Producing an edited book in memory of a departed member of our profession is a tricky task, and so too is reviewing it. The editors and contributors must choose where their aim and their audience lie. Some such works, collections of essays on a theme related to the honorand, are scarcely different from the hundreds of edited volumes reviewed here each year. The editors of the book under review here took a different path, and the result is 241 pages deeply suffused with the character and circle of Garrett G. Fagan.
Fagan’s students and colleagues have produced this volume of eleven essays (ten in English, one in German) in his memory. The group, and the discipline, faced a second loss when one of the co-editors, Matthew Trundle, died in 2019 as the book was in an advanced state of preparation. One final note on personnel is necessary: though it may seem churlish to criticize the composition of a group selected for personal rather than professional reasons, readers will note that one of the co-editors, Andrea F. Gatzke, who also contributes the introductory chapter, is the only woman represented.
Fagan, a Roman historian best known to researchers for his influential Bathing in Public in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press 1999, second edition 2002) and The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge University Press 2011), was Professor of Ancient History at Penn State. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2016, and died in March 2017 at the age of just 54. Beyond his monographs, he published widely on social history, including a range of perspectives on water; violence; warfare; and the dangers of pseudoarchaeology. The ‘people and institutions’ of this volume’s title, at first glance a somewhat vague catch-all, turn out to be fundamental. As the editors and contributors show, Fagan’s approach was characterized by an interest in social psychology, an emphasis on what one might call human nature and human experience in the face of the ever-grinding gears of society in general and the Roman empire in particular.
Although the volume is formally divided into front- and back-matter and eleven numbered chapters in three parts, the different sections flow into each other, with memories of Fagan and contributions focusing entirely on him and his work interleaved with original scholarship. A preface by the editors Gatzke and Brice outlines Fagan’s professional life and gives a glimpse of his charisma; here we also read of how he learned of his diagnosis and how he spent his last months. Two more personal reminiscences follow, from Brian McGing, who taught him as an undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin, and his doctoral supervisor Richard Talbert. The first numbered chapter, Andrea F. Gatzke’s ‘Peopling the Institutions of the Roman Empire’, functions as a traditional introduction, giving an overview of Fagan’s research interests and introducing the chapters to come. It is joined in its section by an autobiographical piece by Fagan himself, telling the story of how he came to ancient history as a schoolboy, and a second reflective essay on Fagan’s scholarship and methods, by J. E. Lendon. Much later, in the third section, comes a third essay closely inspired by Fagan’s own work, Dylan K. Rogers’s ‘Taking the Plunge: A Twenty-First Century Look at Roman Bathing Culture’. Rogers surveys scholarship on Roman baths and bathing since Fagan’s Bathing in Public, tracing that monograph’s influence and suggesting areas for further investigation.
The remaining seven contributors offer more standard edited-volume material. Their chapters are divided into sections on ‘People, Institutions, and History’ and ‘People in Roman Society’, though the themes are broad and the reasons for assigning the chapters to one or the other are not always clear. David S. Potter uses structural and linguistic observations to posit two different phases of publication for Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum. Lee L. Brice draws on scholarship from later historical periods to analyze the three stages of a mutiny; his approach generates a framework that works well to identify the key differences between his three case studies (Caesar’s legio IX at Placentia in 49 BCE, Antonius’ legions at Brundisium in 44, and the mutinies in Pannonia and the lower Rhine in 14 CE), and thus some potential reasons why Caesar and Germanicus succeeded in quelling indiscipline where Antonius failed. Werner Eck looks at what seems at first to be an unpromising and highly fragmentary auxiliary diploma, until the garbled letters on one side turn out to be a hasty and error-strewn transcription of the rarely seen exemption allowing children born before their father enlisted to receive citizenship along with him upon his discharge even after 140 CE. Other examples of the same text are known, but the detective work required to recognize it here, and the implications of the errors within it, make for a fascinating story. Werner Riess offers a reconstruction of the procedural, legal, and social questions surrounding the trial of Jesus. Rene Pfeilschifter takes the triumph scene from Ben-Hur as his inspiration to revisit the late antique triumph. Johnathan Edmondson illuminates how thoroughly the language and metaphor of gladiatorial combat permeates Apuleius’ Golden Ass, less as an exploration of a literary device and more as a demonstration of the omnipresence of the arena in the Roman thoughtworld. Finally, R. J. A. Wilson discusses an unusual feature of a late Roman villa he has excavated in Sicily at Contrada Gerace: its owner made frequent use of monograms as a decorative feature in multiple media. Wilson gives a helpful overview of how and where monograms appear across the century to put his finds in context. The book closes with a complete bibliography of Fagan’s published work and a volume index.
