Most of us tend to encounter Greek myths in childhood as exciting stories brimming with heroes, monsters, and moody divinities. The story of Odysseus’ homecoming and the story about the Little Mermaid feature different characters, but their relationship to reality is understood to be the same: they are fantasy, and not real. If, like me, you were lucky enough to escape the Disneyfication of fairy tales in your childhood, perhaps you will remember the brutality and harshness of folktales, which puts them on a par with many Greek myths. My first encounters with ancient Greek stories about the gods and heroes were very similar to Sarah Iles Johnston's: we were both captivated by Greek myth as children, and the passion, once kindled, only grew stronger when we became mature enough to read the ‘real thing’. In my case, learning about ancient Greek culture and becoming a scholar of Greek religion required a thorough rethink, as I needed to readjust my stance towards Greek myths in order to understand the role that they played in ancient Greek society as formative narratives about the communities’ identities, early history, and human relationships with the gods. My process essentially required an emotional detachment from the beloved heroes of my childhood and a significant amount of distancing.
In her new book, The Story of Myth, Johnston shows that it was precisely the emotional investment and attachment that made stories about the gods and heroes into an effective conduit for forging and strengthening religious belief in ancient Greece.Footnote 1 In order to demonstrate this thesis, Johnston relies on recent studies of the effects of engaging narratives on emotion and cognition. This book is yet another important and welcome contribution to the study of belief in Greek religion. Sections have already been published as pilot studies, and I especially recommend Johnston's two articles in Arethusa 48 (2015), where she presents portions of Chapters 3 and 5. In the book, Johnston first clearly outlines her aims in the project and her definition of myth, and then proceeds to show how the ritualist approach to the study of religion, starting with W. Robertson Smith, not only divorced myth from ritual, but also relegated myth to a secondary and ancillary status, while bringing ‘things done at a temple’ to the fore of the scholarly investigation of polytheist religions. After a clear and engaging history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship on myth and ritual, Johnston turns to the subject of her investigation, the myth as told by the ancient Greek poets, predominantly from the archaic and classical periods. Johnston herself is a wonderful teller of tales, an engaging and lucid narrator who skilfully handles a wide variety of modern theories and ancient material, which renders this book a delightful and stimulating read. Every now and then she references material culture, but visual representations of Greek myth are not her primary object of interest.
Johnston argues that, in the hands of a skilful poet, stories about the gods and heroes ‘work’ by prompting the audiences to open themselves to realities that could not be experienced by normal means and to gradually embrace the idea that gods and heroes were present among them, acting and affecting the course of mortal lives. She uses Joshua Landy's concept of ‘formative’ fiction and Tanya Luhrmann's research of the Vineyard congregations of the Evangelical church. Landy has shown how narratives can change the way in which people decide what is real by teaching them to stop relying only on their senses as guides of what is real and what not. Luhrmann studied the way in which members of the Vineyard congregation use fiction in order to condition themselves emotionally and cognitively to feel the presence of the God. In addition, Johnston adduces the studies of parasocial relationships (PSR), which remarkably demonstrate that all humans have a capacity to form emotional and cognitive attachments to figures with whom there can be no bilateral social relationship, regardless of whether they are real or fictional, ontologically similar to us, or different. Regardless of whether one has a PSR with Beyoncé, Jesus Christ, or Sherlock Holmes, the cognitive and emotional responses that these relationships elicit are the same.
Building on this research, Johnston draws attention to the aspect of Greek myth that most scholars of Greek religion strip away in their analyses: skilful narration and poetic embellishment. She argues that, instead of reducing myth to essential narratives, scholars of Greek religion should actually focus on the ways in which well-executed story-telling not only draws the audience in, but emotionally and cognitively conditions the listeners to accept the existence of persons whom they cannot grasp with their senses and, what is more, to form attachments to them. Particularly important and effective aspects of ancient Greek story-telling are episodic narration, how individual myths contribute to the cumulative building of the Greek mythic story world, plurimediality, and accretive characters. While the main characters in the Netflix series The Crown are based on real people, but we accept that that they are representations and instantiations of them, and not ontologically identical to them, the various poetic and artistic ancient Greek representations of Zeus, Athena, or Heracles were not understood to be fully fictional, but neither were they real in the same way that Elizabeth II in The Crown is real. While we still see the footage and the photographs, and sometimes even witness an epiphany of Elizabeth II in person, ancient Greeks participated in the verbal and visual discourse featuring a range of representations of Zeus, Athena, and Heracles, a discourse which conditioned them to form attachments to these figures without ever expecting to grasp them with their senses in the same way that they grasped their fellow human beings.
The gods and heroes were represented in a variety of media (plurimediality) which allowed the audiences to experience them in a unique and individual fashion, gradually accruing traits from different instantiations into a personal idea of Athena, Zeus, and Heracles (the accretive character of Greek myth). As a result of their exposure to a wide variety of instantiations of gods and heroes, ancient Greeks invested the cognitive and emotional effort in forming an individual and personal idea about the gods and heroes, which led to developing close bonds with them.
These are some of my personal highlights from Johnston's book. She also discusses ancient Greek ideas about divine omniscience and omnipotence from the perspective of Pascal Boyer's and Justin Barrett's work (without referencing Larson's work on the same topicFootnote 2), and she argues that the myths about metamorphoses and the heroes are a distinctive characteristic of ancient Greek culture. The book is a must-read for every scholar of Greek religion, and will certainly be of interest to the Classics community at large.
Also broad in scope, but more specialist in execution, is a volume edited by Lucy Audley-Miller and Beate Dignas which seeks to explore the transcultural uses of myth in the ancient world.Footnote 3 While much work has been done on identifying similarities in mythic tales across ancient cultures, the precise ways in which myths travelled across language and cultural barriers were always more difficult to establish. A particularly thorny question is that concerning channels of communication between the ancient Near East and ancient Greece. This volume has no fewer than three contributions on this question with three different answers. First, Robin Lane Fox offers additional support for his theory of Euboeans as cultural transmitters, an argument he presented in his 2008 book Travelling Heroes. Martin West supports the bilingual poets thesis, and provides a striking explanation for the precise way in which Near Eastern poetry exerted its influence on the Iliad and the Odyssey: he postulates a bilingual poet who composed a Greek epic about Heracles drawing on the Epic of Gilgamesh, which would represent the missing link between Gilgamesh and Homer. West even provides a partial reconstruction of this lost poem. Finally, Ian Rutherford focuses on the Hesiodic succession myth and the Hittite Song of Coming Forth (previously known as the Song of Kumarbi). He surveys the similarities, acknowledges the possibility of some Near Eastern influence on Greek succession myth, and cautiously suggests possible routes and periods of productive cultural contact. One question, three vastly different answers (and many more have been offered by others).
