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194 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS
parisons. Euphemus' clod is a "fertility sy bol" that contributes to a
"hospitality" isotopy and a couple of others. It should have gone down
to Hades at Taenarum, like Hades' bride Core, like piglets at the Thesmophoria,
and since it didn't, the result is "no Calligeneia, no 'Beautiful
Birth'," no "process of agricultural growth" for Libya (56). It also
stands for "autochthony" in a vegetal isotopy and is paralleled by the
Athenian myths of Cecrops and of Ericht onius and by the Theban
myth of Oedipus ploughing his mother's furrow (56-59). In Pythian 5,
says Calame, Oedipus is evoked by the Theban Aegeidae, who introduce
"a matrilineal legitimacy" in place of the illegitimacy that goes with
Euphemus' Lemnian sojourn in Pythian 4 (81--82). I found myself teased
by vain expectation of another smack at Levi-Strauss.
This will suffice as a sampling of Calame's new structuralism. In restricting
himself to half a dozen texts on a single subject, Calame has
heightened to a rare degree the objection to any structuralism of language
or culture, that it is anti-historical. If stJ'Uctures have formed this
or that narrative of Cyrene's founding, they must have operated first
on all the interested people at Sparta and Thera and Cyrene. Now, it
happens that in just these stories there is an obvious element-it can be
suspected in many Greek stories-that may well be due to structures
resisting historical change and for that reason all the more discernible
and verifiable. It is ritual. Everyone knows that the great Dorian festival
Carneia is behind, at the least, certain striking details: it is the occasion
of Pythian 5, and the festival ceremony is cited as attesting the
story. A structural explanation of Greek ritual has been attempted in
different ways by Burkert and by Detienne and Vernant. Though the
results so far may be questioned, we can still hope. With semionarrative
analysis we cannot.
NOEL ROBERTSON
VICfORIA, B.C. and
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
BROCK UNIVERSITY
ST. CATHARINES, ON L2S 3A1
SAMUEL SHIRLEY, trans. Herodotus. On the War for Greek
Freedom: Selections from the Histories, Edited, with introduction
and notes, by James Romm. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Co, Inc.. 2003, Pp. xxvii + 201. US $29.95. ISBN 0­
87220-668-8 (cloth); US $7.95. ISBN 0-87220-667-X (paper),
This new translation of Herodotus, like Walter Blanco's Norton edition,