Recommendation of the Committee on the Goodwin Award of Merit
The 2005 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit
With my colleagues Stephen Hinds and Richard Martin, I take great pleasure in presenting the 2005 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit for a book which is an abundant source of pleasures. In The Myths of Rome, Timothy Peter Wiseman spreads before lay readers and scholars alike a splendid synthesis of ideas he has developed during his distinguished career. His leading claim is that the Romans created a story-world which was as dynamic and imaginative as the myths of the Greeks, yet which always retained the capacity to respond to fresh historical experience. The Romans borrowed personages like Herakles and Kastor and Marsyas from the Greeks, of course, as they borrowed tokens from many of their neighbors. But the gods and heroes who migrated from Greece to Italy were put to work in distinctly Roman stories, and had to compete with local heroes. Ultimately the story figures whom the Romans preferred turned out to be themselves, under such quasi-mythic guises as Camillus, Cincinnatus, Caesar, and Nero.
Wiseman traces the stories which the Romans constructed about themselves in chronological order from a ninth-century clay pot down to the reign of Nerva, and in an epilog he describes how, after they had departed from the scene, they came to be embraced as full-blown myth in Europe and America. In the early chapters, he works mostly from extra-literary evidenceÑthe Roman calendar, archaic names and etymologies, archeological relics and the organization of civic space, and images of all sorts. In one chapter that stands out as a tour de force, he divines the ethos of fourth-century Rome from a set of early engraved bronzes which mix standard myths and Italian variations on them, and which privilege scenes of pleasure under the patronage of the god of wine and promiscuity. In later chapters, he delves more into historical narratives and other texts. He winds up with a riff on the pseudo-Senecan Octavia: the play was written, he argues, to celebrate the fall of Nero, and was in fact produced in the Theater of Marcellus on November 4th in the year 68. Only the author's name is unknown.
The Myths of Rome is jauntily written, plentifully illustrated, and gorgeously produced. For purposes of this essay on cultural story-telling, Wiseman has chosen to cloak his scholarship. There are no footnotes, and the enormous learning from which the book was made is cached in sixty pages of bare references at the end. He confronts us not as a scholar but as a raconteur, and a raconteur who is always veering off to tell another story. The larger argument is punctuated with dozens of mini-essays (on werewolves, George Washington, and Roman sacred talismans, to mention three). Yet Wiseman is able to maintain focus by steering with a few leitmotifs: the Roman calendar and Ovid's poem about it, the importance of Roman scenic festivals in popularizing stories, and the constant tension between the few and the many in Roman civic life. At the same time, the effects of book design, color, line, and typography are dazzling. Wiseman has exploited every device but interactive video to persuade readers to share a provocative view of Roman myth-making. It is a spectacular performance.
Peter White, Chair