Reviews
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Dogs in the Athenian Agora
5–7 minutesColin M. Whiting, Dogs in the Athenian Agora. Agora Picture Book 28 (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2022). 9780876616468. https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/publications/book/?i=9780876616468. Reviewed by Yusi Liu, Bryn Mawr College, yliu2@brynmawr.edu. Since 1931, the Athenian Agora excavations conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) have continuously enriched our understanding of ancient Greece and the broader Mediterranean region. The ASCSA publishes the materials from the Agora excavations in Hesperia and the Athenian…
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The Aeneid and the Modern World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vergil’s Epic in the 20th and 21st Centuries
8–12 minutesJ. R. O’Neill and Adam Rigoni, eds., The Aeneid and the Modern World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vergil’s Epic in the 20th and 21st Centuries (London: Routledge, 2022). 9781000538823. Reviewed by Alicia Matz, San Diego State University, amatz@sdsu.edu. O’Neill and Rigone begin The Aeneid and the Modern World with the question, “Why do we need another book on the Aeneid?” It is true that the Aeneid is one of the most discussed texts from antiquity. Yet…
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Aristotle and the Animals: The Logos of Life Itself
12–18 minutesClaudia Zatta, Aristotle and the Animals: The Logos of Life Itself (London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2022). 9780367409494. Reviewed by Charissa A. Jaeger-Sanders, The Graduate Theological Union, cjaeger-sanders@ses.gtu.edu. In Aristotle and the Animals: The Logos of Life Itself, Claudia Zatta offers a masterful, nuanced, intense philological dive into the word choices that make up Aristotle’s philosophy of science and life, particularly his zoocentric understanding of animals and their connections to humans. Zatta endeavors to…
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Reconstructing Satyr Drama
10–14 minutesAndreas P. Antonopoulos, Menelaos M. Christopoulos, and George W. M. Harrison, eds., Reconstructing Satyr Drama (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021). 9783110725216. Reviewed by Joshua A. Streeter, The Ohio State University, joshua.a.streeter@gmail.com. It is a welcome irony that the massive Reconstructing Satyr Drama, volume 12 of De Gruyter’s MythosEikonPoiesis series, concerns the dramatic genre for which we have the scarcest evidence. In 2016, Andreas P. Antonopoulos and Menelaos M. Christopoulos organized a conference in Patras (Greek Satyr…
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Amor Belli: Love and Strife in Lucan’s Bellum Civile
14–21 minutesGiulio Celotto, Amor Belli: Love and Strife in Lucan’s Bellum Civile (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022). 9780472132874. Reviewed by Kathleen Cruz, University of California, Davis, kancruz@ucdavis.edu. In Amor Belli: Love and Strife in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, Giulio Celotto argues that Lucan’s poem can be profitably understood as a unified work through its guiding pursuit of the dialectic between Love and Strife as systematized in Empedoclean philosophy. Over an introduction, five chapters, and…
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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 engage with ephemeral garden spaces—collective memory, texts, legal documents, wills, songs, poems, narratives, medicinal instructions, images, oral traditions, stories, and…
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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 the Roman site’s sculpture and furnishings in stone and marble, which began as her 1970 doctoral dissertation directed by Otto…
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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 be made of metal, marble, precious stone, paint, or even appear as graffiti; they were on display in private homes…
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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 the ‘Rome and the Colonial City’ conference, which was held under the umbrella of this project in January 2020 at…
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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 by ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships’ expressed through their literary renown” (p. 15). This intriguing device helps…
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