Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews

July 21, 2012 ~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

CJ Online Review: Dodge, Spectacle in the Roman World

July 20, 2012 ~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

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Hazel Dodge, Spectacle in the Roman World. Classical World Series. London and New York: Bristol Classical Press/Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. Pp. 96. Paperback, £12.99/$19.95. ISBN 978-1-8539-9696-2.

Reviewed by Linda Maria Gigante, University of Louisville

Hazel Dodge, the Louis Claude Purser Senior Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at Trinity College, Dublin, has published extensively on topics related to the ancient city and building technology in the Roman Empire. In this small but highly informative book, she presents a concise overview of spectacles in the Roman world from the later Republic through the first two centuries of the Imperial age. There are seven chapters, each averaging between 10–15 pages in length, that include information on various types of entertainments and the structures where they were presented. Dodge illustrates her key points by presenting recent archaeological discoveries and modern perspectives on Roman entertainment, and, while her primary focus is the city of Rome, she also includes evidence from both the eastern and western Empire.

In Chapter 1, which serves as the general introduction, Dodge sets forth the types of evidence for various Roman spectacles, highlighting new discoveries of entertainment structures (like the amphitheater in Sofia, Bulgaria, found in 2006) and ancient sources like Martial’s Epigrams, and other evidence including gladiator tombstones and floor mosaics. Chapters 2 through 5 focus on the types of spectacles, such as the circus and chariot racing (2); gladiators and gladiatorial displays (3); animal hunts (4); and naumachiae and aquatic displays (5). In Chapter 6 Dodge considers the fragmentary nature of the evidence for spectacles in late antiquity, noting that, while we know a considerable amount about chariot-racing, a full complement of events continued to take place in Rome into the 4th century CE, with the last chariot races held in the Circus Maximus in the mid 6th century. Chapter 7, which serves as the conclusion, is concerned with the ancient context for spectacles in Roman society and our perceptions of them today. Dodge reminds the reader that, regardless of the nature of these public entertainments, they all were meant to enhance the political authority of the person paying for them and reinforced the Romans’ social and gender hierarchy. In the Appendix there are definitions of entertainment building-types, the types of events associated with them, as well as well-preserved examples and plans. “Further Reading” consists of a list of secondary sources, most of them in English and dated from the 1980s to the present, that are organized according to headings that parallel the titles of the book’s chapters.

Dodge’s expertise in the field of Roman spectacles is evident throughout the text in her insightful interpretations of the literary and archaeological evidence and in her recognition that there is still much to be learned about the topic. In Chapter 5, for example, she acknowledges that there is no consensus regarding the flooding of the Colosseum and points out that the necessary water-source has yet to be found. And in Chapter 3, on gladiators and gladiatorial displays, she points out that the 20 or so different costumes worn by gladiators had their origins in the battle-gear worn by Rome’s early enemies (including Samnites and Thracians), underscoring the professional fighters’ popularity as exemplars of virtus. Dodge also discusses the 1993 discovery of a gladiators’ necropolis near the stadium at Ephesus, where the remains of 68 gladiators revealed that the deceased had received relatively good medical care and consumed a diet high in carbohydrates.

The stated objective of the Classical World Series is to explore the culture and achievements of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome by publishing affordable books designed for advanced high school and introductory level university students. Dodge makes an important contribution to this Series by writing on a topic of particular interest to all students of Roman civilization: public spectacles. She strikes a good balance between art, archaeology, social history, and literary sources by discussing the buildings where these events took place, the identity of the people who were involved with them, and the Romans’ comments about them. Dodge obviously took great care in selecting a manageable number of black and white illustrations for the text, to include plans and photos of specific entertainment structures, as well as mosaics, coins, graffiti, and reliefs. Additionally, the ancient authors she discusses cover a wide scope, ranging from Pliny the Elder and Suetonius to Tertullian and Augustine. In presenting the evidence for spectacles in this fashion, Dodge provides students with an important perspective on the multidisciplinary nature of scholarship in Roman studies. This book will surely inspire them to pursue further study in the field.

CJ Online Review: Frederiksen, Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period

July 20, 2012 ~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

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Rune Frederiksen, Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period, 900–480 BC. Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xxx + 238. Hardcover, £100.00/$170.00. ISBN 978-0-19-957812-2.

