: Hunting an Augustan Poet ed. by Steven J. Green (review)

Dunstan Lowe

Classical World, Volume 113, Number 1, Fall 2019, pp. 112-113 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/clw.2019.0065

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/740920

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“gaiaskopic” views represented in ancient literature that provide a cosmic van- tage point in contemplating who we are. The essay concludes with the reactions of lunar astronauts who actually enjoyed this view. This is an astonishing collection of beautifully written essays which are worth reading individually and especially altogether, as the overarching narrative speaks not only about Greek and Roman literature, but more importantly about the anxiety of identity in the context of longing for home, or a home, wherever and whatever that might be.

JAMES J. CLAUSS University of Washington

Steven J. Green (ed.). Grattius: Hunting an Augustan Poet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. x, 286. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-19-878901-7.

Grattius the teacher of hunting has always been an outlier to the canon of Au- gustan poetry, even more than Manilius the teacher of astrology, whose much more substantial poem found a champion in A. E. Housman. The we have is a truncated frst volume of what could have been four or fve (136), and suffers from comparison with surviving didactic works by Grattius’ most renowned Augustan contemporaries, Vergil and . The text languished with- out a printed English translation until 1654, and not until a quarter of a mil- lennium later came a second, in 1934 (235); this book contains the third. Most articles on Grattius have dwelt on technical or textual specifcs, one remarkable exception being John Henderson’s 2001 article (“Going to the Dogs/Grattius and the Augustan Subject,” Cambridge Classical Journal 47: 1–22). This book offers a panoply for anyone willing to fght in Grattius’ corner: a convenient recension of the text (David Mankin’s recent death regrettably interrupted his work on a new critical edition), a sound new translation by Green, and ten con- textualizing chapters by scholars both established and new, which range from didactic style and comparative readings to Neo-Latin receptions. In a way, this volume is a boutique version of the “companion” genre of scholarship, covering every major area of Grattian studies and concluding with a two-chapter section on his postclassical legacy. But every chapter brings something new, and several contributors hint that there is still something to pursue in future. There are reasons why it took a convergence of efforts under Green’s direc- tion as late as 2015, in a conference at University College London, to bear this fruit. Grattius’ authorial persona is discreet and generic, even in the opening invocation; the manuscript un-resoundingly fades to static amidst a catalogue of horse-breeds; the lack of a defnite date leaves the nature of intertextual con- tacts (e.g., with Vergil and Ovid) ambiguous; and there are no overt references to or to contemporary politics. But attentively, imaginatively, several contributors wring Grattius’ work for drops of the critical succulence so rel- ished in his Augustan contemporaries. Kayachev compares the text with Virgil’s Aeneid and Tsaknaki with Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, both questioning the default as- sumption that Grattius is the imitator. Green (cued by Henderson 2001) pushes for political allegories in the good trainer, his worldwide breeds and materials, and the reverent petition of Vulcan. O’Rourke reads the poem for metapoetic Reviews 113 allegories, in the form of surrogate author-fgures. Using Theocritus, Lucretius’ Epicurus, and Virgil’s Daphnis, Whitlatch reads Hagnon as an optimistic em- bodiment of hunting. Trying something new, Hutchinson examines the language of movement in the Cynegetica (appending a full list of loci) to conclude that Grattius writes less dynamically than other ancient hunting-authors, being more ethical and pragmatic in focus. Moul’s fne chapter, revelatory for most readers, examines Neo-Latin responses to Grattius but even makes noteworthy remarks about the Cynegetica itself, while Waters focuses on Christopher Wase’s meth- ods and motives for translating Grattius frst. There are signs of variance on a few minor points: Green’s appendix argues against the transposition of fourteen lines by most editors, but chapters 1 and 2 accept it; the author of the Greek Cynegetica is “Pseudo-” in chapter 5 but “Oppian” in the index of “References to Other Authors.” Yet the volume is coherent in its overall project, with usefully harmonizing cross-references. This book is a landmark event in Grattian studies, and likely to remain standard for many years. This makes it a valuable resource for all scholars of Roman didactic verse, and will interest anyone who wants to see the best efforts at sharing with Grattius the high status of other Augustan poets.

DUNSTAN LOWE University of Kent

Patricia A. Rosenmeyer. The Language of Ruins: Greek and Latin Inscriptions on the Memnon Colossus. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xx, 265. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-19-062631-0.

Rosenmeyer focuses on the statue in Egyptian Thebes identifed as the colossus of Memnon and surveys ancient visitors’ reactions to it, in particular the call that it often made to its mother Eos (Dawn) in the morning. Her book falls into three sections. Chapters 1-3 give background, and discuss the identities of the visi- tors and inscriptions that they leave on the colossus. Chapters 4-5 focus on two subsets of the inscriptions: those that reflect the Homeric Memnon and those linked to Sappho. In chapter 6 reactions of German and English Romantic poets to Memnon and to the statue known as Ozymandias are surveyed. The book concludes with three appendices: diagrams of the inscriptions on the colossus; the text and translation of the inscriptions; and an index of the relevant names. Bibliography and an index follow. Chapter 1 opens with Richard Pococke’s description of the two colossi at Thebes, then quotes the earliest and latest datable ancient inscriptions on Mem- non—by Servius Clemens, who wrote in Latin c. 20 ce, and Falernus, who composed elegiac couplets in Greek c. 205 ce. Within this 200-year span, 108 in- scriptions recorded visits of over 90 visitors—centurions, prefects, strategoi; pre- fects’ wives, women in Hadrian’s circle (including his wife); sophists and poets. The nature of these visits to the colossus is the subject of chapter 2, in which Rosenmeyer joins the debate about travel to sanctuaries in the Roman em- pire: was it primarily religious, for sightseeing, or scholarly? After she summa- rizes the scholarship, she examines the language that the inscribers use to record their reactions to hearing Memnon’s cry. She concludes that their motivations