The aim of the present paper is to show the results of one chapter of my Doctorate thesis about Thasian black-figure pottery as archaeologically contextualized documents, being part of the votive objects offered at female sanctuaries, especially the Artemision of Thassos. This paper is centered on Thassos, an island situated in the Northern Aegean, settled by Greeks from Paros. We focus on the Archaic Period, more specifically on the sixth century BC, the peak of local production. Departing from (...) the archaeological contexts through excavation reports, we analyze significant social and religious connections among votive materials associated with the Thasian black-figure pottery. These connections brought us elements that allowed us to interpret the multiculturalism imbricated within the objects, the mimicry and the innovations in the decoration of this black-figure pottery, as well as the particular demand in quantitative terms of a type of vessel called lekane, an object that was loaded with information and religious and apotropaic meaning. In addition, those same elements also showed us traits that reveal votive practices, judging by the way the pottery was exhibited, and its decorative features, which to date are only attested in Thassos. The research revealed intrinsic relationships linked to the diverse facets of Artemis, from a goddess protecting the rites of passage to the protection of women in childbirth, as seen in the black-figure pottery, amulets and other apotropaic objects. Moreover, it demonstrated that the multiple facets of Artemis, as protector of women, act in many spheres, such the civic-religious space in connection with the oíkos and social order, the possibility of a good childbirth and the social position of women in Thassos from the Archaic period. (shrink)

Although the Greek language of the archaic period lacked nominative expressions equivalent to the English “knowledge”, Greek speakers and writers employed a number of verbs in speaking of those who fail or succeed in knowing some fact, truth, state of affairs, or area of expertise—most commonly eidenai, gignôskein, epistamai, sunienai, and noein (in its aorist forms). In the Homeric poems, knowledge can be attained either through direct observation, through a revelatory trial or testing procedure, or from the reliable (...) testimony of others (each of these approaches figures in the discovery of Odysseus’ identity). Three broad ‘epistemic sentiments’ pervade early Greek poetry: the inability of mortals to grasp the nature of things lying beyond their immediate experience; the inability of mortals to grasp the larger course of events or ‘conceiving of what lies ahead and behind’ (prossô kai opissô); and the ability of ‘gifted’ poets and seers to overcome these limitations by drawing upon divine sources of truth and wisdom. (shrink)