Robert Parker provides an epilogue to the volume summarizing and commenting on individual papers, so I will keep my digest brief: in some cases, precise channels of influence and mythic transference can be revealed, and so Tanja Scheer discovers how mythic links between Tegea and Paphos on Cyprus were forged for political reasons in the Hellenistic period. Several illuminating chapters on the reception of Greek myth in the Roman world mostly address the question of how the myths were used, not how they arrived there in the first place. One of the strengths of the volume is its emphasis on material culture: from discussions of Etruscan representations of Greek myth on objects for daily use, to analyses of Apulian vase-painting, Pompeian frescoes, and Roman sarcophagi, each archaeological contribution is richly rewarding and methodologically rigorous. As is to be expected, some controversies remain, but the volume is well worth reading and poses interesting questions, even if it does not answer them all.
Another interdisciplinary volume gathers an international team of scholars in order to throw more light on musical performance in antiquity.Footnote 4 Even though cultural contact is not the primary focus of this volume, individual essays on different cultures’ use of music work well together and often illuminate each other. The eleven chapters are organized chronologically, and start and end in Syria. They discuss material from the third millennium bc to the eighth century ad. The chapters on the musical performers in Syria based on the Ebla archives, on the social rank of musicians in ancient Mesopotamia, and on the singing and singers in second-millennium Babylonia cohere very well. On the basis of textual and visual evidence, the papers outline and discuss the activities of the male and female singers, the musical instruments used, and the social position of musicians both at courts and in the lower strata of society. We even find out about unfortunate lovers of music who became the stuff of cautionary tales (a Sumerian poem from Nipur dated to the beginning of the second millennium bce, The Slave and the Scoundrel, tells one such riches-to-rags story which was taught in school in order to dissuade children from embracing the carefree lifestyle of musical indulgence).
A particularly interesting phenomenon is that of itinerant musicians, which is attested both in the highest and the lowest ranks of society. Court performers were recruited from afar and brought to the palaces, but groups of musicians were also brought to the new places of residence as part of the retinue of royal brides and grooms, or they travelled across Syria accompanying notables on their diplomatic missions. Chapter 2 looks at the same phenomenon at the other end of the social scale, painting a picture of wandering musicians who travelled from one festival to another, often accompanied by animals, clowns, and acrobats.
The third chapter analysis the modes, themes, and performative settings of song in second-millennium Babylonia and reconstructs the performance mode of a beautiful wedding song performed as a dialogue between male and female solo singers, accompanied by a choir (The Wedding Song from Sippar, BM 85206), as well as a hymn to the sun-god Utu, again performed by two soloists and at least one choir. Chapter 4 is yet another treat, an exhaustive overview of Egyptian musical performers and instruments from the Early Dynastic era until the Roman period. It also describes a fascinating attempt to reconstruct ancient Egyptian music on the basis of preserved instruments (some were found in such pristine state that they were still playable, while others were painstakingly reconstructed from images). As in the ancient Near East, music in ancient Egypt was both secular and religious, performed by male and female singers and musicians, and pervaded all social classes. Egypt, too, provides a cautionary tale, about the itinerant freelance musician called The Depraved Harpist. Chapter 5 looks into the music in ancient Israel and demonstrates that circular breathing, a technique which enables the aerophone player to maintain the sound without pausing for breath, was known, as was jazz-like improvisation (the latter was condemned in the Hebrew Bible: Amos 6:4–6).
The chapters on the cultures with most evidence, ancient Greece and Rome, are less enticing. The sixth chapter could sit well in the volume on intercultural myth, as it intriguingly suggests that pantomime music performances with narrative contents relating to classical mythology, such as the one described towards the end of Xenophon's Symposium, could have been one of the vehicles for the transmission of Greek myth to Etruria and elsewhere in the classical world. Chapter 7 covers the possible musical and choral performances in the cultic theatres of ancient western Greece. Chapter 8 moves further to the West and sheds light on the music in Iberia on the bases of iconography. Chapter 9 is a cursory overview of what one might learn by perceiving Pompeii and Herculaneum as ‘a challenge to music archaeologists’. Chapter 10 is entirely about how many-holed tibia/aulos became a symbol of moral corruption. And Chapter 11, although on a fascinating topic – the dangers of music and song in Syriac Christianity – promises far more than it delivers. All in all, I recommend this book for its first half, which is truly illuminating and well worth reading.
Those interested in Greek religion will certainly want to read the two new edited volumes on gods in Homer. Gabriella Pironti and Corinne Bonnet have edited a collection of nine essays which predominantly focus on the gods in the Iliad and, to a significantly lesser extent, the Odyssey.Footnote 5 The goal of the volume is to study the Homeric gods as a group and to contribute to the understanding of the Homeric pantheon in the light of Greek polytheism. Two essays about the way in which divine presences are revealed and hidden from humans open the book, but the third essay turns to the study of an individual divinity, Hera, admittedly through the lens of her relationships with Zeus, Aphrodite, and Hypnos. Further chapters on divine assemblies and Iris and Hermes as divine emissaries elucidate divine decision-making and the way in which divine decisions are put into action, while a complementary chapter on ritual discusses the other side of the coin: human attempts to negotiate with divinities through prayer and sacrifice. Two subsequent chapters explore divine involvement in the battles and Aphrodite's role in the Trojan War, and a closing essay offers a rich investigation of the motif of divine salvation in the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The author of this excellent essay, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui is also a co-editor of the second volume of Les dieux d'Homère, which focuses less on Homeric epics directly and more on the ancient reception of and reactions to Homer's divine anthropomorphism.Footnote 6 The two editors provide an excellent introduction, reviewing approaches to human-like gods from antiquity to the present day. The ancient criticism of divine anthropomorphism is an appropriate opening for the volume. The following two chapters provide a complementary point of view, by addressing the limits of the concept of anthropomorphism. One discusses personified abstractions such as Ate (divinely sent delusion), Horkos (oath), and Litai (prayers) and the other tackles various forms of aniconic cult statues. We then return to human corporeality with an interesting question: when gods and humans are represented together in visual arts, how are the gods distinguished? While this essay focuses on vase images, the next one tackles the most famous ancient divine statue we will never see: Pheidias’ Zeus at Olympia, allegedly fashioned after Il. 1.528–30.
