Materiality of ancient text – written, painted, scratched, or carved – is a topic dear to my heart, and I find the visual dimension of ancient writing fascinating for many reasons. Like many Classicists, I also find a great joy in puzzling out the meanings of the lettered lines, arched like dancing serpents, on archaic Greek vases. If one pauses in front of an interesting pot in a museum, it is very easy to forget the time and the rest of the exhibition, as the somersaulting shapes of the continuous script reveal first their letters, then words, rewarding the reader's patience with a short sentence or two: ‘Rejoice! Drink well!’ At times, we have to admit defeat and acknowledge that we are in front of a ‘nonsense’ inscription: that is, an inscription whose lettering creates meanings in a different way – such as a framing device for the visual narrative scene, or devices in the narrative itself, or mimicking foreign sounds or music.Footnote ¹ Then there is the endlessly amusing world of ancient graffiti – some with acute-angled, nervous letters written in haste; some curvy and elegant, worked out by a skilled and learned hand with plenty of time at its disposal; many accompanied by drawings, some innocuous, some coarse; and all of them, in some way, intent on defying human transience and ephemerality.

I clearly remember the exact moment I became interested in the issues of textual materiality and enchanted by the magic of epigraphy. One July morning shortly before 6 a.m., many years ago, I found myself standing with Manolis Skountakis, a good friend of mine and a fellow graduate student, in front of an inscription carved on a wall in Aphrodisias. There was precious little to be seen, as the inscription's face was shaved clean, nearly completely worn off, and the two of us could not figure out more than an occasional sequence of a few letters, an omicron here (‘or is it perhaps a theta?’), and lambda there (‘or is it an alpha? A delta?’). Having previously studied only easily readable inscriptions, the two of us were baffled. After we had sweated over the task for a while, our supervisor joined us and, visibly entertained by our cluelessness, he pulled from his backpack a big bottle of water and grabbed a piece of charcoal from his pocket. Like an expressionist painter working on a canvas, with wide strokes of the charcoal he first drew several quick, spontaneous, and delicate lines. The pristine shimmer of the marble was now despoiled in the very place where we imagined that the text may have begun. Next, he flicked some water over the mess and started to gently rub the muck into the stone with his fingertips. And then, all of a sudden, there it was: lit by the rising sun, the long-gone letters started to flash one by one right in front of our eyes, woken up by grime if only for a fraction of a second, from their millennial slumber.

The field of Greek and Latin epigraphy, among others, developed a keen interest in issues of materiality of text, and anyone who has had an opportunity to be in close contact with ancient writings will know the urge to touch a stone, a papyrus, or a codex. In fact, the last decade has witnessed an establishment of several large-scheme projects dedicated to issues of textual materiality. I am one of the culprits, but a much more encompassing project is hosted by Heidelberg University, in the form of a collaborative research project entitled ‘Materiale Textkulturen’ (‘Material Cultures of Text’), which deals with the issues of materiality, writing, and reading in pre-typographic societies. The project's results are published in a dedicated book series from de Gruyter (‘Materiale Textkulturen’) which has in the meantime published more than two dozen sets of volumes on relevant topics. The first two volumes under review are products of this interest and stem from the Heidelberg project.

