Classical World

Publishers are invited to submit new books to be reviewed to Professor David Sider, Department of Classics, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, Room 503, New York, NY 10003; e-mail: david.sider@nyu.edu.

As the reward structures of academic institutions increasingly goad scholars to publish quickly, and financial pressures increasingly lead university presses to favor projects that promise high-volume sales, it is heartening—and a little depressing—to contemplate S. P. Oakley’s four-volume commentary on five books of Livy; heartening, because Emmanuel College, Cambridge, made it possible for Oakley to dedicate so much time to the job, and Oxford’s Clarendon Press allocated so many resources to it; depressing, because it is hard to imagine support for such commentaries becoming a trend. But at least we now have, complete, Oakley’s superb scholarly rearguard action warding off for a little longer the forces of darkness.

These last two volumes contain commentary on books 9 and 10, the books in which Livy covers the Second and Third Samnite Wars; and they contain much more. Volume 3 opens with a thorough literary and historical analysis of the Caudine Forks and then moves on to comment specifically on the text, pausing before other major episodes to give further literary and historical analysis. Volume 4 begins with a helpful exposition of the Roman political system circa 300 b.c.e. and the historical developments in the period covered by both books 9 and 10. It, too, offers extensive discussion of particular topics, such as the sources for Livy’s account of the Sentinum campaign. The addenda and corrigenda at the end take account of developments in scholarship and the author’s changes of mind since the publication of volumes 1 and 2.

Oakley’s primary interest is historical, although he does not avoid literary topics entirely, and the essays introducing major episodes show his skill at handling them. Take, for example, the Alexander digression in book 9: the commentary proper is prefaced by a series of discussions approaching the passage from several angles: e.g., digressions in Livy in general; this digression as an example of its purpose in the context of books 8 and 9 (Oakley convincingly puts to rest the old conjecture that the digression was a youthful composition patched into the book); and a discussion of this passage as “counterfactual” history and Livy’s penchant for such speculation down to the level of the inverted ni- clause. The commentary proper includes detailed discussion of the use of figurative speech in talking about digression. Oakley adheres to an empirical and positivist approach, even at his most literary. Volume 4, for example, includes no discussion of how book 10 brings the pentad to a close, nor any speculation as to why the annalistic notices at the end include such a heaping up of monuments and cultural acquisitions. Nor, in his intense focus on books 9 and 10, does Oakley generally consider the role of these passages as part of Livy’s greater narrative, which impinges on the discussion only as a source of lexical comparanda. I am not finding fault, but simply indicating what is and is not here. [End Page 547]

Both volumes include discussions of topography made especially useful by Oakley’s familiarity with the sites (e.g., the possible candidates for the Caudine Forks) and his own photographs of topographical features and ruins. He has also produced his own maps. The small ones at the beginning of volumes 3 and 4 are convenient, but I would have welcomed a gazeteer to accompany the large, identical fold-out maps of central southern Italy at the backs of volumes 2, 3, and 4...