BMCR 2009.03.23, Nicholas Sekunda, Corolla Cosmo Rodewald. Monograph

Nicholas Sekunda (ed.), Corolla Cosmo Rodewald. Monograph Series
Akanthina 2.  Gdansk:  Foundation for the Development of Gdansk
University, 2007.  Pp. 192, pls. 4.  ISBN 978-83-7531-060-3.  $90.00.


Reviewed by P. J.  Rhodes, University of Durham
Word count:  1717 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

This is a collection of essays on topics in ancient history, mostly by
former colleagues and pupils, in memory of Cosmo Alastair Rodewald
(1915-2002).

Rodewald was not a typical modern academic. Rich enough not to need to
jump through hoops, push himself forward and strive for promotion, he
was committed to the subject and to doing a good job in his own way. He
spent nearly all his career as an ancient historian in the University
of Manchester (where, as is common in continental Europe but rare in
the British Isles, ancient history belonged to the Department of
History). He was (by all accounts: I never met him) an exceptionally
conscientious teacher, devoted to his students and fair and firm with
them; generous in hospitality to them and to colleagues; calm and
efficient in administration, and finally elected chairman of his
department (in that short era of democracy in British universities
which has since given way to the era of management). For a long time he
published nothing apart from reviews, but he did eventually produce two
well-received books: Democracy: Ideas and Realities (1974: one of the
first books to provide ancient history students with translated source
texts) and Money in the Age of Tiberius (1976); sadly, failing eyesight
made his retirement less productive than it might otherwise have been.
He was also devoted to music and the visual arts, and his many
benefactions reached into both those areas; they also included New
College, Oxford, where he studied as an undergraduate, and the British
School at Athens, where he was a student in 1938/9.

This volume in his memory was edited by Nicholas Sekunda, one of his
Manchester pupils and now a professor at Gdansk. It opens with three
chapters about Rodewald: a brief biography by Alastar Jackson (a
Manchester colleague) and Sekunda; an account of his twenty-nine years
at Manchester University by Jackson; and an account of his philanthropy
by Victor Sayer (for many years his partner) and Sekunda. Then follow
the academic chapters, which (as Rodewald himself did) span both Greece
and Rome.

Antony Keen and Sekunda write on 'Xenophon the Rhetor'. That is the
attribution in two of the four principal manuscripts of the Athenaion
Politeia of the Old Oligarch, and Keen and Sekunda argue that behind it
lurks not the Xenophon with whom we are famliar but an associate of
Socrates who was captured after the battle of Delium and wrote in exile
in Boeotia (similar views have been advanced by L. Rossetti, but Keen
and Sekunda reached their conclusions independently, before Rossetti's
work was published). I have a vested interest, and am not
convinced,[[1]] but this is a fascinating attempt to penetrate the
obscurity of a frustratingly mysterious author.

David Whitehead discusses 'The Rein and the Spur', arguing that Plato
shows much more interest than Isocrates in equine illustrations, and
that the original version of the story is that Plato thought Aristotle
needed the rein and Xenocrates the spur, not that Isocrates thought
Theopompus needed the rein and Ephorus the spur. (He points out to me
that on p. 40 the last sentence before the quotation from Suda should
begin, 'P-X-A, in Diog. Laert. 4.6, ...'.)

Stephen Hodkinson provides a lengthy study of 'The Episode of Sphodrias
as a Source for Spartan Social History'. Xenophon's view that Sphodrias
was bribed by the Thebans to attack Athens is one of a long series of
unsubstantiated allegations about the bribing of Spartans. The story is
typical also in the important role in it of personal connections
between Spartans and foreigners; and within Sparta Agesilaus'
cultivation of family and friends was important, as was his
relationship with his 'servants' (whatever their precise status). The
story is significant also for its account of the young men's training
system and the importance for Sphodrias' career of his outstanding
performance while undergoing it; for the role of the homosexual
relationship between Agesliaus' son Archidamus and Sphodrias' son
Cleonymus and the relations between the young men and their fathers;
and for Cleonymus' death at Leuctra as one of the e/lite body of
(hoplite) hippeis.

John Graham (sadly, no longer alive when this book was published) looks
at 'Plato's Anachronisms'. He insists (as he is not the first to do)
that they cannot all be explained away. In the Republic, the Parmenides
and elsewhere, it is never safe to argue from the putative date and the
dramatis personae to actual historical chronology. Some of the
anachronisms seem purely gratuitous, serving no detectable purpose, and
Graham sees the anachronisms as hints that the dialogues are not
vehicles of historical truth.

John Davies studies 'The Phokian Hierosylia at Delphi' in the mid
fourth century. Diodorus' figure of 10,000 talents as the sum
appropriated by the Phocians, he argues (particularly from the
coinage), represents in fact an order to make double repayment of
appropriations deemed to be 5,000 talents; the effect of the
appropriations on the money supply of Greece, though significant
locally, was less than that of the prolific coinage of Athens and
Macedon in the third quarter of the century. The Phocians were not the
only or the first Greeks to recycle temple treasures for the payment of
mercenaries, and the availability of such payments may have helped to
ease social tensions in the poorer parts of Greece.

