Collectors, Scholars, and Forgers in the Ancient World: Object Lessons

Forgeries continue to fascinate. Numerous television programs about finding fake artworks and museum exhibitions that put forgeries alongside 'original' objects prove that we think their stories are worth telling. The forgery of texts and objects specifically from the Greco-Roman world has a long history, and in this monograph Carolyn Higbie takes us back to the ancient past and explores how Greeks and Romans thought about such fakes themselves. She has addressed some of the themes of this work before,1 and here her main aim is to situate ancient instances of forgery in a world of ancient collectors and scholars. Her interests are chronologically broad, and the work contains an impressive range of ancient examples. To overcome the possible generalisations that can arise from such a wide scope, her focus stays largely on specific individuals and their stories. The result is a sometimes uneven journey, but such is the terrain of a topic that, at its core, ought to make us question not only the reliability of our understanding of ancient texts and objects but also the notion of reliability itself.