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Subject: BMCR 2005.01.25, Simon Goldhill, Love, Sex, and Tragedy - msg#00027List: education.publications.bryn-mawr-classical-reviewOur Lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pp. 336. ISBN 0-226-30117-6. $27.50. Reviewed by Catherine Conybeare, Bryn Mawr College (cconybea@xxxxxxxxxxxx) Word count: 2112 words ------------------------------- This new plea that we should attend to our classical past is written with considerable brio. It covers a huge chronological range in its short chapters with their snappy titles ('Sex and the City', 'That's Entertainment!'): of course, we have classical antiquity (mostly Athens and imperial Rome), but we also touch down on Simeon Stylites' pillar, in Erasmus' study, on George 'Cincinnatus' Washington's farm, in Byron's idealized Greece. The work is divided into five sections: 'Who do you think you are?' -- on body image and display, corporeal grooming as part of citizenship, and sexual mores (especially the homo-erotic); 'Where do you think you are going?' -- scanning the very different notions of the body and social bonds in early Christianity and the urgent Renaissance debates around the text of the Bible; 'What do you think should happen?' -- a rich reprise of the Athenian democratic leap and of criticism as a fundamental part of democracy; 'What do you want to do?' -- on the abiding power of Greek tragedy, the civic function of the Athenian dramatic festivals, and the all-too-familiar savagery of the gladiatorial games (with a rather surprising excursus on the Seder as close relation of the Greek symposium); and finally, 'Where do you think you come from?'- on the formation of both personal myths and national identities (especially those of Germany and the US) after the inspiration of classical models. The bed on which the multifarious arguments are sprawled is not a Procrustean one. No single proposition for the relevance of classics is expounded -- and this seems appropriate. Instead, we are given a range of justifications, often in the form of declarative statements: 'To speak of culture in the modern West is to speak Greek' (1, obviously a polemical mise-en-scene), 'Christianity simply is a classical subject' (98), 'Modern drama inevitably looks back to Greece for an origin' (216). Only on the penultimate page of the text does Goldhill invite the contextualization of such grandiose claims: "In order to understand and be part of the cultural tradition of the West, we must appreciate [the] repeated reinvention of the past through Greece and Rome. Of course, this is not all that's necessary. But it is one essential strand of what has made the West what it is. (my emphasis)" This last statement is surely uncontroversial; not so the others. As the book has unfolded, however, we have seen that Goldhill is not endorsing a simple-minded search for origins; more often, though he doesn't put it like this, he is promoting a salutary sense of Fremdheit -- a notion of the alienness of the cultures from which we in the privileged Western world are descended and around which we build (some of) our cultural claims, in the hope of making us more reflective about our present assumptions and practices. This is in many ways not a suitable book to review in a scholarly journal for a professional audience. Its jacket sports an enviable blurb from Zadie Smith, and she, surely, is representative of its ideal readers: cultivated, highly intelligent, but not in the business. Goldhill's determination to increase the scope of conventional arguments about the relevance of classics is admirable; so is his obvious commitment to cultural outreach. At the same time, the book is, I think, written to provoke; and for the purposes of this review, I shall allow myself to be provoked. Ostensibly a plea for the relevance of classics, this book is also, presumably unintentionally, a snapshot of the myopias, limitations, and inconsistencies in the discipline as practised today. Sex is in; late antiquity is in. But women and the middle ages are still beyond the pale. The third chapter of the book (entitled unappetizingly 'The Female Body -- Soft and Spongy, Shaved and Coy') begins, 'This has been a very male story so far.' It has been. And it continues to be. The masculine nature of 'classics' could have been addressed head-on at the beginning of the book by asking why Greco-Roman literature has earned the name of 'classics', and by whom, in whose interests, it has been conferred. (The only place where the issue is mentioned, I think, is late in the book: the emotional power of the literature is cited as 'one good reason why the classics are called the classics and deserve our attention' [298].) The 'Female Body' chapter itself, which sets out to rectify the omission of the female, is deeply troubling. The discussion of male beauty acknowledges its complex intersection with ideology and power. Now, the tale of the man who tried to have sex with Aphrodite's statue prompts the question 'when does pleasure in looking become a darker urge?' (43) -- but it is unquestionably men who are doing the looking. The unquestioned primacy of the male gaze is reiterated in the chapter on Sappho, who 'has constantly been used to express female longing in a man's world'. True, but the portrait by Mengin used to illustrate the argument shows a brooding woman in black draperies with her breasts bared, reified in an attitude both sexual and vulnerable to invite the longing of a male audience.[[1]] Goldhill explores the ideals of the body beautiful -- of both genders. He provides us with the data to note the extraordinary discrepancy between the consistent ideal for the male and the constantly varying ideal for the female; but he does not remark upon it or note the consequent reinscriptions of male power over the female body. There are arenas here where the elision of women is even more consequential for our intellectual heritage. The section on democracy is particularly problematic in this respect. Goldhill writes 'a citizen was the only thing to be in a democracy' (184: this is in the context of democratic Athens); seven pages later, he addresses the fact that the 'majority of the adult population' -- including all the women -- were not counted as part of this demos. This matters when, at the end of the chapter, Goldhill inveighs against the 'disempowerment of the people' in modern democratic systems. One knows what he means; but for everyone except propertied men the mere opportunity to vote for a representative every few years -- never mind the chance to run for office, or to work for affiliated political organizations -- is a significant increase in empowerment. Comparable silences are felt elsewhere in the book. The study of the Philhellenism of Byron and Shelley leaves out of account the human detritus left behind by their 'Romantic commitment to the cause of freedom (artistic, political, sexual)' (261) -- the story so poignantly told, for example, in Howard Brenton's 1984 play 'Bloody Poetry'. Byron and Shelley's suicidal lovers and abandoned children might have found Greece rather less 'inspirational.' We learn that nineteenth-century school curricula in Germany and England occupied up to 80% of their time with Greek and Latin, and that consequently 'Greek and Latin provided the furniture of the Victorian mind' (318) -- once again, that of the monied male: we need only think of Virginia Woolf's frustration at her failure to learn Greek (surely connected with her sublime ability to describe men reading Greek, for example in The Years). The learned women of the Renaissance crowd behind this image, too: highly educated in Latin and Greek, fostered, praised, encouraged to give public lectures -- and, time and again, dropped when marriage threatened their relationships with their male mentors.[[2]] Arguably the most enduring intellectual movement of the nineteenth century was not any of the versions of Hellenism so beautifully tracked by Goldhill (summary, 267), but the women's movement: did Elizabeth Cady Stanton take her inspiration from the classics? did Rebecca West? So much for women. What about the middle ages? Why do I even bother to point to their elision? I try to do so on grounds which Goldhill himself proposes. These are twofold. First, if 'Christianity simply is a classical subject' (98), why do we stop discussing it in late antiquity and start again with Erasmus? Second, Goldhill laments that the passion of Christianity has been 'lost to blandness' in modern education, and urges that we apprehend the 'full difficulty of [its] picture' (both quotes from 159; Goldhill's emphasis). On a superficial level, this brings Stevie Smith's trenchant lines irresistibly to mind: People who are always praising the past And especially the times of faith as best Ought to go and live in the middle ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages. But, as with the women, there are important disciplinary presuppositions at stake (sic!). The picture of Medieval Christianity is indeed very difficult -- its passions, while undeniably passionate, are both salutary and devastating -- but time and again it complicates the claims for the classical heritage that Goldhill is considering here. A few examples. Part 1, Chapter 2 ('A Man's Thing?') is in part a celebration of the Greek propensity for displaying erect penises -- including, for example, the enormous phalli on Delos. Goldhill remarks that 'museum curators keep the penises that have been knocked off statues, along with the other objects which the Christian tradition has covered with fig-leaves' (29). And yet these images, and the penile Roman bell-pull on the following page, recall nothing so much as the late medieval trinkets apparently in parody of pilgrimage brooches, which show both erect penises and vulvae dressed as pilgrims, vulvae carried on a litter supported by penises, and other things which might seem to beg for a fig-leaf or two.[[3]] The general assumption that Christianity was automatically opposed to sexuality and eroticism keeps surfacing; this seems to me out of kilter with the ebullience of Medieval spirituality. Goldhill remarks, for example, on the 'false note' of the sexy scene between Saints Thecla and Paul in prison (119); but this foreshadows the sexualization of the spiritual throughout the middle ages. Think of what Christina of Markyate or Margery Kempe could do with bridal mysticism; think of what Agnes Blannbekin could do with the foreskin of Christ. As Christina's biographer has it: "With immeasurable delight she held [Christ] at one moment to her virginal breast, at another she felt His presence within her even through the barrier of her flesh. Who shall describe the abounding sweetness with which the servant was filled by this condescension of her creator?"[[4]] While it is of course true that Christianity develops 'by both rejecting and negotiating the culture of Greece and Rome' (143), it is hard to agree wholeheartedly with the subsequent claim: 'Christianity has continued to find it difficult to deal with classics and the classical ideal, whether it is nudity and sexuality, or philosophy and art.' It seems to me that it is our own age, which fancies itself so bold, which finds it difficult to deal with what is brash and vivid and just plain sexy in either the classical or the medieval periods. Whatever your investment in the subject, this book will excite you and engage you and make you want to argue with it. Of course, it is precisely because I do believe that classics matters intensely in the modern world that I take issue with these reiterations of disciplinary silences. We will never understand why classics should matter unless we leave it open to explore when and where they might not matter. Nor will we understand why classics should matter unless we join up the temporal gap of the thousand diverse and difficult years between late antiquity and the rise of Protestantism. The medieval example shows up the particular problem with the pursuit of Fremdheit: the more pressing question is, what doesn't seem strange, because we are so used to its patterns dictating our life? Every time we bow to Greek supremacy in a certain area, we should ask why, and how, we are acculturated to do so. The compelling legacy of Greek tragedy is probably the best example of this phenomenon. Last year I team-taught a graduate seminar on the application of gender theories to the ancient world with a colleague whose specialism is the archaeology of prehistoric Arabia. One of the works we discussed was Judith Butler's Antigone's Claim (New York, 2000). My colleague was intrigued by the connections made in the work; he appreciated the choice of Antigone as a key figure against the background of the Freudian choice of Oedipus (discussed by Goldhill, 289 ff.). But, working within a cultural matrix so different, he simply could not understand why a close reading of the relationships mapped in one Greek play should have any consequences whatever in the modern world. Ultimately, I didn't know how to answer him. I would like to. ------------------ Notes: 1. See Manchester City Galleries (http://www.manchestergalleries.org/collections/Intro.php) ; in support of Goldhill's reading of 'female longing', note the art work of choice in Curve Magazine (http://www.curvemag.com/Detailed/387.html/) . 2. Resume/s and sample writings in Women Writing Latin volume 3, ed. Churchill, Brown, and Jeffrey (New York/London: Routledge, 2002). 3. See, for example, the images in Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 7 (London: Stationery Office: 1998); and Denis Bruna, Muse/e de Cluny. Enseignes de Pe\lerinage et Enseignes Profanes (Paris: Re/union des muse/es nationaux, 1996). Thanks to Marianne Hansen for leading me to these sources. 4. Translation of C.H.Talbot, from The Life of Christina of Markyate: a Twelfth Century Recluse, paragraph 46 (Toronto: Medieval Academy of America, 1998). One might add that Christ has appeared to her 'in forma paruuli'. Margery Kempe's 'Boke' is readily available in a Penguin translation by B. A. Windeatt (1985); Agnes Blannbekin is most easily encountered in the second volume of Women Writing Latin (above, note 2). Thread at a glance:
Previous Message by Date: click to view message previewBMCR 2005.01.26, John G. Fitch, Seneca. IX Tragedies IIJohn G. Fitch (ed.), Seneca. IX Tragedies II, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules on Oeta, Octavia, Loeb Classical Library 78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. 654. ISBN 0-674-99610-0. $21.50. Reviewed by Rolando Ferri, Universita\ di Pisa (rferri@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) Word count: 1897 words ------------------------------- The second and final volume of the Loeb tragic Seneca comes out two years after the first (favourably reviewed in this journal by R. Scott Smith, BMCR 2003.02.30), and this time simultaneously with some important textual-critical contributions by the same author.[[1]] Specialists are therefore better qualified now to form an opinion about Fitch's editorial choices, for this new Seneca is in all respects an independent and original edition, with a Latin text thoroughly revised and a translation which presupposes several years of close engagement with these tragedies. A Loeb will primarily be assessed on the merits of its translation: study of volume two confirms the favourable judgement expressed by the reviewer of the first. Fine and effective, the translation is remarkable for accuracy, clarity, precision of detail, and concision, the last a remarkable feat, in view of the concentrated nature of Seneca's Latin, inevitably inviting expansive explanatory renderings.[[2]] An extensive index at the end of the volume has helped to reduce the amount of mythological and learned information in the footnotes. The bulk of the footnotes are therefore free to dwell on the clarification of conceits, obscure allusions, double meanings. All plays are preceded by an introduction, informative and insightful, with some indications for further reading. Finally, an attractive feature of this Loeb is the noting of significant borrowings from Seneca in English sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dramas. All translations entail an interpretation of sorts of the text at hand, and so does this. Long gone are the days of Leo's censure of the 'tragoedia rhetorica',[[3]] 'where ethos is nothing and pathos is all', and even the truth of T.S. Eliot's acute dictum, that all Seneca's characters 'speak with the same voice, and at the top of it',[[4]] has become less and less evident with the growing of a more nuanced and problematic understanding of these tragedies. Fitch's translation goes a long way towards consigning to oblivion this early common view, offering a Seneca who is plainer, even conversational at times, though no less subtle, pithy and, in the heated dialogic exchanges, clipped and incisive. His Seneca is rather sombre and pensive than hysterical, or paroxysmal. Most importantly, the translation brings into sharp relief the psychological tensions, revealing the emotion under the casuistry, the conflict and the paradox under the epigram, without ever overinterpreting the original. This renascence of, in the words of Leo, ethos in Seneca is certainly welcome, and has even affected Fitch's choices as a textual critic, to advantage. In this translation, the protagonists are less truculent than we expect them to be, and more involved and personal in their expression of feeling. Even secondary characters pronounce more than just cues to let their interlocutors come in with the next thundering salvo of pointed conceit.[[5]] In textual matters, Fitch takes issue with previous editors without antagonism, and Zwierlein's merits are always acknowledged (in the said volume of 'adversaria', Annaeana tragica). Fitch has an easy talent for conjecture, and his excellent knowledge of Latin, sustained by an admirable critical sense, has helped him to heal the text in a significant number of places, either by conjecture or by a different choice of reading. While generally more cautious than Zwierlein in suggesting corruption or introducing conjectures, Fitch is perhaps bolder than the OCT editor in suspecting interpolation. In fact, I am not sure if some at least of the so-called interpolations should not be considered authorial variants, perhaps present interlinearly or marginally, or subsequently added from a different copy. In any case, a reconsideration of the whole question is certainly in order (as suggested in Annaeana tragica, 4 n. 12). In spite of this persistent doubt on the general issue of interpolations, I find Fitch's excisions generally acceptable (e.g. at Thy. 58, 388-9, HO 461). I have only one different interpretation to suggest for HO 673-4 nec sibi felix pauper habetur / nisi felices cecidisse uidet ('and the poor man thinks himself unfortunate, unless he sees the fortunate fallen', Fitch), which I think could be in place in the section on 'the poor man is exempt from envy' at 652-7, after a string of negative clauses. Translate: 'nor does the poor man thinks himself fortunate unless he sees the fortunate fallen', that is 'only when he sees the fortunate fallen'. A Loeb edition is destined to pass through the hands of specialists as well as general readers, students, and scholars in other fields (for example CompLit and English), all of them, if not necessarily liable to take the left hand side text as littera sacra, naturally less inclined than professional Classicists to query the Latin when the small-print bottom-of-the-page apparatus tells a different story. This consideration may cause one to be perplexed when faced with the considerable number of new conjectures Fitch has printed in the text. Nevertheless, perplexity abates at the quality of these new conjectures, all reasonable, some absolutely persuasive. Even the less successful emendations are always good at advancing the discussion on a specific problem. Among the most convincing of the conjectures proposed by Fitch I shall mention only HO 318 Argea for the transmitted angor of E, and, on my home ground, Oct. 49 secreta repetit for the transmitted secreta refugit, easy to explain as a kind of polar error. Also beautiful are Thy. 58 stuprator for the pointless proper noun Thyestes, HO 472 nil for non, HO 1079 blanda per inferos for inquirens inferos, HO 1595 sonat ecce uastum (supplement), HO 1885 Nomiaeque for Nemeaeque, HO 1951-2 pervius est Acheron ... an remeare licet soli tibi,where an replaces et.[[6]] Fitch has rewritten the transmitted colometry of the anapaestic sections, in accordance with the views set out in his studies on the matter, which I regard as important, especially the case for the more extensive deployment of initial monometers.[[7]] In this edition, however, Fitch has wisely decided to maintain Zwierlein's line-numbers, going back to Gronovius' edition. Yet, unlike Zwierlein, he has not adopted the raised dot or other conventional sign to mark extra lines caused by his different colometric arrangement. For this reason, in anapaestic sections, more than five lines are sometimes found between the usual five-unit intervals marked by arabic numbers at the right margins, i.e. in Thy. 805-10, 810-15, 830-35, 850-55, 865-70. Unless I have missed something obvious in the preface, the reasons for this are nowhere clearly set out, nor obvious to see for the non-specialist, and problems may arise when quoting passages in these sections. The section of the book I have read with the keenest expectation is Hercules Oetaeus. This, perhaps the oddest play in the corpus, has not received the attention of modern commentators: it exhibits a very high number of linguistically questionable features, which have given rise to a great deal of discussion (e.g. the use of genus for 'the human race' and certain strange participial constructions; on all these problems cf. Zwierlein, Kritischer Kommentar [Mainz, 1986], 313-20). Fitch has thought out the linguistic problems in depth, and I have found a great deal of illumination in his translation and footnotes. I have therefore chosen to append to my review a list of comments and miscellaneous queries on the text of this play. At HO 56 quanta nunc fregi mala nudus, 'what evils ... have I now crushed unarmed', the reading of the MSS, nunc, cannot be right. It is true that a Latin perfect can have that resultative meaning, but the sentence is clearly past: Hercules is not nudus, that is 'unarmed', generally; he was so on a number of definite occasions set in the past (for example when he strangled the lion of Nemea). At HO 185-6 me uel Sipyli flebile saxum / fingite, Sipyli (PT) is a very good choice of reading, though in my view it should be considered a conjectural emendation rather than the reading of the archetype. si syphum of E and sisiphi of CS are unlikely to be independent errors in the two branches. HO 274 peperi. quid haeres?, in a prayer to Juno ('I have given birth. Why are you at a loss?' Fitch); but the MS peperi is not very satisfactory. In the parallel adduced by Fitch in support of this reading, Med. 49-50, Medea lists the murders committed in her flight with Jason: if she shed so much blood as a maid, what worse deeds will she do now she is a woman (haec virgo feci ... maiora iam me scelera post partus decent -- where of course post partus is doubly significant). But Deianira cannot use motherhood as the final item of a similar climax (what virginal crimes could she boast like Medea's?). HO 309-10 coniugis tacitae fidem / mihi reddis iterum?: tacitae (E: sanctae A) is too weak for 'long-suffering', the sense required here. HO 465 F. adopts the reading of A, and his text is better than Zwierlein's: Quas pontus herbas generat aut quas thessala / sub rupe pindus aut ubi inveniam malum / cui cedat ille?, but I find the initial indicative odd for an interrogative of this kind: better to write perhaps generet? HO 821-2 truncus in pontum cadit,/ in saxa uertex: unus ambobus iacet: one expects unus to be opposed to duo, not to ambo: cf. Ov. Met. 8.461-2 pugnat materque sororque, / et diuersa trahunt unum duo nomina pectus. Perhaps editors have been too rash to adopt Grotius' only apparently attractive antithesis: 'only one lies in both'. The transmitted funus, also meaning 'corpse', should perhaps be retained: Lichas' corpse lies in both elements, land and water. HO 1124-7 quis tantum capiet nefas / fati, quis superus locus / pontum Tartara sidera? / regna unus capiet tria? ('what place in heaven will hold such fate-wrought havoc -- what single place will hold three realms, Tartarus, sea, and stars?', Fitch). I view this apocalyptic vision as an implosion, with the sky, aether, collapsing onto the earth and underworld. But if the sky falls, what is the locus superus left to contain the final indistinct mass? HO 1272 fletum abstulisti 'have drawn tears from me', but aufero is not found with the meaning exprimo. I first thought of excitasti but HO 1711 si uoces dolor abstulerit ullas supports the MS reading. Is the meaning 'to take, steal away', as if speaking of a prize or a prey? HO 1560 parcite, o dites, inhibete dextras 'forbear, you magnates, stay your hands': I have found no parallels for this use of diues. Cf. however, Quint. Decl. min. 345.16.2 scimus tyrannidem praecipue ad diuites pertinere, which may point to a declamatorial origin for the play. TLL V, 1589.9-10 gives an example of diues. translating <greek>DUNA/STHS</greek> in Christian Latin (Itala), but that is too late to be relevant. HO 1678-9 I was at first surprised by the phrase laniare uterum as sign of mourning but cf. Quint. Decl. maiores 10.3 modo super ora pallentis infelices lacerabat oculos, nunc siccata frustra ubera querebatur, nunc superstitem caedebat uterum. More than a discussion of select passages would be required to do full justice to these 654 pages of Latin, backed by another 277 of 'adversaria', but I hope I have succeeded to convey something of the appreciation I feel for this book, and of the stimulus for further research I have found in it. This new Loeb Seneca is a fine, well thought-out and original piece of scholarship, which will advance considerably the debate on and understanding of these tragedies. ------------------ Notes: 1. J. G. Fitch, 'Textual Notes on Hercules Oetaeus and on Seneca's Agamemnon and Thyestes, CQ 54.1 (2004), 240-54, and id. Annaeana Tragica. Notes on the text of Seneca's Tragedies (Leiden, 2004) 2. Only in a handful of passages did I feel that a different interpretation of the Latin was perhaps preferable. HO 415 quisquis alius orbe consaepto iacet does not seem to mean 'whoever else lies at the world's edge' but 'on dry land', that is, the inhabited world in general, which is surrounded by the Ocean (other editors believe the passage to be corrupt). HO 1568-69 unde commisso resonare ponto / audies Calpen does not mean '(listen from there as Calpe resounds) to its warring seas', but 'while sea is joined to sea', that is the Ocean to the Mediterranean: for this use of committo 'to join two previously separated entities' cf. Sen. NQ 3.3.0.6 sic momento se redundantia pluribus locis maria committent; Med. 35-6 gemino Corinthos litore opponens moras / cremata flammis maria committat duo. Too colourful or too low-register perhaps is Thy. 283-4 ingesta orbitas in ora patris, 'childlessness stuffed down the father's throat'; the alternative proposed in the note is the only one possible in the context, 'thrust in the father's face', (after tota iam ante oculos meos / imago caedis errat 'the whole picture of the carnage hovers before my eyes', Fitch, with the same insistence on seeing). A note was perhaps needed at 1101-2 THY. natos parenti ... ATR. fateor, et quod me iuuat / certos, 'you gave sons to their father ... I admit it -- and definitely your own sons, I am delighted to say', in Fitch's translation. 