Customer Reviews

Anthropology and Roman Culture: Kinship, Time, Images of the Soul (Ancient Society and History)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For some reason it had taken me a long time to read this book all the way through though it sat sideways on my shelf for some years awaiting its chance to be read. It has been read and I am content. This work will not revolutionize the way one thinks about Roman society or reads Latin literature but it will, without a doubt, enrich it tremendously.

The section on kinship explores avenues of etymology, anthropology and philology to expose the traditional positions of patruus (father's brother), avunculus (mother's-brother), matertera (mother's sister) and amita (father's sister) in Roman society. These different roles in the life of a family can be compared interestingly to kinship roles in Nuer society and more importantly allow one to better understand the weight these roles would have carried in the minds of Roman audiences of comedy and poetry. Especially in the case of comedy, certain scenes would lack all humor for modern readers who have not grasped an understanding the stereotypes of family roles that Plautus mocks.

The section on Roman metaphors of time primarily resorts to linguistic analysis to show that before and after or anterior and posterior functioned in language and presumedly Roman life to represent both the past and the future, rather than one standing exclusively for one. Bettini shows two predominant ways of plotting time: the journey, in which the character moves through time, and other stories in which time chases the characters whether they flee or not. It seems obvious that ambiguity would settle around the most complex and common cultural concepts but it is illuminating to have them teased out so deftly.

The section on images of the soul surprises because of the unlikely suspects standing as primary symbols for the soul: bees, moths, and bats. Still, Bettini is very good with animals (his newer work bears this out more fully with his book length discussion of weasels in ancient literature and in the role of animals in the ancient "sonosphere") and bees, moths, bats aren't unpleasant to read about at all. Fans of the Georgics may enjoy the final chapter on the madness of Aristaeus.

Most Latin is already translated and therefore much, sadly, is absent from the text. Most work in other languages from the end notes remains untranslated. Although no any one chapter is magically scintillating, this is a useful and insightful book whose sections accumulate real wonders.