Valerius Maximus Research Articles

Gender and Body Language in Roman Art by Glenys Davies

Reviewed by: Gender and Body Language in Roman Art by Glenys Davies J. F. D. Frakes Glenys Davies. Gender and Body Language in Roman Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 357. $120.00. ISBN 978-0-521-84273-0. Asserting that modern studies of body language offer comparative support to an understanding of ancient gestural codes, and marshaling decades of theorization of how gesture and comportment together work to establish social configurations of identity, Glenys Davies promises here an analysis of how visual art in the Roman world made use of body language to express "status, and the relationship between status and gender" (1). The introduction quickly clarifies the author's methods and assumptions: that art from all Greek and Roman periods can be lumped together as evidence for Roman visual modes (she begins the discussion with a red-figure vase from 430 bce); that literary evidence is of primary value when interpreting visual evidence (she consults Cicero, Valerius Maximus, Seneca, Quintilian, and Plutarch, among others, throughout); and that display context is irrelevant to how artworks communicated ideas of gender and status (the Barberini Faun, the Capitoline Seated Girl, some philosophers, and the Terme Ruler illustrate opening themes, with no discussion of placement and little acknowledgement of dating or replication). A case-study is then built upon Cancelleria Relief B, focusing on the gestural connections between its principal figures, that indulges in Jocelyn [End Page 364] Toynbee's reading (in The Flavian Reliefs from the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome [Oxford 1957]) of the scene's emotional subtext before signaling that Vespasian's gesture toward Domitian is unique and interpreting it remains problematic. What to make of this strange impasse is evidently up to each reader to decide—a difficult challenge considering there will not be any more images to consider for a good sixty pages. The first two chapters present the surviving ancient testimonies relevant to body language, each one devoted to a normative gender: first male, then female. About male comportment we read of exempla traditions, of oratorical training and performance, and of good manners. Themes include status display, imperial power, and the dangers to men of femininity. About female comportment we read of proofs of inferiority and weakness, of tendencies toward frivolity, and of matronly values and modesty. Veiling and clothing requirements follow, along with demonstrations of subordination, and some closing thoughts on the dangers to men of female masculinity, before we are promised an analysis of the representation of Roman women in art. How disappointing it was after all this to turn the page to chapter 3 (82) and discover the Vatican copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos. "The Standing Nude," so Davies argues, best illustrates the differentiated body languages of males and females on account of their opposed sexes being so visually evident, and before too many pages go by there appears the inevitable Naples Doryphoros. Although these famous statues are in fact Roman artworks, they are here treated as unproblematic exemplars of Greek Classical design, works that demonstrate (one assumes?) the timelessness of gendered gestural codes. The bibliography is thorough and responsible—one finds the support of Ridgway, Havelock, and Lefkowitz, among others—but the discussion fails to take us far beyond the luscious treatments of Andrew Stewart's Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece (Cambridge 1997). Beyond their status in elite culture, how do these opera nobilia inform us on the gestural attitudes of lived experience promised earlier? I fear it was a mistake to linger so long among elite male opinion and fetishized works of Classical culture, rather than jumping straightaway into well-documented viewing contexts from the Roman period. What might be said of these as Roman works? I think of Valentina di Napoli's recent study of displays in Roman Achaea of exactly these two statue types, the Knidia installed in baths and domestic contexts in small-scale formats while the Doryphorus was placed in civic settings on scales life-size or greater ("Looking at the Classical Past: Tradition, Identity, and Copies of Nobilia Opera in Roman Greece," in S. E. Alcock, M. Egri, and J. Frakes [eds.], Beyond Boundaries: Connecting Visual Cultures in the Provinces...

Valerius Maximus: The Roman at the Turn of the Age

Valerius Maximus: The Roman at the Turn of the Age

John Bellenden's Livy and Les Decades of Pierre Bersuire: The French in Bellenden's Scots

When producing a Scots translation of Livy's History of Rome in 1533, John Bellenden harnessed Les Decades, the Middle French translation of Livy prepared by Pierre Bersuire in 1358. The French intermediary offered Bellenden not only a rich store of lexical possibilities when grappling with Livy's Latin, as has been partly recognized before, but also a way of structuring and presenting his translation. Inspired by the glosses with which Bersuire furnished Les Decades, Bellenden prepared his own commentary, explaining similar items of political, cultural, and religious interest. Following Bersuire's example, Bellenden's commentary encouraged the reader to approach Livy's History alongside a series of comparative texts, especially Ovid's Fasti and the Memorabilia of Valerius Maximus. Above all, Bellenden took from Bersuire the urge to understand antiquity, as far as was possible, on its own terms.

Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions ed. by Christa Gray et al

Reviewed by: Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions ed. by Christa Gray et al Joanna Kenty Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions. Christa Gray, Andrea Balbo, Richard M. A. Marshall and Catherine E. W. Steel, eds. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 366. Hardback, $105.00. ISBN 978-0-19-878820-1. This new edited volume is the latest product of the Fragments of Republican Roman Orators (FRRO) project, funded by the European Research Council. The volume, like the project itself, seeks to increase and deepen our understanding of the world of republican oratory, and excludes Cicero’s speeches in the hope of turning the spotlight onto other, more obscure figures. The remains of republican oratory (absent Cicero) which survive to the present day are only the tip of the [End Page 119] iceberg. We know oratory was an essential and ubiquitous feature of public life in Rome, but reconstruction of the particulars is a challenge. Who spoke, when and where they spoke, what they said, and the environment in which they said it are all important considerations, but difficult (if not impossible) to answer with any certainty. Before this project, Malcovati’s edition of fragments was the main resource available for scholars of republican oratory. In this volume, several authors reflect on what kind of material was left out by Malcovati, and on the limits of collecting fragments as a method of investigating republican oratory. These papers originated with a conference organized in Turin in 2015 by Catherine Steel and Andrea Balbo, and approach the topic of republican oratory from many different angles. Some interpret and contextualize surviving fragments of real speeches published in the republican period; some turn their attention instead to the authors who transmit those fragments, offering analysis of what those authors were up to and how that might have shaped the fragments they’ve given us. Dugan, in his playful chapter on Gaius Titius, uses “netting the wolf-fish” as a sort of allegory for the whole enterprise. The volume is not a broad introduction to “reading republican oratory,” but a collection of specific essays on various specific pieces of evidence for republican oratory—on the tips of various icebergs, so to speak. Each paper will no doubt be a useful resource to scholars who specialize in its particular subject. Most do not seem to be aimed at more general audiences; the rationale behind particular interpretive moves or attempts at reconstruction may be familiar to specialists but is not spelled out in many of these papers. There are eighteen papers in total, and I do want to call attention to some papers in the volume which particularly stood out to me. The papers on Fulvia and Cornelia at the end of the volume (by Bill Gladhill and Judith Hallett respectively) were a welcome inclusion and offered excellent test cases for what constitutes republican oratory. Both women can be said to survive, after all, as “fragmentary orators” in a certain sense. Earlier in the volume, S. J. Lawrence offers a fascinating analysis of the relationship between eloquentia and potentia in Valerius Maximus’ exempla. Where others have seen a straightforward collage of positive examples of the “power” of eloquence, Lawrence sees subtlety and strategy, an artful presentation of exempla that makes them seem increasingly sinister, hinting at a “dark side” of republican oratory. The following chapter on Cassius Dio, by Christopher Burden-Strevens, offers a similarly thoughtful reevaluation of Dio as a reporter on republican oratory. Dio, he argues, mined Cicero’s extant speeches for stylistic and historical details to bring verisimilitude and detail to the speeches he invented and put in the mouths of Cicero, Gabinius, Catulus and others. Those [End Page 120] speeches are certainly not fragments in the traditional sense, and their relation (if any) to the orations which were really delivered at these moments is unclear, but they may nevertheless be more “accurate” than has usually been thought. Finally, Anthony Corbeill takes up the task of reconstructing Clodius’ contional speech in 56 bce, De haruspicum responsis, to which Cicero’s oration of the same name responds. The result is not only amusing but...