Reviewed by Benjamin Sullivan, Cornell University

The archaeology of Early Iron Age (EIA, 900–700 BCE) and archaic (700–480 BCE) fortification walls is a relatively obscure subject, yet as Rune Frederiksen demonstrates, it deserves much more of our attention. Frederiksen’s book derives from a dissertation produced under the auspices of the Copenhagen Polis Centre, and the painstakingly elaborated rubrics characteristic of the Centre’s work can be observed throughout. It is a skillfully assembled and judiciously synthesized contribution that will be an invaluable help to researchers whose work touches on aspects of early Greece. The thesis Frederiksen develops from his research, namely that EIA and archaic Greek communities were usually fortified, may be counted a somewhat less successful effort.

Eight chapters of discussion precede a 78-page catalogue of 132 walled sites. In the catalogue and throughout the book, the primary categorizing is into three groups, categories A (walls dated by excavation evidence), B (walls dated by masonry style) and C (walls attested by literary sources). Catalogue entries provide summaries of the walls at each site, subdivided under various headings (location, construction, date, etc.), and include essential bibliography. Many entries are accompanied by photographs and plans. The latter vary in quality, since they are reproduced from a wide variety of sources, but are almost always informative. Fifteen tables summarize the catalogue findings and arrange them by categories such as geographic distribution, chronology, and the elements and dimensions of walls; four maps plot the tables’ most important categories.

A review this brief cannot do justice to the many problems illuminated in the text. Chapters include treatments of the “types” (i.e., the variety and character of spaces the walls enclosed) of fortification (Ch. 2); the Greek terminology of fortifications and their (meager) representation in the visual arts (Ch. 3); the destruction of early walls and the manifold ways walls were obscured by later settlement (Ch. 4); the physical characteristics and construction of walls (Ch. 5); and the notoriously difficult questions related to the dating of walls (Ch. 6). Chapter 7 is an attempt to answer how walls were constructed, how they developed over time, and how pre-classical walls differed from later walls. Here Frederiksen employs a periodization with divisions into EIA (C9–8), seventh century, middle archaic (600–550) and late archaic (550–479), each period analyzed under the headings of distribution and topography, and construction and architecture.

Chapter 8 presents final conclusions and includes a valuable discussion of the importance of city walls for establishing the shape and identity of a polis. Frederiksen importantly asserts the usefulness of walls as an urbanization metric, as against temples. Adopting admittedly optimistic interpretations of the data, he thus argues that walls were the most common monumental structures in early Greek towns, and tentatively concludes that the polis may have developed along more secular lines than usually supposed.

The basic flaw in Frederiksen’s thesis is that it often relies on evidence that does not yet exist and is likewise too sanguine about evidence that does exist. The former tendency is apparent in his discussion of what he calls the “problem of central Greece” (105–8). While Mycenaean urban centers concentrated in the Peloponnesos and central Greece, EIA concentrations shifted dramatically to the islands and Anatolian littoral, a phenomenon that seems to indicate that the mainland was isolated from eastern urbanization trends. Frederiksen implies, however, that the mainland walls of the Homeric poems have not been discovered because they have not been an archaeological priority, which may come as a surprise to Peloponnesian excavators. Frederiksen offers Lefkandi as a possible solution to the problem. While no fortifications have been found here, Frederiksen believes that their discovery will show that mainland EIA sites were fortified; yet this is to construct an argument for which there is at present no evidence.

Frederiksen’s interpretation of existing evidence can also be problematic. As he acknowledges (7), ethnicity is a slippery concept, and while he claims it will not affect his thesis, he includes Cypriot Paphos and Salamis as evidence for EIA fortification, since they developed into Greek poleis by the C5. Ethnicity aside, the size of the Cypriot and Cretan intramural spaces and the relative sophistication of their walls are so much greater than other EIA sites that they should probably be considered outliers. In fact, only ten EIA sites outside Crete and Cyprus were fortified. Even granting that these walls have been accurately identified and dated (by no means certain), the number is exiguous. Moreover, again excepting Cretan and Cypriot sites, the estimated intramural areas are tiny in comparison with later periods and at most of the sites it is possible that the walls enclosed refuges rather than settlements proper. The C7 evidence is no better, and it is perhaps significant that Frederiksen restructures his chronological analysis from four groupings in the penultimate chapter to only two in his final analysis, before and after 600, for polis fortification only really becomes widespread after this date.