'Definitely your own sons' is not entirely clear to me: is it opposed to 'not mine'? Perhaps the translation should be rather something like 'and what is more, your legitimate sons'. Atreus, obsessed with adultery and fatherhood, turns against Thyestes what he perceives as his brother's greatest advantage over himself, the fact that no doubts exist about his being the father of his sons. The conversational phatic rendering of nempe with 'you see' is slightly undertranslated. The particle seems to me to possess a more strongly adversative force. 'Surely' or 'indeed' would suit much better the tone of the sarcastic passages where it occurs, as at Oct. 195, which Fitch prints as one sentence said by the nurse, iam metuit eadem nempe praelatam sibi ('[the very woman who first dared to dishonour your marriage bed] is now fearful, you see, of the woman favoured above her'). Other editors usually give the words after nempe to Octavia, still preferable in my view. 3. De Senecae tragoediis observationes criticae (Berlin, 1878), 148. 4. Seneca in Elizabethan Translation (1927) in Essays on Elizabethan drama (New York, 1960), 4. 5. Sometimes, a mere change in punctuation can produce the effect, as at HO 897, where a question mark in uirum sequeris? ('You will follow your husband?', Fitch) may seem a slight change on earlier editors' plain uirum sequeris. (a phrase often belaboured to extract a rhetorical point), but is enough to make the nurse's reaction a half-stifled cry of despair, in the service of characterization rather than of rhetorical climax: 'is that so, are you really determined to die?' Likewise, a different speaker-attribution at Thy. 308-09 not only makes the progression of argument more plausible but also succeeds in making the attendant a character with stronger individual features, who will finally succeed in making Atreus recede from the idea of involving his sons in the plot. At HO 930-1 DEIANIRA: interim poena est mori, / sed saepe donum. pluribus ueniae fuit, the transmitted version, preferred by Fitch, transforms Deianira into a more positive-thinking, hopeful figure ( 'sometimes death is a punishment, but often a gift: for many it means forgiveness', Fitch) than Grotius' determined suicidal character pluribus uenia obfuit ('for most, pardon led to disgrace', my translation). At HO 1340-1, membra complecti ultimum, / o nate, liceat ('let me embrace your limbs for the last time, my son', Fitch, printing Bothe's ultimum), yields a less gruesome text than membra complecti ultima of the MSS, apparently meaning 'what is left of your limbs', consumed by the poison. 6. Among the less convincing emendations I should perhaps mention: HO 388 pariter soror / materque multum rapuit ex illo mihi ('sisterhood and motherhood both stole much of it [sc. beauty] from me', Fitch), where Fitch writes pariter soror in place of pariter (E; partu A) labat in the MSS. However, Deianira's grief for the death of her brother Meleager does not seem to be mentioned elsewhere in the play. In addition, failure to understand the allusion would not be enough to explain the change to labat. -- HO 1099 quod natum est iterum mori, 'what is born, dies once more' (Fitch), but why 'once more'? 'Back to the original state', argues Fitch in CQ, cit., 245 (see note 1), with various parallels, but this meaning is usually evident in the context, for example when two contrary movements are being described. I still find Ackermann's properat a more satisfactory solution to replace poterit. -- HO 1245-6 ubi uires, pater, / in me sepultae?, with Fitch's pater replacing the MS prius: 'where is my strength, father, now buried in me?' -- but 'now buried' for the past participle sepultae is not appealing. Gronovius' prius / memet, is still best, in my view, despite the absence of this form in the play. memet is commonly found in the other plays, although admittedly not as a second term of comparison. -- Oct. 858 PRAEFECTVS tua temperetur ira in place of tua temperet nos ira: too impudent a remark for the prefect; Nero's response would be way too sedate if the prefect had really spoken this line. I have tried to defend the MS reading in my edition of the play (Cambridge, 2003, ad l.). 7. Notably Seneca's Anapaests. Metre, Colometry, Text and Artistry in the Anapaests of Seneca's Tragedies (Atlanta, 1987), and, with renewed arguments, Annaeana Tragica, 263-77. Next Message by Date: click to view message previewBMCR 2005.01.24, Mario Liverani, Myth and PoliticsMario Liverani, Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Edited and Introduced by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Pp. 214. ISBN 0-8014-4333-4. $75.00. Reviewed by Mehmet-Ali Atac,, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College (matac@xxxxxxxxxxxx) Word count: 4474 words ------------------------------- In his Archaic Roman Religion, Georges Dume/zil emphasized the idea that the foundation stories of the Roman state and society, such as those found in the account of Livy, were mythical rather than truly historical, and that such sagas were "early examples of the historicization of myths, of the transposition of fables to events; this process was frequently used by the annalists or their predecessors..."[[1]] Dume/zil hence drew attention to the thought that what the Romans did was, in a way, express myth as if it were history, or in a "historical" guise. In accounting for this Roman ethos in comparison to India, Dume/zil suggested that the "Romans think historically, while the Indians think fabulously ... The Romans think practically and the Indians think philosophically ... The Romans think politically, the Indians morally."[[2]] Our focus here is not Rome, but the ancient Near East; and not Livy, but Mario Liverani, Professor of History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Rome "La Sapienza." Dume/zil's observations on archaic Roman "history" do resonate, however, with aspects of what Liverani has to say in a number of essays, originally published in Italian from the early 1970s until the 1980s, all with the unifying theme of "historiography," presented for the first time in English for a wider audience, translated by Liverani himself, under the title Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Liverani's translations are edited and introduced by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop, who signal in their Introduction that the texts under scrutiny "are always historical reconstructions in themselves and that they do not have a 'pure historical aim.' Instead, their aim is political, moral, theological, and so on." Most of the texts examined by Liverani do in fact take their cues from actual historical figures and situations, but all of them also do something more with them in terms of casting the events or situations described in patterns of myths or fairy tales. Liverani analyzes these texts almost geometrically, at times with charts and graphs, in terms of diction, structure, and semantics, "a deconstructive approach in order to read against the grain of the narrative as it is constructed in the texts," according to the editors. The editors also note some of the intellectual trends with which these essays are in dialogue, such as structuralist anthropology, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and gender theory. Overall, Liverani's essays are important not only regarding the implicit "semiotic" of ancient texts, but also regarding the "international" dimensions of this phenomenon. The book is organized in four main parts, each dealing with a different cultural or geographic area within the greater Near East, "Mesopotamia," "Hittite Anatolia," "Syria," and "Hebrew Bible." These four parts further comprise chapters, each of which is a separate and rather dense essay. Each essay is also preceded by a helpful brief introduction by the editors of the volume, summarizing the specific story dealt with, at times commenting on Liverani's take on the matters at hand, with information on other relevant scholarly literature as well. Despite the overarching methodological unity, the book is no easy read, as with each chapter the reader is required to embark on a new "wavelength" and a new concentrated problem-solving process. "Hittite Anatolia" comprises two, "Syria" three, and "Hebrew Bible" again two essays, with "Mesopotamia" as the shortest part, consisting of only one essay, which is the opening chapter of the book, "Adapa, guest of the gods." Of all the essays contained in the book, the one on Adapa is probably the only one which is distinctively mythological, and in this respect, one wonders if it truly qualifies as "historiography," unless of course one also visualizes a mythical "history" or "proto-history." Be that as it may, the chapter is methodologically quite at home among the rest of the essays, and in fact, with a theme based on a perennial paradox, constitutes an apt opening to this book of complexities. Its focus is the Babylonian myth of Adapa, an antediluvian sage, and son of the god of wisdom and cunning, Ea. In the myth, while Adapa is fishing in the open sea, he is caught in a storm generated by the South Wind. In anger, he curses the wind, breaking its wings, and hence committing a crime that "disturbs the natural order." He is summoned to the presence of the supreme god Anu. In order to protect Adapa from imminent punishment, Ea advises him to appear at Anu's gate in clothes of mourning, so that he would seem to be mourning over the disappearance from the earth of Tammuz and Gizzida, gods connected with the cycle of vegetation, and not to partake of the "food of death" and "water of death" to be offered to him, but to accept the clothing and the oil for anointing. Adapa is admitted to Anu's presence on account of his ostensible reverence toward Tammuz and Gizzida, now guardians at the gate of heaven. Anu, who interrogates him, impressed by his wisdom, decides to offer him the "food and water of life" instead. Adapa, certain that the offerings are the victuals of death, refuses them, and loses his chance to gain eternal life. In his analysis of the myth, Liverani takes issue with the common notion that the myth is one that explains human mortality. Cautioning against analyzing the myth "as if it were a realistic novel," Liverani advocates an analysis that is attuned to the "rules of mythical narratives." The author's first proposed key to the specific problem in the Adapa myth is a consideration of the clothing and oil as parameters in the codification of the narrative just as important as the food and water. Demonstrating with examples how oil and clothing, along with food and water, constituted a formulaic set in a rhetoric of livelihood in the ancient Near East, Liverani argues that Adapa's accepting the oil and clothing, "external gifts," goes together with his admission to the presence of Anu, a success; and his declining the food and water, "internal gifts," goes together with his expulsion from the company of the gods, a failure. Liverani's second proposed key to the meaning system of the myth is an anthropological understanding of "hospitality" by which the guest is assimilated to the host environment. From this standpoint, Adapa's rejecting a portion of the gifts presented to him is understood as a violation of rules of mutual hospitality, resulting in the loss of a chance of full assimilation to the divine. The author's treatment of both of these lines of analysis is remarkably strong and logical, and yet the crux of the problem remains. In particular, the emphasis on "hospitality" does not fully loosen the knot, since, in a way, such myths are predestined to result negatively. In other words, had Adapa, in full harmony with decorum and