The Thinking Eye: Some Remarks on Visuality and Metapoetics in Claudian’s Carmina Minora 17

The Thinking Eye: Some Remarks on Visuality and Metapoetics in Claudian’s Carmina Minora 17 Paolo Felice Sacchi This short paper will seek to read a minor poem by one of the major late Latin poets by handling it, as it were, in vitro.1 Instead of systematically considering Claudian’s Carmina Minora 17 in relation to the rest of Claudian’s carmina and similar late antique specimens, we will mostly move over its surface and try to interrogate its structure while looking at its verses as miniature reflections of aesthetic phenomena which characterize Claudian’s writing as a whole.2 [End Page 275] Examining Claudian’s aesthetics on the basis of Carmina Minora 17 might seem a rather obvious approach: where else if not concerning an ecphrastic poem would one discuss the formal strategies of a poet traditionally interpreted as a clear example of the late antique fondness for synesthesia, visual narration, and digressive structures?3 Indeed, Carmina Minora 17 may be read first and foremost as a sort of expanded ecphrastic epigram in twenty-four couplets describing a sculptural group seen in Catina (i.e., Catania).4 The sculpture portrays two local heroes: brothers who saved their parents during an eruption of the Aetna volcano. Maria Lisa Ricci has meticulously outlined the literary Fortleben of these two fearless sons, whose brave enterprise had already offered some anecdotical material to, to name just a few, Strabo (6.2.3), Valerius Maximus (5.4.4), Martial (7.24.5), Silius Italicus (14.196ff.), Ausonius (Ord. urb. nob. 16–17), and, especially, the anonymous author of the Aetna (603ff., most probably Claudian’s main source of inspiration).5 Thus the subject of this carmen seems to be profoundly conventional, and the same might be argued of its structure. The poem starts with an exordial apostrophe to the reader-viewer (aspice), immediately followed by the presentation and description of the statue (1–26): Aspice sudantes uenerando pondere fratres, diuino meritos semper honore coli,iusta quibus rapidae cessit reuerentia flammae et mirata uagas reppulit Aetna faces.conplexi manibus fultos ceruice parentes 5 attollunt uultus adcelerantque gradus. [End Page 276] grandaeui gemina sublimes prole feruntur et cara natos inplicuere mora.nonne uides ut saeua senex incendia monstret, ut trepido genetrix inuocet ore deos? 10erexit formido comam, perque omne metallum fusus in attonito palluit aere tremor.in iuuenum membris animosus cernitur horror aeque oneri metuens inpauidusque sui.reiectae uento chlamydes. dextram exerit ille 15 contentus laeua sustinuisse patrem;ast illi duplices in nodum colligit ulnas cautior in sexu debiliore labor.hoc quoque praeteriens oculis ne forte relinquas artificis tacitae quod meruere manus: 20nam consanguineos eadem cum forma figuret, hic propior matri fit tamen, ille patri.dissimiles annos sollertia temperat artis: alter in alterius redditur ore parens,et noua germanis paribus discrimina praebens 25 diuisit uultus cum pietate faber. See these two brothers toiling beneath a burden piety bade them bear. They deserve to be worshipped with divine honors: at the sight of them, the respectful flames ceased their ravages and Aetna in admiration restrained her flooding lava. Embracing their parents, they lift them up on their shoulders and, with eyes raised to heaven, hasten their steps. The aged parents, thus carried aloft by their two sons, impede their flight, but dear to the children is that very delay. See, the old man points to the cruel flames; the aged mother’s trembling lips call upon the gods for help. Fear has set their hair on end, the bronze is terror-stricken, and a pale shiver runs over all the metal. In the limbs of the sons is seen bold terror, and, if fear, then fear for their burdens, none for themselves. The wind has blown back their cloaks. One raises his right hand; his left is enough to sustain his sire. But the other embraced his burden with both arms; working more carefully for it is one of the weaker sex that he bears. This, too, as thou passest by, leave not unnoted, for well the craftsman’s [End Page 277] dumb hands deserve such regard; both he has moulded with a likeness such as brothers bear, yet the one resembles rather...

La mujer como exemplum. Subversión, desafío y resistencia en Valerio Máximo.

