General review

Books about Ancient Greeks and Romans for general readership abound, so it was with a certain weariness that I started reading Jennifer Roberts’ ‘accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking’ (jacket blurb).¹ I like to read the acknowledgments section first to get a sense of the person behind the book. Among the formulaic, the catalogic, and the dutiful, slight personal details or minor idiosyncrasies can be revealing and even endearing, sparking my curiosity about the author's persona and their world view. Roberts pulled me in immediately with an anecdote about her dictation programme's hilarious interpretations of the name Thucydides (‘Facilities’, ‘The city flees’, ‘Abilities’, ‘He silly is’, and … ‘Frank’). I provide this detail not just because it is amusing, but also because it is telling. Although this book covers the territory I am very familiar with, I really enjoyed reading it and just could not put it down. Roberts is a wonderful writer and storyteller. Her sprawling narrative, dotted with quotations and anecdotes, is reminiscent of Herodotus. Even though the book is meandering at times and full of digressions, Roberts manages to both outline the historical macro-narrative about the Greeks from the Bronze Age to the end of the Hellenistic Age and, more importantly, to convey a good sense of who they were as a culture and what mattered to them, ranging from the myths about the heroic past, the city states and their various political organizations, attitudes towards women, slaves, and foreigners, competitiveness, religion, philosophy, afterlife, and (I see what she did there – but at the expense of internal logic because afterlife should have been paired with religion) reception. The tone is just right, instructing without condescension, lively without cuteness or overfamiliarity, and – what is probably the most difficult task when a professional Classicist is pitching to a wide audience – straightforward and confident, truly written with a wide audience in mind, rather than plagued by prevarication anticipating the snarky reviews by colleagues. This is a terrific and engaging book, and I hope that it will reach a wide audience well beyond the US (despite its title).

Another book for the general audience, but written by a Professor Emeritus of Earth Science about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is less an overview of what these grand feats of engineering and technology meant for the societies that created them, but rather a fascinating and engrossing explanation of how exactly they were built.² The lists of the ‘Seven Wonders’, like the lists of the seven sages, include different structures in different sources and time periods, and Higgins focuses on the following, one in each chapter: the pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria. Higgins really starts from the ground up, providing exhaustive information about the geology of each region, and paying very detailed attention to the building and ornamental materials and the ancient techniques used for their handling. If you ever wondered about: the exact chemical make-up of ivory and the reason why fossil ivory cannot be carved; the use of glass in ancient statuary; the possible method of irrigation of the Hanging Gardens, or the exact way in which the Pharos lighthouse collapsed in the fourteenth century ce, then this book is for you. It is positively bursting with fun facts, there is a plethora of excellent illustrations, and even if geological science and the chemistry of it all fly above your head, this book will entertain, educate, and amaze you. Its most consequential and awe-inspiring protagonist is planet Earth whose shifting tectonic plates resulting in earthquakes and tsunamis, occasionally assisted by human neglect, destroyed most of the Seven Wonders.

For those more interested in ancient science, two splendid recent publications will be of note. A New History of Greek Mathematics aims to produce ‘a single narrative account, of use for the generally interested public, as well as for undergraduate classes and for those graduate students and scholars looking for some entry point into the historical foundations of science’ (p. xii).³ ‘Science’ because (and this is the main thrust of the book) ‘what the Greeks called ta mathēmata was usually wider in meaning than the modern term implies…Besides pure geometry and stereometry (as well as the much less central field of pure arithmetic), the ancient Greeks always included within mathematics fields such as astronomy and theoretical music, and they often added optics and mechanics as well’ (p. xii). The first half of the book is about the origin and development of ‘pure mathematics’, the chapters four and five are about ‘mathematics in the world’, tackling topics such as mathematical education, geography, engineering, and military applications, mechanics, astronomy, the role of mathematics in philosophy, and finally, the reception of Greek mathematics in Byzantium, the Arab world of the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance. Netz writes lucidly and engagingly, and his passion for the topic leaps from every page. As he reminds us, ancient Greeks started studying mathematics because it was fun, and he manages to convey that sense of fun and discovery remarkably well. Even his ‘suggestions for further reading’ at the end of every chapter are written in an engaging and enthusiastic style!

The aim of the massive, two-volume Geographers of the Ancient Greek World is to provide an accessible (translated and annotated) collection of short or fragmentary geographical writings in ancient Greek.⁴ After a substantial introduction and a prologue consisting of the Catalogue of Ships, the thirty-six chapters are dedicated to specific authors, chronologically ordered from Aristeas of Proconessus (1) to Pseudo-Arrian (36), each subdivided into an introduction with selected further reading, and the annotated text(s). Every effort is made to render this material accessible to the non-expert: there are very useful glossaries of Greek and Latin technical terms, and explanations of ancient units of measure and of the special, Classics-specific editorial signs and abbreviations. The introduction clarifies the reasons behind the selection of texts and provides an overview of geographical genres, as well as other genres that tend to include geographical information.

