Review LEVENE Religion in Livy

1 Bryn Mawr Classical Review 94.10.15 D. S. Levene, Religion in Livy . Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993. Pp. xi + 257. $65.75. ISBN 90-04-09617-5. Reviewed by Christina S. Kraus, University College, London. This book is a surprise, in more ways than one. First, it is that rara auis, a book on Livy th at respects, even admires, its subject. No apologies are offered, and indeed none is wanted, for L[evene]'s decision to work on an author who, despite his increasing popularity, still finds himself featuring with depressing regularity in sentences that begin ' Even Livy ...'. Second, the expectations raised (at least in this reader) by the somewhat uninviting title are not fulfilled on the inside. What is not a surprise is that L., who is establishing a reputation as one of Britain's brightest young Latinists, should have produced a careful, learned, and illuminating study of Livy's use of religious and ritual motifs. L.'s purpose is twofold: to explain (briefly) what religious 'ideas and practices' were current in and just before Livy's time, and to determine what we may conclude about the historian's literary and moral purposes from the way in which he deploys religious themes. The bulk of the book comprises a detailed analysis of the religious content of the surviving quarter of the Ab urbe condita, beginning (chapters II-IV) with the prodigy lists and analogous material from the third through fifth decades, and ending (chapters V -VII) with the f irst decade. As L. himself notes in the Preface (p.ix), though this systematic approach may seem due to the book's origin as a doctoral thesis, it is part of the point: 'at the heart of my account of religion in Livy lies the demonstration that it can only be understood by examining each passage in the context of the material that surrounds it, both religious and non-religious, and in seeing the development of religious themes across the narrative of the history.' Such an exposition risks loss of interest, and there are times when L.'s prose loses its grip on the reader; equally, there are places where a lack of clarity results from his care precisely to avoid potentially tedious plot exposition. On th e whole, however, the advantages of his choice of presentation outweigh the disadvantages. It is extremely difficult to grapple with Livy's text, an entity which T . J. Luce once compared to a bowl of spaghetti: get hold of one strand, and you may well find the whole pile in your lap. Sequential analysis, especially of a running theme, keeps the meal safely on the plate. L.'s chosen topic touches some of the most deeply and widely held preconceptions about Livy . Unfortunately , these are often diametrically opposed. L. rightly singles out this lack of critical consensus as evidence that this text almost wilfully withholds itself (p.16) -- a coyness that one notes in other areas of Livy as well. An interpreter's only hope is to be as

Review LEVENE Religion in Livy

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