Greek Myths in Roman Art and Culture: Imagery, Values and Identity in Italy 50 B.C.–A.D. 250 by Z. Newby

Abstract

200 PHOENIX rejected success in the institutions of the Roman state, it fostered the emergence of what Watts aptly calls a new “drop-out culture” (149–168). Young élite Christians across the empire shocked their families by consciously rejecting marriage and the material rewards of secular careers. Initially, these unwashed radicals had little influence on imperial policy. But as the fourth century progressed, their power increased. Some of them became bishops of the Christian church. Others became famous spiritual advisers and ascetics. According to Watts, it was the growing influence of this new generation of radicals that significantly contributed to the hardening of religious attitudes in the 380s and 390s. There is much that is attractive about Watts’s depiction of the more rigorist Christian culture of the late fourth century. It is clear that the accumulating political power of the church and the growing spiritual authority of its ascetic superstars enabled militant groups to implement anti-pagan and anti-Jewish measures that one generation earlier would have been prevented by the imperial government. But is it really a generational shift that was at play here? As Watts himself observes, already in the 330s and 340s, some Christian intellectuals envisaged a more energetic push for de-paganization (46–47, 86–88). Conversely, the great majority of élite males born in the 330s and 340s followed the same path as their predecessors had one generation earlier. High officials such as the pagan nobilis Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (who carefully included many Christian high officials amongst the recipients of his published correspondence) or the Christian homo nouus Flavius Manlius Theodorus (to whom Augustine dedicated his De beata uita, but whom he later denounced as “a man of monstrous egotism” [Conf. 7.9.1]) were just as career-obsessed and religiously tolerant as the protagonists of Watts’s study. They look very much at home in the self-satisfied world of the fourth century, marked by “storehouses full of gold coins, elaborate dinner parties . . ., public orations before emperors, and ceremonies commemorating officeholders” (220). From this perspective, the crude force of Christian numbers may have been as important in propelling the late fourth-century escalation of radicalism as the biographical experiences of a new generation of activists. But none of this should be taken to diminish the value of this book. The Final Pagan Generation offers an innovative, beautifully written, and meticulously up-to-date social and political history of the fourth century. By restoring the perspective of a group of élite males who lived through this period of transformation, this elegant and humane book enables us to grasp the concrete ways in which religious change was experienced in antiquity. University of Maryland John Weisweiler Greek Myths in Roman Art and Culture: Imagery, Values and Identity in Italy 50 b.c.–a.d. 250. By Z. Newby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2016. Pp. xx, 387, 117 b/w figures, and 15 color plates. The role of Greek mythology in Roman culture has received much attention in classical studies, with scholars seeking lost Greek visual and textual “prototypes” or analogies, or, more recently, focusing on the effects of “Romanization” on these borrowed subjects. Newby approaches this topic from the perspective of lived experience, asking how the inhabitants of Roman Italy strategically used Greek myths “in sites of social BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 201 interaction and self-representation” (7) to create a multivalent social discourse in particular contexts. She explores a variety of interpretive modes, including “connoisseurship, paideia, elevation, escapism, exemplum, paradigm and analogy” (30). Ultimately exemplarity is her answer, although myth also offered viewers ways to connect personally with human experiences, such as fear or love. Newby focuses on Roman Italy, mostly the urbs and the bay of Naples. She pays close attention to viewing contexts, exploring Greek myth in sculpture and wall-painting from villas, ekphrastic literature, and tomb decoration, noting a general preference for subject over style (or, at times, quality). Throughout, she aims not to bend the evidence to fit a predetermined assessment. Each chapter explores myth in various settings. Newby begins (“Introduction: Greek Myths, Roman Lives”) with a discussion of her scope, introducing primary questions and themes. Chapter One...