Fieldwork and Ancient Sources

Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World. Edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Jean Macintosh Turfa. Rewriting Antiquity. London: Routledge, 2016. Pp. xxxvi + 1074, illus. $240.

After several mystical visions of the nun, Pelagia, the holy icon of the Annunciation of the Panagia (“the All-Holy One”, or the Virgin Mary) was found on the island of Tinos in 1823. According to tradition, Pelagia repeatedly witnessed the Panagia in her visions and received orders from her to find the icon and also to build her church. The icon was unearthed in the field where it had remained since the church, built on the ruins of a pagan temple, was destroyed in the tenth century. Two years before the icon was found, the Greek War of Independence broke out. The finding of the icon, the construction of the Church of the Annunciation of the Panagia, the enormous crowds of pilgrims, and the miracles worked by the icon, contributed to the outcome that the island was declared a sacred island, and Pelagia became sanctified. The ritual year of the miraculous icon on Tinos starts on 30 January with the festival dedicated to the Finding of the Holy Icon when the finding is ritually re-enacted, before it is carried in a procession repeating the first procession after the finding. After worshipping the tombs of the builders of the church, the celebration terminates with a popular ritual called the Phanarakia (lanterns), in which children are the main participants, running around in the streets of Tinos town while holding multicoloured lighted lamps, and singing hymns commemorating the finding of the holy icon. This article presents the festival and delves into its meaning and importance for the Greek people.

Our knowledge of Thales of Miletus is fragmentary. We only have very short passages attributed to him by ancient sources, and those passages are not always clearly consistent with each other. In this paper, I analyze some of the most representative ancient fragments with theses assigned to Thales of Miletus by means of a methodology based on the general framework of the unified theory of mental models. My intention in doing that is to try to clarify what he truly thought about water, the soul, and gods, and my conclusions refer to the fact that it is very possible that Thales’ philosophy was much closer to myth than sometimes assumed.

From the clash of bronze weapons on bronze armor to the fall of Rome, war often decided the course of ancient history. This volume is a practical introduction to the study of warfare in the ancient world, beginning with Egypt and Mesopotamia, and tracing the advances made in battle tactics, technology, and government over hundreds of years, culminating with developments in Greece and the Roman Empire. The chronological structure allows the reader to trace certain general themes down through the centuries: how various civilizations waged war; who served in the various armies and why; who the generals and officers were who made the decisions in the field; what type of government controlled these armies; and from what type of society they sprang. Major events and important individuals are discussed in their historical contexts, providing a complete understanding of underlying causes, and enabling readers to follow the evolution of ancient warfare as armies and empires became steadily larger and more sophisticated. Yet as Chrissanthos makes clear, history comes full circle during this period. Rome's collapse in 476 C.E. inaugurated an unforeseen dark age in which great armies were left decimated despite advanced technology that, while proving decisive in the outcome of many critical battles and stand-offs, had vanished amidst the Empire's crumbling walls. In addition to the chronological treatment, Chrissanthos also includes sections on such important topics as chariot warfare, cavalry, naval warfare, elephants in battle, the face of battle, and such vital, but often-overlooked topics as the provisioning of the army with sufficient food and water. Eyewitness accounts are incorporated throughout each chapter, allowing the reader brief glimpses into the life and times of peasants and soldiers, generals and politicians, all of whom were dealing with war and its irreconcilable consequences from differing vantage points. Battle diagrams and maps are carefully placed throughout the text to help the reader visualize particular aspects of ancient warfare. The book also furnishes a detailed timeline and an extensive bibliography containing both modern and ancient sources.

The article is devoted to references to ancient history in the scientific works and university lectures of V.O. Klyuchevsky when he considered issues of a source study. Noted is the use of V.O. Klyuchevsky's experience in comparing texts accumulated by specialists in ancient history as he points out significant differences in the source base of Greco-Roman and Russian history. The main rules (techniques) for working with ancient sources identified by Klyuchevsky were restoration and interpretation of the ancient text, determination of the author's point of view, interpretation of the meaning inherent in the text. He noted that historical criticism acquired a masterful skill precisely in the analysis of the works of ancient authors. The main difference between the sources on the medieval history of Rus' and the ancient narrative tradition is according to V.O. Klyuchevsky that the written monuments of the ancient world, on which historical criticism developed its techniques, are all marked by individuality, are works of personal creativity, while the sources on Russian history before the 17th century are “impersonal works of writing”, that is, chronicles and acts. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the model for Klyuchevsky's development of source study techniques for studying medieval Russian texts was the methods of working with ancient Greek and Roman sources, methods of their criticism and interpretation, as they had developed by the second half of the 19th century. When creating the scientific history of Russia, V.O. Klyuchevsky relied not only on the works of his predecessors in Russian history, but also on the methodology of studying general, especially ancient history.

