Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World

Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. Basic Books. 2008. Pp. 672. ISBN 978-0465024971.

By Nathan Oglesby

Robin Lane Fox begins the preface to The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian with the admission of something self-evident, that presenting nine-hundred years of ancient history in a single volume is a fraught enterprise; and yet in five and half hundred pages he appears to have been manifestly successful. This reviewer had come to the book with at least a haphazard and general account of such history in his head, but had never encountered a volume of such simultaneous scope and concentration, framed at once for the novice and the initiated, and most importantly presented almost throughout as a narrative, rather than “discuss[ing] a topic…across a thousand years in a single chapter” (xv). This concerted “narrative” is told in frank and swift language, and with what appears to be great discernment of emphasis. Laced throughout the narrative framework are temporal flash-forwards to the Roman Emperor Hadrian, with whose reign Fox’s history terminates, on his grand tour of his dominions, so that we might see one of the classical cast members classicizing what is to him already the distant past at every major point in the journey of our own readership. This device complicates the work beneficially, and buoys the dense catalogue of bygone personae and events with an essential impression of the classical world examining itself and its own ‘classicism.’ While it asks, rightfully, to be read as a tale, intercalary chapters are dispersed throughout, which magnify certain personalities, or generalize sociological trends, the only points at which Fox remotely favors the textbook to the chronicle.
The Classical World is divided into two huge stages (Greece, then Rome) of three parts each, which respectively cover ‘The Archaic Greek World’, from Homer’s Greece through the Persian wars, ‘The Classical Greek World’, Athens’ ascendancy through Philip’s advances, ‘Hellenistic Worlds’, Alexander’s conquests and the decline of Greek freedom through the dawn of Rome; then ‘The Roman Republic’, from its early evolution through its effective dissolution by Julius Caesar, ‘From Republic to Empire’, detailing the struggle of Antony and Octavian and the character of the victorious latter’s subsequent political overhauls, and finally ‘An Imperial World’, charting Rome’s frenetic succession of principes from the Julio-Claudians up to the now-familiar congenial globetrotter himself, Hadrian.
The thematic pillars of this ‘epic’ are the buzz-words ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘luxury’, to which Fox makes constant recourse as alternating lenses through which to examine the long course of political modulations which are presented as themselves a cyclic recurrence of these ideas and their reactions. As Fox has it, the call for political ‘freedom’ was as frequent an object of rhetorical ‘spin’ as it is today, the very conduit for the violent usurpations and repossessions of the power of dispensing ‘justice’ over against the tide of ‘luxury’, the spectrous heritage of that power. In this connection he makes a good deal of reference to Polybius, a Greek historian of Roman activity, in whom he identifies a similarly systematic view of history. “According to Polybius’ theory, such change [toward the adoption of ‘luxury’] would inevitably occur, linked to changes in the citzens’ ‘customs’ and behavior: oligarchy would change to democracy, democracy to degenerate mob-rule and then back to monarchy, the starting point” (329). The appropriateness of these themes is manifest, so much so that the insistent emphasis placed on them becomes somewhat tiresome—there are junctures where the operation of these rallying cries (for ‘freedom’, for ‘justice’; against ‘luxury’) is sufficiently self-evident that the work is a little burdened by Fox’s effort to make them transparent. In addition to this, the narrative is laden by a certain categorical repetition of the phrase ‘in my view’, apparently the author’s means of emphasizing the separation of his inferences from fact—but this distinction is likewise too self-evident to necessitate this phrase surfacing nearly ten times a chapter, and therefore several hundreds of times altogether. But as Fox’s frankness appears to make no pretensions to stylistic achievement, excepting the structural impressiveness of the whole, let these be dismissed as petty detractions. And in despite of them, Fox’s voice is not without humor and charm, assuring us that the dubious art objects left in the ruins of Pompeii, whatever the unknown nature of their decorative role had been, “are simply sexy.” But of course, “Pompeii did not collapse in a final torrent of orgies” (537-40).
Diverse chapter headings, almost all from ancient texts, whether literary or clerical, situate the narrative very effectively, and at times are juxtaposed to great effect. One such chapter, which treats the inception of the Flavian dynasty, pits some verses of Statius which appear on a bronze statue of the emperor Domitian (“This staute…will stand while earth and sky endure…” (520)), against the younger Pliny’s Panegyric which lauds the destruction of one of the same such statues. Here and elsewhere, The Classical World is at its most affecting when Fox lets his wisely selected material speak powerfully for itself.
He is at his most effective as a story-teller in the dizzying political drama of the fourth and fifth parts at the heart of the book, during which Hadrian’s trans-temporal field trip is abandoned awhile for the companionship of Cicero, the precedent reductions of whose character he amends, whilst following the manifold civil strife of late-Republican Rome from his beleaguered perspective. Fox cuts through what he identifies as the inherent ‘spin’ (he seems to find this contemporary term very helpful) of ancient sources on the subject, and presents as intricate a record as is possible to follow of these intrigues and their participants, who appear by turns, in this bright objective light, brutal and beautiful, and unfailingly ingenious.
In its totality, The Classical World manages to offer a sustained vision of nearly an entire millennium, of which most would otherwise pass their lives with only the vaguest impressions. It will well furnish for the interested reader copious contextual material with which to approach ancient sources themselves, as well as pull together the accumulated miscellany and ambiguity of such studies into an integrated narrative whole.

Joel M. Hoffman, In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language

Joel M. Hoffman. In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language. New York: New York University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi. and 263. 4 illustration. ISBN 0-8147-3690-4. Softcover. $17.95.

