In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

260 Reviews Cynewulf and Cyneheard. Yet, as he observes, ethnographical understanding requires knowledge of specific and particular social contexts. W e are by no means as ignorant of Anglo-Saxon society as Hill supposes. What we do need to know above all to advance understanding of Beowulf is the date and place of its origin; although, Sam Newton has recently mounted a strong case for eighth-century East Anglia. Hill criticizes H. Munro Chadwick for using Beowulf as evidence of anthropologically presumed change. But some changes in Anglo-Saxon society are independently documented and have been well elucidated by historians since Chadwick's time. Their work and the early Germanic primary sources used by Chadwick are self-evidently more appropriate for the socio-cultural localization of Beowulf than anthropological analyses of remotely comparable societies, intrinsically interesting as these undoubtedly are. Despite its methodological flaws, Hill's study istiioughtful,thoughtprovoking , and occasionally challenging. It is well worth reading, particularly for its penetrating and highly accomplished chapter on the temporal world. Though the complexities of the argument are not easily grasped, the style is admirably lucid throughout. It would be a pity if Hill's repeated assertions that most of the poem's many readers have misunderstood it were to mask the genuine originality of his work. Stephanie Hollis Department of English University of Auckland Jacoff, Michael, The horses of San Marco and the quadriga of the Lord, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993; cloth; pp.xvii, 164; 64 plates; R.R.P. US$35.00. Michael Jacoffs book is an extended exegesis of the famous set of four antique bronze horses which, until their recent restoration and removal from the baneful effects of Venice's pollution, proudly dominated the principal facade of San Marco. These monumental gilded bronze horses, most probably Roman copies after a fourth-century Greek original, are the only surviving remnants of the many recorded chariot groups set up as victory monuments in antiquity. They were part of the booty brought back by the Venetians from Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade. Following the magisterial studies of the Byzantine scholar Otto Demus, the installation of the horses in pride of place on the newly decorated facade of San Marco has Reviews 261 traditionally been understood as an assertive proclamation of Venetian territorial and imperial ambitions in the early thirteenth century. In the wake of Constantinople's downfall, a triumphandy ascendant Venice was to become the 'new Byzantium'. It should be remembered that San Marco is not the cathedral of Venice but rather the private chapel of the Doge, and hence it functions as a kind of Venetian state church. This gives the political charge to the thirteenth-century display of Byzantine spoils at San Marco, of which the horses are the most notable but by no means the only example. Jacoff contends that the accepted reading of the horses as trophies of victory has overshadowed an equally significant aspect of their meaning; namely, the theme of the quadriga domini, or chariot of the Lord. In his first chapter, he demonstrates that certain early Christian writers used the metaphor of the antique quadriga, or two-wheeled chariot drawn by a team of four horses, to evoke the character and action of the four Evangelists. Under the guidance of Christ as their charioteer, the four authors of the Gospels act as a team, vigorously drawing forth the word of God into the world. According to Jacoff, this interpretation explains the fundamental reason for the placement of the horses on the facade of San Marco. This suggestion is appealing, and can add a further dimension to the range of associations invoked by the presence of the four horses upon the facade of a church dedicated to one of the four evangelists. However, the demonstration of his argument rests upon a series of hypotheses and elaborate reconstructions which are not always convincing. In particular, Jacoff has to contend with the medieval lack of familiarity with the form of an antique chariot and the consequent alteration of the metaphor of the quadriga domini in the Middle Ages. Instead of a two-wheeled chariot drawn by four horses, in medieval exegesis the quadriga was transformed into...

pdf

Share