Roman Social Imaginaries

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 421 is capable of great precision (e.g., Theb. 8.607: “women’s quarter” for thalami of Antigone and Ismene’s chambers, an expressive translation distinguishing a specific usage of the word and glancing at the mention of paryenTMnaw in Eur. Phoen. 1275). The commentary, about 300 pages long, is a sort of opus perpetuum that examines the text line by line. Augoustakis chooses to divide the text into long lemmata, each covering up to four lines. The notes lay out substantial quantities of facts and data that in general Augoustakis controls and presents straightforwardly. At times, however, such an all-encompassing approach inevitably interrupts the flow of the discussion. Long quotations from primary and secondary sources also tend to halt the argument, even though they undoubtedly encourage the reader’s autonomous judgment and indeed save the specialist some time. A better place for such extensive quotations would be in the introductory notes, the pace of which, on the other hand, is quite varied: Augoustakis provides good structural and thematic introductions to many sections of the text (e.g., to Theb. 8.229–236, or indeed 607–635 presenting the Antigone and Ismene scene) and he is particularly detailed in introducing similes (see, e.g., the Nightingale and Swallow Simile at Theb. 8.616–620), but some sections of the text are only preceded by short summaries (e.g., Theb. 8.208–217, 716–750). Augoustakis’s sustained attention to formal analysis (e.g., prosody, metre, figures of speech), most appropriate for a poet of such refined literary culture as Statius, also reminds us that textual realia are the key to disclosing a poet’s meaning to those who are careful enough to pay attention. Textual problems are accounted for with philological rigour, even though the reasons behind the commentator’s choices sometimes could benefit from further explanation. Just as the Thebaid is now an acknowledged classic, Augoustakis’s commentary itself has a claim to be acknowledged as a “classic” of the genre. A meticulous, solid, and sophisticated resource for a specialized audience, the volume demands a slow and thoughtful reading. Despite providing many answers and interpretations, it does not impose a preformed understanding of Statius’ work: on the contrary, the materials that it gathers constantly solicit the reader’s intellectual engagement, opening up Statius’ text to a multiplicity of responses and stimulating a large number of questions. It will not therefore come as a surprise if many future contributions to Statian scholarship stem from Augoustakis’s volume. University of Toronto Lorenza Bennardo Roman Social Imaginaries: Language and Thought in the Context of Empire. By Clifford Ando. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 124. This slim volume, the publication of Ando’s 2012 Robson lectures at the University of Toronto, tackles a big problem. It addresses the manifold interrelationships in the Roman world (so the argument goes) between cognition, language, identity, territoriality, the understanding of the social, religion, law, and the machinery of empire. What Ando is ultimately after is the role played by distinctively Roman structures of thought in the making of the Roman empire as a distinctive political form. The ninety-seven pages of text are overflowing with original ideas, bold propositions, and arresting observations. As an essay, it can hardly fail to inspire. But there is nothing like a sustained argument here, and the brevity of the discussion precludes the deep analysis that a topic of this 422 PHOENIX complexity demands. As a conventional monograph, then, it is likely to disappoint many readers. The major claim at the heart of Roman Social Imaginaries is that Roman habits of mind—not so much what Romans thought, but rather how they thought—“shaped and sustained the Roman empire as a political form” (4); “[made] Roman government . . . possible” (29; cf. 51); and even brought the imperial world “into being” (97). These habits of mind are reconstructed from close readings of Latin texts on law, government, religious ritual, and political theory, and interrogated with reference to the definition of political communities (Chapter One, “Belonging”); the replication of imperial institutions in diverse contexts (Chapter Two, “Cognition”); and the maintenance of

Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Context (archaeology) · Linguistics · Literature · Prosody · Simile · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy