Review: [untitled]Author(s): Robert Samuel RogersReviewed work(s):

Caravan Cities: Petra, Jerash, Palmyra, Dura by M. Rostovtzeff ;D. T. Talbot RiceSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Oct., 1933), pp. 96-97Published by: American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1839233Accessed: 19/08/2010 04:47

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96 Reviews of Books

The difference between Pompey and Caesar lay "not in technical skill or

judgement or resource, but in that Pompey lacked that fusing together of

spirit and intellect that marks off genius from talent".

I quote also from Professor Adcock's estimate of Caesar's genius. It was,

he says, "the hard practical genius of Rome raised to the highest power; he

was a keen edge on an old blade. But he reached power late, too late for

patience." "For this reason he could not admit Time to his counsels, nor

share them with others. Thus he became, in a sense, un-Roman in the last

year of his life. There came the clash between his genius and the Roman

steady tradition, and in the clash he was broken, with plans unachieved and

plans unmade. He had shown the world the greatest of the Romans, but he

was not the creator of a new epoch. Whatever he might have done, he had

as yet neither destroyed the Republic nor made the principate. His life had

set an example of autocracy which his death converted into a warning."

"Caesar had done much for the State in his reforms, but he did Rome no

greater service than by his death." The Univer-sity of Cincinnati. ALLEN B. WEST.

Caravan Cities: Petra, Jerash, Palmyra, Dura. By M. ROSTOVTZEFF.

Translated by D. and T/. TALBOT RICE. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. I932. Pp. Xiv, 232. $4.50.)

FIVE years ago Professor Rostovtzeff published in Russian at Berlin and Paris a group of travel sketches based on a trip through Syria, Palestine, and Arabia early in 1928. Revision and rewriting of those essays on the basis of more recent and more ambitious travel in the East has produced the present volume. The author is frank to state that this is not "a final and complete picture either of caravan trade in general or of the life of certain caravan cities in particular", but he is confident that it does indicate the "line of research" which the coming archxological investigation in Syria, Palestine, and Arabia should follow, that is, the recognition that the caravan city is a peculiar and distinctive type.

An introductory chapter sketches the history of the caravan trade from the earliest civilizations in the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates valleys to the end of the Roman period: the routes, the objects of trade, with their origins and destina- tions, and their influence upon the countries which imported them, the con- tributions to the progress of the caravan trade made by the great empires which successively controlled its destinies.

The other five chapters describe the history, the excavation, and the monu- ments of the four caravan cities of the book's subtitle, Palmyra and Dura sharing a joint chapter, as well as having each its own. The present aspect of the sites is charmingly described, and the life and circumstances of the ancient inhabitants vividly recreated from the archxological remains.

Gernet: Le genie grec dans la religion 97

Of many interesting conclusions one example must suffice here. Tfhe so- called temple of Isis at Petra, Rostovtzef[ believes belonged to Tyche, "the

Hellenistic equivalent of the Iranian Hvareno and the Semitic Gad, and wlIo at the same time was the mighty deity of the Petraean Arabs, the moon-

goddess Allat". And he dates the temple, on the basis of its style and the rela-

tionship of its ornamentation to the second Pompeian style, from the late

Hellenistic period, instead of the second or third century A. D. The book is richly illustrated by thirty-five plates, six drawings in the text,

and five maps and plans. Most of the plates carry two illustrations, and

several a larger number. The pictures are therefore small; but they are

sharply clear, and we should rather be grateful for the number than complain

of the size, in these days. Almost half the plates are supplied with the illi-

minating descriptions which Professor Rostovtzeff does so surpassingly well.

They do not, however, this time face the plates but follow the chapters to

which the respective plates belong. There is a seven-page bibliography, classified according to the chapters of

the text and, further, by topics. The six-page index consists almost exclusively of proper names.

The translation of D. and T. Talbot Rice is good; but "exterior" (p. 86) should surely be "external", "at least" (p. 173) should, I suspect, be "no less

than", and there is one very clumsy sentence (p. 200) about Caracalla and

Geta. W'ester-n Rese,ve Univer-sity. ROBERT SAMUEL ROGERS.

Le ge'nie grec dans la religion. Par Louis GERNET, professeur 'a l'Uni-

versite d'Alger, et ANDRE BOULANGER, professeur a l'Universite de Strasbourg. [Bibliotheque de synthese historique.] (Paris: Renais- sance du Livre. 1932. PP. xlii, 538. 40 fr.)

THIS long and learned work is divided into three parts, entitled severally La formation du systeme de l'epoque classique, Le systeme de l'epoque clas- sique, and Vers l'universalisme. Obviously the general arrangement is chron- ological, and the book will be classed by bibliographers as a history of Greek religion. But the authors have not undertaken to present a consecutive story of the development of religion in Greece. Their purpose has been to set fortl and interpret the facts of religion in their relation to the forms of the social order. To this end they have assembled the results of their own researches and of the researches of the many scholars who have been active in this field in the last decades, and organized them afresh in a manner which is highly illuminating and instructive.

Of the first two parts, which are the work of Professor Gernet, it is the first in which his originality is principally displayed. He has not tried to produce an account of the origin of Greek religion on the basis of the scanty