Tacitus’ Germania continues to be the object of considerable interest in Italy, and A.'s text, translation into Italian and commentary, with a substantial introduction, is one of several Italian editions of Germania recently released in a type of series aimed at a wide readership (see also the new commentary by D. Baldi for Quodlibet and the reissue of E. Risari's 1990 commentary for the Mondadori Oscar series, both 2019). The series Classici greci e latini, in which A.'s book appears, expressly states the aim of reaching a wider public readership, especially among younger readers. In fact, though, A.'s sound judgement and his wide perspectives when setting the Germania in context will be worth the attention of specialists as well as an audience new to the work. The text is based on the OCT of M. Winterbottom (1975), with modifications listed at pp. cxcvii–cxcviii and less of an inclination to mark textual problems as unresolved; many of the textual questions are discussed in the commentary notes. It is worth stating that Winterbottom's apparatus criticus passes over some controversies in silence. At Germ. 5.1, for instance, there are defensible reasons for reading frugiferarum arborum patiens with L. Tross (1841), cf. C.E. Murgia, ‘Loci conclamati’, California Studies in Classical Antiquity 11 (1978), though A.'s handling of textual questions is appropriate and in keeping with the aims of the volume. Without getting lost in minutiae he shows the importance of careful reading and keeps the interpretative stakes of philological choices in view.
While the Germania has been the subject of a great deal of scholarship, much of this attention, at least in the last century and a half, has been devoted to a relatively narrow set of questions. One of the virtues of A.'s introduction is the wide range of approaches that he takes. The resulting synthesis is a very worthwhile contribution to criticism on Tacitus’ ethnography. In the first few pages of the introduction A. offers stimulating observations on the contemporary uses of an antithesis between German and Italian culture and politics, even including football, a breadth of reference entirely appropriate when taking into account the ongoing resonances of this text.
The introduction carries the title ‘La Germania: una proposta geopolitica per Traiano’. A. begins by situating the work in its historical and political context, a task that is especially important for a text that has so often been torn from its original frames of reference. Sections 1 to 4 address the work's place in the ethnographic tradition (Section 1) as well as moral and philosophical questions (Section 2), followed by a discussion of Tacitus’ characterisation of the Germani (Section 3) and the proposal that the work be read as a forward-looking geopolitical tract aimed at the new emperor Trajan (Section 4); Section 5 addresses its literary techniques; Section 6 offers a wide-ranging discussion of the reception of the text.
A notable feature of the introduction is the attention to Roman moralising literature in a variety of genres (especially at pp. xxxiii–xxxvii), which brings to the fore a range of literary comparisons that have sometimes been overlooked in scholarship on Germania in the ethnographic tradition. In addition, Section 5, under the heading ‘L'intertestualità ideologica della Germania’, offers a useful model for deepening understanding of the text. A. productively combines several critical approaches in exploring the implications of textual parallels between Germania and other Latin literature. Besides suggesting that parallels be read as allusions, A. expands the view outwards to include the interactions between topoi in the relevant passages. This approach seems to be a useful way to advance the understanding of the literary texture of Germania beyond the study of topoi that has frequently taken critics along the same tracks through ethnographic tradition, and the identification of verbal parallels, which has often led to commentary on ‘echoes’ and ‘colouring’, but often without incorporating such features into a wider reading. A.'s discussion of several passages in this section makes a strong case for the value of reassessing the literary texture of the Germania. It is not completely clear, when verbal parallels are discussed in this section, quite how much emphasis is supposed to be accorded to a specific parallel and how much on the handling of more widely recognisable topoi, though A. provides good reasons to look for both in the Germania.
Section 6, on reception, opens with an amusing rebuttal of a recent conspiracy theory that claims the work is a Renaissance forgery. Few will doubt the value of taking care to explain and dispatch a conspiracy theory and its false premises. The account of the early reception of Germania leads the reader through the story of the text's discovery, its place in seventeenth-century Tacitism, the enlightenment, romanticism and nationalism, before tracing the appropriation of the work by racist ideology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and its abuse by National Socialism and Italian fascism. Here, A. refers to detailed studies by L. Canfora (1979), A.A. Lund (1995), C. Krebs (2012) and J. Chapoutot (2017), helpfully illustrating the importance of philological care and historically contextualised reading through discussion of the ideological deformations that have often rested on apparently minor textual points or arbitrary interpretative frameworks.
The translation, like the rest of the volume, is clearly written. Occasionally the elusive pithiness of a Tacitean expression is sacrificed (e.g. the potentially disdainful quandam at 23.1, potui umor ex hordeo aut frumento in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus ~ ‘Per bevanda utilizzano un liquore derivato da orzo o frumento, fermentato a somiglianza del vino’; or the brevity of 37.5, proximis temporibus triumphati magis quam victi sunt ~ ‘Nei tempi successivi si celebrarono più trionfi che vittorie effettive’), but the translations are sound, and interpretative questions are well handled in the notes.
A.'s bibliography, while of course geared towards an Italian readership, takes in a good range of literature in German, French and English; it is notable that A. draws on a range of bibliographic references (especially in Italian and French) that do not routinely appear in the English and German publications on Germania, and this is one reason why the book will be of value to many readers already familiar with the text. The commentary is especially strong in regard to the wider literary contexts of the Germania, which is the aspect of the work in greatest need of further scholarly attention, and in this respect it often complements the most up-to-date commentaries, those of A.A. Lund (1988), J.B. Rives (1999) and R. Oniga (2003).
At €12 the volume is fairly priced and appropriate for its stated aim of wide distribution. A couple of further aids to orientation might have been helpful: for an introduction of the length provided, subdivisions in the table of contents would have been welcome, and headings to the commentary pages would have made navigating the notes more straightforward. Nevertheless, these are minor points. Overall, this is a well-executed volume. A. has offered readers new to Germania a rich introduction, and his broad-minded approach along with careful attention to literary questions offers the specialist a stimulating read as well.
