Reviews
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Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden: (Re)Framing the Hortus
10–15 minutesVictoria Austen, Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden: (Re)Framing the Hortus (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). 9781350265189. Reviewed by A.L. McMichael, Barnard College, amcmicha@barnard.edu. Ostensibly, ancient gardens are places that no longer exist. Yet in Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden, author Victoria Austen touches on many of the ways that we
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Cosa: The Sculpture and Furnishings in Stone and Marble
5–8 minutesJacquelyn Collins-Clinton, Cosa: The Sculpture and Furnishings in Stone and Marble (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020). 9780472131594. Reviewed by Becca Gaborek, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, rmgab@email.unc.edu. Jacquelyn Collins-Clinton’s meticulously crafted catalogue is an invaluable complement to existing publications on Cosa. It represents decades worth of research on the topic of
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Roman Imperial Portrait Practice in the Second Century AD: Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger
9–13 minutesChristian Niederhuber, Roman Imperial Portrait Practice in the Second Century AD: Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger, Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). 9780192845658. Reviewed by Kira Jones, independent scholar, kirakjones@gmail.com. Portraits of notable individuals were ubiquitous throughout Rome, and none more so than those of the imperial family. They could
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Rome and the Colonial City: Rethinking the Grid
11–16 minutesSofia Greaves and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, eds., Rome and the Colonial City: Rethinking the Grid (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2022). 9781789257809. Reviewed by Maarten Schmaal, University of Groningen, m.p.schmaal@rug.nl. This hefty volume is one of the outputs of the ‘Impact of the Ancient City’ project (funded by the European Research Council). It consists of the proceedings of
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Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity: The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis in the Modern Imagination
8–11 minutesMarco Benoît Carbone, Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity: The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis in the Modern Imagination (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022). 9781350118201. Reviewed by Patricia Y. Hatcher, CUNY Graduate Center, phatcher@gradcenter.cuny.edu. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciahatcher/Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fallaxharuspex.bsky.social Almost one hundred years ago, Mikhail Bakhtin developed the theory of chronotope, the idea that “…places [are] defined
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Narrating Power and Authority in Late Antique and Medieval Hagiography across East and West
11–17 minutesGhazzal Dabiri, ed., Narrating Power and Authority in Late Antique and Medieval Hagiography across East and West (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021). 9782503590653. Reviewed by Richard Broome, University of Leeds, rickybroome@hotmail.com. Hagiography—a genre once seen as containing texts that had to be mined for historical nuggets buried within superstitious nonsense—has become one of the most studied genres
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Plutarch: On the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon
9–13 minutesLuisa Lesage Gárriga. Plutarch: On the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon: Introduction, Edition, English Translation, and Commentary to the Critical Edition, Brill’s Plutarch Studies 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2021). 9789004458079. Reviewed by Chance E. Bonar, Tufts University (chance.bonar@tufts.edu). Plutarch’s literary repertoire is vast and at times unwieldy, particularly given the multiple hats
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Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says It’s a Dead Language?
8–11 minutesHenryk Hoffmann, Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says It’s a Dead Language? (Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2022). 9781622739493. Reviewed by Garrett Dome, independent scholar, gdome@gwu.edu. Henryk Hoffmann’s latest reference book, Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says It’s a Dead Language?, argues, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the Latin language is not dead. The book offers readers a delightful
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Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity
7–11 minutesSara Derbew, Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2022). 9781108492588. Reviewed by Javal Coleman, University of Texas, javalac21@utexas.edu. Race and racism in the study of Classics continues to remain a highly contested field, from Tenney Frank’s “Race Mixture in the Roman Empire” to Benjamin Isaac’s The Invention of Race in Classical Antiquity.1 Sara
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Did God Care? Providence, Dualism, and Will in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy
10–15 minutesDylan M. Burns, Did God Care? Providence, Dualism, and Will in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2020). 9789004432970. Trevor Jordan Davis, Kilgore College, tdavis@kilgore.edu. Providence is a concept that remains central to a variety of faiths across the world and as a topic of scholarly inquiry by historians of religion and the
Rhea Classical Reviews 