Tenue est mendacium is the latest in a series on fakes, forgeries and questions of authorship from Javier Martínez, here accompanied as editor by Klaus Lennartz, who wrote the introduction and one chapter. This instalment follows the aim of its predecessors – Ergo Decipiatur! (Leiden 2014), Splendide Mendax (Groningen 2016) and Animo Decipiendi? (Groningen 2018) – of promoting the study of fakes and forgeries without any restrictions. This results in a broad church of disciplines, methodologies and tone, an approach which helps and hinders in equal measure. For instance, there seems to be no thematic difference from volume to volume. The editors do not explain the relevance of Tenue est mendacium (‘lies are thin stuff’, presumably citing Sen. Ep. 79.18.7) to this collection, nor is it clear why previous volumes had their particular titles beyond a link to deception or falsification. In Tenue est mendacium, chapters do not relate to one another, particularly as each section constitutes a disciplinary silo: Greek literature, the largest section, is followed by Latin literature, late antique and early Christian works, and epigraphy and archaeology. Some chapters in the volume aim only to present a pseudotext and its reception history, with little argument. The best of the chapters, however, embrace the volume’s professed freedom to contribute excellent and innovative scholarship to an ever-growing field of forgeries across literary history.
A positive consequence of this volume’s variety is precisely its range of approaches, something welcome in the field of forgeries, where the boundaries between the genuine and the fake are linguistically and historically messy. Each chapter assesses the value of the fake at hand differently, whether in its intrinsic importance or in its relation to the genuine (or canonical). Particularly engaging approaches are those of Giuseppe La Bua, who discusses pseudotexts not only in terms of imitation but also in terms of competition (‘the imitator’, he argues, ‘thinks of himself as winning and surpassing his predecessor’ (181), an especially generative line of thought); Kostas Kapparis, who debates the merits and frustrations of the works of Apollodoros being yoked to the canon of Demosthenes (they only survived due to being misattributed to the latter, but the label of Pseudo-Demosthenes stymies thorough study); and Esteban Calderón Dorda, who asks where the intentional and unintentional changes of copyists sit on the spectrum of authenticity, a question with particular weight in early Christian works, where potentially fake texts were nevertheless admitted as canonical (as in the case of the ‘long charter’ of Mark, 219–20).
The tone of the collection can best be described as idiosyncratic: readers may come to different conclusions on whether the less formally written chapters are a triumph of experimentation or a frustrating obscuration of fascinating pseudotexts. A more informal tone is struck by Klaus Lennartz in his introduction (‘hem’ (3), is the entirety of one sentence), who moves through relevant theories and contexts at breakneck speed. This atmosphere is taken to extremes by John Henderson, in his chapter on a Ciceronian spuria – in Henderson’s words, ‘a brand new medieval ding-dong of Cicero versus Catiline’ (151). Ciceronian style is described entertainingly, but may be read with some bemusement, as ‘“the bitch is back” speeches’ (153). The majority of contributions are not in this style, although the appearance of the phrase ‘news-reporting bulimia’ (324) in the final chapter continues the collection’s occasionally baffling atmosphere.
One chapter which is experimentally voiced with aplomb and skill is Jared Hudon’s essay, surely the tour de force of the entire collection. The piece is addressed, not to the reader, but directly to one pseudo-Sallust, who wrote the invective Against Cicero. ‘Who do you think you are? What can we make of you?’ (163), this essay begins, Hudson imitating pseudo-Sallust’s address to Cicero, with rhetorical flourishes galore as well as the cadence of ancient invective. Hudson demonstrates that this imitator is imitating both Sallust and Cicero (‘In spraying your readers with textual splinters of Sallust and Cicero … you have synthesized an “atmosphere”’ (164), Hudson declares, rather atmospherically himself). It is a striking example of the scholarly freedom which this volume’s editors promise and a risk which works in the context of the collection.
Overall, Tenue est mendacium succeeds in its aim of habilitating forgeries as useful and valuable texts – an aim revealed to be a rehabilitation in some cases, as Bronwen Neil makes clear that forgery was in fact ‘a respected practice in Late Antiquity’ (229). While some pseudotexts, such as pseudo-Virgil, are ‘virtually on the curriculum’ (151), as John Henderson declares, other pseudepigraphal and pseudonymous works remain virtually unknown. Works such as Tenue est mendacium are valuable repositories for the fragmented, the extracanonical, the forgotten and other texts which do not (yet) fit on syllabi or in particular disciplines. It is moreover a useful yardstick for measuring the development of the study of forgeries as a whole. For instance, Wolfgang Speyer and Anthony Grafton are predictably frequently invoked here, but the true interlocutor throughout is Irene Peirano Garrison’s The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake (Cambridge 2012), now deservedly cemented as a defining text of the field. Despite the volume’s idiosyncrasies, it – and the series which houses it – remains an important avenue of scholarship in an exciting field.
