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ProdigiesinRome(D.)EngelsDasrmischeVorzeichenwesen(75327v.
Chr.).Quellen,Terminologie,Kommentar,historischeEntwicklung.
(PotsdamerAltertumswissenschaftlicheBeitrge22.)Pp.877.Stuttgart:
FranzSteinerVerlag,2007.Cased,98.ISBN:9783515090278.
WilliamE.Klingshirn
TheClassicalReview/Volume59/Issue01/April2009,pp215218
DOI:10.1017/S0009840X08002576,Publishedonline:11March2009

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t h e c la s s i c a l r ev i ew

215

Classics in Anglo-Saxon universities at least partially reects such a reading of the

ancient literary evidence, which accords the Etruscans the role of a semi-barbaric
fringe culture.
L. considers the literary treatment of truph to fall into three distinct groups. The
rst of these has come down to us in the fragmentary record of Theopompus who,
according to L., follows an ethnographic tradition in the vein of Herodotus Histories.
This approach, L. suggests (in so far as the scarcity of the available sources allows this
conclusion), was much more neutral and free of prejudice than is commonly assumed.
The second group is represented by the writings of Posidonius and Dionysius of
Halicarnassus. Here, L. identies a continuing interest in ethnography but also
suggests an increasing desire to link the Roman and Italian with the Greek worlds. In
this regard, the Etruscans are seen to reect certain characteristics which a writer like
Posidonius might have associated with earlier Greeks but considered inappropriate
for the present day, and thus indicative of decline. In a similar way Roman authors,
L.s third group, had a primarily self-reective and historical interest in and largely
critical attitude to Etruscan truph. This, as L. suggests, is particularly true of later
writers such as Livy; by contrast, the signicance whether genuinely derogatory or
merely supercially comical and origin of references to forms of truph in Plautus
(Cist. 5623; Curc. 4825) might be less clear.
So much for literary representations of truph, but what about its realities in
Etruscan life? With regard to these, familiar representations of certain topoi in
Etruscan art (sexual licence, ute playing, obesity) lead L. to conclude that the literary
tradition(s) must ultimately have been based on real-life observations, however
distorted. This is not in itself unlikely. However, one might have wished for a more
sensitive treatment of the archaeological evidence. This primarily comes from
funerary contexts and might, therefore, have warranted a more in-depth discussion
of how, say, a Tarquinian tomb painting of the sixth century B.C. may or may not
have represented a reality of life (and where). The quality of the illustrations is,
furthermore, disappointing, although this may hardly be the authors fault.
L.s study of Etruscan truph is a welcome addition to the historiographic study of
a culture that deserves a more prominent place within Classics than it currently holds.
The relevant passages are reproduced in full and translated into French, including ve
appendices. The indexes have been meticulously compiled and the bibliography is
up-to-date. The price, too, is user-friendly.
University of Cape Town

ROMAN ROTH
roman.roth@uct.ac.za

PRODIGIES IN ROME
En g e ls ( D. ) Das rmische Vorzeichenwesen (75327 v. Chr.).
Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, historische Entwicklung. (Potsdamer
Altertumswissenschaftliche Beitrge 22.) Pp. 877. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 2007. Cased, 98. ISBN: 978-3-515-09027-8.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X08002576

Over the past decade, the prodigy system of the Roman republic has been the subject
of renewed interest among ancient historians. In Gezhmte Gtter. Das Prodigienwesen der rmischen Republik (Stuttgart, 1998), Veit Rosenberger closely investigated
the inner workings of the system, paying particular attention to the mentalities and
The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 1 The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved

216

t h e c la s s i c a l r ev i ew

procedures that supplied it with religious meaning, the nature of the signs that
marked its eld of action, the social signicance of its rituals of expiation, and its
close correlation with the rise and fall of the Republic. A broader, avowedly
sociological approach was taken by Susanne William Rasmussen in Public Portents in
Republican Rome (Rome, 2003). In an eort to determine the role that public
divination played in the construction of Roman identity, she examined prodigies and
their expiation alongside the signs found in sacriced animals and observed in the
auspices. Now we have David Engels study, a comprehensive handbook of prodigies
and the texts that describe and interpret them. Based on a dissertation completed at
Aachen in 2005, this volume is devoted to pre-republican and republican prodigies; in
a future volume, E. plans to focus on prodigies of the imperial period (p. 18).
At the heart of the book is a list of 401 prodigies and groups of prodigies, each
with accompanying commentary and full references to sources and literature
(pp. 283723). Prodigies (except for those that cannot be precisely dated) are chronologically arranged in six historical periods; they are labelled RVW 1, RVW 2, etc., in
what promises to become a standard numbering system. Some headings include a
single prodigy (e.g. RVW 159, the ooding of the Tiber in 189); others contain several
that belong together (e.g. RVW 136, prodigies of the year 203 as observed in Rome,
Antium, Capua, Reate, Anagnia, Frusino and Arpinum). In ten cases, headings are
subdivided to account for particularly signicant multiple prodigies, for example
those pertaining to Caesars death (RVW 342.114). Commentary usually goes on for
a paragraph or two, but it can sometimes consist simply of a brief summary of the
prodigy (e.g. RVW 95, one sentence on Pliny, HN 7.35) and at other times it takes the
form of an essay of ve or six pages (e.g. RVW 86, on the prodigies of the year 249
that led to the establishment of the ludi saeculares).
The prodigy list, located in Chapter 4, is preceded by three introductory chapters.
Chapter 1 (pp. 1159) explains the books purpose, briey surveys the literature (to be
exhaustively reviewed in later chapters), and spells out ve criteria for dening signs
as prodigies. The rst is that the sign must be oriented toward the future. This takes
into account the possibility of future harm if the sign is ignored and the need to take
care in advance by means of a procuratio. Second, it is necessary that the bearer of
the sign be unaware of its signicance. Third, the sign must be such that its character
as a message from the gods cannot be ignored. Disasters with obviously natural or
human causes cannot normally be interpreted as prodigies. Nor should one
necessarily categorise as a prodigy every event that leads to religious action. Thus,
unlike Rasmussen (PT 1 in Public Portents, p. 53), E. does not classify the crop failure
mentioned at Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.17.23 as a prodigy, even though it led to the
consultation of the Sibylline books and the vowing of a temple (p. 55). The fourth
criterion he proposes is the explicit labelling of an event as a prodigy, although this
information is often lacking and even when present must be checked against the other
criteria. Finally, E. requires that prodigies not be deliberately sought by human eort;
they are thus oblative rather than impetrative (Servius, Aen. 6.190).
Chapter 2 discusses the written sources for our knowledge of prodigies, including
the records of the pontices (pp. 6086), archives of the senate, magistrates and priests
(pp. 8792), non-ction authors from Q. Fabius Pictor to Verrius Flaccus
(pp. 93244) and poets (pp. 24458). E.s procedure here is to cross-reference to his list
the prodigies each author relates, discuss the authors terminology and sources, and
evaluate his attitude toward prodigies.
Chapter 3 discusses the etymology and meaning of each of the main Latin words
for prodigy: prodigium, ostentum, portentum, monstrum and omen (pp. 25982). It is

