Review of Searching for the Cinaedus in Ancient Rome

Searching for the Cinaedus in Ancient Rome, ed. Tommasso Gazzari and Jesse Weiner, Brill 2023

Review by James Jope   ©James Jope

The word cinaedus was used in Roman literature as a slur referring to a sex/gender variant of an imprecise kind, principally adult males who desired to be penetrated anally and/or who were effeminate. The contributors to this volume have differing views on the subject, and also on the model of ancient sexuality elaborated by Foucault. For example, they differ on whether cinaedi also had sex with women; Kirk Ormand (“Did (Imaginary) Cinaedi Have Sex with Women?”) argues that the ‘womanizing cinaedus’ is a product of modern scholars misinterpreting the evidence; but other contributors still use that concept. However, most of them seem to agree that the “war”, as the introduction calls it, among classicists over Foucault is over and it is time to turn to more empirical studies of the ancient evidence.

The introduction is an excellent one. The editors first explain the issues: Kinaidos had ambivalent meanings already in Greece, but this volume focuses on Latin usage. The authors look for contextual clues, diachronic changes, etc. They investigate issues such as whether cinaedi were a real type of men in Roman society or only a ‘scare figure of the Roman imaginary’.ⁱ A good summary of the respective papers follows, then a brief discussion of modern reception (e.g., the suggestion that Oscar Wilde modeled his own image after the Roman concept). As this is the only treatment of modern reception, some readers may consider it inadequate; but its value is to suggest areas for further research. Indeed, the entire volume may be regarded as (re-)opening (new) areas for research, as is evidenced precisely by contributors’ opposing views.

In studying the ancient evidence, some contributors utilize theoretical tools from other modern sources besides Foucault. Thus John R. Clarke (“Representing the Cinaedus in Roman Visual Culture: Seeing, Speaking, Touching”) updates his previous work on artⁱⁱ. After explaining how works regarded as obscene were wrenched out of their context in early modern museums, he seeks to reconstruct Roman viewers’ probable reactions in context, using concepts like the ‘mirror-neuron system’.

Important elements of the Greek background are provided by Tom Sapsford (“Cleomachus: A Study in ‘Cinaedic’Associations”) and Jesse Weiner (“The Kinaidos Comes to Rome: Plautus’ Cinaedi”). 

Sapsford studies the ‘intersectional’ relations of sex, gender, and poetry in the story of Cleomachus, a boxer who turned feminine, as told by Strabo and Tertullian. Both authors suggest that cinaedic traits could be infectious. He also discusses the association of cinaedi with poetry; they were known for a particular meter called Sotadean verse. Sapsford provides an admirably detailed account of the relevant prosody and how it suited the twerking cinaedic dance, a subject rather neglected by other contributors, which may be important for understanding how the different valences of the word developed.

Also important in this connection is Plautus. Weiner finds the word in Plautus several times, always in jokes. His audience knew it as an insult, but the jokes 'intersectionally' implicate class, gender and ethnicity. The concept is still more about dance than sex: all of the characters who dance are cinaedi. There are few direct references to passive anal intercourse, and in contrast to the later stereotype, it is always involuntary.

These two essays, together with Mark Masterson’s Byzantine study, suggest a framework for a diachronic study. However, instead of placing one of them first, the editors chose Giulia Sissa’s “Κιναίδων Βίος: Ethics, Lifestyle, and Sensuality in Ancient Greek Erotic Culture”, apparently regarding it as more important to circumscribe the role of Foucault.

Actually, Sissa aims to modify the foucaultian paradigm: the critical polarity in ancient sexuality was not just penetrator v penetrated, but active v passive in response to pleasure, so that even an erastes (the ‘top’ man sexually) who could not control himself could be blamed as being ‘soft’ (malakos). Her argument is culled from various texts, but particularly Plato and Aristotle; and although she endeavours to sift out the general values of Greek society from the sometimes hostile interests of her sources, her theory applies convincingly only to philosophers. Although the lyric corpus is replete with the woes of erastai who could not resist eros, none, as far as I know, is described as ‘soft’. Plato and later philosophers with the exception of some Roman Stoics were seldom fully in line with conventional sexual valuesⁱⁱⁱ.

Unfortunately, to enlist Foucault’s “authority” for her position, Sissa digresses into what reads like a theological interpretation of holy scripture, quoting the Master both in translation and in the original French, favourably interpreting his apparent inconsistencies, and expecting respect for his wisdom.

Roman sumptuary conventions attached status and social/moral values to colours of clothing, and they apparently associated a certain yellow-green hue with cinaedi. Tommasso Gazzari (“Cinaedus Galbinatus: Cultural Perception of the Color ‘Green’ and Its Gender Association with Pathici in Rome”), after trying to identify the exact hue and its social significance, sounds a cautious note of essentialism: If men chose deliberately to wear a colour identified as feminine not only by norms of fashion but even by medical theory, they may have been flaunting a feminine identity.

In fact, flaunting seems to have been a characteristic of cinaedi which differentiated them from other pathici (bottom men).

Judith P. Hallett and Donald Lateiner (“Connotation and ‘Com-motion’: Putting the Kinesis into the Roman Cinaedus”) focus on the mobility of cinaedi, which gives them greater agency than ordinary bottom mens’. Surprisingly, there is little discussion here of dance. They compare texts from Petronius and Catullus. Petronius definitely supports their contention of cinaedi’s mobility, but their interpretation of Catullus is forced; the woman described as cinaediorem in Catullus 10:24 exhibits mobility because “her mind and mouth move fast”.

Barbara K. Gold (“Can a Woman Be a Cinaedus? Interrogating Catullus 10 and Roman Social Norms”) attempts to understand this unique use of the feminine comparative adjective^iv. After reviewing the multiple meanings of the word, she argues that its use here is not about sex but about class and gender.

Flaunting is a striking feature also in Apuleius. Benjamin Eldon Stevens (“The ‘Chorus Cinaedorum’ in Apuleius’ Golden Ass”) calls attention to the work of Blood^v and others trying to learn about non-dominant minority communities (such as Apuleius’ cinaedic priests) from hostile majority sources. But the traits of the priests are the opposite of Lucius’ values, they are a foil for him. Yet in spite of its disputable relevance to Apuleius, Stevens is right to note the importance of such work. All of the usual sources are hostile.

As a closing piece of diachronic research, Masterson (“Kinaidos: The Afterlife of a Term in the Byzantine Empire”) explores the word in lexicographers and texts in late antiquity up to the eleventh-century Michael Psellos. He finds much the same confusion between sex and gender found by modern scholarship. Byzantine Christians condemned both participants in male-male intercourse as ‘wanton’ aselges, even though they regarded such activity as a temptation to which any man could succumb.

