摘要：Man and Animal in Severan Rome claims to be a book about Aelian, butin many ways Smith’s curiosity presses his project toward a broaderremit. Modern scholar and ancient author emerge as wellmatchedinterlocutors in a conversation that encompasses the nature of humankind(as opposed to that of non-human animals), the shared ethical andsocial responsibilities of all living creatures, and the ideas of Romanness andHellenism within the heterogeneous world governed by the Severan Emperors.By the time Smith asks ‘… what qualities will finally rescue a being fromthe arena[?]’ (?), his readers understand that such a question is not aboutanimals in the traditional sense any more than it is about an ‘arena’ as a specifictype of Roman spectacle venue. Rather, Smith and Aelian (or at leastSmith’s Aelian) ask us to consider the network of sympathies and prejudicesthat frame the existential arena we all share; and although Smith does notpush a modern agenda overtly, one gets the strong impression that on manypoints his Aelian can speak as much to our contemporary situation as to thespecific historical context of the Severan era.