The ancient sources on Lais are misleading: apparently they concern only one hetaira, but actually they must refer to two or even three “courtesans” of the same name. This naturally reduces the possibility of writing the biography of a single hetaira called Lais, but on the other hand allows us to trace a genre biography, true, in its main lines, for more than one “courtesan” of Antiquity. “Lais”, the second, for whom we dispose of more individualised historical details, was a hetaira of brilliant erotic and social success, but she was at the beginning of her life a prisoner of war, sold as a slave in Sicily and then moving to Corinth. Keywords: prigionieri di guerra, schiave, prostitute, etere; prisoners of war, slaves, prostitutes, courtesans.

Reviewed by: Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller Carol J. King Duane W. Roller . Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2010 . Pp. x + 252 . US $24.95 . ISBN 9780195365535 . Cleopatra is one of the most significant female figures in recorded history. As heir to the Ptolemaic throne of Egypt in 51 bc, she was the wealthiest and most [End Page 395] powerful Hellenistic ruler of her day. Yet the legacy spawned by her attempts to hold onto both wealth and power in the increasingly Roman-controlled eastern Mediterranean overshadows her accomplishments as the last Ptolemaic ‘king and pharaoh.’ Male-dominated historiography, the victor’s point of view, and the visual and performing arts of the last 500 years have all contributed to the myth of Cleopatra (x, 1), a myth perpetuated in popular culture through film, historical fiction, and even literary biography. The “recension of the myth of Cleopatra” (6) is not the concern of Duane W. Roller’s Cleopatra: A Biography; rather, Roller proposes “to create a portrait of Cleopatra based solely on information from the ancient world” (x). As a corrective to the generally misunderstood and unfairly represented persona of this important historical figure (1), Roller’s book is a valuable contribution to Hellenistic scholarship. As part of the Oxford University Press series Women in Antiquity, Roller’s Cleopatra: A Biography takes a broad approach to ancient history and culture and gives equal attention to Cleopatra’s life and her historical times. The book generally follows chronological order. Chapters 1 and 2 cover, respectively, Cleopatra’s ancestry and her Ptolemaic heritage (particularly Ptolemaic involvement with Rome). Roller rightly gives due attention to historical context that is not only relevant to her but absolutely critical for understanding the significance of her reign (32). For example Ptolemy VIII’s visits to Rome in order to strengthen his political position, as well as his appreciation for the advantages of developing a close personal relationship with a prominent Roman, set precedents for Cleopatra VII (42). Chapter 3 covers Cleopatra’s youth and education. Here the focus is on the cultural context, mainly what is known about the Ptolemaic court, since a sheer lack of evidence frustrates any fuller account of Cleopatra’s early years. Speculation is minimal, kept to the realm of possibility given other facts. “[O]ne presumes that she could study at the Library and attend lectures at the Mouseion,” perhaps preferring those of physicians and pharmacologists (45). Roller pays serious attention to Cleopatra’s educational accomplishments, especially to Plutarch’s mention of seven languages—to which must be added her native Greek, Egyptian, and Latin—and to “the obscure notices” of her writing (50). In Cleopatra’s cultural milieu, “literary output was expected of someone in her position” (50). Roller argues that fragments of a work Cosmetics indicate more of a medical and pharmacological bent than a simple discussion of female adornment. He notes that Plutarch’s list of languages has a geographical progression, from south to northeast, of places historically associated with the Ptolemaic dynasty, which strongly suggests that Cleopatra acquired knowledge of these and likely other languages (Plutarch’s “many others as well”) for diplomatic purposes (48). The “unusually well educated” (43) Cleopatra was evidently less vulnerable [End Page 396] to potentially dangerous factions at court than her rival brother Ptolemy XIII, who was said to have had little education (51). The years 51 to 47 bc, when Cleopatra VII became queen of Egypt, first—significantly—jointly as consort to the younger Ptolemy XIII, are covered in Chapter 4. Roller claimsthat at the point when Caesar arrived in Alexandria in 48 bc, Cleopatra was “marginalized” (in exile) and “no one took her seriously” (60). Thus her swift reversal of circumstances to become sole ruler following the elimination of her brother during the Alexandrian War is indeed remarkable, the more so because it was largely her own doing, beginning with her most ingenious return from exile and self-presentation to Caesar. Roller’s earlier statement that this was one of a number of familiar episodes that “simply did not happen” (7) is somewhat misleading: the oft-called “carpet,” he here argues, was rather a bedsack, but...

