Götter und menschliche Willensfreiheit ed. by Thomas Baier (review)

Publishers are invited to submit new books to be reviewed to Professor Gareth Williams, Department of Classics, Columbia University, 1130 Amsterdam Ave., 617 Hamilton Hall, MC 2861, New York, NY 10027, email: gdw5@columbia.edu.

Gods and human free will in Latin literature of the Imperial period from Lucan to Silius Italicus form the subject matter of this collection of essays put together by Thomas Baier as the proceedings of a 2010 Würzburg conference. The volume comprises sixteen essays, a short introduction, a bibliography, and an index locorum. In the first part of the collection (“Grundlagen”), Christiane Reitz examines the various councils of the gods in Flavian epic and the reintroduction of the divine apparatus in epic poetry after Lucan. In her typology, Reitz investigates how Silius, Valerius, and Statius employ the various meetings of the gods for their narrative purposes: Silius to convey an “ideological message” (34) concerning the eventual triumph of Rome, Valerius to pass on a “poetic message” (37) as his poem continues or picks up the threads of Homeric and post-Homeric epic narrative, and Statius to mark the “distance” of his opus from that of his predecessors.

The second and lengthiest part of the volume is dedicated to Lucan, with seven essays studying the role of fate, fortuna, and the gods in the Bellum Civile. After an informative set of observations by Christine Walde on the function of fortuna in Lucan, Shadi Bartsch offers an insightful analysis of the confusing and confused narrator of the poem when it comes to a consistent moral stance: the reader is led to believe that the gods may or may not exist and that the civil war is both a terrible evil and a cause worth fighting for. Such ethical inconsistency is directly linked to the many paradoxes of the poetic project undertaken, Bartsch argues. I would also recommend Paolo Esposito’s article on the function of similes that involve mythic figures from drama (Medea, Pentheus, Cadmus, etc.) in Lucan and the Flavian epicists (even though this essay seems to be out of place and less connected with the theme of the volume), as well as Paolo Asso’s entry on emotions in Lucan.

Each of the following three sections is dedicated to Flavian epic, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, and Silius Italicus, respectively. Sylvie Franchet d’Espèrey examines the role of the divine in the Thebaid, while William Dominik focuses on the character of Jupiter in particular and the lack of free will on the human level. Eckard Lefèvre’s essay on the problem of free will in Valerius’ Argonautica concludes that the overall picture is quite complex, reflecting the poet’s own inability to make sense of the overarching Ordnung in the world. Finally, Marco Fucecchi and Jochen Schultheiß discuss two episodes from Silius Italicus’ Punica, Jupiter’s prophecy in book 3 and Scipio at the Crossroads in book 15 respectively. Fucecchi connects the divine prophecy with imperial legitimization, while Schultheiß juxtaposes Hannibal as the foil to Scipio.

There are many insightful discussions of various passages in this volume, but, as is often the case with edited collections, quality among the essays varies (and not all articles are up to date in terms of the bibliography). These observations aside, Götter und menschliche Willensfreiheit is a welcome addition to the growing bibliography on religion in Imperial Latin literature.