Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Martin L. West, Homerus. Odyssea. Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, 2026. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Pp. lii, 519. ISBN 9783110425390. €99,95.

Reviewed by Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold, Princeton University (barbara.graziosi@princeton.edu; jhaubold@princeton.edu)

Version at BMCR home site

Publisher's Preview

The posthumous publication of Martin West's Odyssey complements his earlier edition of the Iliad (also in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1998-2000), and crowns a long career of exceptional productivity and achievement.¹ As the publishers point out, 'this is likely to be the standard edition of reference for decades to come'.² For this reason, it seems important to set out, for the general user as well as the specialist, the guiding principles governing West's approach to the Homeric text and to illustrate, by brief and very selective example, how those principles affect the handling of specific editorial problems.³

The preface, written in lively and elegant Latin, focuses on specific issues of grammar and orthography: given that the overall approach to editing Homer has changed little since his edition of the Iliad, West frequently refers to the earlier work, ne molesta fiat materia repetita (p. VII). The overall aim is straightforward: to reconstruct the original text of the Odyssey, which West regards as the work of a single poet, who devoted himself to its creation over a long period of composition and revision, in the last three decades of the 7^th century BCE.⁴ The original text had no book divisions (hence no typographically marked divisions in this edition, as in West's Iliad); it was written in an alphabet that did not distinguish between ε/η or ο/ω (hence the occasional emendation based on ancient theories of transcription from one alphabet into another), and was probably composed in Attica or Euboea. This last claim sets the Odyssey apart from the Iliad. For this reason, the Preface discusses Atticisms and warns readers that these will sometimes be retained (p. VII). In practice, however, several are not: for example, West prints ἄσσον, θάσσον, μάλλον, κρέσσων, μέζων rather than transmitted (and Attic) ἆσσον, θᾶσσον, μᾶλλον, κρείσσων, μείζων. The rationale is not made explicit, though presumably he considers these forms later than 'the poet'.

In reconstructing his 7^th-century text of the Odyssey, West selects what he considers the best medieval manuscripts and supplements them with readings attested in the ancient papyri. The manuscripts have already been well reported by Ludwich and van Thiel, but West more than doubles the number of Odyssey papyri, mostly by harvesting the riches of the Oxford Oxyrhynchus collection.⁵ This is a major achievement in 'both Homeric studies and papyrology',⁶ though it does not result in substantial changes to the text: the new papyri broadly confirm what we already know about the Homeric paradosis – a point to which we return below.

West also includes in his edition an enormous apparatus of testimonia, which contribute little to the constitution of the text, as he himself points out: p. IX. The stated reason for including them is to give a clearer view of the tradition, but this seems problematic, for two reasons. If by 'tradition' we mean the diffusion of the Odyssey in antiquity, then the modern reader would be better served by a discussion that did not draw an artificial line between testimonia and other forms of paraphrase and allusion. If, on the other hand, the aim is to assess the relative weight of individual readings, it would be important to be selective: most of the testimonia originate in ancient scholarship and, as van Thiel points out, 'ancient scholars display a strong tendency to depend upon one another'.⁷ West claims that his testimonia, as well as giving a general impression of the tradition, are useful for confirming medieval variants as old, and for illustrating levels of interpolation in antiquity. These aims, however, do not seem to us to require an apparatus of such length (and cost). More worryingly, the reader can easily be impressed by a long string of mutually dependent testimonia and grant them greater authority than they possess. West himself encourages this by using testimonia to boost minority readings. He also introduces otherwise unattested variants into his apparatus criticus on the basis of his collection of testimonia. His use of the Homeric Centos seems particularly problematic in this regard: there is no reason to assume that a line in Eudocia has to match the text of Homer in every last detail.⁸

Because West's overall aim is to reconstruct the original, seventh-century text of the Odyssey, it becomes important for him to pinpoint 'the poet' in relation to a gradually evolving poetic language. He admits that forms which look late to us may pre-date composition: for example, the poet of the Odyssey may have used the artificial-sounding βῆ δ' ἴμεναι, as well as the earlier βῆ δ' ἰέναι (see Odyssea, p. XVIII). Still, the general tendency in West's edition is to restore the oldest possible text, ensure its grammatical correctness (by modern standards), and minimize inconsistency. To return to the above example, West always prints the older and 'more correct' ἰέναι, despite his own misgivings – not least in order to ensure consistency with his Iliad.⁹ He likewise restores old genitives in -οο, although they almost certainly did not belong to the epic Kunstsprache when the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed.¹⁰ Similarly, he prints -εο- for transmitted -ευ-, despite Wachter's recent (and to our mind convincing) warning not to do so.¹¹ Taken together, West's choices are reminiscent of restorative nineteenth-century scholarship, as exemplified by August Fick, Jan van Leeuwen, and Richard Payne Knight among others.