En el presente texto tratamos de adentrarnos en la complejidad de la acción femenina que, representadas en obras como la de Valerio Máximo, basadas en la ejemplaridad, permite vislumbrar las distintas formas de proceder de las mujeres en la sociedad romana. En los casos que presentamos, no solo podemos ver más allá de los estereotipos, sino que también apreciamos a las mujeres rebelándose contra los roles de género y la moralidad que la sociedad les impone, ya sea como madres, esposas o ciudadanas. The following article dives into the complexity of women’s actions represented in ancient accounts such as Valerius Maximus’. Through the inquiry of these works based on the Roman idea of exempla, it is intended to draw an extensive analysis of women’s role in the Roman society. In the studied cases, it is not only possible to see beyond the stereotypes but can also be noted the women’s rebellion against gender roles and the morality imposed by the society, either as mothers, wives or citizens.

Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus: A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices

Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus: A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices

THE CONSEQUENCES OF VIOLATING THE IMMUNITY OF CARTHAGINIAN ENVOYS IN THE LIGHT OF LIV. 38.42.7 AND VAL. MAX. 6.6.3 1

The article analyses the casus of beating Carthaginian envoys in 188 BC and the effects that this act exerted on the grounds of international law, sacral norms and, at a later time, on the grounds of criminal regulations laid by the Romans. Those issues are analyzed on the basis of the account by Titus Livius (38.42.7) and Valerius Maximus (6.6.3). The analysis demonstrates that emissaries dispatched to other peoples were protected by immunity and it also indicates the way in which envoys were chosen in the republican Rome, as well as the customs related to their reception. It is also presented in the article what types of behaviour might have been perceived as violations of envoys’ immunity and what sanctions were faced by those perpetrating such acts. On the grounds of ius gentium there was a threat of declaring war, which could be averted only if the perpetrator was delivered to the affected community. On the grounds of sacral law, it was assumed that a deed of that nature entailed sacrilegium, and a blame could not be in any way removed from an individual. However, the whole society could be remitted their guilt by delivering the wrongdoer to the injured party. Further, the text analyzes the proceedings in the case of causing bodily harm to Punic envoys – the actions undertaken by the urban praetor and the procedure of delivering the perpetrators (deditio) to Carthaginians, carried out by the fetiales.

The Queer Art of Biblical Reading: Matthew 25:31–46 (Caritas Christiana) Through Caritas Romana

AbstractThe place of eros in Christian theology has always been a contested one, not least because it is positioned as being at odds with agape, the kind of love that embodies gospel ethics. Matthew 25:31–46 calls us to “feed the hungry,” “quench the thirsty,” “shelter the homeless,” “clothe the naked,” and “visit the imprisoned” as emblematic examples of agapic love. This essay shows how a queer act, specifically that of a woman breastfeeding a starving man as depicted in the tradition of Caritas Romana, can fulfill the ethical demands in Matthew's pericope. It demonstrates how the action first narrated by Valerius Maximus and then represented by Paul Peter Rubens beautifully fulfills the Matthean agapic demands, and concludes that queer practices have the potential to fulfill the gospel demands, situating the erotic at the core of the agapic.

Affectus Hispaniae en la historiografía del Alto Imperio

This paper analyses texts written by Greek and Latin High Empire historians dealing with Hispania. Some of the authors have a very positive view (Florus, Iustinus, Appian) while others are clearly negative (Veleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus) though most of them show little interest, indifference or variety of opinions. When there is interest in the region or praise, it is because the author comes from Hispania or he is trying to please an emperor born in Hispania, but it could also be due to a universal conception of history revealing a critical attitude towards Roman imperialism, as in Appian. The praise found in Iustinus’s epitome should be attributed to the author of the epitome rather than to Pompeius Trogus. This can be taken as evidence for situating Iustinus’s life and work in the 2nd century A.D. Loathing of Hispania seems to have its origins in conservative, ‘optimate’ nationalist circles, who perceive the province as the ‘popular’ region that acclaimed and welcomed ‘seditious’ individuals such as Tiberius Gracchus and Sertorius.

