sehepunkte 26 (2026), Nr. 6

James L. Zainaldin: The artes and the Emergence of a Scientific Culture in the Early Roman Empire

Until thirty years ago, in many Anglophone academic environments Roman science was seen as a bit of a joke. Derivative, uninspiring, uncouthly written. Zainaldin's book is an indication of how much scholarship has changed since then.

Ars (pl. artes) is both a type of scientific discipline focussed on know-how, i.e. on human activity, and a literary form - a prose treatise - articulating those forms of knowledge. The label 'scientific' is appropriate here because artes always included an element of self-reflection and articulation of general principles. Their Greek equivalent is technai, but, according to Zainaldin, here we see a specifically Roman inflection of this type of knowledge. Zainaldin's main claim is that in the early Roman Empire the artes emerged as a "coherent intellectual movement" (3). An incisive introduction characterises them as sharing the traits of systematicity (principles are formulated), interdisciplinarity, explanation (causal accounts are given), and balance (experience is valued). After part I, which sets up the main argument and the general background, individual chapters are dedicated to Vitruvius (architecture), Columella (agriculture), Celsus (medicine), Frontinus and Onasander (the art of war), and Frontinus and Hyginus (land-surveying). Zainaldin engages in valuable and insightful close readings of their work through well-chosen case-studies and systematic analysis of demonstrative procedures. Each of the dedicated chapters could stand on its own. For instance, a careful interpretation is provided of the contrast and occasional collaboration between Columella's more scientific approach and the farmers' traditional methods, specifically in the case of viticulture. The unpicking of Celsus' self-positioning as middle ground between clashing Greek medical schools is another highlight; the discussion of etymologies in some land-surveying works is equally illuminating.

One great merit of Zainaldin's book is that it eschews the category of technical literature, which has lately come under (justified) criticism. Rather, he demonstrates that the disciplines under consideration, as discussed by those authors in their works and thus in emic terms, have identifiable family resemblances with one another. Nor does Zainaldin feel the need to over-rehearse well-known arguments about the literary canon and the artes' marginalisation. In Zainaldin's view, the artes "shaped how the Romans understood the significance of the expertise on which their imperium depended." (67) Thus, they were unapologetically at the centre of Roman culture, and must be recognised as such.

Like many strong claims, however, Zainaldin's contention that Roman artes represented a "unified intellectual culture" (3) prompts further questions. Unified, coherent, but in what sense? While Zainaldin carefully and convincingly shows that shared epistemological traits can be identified in all his authors, he also, with equal care and conviction, explores the ways in which the artes differed from each other. Ultimately, whether we emphasise unity or diversity is a judgement call. To talk of a movement implies a commonality of intent, however loose, among its exponents, and the authors here had in some cases very different life paths and divergent social positions. Zainaldin is aware of the issue - a diagram in the Appendix visualises "relationships of influence" (380). Influence, however, is a notoriously slippery term, and the question of how deliberately our authors were participating in the same, coherent, collective movement begs further exploration.

Possibly, the key word here is intellectual. Zainaldin's evidence is entirely literary. While the artes are emphatically about real life and experience, this is a world of books speaking to each other, as it were. As such, it can boast of a coherence that belies the complications of historical context. In a self-contained world of books, Frontinus and Celsus can both write about ratio and experience as if the fact that one had actually been a general, whereas the other was not a medical practitioner, made no difference. And yet, Zainaldin identifies, very accurately, that the artes are militantly and specifically Roman - mobilised to contribute to the greatness of the empire. How are mere words going to do that? Zainaldin's book cannot be asked to do everything, and yet the question of what happens outside the text is a bit of an elephant in the (library) room. There was a whole world out there of apparitores, enslaved scribes, vilici and farmers, of healers, whose role in the emergence of scientific culture was suppressed, or at best filtered through the perspective of the enslaver or the conqueror. Those subaltern voices emerge more clearly in the chapter on Columella and in the discussion of land-surveying, enough to indicate that there are rich seams still to be mined. And yet, little is said explicitly about epistemicide or knowledge appropriation. In other words, the artes are very carefully situated epistemologically, but perhaps less so historically, although Zainaldin pays attention to the diachronic dimension of his argument between late Republic and early Roman Empire.

In conclusion, this is a well-written, lucid contribution both to the study of Latin literature, and to the history of knowledge and culture in the Roman world. Its discussion of individual authors is excellent, and the main claim is strong enough to engender fruitful disagreement. Such debate is likely in my view to improve our understanding of the ancient world, and carry the discussion forward to further studies.