Reviews
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Mediterranean Timescapes: Chronological Age and Cultural Practice in the Roman Empire
20–29 minutesRay Laurence and Francesco Trifilò, Mediterranean Timescapes: Chronological Age and Cultural Practice in the Roman Empire (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). 9781138288751. Reviewed by Eleanor M. Vannan, University of Victoria, eleanormvannan@gmail.com. Historians have long privileged written sources as the paramount form of primary source evidence. Yet, the historiographical role of epigraphy in studying the ancient world has been a matter of prolonged controversy. As Bodel points out, we have moved past the view that the study of epigraphy…
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Aspar and the Struggle for the Eastern Roman Empire, AD 421–71
8–12 minutesRonald A. Bleeker, Aspar and the Struggle for the Eastern Roman Empire, AD 421–71 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2022). 9781350279261. Reviewed by Stuart McCunn, University of New Haven, smccunn@newhaven.edu. Ronald A. Bleeker’s Aspar and the Struggle for the Eastern Roman Empire, AD 421–71 is the first English-language biography of the East Roman warlord and patrician Aspar. Students of the fifth century will almost certainly recognize the name of the man who served as the chief power…
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Roman Self-Representation and the Lukan Kingdom of God
17–26 minutesMichael Kochenash, Roman Self-Representation and the Lukan Kingdom of God (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020). 9781978707351. Reviewed by Robert D. Heaton, Anderson University, rdheaton@anderson.edu. Recent decades have witnessed no shortage of attempts to contextualize the two Lukan volumes that loom large over early Christian historiography. In particular, scholars have attempted to elucidate, among other worthy subjects, (1) the evangelist’s sources, (2) his proximity to the stories he narrates, and (3) his orientation with respect to the reigning…
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Atomism in the Aeneid: Physics, Politics, and Cosmological Disorder
7–10 minutesMatthew M. Gorey, Atomism in the Aeneid: Physics, Politics, and Cosmological Disorder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). 9780197518748. Reviewed by Robert E. Hedrick, III, University of South Florida, hedrick@usf.edu. Matthew Gorey’s recent monograph, Atomism in the Aeneid, presents an intriguing study of philosophical allusions in Virgil’s epic. The author argues that Virgil engages with Epicureanism as filtered through Lucretius’s De rerum natura not just as poetry but as philosophy. He claims that the poet…
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Roman Ionia: Constructions of Cultural Identity in Western Asia Minor
7–11 minutesMartin Hallmannsecker, Roman Ionia: Constructions of Cultural Identity in Western Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). 9781009150187, 9781009158510. Reviewed by Joshua P. Nudell, Truman State University, jpnudell@gmail.com. Archaic Ionia has traditionally received the bulk of attention in Anglophone scholarship when compared to the region’s later history. This earlier period, it is often supposed, was when the cities of Ionia were free bastions of Greek culture where literature and philosophy flourished before being eclipsed by…
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Performing Gods in Classical Antiquity and the Age of Shakespeare
8–12 minutesDustin W. Dixon and John S. Garrison, Performing Gods in Classical Antiquity and the Age of Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). 9781350098145. Reviewed by Amy K. Vandervelde, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, amykv2@illinois.edu. Dixon and Garrison posit that gods onstage can open doors to new ways of thinking about plays, focusing on cases from the classical world to the early modern era. The authors explain that the inclusion of gods within plays enhances metatheatricality, pointing…
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Urban Space between the Roman Age and Late Antiquity: Continuity, Discontinuity and Changes
12–19 minutesArabelle Cortese and Giulia Fioratto, eds., Urban Space between the Roman Age and Late Antiquity: Continuity, Discontinuity and Changes (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2022). 9783795436605. Reviewed by Carolyn T. La Rocco, Universität Hamburg, clr9@st-andrews.ac.uk. Urban Space between the Roman Age and Late Antiquity is a collation of the Acts of the International Workshop at the University of Regensburg (13–14 February 2020). Edited by Arabella Cortese and Giulia Fioratto, the volume has two aims: first, to…
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Dictator: The Evolution of the Roman Dictatorship
5–8 minutesMark B. Wilson, Dictator: The Evolution of the Roman Dictatorship (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021). 9780472132669. Reviewed by Peta Greenfield, The University of Sydney, peta.greenfield@sydney.edu.au. In Dictator, Wilson sets out to offer a full overview of the Roman dictatorship with an eye to understanding the position within the context of a changing Republic. The culminating aim is to reassess the dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar with a view to what had come before.…
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The Egyptian Mummies and Coffins of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science
17–26 minutesMichele L. Koons and Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod, eds., The Egyptian Mummies and Coffins of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 2021). 9781646421367. Reviewed by Sarah E. Wenner, Cincinnati Art Museum, sarah.wenner@cincyart.org. In the introduction to this small but fantastically detailed collection of papers about the Egyptian mummies and coffins at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS), Michele Koons states that the book’s goal is to provide “a…
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The Origins of Roman Concrete Construction in Roman Architecture: Technology and Society in Republican Italy
15–22 minutesMarcello Mogetta, The Origins of Roman Concrete Construction in Roman Architecture: Technology and Society in Republican Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 9781108845687. Reviewed by Amanda K. Pavlick, Xavier University, pavlicka@xavier.edu. Any archaeologist knows the need for typologies and chronologies; the amount of data generated by survey and excavation cries out for fixed points of dating to help us make sense of the material we find. Architecture has often given some of this guidance, and handbooks, such…
Rhea Classical Reviews 