BMCR 2009.05.40: Gordon on Sluiter, Kakos: Badness and Anti-value in Classical Antiquity. Mnemosyne: Supplements. History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity; 307

Ineke Sluiter, Ralph M. Rosen (ed.), Kakos: Badness and Anti-value in
Classical Antiquity. Mnemosyne: Supplements. History and Archaeology of
Classical Antiquity; 307.  Leiden/Boston:  Brill, 2008.  Pp. viii, 514.
ISBN 9789004166240.  $231.00.

Contributors:  Yelena Baraz, Christopher S. Van Den Berg, Matthew R.
Christ, Cynthia Damon, Elaine Fantham, Nick Fisher, Martijn Icks,
Jeremy B. Lefkowitz, Florence Limburg, Kathryn A. Morgan, J.J. Mulhern,
James I. Porter, Ralph M. Rosen, Ed Sanders, Ineke Sluiter, Deborah
Steiner, Ian C. Storey, Amanda Wilcox

Reviewed by Pamela  Gordon, University of Kansas ([email protected])
Word count:  1735 words
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This book is a collection of essays about the discourse of "badness"
and blame in antiquity. Its arresting title springs from an attempt to
avoid modern conceptualizations about bad people and things by
beginning with "an element from the ancient lexicon" (3).

Thus some of the authors seem to be engaged in a lexicographical
project that aims to produce extended entries on <greek>kako/s</greek>
and malus; or studies of a broader range of the vocabulary of censure
or disparagement. Elsewhere attention to <greek>kak-</greek> or mal- is
jettisoned entirely, sometimes along with attention to any particular
elements of the Greek or Latin lexica. In general, however, these
diverse essays form a coherent whole.

All of the essays are products of the 2006 meeting of the Biennial
Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values. These colloquia have been held
alternately at Leiden University and the University of Pennsylvania
since 2000. Previous Colloquia have produced three publications:
Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity (BMCR
2003.12.19; Free Speech in Classical Antiquity (BMCR 2006.01.12); and
City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical
Antiquity (BMCR 2007.07.23). Like its predecessors, this volume rises
to a level above mere "conference proceedings."

In the introduction, Ineke Sluiter offers an informative outline of the
use of the word <greek>kako/s</greek> in classical Greek. Here we learn
that <greek>kako/s</greek> is a poetic word, appearing 39.14 times per
10,000 words in Attic tragedy, in contrast to 6.31 times in Greek
prose. Perhaps most surprising is the infrequency of kakos in Greek
rhetoric (only 8.01 times per 10,000 words). Also interesting is the
rarity of the word in the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (0.3
times). Useful tables present the data on weighted frequencies (7).

The four top authors for the usage of kakos turn out to be Sophocles,
Euripides, Hesiod, and Aeschylus (in that order). Only three prose
authors make a showing in the top ten, with Epictetus appearing just
under Hesiod and the tragedians, and Lysias and Andocides as number 7
and 10, respectively. Aristophanes, Homer, and Theocritus also appear
in the list of top ten. The introduction also promises that some of the
essays are not overly focused on the single word <greek>kako/s</greek>,
but bring in such words as <greek>ai)sxro/s</greek>,
<greek>moxqhro/s</greek>, <greek>ponhro/s</greek>,
<greek>miaro/s</greek>, <greek>u(/bris</greek>, and malus, pravus,
nequam, vitiosus, malitia, malignitas, and superbia.

In chapter one, "Generic Ethics and the Problem of Badness in Pindar,"
Kathryn Morgan notes that a concentration of kakos vocabulary connects
badness with certain types of speech: "the people on whom the poet sows
blame, are (reflexively) those who sow blame"(55). Morgan argues
convincingly that the genre of Pindaric epinician puts constraints on
the construction of bad people, and "bad speaking" (kakagoria) becomes
the epinician sin.