None of these criticisms mean that Frederiksen is not cautious or lacking excellent judgment at every turn, and it should be stressed that he diligently exposes his findings to alternate interpretations. Whatever the validity of its thesis, the book is extremely well conceived and a trove of information about a neglected subject.

CJ Online Review: Ready, Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad

July 19, 2012 ~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

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Jonathan L. Ready, Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. x + 323. Hardcover, $93.00/£55.00. ISBN 978-0-521-19064-0

Reviewed by Rebecca M. Muich, Xavier University

In this thoroughly-researched, stimulating work, Jonathan Ready argues that similes can function as mechanisms of competition within the Iliadic narrative. Ready’s introduction lays out in broad terms his conception of the “competitive dynamics” created by the poet, the characters, and the narrator of the Iliad. Similes construct the competitive dynamics of the Iliad in the following ways: 1) characters use similes to compete as verbal artists; 2) characters use similes to compete with the narrator, in the sense that they will “seek to top” (4) a simile used by the narrator with their own; 3) the narrator uses similes in his description of the competitions between characters, especially on the battlefield; and 4) the narrator uses similes as a means of conferring narrative attention, a honor for which the characters are striving.

In Chapter 1, Ready deconstructs the “A is like B” proposition of similes, showing that the nuance of a simile is not revealed in a direct comparison between A (the tenor) and B (the vehicle), but rather in the degree of actual likeness between A and B. A simile is defined by the degree of difference, or distance, between tenor and vehicle; the comparison by the degree of similarity, or proximity, between tenor and vehicle; and the likeness is defined by an ambiguous distance. The assessment of degree of actual likeness plays a central role in Ready’s later analyses.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 address how similes are used in character-text to distinguish the speakers as competent verbal artists. In Chapter 2, Ready analyzes several stand-alone similes in a variety of discursive contexts to demonstrate how similes can enrich the rhetoric of a speech. In Chapter 3, as a preparation for following chapters, Ready outlines how characters can challenge a speaker’s deployment of a simile by reusing and/or recharacterizing that simile in his own speech. Chapter 4 is the first analysis of such sequences of similes, with Ready paying particularly close attention to how the “recycling” character challenges the message or intent of the originating character. In chapters 5 and 6, Ready expands his scope to include similes spoken by the narrator. In Chapter 5, he claims that similes spoken by characters might expand upon or exploit the narrator’s similes, or they might challenge or repudiate the rhetoric of the narrator’s similes by reusing or recharacterizing the motifs in their own similes. Chapter 6 focuses solely on the narrator’s use of simile to describe characters in martial contests. When the narrator uses similes or sequences of similes in his descriptions of battlefield valor, he amplifies the exploits of one character at the expense of the rest. Ready claims that this method has an “agonistic orientation” (211), as it contributes to the conception of characters as competitors for the narrative “spotlight,” hoping to accrue “narrative status” (222).

Ready’s strength is the care he takes in unpacking each simile, whether it stands alone or is in sequence. His treatment of the simile sequencing between Achilles and Phoinix in Book 9 is an especially fine example of how this works: in the course of his rejection of Agamemnon’s offerings, Achilles compares himself to a mother bird, working hard to bring nourishment back to her chicks, but enjoying none of the spoils herself; Phoinix, in response, offers another simile of parenting in comparing Peleus’ love for him (Phoinix) to the love of a father for an only son. Ready’s close reading reveals how Phoinix recharacterizes parental love in a way that emphasizes love for a child rather than the work that goes into meeting his needs, offering a more mature understanding of obligation to home and community than Achilles can understand. Readings like these are the highlight of each chapter, and shine a bright light on the rhetorical value of comparative figures. Yet the sharpness of Ready’s insight is blunted somewhat by his attempt to find comparable competitive dynamics at both the story level and text level of the Iliad. The chapters focusing on character-text are successful because Ready begins by assuming that Iliadic characters speak in competitively-charged atmosphere, and that each verbal engagement offers an opportunity to display virtuosity. Not all of the similes he examines are spoken in explicitly competitive contexts, yet the argument holds that the successful manipulation of comparative figures would distinguish a speaker among his peers. But Ready does not completely succeed in convincing the reader that the text level is governed by similarly competitive dynamics. He couches his argument that characters and the narrator compete via simile in a discussion of metalepsis (or paralepsis), the phenomenon of factual seepage between text and story levels that allows a character to remark on more than he ought to know within the logical confines of the story. But simile reuse and recharacterization is not dependent on knowledge of plot points, but rather, as Ready himself explains, on a facility with improvisation. Similarly, the “agonistic orientation” of the narrator’s extended similes names the narrator as the orchestrator of the competitive dynamic, not the characters. Ready’s point that the characters display a marked interest in how their personal narratives will unfold after their death is well-taken, but does not lend immediate support to the suggestion that if they knew their battlefield exploits were being narrated, they would want to be in the spotlight as much as possible. These arguments distract somewhat from Ready’s otherwise engaging readings, but ultimately do not diminish the final result. In his conclusion, Ready reminds his reader that his goal was not to assess similes as mnemonic or interpretive aids, or as clues about the nature of life in the Bronze Age, but rather as rhetorical weapons deployed in competitive verbal contests. At this he is largely successful.