Two further chapters provide discussions of divine anthropomorphism in the Second Sophistic, analysing the attitudes displayed by Artemidorus’, Dio Chrysostom's, and Lucian's ‘take’ on Homeric gods, with an emphasis on the role of Zeus. A chapter by Renaud Gagné, the co-editor of the volume, is one of the highlights of the book. He provides a thoughtful analysis of both poetic representations and philosophical critique of divine metamorphoses, by tracing the manifold responses to the passage in Od. 17.485–7, where it is claimed that the gods appear in the form of strangers in order to observe human behaviour. Equally fascinating is the ninth chapter, which looks at the way in which Christian apologists appropriate Xenophanes’ famous criticism of divine anthropomorphism and other critical responses to the early epic representations of the gods. The volume closes with a discussion of dei minuti in Roman religion.
The following two books examine two important aspects of Christian religious life in late antiquity. The Beginning of the Cult of Relics is a historical study of the rise and spread of the belief in the power and miraculous effects of the corporeal remains or objects connected with Christian saints.Footnote 7 The main argument of the book is that this belief originated as an entirely new phenomenon in the mid-fourth century ad and subsequently spread with astonishing speed, so much so that it was documented all over the Eastern and Western Christian world by the beginning of the fifth century ad. The reports of pilgrims and the emergence of a new literary genre, the lives of saints, helped to spread the belief, while the first attestations coincide with the first wave of transfers of relics to new resting places and with the building of elaborate martyria, grave shrines of the saints. The main manifestations of the power of relics were the abilities to expel demons, cure diseases, reveal hidden things (divination), and defend cities from enemies. In addition, the practice of burying the dead in the vicinity of the graves of saints testifies to the belief that the physical proximity of the corpses somehow translates into the proximity and help of the saint in the other world.
Wiśniewski adeptly charts the origin, development, and manifestations of relic thaumaturgy, mostly relying on textual and occasionally also on archaeological sources. However, those wishing to learn more about religious transfer or religious pluralism in late antiquity from this book will be sorely disappointed. Admittedly, non-Christian parallels for miracle-working, such as the healing sanctuaries of Asclepius, various types of oracles, hero cult, and protective divine statues are all mentioned, but only to be all too summarily dismissed as parallels or influences worth contemplating, and the argument for Christian exceptionalism is all-pervasive. Even in the case where a Christian source expressly singles out practices such as the kissing of sacred objects as pagan (Vigilantius according to Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 4), Wiśniewski astoundingly comments: ‘The need for physical contact with powerful objects or people seems natural, but interestingly, there is not much evidence for it outside the Christian milieu’, (125). The dismissive attitude towards other contemporaneous religious traditions is a serious shortcoming of an otherwise valuable book.
About a generation before the rise of the cult of relics, at the end of the third century ad, a boy called Pachomius was born in Egyptian Thebes. After a brief term of service in the Roman army, he converted to Christianity. Based on his new interpretation of the story about Adam and Eve, Pachomius made it his life mission to confront and banish evil thoughts, which he understood to be the root of all human evil and godlessness. In order to enable himself and others to continually practise the banishment of evil and purify their thoughts systematically, Pachomius devised a set of physical and mental practices as a mode of life for a new type of Christian religious community, the monastery. Pachomius wanted to enable the monks, who previously lived alone as hermits, to form communities and worship together and is thus perceived as the originator of coenobitic monasticism (from Greek koinos bios, ‘common life’). When Pachomius died in the mid-fourth century ad, he left behind a set of rules for monastic life and nine affiliated Egyptian monasteries, called the Koinonia.
This revolutionary event in the history of Christianity is the topic of a splendid new book by Paul C. Dilley.Footnote 8 The study seeks to understand the goal and the core practices of Pachomius’ epimeleia (care) for the souls of the monks through the training and regulation of disciples’ cognitive stream. Dilley builds on the research in cognitive science of religion and cognitive anthropology and applies the method of cognitive historicism because he wants to understand the early monastic practices of self as rooted in their historical and ideological context. His methodology is based on Tanya Luhrmann's research on the theory of mind. Luhrmann influentially argued that communities’ ideas about the human mind are culturally specific and proposed six different, regionally and culturally specific, theories of mind. The theories differ in their perception of the degree to which the human mind is permeable to external influence, the significance attached to emotions and thoughts, the valuing of imagination, and the weighing of the senses.Footnote 9 Dilley argues that the cognitive disciplines practised by the early coenobitic monks, such as the study of, meditation on, and recitation of Scripture, the fear of God, and prayer, combined with vigils, labour, fasting, and corporeal discipline, led to the acquisition of a new theory of mind, which he calls ‘monastic’:
Through instruction and discipline, monks learned the various ‘dimensions’ of the monastic theory of mind. First, that the mind is permeable: thoughts arise not only from the interior self, but also through divine guidance or demonic temptation. Second, whatever the origin of these thoughts, they were of fundamental moral significance, even if they did not directly lead to action, and disciples were responsible for managing them with the help of a more experienced counselor. Third, learning how to cope with bad thoughts required training one's imaginative capacities, for example through meditating upon emotionally charged visualizations of heaven and hell. Fourth, in addition to such visionary practices, audition was a key aspect of the monastic sensorium, as monks trained their ear to internalize the biblical proclamations of monastic rhetoric, while ignoring demonic ‘whispers.’ Finally, the monastic theory of mind had a very particular view of ‘relational access’: disciples learned that God was aware of their private thoughts, which were also known to certain inspired saints. (15)
In the first part of the book, Dilley provides an analysis of the monks’ motivations for joining, gender, status, age, social background, and the initiation procedures. The second part covers the three primary cognitive disciplines (scriptural practice, the fear of God, and prayer). The third part provides an analysis of the collective rituals of disciples. The book is clearly and engagingly written and lucidly argued. Dilley's cognitive historicism approach is not only illuminating in the study of early monasticism but could (and I hope will) be productively applied to the study of the ancient polytheistic religions as well.
