Hellenistic Court Research Articles

Money and Trust at the Hellenistic Court

Money and Trust at the Hellenistic Court

Enoch the Explorer: 1 Enoch 17–36 in Its Hellenistic Context

Abstract The journeys undertaken by the antediluvian patriarch Enoch, in 1 Enoch 17–36, engage closely with a well-known contemporary practice of Hellenistic courts: the dispatching of expeditions of exploration. Such reframing can situate this early Jewish apocalypse more fully within its third-century BCE intellectual, cultural, and political ecosystem and also make space for Judean thought in the history of ancient geography.

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

The Hellenistic Court: Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra. Edited by AndrewErskine, LloydLlewellyn‐Jones, and ShaneWallace. Pp. xxx, 442, The Classical Press of Wales, 2017, £64.00.

The Hellenistic Court: Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra. Edited by AndrewErskine, LloydLlewellyn‐Jones, and ShaneWallace. Pp. xxx, 442, The Classical Press of Wales, 2017, £64.00.

The Hellenistic Court. Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra ed. by Andrew Erskine, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Shane Wallace

The Hellenistic Court. Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra ed. by Andrew Erskine, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Shane Wallace

Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art by Kristen Seaman

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...

Herod the Great and the Iudicium Domesticum: Legal Pluralism to Die For

ABSTRACTThe central question under consideration in this article is whether the various trials to which Herod, the well-known king of Judaea, subjected family members qualify as instances of the Roman iudicium domesticum. Modern debate among legal historians has been shaped by the views of two scholars in particular, Wolfgang Kunkel, who argues that one of them so qualifies, and Alfredo Mordechai Rabello, who contends that the rest do not, asserting that Herod simply followed the rules and procedures associated with a Hellenistic court. For the first time in modern scholarship, this article scrutinizes in detail all six examples of such trials. By itself, the evidence, though relatively copious, does not permit us to resolve this dispute as clearly and unambiguously as we would like. Much depends, for example, on precisely how one wishes to define the institution in question. Recent scholarly advances in the area of legal pluralism, however, point in the direction of a solution that does justice to both sides of this debate, as well as, perhaps, to Herod himself.

The Hellenistic Court: Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra by Andrew Erskine Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Shane Wallace

The Hellenistic Court: Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra by Andrew Erskine Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Shane Wallace

Σύντροφος: un Terme Technique Macédonien

Σύντροφος is a term familiar to epigraphists who study Greek inscriptions of the Roman period, especially from Asia Minor, and also to epigraphists and historians of the Hellenistic period. In the former case the term applies to actual foster brothers, to wit children who have been reared together, but also to persons engaged in other forms of professional or affective relationships. Students of the Hellenistic period, on the other hand, are in disagreement. Some interpret this term as an honorific title denoting a fictitious kinship with the king, while others maintain that it qualifies persons of the same age as the king who have actually been brought up with him. The institution of syntrophoi is attested in almost all Hellenistic courts with the exception of the Ptolemies. In Macedonia the relevant evidence extends from the reign of Philip II to that of Philip V. The parallelism between courtly and civic educa- tional institutions (βασιλικοὶ παῖδες and παῖδες in the civic gymnasia, βασιλικοὶ κυνηγοὶ and civic ἔφηβοι, βασιλικοὶ νεανίσκοι and νέοι in the civic gymnasia) ought to have prepared us to expect a civic equivalent to royal σύντροφοι. Such an equivalent is now attested in Philip V’s diagramma regulating military ser- vice. It appears thus that the Macedonian “civic” syntropohoi, like the Spartan mothakes, were boys of inferior social or financial status who were raised in the family of well-to-do boys of the same age, were thus enabled to receive the same education as they in the gymnasia, and could in case of need replace their foster brothers in their miltary obligations.

Arsino of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life by Elizabeth Donnelly CarneyBerenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt by Dee L. Clayman

