Rome’s Patron: The Lives and Afterlives of Maecenas, by Emily Gowers (Princeton University Press): “Let there be Maecenases . . . and you will have no shortage of Virgils” was the poet Martial’s response, in the first century A.D., to an interlocutor lamenting the decline in Roman poetry from a few generations prior. In our own time, the name of Maecenas—the famous benefactor of Horace, Virgil, and Propertius—remains a byword for enlightened patronage, a symbol of hope for impecunious artists everywhere. The well-heeled of ancient Rome often saw him differently: Seneca said his decadent lifestyle was “too notorious to need narrating” and called him “more womanish than his spouse,” and even the emperor Augustus, an ally, called him malagma moecharum, translatable as “putty in married women’s hands.” In Rome’s Patron, the classicist Emily Gowers embraces the multiple perspectives, weaving together testimony from poets, historians, the material record, and more to show how the legend outgrew the man. —RE
The Britannias: An Archipelago’s Tale, by Alice Albinia (W. W. Norton): Though Britain is widely known as “this sceptered isle,” few consider just how tied up the nation is in islands—not just the big ones but also the many scattered throughout the territory. Some are far off, like Orkney, north of the tip of Scotland, while others hide in plain sight, like Thorney Island, the now-obliterated eyot on which the Palace of Westminster and the famous abbey were built. In The Britannias, Alica Albinia traces the history of Britain’s islands in a style both lyrical and personal. —BR
A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention into the Russian Civil War, by Anna Reid (Basic Books): In his 1972 “Message of Friendship,” broadcast from Moscow to the Soviet and American people via television, President Nixon averred that “most important of all, we have never fought one another in war.” Yet the truth was just the opposite, as we learn in Anna Reid’s excellent new book A Nasty Little War, the story of the 180,000 American, British, Japanese, French, and other allied troops who waded into the chaotic fray of the Russian Civil War in 1918. Reid pores over hundreds of primary sources and diaries to weave together a rich, multifarious narrative. At times, there are shades of comic opera: we meet happy-go-lucky doughboys and tommies, a gay commander of an armored train named for his lover, and none other than Ernest Shackleton coming to the rescue with sleds and polar equipment in tow. More often, of course, there is tragedy, as disease, war crimes on both sides, and the Red Terror take their toll. Reid does justice to this oft-forgotten chapter of history, neglected to our peril. Look for my full review in an upcoming issue. —IS
“Joan Thorne: An Odyssey of Color,” at David Richard Gallery, New York (opens March 20): When it comes to the abstract paintings of Joan Thorne, a word that comes to mind is “molten.” Heat and light appear to circulate and swirl in the cavities and fissures of her colorful compositions. Opening this Wednesday at David Richard Gallery in Chelsea, “Joan Thorne: An Odyssey of Color” brings together eleven new paintings from the last two years in the context of Thorne’s larger body of work. With “colors, marks, and compositions” that “organically evolved throughout her six-decade career,” these recent paintings speak to the continued energy and pressure of her colorful oeuvre. —JP
Podcasts:
“Goodbye, Dr. Banda,” featuring Alexander Chula. On what the West can learn from Malawi.
By the Editors:
“New Revelations About the Chinese Communist Party and Its War Against the West”
Roger Kimball, The Epoch Times
Dispatch:
“Concurring dissent,” by James Piereson. On the Supreme Court’s forlorn quest for consensus.