These essays are an important contribution to the study of ancient sexuality. The scholarship is impressive. However, it would have been desirable to include some group discussion of disputed issues (after all, the book originated as a panel discussion), or at least more cross references. Some solutions might also be yielded by a full diachronic study. Of course, this would have to give equal attention to Greek and Latin sources. Even this volume, in spite of the stated intention to focus on the Romans, inevitably includes Greek material. ‘Cinaedus’, after all, is a loan word, which educated Romans would automatically associate with some traces of its Greek background.

i While some contributors point out that a scare-figure need not necessarily lack a real correspondent, I would go further. A scare figure is effective only if there is some reality. McCarthyism used communists as a scare figure, and psychologists attribute homophobia to insecurity about one’s own orientation. But the virulence of both biases was derived from the corresponding social reality.

ii Clarke, J.R. “Representations of the Cinaedus in Roman Art: Evidence of ‘Gay’ Subculture?” JHomosex 39 (2005): 271–298.

ii Aristotle sought to understand the function of conventional values (sozein ta phainomena). As Sissa correctly argues, he articulated the Greek belief that habitual characters were more important than particular actions.

iv Masterson’s paper reveals that this feminine adjectival comparative form occurred also in late antiquity, so that technically, at least, it is not a hapax.

v Blood, H.C. “Apuleius’s Book of Trans Formations.”Eidolon, 15 June 2015. https://eidolon​.pub/apuleius‑s‑book‑of‑trans‑formations‑b98140d11482 and Blood, H.C. “Sed illae puellae: Transgender Studies and Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.” Helios 46.2 (2019): 163–188.

 

review of Yona and Davis, ed. Epicurus in Rome

 Epicurus in Rome, Philosophical Perspectives in the Ciceronian Age, ed. Sergio Yona and Gregson Davis, Cambridge University Press 2022

review by James Jope ©

Contributors to this volume are distinguished Epicurean scholars and their papers are well written and enlightening, as should be expected. However, Sergio Yona’s introduction attempts to contextualize them in relation to the paradox of the popularity of an apparently very un-Roman philosophy in the late Republic. Now, a book investigating why and how that popularity arose would be more innovative than a simple gathering of diverse papers on Epicureanism in Rome, however well written; but if that is the purpose of this book, not all of these papers address it.

I shall discuss the papers in the order of their appearance in the book.

Sint Ista Graecorum: How to be an Epicurean in Late Republican Rome – Evidence from Cicero’s On Ends

Geert Roskam

Cicero’s Rhetoric of Anti-Epicureanism: Anonymity as Critique

Daniel P. Hanchey

The first two essays study Cicero’s hostile treatment of the Epicureans in order to weigh the possibility of a Roman choosing that school.

Geert Roscam opens the book with a satiric caricature of Epicurus; the caricature is right on target, but I fear it might encourage some readers to lay the book aside without further ado. After an intriguing discussion of why all the speakers in Cicero’s dialogues are Roman, and never Greek professional philosophers (because Cicero thought that the Roman aristocrats actually improved on what the professionals had to say), he examines Cicero’s arguments and rightly concludes that it was especially difficult for a senator to be Epicurean. (Incidentally, I should like to point out that the word ‘patronizing’ applies neatly in both its ancient and modern uses to Cicero’s view of Greek professionals.)

Daniel P. Hanchey skilfully penetrates Cicero’s rhetorical devices such as his disdainful references to Epicureans by citing their supposed principles rather than naming the school itself. Among the basic Epicurean ‘principles’ which Cicero rejects is an “animal-like failure to employ ratio (reason, logic) and oratio,” where the latter signifies the rhetorical activity which, according to Cicero, is the basis of community; hence their “failure to observe the natural social bonds that undergird the Republic”.

Both authors acknowledge that Cicero is a hostile witness, and both see clearly through his tactics. However, they remain sympathetic to him-- perhaps too sympathetic to draw out a fair picture of the Epicureans. Thus Hanchey: “Cicero spent the last decade or more of his life arguing for the value of a rational and virtuous society... in the belief that the Republic represented something abstractly good.” A more critical attitude towards Cicero’s own position might cast more light on the Epicureans. After all, here was a man who, because the Epicureans could not fully support a ‘community’ founded on imperialism and competitive internal rivalries which were already tearing it apart, degrades them to solitary animalistic individuals, when they were actually constructing healthy alternative communities to shelter one another from the storm. Surely this communal lifestyle-- open, as it was, to all classes-- attracted many in the turmoil of the civil wars.

Was Atticus an Epicurean?

Nathan Gilbert

Nathan Gilbert counters an earlier view that Atticus was not a serious Epicurean by offering a penetrating analysis of the context, rhetorical tactics, and nuances of Cicero’s correspondence with Atticus. The result, and Atticus’ own advice to Cicero are consistent with serious Epicureanism. However, as Gilbert understands, it was easier to follow that philosophy as an equestrian than as a senator.

Caesar the Epicurean? A Matter of Life and Death

Katharina Volk

Katharina Volk considers the hypothesis that Caesar’s gutsy indifference to death may indicate that he was an Epicurean. She asks what criterion we should use to qualify someone as an Epicurean, and answers, with a delightful flare of common sense, that we should ask them. Noting that neither Caesar himself nor anybody else ever described him as an Epicurean, she suggests that Epicurean ideas were current in the popular culture and Caesar, like others, adapted them to his own needs.

Otium and Voluptas: Catullus and Roman Epicureanism

Monica R. Gale

It seems obvious that Catullus’ personal disaffection with politics, his passionate concept of friendship, and especially his defiant, incorrigible indulgence in illicit romantic love are quite unlike the Epicurean version of the corresponding values. But it is no disservice to scholarship to demonstrate the obvious. Monica Gale does so through an intertextual study of Catullus, Lucretius and Philodemus.

“Love It or Leave It”: Nature’s Ultimatum in Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things

Elizabeth Asmis

Kitsch, Death and the Epicurean

Pamela Gordon

Lucretius’ thanatology must have deeply affected Roman readers at that time, and so it is the subject of two papers.

Elizabeth Asmis offers a very knowledgeable correlation of Lucretius with Epicurus and Philodemus.

Using novelist Milan Kundera’s peculiar concept of ‘kitsch’ as denial of filth and decay as her point of departure, Pamela Gordon interprets Epicurean sources (Lucretius, Philodemus) as lampooning conventional shallow ideas about death and philosophy. While the imposition of Kundera’s specific concept is not very convincing, much of what Gordon says about Lucretius is. Her discussion of the Epicureans’ own kitsch (rings, portraits of The Master) could be especially relevant for the issue of the school’s popularity in the Republic, if indeed serious Epicureans disdained such kitsch. But too often (e.g. as regards Philodemus and Horace), Gordon has to simply postulate that a text which others have taken seriously is intended as satire. This line of inquiry should certainly be pursued further.

Page, Stage, Image: Confronting Ennius with Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things

Mathias Hanses

I’ve always wondered why Lucretius calls Epicurus a graius homo. Mathias Hanses’ explanation is striking proof of the relevance of Ennius for understanding Lucretius, as is the rest of his research on this subject. But the most interesting part of his paper for the issue of Epicurean popularity in Rome is “multi-medial intertextuality”: The correspondence of Lucretius’ narrative with Roman theatrical performances and wall paintings must have been intended to reach a broader audience, and probably succeeded.

We can readily intuit the importance of indifference to death and the support of an alternative community for Romans during the civil wars. But although Hanses’ argument has some difficulties (e.g., chronological), such cross-media research seems promising for future work on the question of the popularity of Epicureanism in Rome, especially given the hostility of some major literary sources. Studies relating literature to material art have already been very fruitful regarding Hellenistic Greek poetry (e.g., by Graham Zanker and Évelyne Prioux).