Payne Knight, in particular, is an important figure for West – a fact betrayed by surreptitious but unmistakable eulogy in the apparatus: iam Knight and corr. Knight, where a simple surname suffices for other scholars, and even fere Knight where the older scholar 'almost' arrived at the conclusion championed by West. Now, Payne Knight (1751-1824) presented himself as the British answer to the (more fully professionalised) German scholars of his day. His aim was to 'restore' Homeric epic to its 'pristine clarity' and 'integrity',¹² thereby refuting the theories of Wolf and Heyne. For all their learning, these scholars lacked, in his view, the quintessential British quality of 'common sense' (Payne Knight, Prolegomena, Leipzig, 1816, p. 15: ipse hominum sensus communis, et experientia quotidiana reclamant). German scholars, for their part, accused Payne Knight of wilful eccentricity: they even coined the term Knightianismus to deride his idiosyncratic restorations.¹³ West is influenced by this particular chapter in the history of Homeric scholarship. Like Payne Knight, he seeks to restore the work of one great, original poet. Like him, he has a low opinion of the transmitted text and wants to revert to a 'purer' form of Homeric Greek. And again, like Payne Knight, he puts great faith in inscriptions and other external witnesses in recovering that form, as we illustrate below.¹⁴

The problem with privileging a nineteenth-century framework defined mainly by British and German traditions of scholarship, is that the arrival of the Americans can go almost unnoticed.¹⁵ To be blunt, the work of Milman Parry makes too little impact on West's edition of the Odyssey.¹⁶ This is a serious shortcoming, for two reasons. The first is that formulaic analysis and oral poetics help to explain the Homeric paradosis and therefore offer important insights for establishing the text. The second is that Parry's approach to Homeric epic posed new questions – some of which still cause debate and disagreement today. An edition alert to current controversies could make a major contribution to settling (or at least framing) them in a manner that increases clarity.

One controversy, as is well known, concerns the existence and nature of a so-called 'Homeric multitext'. The idea here is that Homeric epic evolved over a long period of time, from a stage of relative fluidity and variation in the Dark Age to one of relative stability in the late Hellenistic period.¹⁷ To the proponents of this view, the aim of restoring a single, seventh-century text is not just difficult in practice but wrong-headed in principle. In his review of West's Iliad, Gregory Nagy writes as follows: 'there is no original text of the Iliad and Odyssey that Janko or West or anyone else can reconstruct on the basis of the existing textual tradition. The variations that survive in this textual tradition, many of which are transmitted by Aristarchus, prevent such a monolithic reconstruction.'¹⁸ This claim has been influential in Homeric scholarship, particularly in the United States, but is by no means universally accepted.¹⁹ Careful attention thus needs to be paid to the evidence that can be marshalled in order to support or refute it: assessment of the transmitted variants is, in other words, important.

The addition of many papyri in West's edition confirms, among other things, that papyrus scraps do not necessarily preserve older readings than the medieval manuscripts, though in some cases of so-called 'horizontal' variation (i.e. small-scale differences within a line) they can tip the balance in favour of a specific reading (see, e.g., ad 5.124, 11.173, and 11.199). More important are those instances where the papyri attest 'vertical' variation, i.e. a discrepancy in the number of lines. Generally, if a papyrus does not report a line attested in the manuscripts, West brackets or omits that line.²⁰ In this respect, as in several others, his edition differs from van Thiel's, who adopts a maximalist approach and offers, at times, what seems to us a bloated text. Beyond specific insights about individual passages, the new papyri confirm that the degree of textual variation in Homer is modest compared to the multiformity attested in other oral traditions.²¹ As we have argued specifically in relation to the Iliad, even the 'so-called "wild papyri" are not as wild as all that'. ²²

Among attested variants, those known to the Hellenistic grammarians Zenodotus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus have long been considered important, if controversial: did these ancient scholars collate ancient manuscripts (as Ludwich thought) or merely make recommendations of their own (as van der Valk argued)? Was it a combination of the two and, if so, can we tell the difference? Van Thiel dismissed the Alexandrians' readings as mere conjectures and is censured by West for this: Odyssea, p. X. West's own view, as set out in the Preface to the Iliad edition (pp. VI-VIII), is that Zenodotus based his text on a single inferior manuscript from Ionia; that Aristophanes used both Zenodotus' text and other, better ones; and that Aristarchus still worked with a text that was 'mostly inferior' to the mainstream tradition.²³ This means that West is sceptical of Alexandrian readings – at least in theory. In practice, he seems rather quick to admit into his text variants that are only attested in the work of Hellenistic scholars. This tendency is less obvious in the Odyssey, simply because fewer variants have been transmitted, but West's decisions concerning Hellenistic variants can be questioned in this edition too – and even in cases where he follows well-established editorial decisions.²⁴