With Simon Northwood we turn to Rome: 'Quintus Fabius Pictor: Was He an
Annalist?' Northwood maintains that not only later but even in early
Rome annales were not necessarily histories organised on an annual
framework, and the fragments and testimonia do not make it certain that
Fabius' history was thus organised; it is too simplistic to suppose
that he must have avoided the annalistic form because that would not
suit his defence of Rome against its detractors; Cato's attack (fr. 77
P) shows that Fabius used pontifical records but not necessarily that
he presented an annalistic account. While accepting B. W. Frier's
argument that the annales maximi were not published until the time of
Augustus, he doubts T. P. Wiseman's view that there was no usable list
of consuls in the time of Fabius and that annalistic history must have
been a later creation. That Fabius wrote annalistically he considers
not certain but still possible, and he does not wish to see an
unbridgeable gulf between non-annalists and annalists.

John Briscoe addresses 'Polybius, Livy and the Disaster in the
Macedonian Royal House' in 183-179, maintaining against S. Lanciotti
that the differences between Livy XXXIX-XL and Polybius XXIII are due
simply to Livy's omitting the secret conversation between Flamininus
and Demetrius and the propulsion of Philip by the tyche which haunted
him; there is no need to suppose that Livy was deliberately giving the
whole story a different slant.

Anthony Birley writes on 'Sejanus: His Fall' (using the title of a play
by Ben Jonson produced in 1603). The sources are hostile to Sejanus --
above all Tacitus, who represents him as conspiring against Tiberius.
J. P. Pistner in 1880 thought him the innocent victim of defamation;
and Syme in his Tacitus made that kind of view fashionable, judging
that the only certain plot was that by Tiberius, though towards the end
Sejanus may have planned a counter-stroke. Birley's suggestion is that
Tiberius had intended Sejanus to succeed him; Sejanus married Livilla
in summer 31; he needed to get rid of Caligula, and perhaps what turned
Tiberius against him was that Caligula and Macro got the astrologer
Thrasyllus to come up with a suitable prediction. Speculation which
belongs 'rather to a historical novel', perhaps, but a reminder that
here is a mystery which has not yet been successfully unravelled.

Paul Holder makes detailed 'Observations on the Inner Faces of
Auxiliary Diplomas from the Reign of Antoninus Pius'. The inner texts
came to be increasingly abbreviated, from c.143 omitting the unit list
so that they were no longer legally valid accurate copies; at some
points there were attempts at improvement, but the inner texts were
still frequently unsatisfactory; although technically both outer and
inner were needed to guarantee authenticity, in practice only the outer
text seems to have mattered.

Robin Seager offers 'Notes on Ammianus Marcellinus XVIII', discussing
problems in five passages.

Finally Nick Higham in 'Arthur, Joshua and the Israelites' takes us to
a mediaeval Latin text, studying the Historia Brittonum of c. 829/30,
and showing that it was not a mere compilation from earlier material
but a work composed by a writer from south Wales seeking to please
Merfyn of Gwynedd: the Britons were represented as God's people, and
after the portrayal of St. Patrick as a second Moses an Arthur was
constructed who had little basis in real history but was a second
Joshua and also (Joshua and Jesus being the same name) a Christ-like
figure.

Academically Cosmo Rodewald was not widely known outside Manchester;
and books published in Poland are not prominently displayed in the
bookshops of the anglophone world. But Rodewald deserved his tribute;
and, while some chapters are more substantial than others, and some
will have a wider appeal than others, this book contains material which
is serious and worthy of scholars' attention: it should not be
neglected.

Table of Contents

Alastar Jackson, Nicholas Sekunda, 'Cosmo Rodewald 1915-2002: A Brief
Biography' (pp. 7-9)
Alastar Jackson, 'Cosmo Rodewald at Manchester University 1947-1976'
(pp. 11-13)
Genealogical table (p. 15)
Victor Sayer, Nicholas Sekunda, 'Cosmo Rodewald's Philanthropy' (pp.
17-23)
Antony Keen, Nicholas Sekunda, 'Xenophon the Rhetor' (pp. 25-38)
David Whitehead, 'The Rein and the Spur' (pp. 39-42)
Stephen Hodkinson, 'The Episode of Sphodrias as a Source for Spartan
Social History' (pp. 43-65)
John Graham, 'Plato's Anachronisms' (pp. 67-74)
John Davies, 'The Phokian Hierosylia at Delphi: Quantities and
Consequences' (pp. 75-96)
Simon Northwood, 'Qunitus Fabius Pictor: Was He an Annalist?' (pp.
97-114)
John Briscoe, 'Polybius, Livy and the Disaster in the Macedonian Royal
House' (pp. 115-9)
Anthony Birley, 'Sejanus: His Fall' (pp. 121-50)
Paul Holder, 'Observations on the Inner Faces of Some Auxiliary
Diplomas from the Reign of Antoninus Pius' (pp. 151-71)
Robin Seager, 'Notes on Ammianus Marcellinus XVIII' (pp. 173-7)
Nick Higham, 'Arthur, Joshua and the Israelites: History and Its
Purposes in Early Ninth-Century North Wales' (pp. 179-92)
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Notes:


1.   See J. L. Marr and P. J. Rhodes, The 'Old Oligarch': The
Constitution of the Athenians Attributed to Xenophon (Aris and Phillips
Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxbow, 2008).