Two further edited volumes, both conference proceedings, published in the Trends in Classics series by De Gruyter, are dedicated to important and, to an extent, complementary concepts of miracles and visuality. Broader in scope is Recognizing Miracles in Antiquity and Beyond, edited by Maria Gerolemou.Footnote 10 The volume is divided into three parts. The first part addresses the miracle and the marvel as a narrative motif. The individual papers deal with Ctesias; Epidaurian Iamata (reports about miraculous healings in the sanctuary of Asclepius); human oddities in the paradoxographical literature; the use and meaning of thauma and its cognates in Polybius (with a very useful appendix of all instances of thauma-words in Polybius’ Histories); omens, prodigies, and performance of wondrous deeds in the narratives related to leaders and leadership in Roman historiography; and miracles in the tradition of Byzantine apocalyptic literature from the sixth century to the sixteenth. The second section is dedicated to the figure of the author as miracle-worker (with papers on Herodotus, Plautus’ Amphitruo, wonders in the letters of Pliny the Younger, Pausanias, and Lucian's Alexander). The third part looks into the process of comprehending the wondrous and the paradoxical, with papers on the discourse on the wondrous and visually deceptive in archaic literature; the harnessing of the paradoxical and marvellous in the royal propaganda of Alexander the Great; Pausanias’ reports on the miraculous; the sceptical stance concerning the miraculous in ancient biographies of philosophers and poets; the cross-over of miracles and medicine in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses; and the exploitation of credulity in the Greek novels. The volume offers an index of names and terms, but no index locorum, which is a pity, considering the range and the chronological scope of papers.
Gaze, Vision, and Visuality in Ancient Greek Literature presents nineteen papers exploring oculocentrism (the supremacy of sight) as one of the key aspects of ancient Greek culture.Footnote 11 The majority of papers are written by scholars of Greek literature and address various aspects of visuality across a wide variety of genres: one paper is on the Iliad, two on the Odyssey, two on Apollonius’ Argonautica, one on Helen in Homer and Stesichorus, one on the Oresteia, one on the Bacchae, two on Old Comedy, one on rhetoric, two on historiography, and one on Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Archaeological approaches are represented by three essays on the sensory evocations in real, literary, and sculptural clothes dedications, where the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron serves as a test case; one on the agency of the viewer in archaic and classical visual culture; and a long and richly rewarding essay on the critical responses to the enargeia of Homeric poetry, which, together with a splendid paper on beauty as variegation (poikilia) in Plato were my personal highlights in this excellent volume. The index of terms and names and an index locorum are very helpful.
No index whatsoever is provided for Family Lives, an edited volume on family life in the ancient world, which is truly a handicap for an interdisciplinary and richly illustrated tome covering various aspects of life in ancient Greece, Etruria, Rome, Palmyra, and Roman Egypt.Footnote 12 The editors expressly state that they do not wish to provide an exhaustive coverage of every aspect of ancient families, but aim instead to bridge the gap between established and early career scholars from the Nordic countries. While the aim is commendable, I was left wondering whether stating it so clearly at the outset of the volume does not in fact undermine the objective. The book is divided into four geographically organized sections. The section on ancient Greece questions the inside–outside gender divide on the basis of female work outside the oikos at a farmstead, whereas the paper on the ritual of prothesis insists on it for the classical period. The tragic vision of the family is interpreted as a lens which enabled fifth-century bc Athenians to reflect on the family as the fundamental institution within a polis, and the final paper in the section puts forth an argument that terracotta figurines could serve as family votives. The section on Rome and Etruria contains an analysis of the representations of families, especially children, in Etruscan funeral iconography; an in-depth discussion of a female image on the lid of one specific Etruscan sarcophagus (Velthur Partunu's); a survey of (illegal) family life for the members of the Misenum fleet; an elaboration of Mouritsen's argument that Roman freedman could not claim virtus (presented in his 2011 book, The Freedman in the Roman World); a short survey of women's music-making as an expression of elite social status in the Late Republic and Early Empire; and a study of the iconography of imperial siblings in second-century Rome. The third section, entitled ‘Beyond Rome’ contains two essays: one on family constellations in Palmyrene funerary sculpture, and the other on gender and age in the mummy portraits from the Roman Egypt. Finally, a section entitled ‘Forum’ offers two papers on objects from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen: one uses the representation of a small dog on a funerary monument as a springboard for a broader discussion of the role of the dog as a member of the Roman family; the other is a contribution on the use of colour in Roman marble portraits.
Finally, an edited volume which is very much a model for what makes this particular format a success and a worthwhile endeavour: a substantial, illuminating, and thought-provoking introduction, followed by a carefully selected and arranged collection of papers that both work on their own and also complement each other well, resulting in a whole which is better than the sum of its parts. Greek Memories. Theories and Practices is a superb collection of essays with something for everyone: with sections on archaic, classical, Hellenistic, and Imperial literature, and philosophical approaches to memory from the Sophists, via Plato and Aristotle, to Plotinus.Footnote 13 The editors wanted to explore explicit discursive reflections or ‘theories’ of memory and the role of reflections in shaping practices of remembrance, thought, communication, and writing, which is why the focus of the papers is firmly fixed on literary discourses and not on material culture. The sixteen papers with the introduction splendidly fulfil the aim of the volume stated at the outset: ‘to examine the emergence and development of some central ideas and themes underlying the theories and practices of memory in the Greek world…through a selection of case studies highlighting both shared traits and specificities’ (5).