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity ed. by Karl Galinsky

Reviewed by: Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity ed. by Karl Galinsky Jacob A. Latham Karl Galinsky (ed.). Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 406. $135.00. ISBN 978-0-19-874476-4. The need for humanists, social scientists, and “real” scientists to work together on memory is a central tenet of Karl Galinsky’s Memoria Romana: Memory in Roman Civilization project that was initiated in 2009 with the conferral of a Max Planck Research Award for International Cooperation. The project’s first collected volume, Karl Galinsky (ed.), Memoria Romana: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory (Ann Arbor 2014), concluded with remarks by the eminent architect Daniel Libeskind on the connections between architecture and memory; the present volume gives the last word to neuroscience. Indeed, Galinsky’s introduction also privileges neuroscience by comparison with nonscientists (a.k.a. humanists). What struck me, however, was the degree to which the very approachable neuroscientific essay on memory closely resembles what careful humanist research has argued—apart from the material on the brain, of course. Indeed, the present volume offers many examples of good, often very good, humanist treatments of literary, imperial, honorific, and Christian memory in the Roman world from the early empire to late antiquity. After a long (nearly 10 percent of the volume) and nebulous introduction surveying both memory studies and the present volume, part 1 collects three studies of memory in Roman authors. Alain Gowing, whose groundbreaking Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge 2005) helped bring the memory boom to classical studies, examines memory as a cause of action in Tacitus, for whom more recent exemplars mattered more than those of the storied past. Brigitte B. Libby’s inventive essay argues that Vergil’s Dido was more a Circe-like enchantress, and so a threat to Aeneas’ need to remember the collective good (the foundation of Rome), than an innocent and abandoned Ariadne. Jörg Rüpke’s somewhat difficult contribution treats the exempla tradition in Valerius Maximus, whose first two books somehow historicize religious knowledge. Eric Orlin opens part 2 on imperial memory with a lucid and thorough treatment of the massive Augustan reconstruction of memory in the Campus Martius that was both literal (involving actual buildings) and metaphorical, as it were (impacting collective memory). Charles Hedrick then offers a meditation on fantasy, memory, and history—complete with an Aristotelian/Greimassian semiotic square!—using “memories” of Nero or rumors about his return as a case study. Part 3 then turns to a locus classicus of civic memory, honorific statues. Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp traces the “inter-signification” (or interconnectedness) of monument (a statue of Tremulus) and historical memory (the deeds [End Page 579] of Tremulus) in an oratorical performance (by Cicero), which demonstrates the complex and evolving interplay between place, monument, ritual, and text. Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp explores Sulla’s use of statuary to promote his own memory, battling with Marius on the terrain of memory and eventually removing (the statues of) his competitor from the field, rewriting the rules of commemoration in the process. Although these two essays establish statues as bearers of memory, Diana Ng rightly cautions against simply assuming the value of honorific statues in light of their recycling—though reuse may in fact confirm their value as memory currency—suggesting instead that sculptural programs, which (it seems) were not so easily repurposed, were better able to perform memory work. The final section assembles a group of papers that, more or less, deal with Christian memory, though Nicola Denzey Lewis examines “pagan” memory practices in funerary contexts in a Christianizing empire. Denzey Lewis convincingly evokes the imaginative use of traditional imagery by “pagans” who were attempting to preserve classical cultural memory in religiously plural funerary environments. John Kloppenborg then follows with a massive essay reassessing the conditions that impacted, or rather impaired, the oral transmission of sayings of Jesus in early proto-Christian communities. Drawing upon an experiment conducted by April DeConick, a professor of religious studies, which recreated the process of the oral transmission of various kinds of sayings, and also contemporary memory studies (including neuroscience...

Antyczne reminiscencje w średniowiecznym podręczniku militarnym Krystyny de Pizan Księga uczynków wojennych i rycerstwa

One of the most interesting late‑medieval literary monuments is the military textbook entitled The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry (beginning of the 15th century). The fact that the author of this book on war and chivalry is a woman, Christine de Pizan, is understandably arousing the interest of medievalists – but it is only one of the fascinating issues connected with this work. Equally interesting is the fact of the author’s reference to the antique models and their presence in the textbook. The aim of this paper is to engage in polemics with the thesis that invoking antique authorities was merely a form of “rhetorical” strategy of de Pizan, who wanted to demonstrate her knowledge of classical literature. My intention is to remind the readers that the function of the antique auctoritates (mainly Vegetius and Frontinus, as well as Valerius Maximus) was not purely ornamental, intended to demonstrate the author’s erudition, but that the quotations from the works of antique writers and the references to them constituted an integral part of the author’s line of thinking and argumentation. Their presence in the textbook testifies to the timeless value of the recommendations of the antique writers and their decisive role in the author’s argumentation.