This article is the first in a series devoted to nicknames of well-known people in Greece of pre-Hellenistic times. In it general considerations are primarily expressed about the role of nicknames in human societies, relations of nicknames to personal names and divine epithets, terminology of nicknames among the Greeks, and the possible reasons for not very broad development of the practice of nicknaming in Greece during this period. A nickname is a fundamental phenomenon of the history of culture, and (...) its real significance has not yet been appreciated. Nicknames in particular served as means of distinguishing individuals within any society. The names of the ancient Greeks had originally resembled nicknames as much as possible. Onomastic units in Greek poleis were mostly meaningful. Nicknames can be assigned—not from a semantic but rather from an emotional point of view—to three basic types. We deal with nicknames of a) a positive, exalted character ; b) a negative, pejorative character ; c) a neutral character—those that show a certain characteristic appearance of an individual, or some kind of memorable detail of his biography. Another interesting thing took place in pre-Hellenistic times. Nicknames were more often connected not with politicians and state figures but with people from cultural spheres—poets, philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical GreecePaul ChristesenNigel James Nicholson. Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xiv + 280 pp. 12 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $70.In Aristocracy and Athletics, Nigel Nicholson examines the portrayal of charioteers, jockeys, and athletic trainers in Greek victory memorials (epinikia, statues, vases) produced between 550 and 440 b.c.e. He argues that reliance upon paid, (...) professional assistance put aristocratic victors in a quandary because it ran counter to their insistence on the importance of inherited ability and because it involved them in commodified exchange. Charioteers, jockeys, and athletic trainers were, as a result, carefully excluded from most victory memorials. In the handful of memorials in which they figured, their activities were represented in ways that made them compatible with aristocratic ideals. Nicholson builds directly on the work that Leslie Kurke and others have done on the ways in which Pindar responds to the social and political challenges faced by elites. He takes a firmly New Historicist approach in using detailed analyses of statues, inscriptions, and vases to identify peculiarities in epinikia.In order to assess Nicholson's work, it is necessary to differentiate between his explanation of the reasons for the omission of athletic professionals from victory memorials and his explication of how omission was effected. With respect to the latter, what might be called the poetics of exclusion, Nicholson does an outstanding job. He breaks new ground in highlighting the elision of athletic professionals from victory memorials and in elucidating how the poetics of exclusion shaped epinikia. He identifies seemingly odd features of individual odes that result from the elimination of charioteers, jockeys, and athletic trainers and unpacks the strategies used to generate representations of paid professionals that were acceptable to aristocratic sensibilities. This leads to stimulating new readings of about a dozen of Pindar's odes.There are, at the same time, some problems with Aristocracy and Athletics that spring from Nicholson's single-minded focus on commodified exchange. Nicholson argues that victory memorials came into being because of aristocratic concerns about engaging in commodified exchange with athletic professionals and that this was the primary and, possibly, the sole reason that those professionals were excluded from memorials. He does not take into account the profound changes that transformed Greek athletics in the first half of the sixth century, and he paints an unconvincing picture of triumphant aristocrats overcome by anxiety about commodified exchange. These problems will be addressed in detail below. For the moment, it is important to note that they do not invalidate Nicholson's [End Page 125] insights about how epinician poets went about excluding and accommodating athletic professionals. Aristocracy and Athletics is a significant contribution to the existing scholarship on Pindar that will be of interest to serious readers of Greek lyric and to historians of ancient sport. It is best suited to a specialist audience, though some sections may be useful to advanced undergraduates.Aristocracy and Athletics consists of nine chapters framed by an introduction and a conclusion. In the introduction Nicholson shows that "almost all the competitors in the equestrian and gymnastic contests relied on others in some significant way to secure their victories" (4). He also argues that "the services of athletic trainers, charioteers, and jockeys became increasingly commodified in the late archaic period" (10). He links this development to the creation of the first victory memorials sometime around 550 and sets the lower chronological limit of the study at 440, when "the market for victory odes all but collapsed" (14).The first five chapters of Aristocracy and Athletics examine memorials for equestrian victories. In chapter 1, Nicholson begins his articulation of the poetics of exclusion. Some victory memorials (falsely) represent the owner as having driven his own chariot. Other memorials make little reference to the actual race, eliding a key moment because it was one in which the charioteer rather than the owner featured. Furthermore, epinician poets avoid mention of drivers when describing victory parades and when recounting mythical narratives that typically included charioteers.In chapters 2 to 4, Nicholson looks at the handful of drivers that appear in victory memorials. In... (shrink)

Images permeate and propel archaic thinking in diverse ways. How do philosophic texts from the Greek archaic period (ca. eighth through early-fifth centu­ries BCE) conceive of images and what do images accomplish in archaic philosophies? In what ways can attention to images in philosophic texts open perspectives onto the relations of myth, poetry, and philosophy in the archaic Greek period? With these questions guiding the inquiry, this paper explores texts from various traditions jointly related (...) within the archaic Aegean cultural matrix. Texts from what might be termed philosophy’s prehistory, such as the ancient Egyptian Leiden Hymns and Odysseia, pro­vide important context for understanding the continuity and development of images. (shrink)

The article shows that in the Archaic period the Greeks did not possess a term equivalent to Classical ποιητής “poet-composer.” The principal meaning of the word άοιδός, often claimed to correspond to ποιητής and modern English poet, was “tuneful” or “singer” . The secondary meaning “poet working in the hexameter medium” is limited to the post-Iliadic hexameter corpus. It is furthermore possible to show that the simplex άοιδός was backderived from a compound. More specifically, following Hermann Koller, I (...) propose that the secondary meaning, being an epic innovation, developed from the compound *θεσπιαοιδός “singer of things divine,” whereas the primary meaning “singer” may go back to έπαοιδός, which later acquired the specialized meaning “singer of incantations.”. (shrink)