Lucretius on the Size of the Sun

T. H. M. Gellar-Goad

The Epicurean position that the sun is only as large as it appears has been a thorny issue for ancient and modern critics. T. H. M. Gellar-Goad’s essay makes a plausible case in defense of the Epicureans’ position, claiming that they did reserve judgement (epokhe tes dianoias). It has nothing to do with the issue of their popularity in Rome.

Ancient Botany

Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, Ancient Botany, Routledge 2016

a book of the series Sciences of Antiquity, ed. Liba Taub

 

Review by James Jope © James Jope

Gavin Hardy is known for his work on medicinal uses of plants. Laurence Totelin is a historian of Greek and Roman science. I refer to the authors as H&T.

Although this book’s meticulous documentation makes it useful for researchers in either classics or the history of science, its main attraction is as a superb interdisciplinary introduction to ancient botany for students of both fields. Its aim is to provide an overall understanding of ancient botany from the point of view of the ancient ‘actors’, including their cultural context. H&T argue throughout that given the unavoidable limitations of ancient knowledge (such as no microscopes) actors’ theories were generally reasonable and worthy of attention. They take care to explain the conventions and concepts of classicists and botanists for students of the other discipline, which not only makes the book more understandable, but incidentally teaches readers much about the other discipline. Classicists will learn about the cause of oak galls, why fungi are not plants, etc., while botanists will be given a sense of the vicissitudes of manuscript transmission, pseudepigraphy, etc. Both will learn the differences between the plant sexuality on which Linnaeus’ system is built and the anthropomorphic sexuality ascribed to plants by the ancients.

In an apparent compromise between scientific and classicist conventions, H&T minimize notes, placing parenthetical references in the text instead. Occasional long lists with documentation may annoy some readers.

The book is not organized chronologically, but rather by themes: the classification and description of plants, their life cycles, and their environments. However, topics within each theme are usually discussed chronologically.

‘Actors’ includes ‘handlers’, or people other than authors, who dealt in herbal remedies, farming, etc; for, the first principle emphasized by H&T is that the separation of pure and applied science which has become so deeply ingrained in modern botany can not apply to the ancient knowledge, since there is much to be learned about the ecology and morphology of plants from these sources. H&T draw upon not only authors like Theophrastus, Dioscorides, or Galen, but also the Roman agronomists, Pliny’s encyclopedia, Virgil’s Georgics, even Homer.

Identifying plants mentioned in ancient sources-- i.e., matching them with modern genus and species names-- is a thorny issue which has taxed scholars for a couple of centuries. H&T do not offer any new identifications; instead, they examine how ancient plants were named. Theophrastus and Dioscorides did not coin names, they took them from the handlers. Those names could be meaningfully based on morphological or physiological characters, habitat, or medical uses. However, the ancient terms ‘genus’ and ‘species’ were used so loosely that H&T argue they should both be translated ‘type’. Ancient authors were aware of the nomenclatural disarray, and tried to promote clarity by producing lists of synonyms.

Theophrastus classified plants under four categories: trees, shrubs, undershrubs and herbs. Pharmacologists like Dioscorides classed them by their medical uses. Some sources, especially in Late Antiquity, simply arranged them alphabetically.

Ancient plant descriptions were not without value. Theophrastus constructed technical terms for plant parts much like those used today (e.g. ‘pericarp’); but when describing individual plants he, like others, used comparisons with more familiar plants or other objects.

Many readers may know of the justly famed plant illustrations in the Vienna manuscript of Dioscorides; but plant illustrations existed much earlier. Ancient authors distrusted them, partly because they would show only one stage of a plant’s life. H&T note that this was a valid criticism. Here, however, their usual helpfulness in explaining scientific matters to classicists flags. They should have mentioned that botanical illustrations of the modern era often include smaller drawings of seeds, fruits, etc to fix this limitation.

Pliny has been criticized because his work on plants is organized loosely. H&T try to defend him. They argue that books 12-16 are arranged by geographical regions, while book 17 focuses on agriculture, albeit with ‘excursuses’. --In other words, the work is loosely organized.

A more important issue on which H&T take a controversial stance is whether there was widespread deforestation in the classical Mediterranean region, as some scholars have suggested. They briefly list several arguments against this. However, they do give a fair presentation of their opponents’ arguments, and they conclude that “In order for definitive conclusions to be reached on this question, classicists, archaeologists, botanists and environmental historians need to join forces in multi-disciplinary themes.”

Chapter 5 on plants’ life cycles compares ancient and modern concepts of plant sexuality, but also asexual propagation, such as grafting. The environmental chapter 6 demonstrates ancients’ awareness of plant habitats and their success in transplanting economically useful plants throughout the Roman empire.

The fifth chapter concludes surprisingly with a Priapic poem, which actually shows how common good botanical knowledge was. The sixth, in a sly wink to classicists, is titled “Airs, Waters and Places”, although the Hippocratic work is only once mentioned and not discussed. Sparks of humour also occur in a few other places, as when our authors list some topics discussed in Plutarch’s Table Talk: “why women do not eat the middle part of lettuce (4.10, 672) (unfortunately, the answer to that last question is lost).”

There are a number of typographical errors, all of which suggest that the publisher relied too much on computerized proofreading: confusion of singular and plural, wrong words such as ‘were’ for ‘where’. Only once did I see a mistake which even a computer should have spotted: ‘Romands’ for Romans.

Review of Kelly Olson, Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity, Routledge 2017

This little book is an excellent piece of scholarship. Olson, who has written a previous book on female clothing, has clearly mastered the field of Roman clothing, and dresses up her erudition in plentiful documentation. There are extensive notes and bibliography, and almost every matter in the text is illustrated with appropriate citations in Latin next to Olson’s astute translations. There is a summary at the beginning, and a conclusion at the end, of the book and each chapter. Previous research is acknowledged and a method is employed which weighs carefully the sometimes conflicting evidence of ancient literature and art. (Texts, Olson explains, could be ideological, describing how the writer thought men should dress, while art employed clothing-- not always realistically-- to represent the status of the subjects.)

Unfortunately there are occasional lapses of proofreading. Slips like “but is” for “but it is” (p.13) may be harmless, but the hapless undergraduate who tries to identify “Cornelius Neops” may be flummoxed.

Rome, as the author explains in her Conclusion, was a culture in which visual impressions were paramount. Hence Roman dress conveyed multivalent messages of rank, status and gender. Olson’s book is a thorough survey of Roman masculine clothing, but it is also aimed particularly at scholars of ancient sexuality and gender, who know how obsessed some Roman men were about standards of masculinity.

