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Marianne McDonald: Ancient Sun, Modern Light: Greek Drama on the Modern Stage . Pp. xi + 239; 34 photographs. New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1992.

"The learned Lipsius' has long proved a stone of stumbling; Mark Pattison barely concealed his contempt of him and even the courteous Professor Grafton believes that he was fundamentally untrue to the humanist's calling to understand antiquity on its own terms (American Scholar 56 [1987], 382-90). The issue, at bottom, is Lipsius' belief in the undiminished usefulness of the classical past. The philosophical and political wisdom of antiquity might still shape present-day lives. This conviction he put into practice both by gathering about himself a contubernium of young men whom he schooled to fill high places in their society and by repackaging Stoicism and 'Tacitism' for contemporary consumption. By later students of the classical heritage, however, he is not deemed a serious rival to either the younger Scaliger or Casaubon, not that they brought against him the precise charge of Professor Grafton (indeed, Casaubon recommends Polybius for his usefulness and superiority to Tacitus). The problem is still with us: Professor Brink believes that scholarship cannot interest itself in usefulness to us (English Classical Scholarship [Cambridge and New York, 1985], 6). Mark Morford addresses himself to these live issues and clearly sets out Lipsius' educational aims, with particular attention to Peter Paul Rubens. To get my one criticism out of the way, his account of Rubens's adherence to Lipsian Stoicism does not fully convince. When he concludes that the iconography of some of his historical series is 'consistent with' Stoicism (209), it must be remembered that 'consistency with' is not the same as 'clear indebtedness to'. That apart, this is a highly informative and sympathetic book, beautifully produced and well illustrated. Above all, it puts back into the foreground an abiding issue in our discipline: what and whom do we conceive the study of classical antiquity to be for? Lipsius, with all his faults (they boil down to a desire to shine), had clear answers (174) from which his educational programme never departed. Professor Morford deserves thanks for providing the fairest account of Lipsius' position in this crucial debate.