TWO MORE BMCR REVIEWS:
Mark Andrew Brighton, The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations. Early Judaism and Its Literature 27. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. Pp. xiv, 184. ISBN 9781589834064. $26.95 (pb).
Reviewed by Dmitry Bratkin, St Petersburg State University (bratkin@yandex.ru)
[The reviewer apologizes for the tardiness of this review.]
This book is a revision of the author's University of California (Irvine) dissertation and shares every benefit and drawback of this genre. One has to be cautious when writing (or reviewing) a new piece of scholarly work in this field as it is vast and dominated by a number of competing disciplines and approaches, each of which provide a particular bias. Moreover, the scholarship on Josephus is an industry in itself so that any evaluation of one's predecessors is selective by necessity. This makes any historiographical survey a difficult and uncomfortable list of details and authors. However, M. A. Brighton is fully aware of those hidden traps and steers his ship safely and convincingly through the troubled sea of Josephus and his world.
[...]
And (cross-file under Punic Watch):
Robert Garland, Hannibal. Ancients in Action. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010. Pp. 168. ISBN 9781853997259. $24.00 (pb).
Reviewed by Fred K. Drogula, Providence College (fdrogula@providence.edu)
Robert Garland has produced a concise, useful, and highly readable book that provides an excellent introduction to a difficult subject. The stated mission of the ‘Ancients in Action’ series is to introduce “major figures of the ancient world to the modern general reader, including the essentials of each subject’s life, works, and significance for later western civilisation” (back cover), although Garland further attempts “as much as possible to examine and evaluate Hannibal’s success and failure from his own perspective, in the belief that it is the business of a historian not only to present facts but also to imagine possibilities” (11). This is a daunting task, since (as Garland readily acknowledges [17, 30]) we have very little information about Hannibal’s character and personality, and what we do have mainly comes from later, pro-Roman sources. Nevertheless, Garland assembles the surviving information into a thoughtful and engaging narrative of Hannibal’s career that raises questions and provides insights into the life of Rome’s most famous enemy.
[...]
Via the Agade list.
