Phoenix

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 191 quite useful. But readers who are looking formore theoretical, if speculative, approaches to the spectacles, the Liber spectaculorum, and issues of aestheticizing violence, will have to look elsewhere, and are shortchanged by Coleman's otherwise exemplary bibliography (she does include Wiedemann, an excellent introduction, Gunderson, and Pailler).3 The General Introduction would have been served well by a brief survey of recent attempts in the field tomake cultural sense of Roman spectacles.4 But a commentary cannot do everything, and what this commentary does is indispen sible. It is hard to imagine this commentary being superseded anytime soon. The Liber spectaculorum cannot be read without extensive reference to its historical context and literary project. Coleman makes the text accessible to a wide range of readers, and we can expect not only classicists but also historians and students of comparative literature tomake more use ofMartial's Liber spectaculorum thanks to Coleman's commentary. Boston University Patricia Larash Rome and the Literature of Gardens. By V. E. Pagan. London: Duckworth. 2006. Pp. xii, 160. Rome and the Literature of Gardens provides an introduction to the garden as an expression of Roman culture and society through a selection of four works, each from a genre which the author considers to be uniquely Roman: agricultural treatise (Columella On Agriculture 10), satire (Hor. Sat. 1.8), annalistic historiography (Tacit. Ann. 11), and biography (Aug. Confessions 8). The fifth and finalsectionconsidershow the cultural meanings of Roman garden literature have been transmitted through contemporary plays, Arcadia and The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard. Two additional modern works, Caroline Forche's The Garden of Shukkei-en and J.M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael Kj are also considered. Towards the end of Rome and the Literature of Gardens, Victoria Pagan makes the disclaimer that "This book as much as any other garden book (or book about gardens, or representations of gardens) lives up to its generic expectations; however, at least I know where I have over-interpreted, under-theorized, and hyper-rhetoricized" (123). Pagan's ingenuous comment corresponds to the overall ethos of the Classical Inter/Faces series, which encourages a less formal approach to classical scholarship. That it need be made at all is a disappointment; despite its flaws the book is a lively and engaging work that provides an essential synthesis of current critical scholarship on the subject. It is Pagan's intention to demonstrate that gardens were presented in Roman literature as sites of transgression and transformation; in this, she is only intermittently successful, 3T.Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (London and New York 1992); E. Gunderson, "The Flavian Amphitheater: All the World as Stage," inA. J. Boyle andW. J.Dominik (eds.), Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text (Leiden and Boston 2003) 637-685; J.-M. Pailler, "Le poete, le prince et l'arene: a propos du 'Livre des Spectacles' deMartial," inC. Domergues, C. Landes, and J.-M. Pailler (eds.), Spectaculal: Gladiateurs et amphitheatres (Lattes 1990) 179-183. 4 Theoretically interesting approaches include C. A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton 1993); A. Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (Austin 1997); P. Plass, The Game of Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide (Madison 1995); and nowW. Fitzgerald, Martial: The World ofthe Epigram (Chicago 2007) 34-67. 192 PHOENIX since the interweaving of ancient and modern texts often diverts the focus of the argument. ChapterOne ("TheGarden ofEmpire") opens thesubject withColumellas gardenpoem, discussing its literary context as heir to Cato's Agriculture and Virgil's garden epyllion in Georgics Book Four. Essentially the chapter concords with the recent work of John Henderson (Hortus:TheRoman Book ofGardening [London 2004]), by interpreting the wealth of garden produce as a maturation of poetic talent and microcosm of Rome's imperial territory. Columella's mature garden and secure wealth contrast with the newly-built Horti Maecenatis in the second chapter ("The Garden of Politics"). Pagan deftly traces the social and politic interrelations that produced Horace's infamous farting Priapus from Satire 1.8, scaring away transgressive witches from Augustus' new Rome. Transgressive women are also the subject in Chapter Three ("The...