T H E C L A S S I CA L R E V I E W 335

by M. Cambron-Goulet, ‘The Criticism – and the Practice – of Literacy in the Ancient

Philosophical Tradition’. J. Henderson Collins, ‘Prompts for Participation in Early
Philosophical Texts’, argues that the dialogic form of many philosophical texts encouraged
readers to participate orally in the questions and answers posed in the texts. P. Marzillo,
‘Performing an Academic Talk: Proclus on Hesiod’s Works and Days’, similarly shows
how Neoplatonic authors used oral lectures and related written commentaries to spread
Neoplatonic ideas.
Very much in the same vein is J. Lauwer’s ‘Reading Books, Talking Culture: the
Performance of Paideia in Imperial Greek Literature’. Orators of the Second Sophistic
had to display their ‘abundant knowledge of traditional history and literature in front of
large audiences’ in order to impress (p. 231).
No volume in this series would be complete without an essay by N. Slater: his
‘Eumolpus Poeta at work: Rehearsed Spontaneity in the Satyricon’ is the last essay, and
the only one to examine orality in the Latin-speaking world. Slater shows convincingly
that Eumolpus possessed a vast stock of poetic lines; Eumolpus, indeed, is a caricature
of the performers described in Lauwer’s essay. What stands out is the importance given
to the appearance of being an oral (improvising) poet as late as the post-Horatian and
post-Virgilian Age.
While the second half of the book provides credible evidence of oral performances in a
literate environment, the first part, built as it is on the assumption that the Yugoslav model
as outlined by Parry/Lord is close to universal, disappoints. Although today more compara-
tive material is available, the Oral Theory persists as a fossilised fragment of early struc-
turalist analytics. Taylor’s Indic model could equally well serve to explore the topics
tackled by the authors of the first part of the book – there is no need to claim a 100%
oral Homer based on an analogy with poetry that itself had been in contact for centuries
with literacy.1 It is time to recognise that both illiterate and literate poets can improvise
in performance, and use formulas and other tricks if so inclined.
University of Arizona THÉRÈSE DE VET
tdevet@me.com

EIKŌS
B R Y A N ( J . ) Likeness and Likelihood in the Presocratics and Plato.
Pp. viii + 210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Cased,
£55, US$95. ISBN: 978-0-521-76294-6.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X13000139

B.’s monograph helps answer vexing interpretative questions about knowledge claims in
Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato. Some of these questions are: How should we understand
Xenophanes’ claim in B35 that ‘these things are like the truth’? In Parmenides, what are we
to make of the goddess’s claim in B8.61 that the order of things she speaks of is likely, when
she had claimed previously in B8.53 that the composition of her verse is deceptive? Finally,
how do we read the εἰκώς-claims in Plato’s Timaeus? Could a reading of Xenophanes and
Parmenides help us understand the εἰκώς-claims in the Timaeus? B.’s secondary source

1
I made a similar argument in 1996, see: ‘The Joint Role of Orality and Literacy in the
Composition, Transmission, and Performance of the Homeric Texts: a Comparative View’,
in Transactions of the American Philological Society Vol. 126, 43–76.

The Classical Review 63.2 335–337 © The Classical Association (2013)