By Sean A. Guynes

For those interested in Near East history, Scriptural studies, or linguistics – specifically of the Hebrew language – In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language stands as an accessible and practical achievement of Hebrew Union College’s Joel M. Hoffman, professor of ancient Hebrew at the Jewish Institute of Religion and translator for Jewish Lights Publishing. In the Beginning details the adventure of the life of Hebrew, its effects on the world’s alphabetical systems, the importance of the language’s successes, and how ancient, or biblical, Hebrew might have actually sounded. Though approaching such a significant work of scholarship appears intimidating, Hoffman’s book is organized in a manner that even those without prior knowledge of Hebrew, linguistics, or Scripture will find it straightforwardly instructive. The comprehensive nature of the book’s organization leaves no questions unanswered and provides appendices for further investigation of more broadly related topics. Brilliant and easy to read, In the Beginning portrays Hebrew as a language instrumental to the creation or widespread literacy and a predecessor to modern alphabets as a result of Hebrew being the first known language to record vowels. Further, an introduction to historical and linguistic theories and to various forms of non- and alphabetic writing is given. From the attempted recreation of ancient Hebrew pronunciation by the Masoretes and the Greeks, to the Dead Sea Scrolls, biblical dialects, and advances of Modern Hebrew by Ben-Yehuda, In the Beginning presents the grand picture of the Hebrew language’s over-3,000-year journey and its world-changing implementations as the language of Scripture and ancestor to the Western and Near Eastern worlds’ modern alphabets.
Anyone who wishes to delve into the wonders and mysteries of the creation of the Hebrew language should find no issues with Hoffman’s work, which is filled with scholarly insights and organized so that one with no experience may learn in the first few chapters all that is needed to understand the latter commentary, while someone with knowledge of historical and linguistic theories and the Hebrew alphabet may simply skip to the next chapters. In the Beginning is divided into four Parts and a fifth section, the Appendices. Part I, “Getting Started” is a brief, ten-page introduction, beginning with the three theories of history: Dumb-Luck Theory, God Theory, and Science Theory – knowing all of which is essentially to study not only history itself, but the way in which others and other culture have interpreted history and thus how history may have been interpretively passed down. The latter pages explore the two linguistic theories – prescriptive and descriptive linguistics – and the way in which Hebrew, and to a lesser extent, Greek and Russian, transliteration works. “Antiquity,” Part II, provides the in-depth introduction to non- and alphabetical writing systems, primarily those pre-Hebraic ones of the Near East, and details the groundbreaking importance of the Hebrews’ invention of vowels, even positing that the Hebrew alphabet might have been the first complete alphabet, following the tradition of Linear A and B and other Canaanite scripts. Hoffman next introduces the Masoretes, a group of Jewish linguists and scribes working out of Tiberias, Babylon, and Israel circa the 7th century C.E. who envisioned the pronunciation of ancient Hebrew who created various vowel systems, the most famous of which, Tiberian, is still employed to some extent today. To display the difficulty and in order to investigate the Masoretes’ accuracy Hoffman examines methods of comparing and concluding the pronunciation of ancient languages – specifically, of course, Tiberian Hebrew – by comparing Modern and Semitic ancestor languages and Greek, largely by way of the Septuagint (LXX) and the Origen Hexapla. Part III, “Moving On” explores the famous Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), how they came to be and how came into scholars’ hands, and how the Hebrew and content of the DSS compares to earlier Toraic texts; also, various biblical dialects – the way in which different dialects effected writing, pronunciation, and grammar of the Torah – to further the exploration of Hebrew on a Scriptural level. Following the DSS, a section on post-biblical Hebrew introduces the effects of Greek and Aramaic on Hebrew, and vice versa, and the nature of Rabbinic Hebrew, which as a seemingly natural linguistic continuation of Biblical Hebrew confirms all that is believed about the dialects, grammar, and, to a lesser extent, the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew. Finally, “Now”, Part IV, elucidates the courageous reassertion at the hands of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda of Hebrew as a modern, colloquially spoken language for the Jews, which developed along with the Zionist movement and come to fruition with the creation of the Mandate of Palestine in 1917 and, at last, with the establishment of the State of Israel. Those interesting in exploring more about historical and linguistic theories, writing systems, the Masoretes, DSS, and stages of Hebrew development and dialect, may consult the to Appendices, which itself bequeaths a wealth of information to the budding scholar or interested reader.
As a piece of scholarship, Joel Hoffman’s In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language stands out as a crowning achievement of Hebrew language research and Scriptural history. This work champions the great triumph of Hebrew in creating an effective alphabetic writing system, replete with vowels, which promoted widespread literacy among the Hebrews, and which formed the basis for the Arabic, Cyrillic, Farsi, Greek, Roman, and Sanskrit alphabets. A Medieval Studies and Linguistics student with interest in Hebrew, and a Jew, I found Hoffman’s book within my interest, especially in terms of the historical development of Hebrew given in the latter Parts. Further, understanding the effects of Hebrew and its own genesis is a practically necessity for any student of the language or of theology. In the Beginning binds the rarely merged subjects of linguistics, history, and religion in one effective, intelligible, and outstanding piece of literature, a book that I feel will be indulged by the world of academia, students and professors alike, and likewise by anyone with a basic interest in the subjects it covers, for years to come.

Sean A. Guynes studies Medieval History, Hebrew, and Linguistics at Western Washington University.