B.’s volume provides an original, valuable and well-balanced perspective on the Wealth, both in regard to the religious experience of Athenians in the fourth century and in regard to Aristophanes’ play. The extremely well-structured book discusses, in order, personification, oracular consultation, traditional healing stories, with the fourth and fifth chapters addressing the arrival of Wealth in the community and the more general narrative pattern of the introduction of new gods, which, as B. shows, significantly parallels the plot of Wealth. The final chapters thus provide a fascinating analysis of Aristophanes’ manipulation of space as public and private, and also of the cultural tensions implicit in a new god's introduction, a tension that B. reveals to be resolved by locating the new philanthropic cult within established civic practice. Finally, B.’s conclusion extends his argument into the relation of the religious life of the community and comic fantasy's ability to perform ‘miracles’, arguing that we must go beyond irony to incorporate incongruity and scepticism into a wider and more accepting view.
One of the greatest strengths of B.’s argument lies in his uncovering of a largely unappreciated unity in the play. Through B.’s lens we see the importance of elements such as the play's opening with Apollo's oracle, the incubation scene and the identification of health and wealth implied in the curing of Wealth's blindness, all clearly emphasised in the play, and that nonetheless have received little critical attention. Similarly, B. is able to show a previously unappreciated relevance of Poverty to the play's ‘religious’ side, as referring to a common mytheme of competing divinities (perhaps most familiar from the contest of Athena and Poseidon on the pediment of the Parthenon). Even more importantly, we see the concern that unites all these apparently disparate elements. It should come as no surprise that the ‘social’ and ‘religious’ life of fourth-century Athens are one and the same, and yet B.’s work in uncovering this unity in Wealth is groundbreaking.
B.’s examinations of the various religious practices involved in Wealth also yield important revelations about Athenian religious life. Most significant may be his concluding discussion in Chapter 5, examining the combination of hope and threat involved in the introduction of new gods, a discussion that works particularly neatly in parallel with the first chapter's treatment of personification. The topic clearly has far-ranging implications, and in addition admirably illustrates B.’s nuanced and balanced approach to the vexed question of the religious nature of Greek comedy. B. takes the religious narrative of drama as indeed ‘constructed’ (as C. Sourvinou-Inwood), but sees this as precisely the element of genuine religious experience that comedy adds, seeing Aristophanes as ‘performing’ religious narratives that have a parallel existence in epigraphic sources. Comedy, in this analysis, neither subsumes nor is subsumed by other forms of religious narrative, but joins them within a greater system of narratives associated with the god.
Among the significant points that B. makes in this regard is his discussion (pp. 56ff.) of the need to regard historical and folkloric oracles in the same light. As B. shows, both focus on a need for interpretation and so also on the complementarity of the divine and the human. As so often in this book, the point is not only interesting in itself, but also provides a fascinating backdrop to the generally ‘riddling’ quality of both Wealth and Aristophanic comedy more generally. The opening of the play, which makes us guess at what is going on, thus lays the ground for divine benefaction, with Chremylus’ solution to the problem of Wealth's blindness pairing comic convention and the conventional nature of oracles.
B.’s first chapter, uncovering the deeper complexity of personification, exemplifies his overall approach. As he shows, the issue comes down to a question no less crucial than ‘what is a “real” god?’. In the case of Wealth this involves an uncovering of the dunamis of the god and an exploration of his relation to Zeus and his phthonos. The discussion of Wealth's traditional characteristics, both as a wanderer and as a bringer of good things, uncovers an interweaving of comic and religious narratives, with Wealth revealed, finally, to be fictional, but (reasonably, as the divinity of Wealth is central to the play) a fictional divinity.
In showing how the comic iama or ‘healing story’ reported by Carion dramatises extant stories of healing from Epidaurus, B. uncovers another important but neglected theme in the text, the pairing of health and wealth, and uses this to explore Asclepius as a traditionally friendly god and one who, like Aristophanes’ Wealth, has suffered oppression at the hands of Zeus. While the parallel dramatic epiphanies cited in Euripides (p. 122) may be more ironic than B. allows, the point is nonetheless well taken. This is importantly reinforced by B.’s detailed comparison of Wealth to other narratives introducing a new god, and in his account of Aristophanes’ bravura transformation of Chremylus’ house from private space to public shrine in preparation for Wealth's installation on the Acropolis. And while B. rather glosses over the textual difficulty in identifying Wealth with Zeus the Saviour, taking it as simply a dramatic riddle (p. 154), his point about the connection to ‘philanthropic’ and ‘reciprocal’ gods like Asclepius and Zeus the Saviour is valuable.
One of the great strengths of this book is its complete integration of the ‘social’ issues of wealth and inequality with the ‘religious’ question of the role of the gods, as in its discussion of the role of Poverty. In this light, however, the book also leaves us looking for rather more on both sides. On the ‘religious’ side, although B.’s focus on the Wealth itself, independently of its role within the festival, is understandable, there is something lost in not considering this aspect of the play as well. He is perfectly right that issues of ritual and festival have taken attention away from other aspects of religion, which he valuably examines. Nonetheless, the setting of the play must also have a major impact on how it fits into the overall religious discourse of the city, and it would be very interesting to hear B.’s views on the topic. On the ‘social’ side it would have been good to have a more explicit consideration of the traditional problem of the play, whether it depicts everyone becoming wealthy or only the just – or whether there simply is no reason to be unjust once wealth is freely available.
B. is to be commended for an excellent and nuanced view of Athenian comedy overall, particularly in his conclusion, which brings new insights to the problem of ironic vs non-ironic readings. As he points out, just as the installation of Wealth is both subversive and constructive (p. 157), so also comedy is able to incorporate opposites in its move from the ‘laughter of incredulity’ to ‘laughter mixed with joy and astonishment at the impossible’ (p. 167). In this way the incongruous nature of humour aligns with the miraculous religious experiences described in the play. Or, as the man replied when asked whether he believed in infant baptism: ‘Believe in it? I've seen it done!’
This volume also includes a good, clear, concise introduction and, overall, usefully and effectively locates itself within the scholarship. Its survey of available evidence on religious practices is excellent, both useful to the scholar and accessible to the neophyte. The book is deeply suggestive, does not claim more than is warranted and continually leaves room for thought. Students and scholars on all levels will benefit from its insight and learning.