Roman Charity: Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture by Jutta Gisela Sperling

Reviewed by: Roman Charity: Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture by Jutta Gisela Sperling Peter Carlson Jutta Gisela Sperling, Roman Charity: Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag 2016) 430 pp., ill. Around 31 ce, Valerius Maximus included two curious tales in his Memorable Doings and Sayings that would fascinate artists and writers alike for centuries. In both stories, an adult woman breastfeeds her parent (in one, her mother; in the other, her father) to save the parent from starvation in prison. Whilst the story lived on primarily in written formats in the Middle Ages, it became exceptionally popular as a subject for early modern artists. Sperling has written a book that both documents this popularity and provides provocative suggestions regarding its causes and effects. The subject is certainly transgressive, in particular because the guilt of the parents is uncertain, and so the justice of the daughter's milk offering is hazy, though the idea that the daughter represents filial piety was soon introduced to the accounts in their retellings. But in the early modern period, a uniquely religious spin is put on the Pero/Cimon story (the daughter/father story) as well as on the daughter/mother story, as they are depicted in various forms of visual culture: Pero becomes the model for the Christian Church's prime virtue, Charity. Sperling recognizes the problematic nature of this model for religious virtue, whether in the same-sex or opposite-sex versions. In both accounts, eroticism is lurking just below the surface, with the lactating breasts and suckling adults, as well as an uncomfortable inversion of the parent/child family structures of responsibility and authority. Moreover, in the daughter/mother account, a not-very-subtle expression of homoeroticism is obvious, while in the daughter/father account, the specter of incest cannot be ignored. It is this tension between Christian allegorization and visual shock and even titillation that primarily intrigues Sperling, and for which she seeks an explanation. Sperling addresses her subject by dividing the book into two sections. Part I (Chapters 1–3) is an account of the depictions of the story in early modern visual culture. Chapter 1 shows the first early modern interest in Pero and Cimon (1525–1550) expressed with relative fidelity to the stories (the depictions are clearly prison scenes, and Pero is inside the prison), but also in some cases (such as the prints of the Beham brothers) as intentionally eroticized, and in others (such as the painting by the Master with Griffin's Head) as comparable to strong, and emasculating, women of the Bible such as Judith, Delilah, and Salome. Caravaggio's depiction of Pero and Cimon, Sperling notes in Chapter 2, is a turning point, for the simple fact that he places the imagery in the context of his altarpiece, The Seven Works of Mercy, inserting the Roman story into a specifically Christian context. Sperling suggests, convincingly, that this work, when considered with Caravaggio's other religious paintings (in particular The Denial of Saint Peter, The Calling of Saint Matthew, and The Incredulity of Saint Thomas) "was meant as a figure of dissent vis-à-vis mainstream post-Tridentine Catholicism" (107), in great part because he "secularizes and politicizes Charity by couching Pero as the breastfeeding Madonna's successor… whose needy father, awaiting nurture, renewal, and redemption, is a Saint Peter look-alike" (180). Following this transformative "Caravaggesque moment," as Sperling calls it, the theme of [End Page 271] Pero and Cimon grows arguably even more popular, perhaps because it is picked up by Rubens, Manfredi, Reni, and others—but the scene loses the subversive elements that Caravaggio included. Poussin famously included a daughter/mother breastfeeding scene in The Gathering of the Manna, and Sperling identifies in Chapter 3 the "long shadows" of both Caravaggio and Poussin. Poussin's "aim was to produce a Roman Charity … purged of all irony" in contradistinction to Caravaggio's distinctly polemical version (182). This does not mean however that there was not an element of dissent in the later depictions. Rather, the French visual tradition of parental breastfeeding was, Sperling suggests, a response to the debates of "paternal power and the reform of the monarchy...

