Kraus, 'Livy Book XXXIX', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9508
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9508-kraus-livy
@@@@95.8.10, Walsh, ed./trans., Livy XXXIX
P. G. Walsh, ed. and trans., Livy Book XXXIX. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips, 1994. Pp. x + 196. $49.95 (hb), $24.95 (pb). ISBN 0-85668-625-5
(hb) 0-85668-626-3 (pb).
Reviewed by Christina S. Kraus -- University College, London
c.s.kraus@ucl.ac.uk
In this fourth and penultimate volume of his edition of Ab
urbe condita 36-40, W[alsh] continues to work with clarity and
brevity within the Aris & Phillips format, providing a text, translation,
and (primarily) historical commentary on Livy's account of the events of
187-183 B.C. Book 39 is enjoying popularity: there is a new Bude (ed.
A.-M. Adam) and an even newer school commentary in the Bryn Mawr series
(ed. G. Forsythe); W's edition will probably prove the most useful for
advanced students of classics and ancient history alike, accessible as it
is to readers with and without Latin. The translation, which improves on
available English versions, is fluidly idiomatic (its general excellence
rests in large part on W's text, which is accompanied by a generous
apparatus, printed in an appendix): particularly happy touches are
2.10 pacatis Liguribus 'with the Ligurians now reduced to
inactivity' (cf. 1066 and All That's 'extermination of the Zulus:
peace with the Zulus'); 15.14 cooperti stupris 'caked with
defilement'; 51.6 graue imperium 'oppressive dominion.' Places
where W slips are few indeed, and many only a matter of opinion or taste:
e.g., at 1.3 W defuses Livy's sententious ditiores quam fortiores
exercitus faciebat by moving it from the end to the beginning of the
sentence; 2.3 'cliffs so steep' misses the fig. etym. in rupes
deruptas ('precipitous precipices'?); 16.1 minus tamen esset
'it would not have mattered': I think this is a present contrafactual (so
too Adam)--the conspirators would matter less now if they had stayed
clear of crimes, but they didn't, and so the state is in danger; 16.7
ubi deorum numen praetenditur sceleribus 'when crimes are overlaid
with the gods' will,' I would reverse the order ('when the gods' will is
used as an excuse/pretext for crimes'); 17.2 'bolted' seems overly
colloquial for profugisset in a senatorial decree; 23.13 nouae
atque insuetae libertatis uitio may be appositional to
seditionibus principum (so Adam; cf. Ov. P. 3.3.101
liuor, iners uitium and for the risk of civil unrest posed by
libertas immatura cf. Liv. 2.1.3-6); 24.2 instituit of
mines does not seem to be technical in Latin, and hence 'sinking' is the
wrong register in English.
As well as providing essential historical information, the
introduction and commentary offer glimpses of ways of reading Livian
narrative that can take the student beyond the text-as-quarry-for-facts.
While W's critical vocabulary is somewhat limited (the words
'drama/dramatic' [used both technically and not] and 'lively/enliven'
appear 12 and 5 times respectively on pp.10-11), he is much more willing
than in previous volumes to approach Livy descriptively rather than
prescriptively, without abandoning his keen critical judgment. Attention
is drawn to the structure of speeches and to Livy's flexible use of
traditional rubrics and arrangement (cf. p.151 on 36.12 and see now T.J.
Luce in Livius: Aspekte seines Werkes, ed. W. Schuller [1993]
71-87); to metaphorical and technical language (e.g., 6.4 on fire, 42.4
on triumph formulae; but at 7.2 W does not note that in that
triumph report Livy has replaced the expected transferri with
transuehi); to the anti-Roman sentiments Livy allows his
characters (e.g., p.150; he must have been influenced in this technique
by Sallust, though W does not mention the Letter of Mithridates);
and to the dramatic (in the technical sense) shape of the Bacchanalia
story, the most famous episode in the book. W helpfully appends a text
and translation of the SC de Bacchanalibus, which Livy puts under
contribution, allusively, as often (p.5 'the gist of it appears at
18.7-9'; one might note here that though W finds Livy's report of the
conspiracy 'unsatisfactory' as historical analysis, that report seems, by
W's own account on pp.4-5, to provide information both about the changing
socio-economic conditions since the second Punic war and about the chief
reasons for the extraordinary reaction to the ritual among the Roman
authorities).
At 7.5 (p.116) on the subject of booty bringing tax relief and
the eventual cancellation of the occasional tax in 167, it is worth
adding that the reason for that cancellation was the arrival in Rome of
yet another pile of eastern loot, the Pydna triumph. At 9.1 Livy prefaces
his undoubtedly novelistic account of the detection of the Bacchanalian
conspiracy with the words indicium hoc maxime modo ad Postumium
consulem peruenit, on which W remarks (p.118) that the underlined
phrase 'reveals some scepticism about the details.' It reminds me of
phrases like oratio huius modi, with which ancient historians flag
speeches as being of their own composition: here, then, does it mark the
whole episode as free composition, a probable illustration of how the
ritual was discovered? The story has strong affinities with Livy's
private vignettes, the little--and surely invented--stories from which
big events grow (e.g., Lucretia, Fabia; see also Ogilvie on 4.9.6 and
3.44-49, the 'desire to illustrate [laws] by paradigms'); one can note
the domestic touch of the repeated diminutives (see W on 9.4); the
alarming confrontation between meek woman and consular retinue (12.2, cf.
6.34.6); and the use of (uelut) forte to introduce the
crucial meeting of the consul and Aebutia (11.7, cf. 1.58.6, 6.34.6, 8).
Also on the Bacchanalia: though pointing out (p.4) that Livy juxtaposes
the eastern triumphs which brought foreign excess to Rome (5.14-7.5) with
his account of the Bacchanalia, another foreign importation, W does not
make the important connection back to the Preface, where the moral
decline of Rome is put in terms of disease (Praef. 9-10 ~ 39.9.1.
contagio morbi) and specifically of immigration (Praef. 11
tam serae auaritia luxuriaque immigrauerint ~ 39.8.3, 9.1 ex
Etruria Romam ... penetrauit; 14.4 coniurationes ...
importarent; 18.8-9; see D.S. Levene, Religion in Livy [1993]
93-4). The tension between the problems and advantages of open
immigration is central to Livy's analysis of the growth of Rome and of
the groups within it (esp. the plebs, the group most involved in the
Dionysiac rites [W, p.4]: see my n. on 6.4.4), and the theme runs
throughout the narrative of the Bacchanalia; when Hispala 'immigrates' to
Aebutia's house for protection, then (14.2), W masks the verb's
importance by translating immigraret as 'move in.' In the
delicious story of Flamininus and the scortum who wants to see an
execution over dinner (chh.42-3), it is worth mentioning that this was a
declamatory topic to which Seneca devotes considerable space
(Contr. 9.2--a text adduced by W for a linguistic parallel at
43.3, but with no hint that the topic is identical!); it may be pure
coincidence, but it is in this controuersia that Livy's preference
for choice diction is quoted (9.2.26: Seneca does not, however, mention
Livy's presence at or participation in any declamations of this topic).
In the notes on the death scenes of Philopoemen and Hannibal (chh.
49-51), a cross reference to W's useful discussion of character sketches
at 40.3 (p.155-6) would be helpful; and in the syncrisis of the
two foreign generals with Scipio (52.7-9, p.173) a reference to A.J.
Pomeroy, The appropriate comment (1991) would illuminate
conventional elements that W leaves undiscussed (e.g., the topos of the
appropriate death, 52.7).
This is certainly the best of W's Aris & Phillips commentaries to
date: students will enjoy it, and I look forward to Book 40.