THOMAS BIGGS and JESSICA BLUM (EDS), THE EPIC JOURNEY IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE (Yale Classical Studies volume 39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 323. isbn 9781108498098 (bound); 9781108702898 (paper). £75.00.

Abstract

THOMAS BIGGS and JESSICA BLUM (EDS), THE EPIC JOURNEY IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE (Yale Classical Studies volume 39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 323. ISBN 9781108498098 (bound); 9781108702898 (paper). £75.00.'Epic space presents a world against which reality can crash.' Thus, this volume begins its ambitious (re)vision of the journey in ancient literature. Originally a conference and colloquium on 'Home', it explores the multivalent movements to or from one's Heimatprobing that crucial space in between points of origin and end. While, as the editors admit, recent scholarship has often forayed into such topics, what distinguishes this project is a capacious denition of its terms. Readers browsing the contents page may be surprised to nd chapters on Tacitus, Xenophon and Lucian; yet the introduction shows how epic is the launchpad, not the limitation of the enquiry. These journeys all perform, rework or transgress the paradigmatic voyage inscribed in Homer, particularly the Odyssey. The result in many ways mimics its polytrophic model. The four parts, each prefaced with a synopsis, bend through time, resisting obvious chronological or geographical sequencing. Part I begins with Egbert Bakker's metallurgical reading of Odysseus' journey as a return from the Gold to the Iron Age. Alexander Loney considers the importance of pompe in the Odyssey, demonstrating how Odysseus' successful conveyance requires him to trust and resist excessive agency, and his benefactors to offer abundant, even self-destructive generosity. Jessica Blum moves to a poem which is simultaneously a predecessor and heir to Homer. Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, she argues, articulates a profound dualityof timeframes, generic models and meanings. As epic players in an imperial world, the heroes' dependence on a Homeric martial script often leads them astray, and anticipates their tragedy just outside of the poem.Part II focuses on the intersections between love, relationships and home. Silvia Montiglio, in what for me was one of the nest chapters, examines the parallels and differences between the journeying couples in Apollonius and Heliodorus. Whereas Chariclea and Theagenes succeed in their novelistic prioritisation of love over home, once Medea leaves withor for -Jason, she is always already homeless. Emily Baragwanath considers the domestic politics of Xenophon's Anabasis, in a more positive reading of the journey's success. Alison Keith provides the rst discussion of the Aeneid. Complementing her work on the epic landscape as a contrast between mobile males and grounded women, Keith looks at instances where Vergil almost breaks from this mould. Through Dido, Andromache and the other Trojan women, Vergil 'repeatedly sounds out the possibility of female participation in the epic voyage' (144), only to draw back from ultimately letting them in. This chapter was another highlight of the volume, and I found Keith's readings articulate, pithy and moving.Part III considers movement in the Roman world. Staying with th...