hospitality, accepted the food and water, the latter would have automatically or magically turned into the food and water of death. What truly does help explain a great deal, however, is Liverani's emphasis on how Adapa's lost opportunity, like that of Gilgamesh, is not one of general immortality, but one that pertains to a specific condition, which Liverani understands as that of "priesthood," and not of humankind in general. The author sees the admissibility of Adapa to the presence of Anu as analogous to the restricted access of ancient priests to gods' houses. One wonders, nevertheless, if rather than an aetiology for the clergy in general, this specific condition instead refers to a more fundamental state of "initiation," a concept which Liverani does take up later on in the book. As if to consolidate the questionable "historiographic" dimension of this essay, Liverani concludes: "This development took place 'a long time ago,' and the audience should not be surprised to find from the beginning of the story a description of the prototypical priest, who has already reached the final stage." It is after the "initiation" provided by the Adapa myth that Liverani's essays start meeting more closely the title's promise of "politics" and "historiography." In the first of the two essays belonging to "Hittite Anatolia," "Telipinu, or: on solidarity," the author's focus is a Hittite edict known as the Telipinu Edict, which, up to the time Liverani's essay was published (1977), had been taken as a reliable document to understand the little-known Hittite "Old Kingdom" history. The introduction of this document surveys the history of the Hittite state from a king called Labarna, an archetypal founder king, to the time of Telipinu, the sponsor of the edict. Giving examples from how modern historians took this survey at face value in reconstructing "Old Kingdom" Hittite history, Liverani proposes an alternative reading at the "deep level," and draws attention to a formulaic pattern in the text, one "often found in political addresses of an apologetic or propagandistic nature," that starts with an optimal or ideal phase, represented in the edict by Labarna's reign, followed by a disturbance of that state of perfection, and culminating in a "reform" that results in a restoration of goodness. In the edict, the phase of disturbance is depicted as a complicated sequence of murders for royal succession, to which Telipinu puts an end, seemingly initiating a new "norm," but in fact simply legitimizing his own offensive accession to the throne, since he had murdered his brother-in-law Huzziya, his predecessor, to this end. The new "norm" in essence allows the husband of the first royal princess to be king in case there are no male princes, which, if truly valid, would have been "suicidal" for the safety of Telipinu's own royal tenure. Liverani thus points out that the reform is more "fictional" than real, making Telipinu appear "not as the last in a negative sequence, but as the first in a new, positive, one." The author further stresses how in this way "Telipinu as a king acted in order to save Telipinu as a person under accusation." What is not clear in Liverani's analysis is just how issuing an edict could save Telipinu if he was seriously in trouble, were this the main purpose of the text. Would the accusers, no less than a delegation of public representatives, have been so nai+ve as to be lulled by this stratagem? Liverani's observation of and emphasis on the presence in this edict of the fundamental pattern that consists of concord followed by disintegration followed by renewed concord remain a more powerful aspect of this essay than his attempt to explicate what the text achieved in practical terms. >From the "solidarity" Telipinu tried to implement in his court by means of his new edict, we move on to the second essay of "Hittite Anatolia," "Shunashura, or: on reciprocity." In this essay as well, Liverani traces the political manipulation of a formulaic textual type, a parity treaty, in outlining the change in the relationship between the Hittites and a southeastern Anatolian state, Kizzuwatna, from one of equality or parity to one characterized by the submission of the king of Kizzuwatna, Shunashura, to the Hittites. The author lays out how even though the text on the surface seems to conform to the rhetoric of parity treaties, in which both sides are depicted as fully equal, it in fact introduces subtle modifications that clearly would have asserted to Kizzuwatna the new relation between the two states based on the superiority of the Hittites. Liverani analyzes how the usual symmetry of a parity treaty is disturbed especially by the inclusion of a third parameter, the Hurri, the great rival of the Hittites in the second half of the second millennium, presented as a negative foil for the Hittites, in legitimizing Kizzuwatna's loyalty to the Hittites as opposed to the Hurri. The text states how the Hurri would have treated Kizzuwatna as servants, whereas the Hittites will treat them as their "peer." The symmetry is further manipulated by the involvement of a fourth party, Ishuwa, equal in rank with Kizzuwatna as a vassal state, and subordinate to both the Hittites and the Hurri as the opposing peers of the new political structure. Liverani shows, with charts, how the text pretends to maintain the formulaic symmetry by creating an equal pair out of the Hittites and the Hurri on the one hand, and one out of Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa on the other, with the latter pair inferior to the former. In addition to this constructed symmetry, the text also utilizes chiasmos by indicating how at first Kizzuwatna was a vassal of the Hittites, and Ishuwa one of the Hurri, and how in a second stage Kizzuwatna shifted to the Hurri and Ishuwa to the Hittites, and how now in the final "restoration" "the oxen [Kizzuwatna] recognised their stable," and returned to the Hittites. Liverani in the meantime also draws attention to the same fundamental tri-partite structure that presents the first phase of a "historical" development as "the original and therefore perfect condition of the world," which by nature contained "the situation that is to be proved right." This the text further achieves by omitting "as irrelevant an entire phase of autonomy, the period when the Kizzuwatna kings used the title 'Great King,'" and were hence truly the peers of the Hittite kings. Liverani concludes by suggesting that the message system of this text may also have been directed to the Hurri in formalizing "a change in the political situation that was to the detriment of Hurri." Overall, as Liverani demonstrates, the geometry of this text is so powerful that one wonders if it may have greater autonomy as a "subtext," a word never used by Liverani throughout the book, in addition to its subservience to Hittite political ambitions. The third part of the book, "Syria," comprises three essays. The first, "Leaving by chariot for the desert," is focused on the inscription of Idrimi, ruler of Alalah, which "provides a justification for Idrimi's rule over a city with which he had no previous connections, and was manufactured in order to make the king look especially qualified for the task." According to the text, Idrimi, chased out of Aleppo with his family, crosses the desert, reaches Emar on the Euphrates where he joins bands of warriors, ultimately conquering the city of Alalah whose king he becomes. Liverani recognizes in the structure of this text certain patterns and narrative modes similar to those found in fairy tales, in which the protagonist leaves behind what is familiar to him, his home and family; makes an excursion to the hostile environment outside, depicted as the desert in the Near Eastern setting, which, Liverani suggests, "is the equivalent of the 'forest' into which the hero ventures in European fairy tales;" encounters on his way helpers or tools of a supernatural nature; and ultimately attains a favorable status. It is in the structure of this text that Liverani explicitly sees features of "initiation" which entails a detachment from what is familiar, a challenge to be overcome, and the fulfillment of a final telos. The author argues that it is again on account of the irregular way in which Idrimi ascended the throne that he resorted to such a "story of his life along these lines of a fairy tale," since he had to appease a public that was troubled by this situation. In conclusion, Liverani observes how "most protagonists of 'fairy tale' stories in the ancient Near East are usurpers: Idrimi, Sargon of Akkad, Hattushili III, David, Darius, and so on." Even though the connection with usurpation is clear, one wonders if accounting for this narrative structure solely in terms of facing the opinion of a troubled public does full justice to the intrinsic quality of the fairy tale mode so potently pinpointed by Liverani. Why, for instance, may it not have been the case that a usurper also provided a scribal milieu with good raw material for the kind of "initiatic" subtext that the fairy tale mode was able to convey? The second essay of the part "Syria," "Rib-Adda, righteous sufferer," focuses on a number of letters written by the king of Byblos, Rib-Adda, to the Egyptian pharaohs of the early fourteenth century, who then controlled the Syro-Palestinian area. The letters constitute "by far the most extensive corpus of Amarna letters," with the common theme of complaint on the part of Rib-Adda about the world's hostility, his isolation, and the absence of a remedy or a "savior," which he visualizes as the very "coming out" of the pharaoh to save him in person. The essay is at times rather repetitious, and Liverani's point is clear in that rather than a "historical" situation, the letters again reveal a fundamental pattern familiar from ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, in which a "golden age" or a "paradisiacal state," now lost, is lamented and longed for. In fact, Liverani goes so far as referring to Rib-Adda's aspirations to convince the pharaoh to come in person and save him from the hostilities surrounding him as "eschatological" and "messianic." Liverani does juxtapose, however, the nature of these letters with that of proper wisdom literature, in that the former lack a "true conclusion," "a resolution of the kind usually found in wisdom literature," in which the "righteous one ... through suffering becomes wiser, more conscious, and better to acknowledge the inscrutability of god." According to Liverani, even though the affinity of Rib-Adda's letters to Mesopotamian wisdom literature in Akkadian is clear, this affinity is more on account of the shared "psychological" and "existential" conditions between Rib-Adda and the Akkadian scribal milieu rather than direct influence. It is somewhat puzzling that the author, after laying out so effectively the fundamental pattern that permeates these letters and transcends their historical content, resorts to an explanation focused on "psychosis" and "existentialism" for their common threads rather than a greater emphasis on the likelihood that the letters themselves were also the product of a scribal milieu, though of a different kind from formal wisdom literature, and perhaps not the direct personal output of Rib-Adda. Liverani's conclusion stresses an almost spectral element in this unrequited correspondence: "sometimes we get the impression that the king of Byblos was writing more to vent his frustrations than to obtain an answer, just for the sake of writing rather than in order to be read." The final essay of "Syria," "Aziru, servant of two masters," strikes a similar chord with the previous one in terms of both the genre of the letter and attempts toward "psychoanalysis." This time, the situation found in the previous essay is somewhat reversed, and the protagonist, Aziru, leader of the Amurru, the very bane of Rib-Adda, crafts letters that are meant to avoid an overdue visit to the pharaoh, who is concerned as to the loyalty and reliability of his vassal, whom he constantly summons to explain himself, within the milieu of the political rivalry between Egypt and the Hittites. Liverani's main argument is that Aziru's letters indefatigably postpone such a visit on the grounds that the Hittites might anytime take action and invade Amurru from the North, with the implicit message that if this indeed happens, rather than resisting, the Amurru will change sides and become a Hittite vassal. Analyzing the verbs of "motion" or "stasis" in the letters of Aziru, Liverani suggests that the letters may already have been encoded with the information, if not the message, that the Amurru might anytime change position and "move" to the other side. What again seems to undermine the strength of Liverani's analysis is a tendency to see an unconscious element in this codified diction of "motion," perhaps betraying the author's own uncertainty as to its presence: "The worries and the unstated goals of Aziru come to light in his speech, in the form of almost obsessive insistences -- notably in the 'code of movement' -- and of lexical usages that are ideologically reversed. Unwillingly, Aziru lets us perceive just what he would have