376 BOOK REVIEWS house), and structurally similar actions (e.g. violent revenge) are cyclically repeated .Ritualbringsresolutionbydifferentiatingtheopposites:spaceisreclaimed by the community, and cyclical, repetitive suffering gives way to permanent wellbeing . The book also offers a wealth of insights into topics related to the interplay betweenthelimitednessofritualandtheunlimitednessofmonetizedwealth.Isingle out the discussion of “form-parallelism”—the juxtaposition of words or phrases that are parallel and often antithetical—as a vehicle for conveying ideas both ofantithesisand ofa deeper unity. For instance, in Septem 911–14 form-parallelism in lamentation for the fratricidal brothers assimilates their unnatural opposition to their unnatural unity in both origin (incest) and death. In Aeschylus, thisrhetorical device signifies the deferral or subversionof completion byemphasizing that the opposites are bound together in endless tension— a conception (also Heraclitean) associated with the homogenizing power of money, which assimilatesdifferentcommoditiesby remainingin itselfalways thesame. Thisisanimportantwork that redefinesour conceptionofcentral categories ofearlyGreekthought:space,time,ritual,andmoney.Itwillbeofinteresttoscholarsandadvancedstudentsworkingin theareasofclassical Greekliterature,Greek history, philosophy, and theatre.1 VAYOS LIAPIS Open University of Cyprus, vayos.liapis@ouc.ac.cy * * * * * Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life. By ELIZABETH DONNELLY CARNEY. WomeninAntiquity.Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2013.Pp.215,Hardcover, $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-536552-8. Paperback, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-19-536551-1. 1 Though generally well produced, the volume has a high number of typos. Most are relatively unobtrusive (e.g., “facilated,” p. 119; Κύκλο for Κύκλō and στεφάνō, p. 227). In a few cases, however, they may hinder comprehension (e.g., “seeing gain,” p. 198; “penalties imposed the polis,” p. 251; “benefaction combined with hostility,” p. 268). On p. 211 deleten.22(itreappears,correctly,asn.23).Thecoinage“endophony”(=intrafamilialmurder,from endon and phonos) can be misleading, esp. since “antiphony” is also used in the book. BOOK REVIEWS 377 Berenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt. By DEE L.CLAYMAN. Women in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 270, Hardcover, $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-537088-1. Paperback, $27.95. ISBN 978-0-19-537089-8. Feminism has stimulated classical research in some unexpected ways: it has, for instance, added credibility to Herodotus’s notions of historiography by confirming that women, individually as well as socially, could, and did, influence power politics,while atthe same time makingThucydides’restrictiveemphasisonmales in political or military authority look both arbitrary and, worse, patriarchal. But it has also, by (predictably) encouraging more detailed study of notable women in antiquity, shed a depressing light on just how difficult a process this is. We have long been reminded of the pitfalls involved in putting too much trust in ancient biography,especiallyofliteraryfigures:themixtureofpartiprislog-rolling,gossipy hearsay,anddeductiveinventionfromthesubject’sownworksformsaformidable obstacle to the enquirer. Even with historical characters (as Plutarch too often exemplifies ) this kind of semi-fictionalized evidence remains all too frequent, compoundedbytheaveragehistorian ’sprimeobjective,throughoutantiquity,ofoffering the reader high-minded moral exempla or,alternatively,awful warnings. When it comes to investigating women, the problem is even worse: the evidence is provided by males, who (like Thucydides) largely ignore the feminine fifty percent, and when they do take notice of it, for the most part stick to stereotypes and traditional masculine for idées reçues, whether for praise or blame. Thus even with the most famous (or notorious) subjects, there are more gaps than testimonia , and the latter are shot through with presumptive unreliability. The prospect for successful research could hardly be more discouraging. However, as the two works under review demonstrate, this hasn’t stopped determined scholars from trying. In the process critical scrutiny of dubious evidence has been refined, and ways have been found to bridge the yawning gaps that such evidence inevitably leaves. TheHellenisticAgeingeneral,and theLagiddynastyofthePtolemiesinparticular , offer well-nigh irresistible temptations to anyone seeking to improve our knowledgeofantiquity’snotablewomen.Noaccident that thefirst volumeofOxford ’s Women in Antiquity series (in which both Carney’s and Clayman’s monographsnow appear)wasdevoted to Cleopatra VII.Thatwastheendofthe dynastic line; as both Arsinoë II and Berenice II demonstrate, family-orientated power 378 BOOK REVIEWS politicswasagametheseMacedonianroyalwomenplayedfromtheget-go,sometimes as pawns, sometimes as dominant queens, butalways with ruthless, and not seldom murderous, finesse. There is one unlooked-for advantage here today: we live in an age when the lurid details of Hellenistic court intrigue no longer look quite as dismissable...

LITHIC POETICS: POSIDIPPUS AND HIS STONES

The 20 poems collected together as thelithikaof Posidippus, the first surviving poems on a papyrus roll only published in 2001 and dating from the third century BCE, offer a range of spectacular new evidence for a series of issues in Hellenistic history, art and literature. The standard view is that Posidippus was probably author of all the epigrams in the roll known as P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309, although this has been contested and by no means need certainly be the case. For my purposes here, I do assume that the interconnected poetics of the poems in thelithikado imply a single poet who is quite likely to be Posidippus, since poem 15—independently anthologised in antiquity and known through a manuscript tradition—was attributed to Posidippus in the twelfth century by the Byzantine poet and grammarian John Tzetzes. Historically speaking, the fact that so many of these poems focus on gems from the east gives remarkable insight into the interchange between Hellenistic and Achaemenid cultures: specifically, they signal the prestige of treasures from the east in the Hellenistic courts. In the history of collections, they represent a very early example of exoticism in elite collecting, of the accumulation of valuables in what we may assume was a royal and non-sacredSchatzkammer, of the need for an aesthetic response (in this case through short poems) to ‘label’ and valorise the precious items in the collection. In the history of ancientWissenschaft, the poems’ use of late Classical gem-lore (exemplified in texts like theOn Stonesof Theophrastus) offers a vivid instance of the ways theoretical knowledge circulated at least in elite contexts around the royal circle.

Introduction: Quis se Caesaribus notus non fingit amicum?

