The relief tablets collectively defined as Tabulae Iliacae are a group of small-scale carved stone plaques of the early imperial period, densely illustrated with miniature scenes, related mostly to Homer's Iliad and the rest of the epic cycle. The recent publication of two monographic studies has changed substantially and permanently the modern perception of the meaning and cultural context of the Tabulae. A joint review of the two volumes therefore seems appropriate, in so far as the authors apply to the same subject different methods and approaches, often complementary, at times conflicting.
Since the discovery and first edition of the Tabula Capitolina as early as the late-seventeenth century (Fabretti [1683])Footnote 1 – especially after the publication of the first complete study on the class as a whole in 1873 (Jahn, Michaelis [1873]) – the Tabulae Iliacae have aroused the interest of scholars mainly for their literary references, as an outstanding example of the Hellenistic tendency to illustrate classical works of Greek literature.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, however, the Tabulae Iliacae acquired a poor reputation after a learned study by N. Horsfall (1979) pointed out that the inconsistencies of the reliefs vis-à-vis the narrative of Homer demonstrate a lack of interest, if not incompetence, on the part of both the craftsmen and their customers. The Tabulae have thus been discredited as lowbrow products for an ‘ignorant clientéle’, at best acting as ‘vehicles for elementary adult education’ (Horsfall [1979]), ‘unduly famous’ (Brilliant [1984]) and even defined as ‘expensive rubbish’ (Horsfall [1994]). As a consequence of this widespread disrepute, the Tabulae have been neglected in many recent works on Hellenistic art.
The transition to the twenty-first century marked a new wave of studies, especially in Italy and Germany, which have reconsidered the artistic and cultural value of the Tabulae Iliacae, investigating their context of production and consumption (Salimbene [2002], Valenzuela Montenegro [2004], Puppo [2009]). S.'s and P.'s works belong to this recent trend, thus becoming the first important scholarly contributions in English in defence of the Tabulae. Indeed, both authors take seriously their role as advocates of the ‘renaissance’ of this class of small but complex monuments, presenting them in the light of interdisciplinary studies on visual narrative and ecphrasis.
Although three years separate the volumes, their gestations lasted more than a decade and were accompanied by several articles by the same authors. This allows P. and S. to confront and challenge one another's theories and approaches in their volumes, creating an unexpressed dialogue that the reader can appreciate. Moreover, even though P.'s book was published in 2014, it reflects the final version submitted in 2009, as he himself states (p. 25). In addition, S. knows and often quotes P.'s work at its earlier stage of a Ph.D. dissertation (pp. 73, 109, 205), and both authors mention from time to time conversations that they carried on during their parallel research.
Despite S.'s claim of having produced a ‘small artefact with big ambitions’ (p. 24), his volume is extensive and articulate. Still, the easygoing language chosen and the frequent reference to light, at times even humorous, arguments makes it easy to read, and allows S. to convey a large amount of data and theory in an unusual way.
The book opens with a chapter on the poetics of miniaturisation from Antiquity to the present. The severe judgement of an ancient author such as Claudius Aelianus on miniature works not worth the attention of serious persons is compared to Horsfall's negative appraisal of the cultural value of the Tabulae, and subsequently rejected (pp. 3, 15). On the contrary, S. highlights the multiple possibilities in reading these objects, and encourages the reader to use his book in the same way, ‘playing’ with the potential depth of the arguments and ‘choosing’ one's personal way of appreciation (pp. 24–5).
The chapters follow one another confronting a number of major issues, keeping the advocacy against the former reductive theories as a steady leitmotiv, which informs – at times rhetorically – a large part of the book. The multiplicity of meanings of the tablets is chosen as a principal device for defining them, from the issues of genre, workshops and materials (in consideration of the variability of the 23 items classified under the label of Tabulae Iliacae, pp. 31–67) to the definition of their scope (pp. 67–86).
A long section is devoted to the meaning of the technê of Theodorus (pp. 87–126), whose signature appears on six tablets, often in relationship with graphic games in the form of ‘magic squares’ incised on the verso of several tablets (pp. 197–246).