In the previous issue I alluded to some intriguing poetry included among impressive epigraphic finds of recent years, and I mentioned in passing an inscribed poem from Hellenistic Mylasa. That poem has now been published by Christian Marek and Emmanuel Zingg, in Die Versinschrift des Hyssaldomos und die Inschriften von Uzunyuva, a critical edition of new inscriptions from Mylasa, accompanied by translations and detailed commentary, and with excellent illustrations.Footnote 1 In what follows, I inform the readers of some of the more salient features of this remarkable new verse-inscription, which is bound to attract significant scholarly attention on the part of students of Hellenistic literature and court poetry more generally, as well as of scholars interested in the cultural, religious, and social history of the Hellenistic period.
A poem by a certain Hyssaldomos, son of Eirenaios, dated to the late third or early second century bc and comprising 121 verses, of which around forty are almost perfectly preserved, represents the second-longest surviving Greek verse-inscription. It was found on a stone that was reused in the construction of the stairs of a podium in a temenos located in the centre of modern Milas. The text was carefully inscribed on a votive stele and was in all likelihood set up in the sanctuary of Sarapis and Isis. The editors classify the poem generically as a hymn, with many aretalogical motifs. It is certainly a very remarkable poem in which the poet, the aforementioned Hyssaldomos, takes great pride in his achievement. Consider, for instance, the poet's prayer cum signature on stone (vv. 119–21):
Poems on stone seldom carry poets’ signatures, and while there are occasional examples of such practice in inscriptional hymns, what makes Hyssaldomos (a Carian or a man of Carian descent, judging by the name) stand out is the extent of his self-awareness. His self-praise is in part certainly justified: his very good command of metre is evident throughout the poem, as he carefully and successfully avoids hiatus throughout, and there are no resolutions. Every verse is composed following the strict metrical scheme of the catalectic trochaic tetrameter (- ˘ - x - ˘ - x ¦ - ˘ - ˘ - - x), a metre attested seldom in inscriptional poetry (there is only one further parallel, an epigram from Smyrna), and little more so in literature: it is employed only by Hipponax of Colophon, the sixth-century bc iambic poet of visceral and acerbic verse, and his elusive contemporary, a certain Ananias or Ananios, of whom we have little and know even less. Remarkably, the later tradition has named both Hipponax and Ananias inventors of the catalectic trochaic tetrameter, and it is certainly intriguing that all of our testimonies for the metre are associated with the western coast of Asia Minor.
The language of the poem is high literary Ionic with epic colouring, and the poet employs bold imagery (on which more in a moment) and a rich vocabulary which includes seven hapax legomena, all reasonably transparent compounds. In any event, we are dealing with a skilled and technically competent poet who is very comfortable in his chosen metre and the subject matter. That said, the general tone of the poem appears, to this reader at least, often simultaneously intricate and opaque, solemn and slippery.
This impression is in part owed to the fact that we do not know for which divinity the hymn is intended: the addressee whose achievements are catalogued in the poem is an anax, and for that reason the editors single out Sarapis and Zeus as the prime candidates (the former as the more likely addressee, since the poem was found in the sanctuary of Sarapis; the latter because Zeus was the main god of Mylasa). But those interested in religion will want to be aware that the poem mentions or alludes to other divinities, too, including Hermes, Poseidon, Asclepius, Dionysus, Apollo, and Artemis, who is qualified as paredros, a fact that might intrigue scholars of Callimachus’ Hymns (cf. Call. 3.169), as well as daimones, and a number of rituals.
From what we can tell, the action in the first eighty fragmentary verses focuses on scenes of military combat and on divine intervention which fends off the threat posed by the enemies in the vicinity of the city of Kindye. The motifs of soteriological divine epiphany are further worked out in the well-preserved lines: the poet paints vivid images of hostages saved from the enemy through intervention of multiple divinities and then zooms in on the destiny of one prominent individual, perhaps a certain Pytheas, to sketch the story of his toils in war and wanderings from his destroyed hometown until he finally settles in the welcoming city of Knidos. On the basis of this and similar motifs, the editors reasonably suggest that the entire poem might have been a private dedication, maybe in fulfilment of a vow, for which Hyssaldomos, perhaps on commission, provided a poetic foil.
Here I have been able to provide only a rough outline of this remarkable poem, but I have no doubt that it will soon invite a plethora of scholarly articles addressing some of the many questions that it raises. Christian Marek and Emmanuel Zingg have provided an excellent edition of the Greek text, a clear German translation, a detailed and instructive line-by-line commentary, and a long essay in which they discuss the genre, the historical context (speculating whether the poem's action is placed during the rule of the Hecatomnid dynasty, of Hecatomnus and Mausolus fame), and a general interpretation of the poem's religious significance. There is no doubt that scholars working on the Hellenistic period will be eager to get hold of this volume as soon as they can: not just because of Hyssaldomos’ poem, but also because of more than 100 new inscriptions from the site, from decrees to graffiti, published in the same volume.
War and violence, themes of Hyssaldmos’ poem, were never far from a Hellenistic city. In fact, the entire epoch was marked by frequent armed conflicts, instability of political systems, forced movements of population, and, compared to the archaic and classical periods, a significant rise in the number of war casualties throughout the Mediterranean world. No wonder, then, that so much of the surviving literature and documents from this period in some way relates to individuals’ and communities’ reactions to violence, and provides detailed and often candid insights into the ways in which peoples and states negotiated their positions in volatile times. The volume edited by Michael Champion and Lara O'Sullivan, Cultural Perceptions of Violence in the Hellenistic Period,Footnote 2 deals precisely with this topic: how violence was perceived and represented in the Hellenistic period, which cultural mechanisms helped its perpetuation, and which discourses and media attempted to justify it. The twelve chapters, penned by a cast of senior scholars and younger colleagues commissioned by the editors, cover a fair amount of ground: from discussions of public spaces which served to nurture and incite the military spirit among the youth, through visual representations of violence in Hellenistic sculpture, to philosophical, religious, and socioeconomic discourses that in some way justified patterns of violence and the seemingly unavoidable quotidian presence of war in a Hellenistic city, and finally to literary reflections on violence in Hellenistic poetry and drama, to end, somewhat surprisingly, with an interesting chapter on Catullus, carmen 11.
