Grattius

Reviewed by: Grattius: Hunting an Augustan Poet ed. by Steven J. Green Dunstan Lowe Steven J. Green (ed.). Grattius: Hunting an Augustan Poet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. x, 286. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-19-878901-7. Grattius the teacher of hunting has always been an outlier to the canon of Augustan poetry, even more than Manilius the teacher of astrology, whose much more substantial poem found a champion in A. E. Housman. The Cynegetica we have is a truncated first volume of what could have been four or five (136), and suffers from comparison with surviving didactic works by Grattius' most renowned Augustan contemporaries, Vergil and Ovid. The text languished without a printed English translation until 1654, and not until a quarter of a millennium later came a second, in 1934 (235); this book contains the third. Most articles on Grattius have dwelt on technical or textual specifics, one remarkable exception being John Henderson's 2001 article ("Going to the Dogs/Grattius and the Augustan Subject," Cambridge Classical Journal 47: 1–22). This book offers a panoply for anyone willing to fight in Grattius' corner: a convenient recension of the text (David Mankin's recent death regrettably interrupted his work on a new critical edition), a sound new translation by Green, and ten contextualizing chapters by scholars both established and new, which range from didactic style and comparative readings to Neo-Latin receptions. In a way, this volume is a boutique version of the "companion" genre of scholarship, covering every major area of Grattian studies and concluding with a two-chapter section on his postclassical legacy. But every chapter brings something new, and several contributors hint that there is still something to pursue in future. There are reasons why it took a convergence of efforts under Green's direction as late as 2015, in a conference at University College London, to bear this fruit. Grattius' authorial persona is discreet and generic, even in the opening invocation; the manuscript un-resoundingly fades to static amidst a catalogue of horse-breeds; the lack of a definite date leaves the nature of intertextual contacts (e.g., with Vergil and Ovid) ambiguous; and there are no overt references to Augustus or to contemporary politics. But attentively, imaginatively, several contributors wring Grattius' work for drops of the critical succulence so relished in his Augustan contemporaries. Kayachev compares the text with Virgil's Aeneid and Tsaknaki with Ovid's Ars Amatoria, both questioning the default assumption that Grattius is the imitator. Green (cued by Henderson 2001) pushes for political allegories in the good trainer, his worldwide breeds and materials, and the reverent petition of Vulcan. O'Rourke reads the poem for metapoetic [End Page 112] allegories, in the form of surrogate author-figures. Using Theocritus, Lucretius' Epicurus, and Virgil's Daphnis, Whitlatch reads Hagnon as an optimistic embodiment of hunting. Trying something new, Hutchinson examines the language of movement in the Cynegetica (appending a full list of loci) to conclude that Grattius writes less dynamically than other ancient hunting-authors, being more ethical and pragmatic in focus. Moul's fine chapter, revelatory for most readers, examines Neo-Latin responses to Grattius but even makes noteworthy remarks about the Cynegetica itself, while Waters focuses on Christopher Wase's methods and motives for translating Grattius first. There are signs of variance on a few minor points: Green's appendix argues against the transposition of fourteen lines by most editors, but chapters 1 and 2 accept it; the author of the Greek Cynegetica is "Pseudo-Oppian" in chapter 5 but "Oppian" in the index of "References to Other Authors." Yet the volume is coherent in its overall project, with usefully harmonizing cross-references. This book is a landmark event in Grattian studies, and likely to remain standard for many years. This makes it a valuable resource for all scholars of Roman didactic verse, and will interest anyone who wants to see the best efforts at sharing with Grattius the high status of other Augustan poets. Dunstan Lowe University of Kent Copyright © 2019 The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Inc

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