Certaines sculptures d’époque archaïque trouvées dans les fouilles de l’École française d’Athènes à Délos sont encore très peu connues : c’est le cas des œuvres étudiées dans cet article, qui datent toutes de la fin de la période considérée. La paire de lions A 4103 et A 4104, trouvée par Homolle en 1878 dans l’Artémision (voir, en appendice, un bilan sur les sculptures archaïques découvertes à cette occasion), appartient à une série de fauves figurés dans une attitude menaçante qui est (...) représentée, en particulier, par deux exemplaires de l’Acropole d’Athènes également étudiés ici ; placés sur de hauts supports, peut‑être vers l’entrée du sanctuaire, ils soulignaient la puissance redoutable de l’Apollon Délien et de sa sœur Artémis. La sirène A 3995, un des rares exemples en ronde bosse de ce type de monstre à l’époque archaïque, se rapportait probablement au culte d’Artémis. Enfin, il est certain que la paire d’oiseaux A 3122 et A 3123 (pigeons ou colombes) provient non pas de l’Héraion, comme on l’a pensé, mais d’une zone située au sud‑est du lac : ils appartenaient peut‑être au sanctuaire GD4 68, comme la lionne A 4105. (shrink)

The Beginnings and Nature of Science in Archaic Greece: The aim of the paper is to examine the beginnings and nature of science in the archaic period of ancient Greece. The method of research is historicalphilosophical. It is historical because the interpretation of the birth of science suggested by our approach corresponds with text evidence. And it is philosophical because our reconstruction of the birth of science is able to explain the dynamic nature of the stratification of (...) science. In the first part of the paper we deal with the methodological analysis of the issue of the beginnings of science. In the second part we analyse particular manifestations of ancient investigations that, based on the diversity of their aims and the variety of methods, gradually emancipated to become separate disciplines. In the third part of the paper we argue in favour of the thesis that disciplines emerged from philosophy in such a manner that various disciplines stemmed from the diversity of philosophy. In the conclusion we state that in Archaic Greece of the 6th-5th centuries BC science emerged from the wealth of various research approaches by gradual separation, i.e. stratification of aims and stabilization of research methods. However, not a single science but a number of disciplines appeared. They did not emerge from one philosophy but from the abundance of research approaches and aims. Only later the umbrella term “science” began to be used. (shrink)

According to Xenophon, the hetaira "gratified" her patron as a philos, participating in an aristocratic network of gift exchange , while the pornê, as her name signified, trafficked in sex as a commodity. Recent writers on Greek prostitution have acknowledged that hetaira vs. pornê may be as much a discursive opposition as a real difference in status, but still, very little attention has been paid to the period of the "invention" of this binary. Hetaira meaning "courtesan" first occurs in (...) Herodotus and does not exist in Homer: hence, the conceptual category of the hetaira is an invention of the archaic period. What needs generated the constitution of this category? And what conceptual "work" was the opposition hetaira-pornê doing in Greek culture in the period of its inception? This paper addresses these questions through a reading of fragments of archaic lyric-predominantly those of Anakreon-as well as consideration of Attic vase painting. I suggest that the hetaira-pornê opposition participates in the overarching tension between the aristocratic symposium and the public sphere in archaic Greece. Oswyn Murray has suggested that the symposium constitutes itself as a kind of anti-city with its own rules and conventions. Part of the discursive exclusion of the public sphere is the complete suppression of the city's monetarized economy from the domain of the aristocratic symposium, and it is this impulse to mystify economic relations for sex that generates the category of the hetaira within a framework of gift exchange. But if the motives for this discursive invention are economic, they are also political: the hetaira affirms and embodies the circulation of charis within a privileged elite, while the pornê figures the debased and promiscuous exchanges of the agora. (shrink)

In the manner of an experienced oracular consultant, Scott immediately reflects on the likely response that will greet his enterprise: "A reader picking up this book might well think 'not another book on Delphi and Olympia'!". As he remarks, however, "the majority of English-language books about Delphi focus on its oracle and about Olympia on its games..., relying heavily on literary evidence" to the neglect of their sanctuaries and the archaeological evidence. In what follows, Scott articulates a program for "developing (...) a new level of spatial analysis, which better links archaeological discussions of small-scale spatial development with historical discussions of large-scale place in the wider landscape". (shrink)

Aux périodes archaïques et classiques, les femmes grecques pourvoyaient des soins aux moments les plus importants de la vie, comme la naissance et la mort : pourtant ce n’est pas ce care qu’a mis en avant l’historiographie de la médecine, mais bien le cure masculin des médecins hippocratiques. À rebours, cet article met en avant ce care féminin. Fondée sur les documents textuels, épigraphiques et iconographiques, l’étude aborde la figure d’Hécamède, femme pourvoyeuse de soins efficaces mais non techniques aux guerriers (...) de l’Iliade d’Homère. La deuxième partie analyse le travail de care invisible et dévalué des femmes libres et esclaves au sein de l’oikos. Le soin des malades, des enfants et des vieilles personnes y échoit aux femmes adultes. Une troisième partie s’intéresse aux soignantes aux fortes compétences techniques parfois rémunérées, à mi-chemin entre care et cure : sages-femmes et femmes médecins de la période classique, jamais très éloignées du care puisque spécialisées dans les soins d’entretien de la vie : accouchement, soin des enfants et des femmes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:‘Reading’ Greek Death: To the End of the Classical PeriodJoseph W. Day and Leslie Preston DayChristiane Sourvinou-Inwood. ‘Reading’ Greek Death: To the End of the Classical Period. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xiv + 489 pp. 11 pls. Cloth, $79.This important book contributes much to the growing, though divided, scholarship on Greek mortuary practice as a system of behavior that reflected and constructed eschatological, religious, and socio-political attitudes (...) and ideologies. Distancing herself strongly from I. Morris’ historical analysis of mortuary data (Burial in Ancient Society [1987]; Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity [1992]), with its rejection of what he sees as limiting text- and object-based approaches, S-I derives cultural attitudes from texts like Homer and artifacts like the archaic grave monument. Her approach to this conventional material is hardly conventional, however, nor are its results.Chapter 1, which most classicists could read with benefit, explains S-I’s reader-oriented method; but methodology is foregrounded throughout, especially the semiological principle that no element of a text or artifact, independent of its context, has a fixed meaning for readers. S-I recreates ancient readings of grave monuments, epitaphs, literary texts, and other artifacts accordingly, by reconstructing the cultural lenses through which contemporaries would have interpreted such an artifact (that is, their attitudes to death, expectations about relevant genres, and other aspects of their cultural repertoire). To alleviate the dangers of circularity inherent in such approaches, S-I constructs, and criticizes others for failing to construct, several independent arguments to support each point. Though “very idiosyncratic post-structuralist” (113), S-I’s method can be compared to recent semiological, cultural, and functional approaches to literary and artistic “texts” (e.g., C. Dougherty and L. Kurke, Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece [1993]) and inscriptions (e.g., D. T. Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ [1994]).Chapter 2 deals with views of the afterlife in the Homeric poems and with beliefs about the dead from the Late Bronze Age to the seventh century. For S-I, Homer represents the culture of eighth-century Ionia, and she uses the poems to show later eighth-century attitudes toward death. This is too facile a solution to complex Homeric problems, and while her analysis of the beliefs reflected in the poems is excellent, she does not apply archaeological evidence to demonstrate that this analysis is relevant to eighth-century Greece. She sees two attitudes in the poems: the predominant belief that “everyone must die,” a simple statement of the inevitability of death without any idea of reward and punishment, and the nascent idea that a few individuals can achieve happiness and even immortality after death. She debunks the theory that this latter concept of Elysion comes from Minoan Crete. What she does not do is use archaeological evidence to support her hypotheses. As she rightly points out, reconstructing “belief systems on the basis of archaeological data is a complex and problematic enterprise” (90); [End Page 645] but given the hundreds of burials excavated all over the Greek world from this period, it seems amazing that she refers to them so little. S-I is not unfamiliar with archaeological evidence and uses it to good account in discussing Minoan and Mycenaean burial practices, and she makes excellent use of sculpture and vase painting in chapters 3 and 5; but she chooses not to use actual burial data for Homeric beliefs, perhaps partly in response to Morris. Chapter 2 supplies a useful background for the study of archaic grave markers, but the unwary classicist should know that a methodologically rigorous archaeologist, in particular, will have trouble with it, as with Morris, although for different reasons.Morris and his methodology come under heavy attack in the lengthy Appendix. While some find Morris’ model-building methodology problematic, it is widely accepted by anthropologists looking for an objective method akin to scientific hypothesis testing. S-I opposes this methodology because of its a priori assumptions, yet no methodology is free of cultural bias. We need a variety of approaches, and archaeology must be allowed to give its evidence without either being forced into Morris’ a priori models or S-I’s (and the traditional... (shrink)

