[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Following the spatial turn of the 1990s and 2000s, the recent increase in studies on time and temporality in the ancient world may be considered a ‘temporal turn’. The need for an overview and systematization of such a varied and expanding subject of scholarly research is present both in Anglophone and German-language scholarship; apparent from its title, this book has set as its aim to systematize altertumswissenschaftliche discourses on ancient time and to contribute additional studies that fit into the strands of research identified by the volume’s editors. The book follows upon an older volume published by LIT Verlag, which focused on philosophical and theoretical historical contributions to the same question, “what is time?” (p. iii).[1]
The volume is structured in three parts. The first nameless part consists of the editors’ introductory chapter on discourses of time in scholarship on the ancient world, which is meant to serve as an introduction (Einführung) for any scholar who has not yet made themselves deeply acquainted with the scholarship on this topic. As this is potentially the volume’s most impactful contribution, I will discuss its line of argumentation relatively detailedly. Frank Görne and Marian Nebelin conduct a discourse analysis of time and temporality in classical studies (Altertumswissenschaften in German, traditionally Ancient History, Classical Archaeology and Classical Philology (ancient Greek and Latin)). They identify and discuss three main discursive segments. The first, the material discursive segment, focuses on research that studies the presence of time and its measurement, subdivided into ‘chronology’ (ancient calendars and chronologies), ‘history of technology’ (technikgeschichtlich, e.g. astronomical measurements), and an epochale Differenzdiskursstrang that is occupied with the differences and similarities between ancient and modern temporalities. The second segment (lebensweltlich) deals with how ancient societies manage and manipulate time, roughly what Norbert Elias coined as “social time”.[2] Görne and Nebelin identify strands studying ‘age’ (e.g. gerontocracy), ‘temporal politics’ (e.g. inclusion and exclusion through time, duration of political processes), and ‘historiography’ (e.g. Livy’s historical treatise dictated by consular years, narrative structures). As the third segment, Görne and Nebelin highlight the ‘reflexive’ discursive segment, consisting of a ‘philosophical’ strand, a ‘literary’, and a theological strand. The chapter ends with a five-page introduction and summary of the volume’s individual contributions.
This chapter has the potential to be of innumerable value to scholars of ancient time, as it structures a broad field of research from different disciplines and with different focus points. Yet, a number of comments arise. First, the authors do not make clear on what corpus the discourse analysis is performed; it turns out that it consists mostly of German-language scholarship, including some central anglophone contributions but leaving out others, although anglophone scholarship is, of course, also read, used and interacted with in German academia. Especially Sacha Stern’s 2012 book, which Robert Hannah in his contribution recognises as a milestone in scholarship on ancient time (p. 60–61), comes to mind as missing from this discourse analysis.[3] Following from this, a reflection on the exchange and interaction between different linguistic and national academic traditions would have added a useful layer to this chapter. Third, Altertumswissenschaften traditionally include Classical Archaeology, but very few archaeological studies (or objects of study) are taken into account or appear in the volume’s chapters. Breaking down disciplinary boundaries between the text-based and object-based disciplines would have added to the value of this analysis. Fourth, the reader might be curious to know how altertumswissenschaftliche discourses on time have impacted scholarship in other and neighbouring disciplines, i.e., its cross-disciplinary reach and reception.
