New Books in Classics

Before I read this excellent book, I had no idea that Rome–that is, the Roman Empire–ever had an empress. But, as Joyce E. Salisbury tells us in Rome's Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), it did. And she was a very good one. Galla Placidia ruled in tough times for the Empire. She had to govern a realm with two capitals, preside over endless debates about what being a Christian really meant, deal with several varieties of hostile (though not only) "barbarians," reshape the imperial office she held, and make sure her son followed her in that office. Moreover, she had to do it all in a metaphorical snake pit. As Joyce points out, she was up to it all. Alas, her successors were not, and the empire she nurtured so well soon "fell" (or, as Joyce has it, "was pushed").  Listen in to hear the whole story!

[Cross-posted from New Books in Religion] When a contemporary reader opens up their Bible they may be unaware of the long historical process that created the pages within. One of the key components in this history is the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures between the third century BCE and the second century CE. Timothy Michael Law, Lecturer in Divinity in the University of St. Andrews, offers a thorough chronicle of the creation and afterlife of the Septuagint in When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (Oxford University Press, 2013). Through this narrative Law also interrogates broader concerns, such as the ways we examine canons and scriptures during this period, translation in the ancient world, authorial intentions, and audience receptions. The book covers the role the Septuagint in the Bible’s lengthy history up until the present and demonstrates how our contemporary engagement with it can illuminate numerous shadowy paths in Religious Studies. In our conversation we discussed Hellenistic Judaism, apocrypha, Jerome, the Hebrew Bible, Origen’s Hexapla, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Biblical citation, Augustine, the Protestant reformation, Eusebius, and academic writing for public audiences.

[Cross-posted from New Books in Science, Technology, and Society] Daryn Lehoux’s new book will forever change the way you think about garlic and magnets. What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking (University of Chicago Press, 2012) is a fascinating account of the co-production of facts and worlds, taking readers into the sciences of Rome from the first century BC to the second century AD. Masterfully blending approaches from the history and philosophy of science, Lehoux traces the significance of the “threefold cord” of nature, law, and the gods in making up the early Roman world. The chapters use the works of Cicero, Seneca, Galen, Ptolemy, and others to explore topics making up the foundation of a history of Roman science, including the importance of divination to Roman politics and natural knowledge, the relationship between optics and ethics in the Roman world, and the entanglements of law, nature, and witnessing.  What Did the Romans Know? also contributes to philosophical debates over the theory-ladenness of observation, scientific and historical realism, and relativism. Lehoux ends his account as an “epistemological coherentist,” suggesting a model for thinking about and with the sciences in history and beyond. On top of all of this, the language of the text sparkles. It’s a wonderfully enjoyable read.

[Re-posted with permission from Sol Lederman's Wild About Math] I love novel ways of looking at arithmetic. I'm fascinated with how computers compute in binary, with tricks for simplifying calculations and with how Vedic mathematicians handle difficult arithmetic efficiently. So, when Princeton University Press sent me a review copy of their new book Count Like An Egyptian, I immediately fell in love with it. I was delighted to learn even more techniques and the ideas behind them to deepen my appreciation of the beauty of what most consider to be mundane arithmetic. Count Like an Egyptian is a delightful book, full of color illustrations, fun stories, lots of hands-on exercises, and an appreciation for the power of simple but deep ideas. David Reimer was a pleasure to interview. He is a brilliant mathematician who hasn't lost sight of the power and beauty of mathematics. He taught me and modeled that, despite the stereotype, the more advanced mathematicians are the ones who are more likely to communicate ideas well.

[Cross-posted from New Books in History]  Here's an odd thing: there really haven't been any universally-acclaimed geniuses since Einstein. At least I can't think of any. Really smart people, yes. But geniuses per se, no. It seems Einstein was such a genius that he destroyed the entire concept of genius for us. Or perhaps we've just become tired of "genius." There is, it must be admitted, something democratic cultures don't like about "geniuses." If we're all equal, well, then how can some of us be "geniuses" and others just ordinary folks? It seems that either we're all "geniuses" or none of us are. In his fascinating book Divine Fury: A History of Genius (Basic Books, 2013), Darrin M. McMahon explains Einstein's impact on the idea of "genius" and much more. You will learn, for example, how in Greco-Roman culture a "genius" was a spiritual double: it was something you had, a ghostly sidekick, not something you were. Sometimes your "genius" was good–a guardian angel–and sometimes it was bad–a demon. It's only since the Enlightenment that we've come to think of "genius" as a certain kind of person, namely, someone with truly extraordinary capacities. It's a fascinating story. Listen in.

[Cross-posted from New Books in Philosophy] It’s traditional in Plato scholarship to divide his dialogues in various ways. One common division is a temporal one that distinguishes among early, middle and late dialogues. Another is by content: there are the so-called erotic dialogues, which include Symposium, Phaedrus and Alcibiades I, where themes of love and friendship are explicitly treated, and then the rest, which deal with such non-erotic themes as language and knowledge and ontology. Jill Gordon,  Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy at Colby College, argues that this second division deeply misinterprets the role of eros in the Platonic corpus. In her new book, Plato’s Erotic World: From Cosmic Origins to Human Death (Cambridge University Press 2012), she argues that paradigmatically non-erotic dialogues, such as Theaetetus, Parmenides and Phaedo, are in fact deeply erotic, and that the theme of eros unifies the corpus rather than divides it. For example, the Socratic dialectic, or elenchus, is a give-and-take that is erotic in nature, and doing philosophy itself is an erotic endeavor akin to naked exercise in the gymnasium. Her argument begins with a close reading of Timaeus, Plato’s creation myth, and the role of eros in the immortal human soul, and comes full circle with a reading of Phaedo in which Socrates’ growing rigidity as the hemlock takes hold is an erotic pun.

View on AmazonGregory Nagy In this installment of Faculty Insight, produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School, ThoughtCast speaks with the esteemed Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy about one of the earliest and greatest legends of all time: Homer's epic story of the siege of Troy, called "The Iliad." It's a story of god-like heroes and blood-soaked battles; honor, pride, shame and defeat. In this interview, we dissect a key scene in "The Iliad," where Hector and Achilles are about to meet in battle. Athena is also on hand, and she plays a crucial if underhanded role, with the grudging approval of her father, Zeus. And Nagy is the perfect guide to this classic tale. He's the director of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, as well as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard. We spoke in his office at Widener Library.

[Cross-posted from New Books in South Asian Studies] The Greco-Roman world was the prism through which the British viewed their imperial efforts, and Mark Bradley’s compendium Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2010) explores the various ways in which this reception of the classics occurred. From museums, to oratorical texts, to theories of race, the classical world was a reference point  for the imperial British.  Bradley's book looks at how the British thought about the classical world at a time when they were confronted by their own role as empire builders. There was the desire to reinforce, to justify their claims to being the greatest imperial power after Rome. There was doubt; the need to reconcile the colonized to their rule even as they learnt how ancient Britons had resisted Roman rule.  There was a certain humbled pride that they had managed to supplant the Romans insofar as claims to being the ‘greatest imperial power’ were concerned. There was also puzzlement; the jewel in the crown, India, was nothing like any Roman province or territory-how did this place them in relation to the Romans, who after all went about subjugating ‘barbarians’ as opposed a people with a  highly sophisticated civilization of their own? These are some of the issues that concerned the Britons of the Empire, and that this book analyses with great sensitivity.

[Crossposted from New Books in History] Reading J. E. Lendon's writerly Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins (Basic Books, 2010) took me back to the eventful days of my youth at Price Elementary School, or rather to the large yard on which we had recess. We called it a "playground." But we did not play on it. We did battle. We did not fight for treats or for love or for sport. These things were trivial to us. No, we fought for honor. One achieved honor not by getting good grades, or by having the best lunch, or by making the most friends. Everyone knew that these things were the spoils of honor, not the causes of it. Rather, one gained honor by physical intimidation and, if necessary, combat. Honor was fair: it paid regard to neither sex, nor race, nor class. Girls and boys, blacks and whites, rich and poor could all have whatever honor they could earn. But honor was also brutal: the strong and brave (or should we say "reckless") usually had it, while the weak and timid (or should we say "sensible") usually did not. Interestingly, the former did not "bully" the latter very often. At least at Price Elementary School, humiliating a much weaker opponent was considered, somehow, dishonorable. But among the strong and brave there were constant contests of honor, often violent. The "hegemons," if we may so speak, enjoyed high honor. But they also suffered from constant fear that they might lose it. And so anxious class champions would challenge one another, fight, and the victor would humiliate the vanquished ("Say 'uncle'!"). For the defeated party, eager to regain his or her honor, there was only one honorable course: revenge–swift, ruthless, and public. So it went, day in and day out on the "playground" at Price Elementary School. And so it went, year in and year out, on the battlefields of fifth-century Greece.