While the volume is understandably selective in its scope, many papers offer food for thought. Why did certain Hellenistic poleis still aggressively instil into their youth an ideology of territorial expansion of the city's territory (chora) after they had been absorbed into the political superstructures of kingdoms? What kinds of strains were placed on the financial wellbeing of a polis because of the persistent presence of war, and how did ancient political philosophers grapple with this challenge? Was a Hellenistic city a more dangerous place by night than by day? What I found particularly helpful was the editors’ introduction and the epilogue, which outline the intellectual contributions of the individual papers, justify the organization of the volume, and place it in the context of wider scholarship on the Hellenistic period. In the epilogue, the editors open up the volume's key insights on the Hellenistic discourses on violence to scholars working in adjacent fields. The volume is very well produced (although I found it somewhat odd to print the bibliography both at the end of each chapter and also as a cumulative bibliography at the end of the volume).
Moving on chronologically to the end of the Hellenistic period, we turn to Miguel John Versluys’ book on the breath-taking monuments of Nemrud Dağ (c.50 bc) in the kingdom of Commagene on the upper Euphrates.Footnote 3 Most of us will have seen the images of the unforgettable monumental temple-tomb complex on the top of Mount Nemrut, set up by Antiochos I Theos as a monument to himself: colossal heads of the king and the gods with their pointy caps, heads of lions and eagles, removed from their torsos and lying amid lunar landscape, are fairly familiar images. To generalize somewhat, previous scholarship tended to interpret the monument as representative of hybrid art which combined Greek and Persian (or Iranian) elements in order to visually encapsulate the hybridity of Antiochos’ dynastic vision. Scholars of half a century ago did not flinch from evaluating the monument in explicitly dismissive tone: Versulys quotes one particularly beguiling scholarly view of Nemrud Dağ as being ‘the ugly caprice of a bombastic monarch’ (20).
Versluys’ mission with this monograph is to reclaim the monuments of Nemrud Dağ as an important and informative source on Hellenistic Commagene's identity construction in the context of the Hellenistic koine, as well as to contribute to the debates concerning Hellenism and Persianism in antiquity, and so he does. In this amply illustrated book, he moves away from the well-trodden paths of alleged binaries and dichotomies between the East and Greece, Orient and Occident, to privilege nuanced processes of globalization and development of increased connectivity in the Hellenistic period, as well as to dwell on the agency of representation: what is it that these images actually accomplish? Following discussion of methodology and history of scholarship in the introduction, he instructs the reader on the historical geography of Commagene as a preparation for the central diptych of chapters, dealing first in Chapter 3 with identity (and invention of the tradition in particular) and then in Chapter 4 with style (where he reasonably argues that the Antiochean bricolage of styles is best understood in the context of other first-century bc eclecticisms). The book closes with a postscript that sums up some of the most important results, and stresses once more the complexities associated with the Commagene material and the traps of binary East–West interpretative moulds. There is an appendix with the English translation of Antiochos’ famous sacred regulation from Nemrud Dağ (Versluys reprints Dörner's translation), and a very good general index.
Investigations of cultural contact and sociocultural exchange in the Hellenistic period, and, more generally, studies relying on comparative perspectives, are clearly thriving these days. One such study is Markus Mülke's comprehensive investigation of Aristobulus of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jewish thinker writing in the second century bc, sometimes dubbed the first Jewish philosopher, who provides important insight into Jewish biblical exegesis in Ptolemaic Alexandria.Footnote 4 What Aristobulus is best known for, perhaps, is his argument that the Jewish faith is compatible with Greek philosophy, and his attempt to provide the true interpretation of the Law of Moses, one that would reconcile the tensions between the two traditions. Aristobulus was, by all accounts, a superbly interesting intellectual, whose work stands at the very intersection of Jewish theology and Hellenistic (Greek) scholarship, work that raises questions of cultural identity, explores modes of cultural interaction, and negotiates the position of the Pentateuch within the larger framework of Greek cultural history. Aristobulus’ ultimate goal was nothing less than to prove that the most important Greek works of literature, including the early ones, are younger than the Mosaic laws, and, what is more, that they reflect key insights of the Mosaic laws. In other words, he had no difficulties in imagining Plato and Pythagoras drawing directly from the Pentateuch.
This, of course, is highly intriguing, but the remnants of Aristobulus’ work are fragmentary and scattered through significantly later sources (especially through Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius), which was a major obstacle for investigations of his thought until Carl R. Holladay produced a critical edition of Aristobulus’ remaining work in the mid-1990s.Footnote 5 Mülke's seminal contribution, a revised version of his Habilitation, triangulates Aristobulus by placing his work between the Greeks and the Egyptians. The book explores nearly all of the surviving fragments: alongside in-depth discussions of the texts, Mülke provides detailed explorations of Aristobulus’ cultural background, his literary affinities and cultural disinclinations (primarily directed against Egyptians), his literary techniques and the trajectories of metaphor and allegory appropriated in the work, and much more.
This is an excellently produced book, written with the readership of specialists in mind, but every attempt is made to render it accessible to interested and patient non-experts: the texts are regularly translated, and the German prose is engaging and accessible. That said, as a whole, the book preserves to a large extent the style and feel of a German Habilitation and it will be of most help to those who are looking for discussions of a particular fragment or a particular problem. It is probably fair to say that only few will be tempted to read this volume cover to cover, but the author should be thanked for producing a work of immense learning and for providing an excellent foundation for future work. There is no doubt that this is the first port of call for all things Aristobulean from now on.
