The title of this book does not adequately convey the scope of its content. Co-editor R. explains in the introduction that ‘topography is understood by us in a broad sense: not only the spatial but also the social, ethnical, gendered, political, and religious dimensions of violence will be considered’ (p. 4). For Greece and Rome there are parallel chapters on assassinations, violence against women, violence against slaves, battlefield behaviour, and violence associated with drinking and dining. A chapter on hubris and another on the Spartan krypteia are further contributions on the Greek side, and for Rome readers will find chapters dealing with urban violence, the historiography of battle and the gladiatorial arena. Several of these articles can serve as admirably readable introductory surveys of their respective topics; the pieces with a narrower focus offer some compelling new arguments and perspectives.
It seems appropriate to begin with the two contributions by co-editor F., whose untimely passing has left the field of ancient social history bereft of one of its most gifted scholars. It is hard to imagine a more informative brief survey of its topic than ‘Urban Violence: Street, Forum, Bath, Circus, and Theater’ (Chapter 9). The section on the circus and the theatre is particularly interesting in light of the absence of evidence for rioting in the circus before the infamous outbreaks in the east during the fifth and sixth centuries ad. F. finds it inconceivable that imperial sources, which often record violence in the theatre, would have been silent for so long about such disturbances and thus concludes that they were a late-antique phenomenon.
Also rewarding is F.’s ‘Manipulating Space in the Roman Arena’ (Chapter 14), which begins with a succinct reconstruction of a typical munus gladiatorum. F. pays particular attention to the extravagant stage sets used to enhance gladiatorial combat and venationes, illustrating his discussion with pictures of mosaics and reliefs, including his own photographs of the recently discovered reliefs from Kibyra. Comparing modern evidence about the psychology of viewing violence, F. concludes that ‘the theatricality of arena spectacles hedged the violence of the shows with an air of artificiality, making all the more palatable the very real violence these spectacles entailed’ (p. 372).
D. Phillips's ‘Xenophon and the Muleteer’ (Chapter 1) opens the volume with an engaging and tightly argued study of hubris. Aristotle identifies the intention to inflict humiliation and aggrandise the self as fundamental to the concept, but Phillips shows that Aristotle's exclusion of additional motives, such as anger and retaliation, conflicts with the abundant evidence of trials where such motives are present but not exculpatory. The shaming intention of violence, moreover, is not an absolute indicator of hubris, as Xenophon's own trial in the Anabasis, on charges of having committed hubris by striking disobedient men, shows. Xenophon argues in a speech following his acquittal that he struck soldiers either for their own good (as when he hit men who sat down in the freezing cold and refused to stand) or for the good of the army (by punishing disorderly men and thereby maintaining discipline). Phillips makes a compelling case that this ‘ep’ agathôi standard’, whereby the violent infliction of shame can be justified by salutary effects on the victim or on third parties, ‘applies across Greek literary genres and cultural practices’ (p. 26).
R.’s ‘Where to Kill in Classical Athens: Assassinations, Executions, and the Athenian Public Space’ (Chapter 3) surveys the locations and contexts of murders and executions in Classical Athens. While no surprising patterns emerge from R.’s careful analysis, the chapter nevertheless provides a valuable prosopography of killing. An appendix tabulates the relevant dates, sources, plaintiffs, murderers, victims, locations and other circumstances for each case.
In ‘The Topography of Roman Assassination, 133 bce–222 ce’ (Chapter 8), J. Osgood identifies turning points in the history of assassinations at Rome. From the killing of Tiberius Gracchus, whom Scipio Aemilianus would claim was iure caesus, until well into the principate, assassinations were justified and remembered as tyrannicides. The killing of Elagabalus in the Praetorian Camp, Osgood argues, represented a pivotal departure from this tradition: ‘the act of Elagabalus’ assassination was given no particular sanctity, either in its perpetration or in the memory of it’ (p. 227). Passages from the Historia Augusta not adduced in the article underscore Osgood's point: the compiler of the Vita Heliogabali laments the lack of a proper tyrannicida in Elagabalus’ assassination, contrasting the downfalls of Caligula, Nero and Vitellius (34.1–2). As if to fill the vacuum, the Vita Alexandri Severi has the senate proclaim that Elagabalus’ death is the work of the di immortales and just: luxuriosus imperator iure punitus est (6.3–5).
P. Hunt's ‘Violence against Slaves in Classical Greece’ (Chapter 5) and N. Lenski's ‘Violence and the Roman Slave’ (Chapter 11) survey the range of violence suffered by slaves and the depressingly few protections afforded them by Greek and Roman law. Hunt additionally discusses violence against slave women, and Lenski touches on how slaves were used to commit violence and how some slaves responded with violence to their own bondage.