Possibly some such scholars did not know, for example, that although the toga signalled citizenship, it underwent variations in quality, in how it was worn, and even in style, which also revealed the wearer’s real or supposed wealth and status. This applies also to other articles of clothing. We learn some surprising facts: how clothes were “cleaned” in urine; how a slave wore expensively dyed scarlet to pass as a free man; how magistrates turned their toga backwards when passing a death sentence (cf. the black cap in Britain). These facts are interesting in themselves, but apparently some critics dismiss such details as ‘antiquarian’. Olson seems rather defensive on this point, fending off the charge of ‘antiquarianism’ (which, like ‘essentialism’, seems to be regarded as a label which can refute automatically without any ratiocination) by arguing that one should know all aspects of clothing before understanding the messages about class and gender. I would go further: The entire field of classical studies is antiquarian by definition, and just as in the physical sciences, which are indisputably untainted by antiquarianism, one must learn the facts for their own sake first before finding applications. A historian interpreting the dynamics of a Roman trial, for example, should know that defendants were expected to appear shabbily dressed in order to gain sympathy.

But perhaps the most important sartorial feature revealed by Olson is ambivalence. There was a complex of authentic and fake messages: garments worn by equestrians but also by pseudo-equestrian imposters, items or colours that could signify wealth and/or effeminacy, etc. Olson traces a constant rear-guard struggle by aristocrats to discredit wealthy upstarts encroaching on their prestige, which partly accounted for Roman authors’ praise of plain and simple garb.

After examining the complex codes of clothing and gender, and in particular the concept of effeminacy, Olson very plausibly suggests recognizing a separate social category that could be blurred with pathic homosexuals: viz., ‘dandies’, urban young men of fashion (mainly aristocrats) who were more interested in sex with women. She cites the terms trossulus and comptulus as referring to them, and reinforces her proposal by comparing pre-modern (17^th to 19^th centuries) notions of effeminacy described by historian Randolph Trumbach and queer theorist Alan Sinfield.

There is one issue which Olson has not treated adequately: legislation. We are told repeatedly that there was “no established legal hierarchy of clothing”, yet unauthorized men are said to be “illegally wearing” certain items. For example, while p. 19 refers to a senator’s right by law to wear wide stripes, p. 20 states that the width of the stripes was not regulated in any way. Emperors, in particular, are described several times as allowing or prohibiting various sartorial practices. Olson differentiates between legal and social sanctions, and includes a brief discussion of sumptuary laws; but it would be better to have a section clarifying the role and/or absence of legal sanctions and enforcement.

This book is valuable for gender scholars, but also delightful reading for disinterested ‘antiquarians’ like classicists.

Review of Lucrezio, la Natura e la Scienzia, ed. Marco Beretta and Francesco Citti, Florence 2008

Review of Lucrezio, la Natura e la Scienzia, ed. Marco Beretta and Francesco Citti, Florence 2008

(review copyright James Jope)

This volume, edited by Marco Beretta and Francesco Citti, comprises papers from an interdisciplinary conference between departments of the History of Science and Latin Literature on November 16 2006 in Ravenna.

Table of Contents

MARCO BERETTA – FRANCESCO CITTI, Premessa . . . . . . . . . . . . Page V

ANNA ANGELI – TIZIANO DORANDI, Gli Epicurei e la geometria. Un

progetto di geometria antieuclidea nel Giardino di Epicuro? . ................... » 1

LISA PIAZZI, Atomismo e polemica filosofica: Lucrezio e i Presocra-

tici . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................... » 11

IVANO DIONIGI, Lucretius, or the Grammar of the Cosmos . . . . ..........    » 27

GIOVANNI DI PASQUALE, Il concetto di machina mundi in Lucrezio...     .» 35

ELISA ROMANO, Tempo della storia, tempo della scienza: innovazio-

ne e progresso in Lucrezio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .........................» 51

PHILIP HARDIE, Lucretian multiple explanations and their reception

in Latin didactic and epic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............................. » 69

FRANCESCO CITTI, Pierio recubans Lucretius antro: sulla fortuna

umanistica di Lucrezio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............................» 97

MICHELE CAMEROTA, Galileo, Lucrezio e l’atomismo . . . . . . . . .....     » 141

MARCO BERETTA, Gli scienziati e l’edizione del De rerum natura ...     » 177

Index of names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................» 225

There is no consistent policy regarding translating quotations. In Elisa Romano’s article, for example, Italian translations precede the Latin quotations, whereas Philip Hardie provides no translations, not even for Greek. This circumstance suggests that the editors made no extensive effort of coordination. However, cross-references indicate that contributors were well aware of the other papers, although some are rewritten from previously published versions.

Two outstanding, complementary reception studies by the editors are the foremost feature, so that I shall begin with them. Both are meticulously documented surveys of material which could suffice for longer monographs. (In fact, Marco Beretta later published La rivoluzione culturale di Lucrezio: Filosofia e scienza nell’antica Roma.)

Beretta’s survey here focuses on Lucretius’ influence on scientists from the middle ages into the 20^th century. To avoid (1) taking expressions of admiration for influence or (2) projecting modern ideas back, Beretta takes as the thread of his narrative editions of DRN (De Rerum Natura). Although he perhaps does not always strictly observe (1), this is a very fertile new angle, and by its very nature it makes his essay interdisciplinary.

It might be argued that some of the scientists cited do commit error (2), for example, when they identify Lucretius’ minimae partes with electrons, or the clinamen with indeterminacy in quantum physics. Perhaps an exception is Albert Einstein’s essay in Hermann Diels’ edition, which ascribes to Lucretius only prophetic intuition. But however questionable some citations may be, they do illustrate Beretta’s point that DRN was read not just as a poem but as a serious text for science.

To mention just one of the interesting findings in this survey: Pierre Gassendi edited fragments of Epicurus (1649) as well as Lucretius, whom he read until he was “presto a conoscere a memoria”, and he compared atomism with the findings of seventeenth-century experimental science. While Gassendi is commonly cited in general surveys of atomist influence, the Italian physician Giovanni Nardi had published his edition of DRN two years earlier, and it was the first edition by a scientist and with a scientific publisher. Although Nardi was a (moderate) Aristotelean, he found atomism more useful, e.g., to explain the plague which hit Florence in 1630.

An interesting section of Beretta’s paper traces ecclesiastical moves to suppress Lucretius’ influence. When Alessandro Marchetti completed the first Italian translation of DRN in1667 its publication was blocked by the Church, which placed DRN on the index of forbidden books. After several manoevers, it was finally published posthumously in England in 1717. Censorship was less direct, but still vexacious in the Protestant countries. Authors would purge the ‘impious’ content from Lucretius and elaborate a Christian version of atomism (God created the atoms, etc.) Newton’s letters reveal that he was considering writing a commendation of Lucretius, but he was warned not to publish it. Regrettably, this section could provide food for thought today as censorship is on the rise (political correctness, avoiding ‘offending’ anybody, etc.)

The title of Francesco Citti’s survey (Pierio recubans Lucretius antro) quotes an elegy written in 1447 by the humanist Pontanus (Giovanni Pontano), which also imitates Lucretius’ language. Citti’s survey complements Beretta’s by focusing on humanists. While many Renaissance humanists initially assumed, and even amplified, Jerome’s libel, others imitated Lucretius’ poetry extensively. Partly in order to express Greek scientific language, and partly too for metrical facility, Lucretius coined many hapax legomena, which provide a key for tracing Lucretius’ influence in the Renaissance texts. Citti offers an updated list of 116 of these neologisms--a valuable contribution in itself--on pp. 110-113, and then examines several interesting cases of humanists’ use of them. “In generale i composti ricevono una maggiore attenzione per la loro natura poetica, indipendentemente dal contesto originario”. (Citti seems to equate ‘neologisms’ with ‘hapax legomena’, which is not literally correct if the word is copied by a subsequent classical author.)