Over the last twenty years, the study of the women of the Greek and Roman world has experienced a boom that, if it is judged by the sheer output of relevant publications, dwarfs any other recent innovations and redirections in the field of ancient history. In view of the ongoing proliferation of studies on this topic, I can only hope that my present paper not only adds to the bulk but also a little to the stock (to heed Laurence Sterne's lament over the historian's business) in that it seeks to redress an imbalance that informs most previous research on women's life in classical antiquity. In short, the large majority of studies in this particular field concentrate on urban environments and, as a consequence, give undue prominence to a certain segment, actually a minority group in terms of quantity, of ancient society. Needless to say, however, that, given the nature of our sources, anything else than this biased focus would have been a big surprise and probably impossible to achieve. Even so, the busy study of those layers of ancient society that produced, or caught the eye of, the authors of Greek and Roman literature, inscriptions, papyri, and coinlegends, can be fully vindicated only when the more shadowy and obscure regions of ancient history are not allowed to be passed over in complete silence. The contribution of women to ancient agriculture is an issue that falls squarely within that latter, underprivileged category of subjects. In her introduction to a collection of essays on new methodological approaches to the study of women in antiquity, Marilyn Skinner pointed out that ‘Real women, like other muted groups, are not to be found so much in the explicit text of the historical record as in its gaps and silences – a circumstance that requires the application of research methods based largely upon controlled inference’

The article analyzes the original terminology of the patristic writings of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism of the 4th - 7th centuries, which is found when mentioning the practice of revelation of thoughts as an important pastoral-ascetic activity and a form of spiritual leadership in the monastic tradition of this period. The author identifies the main terms related to this area, analyzes the context of their use and various semantic shades that reflect the corresponding forms, conditions and characteristics of this activity. Modern patrolologists strictly distinguish the practice of revealing thoughts from confession, which in ancient times was carried out in all forms of monastic life: hermitage, semi-hermitage, community and laura. At the same time, the most ancient sources do not always reflect this difference, their external forms and ideological content. Another equally important question remains not entirely clear: how the great fathers of ancient Eastern monasticism understood this saving remedy, whether for them there was a division between confession and revelation of thoughts as between two different actions of repentance, and if so, what appeared for them clear criteria for such division. The sources for the study were the most famous and significant works of monastic writing in the tradition of Egypt and Palestine in the 4th - 7th centuries, as the period of formation, development and greatest flowering of monasticism, and at the same time its ascetic and pastoral theology. Some manuscripts of individual sources were also used as sources, including the most ancient ones, reflecting the understanding of the practice being studied in the minds of scribes belonging to various manuscript traditions - Greek, Latin and Coptic. The subject of study are terms denoting revelation (of hidden thoughts, sinful falls committed in secret), revelation (of oneself, one’s emotional experiences, demonic temptations, etc.), confession (of sins, a passionate disposition of the soul and its destructive consequences), etc.

The reconstruction of Roman mining activities in a primary deposit during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD has been made possible thanks to the excellent preservation of ancient mining and the prerequisite accompanying industries in the territorium metallorum Tresminas/Jales. Decades of on-site research and careful documentation of the monuments and traces of mining have faciliated the understanding of the work processes presented in this volume: prospection, excavation and processing. Within this framework, prospecting not only served the discovery of deposits as reported by ancient sources, but it accompanied the miners' daily work and was an essential element of the mining process. The mining itself has left traces that enable us to both follow and understand the progress of mining over time. The planning and execution that become visible as a result of this allow us to infer a central organisation. The fantastic extensive high galleries of Tresminas, whose dimensions and state of preservation still impress visitors and researchers today are a further example of this. Finds that were abandoned, never completed or destroyed in ancient times are particularly helpful in understanding the mining process. The complex processing of the gold-bearing ores has left behind in Tresminas around 1 000 stamp mills, countless rock-grinding mills and enormous ore washing structures. In addition, the water management system associated with mining and settlement is discussed. An important part of the industrial complex was also the local stone quarrying for the production of stamp mills, rock-grinding and grain mills. A summary of the historical context of the territorium metallorum Tresminas/Jales is presented in the introduction.