E. Millender's ‘The Greek Battlefield: Classical Sparta and the Spectacle of Hoplite Warfare’ (Chapter 6) argues that the strictly disciplined manoeuvres of the Spartan hoplite phalanx were a spectacle that terrified the enemy, reinforced the ethic of ‘communal sociability’ within the state, and communicated Spartan values and superiority both to allies and to the non-Spartans who served in the army. Similarly concerned with the battlefield as a spectacle, G. Ward's ‘The Roman Battlefield: Individual Exploits in Warfare of the Roman Republic’ (Chapter 12) examines the conditions under which a soldier's conspicuous deeds on the battlefield earned gloria in the late republic. From the exceptions granted in the soldier's oath not to break rank, Ward identifies three basic motives for individual displays of valour: ‘the desires to avoid shame, to acquire gloria by killing an opponent, and to save one's comrades’ (pp. 309–10). Exploits performed with these motivations, Ward shows, were deemed praiseworthy to the extent that they enhanced the morale and safety of the army.
If Sparta skilfully exploited the psychological impact of the spectacle of hoplite engagements, it also mastered covert methods to control its subjects. M. Trundle's ‘The Spartan Krypteia’ (Chapter 2) deftly presents the sparse ancient evidence for this secret institution and weighs the various modern interpretations. Trundle offers a convincing synthesis: secret movement through the countryside and spying are common themes in the disparate evidence. Combined with the sporadic killing of helots, or even the mere rumour that such killing could happen, such tactics would have formed a powerful tool of psychological warfare for maintaining control over a large population.
In ‘War as Theater, from Tacitus to Dexippus’ (Chapter 13), D. Potter begins with an analysis of how Cassius Dio and Herodian create battle scenes using stock ‘pictorial’ elements suggestive of imperial art (p. 329). Potter contrasts the archaising and Thucydides-imitating Dexippus, ‘whose battle narratives eschew the visual elements of Herodian (a near contemporary) and Dio to make a more specific point: that the current struggle was part of the grand narrative of human history that set civilization at odds with barbarism’ (p. 339). The discussion turns next to Tacitus’ sophisticated and ironic depictions of spectacle. The chapter concludes with reflections on the absence of a firm boundary between historia and dramatike in the imperial historians.
R. Omitowoju's ‘The Crime that Dare not Speak its Name’ is concerned with how violence against women is portrayed in Athenian forensic oratory. Omitowoju observes that an apparent taboo against prosecuting sexual violence suffered by Athenian women is paralleled by a notable reticence in forensic speeches about all other violence against women, which tends to be dealt with in passing in the few instances it is mentioned. By contrast, empathy for women suffering violence can be found in genres where the women are either fictional or are not dealt with as individuals (e.g. in tragedy, comedy and historical narratives). Omitowoju does not discuss the notable example of Alcibiades’ wife, Hipparete, who appears in R.’s catalogue as a possible homicide (pp. 83–4 and Table 2, case no. 8).
S. Witzke's ‘Violence against Women in Ancient Rome: Ideology versus Reality’ evaluates for ideological content and realism depictions of violence against women in literary sources from the republic and early principate (especially Livy's stories of early Rome, comedy and elegy) and offers supporting discussion of relevant aspects of Roman law. Witzke omits a chilling, if anomalous, application of patria potestas recorded by Valerius Maximus (6.1.3): a certain Pontius Aufidianus put his daughter to death after discovering that she had lost her virginity to one Fannius Saturninus. Valerius’ remark on the episode – that Pontia's father, ‘to avoid celebrating her shameful wedding, conducted a bitter funeral’ (ne turpes eius nuptias celebraret, acerbas exequias duxit) – implies that marriage was a conceivable resolution to a case of stuprum. See J. Linderski, ‘The Death of Pontia’, RhM (1990), 86–93, and T.A.J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (1998), p. 206.
O. Murray's ‘Violence at the Symposion’ (Chapter 7) and J. Donahue's ‘Party Hard: Violence in the Context of Roman Cenae’ (Chapter 15) examine a wide range of literary and historical depictions of violence in these microcosms of society and politics. A curious commonplace of dining-room violence seems to be missing from these accounts, however: the physical abuse of parasites; see, for example, Axionicus, F 6 (PCG), Plautus, Captivi 88–9, Juvenal 5.170–3 and Lucian, Symposium 18–19.
If taken metaphorically, the title is accurate. This collection is an excellent introduction to a grim and difficult terrain.