[Crossposted from New Books in History] It's the classic historical question: Why did the Roman Empire fall? There are doubtless lots of reasons. One historian has noted 210 of them. No wonder Gibbon said that we should stop "inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed," but rather "be surprised that it lasted so long." Indeed. But 210 reasons do not amount to a satisfying explanation. Historical events are complex, but historical  writing must be parsimonious if it is to achieve its primary aim, that is, to make the past clear to us. Happily,  Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower (Yale UP, 2009) does a marvelous job of boiling it all down. He proposes that structural explanations–governmental inefficiency, economic decline, imperial overstretch and the 207 others–are fine, but they really won't do the job in this case. The late Roman Empire was ill, but it was hardly on its death bed in the third and fourth centuries. Moreover, even at its weakest moments, the Empire was hugely more powerful than any of its competitors. In order to understand how the Romans managed to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory (or at least survival) Goldsworthy says we need to look at Roman politics, or what I would call Roman "political culture." In Goldsworthy's telling, the Roman political elite forgot what the empire was for, that is, to serve the interests of the Romans (the "Res publica"). Instead, up-and-coming Roman leaders were primarily interested in making it to the top and staying there. That meant staying alive, and since many failed do so for very long long-term political instability ensued. Too often the Romans were busy fighting each other instead of fending off their many though relatively weak enemies. It was only a matter of time before they fought each other one too many times and those enemies defeated them. Goldsworthy also has some interesting things to say about comparisons between the late Roman Empire and the contemporary United States. I won't give away what he says, but I will tell you he doesn't like them very much and for what I think are excellent reasons.

[Crossposted from New Books in History] "Swords and Sandals" movies always amaze me. You know the ones I'm talking about: "Spartacus," "Ben-Hur," "Gladiator," and the rest. These movies are so rich in detail–both narrative and physical–that you feel like you are "there." But the fact is that we don't and really can't know much about "there" (wherever "there" happens to be in the Ancient World) because the sources are very, very thin. As Joyce Tyldesley points out in her terrific Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008), Cleopatra is a mystery and necessarily so. We don't know who her mother was, when she was born, what she looked like, whom she married, and a host of other details about her life. That means, of course, that every dramatist from Shakespeare on has been, well, making stuff up about Cleopatra. Actually, many of the "primary sources" about her are full of invention because they were written long after the events they describe by Roman authors who just didn't like her very much. They did like a good story, so they embellished, as any good storyteller will. Joyce is an excellent storyteller herself, but she takes no poetic license. She tells us just what can be known–and trust me, that's more than enough to hold our attention! This book is a great read for anyone interested in learning about the real world of Ptolemaic Egypt.

[Crossposted from New Books in History] I have a (much beloved) colleague who calls all history about things before AD 1900 “that old stuff.” Of course she means it as a gentle jab at those of us who study said “old stuff.” Gentle, but in some ways telling. Many historians and history readers genuinely have a bias against the older periods, and particularly against the history of the pre-Hellenic Ancient World (roughly 10,000 BCE to 500 BCE). That’s really too bad for a whole host of reasons. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just list three "biggies": 1) The Ancient World witnessed the greatest single break in the history of humankind, that is, the transition from hunter-gather to sedentary agricultural life; 2) The deepest roots of our civilizations (Western, Eastern, you name it) are mostly to be found in the Ancient World; 3) Finally, the basic institutions of what we think of as “modern” life were all hammered out for the first time in the Ancient World. Take, for example, diplomacy. As Amanda Podany shows in her engaging new book Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East (Oxford University Press, 2010), the rulers of Sumer, Akkad, Syria, Egypt and the rest developed a way of dealing with one another that will be strikingly familiar to anyone who follows modern international relations. They regularly sent envoys to one another. Those envoys were given safe passage, provided with diplomatic immunity, and treated as special guests. Royal representatives followed strict instructions from their masters. They negotiated formal treaties, which included such things as the conditions for international trade. They presented gifts from their masters to their hosts and expected gifts in return. They arranged for diplomatic marriages of the kind any student of European history would recognize. All this is nothing if not strikingly “modern.” Yet, as Amanda points out, the entire system was invented over 4,000 years ago. And, thanks to Amanda, you can read all about it. If you do, you won't think of "that old stuff" as really that old, or at least odd.