To mention just one example: Marcantonio Flaminio used Lucretius’ Latin translations of Empedocles’ terminology on Love and Strife in his own adaptation of Empedocles’ Greek.

Throughout the article, the author moves with impressive ease between Classical literature and Renaissance figures with whom most classicists, at least outside of Italy, will not be acquainted.

The other papers may be discussed in the order of their appearance.

Angeli and Dorandi attempt to reconstruct mathematical works, as well as argumentation regarding geometrical principles, by Epicureans from Epicurus to Lucretius, including fragmentary evidence, some of it recently obtained from the library of Philodemus at Herculaneum. Epicureans argued for the impossibility of the infinite divisibility postulated by Euclidian geometry, since it was incompatible with the Epicurean concept of indivisible minimae partes.

Lisa Piazzi examines both literary and philosophical aspects of Lucretius’ criticism of Presocratic philosophers in DRN I 635-920. She correctly observes that, in the tradition of Aristotelean doxography, he regards them only as atomist precursors. She contrasts Lucretius’ polemical abuse with the civility of Platonic and Ciceronian dialogue, and likens it to diatribe. Again, the comparison may be appropriate, but her apparent comfort with the dialogue writers seems rather naive. Plato’s dialogues are rigged; Socrates’ irony is notorious; and Cicero found ways to insinuate his own judgments into his dialogues.

Ivano Dionigi’s article is an English translation of a study published previously in Italian (for the complete reference, see the footnote on p. 27.) Its inclusion in a volume written mainly in Italian seems odd, especially since its interdisciplinary content relates more to comparative literature than to science.

Lucretius describes the way atoms combine to form different materials through concursus, motus, ordo, positura and figura (DRN II 1021). Referring to Heinrich Keil’s Grammatici Latini, Dionigi argues that these are all technical terms of Latin rhetoric, which leads him to highlight some interesting linguistic aspects of DRN. While it is plausible that Roman readers may have thought of the rhetorical usage when reading Lucretius, we can hardly be certain. The terms are physical in their primary meaning and in their use with reference to the atoms; and the author’s references to Italo Calvino and Gustav Flaubert do not corroborate his argument.

Giovanni di Pasquale’s innovative study contextualizes Lucretius’ machina mundi within a conceptual matrix linking philosophy with technology and engineering. Construction was the principal image of technology in the ancient world, but motion too became important from the Hellenistic period. Philosophers as early as the Presocratics were fond of mechanical models, and the author provides a detailed picture of some of these. Spheres, in particular, suggested mechanical models of a perpetual universe driven by god, but Lucretius’ model is mortal and driven by chance. The author shares the view that Lucretius goes beyond Epicurus and reflects contemporary Roman preoccupations when he believes that our world is old and in decline and its structural balance is fragile.

Elisa Romano explores apparent inconsistencies in Lucretius’ attitude toward newness or change, in what she calls a fenomenologia lucreziana della novità, e.g. in the repetitive cycle of life and death in nature, or in the development of civilization in book V. Lucretius shares the fear of change that gripped Romans in his day, but it is both underpinned and modified by Epicurean ethical theory.

Epicureans offered multiple alternative explanations for phenomena which could not be definitively explained, in order to keep people from resorting to supernatural explanations. Philip Hardie locates Lucretius’ multiple explanations in the context of Greek and Roman poetry. Similar multiple explanations were customary in poetry as early as Homer, but there they could include supernatural as well as natural causes. Roman poets after Lucretius continued the practice and imitated Lucretius’ language as well, but they too would not rule out supernatural causes.

Although Hardie certainly demonstrates that the Epicurean practice overlapped with an established poetic tradition, I would suggest that we can approach a better philosophical understanding of this issue if we ask why Epicurus adapted this very figure which was commonly used by the poets. He would hardly have followed their lead out of admiration. Multiple explanations, whether offered by epic poets, by Epicureans, by scientists discussing as yet unresolved phenomena, or by modern scholars who wish to skirt a disputed issue that they need not resolve in a given context, always pertain to matters for which they do not know the definite answer. Whether or not an epic poet actually supposed that a god intervened, the parallel expression of human and divine motivations was an obvious way to insinuate the divine into a narrative of human action. Perhaps Homeric bards were actually uncertain about gods meddling, whereas the Roman authors were simply reverting to the standard practice of the epic genre. In any case, Epicurus may have wished to challenge the poetic convention by using the very same device to exclude divine intervention rather than accommodate it.

Michele Camerota scrutinizes Galileo’s own writings and controversies during his career for evidence of Lucretian influence. Galileo owned two copies of DRN, but never referred to Lucretius explicitly. His views on the structure of matter were compatible with atomism, favouring quantitative and mechanical explanations against the qualitative and teleological views of the Aristoteleans. However, his own views are sometimes obscure and problematical. For example, he ascribed the specific weight of different materials to the density of ‘minimal particles’ inside them, but he avoided discussing the existence of the void. Camerota admits that Galileo’s interest in Lucretius can not be conclusively demonstrated, but his investigation is still constructive.

Interdisciplinary research between Classics and science (investigations of climate change in antiquity, etc.) has augmented since the turn of the millennium, and this book is a welcome step in that trend.

Approaches to Lucretius: --- a Review

                     © Copyright: James Jope

Approaches to Lucretius: Traditions and Innovations in Reading the De Rerum Natura [DRN] (2020, ed. Donncha O’Rourke) evolved from a conference on Lucretius in Theory at the University of Edinburgh in 2013. The innovations comprise a sampling of diverse critical theories employed in the study of Lucretius (as well as other classical authors) in recent decades. O’Rourke’s excellent introduction sketches the history of this scholarship and gives not only a summary, but some interesting additional information for each essay. The chapters are roughly grouped according to method: Author and Reader (“vaguely narratology”), atomology (after Friedländer), allusion (by an author) and intertextuality (perceived by the reader–although usually intended by the author). David Sedley did not contribute to the present volume, but should be mentioned as an eminence grise; several essays allude to or discuss his thesis that DRN is derived solely from Epicurus’ Peri Physeos. Sedley’s work might be classed as Quellenforschung (searching out source texts) albeit with the novel feature that the supposed source text is not fully extant and has to be reconstructed.

The most traditional essay–so much so that it seems to stand apart in this collection, showing, as it were, how classicists had to work up the text from the extant manuscripts before the literary theorists could amuse themselves with it–is an exemplary study in textual criticism. In Critical Responses to the Most Difficult Textual Problem in Lucretius, David Butterfield tackles the issue of the opening hymn to Venus followed by its apparent disavowal. First he sketches the problems in the manuscript tradition and scholarly debate since the Renaissance, then argues logically and systematically to his own solution: He postulates that there must have been a marginal note pointing out the correct Epicurean doctrine in the lost manuscript copied by our archetype, which the archetype then incorporated into the main text. Regrettably, Butterfield also exhibits nearly rude impatience, describing rival arguments as, e,g, “rhetorical bluster” (p. 30) or “perverse” (p. 34)–a propensity which has not been uncommon in the long history of textual criticism.

