OUP (2016, revised edn. of 2012) p/b 467pp (173 figures, 4 tables, 24 colour plates) £30.00 (ISBN 9780198754138)
It is surely rare to find in a scholarly academic book an illustration of ‘Where’s Wally?’, a reference to Sesame Street, and an image of the Obama family in the eye of a needle, or indeed invented words like ‘epi(c)thet’ and chapters entitled ‘Turning the Tables’ and ‘Taking the Tablets’. But Squire has an important purpose in all this frivolity.
The 22 reliefs that comprise the extant remains of the marble tablets called the Tabulae Iliacae date mainly from the first centuries BC and AD. They combine images and texts based on epic poetry (not only The Iliad), mythical heroes (such as Herakles) and historical figures (e.g. Alexander the Great). The tablets can be held in the hand and passed from person to person, available for diners at a party as sources of conversation, debate, etc. Squire insists that they have been misunderstood and their sophistication seriously underplayed. They were not lowbrow geegaws suitable for Trimalchio and his guests, as some have urged; rather, they are seriously didactic objects for the cognoscenti, and Squire shows how cleverly they combine words and images—‘the size, media, and compositional arrangements….resonate against a set of highbrow literary and aesthetic concerns’ (p. 94). The two media need to be considered together—viewing and reading side by side with no priority given to the one or the other. As a consequence, Squire will have nothing to do with the word ‘illustration’ and dismisses the notion that the images on the tablets derive from illustrated manuscripts. ‘[I]t is wholly typical of classical archaeologists to judge objects that do survive as secondary copies of supposed prototypes that do not.’ (p.63)—in fact, ‘there is no evidence whatsoever that literary manuscripts were set out with accompanying pictures until very late in antiquity’ (pp. 137-8).
Squire’s claims for the Tabulae Iliacae are many and serious: he admires their clever use of scale, their playfulness with words and pictures, their diagrammatic structures on the reverse side of the tablets (word puzzles, anagrams, palindromes, acrostics), their importance for the study of ecphrasis (the chapter on the round tablet depicting and inscribing the Homeric shield of Achilles is particularly satisfying). His eye for telling detail is acute; never before have these objects been given such elaborate treatment. It is helpful that Squire enjoys fun with words, as the tablets are complex entities and from time to time, when Squire is at his most scholarly, even serious-minded readers may find relief in his academic diversion.
Brian A. Sparkes