The book’s contributions are divided in two further parts, Zeitordnungen (temporal orders) and Zeitvorstellungen (imaginations of time). The first focuses on social orderings of time that structure society and public life, which the editors coin as the institutionalised version of the second discourse segment described above (p. 16–17). Robert Hannah (the only anglophone and non-German contributor to the volume) first presents a concise but balanced and helpful overview of scholarship on ancient calendars, which might be one reason why some anglophone works mentioned in footnote 3 of this review are not included in the introductory chapter. As noted above, Hannah identifies a shift in scholarly focus on calendars around 2012, from the technical aspects of calendars towards studying them in their political contexts. In the remainder of his contribution Hannah presents a case study from Cyprus to illustrate the overview (p. 61). Christopher Degelmann shows in a clearly written chapter how mourning periods in Rome were of relative and differentiated duration depending on the financial means of the bereaved and on norms of appropriateness for different social groups. The duration furthermore depended on the gender of the bereaved; especially senatorial men could break off the mourning period, whereas women were usually expected to be in mourning for a full year. Even then, this period could be shortened or extended or even cancelled altogether depending on the circumstances. Isabelle Künzer discusses ancient Greek festivals commemorating pre-marital suicides of girls. This unfortunate timing (Unzeit) caused societal unrest. The temporal anchor of the suicide was lifted, the unrest overcome, and the dead spirits were reconciled and controlled due to the repetitive nature of the festival. Using Hartmut Rosa’s concept of “sacral time” (sakrale Zeit) and Reinhardt Koselleck’s temporal theory, Künzer skilfully shows how Erfahrungsraum and Erwartungshorizont were nearly equalled through the regular and repeated organisation of such festivals.[4] Jan Timmer discusses the qualifications and characterisations of age, and their impact on expectations of Roman politicians in the Late Republic, mostly relying on Cicero and Livy. After a discussion of the literary evidence, he compares them to political practice and notable exceptions. In the last chapter of the first part, Frank Görne discusses whether decision-making in the Roman republican Senate was based on majority rule or consensus by analysing obstruction methods. Originally, the temporal space created by obstruction mechanisms such as tribunal vetoes let to more consensus-based decision-making processes. In the later years of the Republic, however, obstructions were used less to enhance debate and more to quasi-prohibit certain decisions, resulting in long and tedious crippling of political processes and increasing polarisation. Especially the last two contributions of part one regard “time” as a power tool of control, but I could not find a reflection on this connection between the chapters.
The second part of the volume (Zeitvorstellungen; imaginations of time) discusses attempts to capture time and temporality in media, such as speech, writing, and visual representations. Meandering through a range of evidence from Greek and Latin authors, Jewish and Christian religious texts, philosophers like Kant and Romantic writers such as Goethe, Alexander Demandt shows how the representation of time often causes paradoxical statements. The presented sources and observations are interesting and provide helpful insights, but could have benefitted from more recent theoretical underpinnings, for example, sociological research on time. Karen Piepenbrink discusses the thematization of time in political discourses in classical Athenian democracy and the Roman republican Senate. She identifies three main categories, namely the right time to act, the past and the future. Mostly discussing orations, she concludes that Athens and Rome, as separate cultural spaces, also had different discourses of time in all three categories. This is to be expected, but the explicit observation and analysis is valuable nevertheless. In both Athens and Rome, however, references to and discussions of the past had in common that these were not discussed for their temporal dimensions, but mostly because of their contemporary relevance. In Roman orations, the future was conceptualized as a continuation of the past or present, but not as a distinct temporal space (Gestaltungsraum). Michael Krewet asks if, in Herodotus’ work, the gods predetermine the agency and future of humans by means of prophecies and oracles. He analyses this using a wide range of sources, including the explorations of the temporality of the gods and their knowledge in philosophical texts from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE and their neoplatonic reception and reinterpretation in late Antiquity. Krewet concludes that because the gods (and their knowledge) are not bound by time, they were able to prophesy the future to time-bound humans without taking away their agency in shaping their future, thereby solving the inconsistencies on this topic in Herodotus’ Histories. Jan Heilmann convincingly shows that “time” in the Apocalypse was conceptualised with pluriform categories of space, both in linear teleological fashion and through a lack of “old” temporal structural elements. First, he shows how a significant number of temporal indications have a component of space. The predicted thousand-year messianic kingdom is both temporal and spatial. The new Jerusalem, on the other hand, is conceptualised not as an endless, but as a timeless, state in which daylight and the night time served as structuring temporal entities, just as the Temple and the house, where sacrifices and prayers were performed daily. At the same time, this state is still structured by months and years.
The remaining chapters of the second part look into the reception of ancient time and Antiquity in time. Bernadette Malinowksi and Marian Nebelin explore the commonalities and differences of the chronotopical and topography of the ‘afterlife’ (Jenseits, as opposed to the Diesseits, i.e. ‘on this side’ of life, the realm of the living) in so-called Totengespräche (dialogues with or among the dead and in the spaces that play with temporal and spatial imaginations, and contain a moral component, p. 261–262) in ancient and modern German literature. Most interesting for the reader is their observation that, both in ancient and modern German literary Totengespräche, the Diesseits moves forward in time, while the Jenseits as a place is without time but is also temporal through the new arrival of passed-away souls. In the volume’s concluding chapter, Mathias Herrmann discusses the reception of Antiquity in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century clocks from workshops in Electoral Saxony. He distinguishes three types, one displaying figures from Greek mythology, a second with figures wearing antiquated clothing or with antiquated elements such as weaponry but without a mythological reference, and a third with imitations of ancient architectural styles, and argues that clocks, as vessels of time and its measurement, should also be studied for their symbolism and meaning.
