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BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 227 5.13.1-4 Livy records that the year 399 B.C. was remarkable for two reasons: (1) because the winter was so cold and snowy that roads were dosed and the Tiber was unnavigable. and (2) because weather conditions in the summer were at the opposite extreme and the summer was deadly for all living things. When all of Livy's report is considered. it is quite dear that he is recording information about an abnormal year with exceptional extremes of both heat and cold. and that this information should not be used to formulate a theory about dimatic change. The second non-anthropogenic factor mentioned by Hughes is disease. particularly epidemics and malaria. which. he argues. caused dedines in human productivity and population. The section on anthropogenic factors is essentially a summary of the earlier chapters. I would not recommend this book. Although there is a considerable amount of interesting information packed into fewer than 300 pages. and although the central thesis-that human history is linked to environmental change-is undoubtedly correct. the book is blighted by Hughes' manipulation of ancient source material to find support for his theories. JO-ANN SHELTON DErARTMENT OF CLASSICS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA. CA 93106 PATRICIA COX MILLER. Dreams in Late Antiquity. Studies in the Imagination oi a Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994. Pp. xii + 273. Cloth. US $42.50. ISBN 0-69107422 -4. For Patricia Cox Miller. dream is discourse and trope. "one of the modes of production of meaning." "a distinctive pattern of imagination which [in late antiquityl brought visual presence and tangibility to such abstract concepts as time. cosrnic history. the soul. the identity of one's seH" (3). Furthermore. oneiric discourse is so ubiquitous a feature of late antique life irrespective of dass. status. and religion as to be not "exotic" but "ordinary." So approached. Miller maintains. dream is less liable to be idealized or denigrated and "all of the people who tapped the resources of the imaginal forms of dreams can be viewed as ordinary people going about the ordinary business of trying to understand themselves and their world" (12). The focus of Part I of Dreams in Late Antiquity ("Images and Concepts of Dreaming ") is "particularly on how a culture imagines for itself one of its 228 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS own processes of imagining. as well as on the various theoretical and classificatory systems that were used to decipher and manage oneiric phenomena" (12-13). In particular, Miller's concern is to examine "the role of dreams as a technology for managing hopes, fears, and anxieties " and how dreams acted "as a discourse that provided occasion for articulations of ethical and philosophical ideas" (13). Part TI ("Dreamers") comprises aseries of considerations of how particular individuals employed dreams "to construct worlds of personal meaning" (13). "Figurations of Dreams," the initial chapter of Part I. opens with a discussion of severalloci c1assici with respect to dreams in the Wad and Odyssey (especially I1. 23.65-107 and Od. 4.795-8°7, 19.560-567, and 24.10-14 [but not I1. 2.1-34!]). passages which. to Miller's mind, lead logically to sentiments expressed by Hesiod (Th. 211 -212) and by the representation of several dreams in Athenian. particularly Euripidean , tragedy (Hec. 69-76; IT 1244-1251, 1259-1265, and 1278). Taken together, these texts. Miller maintains. reflect a view of dreams as having an existence distinct from the people who experience them and serve to locate dreams spatially in a marginal territory between the living and the dead. These associations Ovid and Vergil accepted and refined. Lucian's use of Vergil's image of the gates of horn and ivory allows Miller to consider in light of several of the satirist's works the "iconization" of dreams and to a discussion of the impact of statues of the gods on the imagery of dream in Artemidorus and Aelius Aristides . From the influence of statuary on oneiric images of gods, it is but a short step to "iconization" inspired by the features of particular humans; thus. just as Patroclus appeared to the sleeping Achilles, so the martyr...

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