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Book Review: Time And Its Adversaries In The Seleucid Empire By Paul Kosmin, Joseph A. P. Wilson

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Book review by Joseph A. P. Wilson.

Kosmin, P. J. (2018). Time and Its adversaries in the Seleucid Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Review Of The Gift Of Active Empathy: Scheler, Bakhtin, And Dostoevsky, By Alina Wyman, Slav N. Gratchev

Dr. Slav N. Gratchev

There are certain writers that literary scholars of all times will study again and again, and there are certain literary works that are too important to be examined only once. Reading Dostoevsky is always an “excruciatingly visceral experience” not only for us, the readers, but also for scholars like Max Scheler and Mikhail Bakhtin (p. 230). Alina Wyman’s book makes a major contribution to this experience. Wyman’s argument is both original and elegantly simple: for Bakhtin and Scheler the concept of loving empathy is fundamental in both their respective models of being and in the particular structure of their careers. …

Review Of The Gift Of Active Empathy: Scheler, Bakhtin, And Dostoevsky, By Alina Wyman, Slav N. Gratchev

Modern Languages Faculty Research

There are certain writers that literary scholars of all times will study again and again, and there are certain literary works that are too important to be examined only once. Reading Dostoevsky is always an “excruciatingly visceral experience” not only for us, the readers, but also for scholars like Max Scheler and Mikhail Bakhtin (p. 230). Alina Wyman’s book makes a major contribution to this experience.

Wyman’s argument is both original and elegantly simple: for Bakhtin and Scheler the concept of loving empathy is fundamental in both their respective models of being and in the particular structure of their careers. …

Readers And Writers In The Ancient Novel [Review], Lawrence Kim

Lawrence Kim

Are there still new and worthwhile things to be said about the ancient novel? There has certainly been an explosion in publications; the volume under review is the twelfth Ancient Narrative Supplement to appear since 2002, and more are on the way, as the multi-volume proceedings of the fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel begin publication in 2011. The eighteen articles reviewed here were originally delivered at a smaller conference in 2007 at Rethymno, and it was the organizers’ hope that the contributors would “tease out…new perspectives” on the topic of “readers and writers” by focusing on those “ …

Critical Moments In Classical Literature [Review], Lawrence Kim

Lawrence Kim

Critical Moments in Classical Literature is a curious book; deeply learned, elegantly written, and filled with subtle observations on a vast array of texts, but also somewhat diffuse, elusive, and in the end frustrating. On the face of it, the subtitle, Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses, is a good description of the book’s six chapters, each focused on a text constituting a ‘critical moment’ in ancient literary criticism: (1) Aristophanes’ Frogs, (2) Euripides’ Cyclops, (4) Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ On Imitation, (5) Longinus’ On the Sublime, and (6) Plutarch’s How the …

Roman Housing [Review], Timothy O'Sullivan

Timothy O'Sullivan

Despite the reawakened interest in the study of Roman domestic space, there has been no general introduction to the topic since Alexander McKay's Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World 25 years ago. Recent monographs on the topic, though exemplary, have been limited in scope by region (Wallace-Hadrill's Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum) or housing type (Mielsch's Die römische Villa), and almost always exhibit a bias (understandable, given the archaeological record) towards upper-class housing. Simon Ellis' ambitious new book, based on over twenty years of research, is an attempt to fill in these gaps; indeed, the work …

God, Space, & City In The Roman Imagination [Review], Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This ambitious book aims to convey what ancient Romans saw, thought, and felt as they experienced their city. Jenkyns focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on literary sources in his attempt to reconstruct how the Roman worldview of the late Republic and early Principate was shaped by the city of Rome itself, and vice versa. The built environment and public space are the principal points of emphasis, but the volume ranges widely over many other topics as well, including religious devotion, attitudes to the countryside, and Roman tourism.

Moore, T. 2012. Roman Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Christopher Bungard

Christopher Bungard

Christopher Bungard's review of Roman Theatre, by Timothy Moore.

Review Of The Imagery Of The Athenian Symposium, Justin St. P. Walsh

Art Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Kathryn Topper's The Imagery of the Athenian Symposium.

