Recent books on late antiquity - June

Some rather good books have appeared recently. Kicking off with Arietta Papaconstantinou and Alice-Mary Talbot's Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium reviewed by Caroline Schroeder at the University of the Pacific:

In defiance of the adage, "children should be seen and not heard," young people have been popping up all over the late antique and Byzantine scholarly landscapes. Recent books on orphans, children in art, and late antique children have added to our understanding of pre-modern childhood while simultaneously reminding us of how much we do not know about the lives of minors in these time periods.¹ In 2006, in the midst of this birth of a new subfield, Dumbarton Oaks hosted a symposium on children in Byzantium. The fruit of this labor is the current volume, edited by the original "symposiarchs" Arietta Papaconstantinou and Alice-Mary Talbot. The book presents a welcome array of studies on material culture as well as texts. All of the articles make important contributions to the field. A few enticing entries from the original program, however, do not appear, as some participants published their own monographs on these topics.

Note Cecily Hennessy's Images of Children in Byzantium mentioned here a while ago. Children are clearly one of the themes of the moment.

Next up Miriam Ewers, Marcellus Empiricus: "De medicamentis." Christliche Abhandlung über Barmherzigkeit oder abergläubische Rezeptsammlung? reviewed by Anthony Corbeill at the University of Kansas:

An introduction reviews the well-known facts customarily used to reconstruct Marcellus's career (11-26). The header to the tract's introductory epistle and sections of the Codex Theodosianus prompt most scholars to identify the writer as a high-ranking official (magister officiorum) in the court of Theodosius I charged with rooting out heretics in the imperial service from c. A.D. 394-395. Both the nature of the office and the purview of these affiliated duties would seem to necessitate that Marcellus openly professed Christianity. The treatise's dedicatory epistle also refers to three men as cives ac maiores nostri, one of whom, a certain Ausonius, is presumed to be the father of the poet of Bordeaux. This aside, combined with the frequent inclusion throughout the treatise of Celtic synonyms alongside Greek and Latin plant names, points to Gaul as Marcellus's original home. After his (perhaps forced) retirement, he seems to have removed to his native Gaul to compose and publish during the reign of Theodosius II his only known work, De medicamentis. There is no strong evidence to support--and no compelling reason to assume--that he ever served as a professional physician.

Finally, Peter Bell's translation, Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian. Agapetus, Advice to the Emperor; Dialogue on Political Science; Paul the Silentiary, Description of Hagia Sophia. It is part of the essential translated Translated Texts for Historians series from Liverpool University Press and is reviewed by Benjamin Garstad at MacEwan University:

Bell's work is presented in two halves. The first offers an introduction to the world of sixth-century Byzantium, the authors generally, and their dates, as well as thorough and helpful introductions to each of the works. Seldom have I seen the promise of 'accessible to the beginner, useful to the expert' better fulfilled. The reader without any background in sixth-century history or Platonic philosophy will not be at a loss and the reader well versed in either will see sources neatly traced and patterns astutely identified. The second half is composed of the translations of the three texts. These are lucid and readable without being colloquial. The accompanying notes supply a more than adequate commentary, discussing, as they do, everything from the translator's grounds for his rendering and the fontes of significant words and phrases to their implications in the court of Justinian.

Comments

[Antoninus Pius]

I see Ancient Warfare magazine is late Roman this bi-month: http://www.ancient-warfare.com/cms/issues/ancient-warfare-iv-3.html.