I have commented elsewhere in more detail that, in epigraphy, increasing attention is paid to the materiality of inscribed texts and the design of written surfaces.Footnote ² Now we have a take on similar issues, namely a study of the modes and functions of writing in their architectural and statuary contexts, penned by a team of three archaeologists. In Schreiben auf statuarischen Monumenten, Nikolaus Dietrich, Johannes Fouquet, and Corinna Reinhardt join forces to draw attention to the third dimension of writing on archaic and early classical monuments, and in particular on sculpture.Footnote ³ Starting from the valid observation that the materiality of inscriptions on sculpture has traditionally represented only a marginal topic of investigation in (German) classical archaeology, in his erudite Introduction Dietrich sketches a history of this neglect. As he observes, since German (and not only German) classical archaeology has been through phases of intensive interest for many other kinds of materiality of sculpture (we are reminded of formalist approaches of ‘Faltenzähler’ and ‘Lockenzähler’: that is, scholarship that focused on counting the number of folds on a statue's garb and of curls on its head), the disregard of inscriptions is all the more remarkable. The task of the volume, then, is to rectify this, and so the authors do. In the first chapter, Reinhardt studies the materiality of inscriptions on grave monuments from archaic Attica. She raises exciting questions about the relationship between the sculpture and its text, and the position of inscriptions (including both sepulchral inscriptions proper and sculptors’ signatures), and explores key features of textual materiality: direction of writing, framing devices, the effects of colour, shapes, and lines all receive due attention and thoughtful analysis. In the following chapter, Fouquet studies statue bases from Attic sanctuaries, and the votives in particular. His principal aim is to highlight the aesthetic tensions that emerge between the rough picked (‘the unfinished’) and the smooth surfaces of the bases carrying inscriptions. Most of these statue bases come from the first half of the fifth century bc, and then their numbers appear to diminish (for a while), while simultaneously public architecture of the same period starts to adopt elements of the infinito style. The question is, of course, what may have influenced such aesthetic decisions and shaped contemporary taste: did the tension between the rough and the smooth reflect the state of the city following its destruction during the Persian wars that scholarship once persuasively argued? Throughout this chapter, Fouquet provides thick descriptions and ably scrutinizes several lines of argumentation to provide answers to this question. Dietrich follows with a deep dive into the layouts of inscriptions on archaic and early classical sculpture, taking as his point of departure one of the most fascinating early inscriptions, the seventh-century bc dedication of Nikandre (CEG 430). One of the most interesting insights of this candid chapter is that, when thinking about the layouts of the period, we should be sensitive both to the nature of objects on which the inscription is carved, and to the moment in the production of an object when the inscription was incised. Both of these observations, unpretentious and natural as they are, pay significant dividends when applied systematically to individual cases, and shed light on the pragmatic and aesthetic aspects of collaboration between image and text. The final chapter, written jointly by the three authors, puts the main observations regarding the early material into diachronic perspective by adducing some of the most prominent examples of writing on sculpture in the classical and Hellenistic periods (here, the authors choose the grave stele of Ampharete, the Daochos group from Delphi, and the monument for Diomedes from Oropos). A short conclusion outlining the main finds, a summary in English, and a set of basic indexes close the volume. In the previous issue of G&R I grumbled about the lack of papers dedicated to the archaic and classical periods in an edited volume dealing with ancient literacy, and this volume more than made up for that omission. It is a well-written, generously illustrated, and important work that not only fills a long-standing gap, but also breaks new ground in regard to the way we think about early iconotexts. Since it represents, in a way, an archaeological pendant to L. H. Jeffery's Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, and a complementary volume to Der Neue Overbeck, it will be helpful to archaeologists, epigraphers, and cultural historians alike.

The second book from the same series by de Gruyter is an edited volume dealing with the materiality of reading in ancient and medieval cultures.Footnote ⁴ The work arose from a conference held in Heidelberg in 2018, and the editors should be commended for the efficacy and speed with which they managed to see the volume through to publication. The thirteen chapters cover a lot of ground: many of the contributions tackle the issues of reading and materiality in Qumran scrolls; the book also includes papers dealing with New Testament and ancient Christian manuscripts, ancient Jewish reading practices, and more. As is often the case with edited volumes, so here too, some of the papers included are more explicitly concerned with the matter at hand than others. That said, this is a rich and stimulating publication; among many strong contributions, the following were my personal highlights: I have learned much from Lindsey A. Askin's and Friederike Schücking-Jungblut's pieces on the page layout of Qumran scrolls; Andrea Jördens' contribution, perhaps the most substantial of the volume, discusses the morphology and key characteristics of a specific type of early codex that facilitates a reader's leafing through the text; and Jan Heilmann's discussion of the lectional signs in early New Testament manuscripts. Like the previous book from the series, this one is handsomely produced (albeit one wishes in both cases that the volumes had included a subject index).

We turn to two more books from de Gruyter, both dealing with religion. The reader might very well wonder why such a flurry of books coming from the same publisher; part of the answer, of course, is that this press produces, like a number of others, excellent volumes that merit attention. The other part of the answer is provided by the circumstances in which this review is written: unlike de Gruyter, some of the main publishers in the field of Classics have temporarily stopped providing physical copies to reviewers and journals and have supplied instead either PDFs or, worse, books in digital formats which require that the readers peruse them entirely online. While this is fully understandable, of course, as long as these presses’ distribution centres remain(ed) closed, the toll on one's eyes at a time when all of us are spending more time in front of a screen than ever before, is accumulating. And many of us, I am sure, are realizing now more clearly than ever just how significant are the roles that tactility and smell play when it comes to the joy of reading (and the process of cognition): the materiality of texts extends far beyond the narrow confines of the work done by the sense of the sight and the lettering.

