Greek Epigram and Byzantine Culture

344 PHOENIX could also constitute restrained criticism of the rulers of his own time would have benefited from broader discussion. Closs’s approach is chronological and her focus on motifs of fire and politics is very broad. It is a strength of the book that it unites consideration of various forms of fire in one tome: fires caused by lightning, arson, the burning of books and records, cremation; fires in everyday life, history, myth, and philosophy. But the difference between such fires plays only a minor analytical role and is not a subject of systematic reflection. In some sections, the focus on fire feels rather narrow. There are several passages where the interpretation would profit from a discussion of the relationship of fire to other natural forces that were also ideologically and politically charged. One wonders, for example, how to interpret the role and function of water (e.g., 52, 67, 72, 80, 86, 110, 121, 159, 183, 192), which is often mentioned in conjunction with fire motifs. Thanks to its straightforward argument and clear style, this is a very accessible book. It is a fruitful read for everyone who is interested in the relationship of politics, history, and literature in the early imperial period. Katholische UniversitÈ at EichstÈ att-Ingolstadt Verena Schulz Greek Epigram and Byzantine Culture: Gender, Desire, and Denial in the Age of Justinian. By Steven D. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2019. Pp. xiii, 275. From the Hellenistic period into the Byzantine age, literary epigrams—formally poems modeled on sepulchral and dedicatory verse inscriptions but including a range of new themes and subject matter—were a dynamic vehicle for poetic expression. These poems were intensely engaged with the literary tradition, but they were also the product of the social and political contexts in which they were composed and, even when ostensibly light-hearted, regularly reflect upon and respond to contemporary concerns about a range of issues, including sexuality, gender, and power. Steven Smith’s important and thoughtful study explores epigrams from a relatively late stage in the development of the genre: the poems of Agathias’ Cycle, a sixth-century collection containing poems by Agathias and his contemporaries that was ultimately digested in the Greek Anthology. Smith’s general interest is in the complex ways in which these epigrams, in their focus on issues of sensuality, sex, and gender, interact with the constraints of Christian society in the age of Justinian, exploiting a tension between the values of the literary traditions to which they belong, on the one hand, and other publicly asserted values of their contemporary context, including Byzantine constructions of masculinity, Christian doctrine, and imperial ideology, on the other. For Smith, the boundary between Christian poetry and the classicizing epigrams of the Cycle is a permeable and productive one, and the epigrammatists exploit the permeability to explore, often in transgressive ways, a series of oppositions, including that between masculinity and femininity, constraint and release, and dominion and submission. The six principal chapters are organized thematically, and each contains a rich array of close readings of individual epigrams. Chapter One, “Food and Wine” (33–71), explores a series of sympotic epigrams in the light of the Cycle’s iambic prologue, in which Agathias represents himself and his fellow epigrammatists as gluttonous banqueters and symposiasts. The authors of these epigrams, in Smith’s view, construct “personae who BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 345 seek pleasure at the limits of Byzantine culture and society” (70), sometimes provocatively casting themselves as disdaining politics or religion. Chapter Two, “An Erotic Geography” (72–102), explores the eroticized images of submission and domination that run through Agathias’ representation of empire. Here, some further consideration of comparable imagery in earlier literature would have been welcome. Chapter Three, “Urban Pleasures” (103–138), contains an engaging discussion of the ways the Cycle poets depicted the pleasures of Byzantium (entertainers, sex workers, the hippodrome, baths, even mosquito nets) whose seductiveness could challenge or undermine masculine selfcontrol . Chapter Four, “Phallic Creatures” (139–164), focuses on depictions of Pan, Priapus , and the Satyrs. In Chapter Five, “Classical Women” (165–191), Smith discusses representations of notorious women of the Greek past, such as Pandora, Phaedra, and Medea, arguing that Byzantine

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