Nulla certior tamen rapacis Orci fine destinata aula divitem manet erum. Odes 2.18.29-32. Alike for those who for To-day prepare, Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere et A Moment's Halt a momentary taste Rubaiyat XLVIII-XLIX. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. Odes 1.11.7-8. And those who husbanded the Golden grain, Rubaiyat XV. ibi tu calentem debita sparges lacrima favillam vatis amici. Odes 2.6.22-24. Horace, in Odes 3.30, boasted that his work would be known as long as Rome endured. His poetry, like the Rubaiyat, is not of any one clime, or race, or period of time, but universal and eternal. Wherever wise men gather together these poets are known and loved. Thomas Bailey Aldrich has given beautiful expression to this thought. And his words, written of Omar Khayyam, are not less true of Horace: Sultan and Slave alike have gone their way The Glory that was Greece. A Survey of Hellenic Culture and Civilization. By J. C. Stobart. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company (1915). Pp. xxv + 292. $2.50. This is a new edition of a sumptuous English volume which first appeared in 1911, to which a companion volume, entitled The Grandeur that was Rome, was added in 1914. Mr. Stobart is well equipped in archaeology, history, and literature. He has experienced the extraordinary sense of illumination which one feels on turning from linguistic study to the examination of objective antiquity on the actual soil of the classical countries, and then the added interest with which realities are invested by the literary records of history. His object is to present a general and vivid picture of ancient Greek culture, and he includes history, politics, religion, and philosophy with art and literature. There are ninety-two beautiful plates, several of which are colored, and thirty-four illustrations in the text. Most of them are excellent, though the view of the Erechtheum (Plate 49) is antiquated and the Laocoon Group (page 264) is given with erroneous upstretched right arm. There is an Introduction on Hellenism: The Land and its People, and there are chapters on The I. Aegean Civilization. A New Chapter in History: Crete, the Doorstep of Europe: Progress of Aegean Culture: The Mainland Palaces, Mycenae and Tiryns: The Makers of Aegean Art; II. The Heroic Age. The Northern Invaders: Homer and the Achaeans: Shield of Achilles: Kings and Gods: Art of the Epic Period: The Hero's Home: Hesiod's World; III. The Ages of Transition. The Coming of Apollo: Athletics: Sparta: Pallas Athene: Tyranny and Culture: Ionia: The West; IV. The Grand Century. The Rise of Athens: Pheidias: Ictinus and the Temple-builders: Tragedy and Comedy: Aidos; V. The Fourth Century. Athens: Sparta and Thebes: Fourth-century Culture: Sculpture: The Other Arts: Literature and Philosophy; VI. The Macedonian World. Alexander and his Work: Alexander in Art: Alexandria: Athens and her Philosophers; VII. Epilogue. There is a Glossary of technical terms, which is fairly good, though we might question some of the definitions. Thus, the entablature is defined to include the cornice as well as the architrave and the frieze. Entasis is hardly explained by "a system of optical correction employed in Greek architecture". Parabasis is not the "ode sung by the chorus in Greek drama at their entrance on the stage". The chorus is often present a long time and says much before it turns and addresses the audience in the parabasis. In the text and Glossary I have detected no revision throughout such as is mentioned in the Preface. Except for a change in the placing of a few of the illustrations the first 269 pages are almost identical in the two editions. The Glossary is followed by a select Bibliography much extended beyond that in the first edition, in which, however, many titles are still missing. Hall's Aegean Archaeology, and the new edition of Gardner's Greek Sculpture (not that with an Appendix separate) perhaps appeared too late to be included. In a book which is to be sold to Americans as well as Englishmen, Fowler and Wheeler's book, Greek Archaeology, should be mentioned. Harrison and Verrall's Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens is out of print; Professor Weller's Monuments of Athens (THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 7.222-223) should take its place in a bibliography. The only American title actually included in the book is Ferguson's Greek Imperialism. One feature of the new edition is the adding in the Glossary and Index of accents and quantity marks to the proper names and Greek words in order to assist the non-classical reader to the correct pronunciation. The accent is to indicate the stressed syllable, but we find, unfortunately, many mistakes in both accents and quantities. The book is so splendidly gotten up and the style is so charming (even humorous at times) and there is so much sound judgment and wide learning that the second edition will undoubtedly find a ready market. In a third edition some of the following points might also be considered. On pages XIII and 106 the temple at Corinth is called the oldest temple in Greece and Corinth is said to have been the first to erect a Doric temple in Greece proper; but the old Argive Heraeum and the Heraeum at Olympia are older. On page XV, page 172, Plate 51, and page 218 we have the idea that the discovery of the Agias statue has proved that the Apoxyomenus is not a true example of the work of Lysippus and that the Agias gives us a very fine example of the style of Lysippus, an idea which seems to be generally accepted but which is far from being proved. Mr. Stobart knows the latest discoveries and publications. He knows Ridgeway's writings, including his Origin of Tragedy, and accepts some of the theories of his Early Age of Greece (of which only one volume has appeared, though on page 271 Mr. Stobart speaks of two volumes). And yet he does not think that Homer's Iliad was written in Mycenaean times, but rather that large parts of Homer were written in the eighth century (52). He thinks (61) that Homer belongs to an altogether lower civilization, typified by the Dipylon He makes him a contemporary of Hesiod and cites (62) Herodotus and the Parian Marble, which sets Hesiod thirty years earlier than Homer, though he does not mention Ephorus, the source of this statement, or the Agon between Homer and Hesiod, which represents an ancient tradition, as a papyrus discovered a few years ago shows. On page 71, the Apollo Belvedere is said to have been carved to suit a decadent taste in the days when Greece had lost the very memory of manliness. The Apollo Belvedere is, however, a copy of a bronze original, perhaps of the fourth century B. C. Some even attribute it to Leochares. On page 82 it is said that only in the later periods is feminine nudity exhibited in Greek art, and yet on page 116, Plate 31, we see a nude woman on the Ludovisi throne, which dates before the time of Phidias (compare also my remarks in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 8.29). Nor is Praxiteles the first to uncover Aphrodite's loveliness (211). It is hardly true that Sparta has left us no art or literature (94). The Spartans were not unartistic. The British excavations at Sparta have discovered much art, especially in bronzes, wonderful ivories, terracottas, vases, lead figurines, and even sculpture (compare Tod and Wace, Catalogue of Sparta Museum, 99 ff.). The 'Cyrenaic' vases are now called Laconian by many scholars. Nor must we forget that Tyrtaeus wrote for the Laconians or that Alcman was a Spartan even if originally from Sardis. On page 142, Plate 39 the whole Aeginetan pediments, perhaps Furtwängler's reconstructions, should be given, not merely three single figures. On page 147 we have a statement, which is found also in Gardner's Greek Sculpture, that the east pediment of a temple depicts a scene of peace, the west a struggle. This is a theory to which there are too many exceptions to say that the Greek sculptors formulated any such rule. On pages 158-159 there is no mention or illustration of any of the copies of Myron's Athena, only of the Marsyas. Even before Penrose, vases. Pennethorne and others had known that the lines of the Parthenon were not straight (161). It is very unlikely that in the case of the Parthenon the background behind the sculpture of the pediment was red, or that the ground of the metopes was red (162). On the same page, where mention is made of an acroterion, we should be told that the Austrians have discovered fragments of the acroteria and in the British Museum Publication of the Parthenon Sculptures can be seen Praschniker's reconstruction. On page 160 is shown an antiquated reconstruction of the Erechtheum without the windows in the east wall which were discovered by Stevens, and conjectured by Bötticher and others. On page 167 the Theseum is wrongly dated earlier than the Parthenon. On the serpent column at Delphi were inscribed not only the names of those who had taken part in the battle at Plataea (168), but the names of whose who had participated in the previous fights against the Persians. It is a memorial not of Plataea, but of all the Persian wars. Nor is it true that a forlorn remnant of it still exists at Constantinople. The entire column with the exception of the three serpent heads is preserved, and all the names can still be read, and even one of the serpent's heads is preserved in the museum at Constantinople. It is time that scholars stopped saying that "the only Greek pictures that we have are the mural frescoes and mosaics of Pompeii" (223). Mention should be made of the wonderful Minoan frescoes and of the many painted stelae from Pagasae and elsewhere. Despite these and several other minor deficiencies and mistakes which there is not space to tabulate, Mr. Stobart has done a real service in publishing this fine volume, embodying the latest researches. Such charming books are common in Germany and are very cheap. So it is a pleasure to see that the American edition costs only $2.50, whereas the original edition cost $7.50. The Mythology of All Races. Volume I: Greek and Roman. By William Sherwood Fox. Boston: Marshall Jones Co. (1916). Pp. Ixii + 354. This is the first of a series of thirteen volumes1 edited by Louis Herbert Gray, who is well known to students of religion and mythology as associate editor of Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. It is certainly a stupendous task to bring together in one series the myths of all the world, but the best of scholars have been selected to write the various volumes. The purpose is to collect the myths in such a manner that the mythology of each race shall be seen to form a coherent part of mythology as a whole. The facts are to be presented, and there is to be little, if any, theorizing, so that the work will differ much from Frazer's Golden Bough. The series must be purchased as a whole, at $6.00 per volume: see the advertisement in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY for November 13, 1916. Professor Fox has done a difficult task systematically and exceedingly well, and, although there are countless books on classical mythology, students and scholars will welcome this volume as somewhat different. Professor Fox tries to find a basis of fact behind the myths and to interpret them as vehicles of religious thought, and treats the cults and myths topographically, in part: and, as far as I know, these things have been done by him better than in any other English book on Greek and Roman mythology. Professor Fox has digested the enormous literature of the subject, including such recent books as Cook's encyclopaedic volume on Zeus. After the Prefaces and an Introduction discussing the sources, Part I deals with Myths of the Beginning, The Heroes, and The Afterworld; Myths of the Peloponnesus (Arcadia, Laconia, Messene, Argos, Corinth); Myths of the Northern Mainland (Boeotia, Euboea, Aetolia); Myths of Crete and Attica. Then follow chapters on Heracles, Theseus, The Voyage of the Argo, The Tale of Troy, The Afterworld. Part II is devoted to the Greek Gods, ten chapters to the Greater Gods and four chapters to the Lesser Gods. Part III, on The Mythology of Ancient Italy, has only twentyone pages, showing how much more important Greek mythology is than Roman, although we must remember that gradually most of the national Greek myths became Roman property with little more than a change of names and local identification. There is an interesting Appendix, on Survivals of Ancient Greek Divinities and Myths in Modern Greece, giving a short summary of Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion; then a similar Appendix on Survivals of Divinities and Myths of the Etruscans and Romans in the Romagnola, based on Leland's EtruscoRoman Remains. Then follow Notes (on page 327, it is said that Argos was made the scene of Aeschylus's Agamemnon to please the Argive allies; it would have been well to add that Mycenae had been destroyed by the Argives ten years before the production of the Agamemnon). In the Bibliography, among the works of J. R. Harris should be mentioned also The Origin of the Cult of Apollo and The Origin of the Cult of Artemis. Professor Baur's article on Tityros, in The American Journal of Archaeology, 9.157 ff., Leaf's Homer and History, Ridgeway's Second volume on The Origin of Tragedy, Della Seta's Religion and Art, and some monographs are missing, but the Bibliography on the whole is excellent. The illustrations are well chosen and beautifully reproduced. They include many worksseldom, if ever, pictured before in a book on mythology, such as bronzes in New York and Boston and several vase-paintings. Unfortunately, the text accompanying the numerous beautiful illustrations, especially in the case of the vasepaintings, has several errors, though on the whole it is excellent and has had the benefit of suggestions from Professor Elderkin. Many of the dates are wrong. The Chalcidian vase on Plate II dates about 550, not 650 B. C. In the text to Plate IV, Professor Gardner's name is four times spelled "Gardiner". The blackfigured amphora on Plate VI can hardly date as late as 475 B. C., if that on page 83, also from Gela, dates from the sixth century B. C. The dates given by Professor Fox to many other vases from Gela, which are reproduced, are very doubtful. The head of Hera reproduced on Plate VII is not an original marble of the fifth century B. C., but a Roman copy of an original bronze statue, and is not much superior to the Farnese or the Ludovisi Hera. The vase reproduced on Plate VIII is in Berlin, not in Boston. The copy of the Athena Parthenos reproduced on Plate IX is a statuette, not a statue. The vase on Plate XXIV in New York is published in Furtwängler-Reichhold's Plates, No. 116. In the text to Plate XXVI, it should be stated that this vase in Boston is not signed by Aristophanes, though it is a duplicate of one in Boston, which is signed. The Orvieto crater on Plate XXVII dates about 470 B. C. or a little later, but not from the end of the fifth century B. C. On Plate XXIX, the object on the wall is a scabbard, not a quiver; nor is the helmet Corinthian. The Boston amphora on Plate XXXII is published in The American Journal of Archaeology 12.406-416. For Plates XXXVII and LXII references should be given to Miss Richter's ideal catalogue of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum (see THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.124-125). The original of Myron's Athena (Plate XL) dates from the second quarter, not from the latter part, of the fifth century B. C. In connection with Plate XLI the Apollo Belvedere is said to be a copy of a Hellenistic bronze, though many scholars date it earlier, some even ascribing it to Leochares. The Lucanian vase reproduced on Plate LV is from the fourth, not from the third century, B. C., and has two Sirens, as in Homer, not three (compare page 262). I cannot let pass this occasion to protest against the spelling of proper names in such an excellent book meant for the general cultured reader rather than for the Greek specialist. The Latinized or English forms which are familiar in English literature and in general usage should be employed and not such strange words as Attike, Plouton, Delphoi, Boiotian, Mykenaian, Phoinikian, Oidipous, Meleagros. The Greek House: Its History and Development from the Neolithic Period to the Hellenistic Age. By Bertha Carr Rider. Cambridge: at the University. Press (1916). Pp. xii + 272. $3.25. Archaeological excavations during recent years have revealed many phases of ancient life. Public buildings, state documents, municipal works and