In Reading the ‘Implied Author’ in Lucretius’ DRN, Nora Goldschmidt applies Wayne Booth’s concept of the ‘implied author’. After Roland Barthes murdered ‘The Author’, leaving ‘The Reader’ in control of the text, Booth assisted The Reader by suggesting an ‘Implied Author’. Like the ‘persona’ or the ‘narrator’, the implied author has, of course, nothing to do with Titus Lucretius Carus; rather, it is the overall impression created by the reading of the text. Goldschmidt considers three apparently autobiographical passages about writing the DRN. Noting the ‘labor’ and ‘furor’ associated with composing a Latin poetic expression of Epicureanism, she surprisingly infers that Lucretius did not have peace of mind , i.e., he betrays an element of anti-Lucrèce. This is strange, because no matter how we translate these words, it seems clear from the context that Lucretius enjoyed his work. But surely the overall impression after reading the entire DRN is the static pleasure of contemplating the cosmic cycle with a new understanding.

Barnaby Taylor’s Common Ground in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura resembles close reading, but not of a continuous passage. Rather, he examines short passages throughout the text which use the first person plural. Differentiating inclusive (the reader is part of ‘we’), exclusive (the reader is not part of ‘we’) and collective (reader and author belong to some larger group) uses, he shows persuasively how Lucretius’ didactic technique of “mutual exploration... between... teacher and student” works differently but effectively for both uninitiated beginners and fully instructed Epicureans.

The concept of ‘distributed cognition’ in Coming to Know Epicurus’ Truth: Distributed Cognition in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura by Fabio Tutrone comes from Cognitive Science. It refers to the modern view (as opposed to Cartesian dualism) that knowledge does not reside solely inside the mind; rather, it involves the external world in connection with the brain. It is probably fairly obvious to students of epicureanism that the atomist theory of mind and the senses falls into this category. Tutrone is more concerned with convincing ‘cognitive scientists’, who, like so many modern intellectuals, like to assume that they had no ancient predecessors. His case is strong, but his determination to express it in cognitive scientists’ terms is embarrassing: “[the] DRN... is construed by Lucretius as a distributed cognitive artefact” (p. 94). While historical scholars will be shocked by the anachronism, “death of the author” enthusiasts may find its attribution to the intention of Titus Lucretius Carus disappointing.

In an important digression, Tutrone persuasively defends the ‘realist’ view of Epicurean gods (they exist) against the ‘idealist’ view (they are mental constructs).

Infinity, Enclosure and False Closure in Lucretius’De Rerum Natura is the editor’s own contribution. After discussing the comprehensible and incomprehensible aspects of the concept of infinity, he suggests some ways in which Lucretius’ poetry conveys a sense of infinity: for example, the ‘endless’ series of proofs of the mortality of the soul, which “seems to go on forever”. O’Rourke draws on various sources from Ovid to Umberto Eco, but not, as far as I know, on any particular school of literary criticism. Although he does show a deeper understanding of the philosophical issue than some classicists, this is essentially a standard piece of classical scholarship, and a good one.
 
Lucretian Echoes: Sound as Metaphor for Literary Allusion in De Rerum Natura: Jason Nethercut proposes a neat instance of the epicurean principle that poetic form and content should correlate. Previous scholars have noticed allusions to the Homeric Hymn to Pan and later texts in Lucretius’ discussion of echo in 4.549-94, but Nethercut argues that Lucretius makes those later texts ‘echo’ the Hymn. His argument is rather speculative and owes much to others (Philodemus, Schiescaro). Can it be backed up by similar passages elsewhere in DRN? The more are found, the stronger the case. Nethercut’s conclusion seems to recognize this.
 
Saussure’s cahiers and Lucretius’ elementa: A Reconsideration of the Letters–Atoms Analogy:
Wilson H. Shearin calls for a reconsideration of the dominant interpretations of the analogy famously explored by Friedländer between the many ways in which atoms/letters can combine to form different compounds/words. His point–without Saussure–is that the dominant views miss some implications of the analogy, in particular the creative potentiality of the atoms suggested by Lucretius’ term genitalia corpora. A point well taken. Unfortunately, he proposes as a model of creative potential Saussure’s so-called ‘anagrams’, an admittedly arbitrary “game” to find theme words hidden in the text. Thus, from

     . . sed Eo magiS acrem
    inritat animi virtutem, effringere ut arta
    natURaE Primus portarum claustra CUPIret. (DRN I 69-71)

the eminent Swiss sorcerer conjured Epicurus’ name. It is sad to see an intelligent scholar turning to such frivolity for inspiration.

Arguing over Text(s): Master-Texts vs. Intertexts in the Criticism of Lucretius by
A. D. Morrison describes two kinds of readers who regard Lucretius’ use of his sources in different ways. ‘Master text’ sources are considered superordinate and the epigone is checked against them. This approach is more common among philosophers, and David Sedley’s thesis positing Peri Physeos as Lucretius’ source text is an example. Intertextuality is the dominant approach among students of Latin poetry, who see their authors as responding to, perhaps even correcting, his source texts. Morrison wishes to avoid polemics and concludes that the DRN can accommodate diverse readers. However, he shows that it does make a difference, and he notes that Roman readers themselves (e.g., Ovid) engaged more in intertextuality. This paper is actually a kind of ‘meta-scholarship’, reflecting on the assumptions implicit in different critical approaches–a beneficial and productive exercise that should happen more often.

Lucretius and the Philosophical Use of Literary Persuasion by Tim O’Keefe: In spite of the unconventional professorial image on Tim’s home page, this is a sober attempt to defend Lucretius’ originality by modulating some influential positions which tend to diminish it. First, O’Keefe argues that the debate over whether Lucretius only copied from Epicurus (Sedley looms here once again) or tailored his arguments against contemporary (esp. Stoic) sources can not be resolved, because the source texts are lacking and because Lucretius favored ‘catch-all’ arguments directed at anyone who shared a given position. Then he considers the poet’s use of emotive images and ridicule, which Martha Nussbaum would class with Epicureans’ irrational indoctrination practices. Comparing Cicero, who shows his originality by intervening in his dialogues, O’Keefe argues that Lucretius uses such moves only to remove popular Roman psychological barriers to his arguments, not to replace the reasoning. “In his use of literary and rhetorical methods of persuasion alongside his argumentation, Lucretius alone among the Epicureans shows a sensitivity for needing to present his arguments in a way that also takes into account the biases, stereotypes, and other psychological factors that hinder his audience from accepting the healing gospel of Epicurus.” Whether this constitutes philosophical originality is disputable, but it certainly means that Lucretius was what he set out to be–a first-rate popularizer.

The Rising and Setting Soul in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura: Emma Gee draws an intriguing comparison between Lucretius on souls and Cicero in his Aratea on stars, studying “the interaction of Lucretius’ text with Cicero’s” in its effect on the reader. Lucretius, she argues, subverts Cicero’s and other Stoic texts to which he alludes by altering their philosophical orientation.