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217

relatively brief because all these words were discussed in detail in the previous
chapter. This chapter does make clear that while a majority of authors considered
prodigium the general term (p. 260), others used ostentum in the same sense (p. 270). It
further concludes that no xed meaning can be attached to any of the Latin or Greek
words used to denote prodigies: their usage varies by author.
The rst four chapters constitute a vast compendium of information: logically
organised (though sometimes repetitive), painstakingly detailed and judiciously
appraised. It is not until Chapter 5 that a sustained historical narrative is attempted
(pp. 72497), but here what one mainly nds is a cautious and somewhat conventional
synthesis based on the evaluation of previous opinion. The rst section, covering the
period from Aeneas to the founding of the Republic (RVW 128), attempts to identify
the Latin roots of the prodigy system as well as the Etruscan and Greek inuences
that shaped it. This paves the way, in the period from 509 to 390 (RVW 2961), for the
prodigy system to be linked to the strength of national Latin elements. It was during
this period, E. believes (p. 747), following Claudia Santi (La nozione di prodigio in
et regia, SMSR 20 (1996), 50524), that the term prodigium increasingly lost its
neutral sense and began to indicate divine anger. The next period, from the fourth
century to the beginning of the Second Punic War (RVW 6294), saw the
establishment of all the features that characterised the fully developed system of
public prodigies in the second century. At the same time, Greek philosophical ideas
began to inuence the divinatory beliefs (though not the practices) of educated
Romans. The Second Punic War, which gave rise to a large number of prodigies (RVW
95139), is seen as a turning point: it represents the height of the prodigy system but
also the beginning of its decline (p. 763, quoting Ludwig Wlkers 1903 dissertation).
In the next phase, from 201 to 133 (RVW 140220), prodigies were observed over an
increasingly extensive Roman territory, but at the same time their instrumentalization by the senate and magistrates increased. Finally, in the period between 133
and 27 (RVW 221380), the republican prodigy system collapsed as a result of the
manipulation of prodigies, philosophical scepticism about religion, and the growing
popularity of personal forms of divination better suited to political domination and
less amenable to aristocratic control.
In Chapter 6 (pp. 798825), E. asks why the Romans should have developed their
prodigy system in the rst place. To many, this will seem like an impossible question,
but E. locates the answer in the realm of ethnopsychology. The earliest Romans, he
says, lived in an organic society that was rigidly patriarchal, with leaders who were
called patres and gods that were like bervter. Massive neuroses resulted when the
Romans childlike nature confronted divine (parental) disapproval. This drove their
elites to create a system that limited the power of the gods at the same time as it
obtained their permission. E. nds the mechanism for this in Sigmund Freuds
well-known paper on obsessive actions and religious practice (Zwangshandlungen
und Religionsbung, Zeitschrift fr Religionspsychologie 1 [1908], 412); he then
links it to divination by way of G. Devereux, Considrations psychanalytiques sur la
divination, particulirement chez les Grecs, in La Divination, ed. A. Caquot and M.
Leibovici, 2 (Paris, 1968), pp. 44971. The result is interesting, but highly speculative,
and based on assumptions about the nature of early Roman society and the validity
of psychohistory that some, perhaps many, readers will not share. Chapter 6 is so
dierent from preceding chapters, however, that one does not need to accept its
approach to form a favourable judgement about the whole. Indeed, it is in the
collection, analysis and historiography of Roman republican prodigies that this book

t h e c la s s i c a l r ev i ew

218

makes its main contribution, rather than in its description of the social and political
framework in which these made religious sense.
The Bibliography (pp. 82659) lists only the most important secondary literature
cited in the book. Books and articles cited less frequently are not listed there; they are
instead given full bibliographical details in the notes in which they appear. The Index
with which the book ends (pp. 86077) is also limited: it is an index of the primary
sources cited in the prodigy list in Chapter 4. There is no index of subjects or names,
but it is not easy to imagine how these could have been managed. The handbook
format and detailed table of contents make it possible to nd what the reader needs
without too much diculty.
The Catholic University of America

WILLIAM E. KLINGSHIRN
klingshirn@cua.edu

ROMAN CULTURE IN EGYPT

H e r k lo t z ( F. ) Prinzeps und Pharao. Der Kult des Augustus in
gypten. (Oikumene. Studien zur antiken Weltgeschichte 4.) Pp. 507,
map. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Antike, 2007. Cased, 69.90. ISBN:
978-3-938032-15-2.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X08002588

This monumental study of the cult of Augustus in Egypt lls a gap in several respects.
On the one hand, Egyptologists still concentrate their studies on the classical periods
of Egyptian culture, the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. Classical archaeologists
dealing with the Roman period, on the other hand, consider Egypt as exceptional
because of its dominant three-thousand-year-old culture that was still vivid when
Octavian conquered Egypt in 30 B.C. Historians, nally, have studied intensively the
period of the Ptolemies,1 while the history of the Roman period has been only
summarized.2 As a result, research on Roman culture in Egypt is still in its infancy.
Unlike in other provinces of the Roman empire, the conquerors of Egypt met a
strong culture which already dominated other peoples. H. aims to reect the cult of
Augustus in all its aspects. She has meticulously collected all the existing sources for
the period; but unfortunately this enormous eort lacks analysis and new ideas or
theories for further discussion.
As an archaeologist I note several methodological problems. H. acknowledges an
architectural tradition for the building programme of temples from the late Ptolemaic
period onwards. On p. 207, however, she states: Leider sind keine in augusteischer
Zeit errichteten oder dekorierten Tempel aus dem Nildelta erhalten geblieben, so dass
hier keine Aussage getroen werden kann. I myself doubt that there have been any,
because even the late Ptolemies did not build temples in this region.

1G. Hlbl, Geschichte des Ptolemerreiches (Darmstadt, 1994); S. Pfeier, Herrscher- und
Dynastiekulte im Ptolemerreich (Munich, 2008).
2G. Hlbl, Altgypten im rmischen Reich. Der rmische Pharao und seine Tempel 1 (Mainz,
2000), 946.

The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 1 The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved