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comprehensive though austere syntheses by V. R.
Desborough, Anthony M. Snodgrass, and J. N. Coldstream, all now outdated. Newer, theoretically sophisticated approaches have since been developed. by Ian
Morris and Susan Helen Langdon, among others. But
this book is by two historians; and, although they
perforce draw heavily on archaeological evidence, the
goals and framework of their book are historical,
putting it more in company with Moses I. Finley's
World of Odysseus (1954) or Chester G. Starr's The
Origins of Greek Civilization, 1100-650 B.C. (1961).
The authors aim to construct a narrative of these
transformational centuries but lack historical names or
secure personalities to do so (only a dozen pages from
the end, when they reach Hesiod and Ascra, can they
write that "the story of early Greece is no longer
anonymous" [po 149]). What makes their book distinctively original is that they circumvent that anonymity
by focusing on just six well-excavated sites and trying
to recreate what life would be like for real people in
these communities-"a Plutarch's Lives of places not
individuals" (p. xiii). These key places (Mycenae,
Nichoria, Athens, Lefkandi, Corinth, and Ascra) are
arranged in chronological sequence, each supposedly
representing a century from 1200 to 700 B.C. and
illustrating its major features.
This novel organization has its attractions: not feeling the need to synthesize a mass of intractible and
patchy data from all over Greece, the authors can
concentrate on a detailed, sometimes lively sketch of
each site, written in language reasonably accessible to
their presumed main (student) audience. Yet structuring the book this way also serves to emphasize weaknesses in the whole approach. The six case studies are
set in the Peloponnese and Central Greece only: what
about the islands, or Greece north of Thessaly (where
there were no palaces to collapse), or-especiallyCrete, about which there has been a flood of recent
publications reporting EIA excavation and survey
work? So exclusive a focus results in the total occlusion
of a primary characteristic of EIA Greece: its marked
regional differentiation. In fact, the regional perspective is altogether lacking, since (despite the statement
that survey archaeology is vital in providing a viewpoint other than that of excavation alone) almost no
use is made of survey data, even when it exists on the
very doorstep of the settlements discussed, as is the
case for Mycenae, Nichoria, and (especially) Ascra.
Most unfortunate, however, is the authors' uncritical
adoption of a very simplistic and outmoded unilinear
model of social evolution: once the palaces are gone,
the whole story becomes merely the inevitable development of complex societies from "much simpler
cultures" (such as Nichoria [po 32]). "Simple" and
"complex" are themselves ill-defined terms involving
dubious linkages. Pastoralism, nomadism, regionalism,
and even instability are all considered hallmarks of
simpler cultures. Thomas and Conant use ethnographic analogies involving big-men and chiefs and
thus should know that instabilities leading to collapse
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
can occur in all sorts of societies, sometimes regularly;
their categorization (borrowed from James Whitley) of
sites as "stable" or "unstable" lacks subtlety.
If we add to these shortcomings the poorly reproduced and often bizarre illustrations, the eclectic
footnotes, and the poorly checked references, this
becomes a book to recommend to students only with
caution. Personally, I would rather have them read the
earlier chapters in Robin Osborne's Greece in the
Making, 1200-479 BC (1996) or Whitley's TheArchae-
ology of Ancient Greece (2001).
JOHN
F.
CHERRY
University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor
ELIZABETH DONNELLY CARNEY. Women and Monarchy
in Macedonia. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
2000. Pp. xiii, 369. $42.95.
Elizabeth Donnelly Carney's book presents an exhaustive account of the careers and identities of the royal
women of ancient Macedonia from the beginnings of
the Argead dynasty in the sixth century B.C.E. to the
defeat of the last Antigonid king by the Romans in the
second century B.C.E., discussing in total some fortytwo women from the relatively well known to the
completely obscure. In her first seven chapters, Carney
alternates between a main narrative, with a chronological, institutional emphasis, and individual biographical essays or inserts that consider motivation and
personal perspective. The inserts actually comprise the
majority of the text of these chapters (in the twentyfive pages of chapter six, for example, there are
roughly eighteen pages of insert on seven different
women). The dual approach also extends to the book
as a whole; the biographical approach dominates the
first part of the book, while the final two chapters
abandon the biographical approach for analytical narrative.
Although the reader can appreciate the author's
desire to give these women their due, the strategy of
biographical inserts frequently results in a repetitious
and hard to follow narrative. A greater problem,
however, is the use of the term biography for women
about whom so little is known. Indeed, far from
discussion of motivation and personal perspective, the
essay on Apamea I is concerned with the question of
whether or not she actually existed (p. 187). Even in
cases of women of undisputed historical substance and
significance, true biography seems beyond reach; and
in her desire to speak of personal motivation, Carney
frequently moves from one hypothetical may have to
another, as for example, in her discussion of Thessalonice's marriage, which, depending on when she was
born and where she was brought up, may have been
arranged or perhaps postponed by her stepmother,
Olympias. Thus, the conclusion follows that we have
no information about whether Thessalonice resented
the postponement of her marriage. If she did, she may
have blamed Olympias, but because Olympias was
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Reviews of Books
probably the only mother she had known, perhaps not
(p. 156). Similar mayor may not scenarios occur
throughout the biographical essays, from Cynnane may
well have resented Alexander, her husband's murderer
(p. 129), to Polycrateia may not have been the mother
of Perseus, but it is possible she was (p. 194).