Some Homeric Hymns [Review], Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

R. offers a new edition of Hymns 3, 4 and 5. The volume follows the typical Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics format and includes a broad discussion of the Homeric Hymns, individual introductions for each hymn discussed, a section on the Homeric Hymns and Hellenistic poetry, a chapter on the transmission of the text, and three maps. R.’s text is based on previous editions, and he uses Càssola’s apparatus criticus as his ‘base’ (p. 33). In his general introduction, R. elegantly deals with questions of dating, authorship, the order of the poems and their function as preludes. The individual …

Greek And Latin From An Indo-European Perspective (Book Review), Dieter C. Gunkel

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Greek and Latin from an Indo-European Perspective edited by Coulter George, Matthew McCullagh, Benedicte Nielsen, Antonia Ruppel, and Olga Tribulato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007

A Companion To The Ancient Greek Language (Book Review), David M. Goldstein, Dieter C. Gunkel

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

It has become customary for reviews of handbooks to express misgivings toward the genre and its ever-increasing presence. But whatever one might think of companion volumes, this is a useful book. It boasts a wide range of generally high-quality essays by a parade of eminent scholars. Perhaps its most praiseworthy feature is the clarity and accessibility of many of its contributions, which makes them ideal starting points for the non-specialist. We will no doubt be assigning several of these chapters in our classes.

Writing And Empire In Tacitus [Review], Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Over the past decade, scholars such as Ash, O’Gorman, and Haynes have taken up a cause long championed by Woodman, insisting that we must treat Tacitus’ works as literary productions before we can use them as historical documents. By remaining attentive to issues of voice, allusion, and narrative presentation, these scholars have shown how Tacitus is worthy of the kinds of intense readings we might perform on any ancient author writing in poetry or prose; in many ways they do for Tacitus what Miles, Jaeger, and Feldherr did for Livy in the 1990s. Dylan Sailor’s Writing and Empire in Tacitus …

Critical Moments In Classical Literature [Review], Lawrence Kim

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Critical Moments in Classical Literature is a curious book; deeply learned, elegantly written, and filled with subtle observations on a vast array of texts, but also somewhat diffuse, elusive, and in the end frustrating. On the face of it, the subtitle, Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses, is a good description of the book’s six chapters, each focused on a text constituting a ‘critical moment’ in ancient literary criticism: (1) Aristophanes’ Frogs, (2) Euripides’ Cyclops, (4) Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ On Imitation, (5) Longinus’ On the Sublime, and (6) Plutarch’s How the …

A Referential Commentary And Lexicon To Homer, Iliad Viii [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

A 14,305 page Iliad commentary? That is what we get if we multiply the pages Adrian Kelly lavishes on Book 8 with the poem’s dimensions. And, Book 8? This is never really explained, though I suspect the long scholarly tradition that the book strays from Homer’s typical compositional practices and standards is one reason. For Adrian Kelly’s stated objective is to recreate at least part of the rich network of associations available to the early auditors of epic, with the result that Book 8 is shown to be as traditional as any other.

Remembering The Persian Empire (Book Review), Elizabeth P. Baughan

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

Has the world forgotten the Persian empire? Three new publications approach this question from different angles. Despite what their titles imply, the British Museum's landmark 2005 exhibition, 'Forgotten Empire. The World of Ancient Persia', and catalogue of the same name have aimed to reclaim the Persian empire not from oblivion but rather from its reputation, founded upon Hellenocentric and Eurocentric biases, as a 'nest of despotism and tyranny', and to illuminate its 'true character' as a remarkably tolerant and cohesive imperial power that embraced cultural variation (pp. 6, 8). One could say that the Persian empire has not until now …

Book Review: Empire Of Ashes, Jeanne Reames

History Faculty Publications

Three historical novels about Alexander the Great were published in 2004 to coincide with the November release of Oliver Stone’s epic film on the conqueror: The Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield, who is best known for Gates of Fire (1998) about the Battle of Thermopylae; Queen of the Amazons by Judith Tarr, who wrote about Alexander once before in Lord of the Two Lands (1993); and Empire of Ashes by relative newcomer Nicholas Nicastro.

Albrecht Berger (Ed.), Life And Works Of Saint Gregentios, Archbishop Of Taphar. Millennium Studies 7 (Book Review), Walter Stevenson

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

The publication of these three texts concerning the life and works of St. Gregentios should facilitate the investigation of a new set of fascinating and important issues. But the pioneering nature of the publication forces us to ask: what issues? Due to the mysterious provenance of these texts and the misty historicity of Gregentios himself, it is not clear whether they tell us more about the literary activities of Middle Byzantine monks or the attempted Christianization of the Jewish state of Himyar (roughly modern Yemen) in the time of Justinian. In this first modern edition B. edits and translates the …

Review Of Inge Nielsen, Cultic Theatres And Ritual Drama In American Journal Of Archaeology, On-Line Reviews, Vol. 111.1:, Kenneth S. Rothwell Jr.

Classics Faculty Publication Series

Nielsen has done us a great service by collecting the considerable evidence for cultic performance spaces in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, Asia Minor, Crete, Greece, Sicily, and Italy. A table (340–41) gives an index of the 58 bestpreserved theaters, but dozens of others are discussed as well. Although some of the theaters could also have been used for “secular” literary drama, this volume focuses on cultic use. Nielsen’s observations should be of great interest to students of theater, religion, and ancient architecture.