Rivers are an indispensable part of life. For ancient societies, rivers served not only as sources of water that ensured the sustainability of life. The establishment of ancient settlements and the development of many civilizations around the rivers are important in terms of showing how crucial they are to human life. The Araxes (Ἀράξης) River, today known as Aras, one of the largest rivers of the Eastern Anatolia, also contributed to the rise of civilization. It was understood that the river was not only seen as a river in ancient times but was also used as a trade and travel route that reached from the Caspian Sea to Artaxata, and from there to Asia Minor, and was accepted as a natural border. From these points of view, the authors of ancient period, mentioned the regions through which the Araxes flows and the cities established around the river. In this way, they revealed the political, socio-economic and cultural structure shaped around the river. This study aims to examine, via ancient sources, how the river in question influenced the regions through which it flows and to draw attention to the misinterpretations about the Araxes by evaluating the relationship between the river and people.

A thorough re-examination of an 11th/12th century codex from the Seraglio, which contains a text most probably deriving from the ancient period, leads us to the conclusion that the author of this text was of the opinion that the hippodrome in Olympia had an total length of 4 stadia. This conclusion is supported by other hints given in ancient sources that indicate a length of 4 stadia for the Greek hippodrome.Although it remains an open question, whether this was a standardised measurement for all Greek – or at least the Panhellenic – horse-racecourses, it is apparent that 4 stadia is certainly a measurement that should be given serious consideration.

Reviewed by: Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power by Elizabeth Donnelly Carney Leanna Boychenko Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power. By Elizabeth Donnelly Carney. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 200. Hardback, $65.00. ISBN: 978-0-190-28053-6. Carney's book on the life of Eurydice of Macedon is an important contribution to our knowledge of royal women. More broadly, it is an extremely useful overview of the political situation in Macedon in the time before Alexander. Like many ancient women, Eurydice is largely defined by her relationship to men: daughter of Sirras, wife of Amyntas III, mother of Philip II and grandmother of Alexander the Great. Eurydice lived at a fascinating time—when Macedon's emerging power gave it a seat at the international table—and was a key player in the events that led to her sons' rise to power (her two elder sons ruled before Philip II), supporting them against other possible successors to the throne. Carney examines her public role, the earliest known for a Macedonian royal woman, but in the end we are left with more questions than answers, not least the question of whether some sources have anything to do with Eurydice's life at all (for instance, the so-called Tomb of Eurydice in Vergina, whose occupant is unknown). This book is short, 117 pages before the notes, and falls into six chapters. The introduction contextualizes Eurydice's life and gives an overview of our sources, Macedonian monarchy and the roles of women in Macedon. Carney also builds on Daniel Ogden's term "bastardizing," pointing out that while Ogden correctly points to the public smearing of a potential successor's birth as a propagandistic tool, frequently the successor's mother was the target, thus explaining the stories about Eurydice in which she is an adulterer and murderer of her two elder sons. Indeed, this analysis can be more broadly applied to other women in the ancient world and makes this book worth reading for that contribution alone. Chapter 2 looks at Eurydice's marriage to Amyntas III and his rule. Especially interesting is the discussion of Eurydice's contested ethnicity and its implications. The rule of her sons is covered in the third chapter, ending with Philip II's consolidation of power and legitimacy. Chapter 4 examines Eurydice's relationships with her sons and reports of her adultery and filicide. It also contains discussion of a [End Page 369] speech of Aeschines (2.27-9), in which he paints Eurydice as a "super mother" (75) responsible for bringing international support to her sons, essentially guaranteeing their safety and rise to power in Macedon. This is the strongest evidence for her political action and public importance, but is buried in the middle of the book (and chapter). The fifth chapter, focused on her public image in her lifetime, looks at dedications, monuments, physical images and inscriptions. Particularly striking is an epigram preserved in Plutarch's corpus (Plut. Mor. 14b-c) concerning Eurydice's education. According to the epigram, she learned to read and write when her sons were in their adolescence. Carney is mostly interested in a textual emendation, which would change the dedication of the epigram to female citizens (and not the Muses) as well as the location of the original inscription (no physical copy exists). I would have liked to read more about what this could tell us about the education of women and literacy in Macedonia. It is also worth considering that this epigram may not be genuine and instead is part of later reception of the queen. Finally, the last chapter concerns Eurydice's public image after her death and is mostly focused on the Tomb of Eurydice, possibly the queen's final resting place. At the end of this chapter, Carney briefly introduces some intriguing topics that deserve more attention: the importance of the name Eurydice in myth and in history; the name-change of her great-granddaughter Adea to Eurydice and what this tells us about Eurydice's legacy; Odyssean figures as models for Macedonian monarchs and Eurydice's connection to Penelope. I wish they had been dealt with more...