Other than Fagan himself, few readers would be competent to assess fully the quality and originality of chapters on such a range of topics: I do not claim to be one of them. Still, one of the joys of reviewing is coming across things one might not otherwise read; I found Eck’s detective work intriguing, Edmondson’s metaphors convincing, and Wilson’s potted history of the monogram delightful. Nevertheless, it is the more personal sections of this volume that are the most successful, both artistically and intellectually. The memories shared by Fagan’s friends and colleagues, and his own contribution, are full of affection and humour. Meanwhile, in the three reflective chapters, Gatzke, Lendon, and Rogers make strong cases for the importance of a number of themes arising from Fagan’s work that glint through in the other contributions. His conviction that human psychology has probably not changed drastically in 2000 years (or at least that the burden of proof lies with those who claim it has) forms the foundation of Brice’s cross-cultural comparison of mutinies. Eck’s diploma highlights the individual as the fundamental subject of social history. The way Pfeilschifter mobilizes Ben-Hur reminds us of how Fagan used comparison to bring the ancient world to life, while Fagan’s close engagement with German-language scholarship is reciprocated with three chapters by colleagues at German institutions.
As an act of pietas and celebration of Fagan’s life and work, this volume is superb. Garry Fagan, known to me only in print and conference corridors, is present here as an esteemed researcher, colleague, and teacher; as a beloved friend; and as a trusted interpreter of the ancient world to audiences far beyond academia via his immensely successful television appearances and online lecture courses. Those who knew and admired him, those who wish they could spend a little more time with him or derive comfort from delving into others’ memories of his life and work, will enjoy and profit from this volume – but they probably need little prompting from an online review. For a wider audience, it is less likely to be an essential purchase, though Rogers’s insightful and concise analysis of recent trends in scholarship on bathing will be immensely useful to anyone dipping a toe into that water and should find a place on many reading lists.
Table of Contents
Part 1 Introduction
Chapter 1 Peopling the Institutions of the Roman Empire, Andrea F. Gatzke
Chapter 2 Of Meter Rules, Romans, and Jesuits, Garrett G. Fagan
Chapter 3 The Scholarship of Garrett G. Fagan, J.E. Lendon
Part 2 People, Institutions, and History
Chapter 4 Caesar and the Bellum Gallicum, David S. Potter
Chapter 5 Commanders’ Responses to Mutinies in the Roman Army, Lee L. Brice
Chapter 6 Der Einschluss der Kinder in kaiserliche Bürgerrechtskonstitutionen nach der „Reform“ des Antoninus Pius im Jahr 140: Einblicke in die römische Administration, Werner Eck
Chapter 7 The Trial of Jesus Revisited, Werner Riess
Chapter 8 Quintus Arrius, the Roman Triumph, and Christianity, Rene Pfeilschifter
Part 3 People in Roman Society
Chapter 9 Taking the Plunge: A Twenty-First-Century Look at Roman Bathing Culture, Dylan K. Rogers
Chapter 10 The Linguistic Lure of the Arena in Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Jonathan Edmondson
Chapter 11 Philippianus: A Late Roman Sicilian Landowner and His Use of the Monogram, R.J.A. Wilson
Cumulative Bibliography of Works by Garrett G. Fagan
Index