This is an intertextual study. There seem to be two major differences between Quellenforschung and intertextuality: (1) Quellenforschung is old and therefore bad, and intertextuality is new and therefore good; (2) Intertextuality involves not only the authors, but especially The Reader. There is, however, a question about intertextuality which puzzles me: Is The Reader a contemporary Roman or a modern polymath? Granted that ancient authors, and Roman poets in particular, read, mined, and strove to upstage their predecessors, can we really assume that they always thought of the same allusions seen by the scholar?

Some of the verbal echoes cited by Gee are rare outside of the compared texts, but others are not. For example, Cicero’s quarum ego nunc nequeo tortos evolvere cursus becomes Lucretius’ quorum ego nunc nequeo caecas exponere causas. The echo effect depends mainly on the first four words, which are common words and likely to be combined in this way for metrical reasons. Like Nethercut’s essay, this would benefit from further instances.       

Was Memmius a Good King? by Joseph Farrell: If researching historical background to better understand literature is a ‘method’, classicists have been using it before, during, and after its discouragement by New Critics (remember them?). Astutely combining historical expertise and literary sensitivity, Farrell compares DRN with Philodemus’ treatise on how to be a good king, by investigating their addressees. Piso was a successful politician, and Philodemus was his dependent (cliens). Memmius was Lucretius’ equal in the Roman social hierarchy and a failure. That is why his teacher is much less indulgent than Piso’s. Farrell even “would not exclude the possibility that Lucretius chose Memmius as his addressee precisely because Memmius’ behaviour reflected so badly not just on himself but on the entire Roman political class, particularly in their relaxed attitude towards living the philosophies that they claimed to espouse.” (239) A notable example of the above ‘astute combination’ concerns DRN 3.992-3, where Tityos is in amore iacentem while having his innards savaged in Hades as punishment for attempting to rape Leto. This, of course, happened only after his crime. The image during the punishment is grotesquely inappropriate. But Lucretius wishes to allegorize the myth as representing the pain of passion... because sexual misconduct played a major part in Memmius’ downfall.                   

A Tribute to a Hero: Marx’s Interpretation of Epicurus in his Dissertation by Elizabeth Asmis is a ‘reception’study, i.e., it concerns the influence of classical authors later in history and in our day. ‘Reception’ has become fashionable partly because it helps classicists keep their jobs, but the reason why it is really needed is clear from Asmis’ observation that “Marx’s dissertation has received much attention from students of Marxism.  There has been very little attention, on the other hand, from students of ancient philosophy.” (241-2) Marx’s interpretation takes the random ‘swerve’ of the atoms as the key to free consciousness, which, evolving along enigmatic Hegelian paths, ultimately surpasses concrete reality. Asmis follows carefully, tracing Hegel’s influence and comparing modern scholarship and ancient evidence, to sift out what is valuable in Marx’s insight. Having consulted her scholarship over the years, I would have thought her well suited for this delicate task, and I am not disappointed.

Plato and Lucretius on the Theoretical Subject by Duncan F. Kennedy offers a critical view of Epicureanism based on its supposed resemblance to Plato, which is well presented rhetorically but so unsound that I must resort to a more polemical style to describe it.

Comparing Plato’s Cave myth with Lucretius’ image of Epicurus as heroic, Kennedy concludes that both philosophies are “metaphysical” because they claim to know the ultimate nature of ‘being’ (viz., the Ideas for Plato and the atoms for Epicurus) on the authority of a privileged reporter or prophet. This definition of ‘metaphysics’ muddles the critical difference: Atomism is verifiable, at least in principle, albeit not yet with ancient technology; the Ideas are not.

Metaphysics, Kennedy continues, is associated with violence, which he finds in the image of religio trodden under foot. But what about the goal of ataraxia (peace of mind)? Apart from the indoctrination alleged by Nussbaum–itself very mild compared with the history of religions–the closest Epicureanism comes to violence is in its calm acceptance of the self-inflicted troubles of the ignorant (suave mari magno etc.) Using the metaphorical image of defeated religio to label Epicureanism as violent is simply not fair.

Kennedy finds in Plato a model of thinking as dialogue, and sees the same model in Lucretius because of the way in which the poet often addresses his reader. What about the entire tradition of didactic poetry going back to the presocratics, and Lucretius’ place in it, which Monica Gale has explored so well?

The weakness of these arguments is hardly compensated by the array of authorities cited, from Socrates to Hannah Arendt. The most prominent of these is Latour, cited as surpassing Lucretius and metaphysics because he “suggests” precisely fifteen (15) different modes of ‘being’. His philosophy too is unconvincing, at least as presented here.

I am indebted to Donncha O’Rourke and his contributors for the opportunity to refresh my acquaintance with Lucretian scholarship through these intriguing essays.

Comments? Questions?        jamesjope@jamesjope.ca

Review of Philip R. Bosman, ed., Intellectual and Empire in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Routledge 2019

Review of Philip R. Bosman, ed., Intellectual and Empire in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Routledge 2019     

©James Jope

Editor Philip Bosman states in his preface, “The collection of articles in this volume results from a conference with the same title, held in October 2014 in Pretoria, South Africa. The conference’s aim was to explore the interactions, literary and real, between the broad categories of wisdom and power in antiquity.” Bosman’s introduction provides useful summaries of the respective papers, and acknowledges that in the published volume, the focus is mainly on the Hellenistic and Roman periods. This restriction is unfortunate, as it excludes some of the most familiar ancient examples of power vs. intellect: e.g., poets and tyrants in Archaic Greece, the judicial murder of Socrates, or Aristotle’s challenging relations with his pupil Alexander as well as the Athenian democratic regime. The democratic instances in particular might have been more promising for reflecting on modern analogies.

Actually, there are conspicuous omissions even within the declared scope: There is nothing about the activities of the Scipionic Circle and Panaetius’ sanitation of Stoic ethics, nothing about Seneca and Nero, nothing about the periodic expulsions of philosophers from Rome or Stoic opposition to the emperors. What we do find is an interesting series of papers on sidelines or supplements to studying the famous cases.

Some of these ‘alternative’ papers (the term is my own) investigate interesting cases, but there is no coherent overall survey of the Roman period, so that the reader who desires a continuous framework will find it only for the Hellenistic period, in Francesca Schironi’s study. With only very reasonable bits of speculation, she deftly extracts from scanty evidence a survey of the intellectual patronage of Hellenistic kings in order compare the Ptolemies’ museum and library with the patronage of other dynasties. Schironi differentiates pure research (mathematics, astronomy) from useful arts (physicians, tutors). While other dynasties emphasized the useful, the Ptolemies cultivated a broader range, striving to establish their Greekness as successors of Alexander.

Clive Chandler defends the Epicurean Diogenes of Seleucia under Alexander Balas as a good Epicurean slandered by Stoic sources. This is not the famed Diogenes who asked Alexander the Great to step out of the sun, but a less known ‘alternative’. Philodemus, who would have been the obvious choice to represent the Epicureans, is mentioned only in passing.

As an ‘alternative’ to discussing Plato’s misadventures with Dion of Syracuse, Evans compares Plutarch with earlier sources to trace the origins of the mythical aura gracing Plutarch’s Dion. Dion, he finds, was actually a mediocre individual who was exalted because of his association with Plato.