This chapter tracks martial or “ravaging rape” since the ancient Mediterranean period. It demonstrates how ravaging has historically been practiced as a form of warfare. It describes how ravaging exerts martial ethno-religious hegemony over people by targeting their reproductive capacity and childbearing customs. It charts this practice in modern times, focusing on the sexual violence of Serbian forces toward Bosnian women. The linkages between historical and modern practices underscore the continuities of harm and violence that women experience in situations of war. The chapter situates recent testimonials about male massacre and martial rape within the long history of ravaging. Historical knowledge underscores the pervasiveness of such practices and the challenges to undoing them in war.

The Israelites in History and TraditionThe book under review appears in the series Library of Ancient Israel edited by Douglas A. Knight. The author, professor at the Institute for Biblical Exegesis at the University of Copenhagen, belongs to the so-called minimalist or deconstructionist school of thought. Their basic claim is that the Hebrew Bible is product of the Persian, or even the Hellenistic, period, and hence none of the historical accounts can be trusted and used in reconstructing Israelite and Judahite history. In this book Lemche questions the origins and political history according to the biblical narratives. Actually, according to him, [A]s far as ancient Israel is concerned, there can be no doubt that it is an artificial creation of the scholarly world of the modern age (p. 163). He accuses the scholars responsible for this creation, like Albright, Wright, and Bright, of being biased and incapable of understanding the true nature of ancient Near Eastern civilizations and the forces operating behind them. Furthermore, they are capable only of paraphrasing the text rather than examining it critically. According to Lemche, biblical scholars have been influenced by the humanistic studies created during the Enlightenment, and they project their own modern ideas on the text, which they read in naive manner. Actually, modern scholars fall prey to a highly ideological construct created by ancient scholars of Jewish tradition in order to legitimize their own religious community and its religio-political claims on land and religious exclusivity (p. 166). Upon reviewing the historical background for understanding the terms ethnos and nation, Lemche would like to see whether scholars who dealt with these issues in relation to Israel showed any independent concern about what historical Israel might have been like or whether they have just followed the ideas of nationality as developed in their own time (p. 21). Thus, one gets the impression that Lemche would analyze biblical as well as extra-biblical materials with care and scrutiny.Every scholar is entitled to his/her conclusions and opinions as long as the investigation and analysis are done in fair manner. However, it seems that Lemche is more interested in slaughtering sacred cows than in reading the truth (if this is at all possible). One feels that the book is laden with hidden agenda. There is nothing wrong in questioning again certain subjects which are already under consensus, but it should be done in an objective manner. Archaeologists admit that it is next to impossible to identify clay vessel as Israelite rather than belonging to so-called Canaanite. But not only the question of pig consumption cited by Lemche (p. 218, n. 7) can be treated from the ethnic point of view. What about the countless seals, seal impressions, and inscriptions containing names of individuals who can be identified with biblical personalities? To ignore this body of evidence that reflects on Israelite identity is highly questionable.Following the Prolegomena: Inventing the Past. Ancient Israel-Ethnicity, Nation, and History as the Mode of Interpreting Ancient Cultures the book is divided into five chapters followed by conclusion, list of abbreviations, notes, bibliography, and two indexes, one of biblical passages and ancient sources and the other of names and subjects. …