The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom by C.P. Jones (review)

of learning in Italy, and in the apparatus, from which the layman can learn about the habits of scribes and the expert trace affiliations of MSS. The various hands in the earliest MSS have never before been distinguished in such detail, so the early stages in the process of conjectural emendation can be clearly followed. Of course there are slips. At 31.5 and 64.387 V's reading is omitted. Readings are sometimes given in the wrong order; at 2b.3ligatam is read but V's negatam cited first. It is sometimes not clear that the reported reading is an expanded abbreviation; at 1.5 it would help to know that 0 reads Iii and G lam (d 64.249). Again, why print V's aureis at 46.3 but not Caluas at 53.3 nor karum at 2.67 The newly published Gallus fragment suggests that this last was what Catullus wrote (so carr. in the apparatus must here be interpreted carrupil) . There is no space here to do justice to the Latin text offered. Suffice it to say that it is a good deal less conservative than Mynors's. Obeli are used at 67.12 only. At 54.2 Thomson reads el mi Rustice and at 55.9 audile en, but that these simplicities could produce respectively el eri rustice and auelte is hard to believe; for the second I prefer Camps's a cetle hue. It is remarkable that Thomson admires Ellis as a textual critic, referring on P4 to his 'magnificent edition of the text' and to his 'unusual ability to generate attractive emendations.' So I cannot resist pointing out that his learned guide has caused him to misspell Carradinus on pp 172 and 179, though admittedly that inventor of a bogus MS, supposedly belonging to a Roman potter of his acquaintance, deserved no better. Not to end on a carping note, one must salute Thomson's achievement with respect, for few scholars can have devoted more labour, care, and thoughtto the collation, the history, and the affiliations of Catullus's MSS, particularly the earliest. (GUY LEE) c.P. Jones. The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom Loeb Classical Monographs. Harvard University Press 1978. vi, 208. $15.00 The title is important, for Oio, the golden-tongued travelling lecturer from Prusa in northwest Turkey, was a Greek, a native Greek speaker lecturing always in that tongue, and heir to all the Greek cultural and intellectual tradition, stubbornly Hellenocentric in its sympathies and presuppositions. Professor Jones's book fits - as did its predecessor, Plutarch and Rome - into an important current of present-day thinking about the intellectual and social history of the period that we call the Roman empire, which can perhaps be simply characterized by saying that we perceive the Reiman empire rather as a period than as a thing. Beneath the very broad umbrella of government from the centre, Rome, several major cultural traditions coexisted; and 'top culture: in prestige and desirability, was stin the Greek. Concentrating on classical Greek HUMANITIES 401 literature and then on Latin (which are unquestionably the best writings), scholars have not for a long time paid enough attention to the celebrated Greek intellectuals of the imperial age; but that is now being done. The books of Professor Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World and Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire, made an important contribution, showing that behind the intellectual history lies the tale of particular men and families making their political fortunes, first at home and then through links with the court and the emperor. The other dimension of evidence is inscriptions: the lifelong work of Professor Louis Robert provides an inexhaustible quarry for study of the background to what the Greek intellectuals were saying. Their surviving works are not easy to judge fairly today: enclless 'orations' (the modern equivalent is lectures or journalism), which seem irremediably beta-minus. Yet it is necessary to try, because they were taken so seriously in their day. Unfortunately, if any sense is to be made of the intellectual and spiritual development of their authors, these lectures have first to be put in chronological order, on the basis entirely of internal evidence. Jones has...