This volume focuses on a highly engaging and debated topic: the relationship between Greek literature of the Roman Empire and Homer.[1] Vincent Tomasso’s argument revolves around the concept of nostalgia for the Homeric epics as a multifaceted phenomenon that arises from different contexts, engages different audiences, and can employ different, even opposing, patterns. To explore this, the volume focuses mainly, but not exclusively, on Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica, a third-century CE epic poem written in Greek that fills the narrative gap between the end of the Iliad and the beginning of the Odyssey. According to Tomasso, the poem offers a “middle-of-the-road response to nostalgia for Homer’s epics” (p. i), with the primary aim “to channel the Homeric epics and simultaneously bring them into the world of the Roman Empire” (p. 12).
Following a brief introduction, the book is divided into five main chapters, each dedicated to a different type of audience and/or reception of the Homeric epics. The volume closes with a concise epilogue, a general bibliography, and two indexes (of quoted passages and subjects). Tomasso examines various strategies for the reception of the Homeric model—such as addition, expansion, contradiction, and rewriting—in both prose and poetry, while also addressing a variety of private and public contexts and audiences. Throughout the argument, a fresh perspective is offered by a constant comparison between the strategies of literature and those of cinema, recalling in particular the analysis of cinematic memory and nostalgia as conceptualized by Pam Cook.[2] This comparison is interesting both from a conceptual and a pedagogical point of view, because it provides an approach to particularly complex examples that involve different media.
The first chapter examines the use of Homer in education as a source of cultural and restorative nostalgia,[3] a desire to return to the origins of the texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. According to Tomasso, this aim could be achieved in various—and sometimes even contradictory—ways: rewording (especially in ethopoeae), addition, and expansion, but also through anaskeuai (‘refutations’) of Homer’s narrative. These reception strategies are highlighted by examples drawn from various sources, such as texts derived from papyri, epic poems of the imperial period (especially the Posthomerica by Quintus of Smyrna, the work most frequently cited by Tomasso as a point of comparison with the Homeric poems), epigrams, and the orations of Dio Chrysostom and Aelius Aristides.
The second chapter (‘Popular Receptions’) is modeled against the background of the first chapter, and partially in opposition to it. It focuses on “non-elite receptions” (pp. 11, 56) of Homer, especially the different strategies that re-word, collate, or expand Homer, such as centonism and performances by rhapsodes and Homeristai. The chapter, as Tomasso notes, operates within a conceptual framework that is far more difficult to grasp and circumscribe than the one on which the first chapter was based. How do we define popular or non-elite from a historical, sociological, literary, and performative point of view? At the beginning of the chapter, Tomasso defines ‘popular’ as “consumed by large audiences”, in contrast to “the pepaideumenoi, the educated […] elite of their society” (p. 37). Nevertheless, the performances of the Homeric epics were attended by both elite and non-elite audiences. In conclusion, these different audiences, notwithstanding the obvious difficulties in categorizing them from a sociological and literary point of view, share an origin (as Tomasso notes), and draw upon and engage with the same ‘cultural capital’, albeit in different ways and with different results.
The third chapter (‘Sources’) is perhaps the most convincing and enjoyable section of the book. Within a few lucid pages, Tomasso engages with examples drawn from both poetry and prose to offer a comprehensive overview of how imperial authors deal with their sources when they follow the Homeric epics, and, more importantly, when they diverge from them. The core of the chapter focuses on the literary techniques of the ‘usual imperial suspects’, such as Quintus of Smyrna, Triphiodorus, and Nonnus, in accepting, revising, or openly rebuking the Homeric narrative. But Tomasso broadens and deepens the argument in two ways. The first is by considering Stesichorus’ Palinode, one of the earlier works of ‘Homeric revisionism’, to offer a model against which to examine the use of sources by imperial authors. The second is by incorporating into the argument prose authors of different literary backgrounds and genres, and with distinctly different literary aims, such as Flavius Philostratus, Dio Chrysostom, Dictys of Crete, Dares Phrygius, and Ptolemy the Quail. The result provides everything necessary to understand how imperial authors use (and, most importantly, choose) their sources to shape their narratives against the backdrop of—or simply against—the Homeric epics.
Chapters four (‘Word Choices’) and five (‘Roman Ruptures’) focus on the core author of the volume, Quintus of Smyrna. Here, Tomasso examines the narrative strategies of the Posthomerica, highlighting how Quintus, through his skillful word choices, connects his work not only to the Homeric epics—his direct (and most obvious) model—but also to other hexametric works, particularly Hellenistic poetry. Quintus’ process, Tomasso argues, operates in the direction opposite to that of the Hellenistic poets. While the latter tend to ‘Hellenisticize’ Homer, Quintus incorporates into his Homeric narrative words or expressions that—significantly—do not appear in Homer. His aim is to ‘Homericize’ non-Homeric texts and, ultimately, to create a diction that follows Homer while at the same time it “rupture[s] his audience’s experience of the Homeric poems by reminding them of the world outside of Homer” (p. 88). These ‘ruptures’ appear not only at the lexical level but also at the higher level of Quintus’ narrative technique, taking the form of what Tomasso terms ‘temporal ruptures’. Although firmly following in the footsteps of the Homeric epics, Quintus remains very much an author of his time and embeds this contemporary awareness into his narrative. Tomasso explicitly refuses to label these instances as ‘anachronisms’ because they do not imply any form of error on the author’s part, but are instead conscious narrative insertions designed to remind the audience of their own contemporary moment. From this perspective, Tomasso examines several examples of these ruptures. The most notable instance is the prophecy of Aeneas’ future in Posthomerica 13, which Tomasso analyzes against the background of the prior literary tradition, especially Poseidon’s prophecy in Iliad 20, and compares with similar prophecies or descriptions of Rome and its empire in authors of the imperial and later periods.
The strength of Tomasso’s book lies in the clarity and directness with which the author addresses, in a concise yet comprehensive manner, key concepts from a literary perspective, as well as from the broader standpoints of social and intellectual history.[4] The study draws connections between texts that may initially—but only initially—appear quite disparate in style, genre, and intended audience. In doing so, it offers a clear analysis of the literary and paraliterary strategies employed by authors of the imperial period in relation to the Homeric epics and the broader Homeric tradition.
Notes
[1] See, for instance, Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation, Oxford 2001 (BMCR 2003.03.14); Lawrence Kim, Homer Between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature, Cambridge 2010 (BMCR 2012.05.15); and, more generally, Richard Hunter, The Measure of Homer: The Ancient Reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Cambridge 2018 (BMCR 2019.02.40). These are three seminal studies on which Tomasso relies for the conceptual, sociological, and historical frameworks of Greek literature during the imperial period.
[2] See especially Pam Cook, Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema, London 2005. For the concept of nostalgia(s) and its relation to classical culture, Tomasso also refers to Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, New York 2001; Clay Routledge, Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource, New York 2016; and Richard Hunter, The Measure, cited above.
[3] For the concepts of cultural nostalgia and restorative nostalgia, see Hunter 2018: 10-12 and Boym 2001: XVIII, respectively.
[4] The book contains several typographical errors; however, these do not detract from its overall readability.