Reviews
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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
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The Search for the Self in Statius’ Thebaid. Identity, Intertext and the Sublime
8–12 minutesJean-Michel Hulls, The Search for the Self in Statius’ Thebaid. Identity, Intertext and the Sublime (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021). 9783110717785. Reviewed by François Mottais, Université Paris Nanterre / École nationale des chartes, fmottais@parisnanterre.fr. Jean-Michel Hulls presents here a study of the construction of a certain number of characters from the Thebaid, primarily approached from the
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Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Ancient Rhetoric
7–11 minutesSophia Papaioannou, Andreas Serafim, and Michael Edwards, eds., Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Ancient Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 2022). 9789004373655. Reviewed by Mary Anastasi, University of California, Los Angeles, mkanastasi@ucla.edu. It is all too easy to think of rhetoric as the weaker counterpart of real intellectual pursuits. But Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Ancient
Rhea Classical Reviews 