Augustus’ management of intellectuals is another obvious area of interest. For this, we have Livia Capponi’s study of the historian Timagenes of Alexandria. Timagenes was banned from the house of Augustus after offending the latter, then burned the books which he had written about Augustus. Capponi offers a detailed study of Timagenes’ life, which was not uninteresting. But his offence and his punishment were both trivial compared to other victims of Augustus, Ovid in particular. And of course, the Augustan government’s positive exploitation of cooperative poets, too, would have been of interest.

An innovative alternative to spilling more ink on Ovid’s ambivalence concerning the emperors is Sanjaya Thakur’s thorough assessment of the historical accuracy of the poet’s trumpeting of Tiberian propaganda to ingratiate himself with the emperor. Comparison with senatus consulta etc. reveals that Ovid’s efforts are not just superficial panegyric, but a carefully crafted reflection of contemporary events and ideology-- so much so that they offer useful evidence on the actual history of the period.

Plutarch is a likely source of subjects for this book’s theme. Mallory Monaco Caterine’s paper on his Life of Aratus shows how Plutarch, while narrating Aratus’ ill-fated relationship with Philip of Macedon, offers advice and examples of how to mentor kings and advocate local interests. Caterine argues plausibly that it must have been written for the benefit of Greeks dealing with Roman authorities. Her findings correspond nicely with those of Katarzyna Jazdzewska, who finds certain patterns of ruler relations in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists: While philosophers might advise rulers with frankness (parrhesia), sophists should ‘enchant’ them with rhetorical persuasion, advocating for local interests and criticizing only with ‘figured speech’, if at all.

Two papers relate to Marcus Aurelius.

Noelle Zeiner-Carmichael analyses the correspondence between Aurelius and Fronto, his teacher of Latin rhetoric, showing that in the competitive intellectual environment of the Second Sophistic, and throughout the changes in their relationship as Marcus came to value philosophy rather than rhetoric, Fronto always defended the importance of Latin rhetoric and his own supremacy in it. Her rhetorical analysis of the letters is persuasive, but she evades the controversy over whether the letters were intended for publication, by simply assuming that they were. She also evades, as irrelevant, the dispute over whether theirs was an erotic relationship, although if it was, that should surely affect interpretation of the letters.

Ewen Bowie writes on Aurelius’ attitude toward Greek poets and sophists-- again avoiding the most notable case, namely Herodes Atticus. Although the Meditations suggests a generally dim view of sophists, Philostratus’ anecdotes reveal the emperor’s likes and dislikes. He responded quickly when an earthquake struck Smyrna, probably because he was moved (‘enchanted’) by Aelius Aristides’ advocacy. He may also have favoured two young men, Hermogenes and Theodotus, because he found them erotically attractive.

Also Lucian of Samosata is the subject of two essays.

One contribution that does not shy from a disputed issue is Heinz-Guenther Nesselrath’s on Lucian’s attitude toward Romans. Nesselrath wisely limits his paper to examining Lucian’s portrayal of Roman imperial officials, which he presents as balanced; some officials are reasonable, some foolish, but the imperial system itself seems to be accepted as an unalterable fact of life. However, in my opinion, this need not be inconsistent with the contempt for social and cultural aspects of Roman society exhibited in works like the Nigrinus. Lucian would have had to be more tactful when writing about imperial officials.

Balbina Baebler’s contribution on Lucian’s Imagines is a brief, but cogent argument that this verbal construction of an ideal image by selecting body parts from different statues is not serious art criticism (ekphrasis) but a parody of the method: The final product would not produce any coherent image at all. For example, in the statue from which some parts are supposedly taken, they are hidden beneath clothing.

John Hilton’s essay on Julian and the Cynics compares their relationship and Hydaspes’ with the gymnosophists in the Aethiopica, but it seems to be more concerned with dating and interpreting the romance than with the non-fictional side of the comparison.

Several of these articles can stand alone as worthy contributions, however specialized. Whether the shift to “alternatives” is a constructive innovation or a shortcoming, I shall leave for the reader to decide. However, this book will be of greater interest to experienced readers already acquainted with the outlines of encounters between wisdom and power in the ancient world than to those desiring an introduction to the subject.

Comments? Questions?        jamesjope@jamesjope.ca 

Mary Beard and translational ethics

Scholars commonly translate Greek and Latin texts in a way that favours their own interpretation of the author—and criticize corresponding maneuvers by rival interpreters. These tendentious translations are not incorrect, but they do evade equally possible alternative versions. This practise can foster fruitful discussion among scholars who know the original languages. Essays addressed to a wider public should perhaps elicit greater responsibility. For example, if tendentious translations are proposed, one should also disclose the linguistic issues involved. Today, with the growing importance of popularizing Classics, there should be some concern for what I would propose to call standards of ‘translational ethics’.

What better source of examples could we desire than a work by the leading British popularizer Mary Beard? Her book Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations (Liveright 2013) is itself a brilliant innovation. Each chapter is based on reviews of one or more books on a particular topic, with background information for general readers and further discussion of Beard’s assessment of the topic as well as of the book(s). The result is engaging reading for classicists and general readers alike. (The only caveat that I shall add is that even this “first American edition” is rather anglocentric. German scholars draw Beard’s attention especially as they relate to English academe. Americans receive a nod when they have committed errors. And Canadians do not seem to exist.)

Beard’s criticism of others’ translations is proficient and sometimes amusing. Her chapter on Thucydides deconstructs famous bons mots of political philosophy ascribed to him, arguing that they actually arose from creative translations and that Thucydides’ intended point was more mundane. Creative translation is necessary for poetry or texts like Asterix, which, as Beard argues, became popular outside of France only thanks to translators’ revisions. But historical writing is another matter. Beard does explain some of the underlying ambiguities of the Greek. Yet I had an uneasy feeling about this procedure: Specialists comparing different translations can verify and evaluate the argument by referring to the Greek. General readers are totally dependent on Beard as their guide. The only benefit for them as independent thinkers is a hint of the difficulties of translation and the rewards of learning Greek.

Overall, Beard’s guidance is reliable; but she too can be surprisingly tendentious. Beard believes that Tacitus wrote his Annals with an implicit message which has been missed, although it is suggested by the very first sentence—viz., Rome was actually prone to monarchy throughout her history. That first sentence reads: Urbem Romam a principio reges habuere. Beard translates: “The city of Rome has been the possession of kings from the beginning (p. 115).” There are three tendentious maneuvers here. One exploits the ambiguity of a principio, which can mean ‘in the beginning’ or ‘from the beginning’. Beard admits this later in the book (p. 164); she believes that Tacitus’ ambivalence is intentional. But there are two further maneuvers which she does not disclose: (1) Latin does not differentiate the perfect tense from the aorist; ‘has been the possession’ could simply mean ‘was the possession’. And (2) the context suggests the aorist. The second sentence is libertatem et consulatum L. Brutus instituit. ‘Freedom and the consulship were introduced by L. Brutus.’ Libertas may relate only to the senatorial class, but however we take it, it is opposed to ‘kings’, especially in its emphatic position at the beginning of the clause. And the one-year tenure of dual consular governors functioned precisely to exclude absolutism. However one evaluates Beard’s overall interpretation of the Annals, the point of the opening sentence is more mundane.