liked to conceal completely, and gives us the 'signals' of his bad conscience. Since we know the end of the story, we easily notice these 'signals' of Aziru's hidden purposes. Did Pharaoh also notice them?" All in all, the essay also differs from the rest of the "historical" texts analyzed by Liverani in its lack of a "mythical" or "fairy tale" element, but the author's by now distinctive mode of textual analysis easily blends it into the overall fabric of the book. The first chapter of the part "Hebrew Bible," "The story of Joash," comes back to the theme of a marginalized hero's ascent to the throne from a fresh angle. The focus of the essay is 2 Kings 11 and 12: "King Ahaz had died as the result of the wounds he suffered in battle, while his son, Joash, was an infant. Athaliah, the mother of Ahaz, became regent and massacred the rest of the royal family, but Joash was saved by an aunt, who hid him in the temple of Yahweh. Seven years later the high priest, Jehoiada, recognised Joash as the true king, installed him on the throne, and killed Athaliah." Liverani this time draws attention to how such narratives are characterized by "a first usurpation in which the protagonist is the victim, and a second one through which the protagonist attains power." The author also touches on the themes of disguise and recognition that are also typical elements of such stories, found in the Odyssey as well. The gist of Liverani's argument is again that such a mise-en-sce\ne has the purpose of persuading a doubtful public of the questionable legitimacy of a political leader, and hence one of "propaganda." In the case of the story of Joash, Liverani especially emphasizes how the "common people," the "lowest level," also needed to be convinced. As already indicated in relation to Idrimi, it is somewhat unclear in Liverani's treatment of these texts to what extent the archetypal story per se takes the upper hand and becomes autonomous and to what extent it remains subservient to a distinct political aim. For instance, the story of Joash perfectly parallels that of Moses, and how would one then comment on the Moses story along these lines? What are our criteria that help tell the "prototype" from the "derivative?" If, on the other hand, legitimation was a veneer for the fundamental story, the intellectual agencies in charge of the production of such texts were certainly as tireless and insistent as Rib-Adda's letters to Pharaoh in telling and re-telling the same old story. The final essay of the part "Hebrew Bible," and of the book, "Messages, women, and hospitality: inter-tribal communication in Judges 19-21," deals with two stories at the end of the biblical book of Judges. The first is the harrowing account of how men belonging to the tribe of Benjamin want to have sexual intercourse with a passer-by Levite from Ephraim, who is on his way home with his recently recovered concubine, and how, to avoid the disgrace, the Levite offers these men as substitute his concubine, who is ravished the whole night and is dead by morning. "The Levite takes her home and cuts the body up into twelve pieces, sending one to each of the tribes of Israel to summon them." A war ensues between Benjamin and the rest of the tribes, resulting in a massacre of Benjaminite men and an oath on the part of the rest of the tribes never to give brides to the remaining Benjaminites. The second story is concerned with the problem of survival of Benjamin without women, and the solution is for the Benjaminite men to abduct "girls at the annual festival of Shiloh and thus obtain brides." As if to second the analogy to archaic Roman "history," mentioned at the beginning of this review, these stories are illogically reminiscent of the Rape of Lucretia and that of the Sabines. This essay is the most dense and convoluted by far of all Liverani's chapters, and the extent of analytical dissection exercised by the author is not only challenging, but at times tiring. The editors of the volume remark in their brief introduction that the chapter "was originally published in 1979, long before a feminist approach became fashionable in biblical studies." In the essay, Liverani devotes a great deal to the "communicative" dimension of the female protagonist of the first story, the concubine, drawing attention to how her passivity, speechlessness throughout the narrative, use as substitute, and ultimate victimization are parts of a semiotic that refers to the male-dominated sociocultural milieu of the period in question. The author's analysis of these stories has an anthropological emphasis, again addressing concepts of hospitality, "conventions of marriage," the "male dialectics between giving and receiving," kinship, and "inter-tribal relations." This is perhaps the only essay in the book in which Liverani's commitment to avoid reading texts as if they were realistic novels somewhat falters. The formulaic dimensions of substitution, victimization, dismemberment, wars caused by violation or abduction of women, and even the twelve tribes receive much less attention than the socio-cultural and socio-economic. Liverani, however, does address the difficulty of understanding the stories from a "historical" and "chronological" standpoint, inevitably drawing attention to their "foundational" nature: "This repertoire by its very nature cannot be 'dated'; it cannot be pinned down too closely in time. It has a fluidity that must be taken into account. Above all, it has no necessary relationship -- either chronological or factual -- with the specific cases to which it is applied. It does not 'date' and it is not 'dated'... we have to acknowledge that it is the reconstruction of a dream, a short dream playing a precise political function at the moment when the Davidic state was constructed." This note in a way also brings the book full circle, since unlike the Adapa myth, this story is clearly difficult to treat as both pure myth and as "dated" history, sharing perhaps more with the ambiguity of Livy's early "history" than with the post-Adapa texts examined in Liverani's book. Each of Liverani's essays begins almost with suspense, but one cannot help feeling that some also end with an anti-climax. It is as if in most of the essays a further or final step, especially one toward the main promise of the title, "myth," were not taken and that there were something more the author could say, an absence with which he almost tantalizes the reader. In this regard, Liverani's essays are like flashes of lightning in the dark. Despite their "agedness," these essays ironically reveal a lingering gap in the field of ancient Near Eastern studies, in that we need more of such perspectives, not just in historical and literary studies, but also in the history of ancient Near Eastern art. The availability of these essays now in English is a truly invaluable service to the wider scholarly audience of the ancient Near East. ------------------ Notes: 1. Georges Dume/zil, Archaic Roman Religion, Philip Krapp trans., vol. 1, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1966/70), 75. 2. Ibid., 116-7. Previous Message by Thread: click to view message previewBMCR 2005.01.26, John G. Fitch, Seneca. IX Tragedies IIJohn G. Fitch (ed.), Seneca. IX Tragedies II, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules on Oeta, Octavia, Loeb Classical Library 78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. 654. ISBN 0-674-99610-0. $21.50. Reviewed by Rolando Ferri, Universita\ di Pisa (rferri@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) Word count: 1897 words ------------------------------- The second and final volume of the Loeb tragic Seneca comes out two years after the first (favourably reviewed in this journal by R. Scott Smith, BMCR 2003.02.30), and this time simultaneously with some important textual-critical contributions by the same author.[[1]] Specialists are therefore better qualified now to form an opinion about Fitch's editorial choices, for this new Seneca is in all respects an independent and original edition, with a Latin text thoroughly revised and a translation which presupposes several years of close engagement with these tragedies. A Loeb will primarily be assessed on the merits of its translation: study of volume two confirms the favourable judgement expressed by the reviewer of the first. Fine and effective, the translation is remarkable for accuracy, clarity, precision of detail, and concision, the last a remarkable feat, in view of the concentrated nature of Seneca's Latin, inevitably inviting expansive explanatory renderings.[[2]] An extensive index at the end of the volume has helped to reduce the amount of mythological and learned information in the footnotes. The bulk of the footnotes are therefore free to dwell on the clarification of conceits, obscure allusions, double meanings. All plays are preceded by an introduction, informative and insightful, with some indications for further reading. Finally, an attractive feature of this Loeb is the noting of significant borrowings from Seneca in English sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dramas. All translations entail an interpretation of sorts of the text at hand, and so does this. Long gone are the days of Leo's censure of the 'tragoedia rhetorica',[[3]] 'where ethos is nothing and pathos is all', and even the truth of T.S. Eliot's acute dictum, that all Seneca's characters 'speak with the same voice, and at the top of it',[[4]] has become less and less evident with the growing of a more nuanced and problematic understanding of these tragedies. Fitch's translation goes a long way towards consigning to oblivion this early common view, offering a Seneca who is plainer, even conversational at times, though no less subtle, pithy and, in the heated dialogic exchanges, clipped and incisive. His Seneca is rather sombre and pensive than hysterical, or paroxysmal. Most importantly, the translation brings into sharp relief the psychological tensions, revealing the emotion under the casuistry, the conflict and the paradox under the epigram, without ever overinterpreting the original. This renascence of, in the words of Leo, ethos in Seneca is certainly welcome, and has even affected Fitch's choices as a textual critic, to advantage. In this translation, the protagonists are less truculent than we expect them to be, and more involved and personal in their expression of feeling. Even secondary characters pronounce more than just cues to let their interlocutors come in with the next thundering salvo of pointed conceit.[[5]] In textual matters, Fitch takes issue with previous editors without antagonism, and Zwierlein's merits are always acknowledged (in the said volume of 'adversaria', Annaeana tragica). Fitch has an easy talent for conjecture, and his excellent knowledge of Latin, sustained by an admirable critical sense, has helped him to heal the text in a significant number of places, either by conjecture or by a different choice of reading. While generally more cautious than Zwierlein in suggesting corruption or introducing conjectures, Fitch is perhaps bolder than the OCT editor in suspecting interpolation. In fact, I am not sure if some at least of the so-called interpolations should not be considered authorial variants, perhaps present interlinearly or marginally, or subsequently added from a different copy. In any case, a reconsideration of the whole question is certainly in order (as suggested in Annaeana tragica, 4 n. 12). In spite of this persistent doubt on the general issue of interpolations, I find Fitch's excisions generally acceptable (e.g. at Thy. 58, 388-9, HO 461). I have only one different interpretation to suggest for HO 673-4 nec sibi felix pauper habetur / nisi felices cecidisse uidet ('and the poor man thinks himself unfortunate, unless he sees the fortunate fallen', Fitch), which I think could be in place in the section on 'the poor man is exempt from envy' at 652-7, after a string of negative clauses. Translate: 'nor does the poor man thinks himself fortunate unless he sees the fortunate fallen', that is 'only when he sees the fortunate fallen'. A Loeb edition is destined to pass through the hands of specialists as well as general readers, students, and scholars in other fields (for example CompLit and English), all of them, if not necessarily liable to take the left hand side text as littera sacra, naturally less inclined than professional Classicists to query the Latin when the small-print bottom-of-the-page apparatus tells a different story. This consideration may cause one to be perplexed when faced with the considerable number of new conjectures Fitch has printed in the text. Nevertheless, perplexity abates at the quality of these new conjectures, all reasonable, some absolutely persuasive. Even the less successful emendations are always good at advancing the discussion on a specific problem. Among the most convincing of the conjectures proposed by Fitch I shall mention only HO 318 Argea for the transmitted angor of E, and, on my home ground, Oct. 49 secreta repetit for the transmitted secreta refugit, easy to explain as a kind of polar error. Also beautiful are Thy. 58 stuprator for the pointless proper noun Thyestes, HO 472 nil for non, HO 1079 blanda per inferos for inquirens inferos, HO 1595 sonat ecce uastum (supplement), HO 1885 Nomiaeque for Nemeaeque, HO 1951-2 pervius est Acheron ... an remeare licet soli tibi,where an replaces et.