CJ Online Review: Sens, Asclepiades of Samos

July 18, 2012 ~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

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Alexander Sens, Asclepiades of Samos: Epigrams and Fragments. Edited with Translation and Commentary. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Hardcover, £100.00/$150.00. Pp. cxvi + 354. ISBN 978-0-19-925319-7.

Reviewed by Valentina Garulli, University of Bologna

This long-awaited work fully satisfies the reader’s expectations. Sens’ new edition with English translation of and commentary on Asclepiades’ epigrams proves page by page to be the result of thorough research and profound meditation on this text, and will provide much to consider for both those specifically interested in Asclepiades’ poetry and those concerned with epigram as a whole.

The book’s contents are as follows: after a list of abbreviations (xiii–xxiv), a wide and comprehensive introduction, rich in ideas and clever suggestions, which treats the main topics and problems concerning Asclepiades’ life and work (xxv–cix); text, critical apparatus and English translation of the testimonia (cx–cxiv); critical edition, English translation of and commentary on 52 poems, including 5 fragments at the end (1–345); subject index (347–50) and index of Greek words and phrases discussed (351–3). A final comparatio numerorum would have been welcome, as well as a complete word index. For the latter one must refer to the work of L. A. Guichard (Bern 2004), which is the most important edition (with Spanish translation and commentary) of Asclepiades’ epigrams prior to Sens’.

Throughout the book constant attention is paid to Asclepiades’ literary past, present and future. Such a perspective implies the conviction that collections in which poetry was “treated as a written form separate from its original performance context” helped to “blur the boundary” between other genres and epigram (xliv). This is a productive approach to epigram, which must be examined with other genres in the background but also with regard to its own subgenres and history (see xxxviii–xlii). Sens is always careful to detect in the texts the distinctive features of different kinds of epigram, whether they be funerary, dedicatory, ecphrastic, or other types, even when such generic clues consist only of a single word, or when they are mixed up. This allows him to catch Asclepiades’ intent in each text and to cast light on the genre as a whole. An excellent example is given by his analysis of ep. XV (96–102). As Sens well observes, the opening words establish the expectation of an epitaph, in which the first-person speaker is the dead person. But the poem “disappoints this expectation and inverts the traditional lamentation of the mors immatura, since … the speaker is still alive, and his point is … that the pain of his life leaves him ready for death”; moreover, “the final couplet … resonates against the common funerary convention that the death … profoundly affected the lives of surviving friends and family,” because “the speaker’s death changes nothing for the Erotes” (97). Sens’ reading brings to light further intriguing aspects of the poem, such as the change of tone from the pathetic seriousness of the beginning to the cool playfulness of the final line, and the ironic effect of the emphasis placed by the speaker on his age. Also in ep. IV the first-person amatory narrative of the lyric tradition combines with the voice of the inscribed epigram (20–1), whereas in ep. VI (36–7) funerary, dedicatory and equestrian epigrams play with one another.