KAZUS ZŁOTEGO TRÓJNOGA A PRZEDMIOT SPRZEDAŻY W KONTRAKCIE ‘EMPTIO SPEI’

THE CASE OF THE GOLDEN TRIPOD AND THE SUBJECT OF SALE IN THE CONTRACT OF ‘EMPTIO SPEI’Summary The article analyzes the question of the subject of sale in the contract of emptio spei. The starting point for this study is the source document by Valerius Maximus, describing the case of finding a golden tripod by fishermen, who before sailing out sold the result of their work to Miletus merchants. After the return of the fishermen a dispute arose over whom the find should be awarded to: the sellers or the buyers. The solution to this particular case depends on the accepted position on the subject of sale in the contract called the sale of hope. Literature of the subject presents four views on the matter. According to the first one, the subject of sale in the contract of emptio spei is hope itself. However according to the second view it is the item, the subject that will appear in the future. The third among the presented views proclaims that the subject of sale in the contract of emptio spei is alternatively: hope of obtaining the item or the item itself, depending on the achieved result. The fourth view, in which the consensual contract calls for receiving a subject nonexistent in the moment of sale, should not be qualified as the contract of purchase-sale. The article presents advantages ad disadvantages arising from accepting each of these views. Considering all of the mentioned views on the subject the author regards the second opinion, according to which the contract of emptio spei is always res future as the best. Accepting this opinion allows to evaluate the time of perfectio of sale, allows naming the subject of obligation of the seller as well as the range of liability of the parties arising from the title of failure to perform or improper performance of the contract.

Accepting Prophecy: Paul’s Response to Agabus with Insights from Valerius Maximus and Josephus

This article highlights seemingly conflicting presentations of the Spirit’s guidance of Paul’s journeys in Acts 16.6-10 and 21.1-14, noting in particular the difficulties posed by the disciples’ instruction ‘through the Spirit’ not to go to Jerusalem in 21.4b. In contrast to past treatments, I suggest that it is possible to hold together Luke’s portrayal of 21.4b as an inspired instruction and as a positive reading of Paul’s journey to Jerusalem. The study is informed by comparisons to the treatment of the traditional themes of determinism and human freedom in two other first-century texts: Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Doings and Sayings and Josephus’s Jewish War. Although very different texts from each other, Valerius’s popular register and Josephus’s Jewish Hellenistic setting enable each to illuminate aspects of Luke’s presentation. I conclude that the tensions in the Lukan Paul’s discernment of his journey to Jerusalem stem not only from Luke’s focus on a divine plan, but his particular interest in underscoring the importance of human response, with significant implications for the way the plan unfolds across Acts.

Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Edited by Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg, and Janet Levarie Smarr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xix+555.

<i>Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works</i>. Edited by Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg, and Janet Levarie Smarr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xix+555.

PUTTING TORTURE (AND VALERIUS MAXIMUS) TO THE TEST

There has been a tendency, even among authors who have regarded Valerius Maximus as worthy of independent study, to use theFacta et Dictaas a neutral conduit of information about other wider areas. Valerius has thus sometimes become a sourcebook mined for nuggets of information but effectively invisible to those who work it. The past thirty years have seen valuable contributions that raise awareness of the importance of the genre of theFacta et Dictaand (to a lesser extent) the personal input of Valerius, but traces of the ‘conduit’ approach are still preserved in some authors’ attempts to justify their study of the work. For instance, Valerius provides an insight into the historical image of Marius, and is valuable precisely because he has no opinion or personal ideas to offer, because he preserves the language of school rhetoric, because his collection gives us strictly conventional material about religion, because he presents an unadulterated mirror-image of imperial policy and propaganda and because he is ‘middle-brow’ and thus depicts common attitudes. The text has also sometimes been studied for what it reveals about Early Imperial Latin, non-Republican culture and the organisation of Roman knowledge. Most recently, Tara Welch has argued that Valerius deliberately stripsexemplaof all authorial input, including his own, in an attempt to make himself a conduit fortraditio.Alternatively, study of the text is justified by interest in the time period in which it was written.

