This is a brief book (a revised Amsterdam dissertation) in Brill’s” “The Language of Classical Literature” series, on a topic that deserved a monograph. Meticulously researched and replete with judicious appraisals of challenging texts, it deserves a place on the shelves of anyone interested in narrative epic, gender studies, and the shadowy history of Penthesilea in particular.
One of the many virtues of this work is its scope. Ranging from Homer and the remains of cyclic epic through the monumental surviving compositions of both Greek and Latin imperial poetry, Borowski offers a remarkably comprehensive, lucid treatment of her subject in short compass. Her analyses feature both economy of expression and careful citation of the burgeoning bibliography on epic depictions of Amazons, and of women who are explicitly compared to Amazons via simile or direct poetic reference. Translations of all passages from Greek and Latin render the work accessible to scholars from diverse disciplines; a detailed index locorum makes it easy to research particular texts (an index nominum would have been welcome, though given the organization of the volume by author it is not unduly difficult to navigate one’s way to this or that character, at least for the reader with basic familiarity with the texts).
The figures treated in this volume (Antiope, Penthesilea, Camilla, Asbyte, and other Amazons and Amazonian epic characters both more and less familiar to the general reader) have been the subject of significant commentary and critical study, research that Borowski synthesizes and presents in readily digestible form in this volume. Of particular interest is the material on both Quintus of Smyrna and Silius Italicus, authors who have enjoyed a fruitful recent period of insightful treatment from sympathetic critics; Posthomerica 1 and Punica 2 are revisited here in the wake of recent commentaries and major specialized studies, alongside Argonautica 2 and (especially) Aeneid 11.[1] Borowski engagingly details how Amazon episodes contribute appreciably to the narrative structure of their epics, serving as integral components of plot and character development, and of a given poet’s intertextual engagement with predecessors.
The structure of Borowski’s study is thematic and diachronic. After an overview of epic Amazon scenes, subsequent chapters consider the juxtaposition of erotic and violent imagery in the portrayal of Amazons, on Amazon genealogies, and on the depiction of Amazons in war. The treatment of the first of these topics (“Eros oder Ares?”) focuses particular attention on the development across time of a fairly consistent portrayal of the eroticized battle heroine, with Quintus’ Penthesilea as the consummate example of the stereotype.
This is a book devoted to literary depictions, indeed specifically to the portrayal of Amazons in epic; understandably (and wisely) there is nothing on the immense amount of work that has been done by scholars from art history, archaeology, and anthropology about traditions of warrior women, and nothing on such interesting topics as allusions to Amazons in elegy and other poetic genres and forms, or on reception of epic models and tropes. It was sensible to keep the work sharply focused, and one of the noteworthy features of this slender tome is that it exercises admirable restraint in remaining glued to its theme, even when it would have been tempting to delve into interesting investigative byways (one thinks here of the potentially rich topic of Thracian history and later attitudes toward that region, as evidenced by the many geographical, ethnic, and mythological references thereto that we find in surviving Amazon episodes).
Especially given the relative brevity of the work, the aforementioned bibliography is impressively wide-ranging; one omission that deserves special note is Maria Alessio’s somewhat underappreciated Studies in Vergil: Aeneid Eleven, An Allegorical Approach, which for Virgil and his epic antecedents offers much material on the same subject as the present work, including extensive and insightful treatment of Camilla’s enigmatic Amazonian Italides Larina, Tarpeia, and Tulla.[2]
In an age when there is a countless flood of monographs, companions, article compilations, journal submissions and the like, it can be easy to miss certain titles, or to neglect important work. Borowski’s study of epic Amazons is both synthesis and introduction, culmination and provocation. While distilling the labors of many scholars of the last two decades in particular, this treatment of Penthesilea and her epic sisters points out future directions of profitable study, not least in the ever-intriguing, occasionally frustrating quest to tease out the possible influence of Latin poets on later imperial Greek authors. Scholars of ancient religion and mythology will profit from the impetus given herein to the study of Ares/Mars and the complexities of the depiction of the war god in epic; nuances of lexical choice, rhetorical technique, and poetic diction in epic Amazon episodes illuminate other avenues for philological and interpretive analysis.
Narratological insights abound here; one especially welcome feature of Borowski’s approach is that it is rooted in close, rigorous readings of passages, with conclusions grounded in methodical, learned analysis. Anyone curious about Amazons will profit from studying this book carefully; readers interested in everything from the lore of the encounters of Theseus and Heracles with the legendary heroines to the question of Amazon genealogy will find much to consider either anew or afresh. Along the way, they will also be treated to a worthwhile reexamination of such perennially intriguing topics as intertextuality, allegorical composition, the structure and aesthetics of epic battle narrative, and the curious relationship and overlap between martial Amazons and sylvan huntresses that recurs in extant literature from the Harpalyce of Parthenius and Virgil to the Nicaea of Nonnus.[3] After working through the half dozen chapters of this volume, the reader is likely both to revisit and reconsider familiar epic scenes, and to become further acquainted with relatively understudied episodes of large-scale narrative. Advancing from the cyclic Aethiopis to Valerius’ Argonautica and beyond in less than two hundred pages, Borowski’s book enacts something of its own swift Amazonian gallop across the icy Thermodon, in this case imparting both valuable insights on several classical epics, and welcome suggestions for where to go next.
Notes
[1] Note here especially S. Bär, Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica 1. Die Wiedergeburt des Epos aus dem Geiste der Amazonomachie. Mit einem Kommentar zu den Versen 1-219, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009, N.W. Bernstein, Silius Italicus, Punica 2, Oxford, 2017.
[2] Québec City: Montfort & Villeroy, 1993. Judith Rohman’s contemporaneous volume Le héros et la déesse: personnages, strategies narratives et effets de lecture dans l’Enéide de Virgile, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2022, may be studied profitably in conjunction with Borowski for the Camilliad; so also Juan Carlos Villalbla Saló’s La naturaleza en la Eneida: descripción, simbología y metapoética, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 2021, which likely appeared too late for consideration. Camilla Rose Christie, Battle Narrative in Virgil and Ovid, Master’s Thesis, Cape Town, 2014, offers a good example of the same sort of epic analysis, with material relevant to the study of Penthesilea and Camilla in particular.
[3] The related case of Atalanta poses its own problems; Borowski’s method could be applied with profit to the Ovidian narrative of the Calydonian boar hunt in Metamorphoses 8 (only touched on in passing in the work under review since Atalanta is never explicitly compared to an Amazon).