A major contribution of S. is the rebuttal of the widespread theory of the derivation of the Tabulae from illustrated literary papyrus scrolls (Weitzmann [1947]). The existence of illuminated texts in the early Imperial period that would have been available to be used as models for the tablets and some painted friezes still remains to be proved, since the extant evidence dates from Late Antiquity (pp. 129–39). Moreover, the independence of the tablets as works of art is demonstrated by the manifold ways of reading the figures on the tablets, more perceptible on the better preserved Tabula Capitolina. As a matter of fact, besides the narrative sequence stemming from the epic poems, several diverse pictorial devices can be detected, such as the repetition of a character in the same scene to represent the flow of time (pp. 148–56), as well as visual resonances among different parts of the tablet – as, for instance, the funerary stela of Achilles at Cape Sigeum recalling the monumental pillar on the right of the Capitolina, inscribed with a summary of the Iliad (p. 154) – and the ‘visual rhymes’ recognised in a number of friezes (pp. 171–5), which introduce a suggestive, fecund concept into the modern art criticism.
In the latter part of the volume, S. goes back again to the poetics of miniaturisation, presenting the tablets in light of the Hellenistic aesthetics of ‘finesse’, championed by Callimachus (leptotês) and described in visual arts by Pliny (subtilitas) (pp. 269–74). In this way S. is able to link the production environment of the Tabulae with the long-lasting tradition of miniature art, which knew a celebrated artist named Theodorus, living in Archaic Samos, and whose name could have inspired the pseudonym of the creator of the tablets (pp. 285–300).
Finally, the book embarks on an effort to investigate the theoretical and philosophical background of the Tabulae Iliacae, demonstrating the contrastive relationship with literary ecphrasis – ‘visualizing the verbal’ vs ‘verbalizing the visual’ (pp. 325–67) – and stressing the liberty given to the individual viewer of the tablets, who is afforded to choose his/her own way of reading the figures represented (pp. 382–4: ‘choose your own adventure’, thus, becomes a lesson in life: perhaps a bit too much, in my opinion, for the tiny Tabulae Iliacae, which after all were a few small-scale reliefs displayed individually in private contexts).
Taking advantage of the recent complete catalogue of the Tabulae Iliacae provided by N. Valenzuela Montenegro (2004), who reviews the archaeological data and the extant bibliography, P. has written a well-balanced, slender volume, focusing on the literary, cultural and display contexts of the tablets.
Aiming to tackle these themes as soon as possible (he even encourages the readers to ‘skip to Chapter 1 without much harm’, p. 16), P. reviews perhaps too quickly some major issues such as workshops and chronology. He assumes that ‘the tablets come from a single workshop linked to the name of Theodorus’ (pp. 18–19) and states that, since the inscriptions on two tablets refer to events of a.d. 15–16, ‘the two tablets in question, and therefore the class, should belong to the early first century ce’ (p. 20).
As regards the problem of sources, P. dismisses Weitzman's theory of illuminated texts, and endorses the hypothesis that the craftsmen drew the figures from pattern-books, presumably on papyri. These probably contained complete scenes and friezes, which were adapted and condensed as needed, thus explaining ‘errors’ and ‘variations’ occurring on the tablets (pp. 22–5).
Chapter 1 immediately confronts the issue of visual narrative, demonstrating the greater freedom allowed by visual arts vis-à-vis literature in presenting a narrative content with no reference to the logical time sequence. Ironically, for this purpose he analyses a number of literary texts describing illustrated objects (ecphrasis), and borrows from Russian Formalism the terms ‘fabula’ and ‘sjuzhet’, respectively corresponding to the chronological sequence of a narrative and to the order in which the events are recounted (pp. 32–7).
Going over an epyllion of Moschus (Europa 44–61), an idyll of Theocritus (1.32–54) and a famous passage of Virgil's Aeneid (1.466–93), P. is able to show that in ancient works of art the order was not necessarily fixed with reference to time (pp. 29–48). This provides the theoretical background required to understand the guiding principle that informs the composition of the Tabulae Iliacae.
P. devotes his research principally to those tablets representing Iliadic subjects, excerpting them from the corpus as a homogeneous case study (pp. 78–88). The main point is the interpretation of the ‘taxis of Homer’, mentioned by the elegiac couplet inscribed on the Tabula Capitolina, as corresponding to the manifold sjuzhet allowed by the reading of the tablets (pp. 49–68).