Be that as it may, the third volume of Greco-Roman Associations is now out. Like the first two comprehensive corpora of documents pertaining to ancient guilds, this one represents an indispensable tool for anyone interested in Greek and Roman religion and sociocultural and economic history.Footnote ⁵ The first two volumes compiled the material regarding associations from the mainland (Attica, Central Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace, by John S. Kloppenborg and Richard S. Ascough), and the northern Black Sea and Asia Minor (by Philip A. Harland). The third volume presents about 140 documents (dedications, decrees, funerary monuments, and more) from papyri and stones stemming from Egypt, organized into four sections (Delta, Middle Egypt, Upper Egypt, and a small group of documents of unknown provenance). Individual entries provide basic information (date, provenance, current location), a list of editions, a list of comparanda (a terrifically helpful feature), description of the object or the papyrus, Greek text with an excellent apparatus, a clear translation, notes on notable words and expressions, and a learned and rich commentary followed by a bibliography. The world of ancient associations is exceptionally diverse: apart from cultic associations dedicated to a specific divinity or divinities, the volume also includes evidence for athletic and musical guilds, as well as for the occupational guilds (here we find pretty much everything – from carpet-weavers, corpse-transporters, and dung merchants to saddle-makers, tavern-keepers, and woolworkers, with an astounding variety of other guilds in between). A truly fantastic set of no fewer than thirteen indexes closes the volume. It is impossible, of course, to appropriately present here the phenomenal wealth of information provided by this magisterial volume, but its helpfulness is extraordinary. It is probably true that, owing to the nature of the project, only a few will be tempted to read the volume cover to cover. That said, I received a lot of joy reading several entries per day, and gaining much interesting information regarding the everyday life of Hellenistic and Imperial Egypt. From a court case regarding a mortuary worker who appears to have stolen the deceased person's clothing (no. 261), via beer prices in first-century ce Tebtynis (no. 214), to club accounts (no. 194), all these documents provide colourful and invaluable insights into the socioeconomic and cultural history of Egypt.

Consider, for instance, the following excerpt from the bylaws of an association of Zeus Hypsistos from first-century bc Philadelphia (no. 199). After the text has proclaimed a certain Petesouchos (a fine and an eloquent fellow, we are reminded) as the president of the association for a year's term, and has defined the duties of the president, it notably turns to the club members’ etiquette:

The delightful specificity of these prohibitions – one can almost hear the exasperation in the tone of the ordinances here – reveals just how common these kinds of disruptive misbehaviour must have been during this association's symposia. In fact, on the basis of these bans we may recognize the contours of dramas not entirely dissimilar to those one could imagine in a college's Senior Common Room on, say, a whisky-tasting evening. The drama starts with factionalism and rejection of a principal's authority: ‘Let's move to this corner; by the way, I'm not really sure that Petesouchos has a clue what he's doing…’. Then, there is the in-group jockeying for social and cultural capital in the guise of genealogizing, that is, poking around someone's background: ‘What did you say your parents did? I thought I saw your mother at a stall in the agora? Your grandfather was a Thracian, wasn't he?’, leading gradually to kakologia (‘So, Petesouchos, you say you went to school there? Well, someone has to, I suppose’). Once the atmosphere at the party has become uneasy (‘clouded drinking’), ostensible passive aggression could follow. In this entirely fictional (I hasten to add) drama, the couch-switching at a symposium might be imagined as a pendant to the strategic positioning in a college SCR's queue right before the gong announces the imminent start of the dinner, or – horribile dictu! – to changing one's seat at high table. And it all may culminate in open accusations and indignant and resentful declarations (‘As long as Petesouchos is in charge, I refuse to be a member of this club!’). As you can see from this quick sketch, the documents that Kloppenborg presents in this volume are a treasure trove for social, religious, economic, and cultural historians: we owe him a debt of gratitude for this excellent achievement.

Next, a volume on the sacral topography of the western Peloponnese. In his books on the cults and sanctuaries of Elis and Triphylia (the latter being the stretch of land extending between Elis and Messenia), Oliver Pilz provides a comprehensive account of the religious life of these areas on the basis of a careful and thorough examination of the material, literary, epigraphic, and numismatic sources, and also informed by early travel accounts.Footnote ⁶ This substantial volume, stemming from the author's Habilitationsschrift, is split into four main sections following the Introduction (Chapter 1), in which the reader is introduced to the history of scholarship, methodological considerations, and the geographical delineation. The following chapters are dedicated to individual areas: Chapters 2–4 deal respectively with the cults of the city of Elis and its territory; the area of Pisatis – that is, the area around Olympia proper which was probably annexed by the Elians in the sixth century bc; and Triphylia. The closing chapter provides a summary of the main findings, and discusses the political and cultural points of pressure in the relationship between urban and rural sanctuaries, as well as the dynamics of cult transfer in these areas. Within individual chapters, Pilz makes every effort to adduce and assess all available and relevant evidence for individual gods and heroes venerated at a locale. The emerging picture is, as might be expected, one of an exciting mixture of the cults of panhellenic heroes and Olympians, often with intriguing cult epithets, and local divinities and heroes. The work as a whole, owing to its catalogic features, its erudition, good indexes, and more than fifty helpful illustrations will be a useful tool for anyone interested in the local religious life of the area.