imperial dedications have been recovered, and temples, statues and inscriptions repeatedly testify to the piety and public service of the people. But a reconstruction of the normal course of private life in Greece has been more difficult to achieve, for the people seem to have lived modestly in order to bestow their substance lavishly on the gods and on the State. But each excavation of any extent made in the recent past has shed some light on this side of ancient Greece until now the cumulative results are considerable, and, while many details are lacking for a complete reconstruction of the private life, no phase of it is entirely unknown. In the study of the homely life of individuals in their daily intercourse an important subject is that which concerns the arrangements and furnishings of the households of the people and the actual houses in which they reside. Private houses in Greece were never built substantially, as were the temples, and their frail walls have crumbled and disappeared, so that, even when the furnishings of clay and metal have survived, the walls of the houses are recognized only by their stone foundations. Yet in many excavations of sites of varying periods, from the early settlements in Thessaly and Crete to the great Hellenistic towns of Thera and Delos, of Priene and Pergamon, hundreds of houses, uncovered with minute care, have supplied abundance of material for a consecutive study of the structural development of the Greek house, its relation to ethnological problems, its accord and discord with descriptive details preserved in extant literary works. The assembly and arrangement of these results, which are scattered far and wide in many volumes and in articles in periodicals, is the aim of the present work, a "thesis approved for the degree of Doctor of Literature in the University of London". The writer begins with a description of house remains of the neolithic period in North Africa, and in the West and East Mediterranean. She then discusses the lake dwellings and their modification as revealed in Northern Italy, passing presently to a consideration of Cretan tombs and the round, elliptical, and rectangular forms of early foundations that have been found in the islands and elsewhere in the Greek world. She subsequently treats the early Minoan settlements in Crete, following that subject with a long chapter (IX) on Cretan palaces (80-110). After this the various mainland palaces are discussed before the chapter (XIII) which deals with Minoan private houses, as discovered mainly at smaller town sites like Palaikastro and Gournia, and as illustrated by the porcelain mosaic from Knossos. More space, however, is alloted to Homeric palaces, Chapter XIV (166-209), than to any other subject, although without doubt Homeric palaces have been discussed more than any other type of house mentioned in the book. Miss Rider does not suggest any new theory, or introduce any new matter, but consumes a great deal of space by repeating the familiar references in Homer not only in full in Greek but with an English translation. The later house of the classical and Hellenistic periods is quickly finished in Chapters XV and XVI, and the book is completed by an Index. In criticizing this work emphasis must be laid on the fact that it is not only a doctor's dissertation, but is a book published by the Cambridge University Press and sold for $3.25. Regarded solely as a thesis for the doctorate the work is acceptable, but as an ambitious study of the Greek house it falls far short of its pretentions. In the concluding paragraph (267) the writer says: Our sole object has been to throw some new light on the nature of the abodes of the Greek race throughout its history, and to make a complete review of architectural development possible. As a matter of fact, she has thrown no new light on the Greek house, she has neglected all recent discoveries at Delos, and has entirely omitted any reference to streets of houses uncovered at Pergamon and on the island of Thera. This, moreover, is not done for economy of space, since well-worn themes, such as Minoan and Homeric palaces, are discussed at great length, and throughout the book is practiced a useless habit of quoting Greek texts in full and then giving a complete translation in English. Often neither is essential and both are never necessary. Furthermore, even the Greek passages are not above reproach; and the Cambridge Press must be sorely tried by war conditions when so many errors are allowed to slip into a book. (See e. g. the Homeric passages quoted on pages 181, 182, 183 and 185). The faults of the work are that it is neither accurate nor thorough. Much available material on the subject has been overlooked and other matter is not handled with sufficient discrimination. Its merit lies in the presentation of a great subject for the first time as a unit, which has been constructed of elements not always accessible, and sometimes inconvenie tly remote. It is the only work that treats the history of the Greek house as a whole; and the conclusions with regard to the persistence of the Mycenean megaron type into Hellenistic times, as well as the views on the problem of a single or double court arrangement for the classical period, are sound and reasonable. The book, then, is interesting and has considerable value, and its use is indispensible until some archaeologist shall publish an exhaustive study of the subject, which could be advantageously illustrated by photographs of excavated houses as well as by reproductions of architectural plans. |