Also dealing with Jewish and Greek literary traditions, this time from a distinctly comparative perspective, is Pieter B. Hartog's Pesher and Hypomnema. A Comparison of the Two Commentary Traditions from the Hellenistic–Roman Period, a revised version of the author's PhD defended at KU Leuven in 2015.Footnote 6 The book focuses on the origins of commentary writing in ancient Judaism by drawing parallels between the exegetical genres of the ancient Jewish and Greek grammarians respectively. Hartog juxtaposes the collection of sixteen commentaries, collectively known as pesharim (the plural of pesher, ‘commentary’), the first explicit commentaries on poetic-prophetic passages from the Jewish scriptures and found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, with seventeen hypomnemata (‘commentaries’, in a rather loose sense) on Homer's Iliad, most of which stem from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. The first of the book's two main thrusts is a common-sensical one, namely that the circumstances of production of pesharim and hypomnemata are fundamentally similar, as both genres developed in ancient intellectual communities. The second argument, put plausibly throughout, is that cultural networks, extending over the entire Hellenistic and Roman Near East, facilitated intellectual exchange and transfer of knowledge from Alexandrian grammarians to pesharim authors and their readership. Hartog makes a very good case for privileging Alexandrian traditions of hypomnemata as a model for the earliest Jewish commentary writing, but he is also careful not to claim the exclusivity of the Alexandrian influence on pesharim, and to point to other cultural traditions that could have shaped and influenced the Jewish practice.
The introduction lays down the aims and objectives of the book, defines individual hermeneutic traditions under investigation, clarifies the terminological scope of ‘commentary’, hypomnema, and pesher, and introduces what the author labels ‘glocal’ perspective: that is, the interplay between the forces of globalization and the local cultures. The rest of the book consists of nine chapters organized in three triptychs, whereby the first chapter of each triptych introduces the overarching issue, followed by two chapters dedicated to analysis of the Greek and Jewish material in isolation.
Chapter 2, introducing the first triptych, provides a discussion of the intellectual backgrounds in which pesher and hypomnema developed, and draws parallels between the intellectual hubs of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt on the one hand and those of Palestine of the same period on the other, introducing the commentators and outlining the key features of intellectual life in Egypt and Palestine respectively. The following two chapters then look at the physicality of the hypomnemata and pesharim, focusing on the most important features of each: dimensions, corrections, abbreviations, and effectively the most important elements of the apparatus employed for annotation.
Chapter 5, picking up organically from the previous discussion, introduces the second triptych, which investigates the structure of both genres, singling out what Hartog calls their bifold macro-structure. By this, he means that both genres distinguish between lemmata and their interpretations, which, in return, prefigure the rhetoric of the commentaries written for both educational and scholarly purposes. The following two chapters then investigate the relationship between the base text and its interpretation, highlighting the most important structural and narrative features of individual entries. Here, Hartog does a very good job explaining in a concise but precise fashion some of the main strategies of Homeric hypomnemata (comments on glosses, paraphrases, references and quotations, use of formulaic elements, and invocations of authority). This chapter could be profitably used when introducing students to Hellenistic literary culture and the development of literary criticism in antiquity. It was interesting to learn how substantial is the structural overlap between the two traditions, but also where they differ. Unlike hypomnemata, pesharim tend to leave out scholarly debates, and attempt to integrate heterogeneous interpretations into one unified narrative; Hartog here insightfully remarks on the agency of the Jewish interpreter, who is styled as the teacher of righteousness and a recipient of divine revelation, which influenced the way that he presented information. Greek scholars commenting on authoritative texts in the Alexandrian Museum had no such claims, of course, and did not hesitate to simply introduce an alternative interpretation by saying nothing further than Ἢ οὕτως· (‘or like this’) or, even shorter, ΑΛΛΩΣ (‘differently’).
The final triptych of chapters looks at larger interpretative strategies, that is the hermeneutical profile of the commentaries, and provides interesting perspectives on the foci of interpretation, commentators’ implicit and explicit assumptions, and their use of analogy and creation of authority, among other themes.
This clearly written and well-organized book was an interesting and instructive read; my only quibble is with the press: the eye-watering list price of €132 ($152) for a delicate paperback of Brill's MyBook series is beyond the pale. But to finish with the merits of the work: Hartog's book taught me much about the structure and the intellectual background of pesharim, and it also helped me rethink some of the features of hypomnemata that I, more intuitively than consciously, held as being distinctly Alexandrian. In some ways, the main thrust of the argument fits well with the current trends present in scholarship on Hellenistic Judaism as displayed by scholars such as Maren R. Niehoff in her Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (2011). Hartog's book is a welcome addition to the growing field of studies in cultural exchange in the Hellenistic period, as well to the study of ancient literary criticism.
Let us turn now to two new text editions, one of ancient medicine, and the other of ancient science (and medicine). Volume XI of the Loeb Hippocrates, edited and translated by Paul Potter, provides a new edition and an elegant translation of Hippocratic treatises on Diseases of Women 1–2.Footnote 7 The texts are of uncertain date. They were known to and quoted by first-century ad medical authors, and Pliny the Elder, Soranus, and Galen of Pergamum all made use of them, while excerpts were translated by Arabic medical writers. Potter provides the first complete edition of the Greek text since Littré (1853) and Ermerin (1862). The new edition is based on collation of manuscripts to which neither Littré nor Ermerin had direct access. This fact alone would be praiseworthy enough, but Potter also provides a very helpful up-to-date bibliography, and a Greek–English and English–Greek lexicon of therapeutic agents: that is, substances, implements, and methods employed by the Hippocratic doctor in the treatment of a vast spectrum of female ailments and diseases.
The texts themselves provide phenomenal insights into the minds of the ancient doctors and into the methods employed in ancient gynaecology. In terms of the topics, Diseases of Women 1 charts the problems as they might appear during the crucial stages of the reproductive cycle: the first twenty chapters deal with menstrual disorders and problems with conception (treatment of barrenness), then with disorders of pregnant women, lochial cleaning, postpartum disorders, and disorders of the uterus. The final thirty chapters cover a wide array of issues, including distinctly non-gynaecological procedures such as use of emetics or instructions for depilation. Diseases of Women 2, on the other hand, is for the most part distinctly focused on problems with the uterus: after a discussion of various types of vaginal discharges, almost ninety chapters are dedicated to movements of the uterus (of the ‘wandering womb’ fame) in various directions, and the consequences thereof (from loss of speech to gangrene); the final thirty or so chapters address a hodge-podge of symptoms, from halitosis, via freckles (!), to the treatment of wrinkles. Caveat lector: I am picking out the symptoms I mention here carefully, as the volume is not a fit read for those with sensitive stomachs. But some procedures are worth reproducing here to familiarize the reader with the oddity and attraction of these texts, so I single out the one for the beautification of the face, a kind of a do-it-yourself face mask for, to put it in the language of TV commercials, glowing and radiant skin (Diseases of Women 2.79; 409):
To beautify the face: take lizard's liver, knead it with olive oil, and apply this on the face together with undiluted wine – bile of the green (sc. lizard) is deleterious. Barley water also makes the face radiant, as do white of eggs, meal of lupines and vetches (plastered on with a fig), roots and seeds of cabbage…and bastard sponge.
