[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
It may not be inappropriate to begin a review of a cultural history of ideas in classical antiquity with a paradox. I have spent considerable time on the book in question, learned a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed thinking about it as well as with it. The first volume of a series of six (the last ending with The Modern Age), it covers the nine topics set for the entire collection, which the general editors Sophia Rosenfeld and Peter T. Struck define as “a set of general areas of investigation focused on comparable subjects across the ages” (ix). They emphasize the Sitz im Leben of all ideas, define culture beyond its traditionally primmed purview to include “collective memory … and mass culture” (xii), and emphasize hybridity and connectedness as integral aspects of history. Surprisingly, neither the selection of topics nor their ordering is argued for; nor do Clifford Ando and Giulia Sissa, two of the three editors of this first volume, engage much with either question or the general introduction as a whole, which seems like an opportunity missed.[1] In fact, their disavowal of (past) enshrinements of classical culture and reflections on how much of it is lost, and how much of that little is secondhand are conditions that are rather specific to antiquity and that have obvious consequences for the approach as outlined by the general editors. But when they end their introduction with promising summaries of the chapters, the reader is intrigued and ready to embark on this intellectual journey, from which—to return to my paradox—I much benefitted, even though, at its end, I was left with a sense of disappointment and unease.
This sense does not result from the absence of this or that idea individual readers will expect to find discussed (“paradox” does not appear in the index)—that much is inevitable; it results from three more general problems. Several of the contributors opted to write not about their topical field but rather about a specific idea or complex of ideas which they found interesting within their topical field: this is particularly striking in Giulia Sissa’s discussion of “The Human Self,” wherein she lists, in one paragraph, the various notions of that self in antiquity only to then focus solely on human beings as “children of care” (25). Secondly, Roman contributions are, generally speaking, shortchanged: so already in the first chapter by the late Thomas Habinek, in whose disquisition on “Knowledge” we hear little about the pervasive and highly consequential attempts at rationalization and systematization in the late Roman Republic (Rawson 1978 [not in the bibliography] and Moatti 1997), nothing of the honing of instrumental reason (Schmidt 2006 [not in the bibliography]), and nothing about the pronounced anti-intellectual objections amongst certain Romans to certain forms of knowledge (alii … caelique meatus | describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent, Verg. Aen. 6.849-50, e.g.)—all of which is arguably most relevant to modern readers of this history. Lastly, if I were asked to identify ideas that are rather characteristic of Greek and Roman antiquity generally, across its long stretches of time and swaths of lands, I would think of rhetoric as a (socio-politically) foundational and in many ways all-pervasive discipline (much as math is often said to be today), of etymology (and especially folk-etymology) as an epistemic resource, or that inspiring and long-lasting commitment to scientific explanation. All three of these are touched upon in the course of the book, of course; but they do not stand out as especially distinguishing.
Let me turn now to the individual discussions beginning with the chapter on “Knowledge,” wherein Habinek identifies “a quest for strategic information” and “a concern for the reliability of information” (7) as the two foundational principles that can be traced back to archaic Greek poetry and followed through to late antiquity (the latter of which is not really undertaken). He reviews the ever-problematic access to and nature of knowledge, from “direct sensory encounter” (8) via “authority and signs” (10) to the preservation and systematization of knowledge (“Memory and Archive,” 16). The roles of “deliberation, persuasion, and shared reasoning” (14) in the ascertainment of “truth” are singled out, as is epistemology, viz. “knowledge as a topic of philosophical inquiry” (18).
Giulia Sissa, limiting herself to the idea of the human self as “children of Care,” as “an object of socialized anxiety” (25), succeeds in demonstrating how elaborate and frequent that idea is. Beginning with the kēdea lugra in Hesiod, she traces “modifications of care” across the Ages of Man; in contrast, the Muses are not just of a carefree spirit but also “capable of altering the human experience of care” (31) through their arts. Odysseus embodies someone who cares (kēdomenos), and the Odyssey itself is sketched as a text “that is all about kēdea” (34); but it lacks Hesiod’s etiology of that human condition. The Greeks thought of governing as taking “Care of the Polis” (36), and amongst the briefly treated Romans Seneca receives special attention, since for him cura allows us human beings to strive for perfection and endeavor beyond human limitations. More than once, there is a Heideggerian ring to her discussion, which ends with a look at the reception of this concept of the human self by, among others, the philosopher from Messkirch.
In his “Ethics and Social Relations,” James Ker offers a wide-ranging and balanced discussion of ethical ideas in their interactions with “social forms and practices,” with particular attention to Greek and Latin literature in their “mediating role” (43), as when Hesiod’s advice to Perses in Works and Days is interpreted as “a glimpse of a popular culture in which the workings of the world are parsed” (44). Beginning with the “lovers of wisdom,” Ker sketches the human mind, (the history of) institutions and (their) ideologies, and rituals as areas of ethical concern. Fundamental concepts such as the different (and widening) circles of social relationships, the different lifestyles and life’s various stages, the cardinal virtues, learning by (and institutionalization of the) exemplum are discussed with much evidence both from the Greek and the Latin literatures, as are friendship, solitude and soliloquies, and, ultimately, the (to us strangely) social nature of narrated death scenes (61). This learned and engaging chapter would seem to meet the intended reader’s expectations most fully.
Clifford Ando’s disquisition on “Politics and Economies” is the most theoretically sophisticated of the volume, wide-ranging and attuned to Greek and Roman specifics and differences. I found particularly stimulating his demonstration of the limitations of an intrinsic reconstruction of the ancient discourse when illuminated by an extrinsic (modern) perspective—e.g. “no ancient theorization of the economy comes remotely close to capturing the texture or scale of economic activity that modern historical inquiry has revealed, and that is in itself an important fact about their ‘ideas’” (77). Ando surveys the concepts of the polis and the civitas and highlights how the distribution of power is first and foremost tied back to individual citizens, which necessitates an inquiry into the concept of citizenship. Amongst the major contributions from antiquity to the western political discourse, Ando lists the threefold typology of government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, along with their respective evil twins), the famous anakuklōsis (viz. the cycle of the said constitutions, from monarchy to democracy through their respective distortions back to monarchy), the equally famous mixed constitution, and the “juridification of notions of political belonging in the form of citizenship” (68). His section on “economic thought and economic activity” treats in detail the transfer of wealth and euergetism as an institution to manage socio-economic inequality. When he ends on how we, in the 21st century, appreciate the massive economic contribution that slaves made much better than their contemporaries, he returns to his introductory theoretical point. Given how thorough a discussion this is, it surprised that there is no discussion of patronage and no reference to the work done by Richard Saller and Walter Scheidel.[2]
In “Nature: Concepts, Origins, and Ambivalences,” Geoffrey Lloyd is also (like Ando) particularly outspoken about the risk of assimilating Greek conceptualizations of nature to our understanding. While it is true that we can observe “the forging of the new category of ‘nature’ in Greek medicine and philosophy” (94), in some instances phusis can be seen to include “things that are full of gods” or even that “which is not” (Thales, Parmenides). The Greek developments are compared to those in ancient China and Mesopotamia: it emerges that only in Greece is there “the appeal to what we may call second-order factors” (93), viz. the argument that you yourself “must be right and your opponents wrong because you have the right method and understanding” (94). As a further characteristic a (wider) “preoccupation with accountability” is identified. Unfortunately, given the massive impact that Lucretius’ De rerum natura had (to give but one example),[3] the chapter has nothing to say about the Roman world and its conceptualizations aside from a reference to Galen.
Discussing “Religion and the Divine,” Zsuzsanna Várhelyi begins with reflections on the prevalence of practice over theory, i.e. theology, in much of Greek and Roman religion and the additional challenge this poses to anyone hoping to investigate the cultural history of religious ideas. She then selects two case studies, fifth-century Athens and first-century Rome, to identify sets of “innovative religious ideas” in their respective cultural (often philosophical) contexts and, as far as possible, to relate them to contemporary (religious) practices. For the Athenian discourse she singles out efforts to define proper religious behavior and its significance for civic identity (such as attempts to differentiate agnosticism from atheism) and the justification of divine injustice. While her references to the theatre and the symposium as venues for such ideas and Orphic poetry as another medium of their propagation situate these ideas in Athenian life, all too little can be gleaned of their possible consequences in practice. For Rome she focuses on the systematization of the religious sphere (as exemplified by Varro’s theologia tripartita), the definition of superstitio, and the threat that some beliefs (such as Epicureanism) posed to the political fabric. The entwining of politics and religion, as represented especially by members of the political elite holding high religious offices, gains in profile from the contrast with Athens; but I missed a discussion of the calendar reform, which exemplifies many of her points (and I was surprised not to find any reference to Duncan MacRae’s 2016 Legible Religion).
