MLR, 96. I, 2001 MLR, 96. I, 2001 Racine's readingsin Tacitus'sAnnals,Suetonius'sLivesoftheTwelve Caesars, Cassius Dio's Roman History (throughXiphilinus's resume of the missingbooks), and also in Plinyand Seneca. He successfullyshowshow Racine's 'imitationcreatrice'exploited to dramatic ends the history of imperial ambition after the death of Augustus, instilling the principal roles of the play with an exemplary moral and political significancein relationto rightruleand tyranny,the naturenurturedebate, and the education of the Prince. The next two chapters are yet more interesting. The first situates the play's dispossessed young lovers within contemporary tragic and pastoralconventions;the second, concerned withJunie's finalflightinto theTemple of Vesta, reveals how Albine's closing narrativedrawson Augustanpanegyric and the cult of Vesta as characterized in Ovid's Fasti.Thus Junie, as the last direct descendant of Augustus, preserves the link with a golden age of Imperial rule. By joining the traditionalguardiansof the sacredflame of a Rome presentlyimperilled by Neron's tyranny,she transformsthe tragic denouement into political and moral triumph. Less convincing is the closing chapter dedicated to a comparison of Britannicus with Moliere's DomJuanin which Neron is compared with Dom Juan, Burrhuswith Sganarelle,Junie with Charlotte,and the statueof Augustuswith that of the Commandeur.Here, loose analogywithoutthe cogency ofpreviousdiscussion leads disappointingly to the conclusion that the lasting 'actualite' of both plays derivesfrom theirillustrationof the dangersinherent in 'le troublepassionnel erige en principe de vie' (p. 291). So emphaticallypoliticala readingof the play, as a post-Cornelianmeditation on monarchical governance and on the nature and sourcesof violence and tyranny,is intended to counter what Schroder condemns as 'la myopie des analysespsychologiques '. However he himself seems no less purblindin overlookingthe importance of Racine's evocation in the FirstPrefaceto Britannicus of the traditionaldistinctions to be drawn between history and the biographical 'Life'. In defiance of the elder dramatist'sinsistence that the dignity of tragedy was grounded in history 'proper' and 'les grands interets d'Etat', Racine famously emphasized his originality in looking to the more intimate moral perspectivesof the 'Lives'tradition:'IIne s'agit point dans ma tragedie des affairesdu dehors. Neron est ici dans son particulieret dans sa famille'. Since one of Racine's major differences with his Cornelian detractorsturned on what constituted an appropriatesource for Roman tragedy, these distinctions, familiar to all through Plutarch's preamble to his 'Life of Alexander', should have been taken into account in a historico-politicalreading of Britannicus such as this. LONDON DAVID CLARKE Towards a Cultural Philology: 'Phedre' andtheConstruction of 'Racine'.By AMY WYGANT. Oxford:Legenda. I999. 158pp. Amy Wygant'sconcise interdisciplinarystudy, 'an analysisof how one particularly numinous cultural object has been perceived to mean' [sic] (p. 7), is divided into four sections:'music', 'design', 'garden', and 'sublime'.It would be almost correct, if something of a simplification,to suggestthat she takesa single line from Phedre as the startingpoint for each of them, and then exploresits ramificationsin the light of the discipline which informs the chapter. The first three certainly seem to follow that principle, with a wide-angled approach gradually and tellingly brought into focus. Wygant starts with 'La fille de Minos et de Pasiphae' and ingeniously considersthe line's musicalitywith referenceto the problem of rhyme posed by the name 'Phedre',beforedetectingthe absenceofmelosfromcontemporarytranslations Racine's readingsin Tacitus'sAnnals,Suetonius'sLivesoftheTwelve Caesars, Cassius Dio's Roman History (throughXiphilinus's resume of the missingbooks), and also in Plinyand Seneca. He successfullyshowshow Racine's 'imitationcreatrice'exploited to dramatic ends the history of imperial ambition after the death of Augustus, instilling the principal roles of the play with an exemplary moral and political significancein relationto rightruleand tyranny,the naturenurturedebate, and the education of the Prince. The next two chapters are yet more interesting. The first situates the play's dispossessed young lovers within contemporary tragic and pastoralconventions;the second, concerned withJunie's finalflightinto theTemple of Vesta, reveals how Albine's closing narrativedrawson Augustanpanegyric and the cult of Vesta as characterized in Ovid's Fasti.Thus Junie, as the last direct descendant of Augustus, preserves the link with a golden age of Imperial rule. By joining the traditionalguardiansof the sacredflame of a Rome presentlyimperilled by Neron's tyranny,she transformsthe tragic denouement into political and moral triumph. Less convincing is the closing...