Similes in ancient epic have attracted a lot of scholarly attention in recent years. Methods like narratology, cognitive psychology, gender studies or ecocritical approaches have all been applied to this brief but multifaceted literary device, offering fruitful new readings. Most studies, however, focus either on a single work or corpus (such as the Homeric epics) or on a specific area of imagery (e.g. predators and prey). Deborah Beck's book combines several of these approaches in a highly interesting way. Her most original contribution is to read the similes as stories in their own right, from a synchronic or intratextual as well as from a diachronic or intertextual perspective. She considers the similes as an additional narrative layer woven into a given epic (cf. ix and 12 on her employment of ‘the terms “pattern” and “weave” for the content and structure of similes’) and resonating with its main plot.
In the body of her book, B. deals with five fully preserved Greek and Roman epics from Homer through Apollonius to Vergil and Ovid in a roughly chronological manner (cf. 16–17). Starting with the Odyssey (ch. 1), she argues that its strong focus on human relationships depicted in the similes underlines the poem's exploration of the theme of homecoming and the conflicted feelings of both Odysseus and his family members. Leadership is a common concern of the chapters on the Iliad and the Argonautica (chs 2 and 3), where hapless or successful shepherds and sailors embody the failure or triumph of human agency and skill (cf. also the Introduction, 3–14). Moreover, echoes of Homeric and tragic grief in Apollonius’ similes emphasise Jason's lack of empathy with suffering women. Even more so, in Vergil's Aeneid (ch. 4), isolated individuals in the grip of negative emotions take centre stage, reflected by a lack of interpersonal interaction in its similes. Finally, the similes in Ovid's Metamorphoses (ch. 5), by telling not cohesive but fragmented stories, mirror the poem's innovative structure and its kaleidoscope of violent passions and erotic desire. Generally, in Roman epic, anachronistic geographical and historical references bring the simile world closer to the lived world of the poets and their audiences. Although B. discusses only a limited selection of similes (cf. the index of passages), paying special attention to programmatic ‘first similes’ or clusters, her serial readings of thematically interconnected similes help to throw the individual profile of each epic into sharper relief. With Hellenistic and Latin epic, intra- as well as inter-generic intertextuality and metapoetics gain more prominence, as the similes become vehicles for narrative experiments and ‘self-conscious fictionality’ (224) in changed cultural contexts (cf. the somewhat enigmatically titled ch. 3.4.4 ‘Apollonius as a Form of Simile Structure’). At times, B. also uses ambiguity and uncertainty as heuristic tools (e.g. chs 3.2.2 and 3.5 on the elusive similes involving girls in Ap. Rhod. 3.654–66 and 1.268–77).
B. introduces all Greek and Latin quotes by English translations before launching into meticulous linguistic analyses combined with sensitive interpretations, thus offering the general as well as the specialist reader much food for thought (cf. 18–19, where she states that her aim is to produce an accessible text by relegating scholarly discussions to the endnotes). Nevertheless, she often enters into a close dialogue with classical scholarship, while also referring to contemporary psychological concepts such as ‘ambiguous loss’ (37–8, 50, 53, 58 n. 27, on Hom., Od.; cf. 234, 250 n. 45: healing trauma through storytelling, on Arethusa in Ov., Met.) or referring to the recent COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate the complex emotions triggered by a reunion with loved ones (47, 60 n. 46). Such appeals to personal experience strengthen B.'s attempt to draw the audience into an engaged reading of the ancient texts as well as of her own book. Her global approach is very rewarding, even if her consistent tendency to postulate immersive audience identification with characters in similes (cf. esp. 2–4, 257), readily understood in the case of powerful feelings embodied in human relationships that affect ‘us as well’ (29), seems less intuitive in other cases (e.g. the quarrelling farmers in Il. 12.421–4 (76) or the hungry wolf in Aen. 9.57–66: ‘Rain and wind in the thick darkness of night buffet us along with the wolf, immersing us in its discomfort’ (165; cf. 71)). Moreover, the subtle verbal echoes she traces through the various epics are sometimes obscured by the fact that she quotes from published translations rather than offering her own (cf. 19): so e.g. the recurring adjective ἁδινός is interpreted convincingly as ‘the thick gut-wrenching spasms characteristic of intense grief’ (32; cf. 44, 136) but rendered in many different ways (32: ‘nonstop’; 43–4: ‘pulsing sharper’; 84: ‘throbbing’; 135: ‘wrenchingly’, ‘profusely’).
To conclude, throughout the epics studied in B.'s book, the simile worlds offer a full panorama of the human condition, evoking emotions that range from bereavement to joy and from love to loss, constructing gender and family relations, depicting human activities such as farming and craftsmanship, and exploring the often conflicting interactions between humans, animals and natural forces. A final point not so much of criticism but of regret is that both the book and the accompanying database (https://epic-similes-beck.la.utexas.edu/) end with Ovid. It would certainly be worthwhile to extend this approach at least to early imperial Latin epic and thereby to add further layers to the ever-evolving stories of similes.