Greek concerns about the malleable meaning of words and the slippery versatility of arguments stand at the beginning of Sean Gurd’s “Language, Poetry, Rhetoric,” arguably one of the more fundamental chapters of the book. Dialectics, as the art of rhetoric (if such it is), and grammatikē as the “systematic attempt to treat language as an art” (122) are discussed, as are poetics, aesthetics, and the subtle “debates over sound and sense” (127) in their consequences for the rhetorical system. The singular significance of Cicero’s De oratore and its portraits as “crafted sel[ves] … where language, philosophy, and practice are integrated” is brought out well (128). But I found the ideas of “freedom of speech” and of the connection between the fortunes of oratory and its historical (especially political) situation (as is Tacitus’ consequential insight in the Dialogus [Heldmann 1982]) sadly missing.
In her eminently engaging discussion of “The Arts,” Ruth Webb also stresses the mismatch between ancient and modern concepts of the arts. Both τέχνη and ars are semantically broader than “arts,” the ancient concept prioritizes music, rhythm, and dance against the modern prioritizing of painting and sculpture; and the former is typically more embedded in political and religious contexts than the more autonomous modern counterpart. The problems continue, as there was a “synesthetic unity” (136) amongst the arts that appears from their embodiment by the familial muses as much as from Horace’s epigrammatic ut pictura poiesis (Ars 361). But there existed a predominant underlying idea, viz. mimēsis, which Webb discusses for Plato, Aristotle, and “beyond” (140), ranging from a pale simulacrum to the vivification of the invisible, from a threat to one’s character to the motivation to perform one’s duties. Across the ages and changing cultures, the worry over the boundary between signifier and signified emerges as a continuous concern.
Lastly, in “History,” Lucas Herchenroeder and Clifford Ando trace historical thinking both inside and outside of historical writing, paying particular attention to the consequences of cultural changes for the idea of history. Beginning with the multi-generic genealogical thinking “in the dispersed world of late archaic colonization” (150), they move on to historical prose, with its towering geniuses Herodotus and Thucydides and their respective methodologies, and from there to “history in the age of the library” (157), when ready access to rapidly growing written sources changed the scope and general idea of history. They end with the “institutional and public memory under the empire” (160), with the Fasti and records of political discussions and decisions. But there is a surprising omission: while rhetoric and its intersection with history is touched upon (160), the fundamental difference between classical historiography and its modern counterpart, i.e. the treatment of the fictional element, is not mentioned (neither Peter Wiseman nor Tony Woodman made it into the bibliography).
Bibliography
Heldmann, K. (1982), Antike Theorien über Entwicklung und Verfall der Redekunst, Munich.
MacRae, D. (2016), Legible Religion. Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture. Cambridge.
Moatti, C. (1997), La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République, Paris.
Palmer, A. (2014), Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance. I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history, Cambridge.
Rawson, E. (1978), “The introduction of logical organisation in Roman prose literature,” PBSR 46: 12-34.
Saller. R. P. (2022), Pliny’s Roman Economy: Natural History, Innovation, and Growth, Princeton.
Scheidel, W. & I. Morris & R. P. Saller (2007), The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, Cambridge.
Schmidt, E. A. (2006): “Römische Rationalitätsformen und ihr europäisches Wirkungspotential. Beobachtungen und Überlegungen zu literarischen Texten des antiken Rom,” in: Elm, R. (ed.), Vernunft und Freiheit in der Kultur Europas: Ursprünge, Wandel, Herausforderungen, Freiburg im Breisgau: 78-115.
Wiseman, P. (1979), Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature, Leicester.
Woodman, A. J. (1988), Rhetoric in Classical Historiography. Four Studies, London.
Authors and Titles
- Knowledge, Thomas Habinek
- The Human Self, Giulia Sissa
- Ethics and Social Relations, James Ker
- Politics and Economies, Clifford Ando
- Nature, G.E.R. Lloyd
- Religion and the Divine, Zsuzsanna Várhelyi
- Language, Poetry, Rhetoric, Sean Gurd
- The Arts, Ruth Webb
- History, Lucas Herchenroeder and Clifford Ando
Editorial note: please see BMCR’s Statement on Publication Ethics for information on reviews of books edited by BMCR editors.
Notes
[1] Generally speaking, there are surprisingly few instances of dialogue, viz. cross-references, among the nine chapters, even though several concepts (such as mimēsis) are treated repeatedly; this sits oddly with the emphasis on “connected history.”
[2] Saller’s 2022 Pliny’s Roman Economy: Natural History, Innovation, and Growth came out too late for this volume. But The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, edited by him, Walter Scheidel, and Ian Morris, 2007 should have merited mention.
[3] Ada Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance. I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history. Cambridge 2014.