The individual contributions provide thought-provoking observations and analyses, with several authors going beyond the status quo and contributing substantially to their respective debates. However, the two parts would have benefitted from a short reflection on commonalities among the chapters, identifying common mechanisms at work and suggesting avenues of further research, although I recognize the difficulty of this in such a diffuse thematic field.
The book comes in a beautiful hardcover edition. Every chapter is provided with its own bibliography (except Demandt’s chapter), which makes looking up references easy and accessible. I furthermore observed very few and only minor typographical mistakes. The volume and its contributions reflect on the state-of-the-art and provide a wide range of insightful contributions on ancient time and temporalities, ranging from ancient history to philology, religious studies and classical reception. All in all, this volume provides a broad overview of German scholarship on time and temporality in the ancient world, and is a helpful guide into this sub-field of classical research.
Bibliography
Ben-Dov, Jonathan, and Lutz Doering (eds.), The Construction of Time in Antiquity: Ritual, Art, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Deußer, Andreas, and Marian Nebelin, Was ist Zeit? Philosophische und geschichtstheoretische Aufsätze, Philosophie 74 (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2009).
Elias, Norbert, Über die Zeit. Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie II, Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 756 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984).
Feeney, Dennis, Caesar’s Calendar. Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History, Sather Classical Lectures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
Ker, James, The Ordered Day. Quotidian Time and Forms of Life in Ancient Rome (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2023).
Koselleck, Reinhardt, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 757 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979).
Kosmin, Paul J., Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2018).
Remijsen, Sofie, “The Postal Service and the Hour as a Unit of Time in Antiquity,” Historia 56 (2007), 127–140.
Remijsen, Sofie, “Living by the clock: The introduction of clock time in the Greek world,” Klio 103 (2021), 1–29.
Rosa, Hartmut, Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstruktur in der Moderne, Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 1760, 11th edition (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2016).
Shaw, Bernard D., “Did the Romans Have a Future?”, The Journal of Roman Studies 109 (2019), 1–26.
Stern, Sacha, Calendars in Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Authors and titles
- Altertumswissenschaftliche Zeitdiskurse: Zur Einführung in Themen und Tendenzen eines Forschungsfeldes (Frank Görne and Marian Nebelin)
ZEITORDNUNGEN
- Ancient Greek and Roman Calendars, with a Case Study of the Calendars of Cyprus (Robert Hannah).
- Dauer und Trauer: Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion von Trauerzeit in der späten römischen Republik und der (frühen) Kaiserzeit (Christopher Degelmann)
- Die Einzeitlichung des Unzeitigen: Gefeierte Suiziden im antiken Griechenland (Isabelle Künzer)
- Alte weise Männer: Lebensalter im politischen System der römischen Republik (Jan Timmer)
- Die umkämpfte Zeit: Obstruktionen in der späten römischen Republik (Frank Görne)
ZEITVORSTELLUNGEN
- Zeitparadoxa: Eine sprachkritische Betrachtung (Alexander Demandt)
- Zur Diskursivierung von Zeit in der attisch-demokratischen und der römisch-republikanischen Rhetorik (Karen Piepenbrink)
- Zeitloses Wissen des Göttlichen und zeitgebundenes menschliches Erkennen in der Geschichtsschreibung Herodots (Michael Krewet)
- „… dass Zeit nicht mehr sein wird“ (Apc 10,6): Zum Zeitverständnis der neutestamentlichen Johannesapokalypse (Jan Heilmann)
- Chronotopik und Topographie des Jenseits in Totengesprächen der antiken und der modernen deutschen Literatur (Bernadette Malinowski and Marian Nebelin)
- Zeit ist nicht alles: Antikebezüge auf Uhren aus sächsischen Museen (Mathias Herrmann)
Notes
[1] Deußer and Nebelin 2009.
[2] Elias 1984.
[3] Stern 2012; other prominent Anglophone studies with wider reception in (German) academic scholarship, but which are not included, are Feeney 2007; Ben-Dov and Doering 2017; Kosmin 2018; Shaw 2019; Ker 2023; furthermore, some anglophone scholarship produced and published in German academic contexts has been left out. One might think of Remijsen’s studies into clock time and the postal service: Remijsen 2007; Remijsen 2021; the discourse analysis might also have benefited from explicit references to larger research projects and groups such as the Berlin-based Einstein Center Chronoi.
[4] Rosa 2016; Koselleck 1979, 349–375.