Contested Triumphs: Politics, Pageantry, and Performance in Livy’s Republican Rome by Miriam R. Pelikan Pittenger (review)
459 apart the components of a sentence to understand its meaning. It is difficult to recommend Stroup’s work wholeheartedly, since it does have some major omissions in its approach, which limits its value for the social and cultural historian. And curiously, at first glance this seems to be the market at which the book is primarily aimed. Nonetheless, I suspect Stroup’s monograph would better serve the interests of philologists working on Cicero (and to a more limited extent Catullus) and students of literary history of the Late Republic. For these, Stroup does have some valuable insights and interpretations that are well worth further consideration.
Livy's Exemplary History
The idea that it is possible to learn from history is fascinating, but also complex. What exactly can you learn from the past? Does it repeat itself? If it does, how can you prevent repetition of evil and ensure repetition of good? Livy's History of Rome is all about people learning or failing to learn from the past, so in many ways his work is an extended exploration of this problem. In this book Dr Chaplin starts from Livy's programmatic claim that history offers examples of good and bad conduct. Where previous studies have focused on the meaning of exemplary episodes and characters in isolation, this treatment traces the way historical figures try to interpret the past to their advantage. In doing so, the book demonstrates Livy's awareness of the shifting relevance of history and argues that a narrative organized around exempla allowed Livy, poised between the collapse of the Republic and the foundation of the Empire, to make the Romans' past meaningful for their future.
Urban Identities and Catastrophe: Izmir and Salonica at the End of the Ottoman Empire*
Two huge fires dramatically influenced the urban development of Salonica and Izmir, in 1917 and in 1922, respectively. These catastrophes occurred after the Ottoman Empire fell, and Salonica and Izmir had shifted into new national contexts. The fires mainly destroyed the districts that were transformed during the late‐Ottoman period. These districts became the cosmopolitan façades of modern Izmir and Salonica. The post‐fires' tabula rasa provided an opportunity for Greek and Turkish politicians and European planners to change the urban identity of both cities. Moreover, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 transformed their multicultural societies also. Reconstruction plans had been thought to de‐Ottomanize and remove the previous idea of the towns and their multiplicity, interpreting new cultural and nationalist feeling. Here, I emphasize how modernity was interpreted before and after the fires, and point out contradictions between ideological aspects of planning and how the first urban districts were built during the 1920s.