These are boom times for sarcophagus studies in the Anglophone world. The development is new, for as late as 2011 the field was still a Teutonic preserve, a specialist domain where few scholars working in English dared to venture. The 1990s saw two monographs appear by chance only a year apart: M. Koortbojian's Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi (1995) and H.’s own Roman Children's Sarcophagi (1996). But after this brief and unprecedented flowering, Anglophone sarcophagus studies seemed to withdraw into its own tomb. Some fifteen years would elapse before another English-language book on Roman sarcophagi appeared – J. Elsner and H.’s important edited volume of 2011 (Life, Death, and Representation) – followed in quick succession by another edited volume (W. Hung and J. Elsner, Res 61/62: Sarcophagi [2012]) and a spate of monographs: P. Zanker and B. Ewald's epic Living with Myths (2012), S. Birk's Depicting the Dead (2013) and B. Borg's magisterial Crisis and Ambition (2013), joined by multiple journal articles, dissertations and conference sessions. The volume under review must thus be seen as a major new addition to this recent upswell, helping to revivify a subject to which H. herself first contributed some 20 years ago.
The monograph's novelty, and a good deal of its value, lies in its daring choice of subject matter: not the grand mythological frieze sarcophagi that dominate the scholarship (a dominance utterly out of proportion to their relatively limited numbers, given that only a small fraction of Roman sarcophagi feature mythological friezes), nor the so-called ‘biographical’ specimens featuring scenes from the deceased's idealised life (scenes of battles and hunts, of weddings and sacrifices, whether literal or fanciful – and, we now know, almost all were fanciful, as fantastic in their own way as the scenes adorning mythological sarcophagi), but instead, a type of sarcophagus typically ignored: those coffins with long fields of gently curving, S-shaped fluting whose form vaguely evokes a Roman strigil. Because their iconographical repertoire is rather limited in comparison with that of the mythological frieze sarcophagi, and the number of specimens massive (what does one do with so many?), strigillated pieces have long suffered from scholarly neglect, and H. does a fine job early on (p. v) and throughout in articulating the negative consequences of that neglect. As the first book in any language to treat this genre, the largest surviving group, in sustained fashion, the book does a vital service. It is thus worth enumerating several of its many strengths.
First, it follows a logical layout: treatment of the production, carving, trade and purchase of strigillated specimens is followed by discussion of their clientele, nuanced analysis of their imagery and, finally, extended discussion of their later reuse and reception. This organisation essentially follows the ‘lifecycle’ of a sarcophagus itself, from its initial conception (one might say) at the quarry, birth in a workshop and prime of life as a container for its first inhabitant, to its middle-aged reuse later in antiquity, followed by its old age (or rebirth?) in later medieval and modern hands. This implicit, although never stated, reliance on a ‘lifecycle’ model clearly resonates with other work H. has done in this vein (Elsner and H. [2011], pp. 55–82), and it provides effective scaffolding here.
Second, the work is to be commended for treating ‘pagan’ and early Christian pieces together. Given the separate treatment that they have long suffered, despite immense overlap in their production, clientele and imagery (indeed, some workshops clearly manufactured both ‘pagan’ and Christian pieces under the same roof), this is a huge boon.
Third, H. does a remarkable job of articulating the aesthetic allure of the strigillated fluting itself (pp. 8–11, 76–80, 92–4). Although typically ignored or written off as decorative ‘filler’, mere ancillary ornament to the figural vignettes, H. makes us aware of the strigillation's own considerable appeal, and deftly suggests something of the range of associations that these ranks of flowing curves likely evoked: metalware and other luxury goods, water and waves, spirally fluted columns, and nymphaea, with their particular valence dependent on other elements in the composition (pp. 9–11, 77–9). When combined, for example, with isolated standing figures, relief columns and other architectural elements, the overall effect was a subdued monumentality that few other Metropolitan genres could match, and H. convincingly argues that strigillated pieces thus spoke to Romanitas as the mythological frieze sarcophagi could not (pp. 14–15, 29, 78, 84, 93, 102).
Fourth, the book is admirable in its consistent consideration of various types of viewers, viewer response and the extent to which ‘meaning was in the eye of the beholder’ (p. 7) – including the eyes of later viewers, i.e. a focus on reception (pp. 103–11, 245–74). Such an approach is less novel than it once was, but H. gives it punch by convincing us why strigillated sarcophagi in particular benefit from such considerations: because their preference for compartmentalised designs and distantly juxtaposed generic figures required more work on the viewer's part to tease out connections than did other genres of sarcophagi – such as the grand mythological frieze specimens – that laboured to make all explicit (p. 103).
Fifth, the volume is particularly strong in its discussion of portraits – their various forms and formats, varying degrees of ambivalence between individuation and social anchoring, and role in affirming communal values – and the ways in which the strigillated format was particularly well-suited to staging such variation and ambivalence (pp. 115–49, one of the best chapters in the book). Relatedly, the book excels at articulating the dynamic range of gendered relationships (whether complementary or oppositional, hierarchical or level, differentiated or equivalent, joined or autonomous) that strigillated sarcophagi could stage, depending on where and how the partners were slotted in across the slab's partitioned surface (pp. 136–41, 173–5).
Finally, although English, H.’s work embodies the best of the German Sarkophag-Studien tradition while avoiding its restrictive format. Diagrams and illustrations, while sparse, are effective. The index is more than adequate. The list of works cited is encyclopedic in its scope. The inclusion of a glossary is a nice touch. The appendix listing all strigillated sarcophagi that appear in the Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage (one of the field's standard compendia) is a welcome addition to the scholar's toolkit. And the footnotes, consistently thorough, offer a wealth of resources. As for typographical errors, they are utterly minimal: repetition of ‘the’ on p. 7; absence of an ‘a’ on p. 62 n. 160; ‘install’ spelled as ‘instal’ on p. 72; and a missing ‘or’ on p. 91.
It is, of course, the reviewer's task to suggest missed opportunities, and so I offer a small handful. One concerns repetition: the reader does encounter a certain amount of it. Much of this is a result of the book's organisational scheme. Each chapter can stand alone – in this the book is well-suited for classroom use, as chapters can be assigned in discrete chunks without comprising their intelligibility – but achieving this has required reduplicating some content across chapters, producing an occasional jolt of déjà-vu. Another concerns the images: larger ones, perhaps less washed out, would enhance the aesthetic impact of these compelling objects (but this, of course, is beyond the author's control). And a third concerns discussion of the epigraphic impulse, or more precisely, its limits. H. observes that one of the major attractions of the strigillated format – over, say, that of the frieze format – was the space that it offered for inscriptions (p. 58). And she is surely right to note that inscriptions, by defining and ‘fleshing out’ the deceased, serve much the same function as portraits (p. 84). But I should like to have seen some consideration of the tension between the two. On sarcophagi, after all, portraits and inscriptions typically appear as mutually exclusive options, as they had not been on preceding ash urns. Why this should be is still a puzzle. Some discussion, then, of the relative merits of these contrasting forms of commemoration, and the types of issues and choices that could have led a customer to choose one over the other, might provide welcome critical leverage. But these are minor quibbles. The volume is indispensable for any scholar of Roman sarcophagi, and those who study early Christian art, or Medieval and Early Modern reception and reuse of antiquities, will find much to savour here too.