[[6]] Fitch has rewritten the transmitted colometry of the anapaestic sections, in accordance with the views set out in his studies on the matter, which I regard as important, especially the case for the more extensive deployment of initial monometers.[[7]] In this edition, however, Fitch has wisely decided to maintain Zwierlein's line-numbers, going back to Gronovius' edition. Yet, unlike Zwierlein, he has not adopted the raised dot or other conventional sign to mark extra lines caused by his different colometric arrangement. For this reason, in anapaestic sections, more than five lines are sometimes found between the usual five-unit intervals marked by arabic numbers at the right margins, i.e. in Thy. 805-10, 810-15, 830-35, 850-55, 865-70. Unless I have missed something obvious in the preface, the reasons for this are nowhere clearly set out, nor obvious to see for the non-specialist, and problems may arise when quoting passages in these sections. The section of the book I have read with the keenest expectation is Hercules Oetaeus. This, perhaps the oddest play in the corpus, has not received the attention of modern commentators: it exhibits a very high number of linguistically questionable features, which have given rise to a great deal of discussion (e.g. the use of genus for 'the human race' and certain strange participial constructions; on all these problems cf. Zwierlein, Kritischer Kommentar [Mainz, 1986], 313-20). Fitch has thought out the linguistic problems in depth, and I have found a great deal of illumination in his translation and footnotes. I have therefore chosen to append to my review a list of comments and miscellaneous queries on the text of this play. At HO 56 quanta nunc fregi mala nudus, 'what evils ... have I now crushed unarmed', the reading of the MSS, nunc, cannot be right. It is true that a Latin perfect can have that resultative meaning, but the sentence is clearly past: Hercules is not nudus, that is 'unarmed', generally; he was so on a number of definite occasions set in the past (for example when he strangled the lion of Nemea). At HO 185-6 me uel Sipyli flebile saxum / fingite, Sipyli (PT) is a very good choice of reading, though in my view it should be considered a conjectural emendation rather than the reading of the archetype. si syphum of E and sisiphi of CS are unlikely to be independent errors in the two branches. HO 274 peperi. quid haeres?, in a prayer to Juno ('I have given birth. Why are you at a loss?' Fitch); but the MS peperi is not very satisfactory. In the parallel adduced by Fitch in support of this reading, Med. 49-50, Medea lists the murders committed in her flight with Jason: if she shed so much blood as a maid, what worse deeds will she do now she is a woman (haec virgo feci ... maiora iam me scelera post partus decent -- where of course post partus is doubly significant). But Deianira cannot use motherhood as the final item of a similar climax (what virginal crimes could she boast like Medea's?). HO 309-10 coniugis tacitae fidem / mihi reddis iterum?: tacitae (E: sanctae A) is too weak for 'long-suffering', the sense required here. HO 465 F. adopts the reading of A, and his text is better than Zwierlein's: Quas pontus herbas generat aut quas thessala / sub rupe pindus aut ubi inveniam malum / cui cedat ille?, but I find the initial indicative odd for an interrogative of this kind: better to write perhaps generet? HO 821-2 truncus in pontum cadit,/ in saxa uertex: unus ambobus iacet: one expects unus to be opposed to duo, not to ambo: cf. Ov. Met. 8.461-2 pugnat materque sororque, / et diuersa trahunt unum duo nomina pectus. Perhaps editors have been too rash to adopt Grotius' only apparently attractive antithesis: 'only one lies in both'. The transmitted funus, also meaning 'corpse', should perhaps be retained: Lichas' corpse lies in both elements, land and water. HO 1124-7 quis tantum capiet nefas / fati, quis superus locus / pontum Tartara sidera? / regna unus capiet tria? ('what place in heaven will hold such fate-wrought havoc -- what single place will hold three realms, Tartarus, sea, and stars?', Fitch). I view this apocalyptic vision as an implosion, with the sky, aether, collapsing onto the earth and underworld. But if the sky falls, what is the locus superus left to contain the final indistinct mass? HO 1272 fletum abstulisti 'have drawn tears from me', but aufero is not found with the meaning exprimo. I first thought of excitasti but HO 1711 si uoces dolor abstulerit ullas supports the MS reading. Is the meaning 'to take, steal away', as if speaking of a prize or a prey? HO 1560 parcite, o dites, inhibete dextras 'forbear, you magnates, stay your hands': I have found no parallels for this use of diues. Cf. however, Quint. Decl. min. 345.16.2 scimus tyrannidem praecipue ad diuites pertinere, which may point to a declamatorial origin for the play. TLL V, 1589.9-10 gives an example of diues. translating <greek>DUNA/STHS</greek> in Christian Latin (Itala), but that is too late to be relevant. HO 1678-9 I was at first surprised by the phrase laniare uterum as sign of mourning but cf. Quint. Decl. maiores 10.3 modo super ora pallentis infelices lacerabat oculos, nunc siccata frustra ubera querebatur, nunc superstitem caedebat uterum. More than a discussion of select passages would be required to do full justice to these 654 pages of Latin, backed by another 277 of 'adversaria', but I hope I have succeeded to convey something of the appreciation I feel for this book, and of the stimulus for further research I have found in it. This new Loeb Seneca is a fine, well thought-out and original piece of scholarship, which will advance considerably the debate on and understanding of these tragedies. ------------------ Notes: 1. J. G. Fitch, 'Textual Notes on Hercules Oetaeus and on Seneca's Agamemnon and Thyestes, CQ 54.1 (2004), 240-54, and id. Annaeana Tragica. Notes on the text of Seneca's Tragedies (Leiden, 2004) 2. Only in a handful of passages did I feel that a different interpretation of the Latin was perhaps preferable. HO 415 quisquis alius orbe consaepto iacet does not seem to mean 'whoever else lies at the world's edge' but 'on dry land', that is, the inhabited world in general, which is surrounded by the Ocean (other editors believe the passage to be corrupt). HO 1568-69 unde commisso resonare ponto / audies Calpen does not mean '(listen from there as Calpe resounds) to its warring seas', but 'while sea is joined to sea', that is the Ocean to the Mediterranean: for this use of committo 'to join two previously separated entities' cf. Sen. NQ 3.3.0.6 sic momento se redundantia pluribus locis maria committent; Med. 35-6 gemino Corinthos litore opponens moras / cremata flammis maria committat duo. Too colourful or too low-register perhaps is Thy. 283-4 ingesta orbitas in ora patris, 'childlessness stuffed down the father's throat'; the alternative proposed in the note is the only one possible in the context, 'thrust in the father's face', (after tota iam ante oculos meos / imago caedis errat 'the whole picture of the carnage hovers before my eyes', Fitch, with the same insistence on seeing). A note was perhaps needed at 1101-2 THY. natos parenti ... ATR. fateor, et quod me iuuat / certos, 'you gave sons to their father ... I admit it -- and definitely your own sons, I am delighted to say', in Fitch's translation. 'Definitely your own sons' is not entirely clear to me: is it opposed to 'not mine'? Perhaps the translation should be rather something like 'and what is more, your legitimate sons'. Atreus, obsessed with adultery and fatherhood, turns against Thyestes what he perceives as his brother's greatest advantage over himself, the fact that no doubts exist about his being the father of his sons. The conversational phatic rendering of nempe with 'you see' is slightly undertranslated. The particle seems to me to possess a more strongly adversative force. 'Surely' or 'indeed' would suit much better the tone of the sarcastic passages where it occurs, as at Oct. 195, which Fitch prints as one sentence said by the nurse, iam metuit eadem nempe praelatam sibi ('[the very woman who first dared to dishonour your marriage bed] is now fearful, you see, of the woman favoured above her'). Other editors usually give the words after nempe to Octavia, still preferable in my view. 3. De Senecae tragoediis observationes criticae (Berlin, 1878), 148. 4. Seneca in Elizabethan Translation (1927) in Essays on Elizabethan drama (New York, 1960), 4. 5. Sometimes, a mere change in punctuation can produce the effect, as at HO 897, where a question mark in uirum sequeris? ('You will follow your husband?', Fitch) may seem a slight change on earlier editors' plain uirum sequeris. (a phrase often belaboured to extract a rhetorical point), but is enough to make the nurse's reaction a half-stifled cry of despair, in the service of characterization rather than of rhetorical climax: 'is that so, are you really determined to die?' Likewise, a different speaker-attribution at Thy. 308-09 not only makes the progression of argument more plausible but also succeeds in making the attendant a character with stronger individual features, who will finally succeed in making Atreus recede from the idea of involving his sons in the plot. At HO 930-1 DEIANIRA: interim poena est mori, / sed saepe donum. pluribus ueniae fuit, the transmitted version, preferred by Fitch, transforms Deianira into a more positive-thinking, hopeful figure ( 'sometimes death is a punishment, but often a gift: for many it means forgiveness', Fitch) than Grotius' determined suicidal character pluribus uenia obfuit ('for most, pardon led to disgrace', my translation). At HO 1340-1, membra complecti ultimum, / o nate, liceat ('let me embrace your limbs for the last time, my son', Fitch, printing Bothe's ultimum), yields a less gruesome text than membra complecti ultima of the MSS, apparently meaning 'what is left of your limbs', consumed by the poison. 6. Among the less convincing emendations I should perhaps mention: HO 388 pariter soror / materque multum rapuit ex illo mihi ('sisterhood and motherhood both stole much of it [sc. beauty] from me', Fitch), where Fitch writes pariter soror in place of pariter (E; partu A) labat in the MSS. However, Deianira's grief for the death of her brother Meleager does not seem to be mentioned elsewhere in the play. In addition, failure to understand the allusion would not be enough to explain the change to labat. -- HO 1099 quod natum est iterum mori, 'what is born, dies once more' (Fitch), but why 'once more'? 'Back to the original state', argues Fitch in CQ, cit., 245 (see note 1), with various parallels, but this meaning is usually evident in the context, for example when two contrary movements are being described. I still find Ackermann's properat a more satisfactory solution to replace poterit. -- HO 1245-6 ubi uires, pater, / in me sepultae?, with Fitch's pater replacing the MS prius: 'where is my strength, father, now buried in me?' -- but 'now buried' for the past participle sepultae is not appealing. Gronovius' prius / memet, is still best, in my view, despite the absence of this form in the play. memet is commonly found in the other plays, although admittedly not as a second term of comparison. -- Oct. 858 PRAEFECTVS tua temperetur ira in place of tua temperet nos ira: too impudent a remark for the prefect; Nero's response would be way too sedate if the prefect had really spoken this line. I have tried to defend the MS reading in my edition of the play (Cambridge, 2003, ad l.). 7. Notably Seneca's Anapaests. Metre, Colometry, Text and Artistry in the Anapaests of Seneca's Tragedies (Atlanta, 1987), and, with renewed arguments, Annaeana Tragica, 263-77. Next Message by Thread: click to view message previewBMCR 2005.01.24, Mario Liverani, Myth and PoliticsMario Liverani, Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Edited and Introduced by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Pp. 214. ISBN 0-8014-4333-4. $75.00. Reviewed by Mehmet-Ali Atac,, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College (matac@xxxxxxxxxxxx) Word count: 4474 words ------------------------------- In his Archaic Roman Religion, Georges Dume/zil emphasized the idea that the foundation stories of the Roman state and society, such as those found in the account of Livy, were mythical rather than truly historical, and that such sagas were "early examples of the historicization of myths, of the transposition of fables to events; this process was frequently used by the annalists or their predecessors..."[[1]] Dume/zil hence drew attention to the thought that what the Romans did was, in a way, express myth as if it were history, or in a "historical" guise. In accounting for this Roman ethos in comparison to India, Dume/zil suggested that the "Romans think historically, while the Indians think fabulously ... The Romans think practically and the Indians think philosophically ... The Romans think politically, the Indians morally."