The new C.A.H. rolls majestically on its way. The Fifth Century (covering in effect 478-404 B.C.), though shorter than volume IV, is still (at 2 lbs. 5 ozs.) a substantial book and a reviewer who has read it from cover to cover (ineluctably, but with a faint sense of absurdity, for what normal reader will do the same?) harbours the uncomfortable conviction that it is now time to begin again, like painting the Forth Bridge. But although most readers will treat this as a reference book to dip into, not to swallow whole, its organization has a rationale which is worth grasping. After an initial chapter on sources, chronology and method, the first third of the volume charts a (mostly) political and chronological path through the Pentecontaetia in Greece and the Aegean, with a chapter on Sicily as coda. There is then a marked change of tempo as chapter eight, containing some two hundred pages by seven different authors, provides a wide-ranging thematic survey of culture and society. The final third returns to the original key with three very substantial chapters on the Peloponnesian War. At the end are short chronological notes, a chronological table, a good (though not always completely up-to-date) bibliography, in the style of earlier volumes, and a reasonably full index (but no index locorum). The ' political' chapters are, to mince no words, wholly admirable, both in selection of material and soundness of judgement. The reasoning is (naturally) often debatable but never indefensible. D. M. Lewis's chapter on sources lays a reassuringly sound foundation in treating Thucydides as a great historian whose ' high competence and devotion to truth are not to be doubted'. J. K. Davies, after a perceptive discussion of what made Greeks feel Greek, argues less conventionally that the 470s constitute a period of uncomfortable transition for the polis. Two chapters by P. J. Rhodes (on the Delian League to 449 B.c. and on Athenian internal affairs down to Pericles' ascendancy) and two by D. M. Lewis (on Mainland Greece 479-51 B.C., and on the Thirty Years Peace) provide a massively judicious survey of political developments. (Among judgements of interest note the view that Thucydides' figure of 460 talents for initial tribute may have come from an over-optimistic assessment list; the Delian League may have been initiated as a permanent alliance to bind Athens as much as the allies; the chronological Gordian knot of the 470s and 460s is cut by supposing that Themistocles' flight coincided neither with the siege of Naxos nor that of Thasos (this is over-sceptical); Dipaea is put before the Messenian war and Oenoe almost disappears in 456. The Messenian war goes on till 456/5, leading to a treatment of Athenian policy as relatively aggressive in the early 450s.) After a slightly shaky start, where it is unclear whether Sicily is being divided into four political blocs or six, D. Asheri provides a most useful excursus on Sicily from 478 to 431 B.C. (Why, however, are the Greeks in S. Italy excluded, and why is attention to Sicily after 431 confined to a Peloponnesian War perspective?) The rationale of the central sections (chapter 8) is explained in the Preface as being that the old separate chapters on drama, philosophy, historiography and art 'have been replaced by an attempt to show the cultural achievements in their historical, social and religious contexts'. In the present reviewer's opinion (admittedly a non-

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The Cambridge ancient history.

Gestures as illocutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation

Predictions of climate change and its impacts are highly uncertain at regional and local levels. Downscaled models often operate with a too coarse scale and look at standard parameters that may be irrelevant to resource-dependent people. This article argues that a more robust analysis and prediction of climate change at local levels can be inferred from the integration of local people's observation of change with meteorological records and models. The example proposed here is the analysis of climate change in the desert-steppe region of Mongolia. While regional models and local analyses agree that Mongolia has become warmer, predictions either ignore or are contradictory about the changes in precipitations and sand storms. The Mongolian pastoral nomads on the other hand identify longer and more intense droughts and sand storms as the most important recent climatic changes, relevant to their livelihoods. In addition, they record detailed changes in the precipitations regime. Thus, they are unequivocal that rains have become patchy – ‘silk embroidery rains’ – (forcing pastoralists to move farther and more frequently), more intense (thus less effective due to runoff) and that summer rains are delayed (reducing the growing season). The observations of the pastoralists can only partly be investigated in light of meteorological records due to different parameters observed by the two systems. Nevertheless, additional evidence derived from the analysis of meteorological records resonates with the perceptions of the herders and adds elements for further investigation. This combined evidence suggests that due to a southern shift of the East Asian Monsoon, rains in southern Mongolia rely on re-circulated local moisture, leading to large-scale droughts and in turn more frequent sand storms. The analysis provided herein shows that combining the two knowledge systems (local people's observations and climatology) holds the potential to provide more reliant and relevant investigations of climate change and allow for better planned adaptations.

Riders under storms: Contributions of nomadic herders’ observations to analysing climate change in Mongolia

Recent research on both old and new excavation data from Anglo‐Saxon burial sites reveals a widespread and frequent practice of reusing monuments of earlier periods. Both Roman and prehistoric structures provided the focus of cemeteries, burial groups and single graves between the late fifth and early eighth centuries AD. It is argued that this practice was central to the symbolism of Anglo‐Saxon mortuary practices, and was important for the construction and negotiation of origin myths, identities and social structures.

Monuments and the past in early Anglo‐Saxon England

Morality is one of the fundamental structures of any society, enabling complex groups to form, negotiate their internal differences and persist through time. In the first book-length study of Roman popular morality, Dr Morgan argues that we can recover much of the moral thinking of people across the Empire. Her study draws on proverbs, fables, exemplary stories and gnomic quotations, to explore how morality worked as a system for Roman society as a whole and in individual lives. She examines the range of ideas and practices and their relative importance, as well as questions of authority and the relationship with high philosophy and the ethical vocabulary of documents and inscriptions. The Roman Empire incorporated numerous overlapping groups, whose ideas varied according to social status, geography, gender and many other factors. Nevertheless it could and did hold together as an ethical community, which was a significant factor in its socio-political success.

Archer Taylor

Papers

English riddles from oral tradition

L'idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens

The Oxford dictionary of English proverbs

Sumerian Proverbs. Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Proverbial Comparisons and Similes from California