Masterpieces of Metonymy: From Ancient Greek Times to Now by Gregory Nagy

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 407 identities. The author engages in an interesting discussion of several court cases cases where gossip may have played an important role. In the final section the author discusses whether fourth-century Athens was a catastrophically disrupted society, haunted by the trauma of the Peloponnesian war and the subsequent experience of tyranny. However, it must be noted that by the middle of the fourth century, when the cases Eidinow discusses went to trial, such memories would not have had the same affective power as they did in the first two decades of the century. Sometimes the reader is left wanting to know more, as for example on the role of gossip in the speech Against Euboulides, where it seems that the entire case against the citizenship of Euxitheos was based on nothing more than rumor. Likewise, one might want to hear more about the celebrity status of Phryne and how this could have evoked the poisonous phthonos which led to her prosecution. Some of the details of the court cases mentioned here contain small factual errors, as for example in the case against Neaira, where the prosecution was not one of graphe xenias but of purported marriage with a citizen, and Theogenes did not testify on the parentage of his wife. The document in 59.84 is undoubtedly a forgery, and I have argued elsewhere that he only testified on his divorce. I wish to note in particular that at 17, n. 24, Eidinow argues that the nominative of the name N”non is unknown and adopts the form Ninon (in the accusative), following the LGPN. However, the nominative of the name cannot be anything else except N”now (like the Assyrian city of Ninos, as in Str. 16.1.1, = N”now, Luc. Cont. 23.17 al.). It cannot be Nino (NinQ) because then the accusative would also be Nino, and it cannot have a neuter ending (= N”non), because feminine names with neuter endings are affectionate diminutives ending in -ion (e.g., Nannion, Aedonion), also rendered with neuter endings (-ium) in the Latin adaptations of Greek comedy (e.g., Astaphium, Adelphasium). This may seem like a small detail, but as Eidinow’s account of the trial of Ninos is the first significant discussion of this historical incident, I believe it is an important one. Eidinow has written an “exploratory and speculative” (266) study of envy, gossip, and social trauma in Athenian society, as well as a thought-provoking account of the reasons behind the prosecutions of the three women in question. She has laid out the pieces of the puzzle and directed her readers to consider a number of alluring possibilities. Students of classics, ancient history, and gender studies will find this volume an enjoyable journey through the messy public and private affairs of fourth-century Athens. University of Florida K. Kapparis Masterpieces of Metonymy: From Ancient Greek Times to Now. By Gregory Nagy. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies. 2015. Pp. xi, 284. Gregory Nagy is best known for his work on older Greek poets—particularly Homer, but also Theognis, Pindar, and others—and also for his work on Greek myth and hero cult. This book, however, concentrates on a rhetorical figure, metonymy, rather than an author or a genre, while developing ideas and interests present in Nagy’s earlier work. Metonymy, in a very rough definition, consists in substituting one term for another connected to it in some way. Metonymy is usually considered a trope, a figure which changes the meaning of a term; schemes, on the other hand, such as alliteration, leave 408 PHOENIX meaning alone. Metonymy is one of what Kenneth Burke calls the “four master tropes” (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony);1 and according to Roman Jakobson, metonymy and metaphor are the two fundamental structures of language.2 There has been an abundance of theoretical and practical discussion of metaphor, but much less of metonymy, and Nagy’s study goes a long way towards filling that gap. The book is organized in a series of studies interrelated through thematic associations. The Introduction and Part One define the concept of metonymy. Part Two shows the...

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