Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art by Kristen Seaman

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 365 helpful in demonstrating the continuity and changes in trends of reuse over time, as does the brief epilogue that brings the concept of upcycling into the present day with a short case study on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that stands before the Greek Parliament Building in Syntagma Square, Athens. Here Rous demonstrates that upcycling is not a term beholden to a particular time or place. Overall, Rous’s book and her articulation of the concept of upcycling are important contributions to the fields of archaeology and ancient history. Throughout, she highlights the inherent flexibility of the term and clearly distinguishes it from the more neutral “reuse” and the value-laden “spolia.” Attention to social memory is a crucial part of Rous’s conception of upcycling and although it is not laid out as convincingly as the concept of upcycling itself, it remains an important avenue for thinking through the ramifications of deciding if something is upcycling, recycling, or spolia. Ultimately, Rous’s promotion of upcycling as a means of gaining traction on specific types of ancient reuse is a compelling model for scholars examining reuse, visibility, and deliberate choice in the archaeological record. College of William and Mary Jessica Paga Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art. By Kristen Seaman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2020. Pp. xv, 186, 8 color plates. In this volume K. Seaman explores innovations in Hellenistic art, which she connects with the growing impact of rhetorical exercises (progymnasmata) in the intellectual training of Greek artists and viewers. She begins by examining the major theories concerning these innovations (Chapter One) and criticizes the assumption that they resulted from cultural hybridization and the encounter of Greek artists with Egyptian or Near Eastern culture, suggesting rather that the artworks produced at Hellenistic courts were marked by the artists’ familiarity with rhetorical exercises. She offers three case studies , each presenting a famous Hellenistic work of art as the visual equivalent of one of the progymnasmata: the Telephus Frieze of the Pergamon Altar as the equivalent of a diegema, narration (Chapter Two); a reading of the so-called “Apotheosis of Homer” as an enkomion involving ethopoiia (Chapter Three); and a study of the connections between Sosus’ Asarotos oikos and ekphrasis (Chapter Four). This book is a welcome attempt at bridging the gap between the study of visual art and literary works.1 However, a caveat seems necessary: although there is probably no hybridization in the three artworks Seaman studies, other scholars have effectively shown that some literary works and visual creations of Hellenistic Alexandria were influenced by the encounter with Egyptian culture and contain references to Egyptian language or religion.2 It seems to me that many factors should be taken into account when trying to explain the innovations of Hellenistic art, and that hybridization has a rightful place among them. 1 See G. Zanker, Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art (Madison 2004); P. Linant de Bellefonds and É. Prioux, Voir les mythes (Paris 2017). 2 For example, P. Moreno, Scultura ellenistica 1 (Rome 1994) 326–329; J. Trinquier, “La mosaı̈que Barberini de Palestrina et l’image de la faune éthiopienne dans l’Égypte lagide,” in F.-H. Massa-Pairault and G. Sauron, Images et modernité hellénistiques (Rome 2007) 23–60. 366 PHOENIX Chapter One presents a detailed analysis of the Telephus Frieze. Seaman argues that the Frieze should be understood as a diegema and, more specifically, as a bios of Telephus. She also contends that this visual narration was a complete innovation in Greek art (e.g., 52). Although Pergamene art certainly brings narration to an entirely new level, I am not convinced by Seaman’s theory on the absence of narratives in earlier Greek art: see, for example, the widely accepted reconstruction of the sequence of metopes on the South Side of the Athenian Treasury in Delphi. I also disagree with the statement (55) that the scenes on the “Homeric bowl” showing the death of the suitors3 are in the wrong order. It is true that the archaeological drawing reproduced by Seaman encourages this conclusion by showing, from left to right, scenes corresponding to: (a) Od. 22...