{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03690036900369004, 'fraction_numerical': 0.009057363300905737, 'mean_word_length': 5.123203285420945, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity ed. by Thelma K. Thomas (review)

Pucci, contain “[t]he philosophic basis for recuperation [ . . . ] in Augustine’s notion of verbal mimesis” (128): as language in general, poetic words can convey falseness and truth. In the last chapter (“De doctrina christiana: Recuperation and Charity,” 140–178), Pucci shows how the concept of recuperation, developed at Cassiciacum, fits with and is continued in Augustine’s teaching on redemption as a way from paganism to Christianity, and thus to truth. The book ends with a chronological list of poetic quotations in the Cassiciacum dialogues, an index and a bibliography. Looking at Augustine’s Vergilian Retreat as a whole, one can first say that Pucci is innovative and helpful in drawing the reader’s attention to Augustine’s repeated meta-intertexual remarks on the reading of Virgil during the stay at Cassiciacum and in the dialogues taking place there. Partially, the author offers exciting reinterpretations of Augustine’s hermeneutic semantics (e.g. 59–68). On the other hand, however, he does not pay much attention to the philological details of individual quotations. Just to give an example: Dealing with Augustine’s quotation (De beata vita 4.25 verissima est enim illa sententia: nam tu quod vitare possis, stultum admittere est.) of Terence, Eunuchus 761 tu quod cauere possis, stultum admittere est (79–81), the author neither discusses the change of the wording nor the question whether, as Pucci supposes, a reader can be expected to recontextualize a moral commonplace (“if you can avoid an evil, do so”) within the notoriously complicated plot of a comedy. This does, of course, not weaken the general line of argumentation (in fact, the quotation fits with Augustine’s philosophical purpose at this point), nevertheless, the inspired interpretation could here and in many other cases have been supported by some reflections concerning the philological aspects of intertextuality. There is, of course, scholarship dealing with these questions, which might have been taken into account. The bibliography lists titles which are not actually referred to, e.g. G.A. Müller’s important book Formen und Funktionen der Vergilzitate bei Augustin von Hippo (Paderborn, 2003). Furthermore, the pedagogic recuperation of Virgil at Cassiciacum which Pucci tries to outline could also have been examined against the background of the earlier Christian appropriation of Virgil—strategies of recuperation of Virgil can already be found in Minucius Felix and Lactantius. But on the other hand, one must confess that one of the several assets of Pucci’s book is its clear focus. The most important innovation made in Pucci’s book is his pedagogic reading of the Cassiciacum dialogues and the use of Virgil and, more generally, the pagan poetry within them. Thus, Pucci gives an impressive example of how Christian thinking has been cultivated on a pagan cultural substrate.