336 T H E C L A S S I CA L R E V I E W

material is too extensive for this review, so I focus on her main arguments. While the book is
limited to the Presocratics and Plato’s Timaeus, it has broader implications for how we should
think of likeness and image in other Platonic dialogues.
In the opening chapter, B. presents arguments for reading fragment B35, ταῦτα
δεδοξάσθαι μὲν ἐοικότα τοῖς ἐτύμοισι, as an indication of Xenophanes’ fallibilism:
humans are incapable of attaining certain knowledge (p. 9). One of the more interesting
and perhaps questionable arguments B. advances is her contention that the ἐοικότα τοῖς
ἐτύμοισι in B35 alludes to ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα in Hesiod’s Theogony 27–8 and in
Homer’s Odyssey 19.203 (pp. 12–16). While the similarities have been noted elsewhere
in the literature, B. offers new insight: while ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα is understood usually as
‘successful lies that deceive’, it also means ‘indistinguishable from the truth’ (p. 15).
B. claims that by altering ὁμοῖα to ἐοικότα, Xenophanes intentionally distances himself
from the poets, and asserts that his own views have ‘a different resemblance to the
truth’ (p. 16). His account is probably true, but the truth cannot be known with certainty
(p. 23). At the same time that Xenophanes recognises the ‘cognitive disparity’ between
gods and men, he is still optimistic about human reason (p. 48).
Chapter 2, ‘Parmenides’ Allusive Ambiguity’, argues that the use of ἐοικώς in Parmenides
is both an allusion to and a correction of Xenophanes’ B35: where Xenophanes rules out
human access to god’s knowledge, Parmenides provides a way for humans to have knowl-
edge of reality (p. 58). B. focusses on the fragments which move from the so-called
Alētheia to the Doxa parts of the goddesses’ poem. B. offers four different meanings of
ἐοικώς in the B8.60’s: similar, fitting or appropriate, specious, and plausible (p. 66). None
of these standard meanings alone satisfies B. Yet, when taken together, they form a coherent
reading. B. takes Parmenides to use ἐοικώς intentionally in an ambiguous manner that serves
a philosophically significant point. The Doxa is plausible because it bears a likeness to the
Alētheia. However, since the Doxa is about Coming-to-be rather than about Being, the resem-
blance is only apparent. Such an interpretation uses the goddess’s warning in B8.53 that the
account is deceptive while maintaining a positive interpretation for ἐοικότα πάντα at B8.61:
the whole account is plausible. B. cleverly avoids an inconsistent reading of these passages by
introducing a distinction between objective truth and falsehood and subjective plausibility
(p. 73). The Doxa has subjective plausibility and it is false: ‘plausibility can be understood
as a subjective quality of accounts distinct from their objective truth or falsehood’ (p. 73).
While both Parmenides and Xenophanes attribute opinion to mortals, Parmenides ‘corrects’
Xenophanes’ pessimistic epistemology by emphasising the nature of what can be known
rather than the nature of the knower (p. 101).
In Chapter 3, ‘Plato’s Timaeus’, B. departs from the widely held view regarding the
proemium at 29b1–d3, that the story of the cosmos, is εἰκώς, ‘likely’, where εἰκώς is
understood as expressing a deficiency about the status of the account. Instead,
B. attends to Timaeus’ claim that being a likeness (εἰκών), the account will be ‘likely’
(εἰκως) (p. 115). She proposes that Plato uses εἰκώς in an original and technical sense
founded in the etymological link to εἰκών (p. 118). B. argues Timaeus’ εἰκώς-claim indi-
cates it successfully relates the status of its descriptum as a likeness (pp. 119–31). B. relies
on a strong reading of Timaeus’ claim that accounts are ‘kin’ (συγγενεῖς) of their subject
matter to support her argument. She says the συγγενεῖς-claim is prescriptive, ‘the status of
the descriptum as either likeness or model will or, rather, should influence the status of the
description’ (p. 120). From B. we get a new, positive account: ‘A successful likeness is one
that represents its original. A successful likely account is . . . one that expresses the status of
its subject-matter as a likeness, i.e., as related to and influenced by the original’ (p. 144).
On B.’s reading, Timaeus’ cosmological account is both a likely account, since it success-
fully describes a likeness as a likeness, and a plausible account.
 T H E C L A S S I CA L R E V I E W 337
Chapter 4, ‘Imitation and Limitation in Timaeus’ Proemium’, integrates the work from
the previous chapters to inform an understanding of two claims that Timaeus makes in the
proemium. The first is the proportional claim at 29b5–c3, the second is the εἰκὼς μῦθος
claim at 29c4–d3. B. reads the proportional claim, ὅτιπερ πρὸς γένεσιν οὐσία, τοῦτο
πρὸς πίστιν ἀλήθεια, as alluding both to the Republic and to Parmenides. I leave aside
her Republic analysis and focus solely on the allusion to Parmenides fragments B1.29–
30 and B8.26–8. For B., since πίστις in Parmenides is not a cognitive state but a quality
attributed to accounts, it refers to the persuasive force of the account. Hence, we should
read ‘ἀλήθεια is to πίστις’ in the Timaeus, ‘As Being is to Coming-to-be, so truth is to
convincingness’ (p. 170). For the εἰκὼς μῦθος claim, B. stresses the μῦθος part of the
claim, rather than the εἰκὼς (p. 176). Her reasoning is that Timaeus is not limiting mortals
to a merely likely account of the cosmos. Instead, the limitation is in the kind of account it
is, a μῦθος account.
The importance of this work is that it challenges the paradigmatic thinking that when-
ever Plato talks about image, likeness and likelihood, the account is somehow deficient or
specious. We may think Plato has such misgivings because of his treatments of image in
the Republic or his reserved remarks about likeness in the Phaedrus and Theaetetus. We
might add to these ‘deficient accounts’ the discussion of equal sticks ‘falling short’ of
the equal itself in the Phaedo. B.’s analyses of likeness may help in other ways, too,
such as how to take Plato’s images of Socrates, or what to make of the claim in the
Phaedrus that the account of the soul does not say what the soul is, but rather what the
soul is like. B.’s work alerts us to the fact that ‘likeness’ in Plato does not always mean
the account is deficient. Moreover, the work teases out and makes clear Xenophanes’ influ-
ence on Parmenides and Parmenides’ influence on Plato. B.’s monograph, a revision of her
doctoral thesis at Cambridge, is a helpful resource for scholars working on Presocratic phil-
osophy and Plato’s dialogues.
B. addresses the more contested fragments and claims in Xenophanes, Parmenides and
Plato’s Timaeus. Her analysis of ἐοικώς/εἰκώς explains how each of the three authors
responded to his predecessor, and arguably, in the case of Xenophanes, to Homer and
Hesiod. I recommend her book to the academic community.
Purdue University SOPHIA A. STONE
sstone@purdue.edu

GENRE EQUALITY
S W I F T ( L . A . ) The Hidden Chorus. Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric.
Pp. xii + 451. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Cased, £75.
ISBN: 978-0-19-957784-2.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X13000140

The centrality of choral performance in ancient Athenian civic life has generated increased
scholarly discussion – now concerted, now antiphonic – since Arion 3 (1994–95), if not
earlier; and the past decade in particular has seen the subject of generic interactivity
between choral song and other genres of poetry become a central topic in that discussion.
S. elegantly amplifies these strains of scholarship whilst inviting further investigation: her
project is to shift our understanding of the chorus ‘in terms of tragedy’s inheritance’ and to
resituate it within ‘the wider contemporary musical culture in which tragedy is rooted’
(p. 2). S. does well to ‘explore the various ways in which tragedy interacts with other

The Classical Review 63.2 337–339 © The Classical Association (2013)

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