Kingship In The Mycenaean World And Its Reflections In The Oral Tradition [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Shear undertakes a detailed comparison of archaeological evidence from Mycenaean Greece, the surviving Linear B tablets, and the Homeric epics with the aim of showing that, contrary to the reigning scholarly consensus, Homer preserves a detailed and accurate portrait of the age he purports to describe. Indeed, Shear believes that both epics and much of Greek myth took shape during this period and reflect actual historical events (hence the reference to "oral tradition" rather than "Homer" in the title). Thus, because Pelops is the eponym of the Pcloponnesos, "he should logically belong to the early tradition that evolved soon after …

Fergus Millar: Rome, The Greek World, And The East. Volume 2. Government, Society And Culture In The Roman Empire (Book Review), Walter Stevenson

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

In Fergus Millar's discussion of his teacher, Ronald Syme, he states, "we can afford to take his stature as a historian as a presupposition and should not shirk the duty of asking what his work has been, what we have learnt from it" (p. 399). Likewise, now that Millar's papers have been intelligently collected into two volumes, the second of which roughly covers the first four centuries of our era, we attempt to ascertain the significance of one of the most influential ancient historians of the last forty years.

Rüdiger Kinsky (Ed.), Diorthoseis. Beiträge Zur Geschichte Des Hellenismus Und Zum Nachleben Alexanders Des Grossen. Bza, 183 (Book Review), Walter Stevenson

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

This volume presents five elaborations on lectures given at a seminar for Gerhard Wirth's 75th birthday (December, 2001). Kinsky explains in his terse introduction that the papers are dedicated to revising standard views of Alexander's reception and the history of Hellenism. In this spirit, the title "Diorthoseis" refers to a continuous process of reconstructing ancient history and periodically revising these reconstructions by reassessing all evidence. The breadth of this description fits the essays, but whatever is lost in focus is made up for in clearly formulated issues and engaging syntheses.

The Raft Of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination Of Homer's Odyssey [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In The Raft of Odysseus, Carol Dougherty wishes to read several major episodes of the Odyssey as ways of imagining colonial experience, and as informed by the discourse of colonial foundation. Odysseus can be compared to an ethnographer, who gains self-knowledge through a process of “decoding” a foreign culture and “recoding” it for one’s own, so that “the strange becomes familiar and the familiar strange” (p. 10). At the same time, he is also a colonist, whose experiences among the Phaeacians and Cyclopes offer complementary images of colonial encounters, and a traveling poet, who trades his stories for commercial …

James I. Porter. Constructions Of The Classical Body (Book Review), Walter Stevenson

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

This book brings together in a convenient package a variety of stimulating work by an impressive array of scholars interested in ancient sexuality and gender. Topics covered in the book vary in time and place from Archaic Greece to Medieval Europe, in field from Art History and Anthropology to Literature and Philosophy, and in form from prose poetry to painstaking scholarly exposition. Some critics may say that this volume represents just another ill-defined collection of warmed-over talks and essays; that it tries to plug one more new life-support line into the tired body of 1970s French theory; and that it …

The Returns Of Odysseus: Colonization And Ethnicity [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The Returns of Odysseus will be essential reading for specialists in Homer, early Greek history, and ancient ethnology. They and others willing to expend the time and energy necessary to read this densely argued and worded book will win a perspective on Greek (pre)colonization and its mythology unavailable from any other source. I myself required a full week for a careful reading, after which I noted to my surprise that I had taken over 50 pages of notes, many of which now belong to my permanent files. If, in what follows, I concentrate on some illustrative problems with Malkin's (M.) …

Homer, His Art And His World [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

First let me say what this book is not. Although the dust-jacket claims that the book includes "sections on the relevance of Homer to modern issues in literary criticism", it cannot be said to offer anything approaching a representative, let alone a comprehensive, survey of modern criticism, even as it is currently applied to Homer (H.). It does, in 34 pages, outline "the historical background to Homer and his poetry", but only for those who share the author's assumptions on the time, place, and circumstances of composition.

Book Review: "Radical Christianity: A Reading Of Recovery" By Christopher Rowland, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Christopher Rowland, Lecturer in Divinity, Dean and Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge, has written a fascinating and provocative book. Although drawing upon years of research on Christian origins, especially on apocalypticism in Judaism and early Christianity, this book goes far beyond antiquarian exegetical interests and questions. It is a most interesting attempt to determine the origins, then chart and account for major developments in the course of one type of Christian ethic and orientation-a type of "radical Christianity" rooted in apocalypticism.