The topic of this volume is ‘the nature and extent of the late-antique engagement with the classical past’. While Volume 1 concentrated on the centre, Volume 2 turns to the outskirts of the empire.
One stated aim (among many) is to reflect the ‘wide ranges of responses across the Mediterranean world’ provoked by the classical tradition (p. 1). Further goals are to ‘offer a vision of late antiquity characterised by a complex engagement with the negotiable authority of the classical past’ (p. 1) and ‘to draw attention to the clear and consistent engagement of late antiquity with the classical tradition in terms which avoid dismissing it either as bleached classicism on the one hand, or straightforward rejection on the other’ (pp. 2–3).
There is an essential question which is left unresolved: what exactly is the referent of the term ‘classical tradition’ and is it the same as or different from ‘the classical past’? Some of the definitions or glosses offered are ‘what came before’ (p. 3), classical tradition as synonymous with the past, as ‘the cultural authority of the classical past and of classical models of presentation and behaviour’ (p. 3), or ‘a set of assumptions or conventions’. The closing statement in the introduction asserts: ‘Classical traditions were adopted, adapted or inherited in every corner of what had once been the classical world; and what unity may be found there is created not by any direct similarity in the shape of these various responses to the classical past, but by the central role of that still authoritative past in the formation of new identities and traditions’. This lack of clarity is problematic and surely unnecessary.
In ‘The Jewish Patriarchate: a State within a State?’ J. Curran reads the Patriarchate as a means of reconciling Jewish identity and history with its present location under Roman power by recounting instances of interaction between Jewish patriarchs and Roman officials. By casting themselves as empowered and influential in relation to Roman government, an involuntary state of dependence on Rome could be re-sold as benign and mutually respectful. Curran parses for us what sort of engagement with the classical past can be seen in this case: ‘Upholders of the most unclassical of traditions, the Patriarchs of the Jews paradoxically reveal some of the most important dynamics of the government of emperors … the Jews produced a series of figures who became highly significant in negotiating the new dispensation with Rome’ (p. 27).
F. Hadjittofi, ‘Nonnus’ Unclassical Epic: Imaginary Geography in the Dionysiaca', sees the text in question as simultaneously a hymn of praise to Greek culture and a sly case of subversion in that it privileges marginal cultures and individuals, thus decentring and contesting the primacy of Greece.
D.M. Gwynn, ‘Athanasius in Oriental Historical Tradition’, studies the ways in which the episcopate of Athanasius of Alexandria is portrayed in the Syriac, Coptic and Armenian literature. While this is a topic of great interest, it is not clear how narratives of the life of a fourth-century bishop constitute engagement with the classical tradition. It is to his credit that Gwynn makes no attempt to pitch the essay as such.
S. Knipe, ‘Sacrifice and Self-transformation in the Alchemical Writings of Zosimus of Panopolis’, treats a case of the energetic rejection of classical traditions of sacrifice. Alchemists like Zosimus replace popular religious practice with esoteric authorities and special significances: ‘Through alchemical discourse, Zosimus can be seen to establish a firm break with the classical traditions of pagan worship … re-imagined in notably unclassical terms as self-sacrifice in the initiate flame of God’ (p. 69). Here again it is not clear that Zosimus is really engaged with the classical past and not with contemporary ritual practice.
Possibly the strongest essay is F.'s ‘Genealogies of Unbelief: Epiphanius of Salamis and Heresiological Authority’. Here the relation between the text and classical tradition, in this case the rhetoric of medicine, and the effects of that relation, are articulated precisely: ‘Traditional forms of authority were here reconfigured to serve as part of a contemporary Christian agenda, but in the process created a new kind of discourse that was neither entirely new nor entirely classical. What is significant is the way in which uniquely modern concerns could be redefined in a reassuringly familiar fashion: when presented in the language of medicine, heresy could become a matter not for polemic but for sober diagnosis and treatment; and the theological authority of a Cypriot bishop could be bolstered by the scientific expertise of a Nicander of Colophon or a Galen’ (p. 8).
W. studies correspondence from Augustine's early career in ‘Beloved Lord and Honourable Brother: the Negotiation of Status in Augustine, Letter 23’, similarly illustrating skilful fusion of classical and Christian conventions. In this case, however, the aim of Augustine's ambivalence is pragmatic rather than ideological and serves to provide him with a rhetorical exit strategy in an unpredictable conflict.
The next essay, ‘totum subuertere uoluerunt: “social martyrdom” in the historia persecutionis of Victor of Vita’, is also located thematically in North Africa. A.H. Merrills portrays the occupation of Carthage by the Vandals as the destruction of a fine classical society overrun by barbarians, with special attention to anxieties over loss of public status resulting from Vandal dominance of the city.
The volume closes with T. Kitchen's ‘Italia and Graecia: West Versus East in the Rhetoric of Ostrogothic Italy’, which shows how the regime of Theodoric is presented in terms of full exploitation of the ambiguity of Italia to mean either a specific province or the western empire as a whole, in which case the ruler of Italia was the heir of Roman emperors (p. 11).
The strengths of this volume are to be found in the individual contributions. However, as a collection of essays on a clearly articulated concept, the volume reveals its weaknesses. It is the task of the introduction to make plausible the unity of the collection and to work through the concepts relevant to the topic, as well as to explain the role of each contribution in the execution of its analysis. The introduction, which itself would have profited from more stringent editing for clarity, does not serve to clarify what the volume is about or how the parts make up a coherent whole.
It would have been helpful if the editors had suggested what, if anything, late-antique thinkers might have done instead of relate themselves to a classical tradition, or if they had sought analogies in post-colonial literatures where the cultural work of a society is referred to a past which is not proper to it. Is it something similar that we see when the North African Augustine uses classical epistolary forms? Or is there something different about this type of engagement with more recent cases of reception, adaptation and self-identification in terms of an imagined past? In addition, there is no significant use made of previous scholarly discussions on topics of reception and historicisation, or other cultural processes of relating to the past. Here the work of P. Ricoeur, B. Anderson or J. Assmann could have provided conceptual clarity.