Archimedes and the Roman Imagination

The great mathematician Archimedes, a Sicilian Greek whose machines defended Syracuse against the Romans during the Second Punic War, was killed by a Roman after the city fell, yet it is largely Roman sources, and Greek texts aimed at Roman audiences, that preserve the stories about him. Archimedes' story, Mary Jaeger argues, thus becomes a locus where writers explore the intersection of Greek and Roman culture, and as such it plays an important role in Roman self-definition. Jaeger uses the biography of Archimedes as a hermeneutic tool, providing insight into the construction of the traditional historical narrative about the Roman conquest of the Greek world and the Greek cultural invasion of Rome. By breaking down the narrative of Archimedes' life and examining how the various anecdotes that comprise it are embedded in their contexts, the book offers fresh readings of passages from both well-known and less-studied authors, including Polybius, Cicero, Livy, Vitruvius, Plutarch, Silius Italicus, Valerius Maximus, Johannes Tzetzes, and Petrarch.

DINING AND OBLIGATION IN VALERIUS MAXIMUS: THE CASE OF THE SACRA MENSAE

The phrase sacra mensae appears in only a select number of instances from the first century a.d. onwards. This paper seeks to demonstrate that references to sacra mensae are not coincidental, and that they were employed deliberately by authors such as Valerius Maximus and, after him, Quintilian, Tacitus and Seneca, based on an assumed shared understanding of their significance on the part of Roman audiences. Although it appears across a variety of literary works and in a range of contexts, the phrase does not seem to have been used in reference to a specific rite or rites performed at the table. Instead, sacra mensae appears to have been used primarily in a metaphorical sense, designed to epitomize the customs and respect attached to dining in Roman culture. Religion certainly played an important part in creating the aura surrounding the table, which was subject to various rituals and superstitions that were discussed by ancient authors. However, beyond the sphere of religion there was the equally important social emphasis on dining, which enforced notions of conviviality and personal obligation between hosts and guests. Disregard of such traditions came to be identified as a hallmark of tyranny, which provided the writers of the Principate with an opportunity to use the sacra mensae as a powerful literary device against those who failed to respect established customs of hospitality.

Gens Claudia i rzymski kult Wielkiej Macierzy – Kybele

GensClaudia and the Roman cult of Magna Mater (Cybele) (Summary) Eminent historian of ancient Rome, Professor Maria Jaczynowska, was a teacher of many generations of not only historians, but also classical philologists. This article is written by classical philologist who is grateful for Professor’s research effort. The inspiration is recognized by the outstanding Scientist Jaczynowska topic of Claudii in the Roman cult of Magna Mater (Cybele). It has been described so far in only one Polish monograph “Religions of the Roman world” published in Warsaw in 1987. The purpose of this article is to make a fine complement to observations done by Professor Jaczynowska in aspect of philological research, which for obvious reasons could not be included in Her book. Analysis of extant literary sources in the context of references to the role of representatives of the family Claudii in bringing Cybele to Rome in 204, and Ludi Megalenses of 56 BC, brings us to interesting conclusions. The texts of Cicero, Livy, Ovid, Valerius Maximus, Tacitus, Statius and a minor mention in other ancient writers works, let us draw a conclusion about undeniable ties between gens Claudia and the cult of the goddess of Pesinunt. The reason is that the matron, who was delegated to welcome the Magna Mater to Rome was Claudia Quinta, the grandchild of censor Appius Claudius Caecus. Undoubtedly, the historical fact evolved since the days of the Republic till the second century of Empire into the literary legend of the “miracle of the goddess” who gave “proof of innocence” to the dishonored patrician. Another “miracle” is associated with a standing in the temple of the goddess statue of matron. Interesting is also the evolutionof a priest position to Brogitar by Publius Clodius and the riots called by him during Ludi Megalenses in 56 BC is, as historians say, the element of rhetorical invective on the tribune hated by Cicero. of Claudia who was described in Republican texts as a matron, and in imperial times as a vestal virgin. The Legend of Claudia Quintais the strongest proof that the gens Claudia was described in the sources as closely associated with the cult of Cybele. However, references in the works of Cicero regarding the sale of a priest position to Brogitar by Publius Clodius and the riots called by him during Ludi Megalenses in 56 BC is, as historians say, the element of rhetorical invective on the tribune hated by Cicero.