Another massive and ambitious volume testifying to the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the role of gods in ancient polytheisms is dedicated to the topic of divine names.⁵ There are thirty-six chapters penned by an international team of experts, divided into five parts. Part one (Ritual Names) is about the role of names in the communication with the divine, with papers on Ancient Mesopotamia, Rome, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ancient Greece, and China. The second part (One and Many) is on the phenomenon of polyonymy (‘many names’ or ‘many epithets’). When a god has many names or epithets, are we dealing with divine unity or multiplicity? The scholarly fascination with this problem in the study of Greek religion is long standing, with prominent proponents of both views. Here we get a broader perspective with proponents of both views represented: there are papers on the local instantiations of Ištar in the Neo-Assyrian period (distinct); the storm god Hadad in Aramean Syria and Anatolia (distinct); Demeter Thesmophoros (about the meaning of this epithet in comparison to other epithets and onomastic attributes of the goddess, implying unity); and healing deities in Greece, especially Asclepius (unity). The third part (Names and Images) is about the interplay of divine names and images with chapters on: the attributes of Apollo, the disparity between local epithets and rather generic representations of Apollo holding a kithara and performing a libation on a series of reliefs from Propontis; the close link between the visual representations of the Neo-Hittite goddess Kubaba on reliefs and her epithets from the Luwian inscriptions from Karkemish and Kummuh; and on the images and epithets of an Egyptian man named Piyris whose tomb at the Kharga oasis became a sanctuary where he was venerated as a divinity in both human and falcon form. The fourth part (Plural Divine Configurations, ‘Pantheons’ and Divine Sovereignty) addresses topics such as: whether there ever was a discrete divinity called Baal in Phoenicia and Cyprus (the answer is ‘no’ – this was an onomastic element expressing authority); the onomastic attributes of Zeus expressing sovereignty in Attica and in the Near East; various local assemblages under the label theoi (‘gods’) in North-Western Greece; and Megistoi Theoi (‘greatest gods’) of Stratonicea in Caria. The fifth part (Human Names, Divine Names) is on the interplay between divine and human names and contains chapters on: the role of divine epithets in the formation of Luwian personal names, theophoric personal names in Carthage, and in the Aramaic-speaking world of Elephantine; the impact of Christianity on the personal names in Syria and the Near East, theophoric names in early Christianity, and on the lack of overlap between Greek divine epithets and those used to praise the citizens in honorific inscriptions with the exception of soter (‘savior’), euergetes (‘benefactor’) and ktistes (‘founder’), with despotes and kurios (‘lord’) only applied to emperors. The sixth part (Names and Knowledge) contains papers on: the perceived meaning and origin of names of the Greek gods; Greek etymological interpretations of divine names; the role of the knowledge of divine names as a source of power for the human practitioner in Greek magic; the names, titles, and attributes of Yahweh, and on the significance of the appellation ‘Lord of Spirits’ in the Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37–71) and its attestations on Jewish tombstones from Rhenea. The final section (Mobility, Transmission, Translation) contains papers on: the interpretation of foreign gods by the Levantine people residing in Egypt in the Hellenistic period; the transformation of Yahweh from the god of Israel to the universal heavenly lord in Early Judaism; divine names in bilingual inscriptions from Rome; the possible derivation of Apollo's epithet Delphinius from the Anatolian vegetation divinity Telipinu; and on the role of pilgrimage in the diffusion of cults. The postscript contains two further wide-ranging and theoretical chapters. This rich and expansive series of studies will be of interest to all scholars working on the ancient Mediterranean religions.