Introduction:Quis se Caesaribus notus non fingit amicum? 1 Richard Talbert This volume owes its origin to a chance encounter in March 2008. As fellow Roman historians, David Potter and I always welcome the opportunity of a conversation whenever our paths happen to cross. Finding myself in Ann Arbor in this instance, I mentioned to David as we talked how impressed I was with the recently published volume The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies, a set of seven contributions edited by Tony Spawforth (2007); of particular interest for my own current work, I added, was the treatment of the Late Roman court by Rowland Smith. David's disclosure at this point that he and Rowland had been fellow graduate students, and our mutual recognition that "court studies" are an emerging theme with immense potential, eventually led us to contemplate sponsoring a conference panel on it. With the 8th Roman Archaeology Conference at Ann Arbor in preparation, we approached the organizers, and they generously included "Royal Courts" in the conference program as a special session. Rowland accepted our invitation to come from the United Kingdom for the occasion, as did Boris Dreyer from Germany. They were joined as speakers by Geoffrey Sumi (Mount Holyoke, Mass.) and by Karen Acton and Ian Moyer from the University of Michigan itself. The session took place on April 3, 2009, during the week that Michelle Obama was suspected of committing the courtly faux pas of touching Queen Elizabeth II in London. In view of the high quality of all five papers, their remarkable cohesion, and the stimulus aroused by the session, we became convinced that publication of written versions would have lasting value and interest. The three special issues to date of American Journal of Philology (all of them likewise stemming from conference panels in fact) seemed an ideal model for the purpose. When approached, the present editor, David Larmour, reacted most positively to the prospect of a fourth such special issue, and we thank him warmly. [End Page 1] We are also grateful to our session speakers, all five of whom consented with alacrity to write up their papers for publication. David offered to add a contribution, and I undertook to introduce the volume. Once we were able to review all six contributions together, it seemed that the original session title called for modification, hence our choice of Classical Courts and Courtiers. What constitutes a "court" is obviously a fundamental issue, treated in this volume by David Potter's contribution in particular and usefully defined in brief by Rowland Smith as "a distinctively configured field in which two categories of human activity—domestic service to a ruler and government of his territories—intersect and mix." For classicists to appreciate the complexity and importance of such an elastic institution is indeed no novelty where Alexander the Great and the Successor kingdoms are concerned, with their close links to earlier Persian and Egyptian forms of rule. This is not to suggest that little remains to be said about these courts. Far from it. David and I were conscious that Tony Spawforth's volume could not be enlarged to include contributions on the Ptolemaic or Seleucid courts. We were eager, therefore, that our own panel (which in turn had to be selective in its coverage) should somehow address these gaps. For that very reason we approached Ian Moyer and Boris Dreyer, who between them demonstrate most capably that established thinking about the composition and development of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid courts, respectively, is due for revision when the evidence is subjected to fresh appraisal. In contrast to the Hellenistic courts, study of the Roman court has been strangely delayed. A principal purpose of the present volume therefore is to reinforce and advance research already begun by several scholars, especially Jeremy Paterson, Rowland Smith, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, and Aloys Winterling (latest, 2009).2 A range of reasons for this neglect of the Roman court—so astonishing in retrospect—can be identified. First, the lack of specificity for the court. No structures to be closely associated with it remain intact; the same applies, broadly speaking, to both Alexandria (Moyer in this volume) and the great Late Roman...

Court, Chora , and Culture in Late Ptolemaic Egypt

Indigenous Egyptian elites who held titles in the late Ptolemaic court hierarchy offer a counterpoint to the typical model of Hellenistic court society as a culturally and ethnically exclusive social space. Though underrepresented in standard accounts, several Egyptians held the honorific title of "kinsman" of the king ( syngenes ). Statues of these men wearing the mitra of the syngenes in the forecourts of temples, together with Greek and Egyptian epigraphic evidence, show that indigenous elites who circulated between Alexandria and Upper Egypt contributed to the creation of a transcultural space that was critical for maintaining the power of the Ptolemaic state in the Egyptian chora during the troubled conditions of the second and first centuries B.C.E.

Hellenistic Court Imagery in the Early Buddhist Art of Gandhara

AbstractThe focus of the paper is on the relationship between Gandharan artistic culture and the presence of a Hellenistic court milieu during the 1stcent. before and after CE in the territories of Ancient Uḍḍīyāna. What emerges from new literary and archaeological evidences are significant interactions between artistic production and the evergetism made by the princes of Apraca and Oḍi: many evidences demonstrate the substantial involvement as donors of these local dynasties in the construction of the sacred landscape. What influence did these local dynasties have in the structuring of religious communication? How was this local power and his Hellenistic background reflected in the images and complex decorative Buddhist monuments? In order to understand the dynamics between power and religious communication in the sacred space of Early Gandharan society not only some well-known iconographic themes are now interpreted as self-representations of an aristocratic habitus, but also the presence of a ‘beholder in the image’ is detected as powerful visual strategy to stage the religious experience as a suggestive ritual performance.