The problem lies in the evidence or lack thereof.
Although Carney devotes a few pages to primary and
secondary sources, her argument here essentially supports the hypothetical (or sometimes interrogative, see
the series questions on page 142) mode of the narrative with the observation that ancient evidence about
Macedonian women, when it exists, is usually biased
and unappreciative of their distinctive participation in
monarchy. Thus, interpretation "and interrogation of
the evidence are both legitimate and essential. Basic
factual reliability as well as bias is also an issue for
many of the late sources (e.g. Diodorus, Justin, and
Athenaeus) on which Carney relies. The reader is
warned.
Whatever one makes of the biographical sections of
the book, the arguments of the main narrative about
the distinctive way in which royal women participated
in the Macedonian monarchy merit attention. Here,
Carney is more successful in her general portrait of the
dynastic character of Macedonian monarchy than in
her specific argument for historical change; although
her thesis is that the explanation for the fluctuations in
the prominence of four royal women in the public life
of Macedonia can be found in changes in Macedonian
monarchy itself, that argument emerges only in the last
biographical chapter on the Antigonid period, when
she argues that the monarchy became (or may have
become, p. 200) more of an office held by an individual
than a family dynasty. (Thus the reduction in the
evidence about royal women, including evidence that
they had been murdered: in Antigonid Macedonia,
royal wives were too insignificant to be worth murdering.)
The conclusion seems somewhat undercut in chapter
eight, "Changes in the Public Role of Macedonian
Royal Women in the Hellenistic Period," which shows
very effectively the way in which royal weddings (beginning with that celebrating the marriage of Alexander's sister Cleopatra to her uncle and continuing on
through the Antigonid period) were international
events, and also how royal women came to be honored
along with their husbands or sons as eponymous
founders of cities or as subjects of religious worship.
The latter topic leads Carney to discuss the Olympieion, Philip's monument to his family set up in the
sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia after the battle of
Chaeronea in 338. According to Pausanias, the round
building called the Olympieion contained in his day
three chryselephantine statues-of Philip, his father
Amyntas, and his son Alexander-while two additional
statues of Olympias and Philip's mother Eurydice that
had once stood beside the male figures had been
moved to the nearby precinct of Hera (Carney, p. 212;
Pausanias 5.17.4). It is frustrating to have this impor-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
tant evidence introduced so late in the book, and, in
general, archaeological and epigraphic evidence is
underrepresented in the first seven biographical chapters. The important recent archaeological evidence
produced by the excavations of the Vergina tombs
seems to be included here almost as an afterthought in
the last chapter, "Royal Female Burials."
In sum, although this is an important update and
supplement to Grace Harriet Macurdy's discussion in
Hellenistic Queens: A Study of Woman-Power in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt (1932), less
emphasis on biographical may haves and more on
discoveries. and developments in the field of Macedonian history and archaeology since 1932 would have
produced a better book.
CYNTHIA PATTERSON
Emory University
KARL-JOACHIM HOLKESKAMP. Schiedsrichter, Gesetzgeber und Gesetzgebung im Archaischen Griechenland.
(Historia/Einzelschriften, number 131.) Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner. 1999. Pp. 343. DM 98.00.
Karl-Joachim Holkeskamp has written a comprehensive and thorough study of the earliest Greek legislation (beginning ca. 650 B.C.E.). The evidence consists
primarily of inscriptions of laws on stone and reports
by later authors such as Aristotle and Plutarch. Most
of the inscriptions are incompletely preserved and
their language is archaic and often elliptical, making
their study difficult even for specialists. The latter,
however, will welcome Holkeskamp's study, for it
certainly makes a most useful contribution to the
growing literature on the subject. Especially helpful is
chapter three (more than two-thirds of the book),
which compiles the evidence city by city. For those not
already familiar with the study of these fragmentary
texts, however, this is not the place to start.
Nonspecialists need not despair, however, since
Holkeskamp has foreshadowed this present study with
two earlier articles in English (as well as others in
German) that set out his views in preliminary form.
Briefly (and no summary can do justice to the full
complexity of his views), Holkeskamp challenges the
traditional picture, inherited from antiquity, that
Greek legislation originated as large-scale collections
or "codes" of laws promulgated by a small number of
extraordinary individual "lawgivers" in different cities
(such as Solon in Athens or Lycurgus in Sparta).
Rather, he argues that written laws presupposed the
growth of the polis, complete with authoritative public
magistrates and a central public space (the agora) in
addition to its sacred areas. Written law began as these
magistrates responded individually and piecemeal to
specific crises and needs by enacting detailed and
specific written laws. There is no evidence for codes in
the strict sense of the term; early legislators were not
thinking in broad terms of creating a comprehensive
structure of rules governing the affairs of the polis but
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