Also of interest to scholars of religion, but restricted to the Ancient Greek world, is a new monograph on epiphanies and dreams.⁶ Michael Lipka invites us to compare his monograph to the authoritative articles by Henk Versnel and Fritz Graf and two excellent relatively recent monographic treatments of epiphany⁷ and sees the contribution of his book as invalidating their claims about the extraordinary importance and pervasiveness of epiphany as a religious phenomenon in ancient Greek culture. Contrary to Graf, Versnel, Platt, Petridou, and a plethora of other scholars studying epiphany, Lipka sidesteps the emic meaning of the term (manifestation of a divinity and/or divine power) and restricts his study to the following question: ‘whether the Greeks may actually “see” their gods in reality in human shape as human characters with the iconographic markers attributed to them by the arts in the human lifeworld’ (p. 3, italics in the original). He is explicit about defining epiphanies in a ‘merely etic manner as visible apparitions of temporary, metaphysical manifestations of human-like entities to human individuals in a waking state’ (p. 4, italics in the original). I see no justification for exploring the significance of a culturally specific phenomenon by deliberately sidestepping the emic view of that phenomenon. Seen in the light or Lipka's definition, there are indeed fewer epiphanies in Greek culture, but Lipka actually maintains that there were none (his answer to the question from page 3 quoted above is ‘there is virtually no material to support this view’, p. 3). This he proves by investigating epiphanies according to the genre and discounting epic, narrative and lyric hymns, and drama as fiction. According to Lipka, all ancient Greek literature falls into one of the three groups according to its relationship to reality (pp. 18–19): ‘Lifeworld reality’ informed by individual personal experiences; ‘intentional reality’, following Gehrke's influential notion of ‘intentional history’, namely cultural memory as a marker of the group's identity;⁸ and finally ‘invented reality = fiction’, which, following De Termmerman, Lipka defines as ‘untruth that is intended not to be believed as truth but rather to be acknowledged as untruth’ (p. 19, italics in the original). Even on this view, it would have been important to ask the question why the motif of divine epiphany is so prominent in epic, hymns, and drama, and how such narratives shape their audiences’ notions about the divine.⁹ Regarding historiography, Lipka classifies all reports of appearances of gods and heroes as visible appearances in human-like shape to human individuals as couched in what he calls ‘anecdotal mode’, namely reports about experiences of others, which he discounts as altogether unreliable. We are meant to see episodes such as the epiphany of Pan in Herodotus (6.105) as ‘intentional reality’ presented in the ‘anecdotal mode’, an instance of a cult aetiology invented and circulated by the priests of Pan at Athens (p. 140). Even if that were the case, Lipka never explains why a report about the epiphany of a deity would have constituted such an effective measure for a cult establishment not only at Athens, but virtually everywhere in the Greek world (and this question is all the more pertinent because Lipka explains all public inscriptions and literary reports about epiphanies followed by a cult establishment or modification in the same way). This ‘nothing to see here, move along’ strategy reaches the pinnacle in Lipka's discussion of Pausanias’ Periegesis with its numerous instances of epiphanies, where we learn that Pausanias had narrated various local epiphanies of Demeter with such ‘fondness for details’ because he was a ‘passionate initiate of Eleusis’ (p. 169). Public inscriptions recording epiphanies were ‘an alibi’ (p. 182) to justify the modifications in cult and ritual. ‘Waking epiphanies’ are ‘virtually never mentioned in private inscriptions’ (p. 200), and so on. Genre after genre is treated in a cursory way, copious testimonies are summarily dismissed, and at the end the reader is left full of bafflement at the sheer scale of a concentrated effort to scam ancient Greeks into believing in epiphanies, an effort spanning centuries and involving so many conspirators (with Thucydides as the sole author left out of this masterplan). Lipka denies that the Greeks were ‘epiphany minded’, but does not cast doubt at the importance of dream epiphanies. It is one thing to investigate and scrutinize the cases of visual epiphanies of gods and heroes in an anthropomorphic form, but quite another to use this phenomenon, a fraction of a range of phenomena that the ancient Greeks considered as epiphany, to conclude that the Greeks were not ‘epiphany-minded’. Despite the fact that I remain completely unconvinced by Lipka's main argument, this book provided me with a valuable opportunity to rethink epiphany as a religious phenomenon.

Finally, I want to mention and warmly recommend two edited volumes that emerged from the shadows of the global pandemic: Pathologies of Love in Classical Literature is an excellent collection of essays on various aspects of love either as sickness or as a negative social construct.¹⁰ Ranging from philosophy and medicine to poetry, the eight essays cover a vast range of Greek and Roman material. The editor Dimitrios Kanellakis offers a useful appendix, an anthology of passages where a vast range of love-related pathologies is attested, from Homer to the fifth-century ce medical writer Caelius Aurelianus. The other volume is eerily timely, not just because of the social distancing during the recent global pandemic, but also because of the current epidemic of loneliness, an issue which was recently qualified as a global health threat by the World Health Organization: ‘Current global estimates suggest that 1 in 4 older adults experience social isolation and between 5 and 15 per cent of adolescents experience loneliness.’¹¹ The US Surgeon General declared an epidemic of social loneliness and isolation in 2023, and compared the impact of loneliness on our health to smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day.¹² So how was social isolation perceived in antiquity? Being Alone in Antiquity offers a range of answers and throws light on manifold aspects of loneliness, from periods of the day and life when people were typically alone, the societal situations that required isolation, through stereotypes about misanthropy and perceived lack of sociability, social roles that were typically seen as particularly isolating, gender-related loneliness to misanthropy as the symptom of mental illness.¹³ From Homeric Bellerophon to the early Christians, from societal stereotypes to actual historical persons, the individual chapters provide a remarkably rich set of reflections on social isolation, resulting in a coherent and very useful volume that is sadly very relevant today and will doubtless remind its readers of their personal struggle with isolation during the challenging times of the global pandemic.