I have no idea what precisely a bastard sponge (τὸ ἀλκυόνειον) might be and whether it was used as a facial scrub, but it makes an appearance also in the instructions for depilation, and, as some digging through other medical authors showed, in cures for acne (Aetius of Amida, Libri medicinales 8.12). Curious vignettes of this kind are plentiful in this volume, and I read it with great interest. Scholars and students interested in cultural history, ancient medicine, and gender studies will certainly be interested in this book.
From Hippocrates, we move on to the early first century ad and Celsus, writing during Tiberius’ reign: Werner Albert Golder's Celsus und die antike Wissenschaft, part of the eminent German Sammlung Tusculum series, is an anthology of passages from Celsus’ Artes, which included books on ancient agriculture, medicine, rhetoric, military science, and perhaps on philosophy and jurisprudence, although the last two are subject to scholarly debate.Footnote 8 The volume under review dedicates most space to Celsus’ medicine and its contexts – around 630 pages of this lengthy anthology are devoted to passages on various ailments, accompanied by a compilation of passages from numerous Greek and Roman authors that are in some way relevant as comparative material to Celsus’ passages; here, unsurprisingly, passages from Galen and Hippocrates figure prominently. The guiding principle of the selection is to shed light on the tradition from which Celsus’ passages stem, or to assist the reader in understanding Celsus. This is helpful to a certain extent, and the endnotes provide further assistance on tricky issues of detail.
Celsus does not appear to have enjoyed a particularly stellar reputation in antiquity, and not even Galen, who quotes material from far and wide, deemed it necessary to refer to his work. Perhaps this was because Celsus was not a doctor himself, and perhaps, as Golder points out in his essay on the reception (Wirkungsgeschichte) of Celsus, because he was perceived in antiquity primarily as a compiler of medical knowledge, and medical authorities preferred to go directly to the source. The Middle Ages were somewhat kinder to the author, but it was among eighteenth-century doctors and scholars that he rose to prominence.
With his fresh translations (for Celsus based primarily on Friedrich Marx's 1915 edition), Golder's overall aim is to facilitate access to Celsus and develop a sense of appreciation of the author. A noble goal, by all means, and it is clear throughout this volume that this anthology is a labour of love: Golder translated all passages himself and provided good notes, a substantial introduction, bibliographical overviews, and excellent indices. And he is certainly right in his claims that there are many witticisms and historic gems hidden in the volume. Celsus’ writing includes both elements reminiscent of stoic thought, such as his recommendation of quies and abstinentia (‘rest and abstinence’) as the best prophylactic measure when it comes to health (3.2.5), but also a recommendation for inking the scull as a solution to baldness (6.4). There is something for everyone in this volume.
I end this review with a new book on Hadrian's Wall, a World Heritage Site and one of the most impressive monuments in the UK. Worryingly, the BBC recently reported that some portions of the wall are in danger of collapsing. As many will remember, similar warnings have been issued repeatedly in past, since damage is unavoidable owing to weather conditions and ground erosion, but what was new about the recent warning is the source of the threat. Following the stellar global success of the TV show Game of Thrones, tourists flock to the notional site of the fictional Wall in the North. All of this would be very well, and more income generated by the local museums would certainly be welcome for purposes of conservation and research, were it not for the new tourist fad of taking selfies atop the wall and thus putting additional strain on the already fragile structure. Let's hope that the fad ends as abruptly as it started.
Adrian Goldsworthy's Hadrian's Wall is a concise, charming, and erudite guide on the wall's history until the end of the Roman Empire, written for a general audience.Footnote 9 That, however, does not mean that the emerging picture of the wall is in any way oversimplified: the book is founded on sound scholarship and the author's comprehensive understanding of the historical and – his repeated apologies concerning his lack of specialization in archaeology notwithstanding – also of the archaeological contexts of the structure. Goldsworthy opens the volume by sketching out the basics of the Principate and Roman Britain, before turning to discussion of the wall itself. The reader is first equipped with sufficient knowledge of the wall's structure and its constituent parts, and then introduced to the exciting sociocultural history of the main protagonists in the wall's history, and to the daily lives and activities of Roman soldiers, barbarian raiders, civilians, traders, medics, and animals.
The prose is clear and elegant and Goldsworthy is admirably efficient in presenting fairly complex evidence, quoted in translation, in a captivating fashion. At the same time, the book wisely acknowledges the limits of the extant evidence, and the reader is authoritatively guided through scholarly quandaries and warned of the pitfalls. In this sense, scholarly bibliographies provided in an appendix with suggestions for further reading orientate a novice in the field or an interested amateur very well. Also helpful are more than thirty black and white images, plans, and maps that stimulate the reader's imagination further, even if better quality of the reproductions, and in particular of some of the maps, would have been very welcome (the toponyms on one of the most important illustrations, namely the map of the wall [16], are all but illegible).
Goldsworthy's life-long fascination with the wall is palpable on every page, and his appreciation is occasionally expressed in delightful personal side-notes, such as the one that, as a child, he deleted the letter H in Hadrian's name on the map of the wall, baptizing it as Adrian's Wall (xii). Hadrian's Wall is, as Goldsworthy repeatedly points out, a truly special place, and I very much appreciated the affection with which he managed to bring its history to life. This was a rewarding read, and I recommend it to anyone with interest in Roman Britain and Hadrian's Wall and the lives of the people who built it, raided it, defended it, and lived around it. Spoiler alert: there are no dragons in this book.
