Reviews
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Gaming Greekness: Cultural Agonism among Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire
9–14 minutesAllan T. Georgia, Gaming Greekness: Cultural Agonism among Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2020). 9781463241230. Reviewed by Elizabeth R. Davis, Brown University, elizabeth_r_davis@brown.edu. The fraught interactions between pagans, Christians, and Jews throughout the centuries of the Roman Empire have long been a rich field of scholarly inquiry. Georgia’s monograph is a sophisticated contribution to the field, taking up the slippery notion of “Greekness” as it functions in the literature of…
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Milesian Islands: The Fortified Installations in the Insular Environment of Miletus in the Aegean in Context
13–20 minutesKonstantinos Sarantidis. Milesian Islands: The Fortified Installations in the Insular Environment of Miletus in the Aegean in Context. Thiasos Monographie 15 (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2020). 9788854910737; 9788854910652. Reviewed by Christina DiFabio, Koç University, cdifabio@umich.edu. Given modern national borders, regional studies in Mediterranean archaeology can often be defined within one modern country, even if a sphere of interaction in antiquity would now encompass two modern nations. This situation is particularly relevant for the region of the…
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Monsters in Greek Literature
9–13 minutesFiona Mitchell, Monsters in Greek Literature: Aberrant Bodies in Ancient Greek Cosmogony, Ethnography, and Biology (New York: Routledge, 2021). 9780367556464 Reviewed by Grace Zanotti, Milken Community School, gracemzanotti@gmail.com In the introduction to Monsters in Greek Literature: Aberrant Bodies in Ancient Greek Cosmogony, Ethnography, and Biology, Fiona Mitchell sets out her purpose clearly: she will examine representations of monsters in Greek literature in order to better understand “the ways in which ancient Greek authors delineated the…
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Exploring the Mid-Republican Origins of Roman Military Administration: With Stylus and Spear
17–25 minutesElizabeth H. Pearson, Exploring the Mid-Republican Origins of Roman Military Administration: With Stylus and Spear (London and New York: Routledge, 2021). 9780367820732. Reviewed by Dominic Machado, College of the Holy Cross, dmachado@holycross.edu How was Rome able to conquer the majority of the Mediterranean basin in a little over a century? Beginning with Polybius, countless observers of the Roman army have offered their thoughts on the subject. Rome’s cultural values, political systems, tactical superiority, and even…
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Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire
10–15 minutesCharles Goldberg, Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire (London and New York: Routledge, 2021). 0367480468, 9780367480462. Reviewed by Ashley L. Bacchi, Starr King School for the Ministry, ashleylb@sksm.edu. The Roman Empire has, unfortunately, been co-opted in the imagination of white supremacists as a paradigm for white cisgender-heterosexual-male strength, a strength they imagine as glorifying unmitigated violence and domination over the “other.” The model of masculinity that Charles Goldberg reveals in this book demonstrates…
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Julian and Christianity: Revisiting the Constantinian Revolution
14–21 minutesDavid Neal Greenwood, Julian and Christianity: Revisiting the Constantinian Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021). 9781501755484. Reviewed by Jeremy J. Swist, Brandeis University, jeremswist@brandeis.edu. The emperor Julian, dubbed “the Apostate” by his detractors for rejecting the faith of his upbringing and attempting to stop the spread of the Christian “pandemic” accelerated by his uncle Constantine and his sons, reigned as sole Augustus only from November 361 CE to his death in battle against the Sassanid…
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Greek Mythology: The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook
9–13 minutesLiv Albert, Greek Mythology: The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook (New York: Adams Media, 2021). 9781474461610; 9781507215494. Reviewed by Debby Sneed, California State University, Long Beach, debby.sneed@csulb.edu. I have anticipated Liv Albert’s handbook on Greek mythology since I became aware of her successful podcast, “Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby!”. The podcast format encourages storytelling rather than dry academic presentations of ancient source material, and Albert’s handbook adheres to that same spirit: it presents ancient Greek…
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The Stoic Theory of Beauty
14–21 minutesAistė Čelkytė, The Stoic Theory of Beauty (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020). 9781474461610; 9781474461634. Reviewed by Michael McOsker, Institut für Altertumskunde, Universität zu Köln, mmcosker@umich.edu. What is good about peacock tail feathers? And what do they have in common with the sage, who is the only truly beautiful person? This book by Aistė Čelkytė, a revision of her PhD thesis (“Chrysippus on the Beautiful: Studies in a Stoic Conception of Aesthetic Properties,” Univ. of Edinburgh),…
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Oil, Wine, and the Cultural Economy of Ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the Archaic Era
12–18 minutesCatherine E. Pratt, Oil, Wine, and the Cultural Economy of Ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the Archaic Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 9781108835640. Reviewed by Evan Vance, University of California, Berkeley, evan.j.vance@berkeley.edu. How did oil and wine become constitutive features of Greek culture, both within the Greek peninsula and in the broader Mediterranean? Pratt pursues this question by tracing the production, consumption, and movement of oil and wine over five geographic and…
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The Story of Garum
11–16 minutesSally Grainger. The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World. Routledge: London, 2021. 9781138284074; 9781315269825. Reviewed by Christopher Stedman Parmenter, University of Pennsylvania, csparment@gmail.com. Commodities bring the world together.1 This is the principle that undergirds commodity biography, the transnational study of how the production, transport, and consumption of material goods link (in the words of Sidney Mintz) “people unknown to one another . . . through space and time.”2…
Rhea Classical Reviews 