VALERIUS FLACCUS - T. Stover Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome. A New Reading of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica. Pp. xii + 244. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Cased, £55, US$99. ISBN: 978-0-19-964408-7.

Abstract

ought surely to pay more attention to Cicero DND 2. In the reading of Book 1 against historiographical tradition (pp. 36-47), I miss Sallust, although he does get the odd mention, for instance on p. 43. When teaching this text it has often occurred to me that there is plenty of Sallust at stake in Lucan's terminology and ideology: I would like to have seen a thorough exploration of this. The comparison of the BC with Petronius' 'Bellum Civile' (pp. 45-7) is rather deadpan. This section needs to show how Petronius can be used to comment on Lucanas parody, or as reductio ad absurdumnot just in the light of a general 'sense of correlation' (p. 47). The section on language and style which makes up most of the rest of the introduction will be invaluable reading for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates, and scholars who want a sound and comprehensive summation of Lucan's diction and style. The table of textual variants is oddly placed proleptically, after p. 61; it would be better after p. 64. The text used is that of Housman (1926), with any divergences noted in the table of variants. The brief apparatus is pared-down in comparison with Housman, probably rightly so given the target audience. This is an advance on Getty, who has no apparatus. The typeface in both text and apparatus is easy on the eye, and the apparatus, as far as it goes, very clear. There is no description of manuscripts to replace Housman. The commentary carries the interpretative burden of the work. This is R.'s great achievement, to combine the commentary form with the assimilation of interpretative scholarship. Many of the themes adumbrated in the introduction are worked through in the numerous essays which form the introductory notes to the chunks of text. At the level of minutiae, fascinating linguistic threads are followed up, for example, the fact that the term pondus is rarely neutral in the BC (n. at line 39); or the discussion of the usage of irreuocabile (first in Lucretius) at line 509. Less successful (in my view) is the fruitless revisitation of the question of whether Nigidius Figulus' astrological pastiche reflects a 'real' speech, or at least 'real' issues (pp. 361-3; cf. Housman [1926], pp. 325-7). Like the rest of the book, these lines should be read for their cultural, thematic and poetic resonances: one should not resort to old-fashioned historicism just because they purport to contain astrology. So for instance the note on nulla cum lege (line 642), which merely glosses the phrase as sua sponte, misses the point. The terminology is political: R. could have made much here of the propensity of the heavenly bodies to act illegally: an extension, perhaps, of the Lucretian image of a cosmos constantly on the point of res noua ('revolution': DRN 1.97 and passim for the imagery). This is a missed opportunity to bring astrological subject matter into line with the political and to tie up some of the threads skilfully introduced earlier in the introduction and commentary.