due in 24 hours

happily, meet a high standard of professionalism and consti- tute a worthy tribute to their honorand.

Elizabeth A. Meyer
The University of Virginia

SOPHOCLES, THE THEBAN PLA YS: OEDIPUS THE KING, OEDIPUS AT COLONUS, ANTIGONE. Trans- lated, with notes and an introduction, by Ruth Fainlight and Robert J. Littman. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. lix + 219; illustrations, map. Cloth, $50.00; paper, $18.95.

These lucid translations, the work of a poet (Fainlight) in collaboration with a Greek scholar (Littman), can take their place alongside the best of them in libraries, classrooms, and on the stage. The language is elegant, apt, even at times musical ("a fiery fever god stalks among us," Oedipus the King (OT) 27; "trees are wreathed by wine-dark ivy," OC 673). The English line-numbering matches the Greek, so lines are of unequal length, but rhythmic nonetheless. The rhetoric rarely falters, as it does at OT 124-25 ("How could a single robber...?"), where overemphasis on the singular undermines the interpretation of this line given in the intro- duction. Supporting materials include a map, a family tree, a useful timeline (and, in the text, the action is helpfully situ- ated "two generations before the Trojan War"), explanatory notes in the back, two glossaries, and a bibliography, along with the ample, wide-ranging introduction. These back- ground materials are occasionally marred by inaccuracies (e.g., botched identifications of iambic trimeter and "trochaic trimeter" in the glossary, and of the proagon in the introduc- tion), and overly broad strokes ("Greek tragedy for the Greek audience was the equivalent of the medieval Passion play in Europe"). But students will appreciate the detailed setting- out of the Theban myths and discussion of the plays' literary antecedents and afterlife, from Aeschylus' Oedipus trilogy to Theodorakis' Antigone.

Diane Arnson Svarlien Lexington, Kentucky

THE CATTLE OF THE SUN: COWS AND CULTURE INTHEWORLDOFTHEANCIENTGREEKS.By Jeremy Mclnerney. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 2010. Pp. xvii + 340. $45.00.

This book argues that herding, far from merely catering to nutritional needs, led to the creation and establishment of cultural patterns that persisted even when cattle was no longer the major source of wealth. The effects of pastoralism are persistently visible in religion, myth, economy (even coinage), and the determination of social status. Yet despite the ubiquity of cattle in myth, there are significant changes: for example, Indo-European cattle raids involve the hero's fight with a monster, whereas in Homer this phenomenon is tied to issues of wealth and power. While cattle came to symbolize wealth and social status, and participation in-and consumption of meat during-the feast was a sign of one's prestige, the mortality of livestock forced humans to circu-

late it while they could, which supported the advancement of certain social institutions (bride price, gift exchange, cattle raids). The great need for sacrificial meat led to the control by sanctuaries of large territories, which they leased in exchange for cattle in terms that reflect "sensibleflockman- agement," especially when cattle raising became an unvi- able enterprise for individuals. Religion thus merged with economy. Drawing on evidence ranging from Neolithic times, the Minoans and Mycenaeans, Greek sources from the Classical and postclassical periods, including sacred laws, to parallels from African peoples among whom the "bovine idiom" is more pronounced than in the Greece of historical times, this intriguing book will be invaluable to everyone interested in the significance of cattle in ancient Greek economy, society, and thought.

Athanassios Vergados Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg

PINDAR'S METAPHORS: A STUDY IN RHETORIC AND MEANING. By Glenn Patten. Bibliothek der klassis- chen Altertumswissenschaften, neue Folge, 2. Reihe, Band 124. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009. Pp. ix + 275. N.p.

This revised Heidelberg dissertation examines Pindar's epinicians from the perspective of the "troubled relationship between . . . language and its meaning" postulated by Walter Benjamin. In a framework of poststructuralist theory, espe- cially the work of Paul de Man, Patten gives thoughtful atten- tion to the history of Pindaric criticism, detailing the period from Boeckh through Kurke, and placing the issues in a wider context of philosophical concerns from antiquity to the present. Patten argues that "the discontinuity between rhetoric and meaning foregrounded in poststructuralist lit- erary theory is already at work and addressed" in Olympian 1. Patten relates the critical preoccupation with "Unity" (chapter 4) to questions raised by Aristotle's Metaphysics, and argues that this notion "is subverted at more than one place in the epinicians themselves." In chapter 5, on "Subject," Patten takes up the question of the Pindaric ego, with special focus on metaphors for song, including the arrow, the javelin, the path, and the hunt, which "structure ... the relationship between speaking and meaning as a movement between two poles." Patten's erudition is impres- sive, and his goals and conclusions ("literary-interpretative, research-historical, and literary-theoretical") are clearly delineated. The ideal reader would be one undeterred by such sentences as: "The eidos as peras precedes the differ- ence between being and non-being; without itself being a being, it determines the Being of being." The index includes passages discussed, ancient and modern authors, Greek words, and terms such as "intention" and "symbol"; the twenty-page Bibliography includes work as recent as 2007.

Diane Arnson Svarlien Lexington, Kentucky

291