Books

The Artes and the Emergence of a Scientific Culture in the Early Roman Empire

in production at Cambridge University Press

This book offers the first full-scale, synthetic account of the Latin technical treatises called artes, arguing that their flourishing in the early Roman Empire represents the emergence and development of a uniquely Roman scientific culture. It introduces the Roman artes on architecture, agriculture, land-surveying, medicine, and the art of war to those without specialist knowledge of the disciplines and advances a new argument for their significance vis-à-vis a common intellectual culture. It unpacks the socio-political, literary, and especially philosophical and scientific dimensions of these writings. It characterizes the scientific culture which the artes constitute and traces significant themes in their construction of disciplinary expertise, examining the effects of the tension between theory and practice as well as their systematic, explanatory, and interdisciplinary presentation of specialized knowledge. In presenting a novel interpretation of the artes, this book aims to add a new chapter to the history of science in Greco-Roman antiquity.

Seneca: Consolation to Marcia

under contract for Cambridge University Press in the series Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics (Green and Yellow)

With Jonathan Master (Emory), I am preparing a Green and Yellow commentary on Seneca’s Ad Marciam de consolatione.

The Ad Marciam offers consolatory advice to Marcia, a mother still grief-stricken several years after the death of her adult son, Metilius. In what is likely the earliest prose work in his corpus, written during the reign of Gaius (AD 37–41), Seneca draws on traditional sources of consolation that stretch back through Cicero to the Hellenistic Academic philosopher Crantor of Soli (c. 335–275 BC) and beyond, but refashions them within the idioms of Roman culture and Stoic philosophy. Marcia was the daughter of Cremutius Cordus, historian of the late Republic, who was persecuted in the principate of Tiberius by the emperor’s vicious prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus. Seneca takes as his starting point Marcia’s response to Cremutius’ victimization and voluntary suicide and examines her father’s and her own conduct as exempla. The overall trajectory of the essay tends in the direction of Stoic philosophy as the only solution to Marcia’s grief over Metilius, as Seneca moves from the specific circumstances of Marcia’s experience and Rome’s cultural preoccupation with its own history to a universal and truly educational Stoic cosmic perspective. In the Stoic conclusion to the consolation, modeled on but departing in important respects from Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, it is precisely a rejection of the value that the living Cremutius placed on studying history that Seneca highlights for Marcia as a cure for her grief. In its totality the consolation brings together many interesting strands of Roman thought and culture: gender, Roman history, philosophy, and Seneca’s style of deeply literary and rhetorical didactic. The dynamic approach to persuasion that Seneca adopts in the work and his sensitivity to the addressee’s philosophical progress are in line with the best that his writings have to offer.

Gargilius Martialis: The Agricultural Fragments

Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 60

Publisher’s book description: In the third century CE, the North African polymath, soldier, and provincial official Q. Gargilius Martialis (died 260) wrote a treatise on the cultivation and medical use of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. The agricultural part of this work survives in a fragmentary state in a single manuscript. Despite this impediment, the agricultural writings are noteworthy for the clear marks both of their meticulous research and of the application of independent judgement and experience. Gargilius furthermore presents his advice in a stylized and literary form that strives for elegance through the use of prose rhythm, rhetorical variatio, and figurative language. The fragments will be valuable for those interested in ancient agriculture, in Greco-Roman authorship on the technai or artes, and in the history and sociolinguistics of Latin. This volume offers a new edition and the first English translation of Gargilius' agricultural fragments as well as an introduction and full-scale commentary.