Reviews

  • The Body of the Combatant in the Ancient Mediterranean

    Hannah-Marie Chidwick, ed. The Body of the Combatant in the Ancient Mediterranean. London: Bloomsbury, 2024. 9781350240872. Reviewed by Allyson Blanck, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU, ab10542@nyu.edu. The Body of the Combatant in the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by Hannah-Marie Chidwick, expands a recently growing movement towards an embodied military history. Responding to

    Read more

  • Global Classics

    9–14 minutes
    ,

    Jacques A. Bromberg, Global Classics (New York: Routledge, 2021). ISBN 9780367549268. Reviewed by Goran Đurđević, University of Zadar, Croatia. goran.djurdjevich@gmail.com. In Global Classics, Jacques A. Bromberg explores the challenges facing Classics in the 21st century, integrating the global turn into classical studies. His primary concerns include the question of what makes Classics global, and perhaps

    Read more

  • Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory

    De Marre, Martine and Rajiv K. Bhola, eds., Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory, (New York: Routledge, 2022). 9780367371449. Reviewed by Stephanie Murphy, University of North Texas, Stephaniemurphy3@my.unt.edu. The past few decades have seen a growing interest in the field of historiography.1 While previous academic generations have asked the questions of “how” and “from what sources”

    Read more

  • Pliny the Elder and the Matter of Memory. An Encyclopaedic Workshop

    10–15 minutes
    ,

    Anna Anguissola, Pliny the Elder and the Matter of Memory. An Encyclopaedic Workshop. London and New York: Routledge, 2023. ISBN 9781032056227. Reviewed by Jazz Demetrioff, University at Buffalo (SUNY), jazzdeme@buffalo.edu.  Pliny the Elder’s Natural History was the ultimate source for obtaining information in order to preserve traditions and knowledge during the first century CE, when

    Read more

  • Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy

    11–17 minutes
    , ,

    Jeremy Armstrong and Sheira Cohen, eds., Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2022). 9780367631727.  Reviewed by Ulla Rajala, Stockholm University, Sweden, email rajalaullam@gmail.com. This volume originates from the conference “Exchanging Ideas: Trade, Technology, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy,” held in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2020. Not all of the

    Read more

  • Aristotelianism and Magic in Early Modern Europe: Philosophers, Experimenters, and Wonderworker

    7–10 minutes
    , ,

    Donato Verardi, ed., Aristotelianism and Magic in Early Modern Europe: Philosophers, Experimenters, and Wonderworkers (London, New York, and Dublin: Bloomsbury, 2023). 9781350121092. Reviewed by Adrien Mangili, FNS/Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès., adrien.mangili@gmail.com. This edited volume, Aristotelianism and Magic in Early Modern Europe, explores the unexpected intersections between Aristotelian philosophy and magical practices over a long

    Read more

  • Trees in Ancient Rome. Growing an Empire in the Late Republic and Early Principate.

    10–15 minutes
    , ,

    Andrew Fox, Trees in Ancient Rome. Growing an Empire in the Late Republic and Early Principate (London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). 9781350237803. Reviewed by Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod, St Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, carbuckle@stmcollege.ca. Andrew Fox’s Trees in Ancient Rome is a substantial adaptation of his 2019 PhD thesis. Through a series of

    Read more

  • Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis: Beyond Light and Darkness

    12–17 minutes

    Mattias Brand, Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis: Beyond Light and Darkness, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 102 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). ISBN 9789004510296. Reviewed by Evan Axel Andersson, University of California, Santa Barbara, eandersson@ucsb.edu. Manichaeans were often understood through the polemics of their doctrinal enemies or, less often, through the writings of their

    Read more

  • Ciris: A Poem from the Appendix Vergiliana

    8–12 minutes
    ,

    Kayachev, Boris. Ciris: A Poem from the Appendix Vergiliana. Introduction, Text, Apparatus Criticus, Translation and Commentary. Swansea, UK: Classical Press of Waales, 2020. ISBN 978-1-910589-81-6. Reviewed by Thomas R. Keith, Independent Scholar, trkeith@hotmail.com. In the hortus deliciarum (garden of delights) of Latin literature, the Ciris is a thornbush. Its authorship and date are much disputed,

    Read more

  • Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen’s Anatomical Experiments

    7–11 minutes
    ,

    Luis Alejandro Salas, Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen’s Anatomical Experiments (Leiden: Brill, 2020). 9789004439184. Reviewed by Matthew J. Chalmers, Independent Scholar, mattjchal@gmail.com. Medical literature has historically received less attention from classicists than it deserves, as is generally the case with ancient technical literature.1 Nevertheless, specialist study has flourished, especially since the important work of Heinrich

    Read more