[[2]] Our focus here is not Rome, but the ancient Near East; and not Livy, but Mario Liverani, Professor of History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Rome "La Sapienza." Dume/zil's observations on archaic Roman "history" do resonate, however, with aspects of what Liverani has to say in a number of essays, originally published in Italian from the early 1970s until the 1980s, all with the unifying theme of "historiography," presented for the first time in English for a wider audience, translated by Liverani himself, under the title Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Liverani's translations are edited and introduced by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop, who signal in their Introduction that the texts under scrutiny "are always historical reconstructions in themselves and that they do not have a 'pure historical aim.' Instead, their aim is political, moral, theological, and so on." Most of the texts examined by Liverani do in fact take their cues from actual historical figures and situations, but all of them also do something more with them in terms of casting the events or situations described in patterns of myths or fairy tales. Liverani analyzes these texts almost geometrically, at times with charts and graphs, in terms of diction, structure, and semantics, "a deconstructive approach in order to read against the grain of the narrative as it is constructed in the texts," according to the editors. The editors also note some of the intellectual trends with which these essays are in dialogue, such as structuralist anthropology, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and gender theory. Overall, Liverani's essays are important not only regarding the implicit "semiotic" of ancient texts, but also regarding the "international" dimensions of this phenomenon. The book is organized in four main parts, each dealing with a different cultural or geographic area within the greater Near East, "Mesopotamia," "Hittite Anatolia," "Syria," and "Hebrew Bible." These four parts further comprise chapters, each of which is a separate and rather dense essay. Each essay is also preceded by a helpful brief introduction by the editors of the volume, summarizing the specific story dealt with, at times commenting on Liverani's take on the matters at hand, with information on other relevant scholarly literature as well. Despite the overarching methodological unity, the book is no easy read, as with each chapter the reader is required to embark on a new "wavelength" and a new concentrated problem-solving process. "Hittite Anatolia" comprises two, "Syria" three, and "Hebrew Bible" again two essays, with "Mesopotamia" as the shortest part, consisting of only one essay, which is the opening chapter of the book, "Adapa, guest of the gods." Of all the essays contained in the book, the one on Adapa is probably the only one which is distinctively mythological, and in this respect, one wonders if it truly qualifies as "historiography," unless of course one also visualizes a mythical "history" or "proto-history." Be that as it may, the chapter is methodologically quite at home among the rest of the essays, and in fact, with a theme based on a perennial paradox, constitutes an apt opening to this book of complexities. Its focus is the Babylonian myth of Adapa, an antediluvian sage, and son of the god of wisdom and cunning, Ea. In the myth, while Adapa is fishing in the open sea, he is caught in a storm generated by the South Wind. In anger, he curses the wind, breaking its wings, and hence committing a crime that "disturbs the natural order." He is summoned to the presence of the supreme god Anu. In order to protect Adapa from imminent punishment, Ea advises him to appear at Anu's gate in clothes of mourning, so that he would seem to be mourning over the disappearance from the earth of Tammuz and Gizzida, gods connected with the cycle of vegetation, and not to partake of the "food of death" and "water of death" to be offered to him, but to accept the clothing and the oil for anointing. Adapa is admitted to Anu's presence on account of his ostensible reverence toward Tammuz and Gizzida, now guardians at the gate of heaven. Anu, who interrogates him, impressed by his wisdom, decides to offer him the "food and water of life" instead. Adapa, certain that the offerings are the victuals of death, refuses them, and loses his chance to gain eternal life. In his analysis of the myth, Liverani takes issue with the common notion that the myth is one that explains human mortality. Cautioning against analyzing the myth "as if it were a realistic novel," Liverani advocates an analysis that is attuned to the "rules of mythical narratives." The author's first proposed key to the specific problem in the Adapa myth is a consideration of the clothing and oil as parameters in the codification of the narrative just as important as the food and water. Demonstrating with examples how oil and clothing, along with food and water, constituted a formulaic set in a rhetoric of livelihood in the ancient Near East, Liverani argues that Adapa's accepting the oil and clothing, "external gifts," goes together with his admission to the presence of Anu, a success; and his declining the food and water, "internal gifts," goes together with his expulsion from the company of the gods, a failure. Liverani's second proposed key to the meaning system of the myth is an anthropological understanding of "hospitality" by which the guest is assimilated to the host environment. From this standpoint, Adapa's rejecting a portion of the gifts presented to him is understood as a violation of rules of mutual hospitality, resulting in the loss of a chance of full assimilation to the divine. The author's treatment of both of these lines of analysis is remarkably strong and logical, and yet the crux of the problem remains. In particular, the emphasis on "hospitality" does not fully loosen the knot, since, in a way, such myths are predestined to result negatively. In other words, had Adapa, in full harmony with decorum and hospitality, accepted the food and water, the latter would have automatically or magically turned into the food and water of death. What truly does help explain a great deal, however, is Liverani's emphasis on how Adapa's lost opportunity, like that of Gilgamesh, is not one of general immortality, but one that pertains to a specific condition, which Liverani understands as that of "priesthood," and not of humankind in general. The author sees the admissibility of Adapa to the presence of Anu as analogous to the restricted access of ancient priests to gods' houses. One wonders, nevertheless, if rather than an aetiology for the clergy in general, this specific condition instead refers to a more fundamental state of "initiation," a concept which Liverani does take up later on in the book. As if to consolidate the questionable "historiographic" dimension of this essay, Liverani concludes: "This development took place 'a long time ago,' and the audience should not be surprised to find from the beginning of the story a description of the prototypical priest, who has already reached the final stage." It is after the "initiation" provided by the Adapa myth that Liverani's essays start meeting more closely the title's promise of "politics" and "historiography." In the first of the two essays belonging to "Hittite Anatolia," "Telipinu, or: on solidarity," the author's focus is a Hittite edict known as the Telipinu Edict, which, up to the time Liverani's essay was published (1977), had been taken as a reliable document to understand the little-known Hittite "Old Kingdom" history. The introduction of this document surveys the history of the Hittite state from a king called Labarna, an archetypal founder king, to the time of Telipinu, the sponsor of the edict. Giving examples from how modern historians took this survey at face value in reconstructing "Old Kingdom" Hittite history, Liverani proposes an alternative reading at the "deep level," and draws attention to a formulaic pattern in the text, one "often found in political addresses of an apologetic or propagandistic nature," that starts with an optimal or ideal phase, represented in the edict by Labarna's reign, followed by a disturbance of that state of perfection, and culminating in a "reform" that results in a restoration of goodness. In the edict, the phase of disturbance is depicted as a complicated sequence of murders for royal succession, to which Telipinu puts an end, seemingly initiating a new "norm," but in fact simply legitimizing his own offensive accession to the throne, since he had murdered his brother-in-law Huzziya, his predecessor, to this end. The new "norm" in essence allows the husband of the first royal princess to be king in case there are no male princes, which, if truly valid, would have been "suicidal" for the safety of Telipinu's own royal tenure. Liverani thus points out that the reform is more "fictional" than real, making Telipinu appear "not as the last in a negative sequence, but as the first in a new, positive, one." The author further stresses how in this way "Telipinu as a king acted in order to save Telipinu as a person under accusation." What is not clear in Liverani's analysis is just how issuing an edict could save Telipinu if he was seriously in trouble, were this the main purpose of the text. Would the accusers, no less than a delegation of public representatives, have been so nai+ve as to be lulled by this stratagem? Liverani's observation of and emphasis on the presence in this edict of the fundamental pattern that consists of concord followed by disintegration followed by renewed concord remain a more powerful aspect of this essay than his attempt to explicate what the text achieved in practical terms. >From the "solidarity" Telipinu tried to implement in his court by means of his new edict, we move on to the second essay of "Hittite Anatolia," "Shunashura, or: on reciprocity." In this essay as well, Liverani traces the political manipulation of a formulaic textual type, a parity treaty, in outlining the change in the relationship between the Hittites and a southeastern Anatolian state, Kizzuwatna, from one of equality or parity to one characterized by the submission of the king of Kizzuwatna, Shunashura, to the Hittites. The author lays out how even though the text on the surface seems to conform to the rhetoric of parity treaties, in which both sides are depicted as fully equal, it in fact introduces subtle modifications that clearly would have asserted to Kizzuwatna the new relation between the two states based on the superiority of the Hittites. Liverani analyzes how the usual symmetry of a parity treaty is disturbed especially by the inclusion of a third parameter, the Hurri, the great rival of the Hittites in the second half of the second millennium, presented as a negative foil for the Hittites, in legitimizing Kizzuwatna's loyalty to the Hittites as opposed to the Hurri. The text states how the Hurri would have treated Kizzuwatna as servants, whereas the Hittites will treat them as their "peer." The symmetry is further manipulated by the involvement of a fourth party, Ishuwa, equal in rank with Kizzuwatna as a vassal state, and subordinate to both the Hittites and the Hurri as the opposing peers of the new political structure. Liverani shows, with charts, how the text pretends to maintain the formulaic symmetry by creating an equal pair out of the Hittites and the Hurri on the one hand, and one out of Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa on the other, with the latter pair inferior to the former. In addition to this constructed symmetry, the text also utilizes chiasmos by indicating how at first Kizzuwatna was a vassal of the Hittites, and Ishuwa one of the Hurri, and how in a second stage Kizzuwatna shifted to the Hurri and Ishuwa to the Hittites, and how now in the final "restoration" "the oxen [Kizzuwatna] recognised their stable," and returned to the Hittites. Liverani in the meantime also draws attention to the same fundamental tri-partite structure that presents the first phase of a "historical" development as "the original and therefore perfect condition of the world," which by nature contained "the situation that is to be proved right." This the text further achieves by omitting "as irrelevant an entire phase of autonomy, the period when the Kizzuwatna kings used the title 'Great King,'" and were hence truly the peers of the Hittite kings. Liverani concludes by suggesting that the message system of this text may also have been directed to the Hurri in formalizing "a change in the political situation that was to the detriment of Hurri." Overall, as Liverani demonstrates, the geometry of this text is so powerful that one wonders if it may have greater autonomy as a "subtext," a word never used by Liverani throughout the book, in addition to its subservience to Hittite political ambitions. The third part of the book, "Syria," comprises three essays. The first, "Leaving by chariot for the desert," is focused on the inscription of Idrimi, ruler of Alalah, which "provides a justification for Idrimi's rule over a city with which he had no previous connections, and