I close this issue's General review with a book on ancient Greek insults.Footnote ⁷ In her thoroughly entertaining book, Deborah Kamen focuses on Athens and the insults attested in the classical period (the emphasis being on the mid-fifth century bc until the death of Alexander the Great), in order to explore the rules governing Athenian insults, their contents, and the functions and consequences of ribald and affrontive language attested in our sources. As not all cusses are born equal, the material examined includes insults of a varying degree of intensity: since, as Kamen points out, Greeks had no single term for ‘insult’, she brings together categories of speech that they distinguished as separate and that extend from ‘jests’ (skomma) and ‘shameful speech’ (aischrologia), via ‘denigrating speech’ (loidorein), ‘to ‘defamation’ (diabole, blasphemia) and hubris (translated by Kamen as ‘deliberate affront to another's honor’, 10). Kamen's observation regarding these varying degrees of intensity also provides the book's organizing principle. In five chapters we move from the most benign to the vilest of ancient Greek insults, and each chapter invites the reader to reflect on the power of language, and the limits of freedom of speech. Given the way that public discourse has shifted in many countries around the world over the past few years, and given the attempts made by some of the most prominent political actors to normalize abnormal speech, this book could not be timelier.

In the first three chapters, Kamen analyses socially acceptable insults: that is, insults that were not legally actionable nor condemned by society at large. The opening chapter, with its focus on aischrologia and skommata, deals with insults attested in a religious context. A prominent place is given to ritual insults in the cults of Demeter (including the gephurismoi, the ritual insults performed during the Eleusinian mysteries at the point of crossing the bridge over the river Kephisos, of relatively innocuous character [‘Shorty!’, ‘Fatty!’, ‘Baldy!’]) and in the cults of Dionysus (including the sympotic setting). Kamen demonstrates clearly that insults in these contexts served a variety of purposes. Mockery can be employed to re-enact a ritual drama, or can serve an apotropaic function, while it simultaneously contributes to the social cohesion of the group. Chapter 2, dedicated to the mockery in Old Comedy, examines the limitations in the use of comic insults (especially the extent to which mockery ‘by name’ was policed), before the chapter turns to the contents of such insults. Kamen recognizes several main motifs: first, there is one's foreign origin or background as the potential butt of jokes – having, say, a Thracian, Scythian, or Mysian parent could be weaponized by an Athenian of a finer pedigree for the purposes of mockery. And now, that clause from the bylaws of the association of Zeus Hypsistos we examined above is thrown into sharp relief: no wonder that the members of the association were not allowed to enter into one another's pedigrees at the banquet! Other typical motifs include one's (low) social status and profession (e.g. leatherworkers or ribbon-sellers), cowardice (e.g. draft-dodgers and deserters), and what was perceived as sexual and gender deviance (e.g. effeminacy, promiscuity, and prostitution). Chapter 3 turns to invective in Attic oratory, and the use of diabole in particular (Kamen prefers to translate the term as ‘denigration’ or ‘defamation’ rather than ‘slander’). As in previous chapters, we are first introduced to the limitations on the use of invective in Athenian courts: calling someone a murderer, or accusing them of parent abuse or cowardice, was sanctionable, while hubris and buffoonery were best avoided. As for the content of insults in the invective, Kamen points out the extent of the overlap with comic mockery: pedigree, social status and occupation, cowardice, and sexual deviance all crop up here too.

The final two chapters deal with forbidden forms of insult – that is, actionable verbal abuse. In Chapter 4, we are instructed regarding the legal status of kakegoria (‘ill-speaking’) and the legal implications from Solon onwards. Then we turn to the category of aporrheta (‘unspeakable’ insults), which prohibit calling someone a murderer, a mother or father beater, or a deserter. In addition to these, some scholars include in the category of aporrheta the insult of reproaching someone for being a worker in the agora (‘market insult’). Kamen draws our attention to the fact that the inclusion of such insults in the category of aporrheta was probably motivated by a fundamentally different concern from the rest of aporrheta: she suggests that, given the socioeconomic situation in Athens in the mid-fourth century, this measure may have served the purpose of protecting lower-class Athenians from disenfranchisement. The final chapter tackles the problematic issue of hubris and its legal ramifications. Starting with questions of definition, Kamen goes on to discuss the kinds of behaviours labelled as hubristic, to outline the scholarly conundrum regarding our evidence (and the entrenched interpretations thereof), as well as emotional and legal responses to hubris. This chapter adopts a slightly different tone from the rest of the book, and it is likely to be appreciated more by legal historians than the general reader. A brief and clear summary of key insights, followed by a bibliography and a set of useful indexes, closes the volume. As an introduction to Athenian insults and a stepping stone for further engagement with the topic (which is what the book intends to achieve), this accessible and insightful work provides plenty of food for thought and, as such, it deserves to be welcomed by a general audience and Classicists alike.