Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature by Denis Feeney (review)

Only the subtitle of Denis Feeney’s new book identifies his subject: the creation of Latin literature and its rapid development in the century after 240 bce. Feeney supplies much detail, but his argument is relatively simple: how amazing it is to have a literature created by translation. The introduction and first three chapters demonstrate that amazingness over and over in a number of contexts, in terms of the ancient Mediterranean world, cross-cultural comparison, and translation theory; and although Feeney includes some comments on Livius Andronicus’ translation of the Odyssey, the actual performance in 240 only appears in chapter 4. After about three pages, we are off again: exploring the background in Roman and Italic cultures (chapter 4); the significance of ludi in a pan-Mediterranean context (chapter 5); and the development of Latin literature in the century after 240 (chapters 6 and 7). A final chapter goes into great detail to refute the idea of oral performance in Rome as a form of, or source for, literary expression. Feeney’s two major themes are that what he calls “the Roman translation project” is a truly unique phenomenon in world literature; and that this project was a deliberate policy of the Roman elite, part of Rome’s self-presentation on the international stage which the Romans were entering in 240 bce. Intention and deliberateness aside (for which there is no evidence), Feeney is right to emphasize uniqueness, and he demonstrates it in many ways; there is also no harm in stressing the international context. Neither point, however, is particularly original in itself, and Feeney’s account of early Roman literature belongs in a familiar line of interpretation going back to Friedrich Leo. It is a good story, but not new.

Feeney generally aims at an audience with little knowledge of Roman literature or culture, but the book bristles with endnotes (more than four per page) citing an impressive amount of scholarship on a wide range of subjects. But few notes adduce primary texts, and little space is given to discussing the difficulties of evidence except in the last chapter, where Feeney attacks (with the only significant quotations of Latin or Greek in the book) the old hypothesis of ballads as bearers of early history and of an oral performance tradition. Up to that point, the highly polemical nature of this book is softened by Feeney’s sleek surface rhetoric, which incorporates constant praise as “important” of (often controversial and speculative) scholarship that Feeney agrees with and equally constant disdain for anyone else.

Feeney’s major polemic concerns the Ludi Romani of 240; his technique is essentially to say nothing about them. He does not discuss our evidence for this momentous event, concealing how little we know about it. Not one ancient source says that there was any official alteration of the Ludi; Cicero (Brutus 72) and Livy (7.2.8) simply state that Livius was the first to produce a fabula or argumentum. Feeney never mentions that there was ancient (and indeed modern) debate about the date—or indeed that standard Roman chronology was only established in the first century bce. It was probably Varro who explained how Roman drama grew from Italic traditions, Atticus and Cicero who cut out the Italic mediation between Rome and Greece. Feeney’s argument repeats Cicero’s position; there is no evidence either way.

Some important definitions (what is Greek; what is Roman; what is translation) in Feeney’s account change as needed. He repeatedly announces that it is hard to know what happened—and then tells us what it was, with no evidence. His story is learned and smooth, but no more credible than the narratives he is attacking (for example, Suerbaum, Habinek, Zorzetti), and he is very high-handed with what evidence there is. Everything written about early Rome contains much imaginative fiction, and this is no exception. Arnaldo Momigliano’s comment on this...