Jeremy B. Lefkowitz's essay, "Ugliness and Value in the Life of Aesop,"
offers a perceptive reading of Bentley's Dissertations (1699), and
argues that the Life of Aesop is a significant text in which Aesop's
ugliness is itself didactic. Like the fable, the body of the fabulist
offers a lesson on the deceptiveness of outward appearances. Next,
Deborah Steiner's "Beetle Tracks: Entomology, Scatology and the
Discourse of Abuse" takes as its point of departure Semonides' claim
that the dung bettle "leads the worst <greek>ka/kiston</greek> way of
life" (83). Traversing archaic iambos, Attic comedy, and Hellenistic
poetry, Steiner brings "natural history, genre and social standing"
into the discussion of what is <greek>kako/n</greek> (115).

In the first of three essays on Aristophanes, "'Bad' Language in
Aristophanes," Ian C. Storey demonstrates succinctly that Aristophanic
ridicule does not rely heavily on kak-compounds, which tend in the
comedies to designate general inferiority (e.g. bad poets). Moral
overtones adhere more to other adjectives, including
<greek>ponhro/s</greek> ("wicked") and <greek>miaro/s</greek>
("despicable"). Although the authors do not engage each other's
demonstrations that kakos often lacks moral connotations, the argument
here invites comparison with the article by Rosen that immediately
follows it, and with Van Den Berg's work on malignitas (below). Ralph
M. Rosen's "Badness and Intentionality in Aristophanes' Frogs"
continues the focus on Aristophanes' use of kakos to refer to bad poets
and the bad things they do. Rosen argues persuasively that the contest
between Aeschylus and Euripides in the Frogs has to do with a
proto-theory of "mimetic badness" that examines why Aeschylus (but not
Euripides) can represent wickedness without being accused of teaching
bad things.

Matthew R. Christ's "Imagining Bad Citizenship in Classical Athens:
Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae 730-876," argues convincingly that
Athenians frequently invoked a good/bad citizenship polarity not simply
because one was a foil for the other, but because bad citizenship was
"a familiar phenomenon and a common alternative" (169). Interestingly,
the adjective kakos does not appear in Christ's quotations of
Ecclesiaszusae and other texts that mention shirkers, sycophants, and
freeriders.

Focusing on laws regulating immoral behavior, Nick Fischer's article,
"The Bad Boyfriend, the Flatterer and the Sykophant: Related Forms of
the kakos in Democratic Athens," offers among other things an
illuminating and precise catalog of 15 historical young men who were
"attacked under more than one heading" (199), such as kolax,
eurupro^ktos, and alazo^n. Here the word kakos appears in the subtitle
to the essay, but not in the quotations of ancient texts.

Aristotle is the subject of the next two articles. J.J. Mulhern's
"KAKIA in Aristotle" returns to the exploration of the ancient lexicon
(with kakia translated here as "vice"). Mining Aristotle and his
ancient biographies, Mulhern suggests that Aristotle uses kak- to
"exemplify the different ways of being bad that plague categorically
different doings and qualities" (252). In chapter 10, "Pathos Phaulon:
Aristotle and the Rhetoric of Phthonos," Ed Sanders begins with
Aristotle's early treatment of phthonos (envy) in the Rhetoric. After
an exploration of the ways Aristotle developed his theory of the
emotions in the Ethics, he concludes that phthonos "stands apart from
the others because of its badness" (278).

Much of James I. Porter's essay, "The Disgrace of Matter in Ancient
Aesthetics," is excerpted from his forthcoming work on ancient
aesthetics (313, note 99). Here he suggests that to kalon as it figures
in canonical philosophical texts entails a "disgracing of matter"
(314). He elucidates an alternative "material sublime" that converges
with the immateriality of to kalon only in later antiquity.

In "With Malice Aforethought: The Ethics of Malitia on Stage and at
Law," the first of seven chapters on "anti-value" in the Roman world,
Elaine Fantham picks up the lexicographical thread and demonstrates
concisely that the word malitia does not bear the same relationship to
malus as kakia bears to kakos. Rather, the Latin noun connotes more
specifically "bad intentions and willful deceitfulness," and is later
"displaced by the concept of dolus malus" (320).