This interest does not lead the author to neglect other aspects of the subject matter: textual criticism, language, metre, and style. Sens’ welcome concision never excludes a substantial discussion of the problems and a survey of the best arguments. His book is a rare combination of scholarly acumen and light, pleasant writing. Such clarity makes this book suitable for teaching: the pages describing Asclepiades’ literary context (li–lxv), especially the chapter focusing on the relationship between Asclepiades and Posidippus (lvii–lx), as well as the limpid description of the manuscript tradition of Asclepiades’ epigrams (c–cvii), should be recommended to all students of Greek poetry.

Sens has the virtue of prudence in his treatment of uncertain questions. The language of Asclepiades (lxv–lxxii), as well as that of other epigrammatists, presents thorny problems; the manuscript tradition is unreliable on this matter, because the original dialectal coloring is likely to have been distorted (lxv–lxvi). Sens reasonably notes that “any editor who seeks to regularize in one direction or another in passages where forms from different dialects coexist must proceed with great caution” (lxvi). In his edition and commentary Sens makes his choices on a specific basis text by text (see, e.g., 4, 55–6, 106), and in his introduction to Asclepiades’ language he illustrates the main tendencies in the corpus, such as Ionic dialectal coloring strongly influenced by Attic, features common to most Doric dialects, and the avoidance of markedly epic forms. In general, he admits that Asclepiades’ language may give examples of “dialect ‘mixing’” and follows the reasonable principle that “in the absence of more information, it seems best to preserve the dialectal inconsistency rather than to regularize in one direction or the other” (lxx). As a result, we cannot use dialect to help us decide whether or not a given poem is by Asclepiades.

The question of authorship is also difficult (xcvi–c). Like Guichard, Sens marks texts from XXXIV onward with an asterisk, as poems doubtfully ascribed by ancient sources alternatively to Asclepiades and other authors, especially Posidippus; unlike Guichard, he excludes from the corpus of Asclepiades’ fragments Ath. 594d (fr. 2 Guich.), a couplet transmitted as Archilochus’ and conjecturally ascribed to the Samian by M. L. West (Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin–New York 1974) 140). In Sens’ opinion not only dialectal coloring but also “[t]heme, style, and metre […] are unreliable indexes” for accepting or rejecting an ascription to Asclepiades, because his corpus is small and influenced by Meleager’s editorial work (xcvii). As a general rule, the question of ascription must be considered open and in most cases Sens wisely confines himself to merely admitting that “the scales incline in one direction or another” (xcvii). Discussing the texts ascribed alternatively to Asclepiades and Posidippus, Sens first pays attention to the fact that an epigram has a specific subject-matter in common either with another epigram of the corpus or with an epigram by Posidippus, and then wonders whether the epigrams in question must be regarded as companion pieces composed by the same author or as texts responding to each other and composed by different authors. Nonetheless, even such a criterion may sometimes appear too subjective. For example, Sens inclines to attribute ep. *XXXV to Posidippus: its subject is too similar to that of Asclepiades’ ep. VI to be the work of the same author, and the competition between courtesans described in *XXXV would be “a metaphor for literary rivalry” between Posidippus and Asclepiades (236). Guichard too regards the ascription to Posidippus as more plausible: he observes that the similarity of epp. VI and *XXXV cannot be compared with that of other pairs in Asclepiades’ corpus. This argument is questionable: as Guichard admits (389), Asclepiades might have composed pairs of epigrams on a similar subject, and, although the two epigrams play with the same sexual metaphor, they describe two different scenarios, a courtesan in one case (ep. VI) and two women competing in the other (ep. *XXXV). Moreover, the humorous engagement with Posidippus’ ἱππικά identified by both Guichard (390–1) and Sens (235–6) seems to make less sense as self-parody, if we regard Posidippus as the author of ep. *XXXV. However, even considering Posidippus as the author of that poem, one can hardly find arguments for reading the competition between two courtesans as a metaphor for literary rivalry.

Sens provides his readers with only a select bibliography: this is apparent in both the critical apparatus and the commentary. Whatever the reasons for this choice are, scholars will find it annoying not to be provided with complete bibliographic information. The readers deserve to know, for example, in what publication the “Martorelli” mentioned in the critical apparatus of ep. *XXXIV conjectured ἐρχομένην instead of the transmitted ἐρχόμενοι at line 2 (226). Moreover, a compendious list of the most important discussions of each of these epigrams would have been welcome, allowing readers go back to the sources of the editor and form their own opinion. For this purpose too, one must still use Guichard’s edition.

The texts edited and commented are enumerated following Hellenistic Epigrams by Gow and Page (Cambridge 1965), which includes only 47 texts (see p. xcv); like Guichard, Sens adds ep. *XLVII (and Gow–Page’s XLVII turns into Guichard’s and Sens’ *XLVIII), and, unlike Guichard, adds 4 fragments (XLIX–LII) instead of 5. Sens’ textual choices are led by a rare sensitivity to, and familiarity with, Asclepiades’ work: as a result, in several cases his text is the best available. Sens’ lines—as well as Guichard’s—contain far fewer obeli than those of Gow–Page: Sens improves a text obelized by both Gow–Page and Guichard in VIII 4 (Sens’ good conjecture ἔδακεν gives the epigram an interesting final point and is palaeographically plausible), XX 3 (the transmitted text can be understood without emendation following Sens’ interpretation), *XLV 3 (Jacobs’ χερί instead of the transmitted περί makes a good sense) and reasonably keeps Gow–Page’s cruces at least in XXIV 2 (although ἃ μήτ’ ἄνθει μήτε γένει γ’ ἐν ἴσῳ—printed by Guichard as a combination of conjectures found in the apographs G and V—“seems on the right track semantically,” as Sens admits, it is stylistically rather problematic) and XXV 8 (the hapax θέσμυκες which produces the only case of a pentameter with a spondaic foot in the second hemistich cannot be accepted as such). In ep. V 1 Sens prints Wilamowitz’s conjecture τὠφθαλμῷ, rightly refusing τῷ θαλλῷ of the manuscripts (obelized by Gow–Page, regarded as sound by Guichard and many other editors), which does not give acceptable sense.

Sens’ translations deserve consideration for their effort to adhere to the Greek text: see e.g. ep. V (27). This makes Sens’ book even more suitable for students. Many readers will also appreciate that he does not indulge in peculiar English idioms in translations, or in the book as a whole.

The structure of the commentary is clear: after text, critical apparatus and English translation, readers are given a brief summary of the epigram’s contents and point, which helps them to focus immediately on the implications of the epigram. An overall commentary on the poem as a whole follows, giving much space to intertextual remarks: in particular, attention is consistently paid to later Greek and Latin texts and authors influenced by Asclepiades or alluding to his epigrams, within both the literary and the epigraphic traditions (see, e.g., 22–3 on ep. IV; 69–70 on ep. XI; 83 on ep. XIII; 113–14 on ep. XVII; 121–2 on ep. XVIII; etc.). A line-by-line commentary closes the discussion on each epigram.

Sens’ commentary contributes to a deep understanding of the texts: his attention to every nuance makes him at ease with such a refined poet. Of course, one might disagree about a few interpretations. In the second couplet of ep. V, for example, in Sens’ opinion, the point is that “the speaker, having been burnt by Didyme’s heat, sees her as a lovely rose, even while those who have not been scorched … do not” (28): the active voice of the transitive verb θάλψωμεν, with ἄνθρακες as direct object, may suggest that we regard the black Didyme not only as the person who excites the narrator’s passion, but also as a passive victim of love’s passion herself; the topos of a man “melting like wax by the fire” for a woman’s beauty seems to be unexpectedly completed by the less usual image of the woman burning like coals heated by a man.

Sens’ interpretation is balanced with regard to possible sexual double entendres: it seems wise, for example, to reject (137–8) the interpretation of πέτασος (ep. XX 4) as referring to Dorcion’s genitals; on the contrary, at the end of ep. V (ῥόδεαι κάλυκες) an obscene allusion does not seem to be “out of place here,” as Sens claims (35), given the erotic contents of the poem and the attested use of the term ῥόδον for the female genitals (as Sens records ad loc.).

Scholars will certainly benefit from this volume: it provides many novel and well-founded answers, but it also raises as many questions and provides plenty of direction for further research. We are dealing with a very important book in scholarship on Asclepiades, which works in synergy with Guichard’s edition. Those interested in Asclepiades have now at their disposal two major scholarly works, which, taken together, mark a great advance on Gow–Page and the other editions, and will support further work in the fields of both textual criticism and exegesis.

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