Anthropologists have defined iconatrophy as a process by which oral traditions originate as explanations for objects that, through the passage of time, have ceased to make sense to their viewers. One form of iconatrophy involves the misinterpretation of statues' identities, iconography, or locations. Stories that ultimately derive from such misunderstandings of statues are Monument-Novellen, a term coined by Herodotean studies. Applying the concept of iconatrophy to Greek sculpture of the Archaic and Classical periods yields three possible examples in which (...) statues standing in Greek sanctuaries may have inspired stories cited by authors of the Roman imperial period as explanations for the statues' identities, attributes, poses, or locations. The statues in question are the portrait of the athletic victor Milo of Croton at Olympia, a bronze lioness on the Athenian Acropolis identified as a memorial to the Athenian prostitute Leaina , and the Athena Hygieia near the Propylaia of Mnesikles. Inscriptions on the bases of Archaic and Classical statues in Greek sanctuaries typically named the dedicator, the recipient deity, and the sculptor, but did not include the subject represented or the historical occasion behind the dedication. These “gaps” left by votive inscriptions would only have encouraged the formation of iconatrophic oral traditions such as the examples examined in this article. (shrink)

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes original scholarly (...) contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

In the present research paper an attempt has been made to unravel the mysterious connection feminine life and mother Earth. The tantra pattern of “eco-feminist consciousness” is the earliest and the most archaic in the Indian tradition. It is intrinsically tied up with land related activities. Land culture, material culture and body culture are 3 important dimensions of tantric life. The tantra model of Earth-Woman identity based on the fertility motif represents a materialist and maternalist world view. Epistemologically, pre-vedic (...) people sought the significance of knowledge, not in the realization of any illusory absolute but in the day today activities of life, like agriculture. Connected to this they had further fundamental insight that microcosm and macrocosm are identical – the truth revealed bymodern science today. Elements of tantric world view gradually found a place in Brahmanical world view. The later world view is not sympathetic to the cult of mother Goddess possibly because it leads to social supremacy of female. Tantric eco-feminism suggests a positive, radical change in our attitudes towards the feminine and nature. (shrink)

From the Archaic period to the sixth century A.D., as well as in later Byzantine lexica, we find numerous instances of the word TTTJKTIS as the name of a musical instrument. It occurs in some 78 passages:1 enough, one might suppose, to establish its meaning beyond peradventure. Yet of all ancient instrument names, this one proves to be the most Protean. In the earlier sources it designates a harp. Later it is applied to other types of stringed instrument, (...) both to lyres and to lutes. But it does not remain confined to the chordophone category, for in the Imperial period it frequently signifies a panpipe. As no complete collection and analysis of the evidence has ever been made, I have thought it worth while to undertake one. (shrink)

The Archaic deposit of the North Rampart at Amathus, VII. Other Cypriote wares and Levantine imports After two previous studies, concerning specific categories in the deposit (kitchen wares, and vases of the ‘ Amathus style’), this article treats all the other ceramic categories of Cypriote production, as well as the Levantine imports. It draws up the repertoire and thus proposes a synthesis of the Amathusian production of Late Archaic times. The abundant material collected from up against the North (...) Rampart of the Lower Town of Amathus has to be compared with the contemporary deposits of the cave of the sanctuary of Aphrodite and of the cemeteries : this assemblage, of appreciably different composition, stresses the importance of feasting in the palace at the end of the Archaic period. (shrink)

The purpose of the conference "On Pythagoreanism", held in Brasilia in 2011, was to bring together leading scholars from all over the world to define the status quaestionis for the ever-increasing interest and research on Pythagoreanism in the 21st century. The papers included in this volume exemplify the variety of topics and approaches now being used to understand the polyhedral image of one of the most fascinating and long-lasting intellectual phenomena in Western history. Cornelli's paper opens the volume by charting (...) the course of Pythagorean studies over the past two centuries. The remaining contributions range chronologically from Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans of the archaic period (6th-5th centuries BCE) through the classical, hellenistic and late antique periods, to the eighteenth century. Thematically they treat the connections of Pythagoreanism with Orphism and religion, with mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology and with politics and the Pythagorean way of life. (shrink)

Professor Andrewes has recently been kind enough to refer in his commentary on Thucydides to a suggestion of mine. This present note seeks to expand the idea, and to relate it to north Arcadian politics of the early fourth century B.C. Tradition gave some prominence in the archaic period to Orchomenus in eastern Arcadia; and genealogy supported this prominence, since, apart from a belief that Areas himself was a son of the eponym Orchomenus, there was a continuing belief (...) that this Orchomenus founded not only Orchomenus itself but also Methydrium. (shrink)