Apion is the subject of Cynthia Damon's essay, "'The Mind of an Ass and
the Impudence of a Dog:' A Scholar Gone Bad." Her catalogue of the
colorful epithets and sobriquets applied to Apion in antiquity includes
<greek>Mo/xqos</greek> (Tedious) and cymbalum mundi (the world's gong).
When Apollonius says that Apion writes "badly" (<greek>kakw=s</greek>),
he means simply that he gets it wrong.

In "From Vice to Virtue: the Denigration and Rehabilitation of superbia
in Ancient Rome," Yelena Baraz explores the semantics of Roman
arrogance (focusing, for example, on adrogantia, fastus, and
insolentia.) In Baraz's reading, the negative connotations of the word
superbia at first reflected the status of pride under the Republic, but
in later poetic contexts comes to be constructed as a positive quality.

Next, Christopher S. Van Den Berg offers a cogent study of another
crucial element of the vocabulary of negative criticism in "Omnis
Malignitas est Virtuti Contraria: Malignitas as a Term of Aesthetic
Evaluation from Horace to Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus." Arguing
that the word malignitas "is both more and less bad than has often been
acknowledged" (400), Van Den Berg demonstrates that it often designates
literary rather than moral failure. In contexts of literary rivalry,
malignitas engenders incorrect or unjust commentary on an opponent's
work.

Each of the last three essays takes us further away from the close
scrutiny of vocabularies of blame or censure. In "The Representation
and Role of Badness in Seneca's Moral Teaching: A Case From the
Naturales Quaestiones (NQ 1.16)," Florence Limburg explores and
contextualizes Seneca's description of "Hostius Quadra's misuse of
mirrors for the purpose of his sexual satisfaction," a lengthy passage
that may seem salacious (434). In Limburg's alternative reading,
Seneca's representation of vice has an apotreptic and didactic purpose.
Amanda Wilcox also focuses on Seneca's philosophical understanding of
vice in "Nature's Monster: Caligula as exemplum in Seneca's Dialogues."
Gaius serves a purpose in Nature's plan and so is not evil on a
cosmological level. Not simply a negative exemplar, he is "a
provocateur of famous deeds" (460). In the last chapter, "Heliogabalus,
a Monster on the Roman Throne: The Literary Construction of a 'Bad'
Emperor," Martijn Icks explores the diverse ways ancient writers
vilified the short-lived Heliogabalus.

Any scholar interested in the range and usage of <greek>kako/s</greek>
and malus (and other terms of negative assessment) should consult this
volume. It will also be useful to scholars or advanced students
interested more generally in the ways Greek and Latin texts dish out
censure and blame. Here a note on an element from the contemporary
English lexicon. The conference-goers seem to have accustomed
themselves to employing the potentially whimsical word "badness" to
refer to the rubric under which they were gathered. The term
"anti-value" makes the occasional appearance beyond the title page and
the introduction, but the authors resort most often to "badness" as the
unifying term. The desire for an organizing principle other than the
minimalist <greek>kako/s</greek> is understandable, but it may be
misleading to refer to a single abstraction in English when the ancient
texts treated here do not attest to a unifying abstraction in Greek or
Latin.

Most of the chapters are well worth reading, and all but one ends with
a carefully demarcated conclusion that sums up its contribution.
Unfortunately, the essays make scant reference to each other. This is
perhaps a minor imperfection, but the lack of engagement seems odd for
a collection of revised and carefully edited conference papers.

The individual bibliographies appearing at the end of each essay alert
the reader to a range of pertinent publications, including many from
the current decade (mostly in English). Latin and Greek are translated
throughout, but German is not. Includes indices of Greek and Latin
terms, an Index Locorum, and a General Index. Typographical errors are
remarkably few.