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Review: [untitled] Author(s): Robert Samuel Rogers Reviewed work(s): Caravan Cities: Petra, Jerash, Palmyra, Dura by M.

Rostovtzeff ;D. T. Talbot Rice Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Oct., 1933), pp. 96-97 Published by: American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1839233 Accessed: 19/08/2010 04:47
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Reviews of Books

The difference between Pompey and Caesar lay "not in technical skill or judgement or resource, but in that Pompey lacked that fusing together of spirit and intellect that marks off genius from talent". I quote also from Professor Adcock's estimate of Caesar's genius. It was, he says, "the hard practical genius of Rome raised to the highest power; he was a keen edge on an old blade. But he reached power late, too late for patience." "For this reason he could not admit Time to his counsels, nor share them with others. Thus he became, in a sense, un-Roman in the last year of his life. There came the clash between his genius and the Roman steady tradition, and in the clash he was broken, with plans unachieved and plans unmade. He had shown the world the greatest of the Romans, but he was not the creator of a new epoch. Whatever he might have done, he had as yet neither destroyed the Republic nor made the principate. His life had set an example of autocracy which his death converted into a warning." "Caesar had done much for the State in his reforms, but he did Rome no greater service than by his death." ALLEN B. WEST. The Univer-sity of Cincinnati.

Caravan Cities: Petra, Jerash, Palmyra, Dura. By M. ROSTOVTZEFF. Translated by D. and T/. TALBOT RICE. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. I932. Pp. Xiv, 232. $4.50.) yearsago ProfessorRostovtzeffpublishedin Russian at Berlin and FIVE Parisa group of travelsketchesbasedon a trip through Syria,Palestine,and Arabiaearly in 1928. Revisionand rewritingof those essayson the basis of more recentand more ambitioustravel in the East has producedthe present volume. The authoris frank to state that this is not "a final and complete tradein generalor of the life of certaincaravancities pictureeitherof caravan but he is confidentthat it does indicatethe "line of research" in particular", which the coming archxologicalinvestigationin Syria,Palestine,and Arabia should follow, that is, the recognitionthat the caravancity is a peculiarand distinctivetype. chaptersketchesthe historyof the caravantradefrom the An introductory valleysto the end of the earliestcivilizationsin the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates Romanperiod:the routes,the objectsof trade,with their originsand destinations, and their influenceupon the countrieswhich importedthem, the contributionsto the progressof the caravantrade made by the great empires which successivelycontrolledits destinies. and the monudescribethe history,the excavation, The otherfive chapters and Dura book's Palmyra the subtitle, of ments of the four caravancities The presentaspectof sharinga joint chapter,as well as having each its own. of the ancient and the life and circumstances the sitesis charminglydescribed, from the archxologicalremains. inhabitantsvividly recreated

Gernet: Le genie grec dans la religion

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Of many interesting conclusions one example must suffice here. Tfhe socalled temple of Isis at Petra, Rostovtzef[ believes belonged to Tyche, "the Hellenistic equivalent of the Iranian Hvareno and the Semitic Gad, and wlIo at the same time was the mighty deity of the Petraean Arabs, the moongoddess Allat". And he dates the temple, on the basis of its style and the relationship of its ornamentation to the second Pompeian style, from the late Hellenistic period, instead of the second or third century A. D. The book is richly illustrated by thirty-five plates, six drawings in the text, and five maps and plans. Most of the plates carry two illustrations, and several a larger number. The pictures are therefore small; but they are sharply clear, and we should rather be grateful for the number than complain of the size, in these days. Almost half the plates are supplied with the illiminating descriptions which Professor Rostovtzeff does so surpassingly well. They do not, however, this time face the plates but follow the chapters to which the respective plates belong. There is a seven-page bibliography, classified according to the chapters of the text and, further, by topics. The six-page index consists almost exclusively of proper names. The translation of D. and T. Talbot Rice is good; but "exterior" (p. 86) should surely be "external", "at least" (p. 173) should, I suspect, be "no less than", and there is one very clumsy sentence (p. 200) about Caracalla and Geta. ROBERT SAMUEL ROGERS. W'ester-n Rese,ve Univer-sity.

Le ge'nie grec dans la religion. Par Louis GERNET, professeur 'a l'Universite d'Alger, et ANDRE BOULANGER, professeur a l'Universite de Strasbourg. [Bibliotheque de synthese historique.] (Paris: Renaissance du Livre. 1932. PP. xlii, 538. 40 fr.) long and learnedwork is divided into three parts,entitled severally THIS La formationdu systemede l'epoqueclassique,Le systemede l'epoqueclasis chronObviouslythe generalarrangement sique, and Vers l'universalisme. as a historyof Greek ological,and the book will be classedby bibliographers to presenta consecutivestory religion. But the authorshave not undertaken of the developmentof religionin Greece. Their purposehas been to set fortl and interpretthe facts of religion in their relationto the forms of the social order. To this end they have assembledthe resultsof their own researches of the many scholarswho have been active in this field and of the researches and organizedthem afresh in a manner which is highly in the last decades, illuminatingand instructive. Of the first two parts,which are the work of ProfessorGernet, it is the first in which his originalityis principallydisplayed. He has not tried to producean accountof the origin of Greek religionon the basis of the scanty

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