was manufactured in order to make the king look especially qualified for the task." According to the text, Idrimi, chased out of Aleppo with his family, crosses the desert, reaches Emar on the Euphrates where he joins bands of warriors, ultimately conquering the city of Alalah whose king he becomes. Liverani recognizes in the structure of this text certain patterns and narrative modes similar to those found in fairy tales, in which the protagonist leaves behind what is familiar to him, his home and family; makes an excursion to the hostile environment outside, depicted as the desert in the Near Eastern setting, which, Liverani suggests, "is the equivalent of the 'forest' into which the hero ventures in European fairy tales;" encounters on his way helpers or tools of a supernatural nature; and ultimately attains a favorable status. It is in the structure of this text that Liverani explicitly sees features of "initiation" which entails a detachment from what is familiar, a challenge to be overcome, and the fulfillment of a final telos. The author argues that it is again on account of the irregular way in which Idrimi ascended the throne that he resorted to such a "story of his life along these lines of a fairy tale," since he had to appease a public that was troubled by this situation. In conclusion, Liverani observes how "most protagonists of 'fairy tale' stories in the ancient Near East are usurpers: Idrimi, Sargon of Akkad, Hattushili III, David, Darius, and so on." Even though the connection with usurpation is clear, one wonders if accounting for this narrative structure solely in terms of facing the opinion of a troubled public does full justice to the intrinsic quality of the fairy tale mode so potently pinpointed by Liverani. Why, for instance, may it not have been the case that a usurper also provided a scribal milieu with good raw material for the kind of "initiatic" subtext that the fairy tale mode was able to convey? The second essay of the part "Syria," "Rib-Adda, righteous sufferer," focuses on a number of letters written by the king of Byblos, Rib-Adda, to the Egyptian pharaohs of the early fourteenth century, who then controlled the Syro-Palestinian area. The letters constitute "by far the most extensive corpus of Amarna letters," with the common theme of complaint on the part of Rib-Adda about the world's hostility, his isolation, and the absence of a remedy or a "savior," which he visualizes as the very "coming out" of the pharaoh to save him in person. The essay is at times rather repetitious, and Liverani's point is clear in that rather than a "historical" situation, the letters again reveal a fundamental pattern familiar from ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, in which a "golden age" or a "paradisiacal state," now lost, is lamented and longed for. In fact, Liverani goes so far as referring to Rib-Adda's aspirations to convince the pharaoh to come in person and save him from the hostilities surrounding him as "eschatological" and "messianic." Liverani does juxtapose, however, the nature of these letters with that of proper wisdom literature, in that the former lack a "true conclusion," "a resolution of the kind usually found in wisdom literature," in which the "righteous one ... through suffering becomes wiser, more conscious, and better to acknowledge the inscrutability of god." According to Liverani, even though the affinity of Rib-Adda's letters to Mesopotamian wisdom literature in Akkadian is clear, this affinity is more on account of the shared "psychological" and "existential" conditions between Rib-Adda and the Akkadian scribal milieu rather than direct influence. It is somewhat puzzling that the author, after laying out so effectively the fundamental pattern that permeates these letters and transcends their historical content, resorts to an explanation focused on "psychosis" and "existentialism" for their common threads rather than a greater emphasis on the likelihood that the letters themselves were also the product of a scribal milieu, though of a different kind from formal wisdom literature, and perhaps not the direct personal output of Rib-Adda. Liverani's conclusion stresses an almost spectral element in this unrequited correspondence: "sometimes we get the impression that the king of Byblos was writing more to vent his frustrations than to obtain an answer, just for the sake of writing rather than in order to be read." The final essay of "Syria," "Aziru, servant of two masters," strikes a similar chord with the previous one in terms of both the genre of the letter and attempts toward "psychoanalysis." This time, the situation found in the previous essay is somewhat reversed, and the protagonist, Aziru, leader of the Amurru, the very bane of Rib-Adda, crafts letters that are meant to avoid an overdue visit to the pharaoh, who is concerned as to the loyalty and reliability of his vassal, whom he constantly summons to explain himself, within the milieu of the political rivalry between Egypt and the Hittites. Liverani's main argument is that Aziru's letters indefatigably postpone such a visit on the grounds that the Hittites might anytime take action and invade Amurru from the North, with the implicit message that if this indeed happens, rather than resisting, the Amurru will change sides and become a Hittite vassal. Analyzing the verbs of "motion" or "stasis" in the letters of Aziru, Liverani suggests that the letters may already have been encoded with the information, if not the message, that the Amurru might anytime change position and "move" to the other side. What again seems to undermine the strength of Liverani's analysis is a tendency to see an unconscious element in this codified diction of "motion," perhaps betraying the author's own uncertainty as to its presence: "The worries and the unstated goals of Aziru come to light in his speech, in the form of almost obsessive insistences -- notably in the 'code of movement' -- and of lexical usages that are ideologically reversed. Unwillingly, Aziru lets us perceive just what he would have liked to conceal completely, and gives us the 'signals' of his bad conscience. Since we know the end of the story, we easily notice these 'signals' of Aziru's hidden purposes. Did Pharaoh also notice them?" All in all, the essay also differs from the rest of the "historical" texts analyzed by Liverani in its lack of a "mythical" or "fairy tale" element, but the author's by now distinctive mode of textual analysis easily blends it into the overall fabric of the book. The first chapter of the part "Hebrew Bible," "The story of Joash," comes back to the theme of a marginalized hero's ascent to the throne from a fresh angle. The focus of the essay is 2 Kings 11 and 12: "King Ahaz had died as the result of the wounds he suffered in battle, while his son, Joash, was an infant. Athaliah, the mother of Ahaz, became regent and massacred the rest of the royal family, but Joash was saved by an aunt, who hid him in the temple of Yahweh. Seven years later the high priest, Jehoiada, recognised Joash as the true king, installed him on the throne, and killed Athaliah." Liverani this time draws attention to how such narratives are characterized by "a first usurpation in which the protagonist is the victim, and a second one through which the protagonist attains power." The author also touches on the themes of disguise and recognition that are also typical elements of such stories, found in the Odyssey as well. The gist of Liverani's argument is again that such a mise-en-sce\ne has the purpose of persuading a doubtful public of the questionable legitimacy of a political leader, and hence one of "propaganda." In the case of the story of Joash, Liverani especially emphasizes how the "common people," the "lowest level," also needed to be convinced. As already indicated in relation to Idrimi, it is somewhat unclear in Liverani's treatment of these texts to what extent the archetypal story per se takes the upper hand and becomes autonomous and to what extent it remains subservient to a distinct political aim. For instance, the story of Joash perfectly parallels that of Moses, and how would one then comment on the Moses story along these lines? What are our criteria that help tell the "prototype" from the "derivative?" If, on the other hand, legitimation was a veneer for the fundamental story, the intellectual agencies in charge of the production of such texts were certainly as tireless and insistent as Rib-Adda's letters to Pharaoh in telling and re-telling the same old story. The final essay of the part "Hebrew Bible," and of the book, "Messages, women, and hospitality: inter-tribal communication in Judges 19-21," deals with two stories at the end of the biblical book of Judges. The first is the harrowing account of how men belonging to the tribe of Benjamin want to have sexual intercourse with a passer-by Levite from Ephraim, who is on his way home with his recently recovered concubine, and how, to avoid the disgrace, the Levite offers these men as substitute his concubine, who is ravished the whole night and is dead by morning. "The Levite takes her home and cuts the body up into twelve pieces, sending one to each of the tribes of Israel to summon them." A war ensues between Benjamin and the rest of the tribes, resulting in a massacre of Benjaminite men and an oath on the part of the rest of the tribes never to give brides to the remaining Benjaminites. The second story is concerned with the problem of survival of Benjamin without women, and the solution is for the Benjaminite men to abduct "girls at the annual festival of Shiloh and thus obtain brides." As if to second the analogy to archaic Roman "history," mentioned at the beginning of this review, these stories are illogically reminiscent of the Rape of Lucretia and that of the Sabines. This essay is the most dense and convoluted by far of all Liverani's chapters, and the extent of analytical dissection exercised by the author is not only challenging, but at times tiring. The editors of the volume remark in their brief introduction that the chapter "was originally published in 1979, long before a feminist approach became fashionable in biblical studies." In the essay, Liverani devotes a great deal to the "communicative" dimension of the female protagonist of the first story, the concubine, drawing attention to how her passivity, speechlessness throughout the narrative, use as substitute, and ultimate victimization are parts of a semiotic that refers to the male-dominated sociocultural milieu of the period in question. The author's analysis of these stories has an anthropological emphasis, again addressing concepts of hospitality, "conventions of marriage," the "male dialectics between giving and receiving," kinship, and "inter-tribal relations." This is perhaps the only essay in the book in which Liverani's commitment to avoid reading texts as if they were realistic novels somewhat falters. The formulaic dimensions of substitution, victimization, dismemberment, wars caused by violation or abduction of women, and even the twelve tribes receive much less attention than the socio-cultural and socio-economic. Liverani, however, does address the difficulty of understanding the stories from a "historical" and "chronological" standpoint, inevitably drawing attention to their "foundational" nature: "This repertoire by its very nature cannot be 'dated'; it cannot be pinned down too closely in time. It has a fluidity that must be taken into account. Above all, it has no necessary relationship -- either chronological or factual -- with the specific cases to which it is applied. It does not 'date' and it is not 'dated'... we have to acknowledge that it is the reconstruction of a dream, a short dream playing a precise political function at the moment when the Davidic state was constructed." This note in a way also brings the book full circle, since unlike the Adapa myth, this story is clearly difficult to treat as both pure myth and as "dated" history, sharing perhaps more with the ambiguity of Livy's early "history" than with the post-Adapa texts examined in Liverani's book. Each of Liverani's essays begins almost with suspense, but one cannot help feeling that some also end with an anti-climax. It is as if in most of the essays a further or final step, especially one toward the main promise of the title, "myth," were not taken and that there were something more the author could say, an absence with which he almost tantalizes the reader. In this regard, Liverani's essays are like flashes of lightning in the dark. Despite their "agedness," these essays ironically reveal a lingering gap in the field of ancient Near Eastern studies, in that we need more of such perspectives, not just in historical and literary studies, but also in the history of ancient Near Eastern art. The availability of these essays now in English is a truly invaluable service to the wider scholarly audience of the ancient Near East. ------------------ Notes: 1. Georges Dume/zil, Archaic Roman Religion, Philip Krapp trans., vol. 1, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1966/70), 75. 2. Ibid., 116-7. Loading Comments...
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