The key for reading the tablets is provided by the ‘magic squares’ incised on their verso, all of which operate according to the principle of the ‘middle letter’ as overtly expressed in a hexameter repeated on two tablets: ‘look for the middle letter and continue wherever you wish’ (pp. 62–8). Applying this method to the figures on the recto, the viewer is immediately attracted by the central position of Aeneas in the scenes of Ilioupersis (in a significant Romano-centric perspective, pp. 89–93), as well as of Achilles in the friezes of the Tabula Capitolina relating to Iliad A and to the Aethiopis (pp. 112–18). P. argues, therefore, that the artisan has arranged the spatial relationships of the figures (panel and friezes) from a central perspective, balancing the narrative contents on the left and right for reasons of symmetry (p. 117).
The subject of the spatial distribution of figures is even more relevant in the Ilioupersis panels than in the individual friezes: in fact, in the panels the sequence of events is not linear and some devices have been deployed to suggest the reading sequence. P. defines this method of distribution as ‘achronous narrative’, that is to say with no reference to time (pp. 118–19). Still, this expression is not fitting for the scenes represented outside the city walls, where the repetition of some characters indicates the reading direction from left to right (pp. 131–4); moreover the three occurrences of Aeneas – in the city, at the gate and on the seashore – confirm that the time sequence proceeds from up-and-left to down-and-right (pp. 127–31).
According to P., the ‘achronous’ format of the panels is comparable with the chorographic maps described by Strabo, adorned by poikilmata in order to represent landmarks (pp. 119–22). Yet, he fails to compare the earliest known map of this type, the Tabula Peutingeriana that provides an example of the format described by Strabo – albeit much later – not at all matching with the panels of the Tabulae.
Putting together the features of the tablets, P. observes persuasively that only one ancient environment is in keeping with their learned literary claim, their possible didactic function, their artistic value and their occasional sacred reference: that is the (private) library (pp. 145–64, 169), where even the supposed cartographic reference would find its justification (p. 154).
The last chapter contains a rapid review of the artistic fashion of miniatures in the Graeco-Roman world (pp. 165–81), thus creating a circular link with S.'s work, which had begun with the theme of miniaturisation. This strengthens the complementarity of the two volumes, although the arguments are differently arranged (sjuzhet).
Interestingly enough, while S. concludes by stressing the necessity of studying the context of the Tabulae (pp. 375–7), P. answers this plea. And, even though the former points at the cena as the most likely environment for the use of such literary visual devices (pp. 77–86), this is not incompatible with P.'s hypothesis of the library as their usual place of display.Footnote 2 After all, the tablets were objects as mobile as scrolls and fit for a plurality of environments (P., p. 147).
Both authors agree in highlighting the characteristic of playfulness in the Tabulae Iliacae, with special regard to the meaning of the ‘magic squares’ on their verso. This is evident in the language they use – much more imaginative in S. – and in the comparanda they suggest with ‘Where is Wally?’, ‘snakes-and-ladders’ (S., pp. 164–5, 182) and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (P., p. 103). Still the Tabulae convey a profound learned aura that collides with this light-heartedness. Ancient Classical authors hand down a Greek term fit for defining similar cultivated games: technopaegnia (S., p. 231), which Martial seems to translate into Latin as difficiles … nugae (applied to the reverse poems of Sotades; S. p. 223).
As we have seen, in the Tabulae the visual verbal games of the verso are paralleled by the literary visual games of the recto. But neither P. nor S. seems aware that in the latter case the principle of the ‘middle letter’ is reversed: Aeneas is neither the principal hero nor the starting point of the epic cycle (P., pp. 92–3); on the contrary his flight from Troy is the inevitable conclusion and the final goal of the whole Trojan saga. In other words, as in the ‘magic squares’ every possible reading direction stems from the central letter, in the taxis of the recto every possible narrative leads (deterministically) to Aeneas' flight and, ultimately, to the foundation of Rome.
Lastly, the impressive philological collection of literary references and thorough linguistic exegesis of the verses inscribed on the Tabulae, provided by both S. (pp. 102–10) and P. (pp. 49–62), deserve a special mention. Still, one more reference from Plato, Apol. 22d should be added to their corpus: ‘the good craftsmen also seemed to me to fall into the same error as the poets: because he performed his art (technê) nobly, each one considered himself wisest also in the other, major issues – and this dissonance of theirs overshadowed that wisdom (sophía)’.
To this sharp criticism of the Classical philosopher responds the arrogant pride of the Hellenistic artist: ‘Learn the art (technê) of Theodorus, so that, having mastered the order of Homer, you will have the measure of all wisdom (sophía)’.