Modern scholars have always associated the Minervium of Varro with the parva delubra mentioned by Ovid, which is related to the cult of Minerva Capta: in fact, these two different names identify the same temple, located on the Cealius hill. Therefore, this work examines the etymological, linguistic and historical context of both names of Minerva’s shrine, by pointing out any religious and cultual implications concerning such expressions: the Minervium, connected to the archaic list of sacella Argeorum; the epithet Capta, (...) whose meaning is fundamental to the comprehension of a cult connected with post-pubertal transition rites. In conclusion, both expressions must be linked to the archaic period of the Roman religion and so demonstrate the antiquity of Minerva’s cult, as it regards the Celius hill but also the history of the whole Roman community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Business Managers in Ancient Rome: A Social and Economic Study of Institores, 200 B.C.–A.D. 250Nicholas K. RauhJean-Jacques Aubert. Business Managers in Ancient Rome: A Social and Economic Study of Institores, 200 B.C.–A.D. 250. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1994. xvi + 520 pp. Cloth, Gld. 220, $125.75 (US). (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, Volume XXI.)Aubert’s declared purpose in this study is to examine the (...) world of Roman business managers (institores)—their social background and status, their role as managers within business enterprises, and their ensuing relations with workers, entrepreneurs, suppliers, and customers. He pursues these themes through five chapters. Chapter 1, “Business Agents and Business Managers,” explores developments in the use and meaning of the term institor through the legal, literary, papyrological, and epigraphical source materials of Republican and Imperial Rome. Chapter 2, “Indirect Agency in Roman Law,” examines the evolution of the Roman laws of indirect agency (particularly the actiones adiecticiae qualitatis) from their inception through the classical jurists to show how Roman law was adjusted to accommodate the needs of the business community. Chapter 3, “Managers of Agricultural Estates,” traces the roots of the Roman system of indirect agency to the management of agricultural estates and to the exploitation of natural resources such as clay, quarries, and manufacturing activities on the Roman farmstead. Chapter 4, “Production and Distribution of Clay Artifacts,” examines the manager’s role in the organization of various types of workshops producing clay artifacts—bricks and tiles, amphoras, terra sigillata, and terracotta lamps—and the subsequent marketing of this production. Chapter 5, “Direct Management and Public Administration: Four Case Studies,” investigates how the vilicus-based system of management became adapted to four areas of [End Page 501] the economy and administration of the Roman empire—imperial tax collection (vectigalia), recreational facilities (including baths, libraries, theaters, amphitheaters, and circuses), the imperial communications system (roads, post, and transport services), and the imperial mint. This cursory outline of A.’s intentions serves to demonstrate the breadth and importance of the task he assumes. In my opinion he handles this with a tremendous degree of authority and even-handedness.A.’s overarching theses are 1) that indirect agency emerged through the increasing absentee management of Roman farm operations and the delegation of Roman estate management to the agent known as the vilicus, 2) that regardless of the type of industry, most managerial operations exploited the practical efficiency and accountability of this vilicus-based system, and 3) that overall developments in Roman business management progressed from a more restrictive reliance on agents directly subservient to the entrepreneur (generally young slaves or family members under the direct potestas of the proprietor) to a more liberal reliance on managers enjoying looser personal connections—freedmen, servi alieni, and freeborn nonrelatives whose services were ensured by the terms of consensual contracts. One of the main points of the first chapter, for example, is the limited quantity of information there is available for institores and the generally derogatory tone it bears. We learn later on that institores were, in fact, relatively few in number and ill-liked precisely because they were so independent (175), and that far more business managers are recorded as vilici precisely because entrepreneurs could more firmly control them.A. argues that due to its extreme formalism rooted in the archaic period, Roman law lacked the concept of direct agency, and that the praetor responded to the needs of businesspeople by creating a legal system based on existing structures of Roman society (slavery and family) with advantages similar to those direct agency could otherwise have offered. With respect to the vilicus-based managerial system this was achieved through the legal fiction of the peculium, “the juristic existence of fictitious assets pertaining de facto to the dependent, but belonging de iure to the principal” (65). Terms of employment and guarantees of liability were inherently trickier for nondependent business agents and evolved during the second and first centuries b.c. through increased reliance on formulary procedure, and particularly through the development of consensual agreements. In this regard A. stresses the importance of the emergence of the... (shrink)