop out after about ten appearances. For those reading the entire Gospel continuously, this arrangement has benefits, but it can be counterproductive for those who read only selections. Moreover, there is no list of high-frequency words (a list of all the words occurring ten times or more would make sense, given Duckwitz’s approach). The bar for the pedagogical deployment of vocabulary has been raised since Duckwitz completed his John reader. For example, Mounce’s beginning Greek book purposefully builds a student’s high-frequency vocabulary comprising roughly 80% of the New Testament, and chapters even give a student’s statistical progress toward this goal. Two complete intermediate readers of the entire New Testament now provide vocabulary with the text for all lemmas which occur fewer than thirty times in the corpus, along with occasional parsing information.[[3]]

Likewise, the phonological, morphological (parsing) and syntactical information eases from very full to less detailed, but Duckwitz never explains the arc to this pattern. For teachers, then, it is not clear how to guide and prioritize grammatical topics. Finally, the piling of information makes finding any given datum a challenge. The vocabulary entries are given in their own section, so why not analogous sections for the phonology, morphology, syntax and exegesis? In an age of digital layout, this is a reasonable expectation, but these pages have the look of a dense 19th-century schoolbook.

Overall, however, there are many positives that recommend this book. It does make an entire Gospel compact, accessible and affordable. For the price and the comprehensive annotation, there is nothing better for a course devoted to, at least in part, introducing readers to extended reading in the New Testament. It is thus a very welcome addition to the growing set of excellent intermediate readers for Greek.

NOTES

[[1]] Norbert H. O. Duckwitz, Reading the Gospel of St. John in Greek: A Beginning (New York: Caratzas, 2002), ISBN 978-089241-584-3.

[[2]] William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), ISBN 978-0310-287681.

[[3]] Richard J. Goodrich and Albert L. Lukaszewski, A Reader’s Greek New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), ISBN 978-0310-273783; and Barclay M. Newman, The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), ISBN 978-1598562859.

Catching up …

• 2012.09.05:  Maria Serena Mirto, Death in the Greek World: from Homer to the Classical Age. (First published in Italian 2007; translated by A. M. Osborne).
• 2012.09.04:  Steven Johnstone, A History of Trust in Ancient Greece.
• 2012.09.03:  S. D. Lambert, Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher.
• 2012.09.02:  Johann P. Arnason, Kurt A. Raaflaub, The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. The ancient world: comparative histories.
• 2012.08.60:  Brigitte Pérez-Jean, Les Dialectiques de l’ascèse. Rencontres, 18.
• 2012.08.59:  Zacharoula Petraki, The Poetics of Philosophical Language: Plato, Poets and Presocratics in the Republic. Sozomena. Studies in the recovery of ancient texts, 9.
• 2012.08.58:  Christopher Shields, Ancient Philosophy: a Contemporary Introduction. Second edition (first edition published 2003).
• 2012.08.57:  James G. Clark, Frank T. Coulson, Kathryn L. McKinley, Ovid in the Middle Ages.
• 2012.08.56:  Daniela Patrizia Taormina, Rosa Maria Piccione, Giamblico. I frammenti delle epistole. Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento. Elenchos, 56.
• 2012.08.55:  David R. Slavitt, The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil.
• 2012.08.54:  Pierre-Louis Gatier, Julien Aliquot, Lévon Nordiguian, Sources de l’histoire de Tyr: textes de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Âge.
• 2012.08.53:  D. M. Carter, Why Athens? A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics.
• 2012.08.52:  Noel Lenski, The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine. Revised edition (first published 2006).
• 2012.08.51:  Emma Aston, Mixanthrôpoi: Animal-human Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion. Kernos. Supplément, 25.
• 2012.08.50:  Mark J. Lutz, Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato’s ‘Laws’.
• 2012.08.49:  Andrea L. Carbone, Aristote illustré. Représentations du corps et schématisation dans la biologie aristotélicienne. Les anciens et les modernes – études de philosophie, 3.
• 2012.08.48:  Fabrice Galtier, L’image tragique de l’Histoire chez Tacite: étude des schèmes tragiques dans les Histoires et les Annales. Collection Latomus, 333.
• 2012.08.47:  David Stuttard, Power Games: Ritual and Rivalry at the Ancient Greek Olympics.
• 2012.08.46:  José Antonio Dabdab Trabulsi, Le Présent dans le Passé: autour de quelques Périclès du XXe siècle et de la possibilité d’une vérité en Histoire. Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Antiquité.
• 2012.08.38:  Oretta Olivieri, Miti e culti tebani nella poesia di Pindaro. Filologia e critica, 89.
• 2012.08.39:  H. S. Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology. Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, 173.
• 2012.08.40:  Thomas Faucher, Marie-Christine Marcellesi, Olivier Picard, Nomisma: la circulation monétaire dans le monde grec antique. Actes du colloque international, Athènes, 14-17 avril 2010. BCH Supplément, 53.
• 2012.08.41:  Vincent Azoulay, Paulin Ismard, Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes: autour du politique dans la cité classique. Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 109.
• 2012.08.42:  P. J. Rhodes, Alcibiades: Athenian Playboy, General and Traitor.
• 2012.08.43:  Marina De Franceschini, Giuseppe Veneziano, Villa Adriana: architettura celeste: i segreti e i solstizi. Accademia Villa Adriana, 1.
• 2012.08.44:  Filippo Canali De Rossi, Hippika: corse di cavalli e di carri in Grecia, Etruria e Roma. Volume I: la gara delle quadrighe nel mondo greco. Nikephoros. Beihefte Bd 18.
• 2012.08.45:  Daniel J. Pullen, The Early Bronze Age Village on Tsoungiza Hill. Nemea Valley Archaeological Project, 1.
• 2012.08.46:  José Antonio Dabdab Trabulsi, Le Présent dans le Passé: autour de quelques Périclès du XXe siècle et de la possibilité d’une vérité en Histoire. Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Antiquité.