For example, at Od. 1.208 the manuscripts and one papyrus transmit γάρ, whereas Aristophanes and Aristarchus recommend μέν. West, following Bekker, Ludwich, Ameis-Hentze and others, adopts the latter reading, but this is almost certainly wrong – and it is instructive to see why. It is standard in Homer to cap a request for information or action (ἀλλ' ἄγε + imperative or hortative) with a reason for making it: 'So come now … (I ask this) because, γάρ …'.²⁵ In this case: 'So, tell me: are you the son of Odysseus, so grown up as you are? For you look strikingly like him…' The alternative, a μέν-clause after ἀλλ' ἄγε … is unidiomatic in early Greek epic,²⁶ and may even sound rude, since the request is not followed by an explanation, as is usual in such instances.²⁷ Now Athena, especially in the guise of Mentes, is a paragon of good manners, so the question then becomes why Aristophanes and Aristarchus preferred μέν to γάρ in this passage. At a general level, Hellenistic scholars took an interest in Homeric particles and often championed alternatives to the received text. In this particular case, μέν, rather than transmitted γάρ, may have appealed to them because it creates a pleasing correspondence with δέ in line 212: 'You look much like Odysseus when I still saw him regularly (μέν) – but (δέ) since the war I have not seen him'. The fact that the scholia describe μέν as having 'a certain appeal' (ἔχει τι εἶδος ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη) suggests that Aristophanes and Aristarchus argued along these lines. Replacing γάρ with μέν (even if, with modern scholars, we take μέν for μήν) involves reading the passage backwards, starting at the end, and articulating it as a prose-like complex period. This is not, on the whole, how Homeric epic worked: Egbert Bakker and others have shown how hexameter versification builds up by forward momentum, rather than backtracking rearrangement.²⁸

The more general point here is that it is often possible, by patient, case-by-case consideration, to discriminate between different kinds of variants and the motivations behind them. Such detailed work does not settle the question of how exactly Homeric epic was composed and transmitted, simply because several models are compatible with the limited evidence available to us. As Albio Cassio points out, Homeric poetry is 'likely to be the result of extremely complicated processes involving both orality and writing, which we can no longer reconstruct'.²⁹ Still, it is possible to arrive at a more detailed understanding of Homeric composition and transmission by considering individual variants, their likely origin, and their significance.

West's aim to reach beyond the transmitted text of the Odyssey to what he regards as its 7^th-century ancestor repeatedly leads him to make use of weakly attested variants and, indeed, to adopt modern conjectures in preference to the transmitted text.³⁰ It also leads to intervention at the level of morphology and orthography. Now, of course, grammatical correctness is an obvious criterion for judging the transmitted text, but the crucial question (and this is a question West never addresses in a systematic fashion) is what early epic singers and audiences considered acceptable in terms of morphology and grammar.³¹ Were their criteria for what sounded correct the same as ours? That would be surprising.

For illustration, let us consider West's decision, made already in his edition of the Iliad and maintained also for his Odyssey, to switch all third-person singular subjunctives in -ηισι to -ησι. West adduces two arguments for correcting the transmitted text. The first is linguistic: -ησι is the older form (cf. Vedic -āti), and there is no justification, in principle, for the added iota (thus Wackernagel and others since).³² The second is archaeological: the early inscription on the famous 'Cup of Nestor' found in Ischia displays the form ΠΙΕΣΙ, without iota (as first noted by Watkins).³³ The aim for the Homeric editor, however, is not to print the oldest recoverable form of a word, but rather the Homeric form: as Ludwich pointed out in 1885, 'Homerisch ist nicht Urgriechisch'. In order to reconstruct the Homeric form, further considerations become relevant. In the case of -ηισι vs -ησι, Martin Peters convincingly demonstrated that transmitted -ηισι should be retained: his study was published in 1998, too late to affect West's edition of the Iliad, but in time to inform his work on the Odyssey.³⁵ Here is Peters' argument for why transmitted -ηισι, although typologically younger and 'less good' than -ησι, must be the Homeric form. Under pressure from the subjunctive in -ηι (already in Homer the more common form), the archaic ending -ησι acquired an additional iota and, probably as part of the same process of 'updating' inherited morphology, was reanalysed as vernacular -ηι plus the athematic ending -σι. On that basis, epic singers created other 'extended' subjunctive forms in -ωμι (-ω + μι, 1^st pers. sg.) and -ηισθα (-ηισ + θα, 2^nd pers. sg). The result was a typical proliferation of metrically useful alternatives:

The 3^rd person singular subjunctive in Homer

'Short' system (rhythmic shape ‒)
-ω
-ηις
-ηι

'Extended' system (rhythmic shape ‒ᴗ)
-ωμι (understood as -ω + μι)
-ηισθα; (understood as -ηισ + θα)
-ηισι (understood as -ηι + σι)

Since -ωμι and -ηισθα cannot be explained in Homer without transmitted -ηισι, West's insistence on printing -ησι makes nonsense of the entire system.

The general insight underlying the observation above was set out by Milman Parry in an article published in 1932, where he demonstrated that epic singers, under pressure from a changing linguistic environment, constantly modified their traditional idiom.³⁶ Creative adaptation, rather than textual corruption, accounts for 'recent' forms like the famous epic diectasis (ὁρόωντα < ὁρῶντα < ὁράοντα), which arose from the need to adapt the inherited morphology of epic to the contracted forms of the vernacular which the bards heard spoken around them. There can be no question of trying to 'fix' Homeric diectasis by reinstating uncontracted forms, as was sometimes attempted in the nineteenth century. More generally, it is important to resist the lure of archaising emendations: the 'true' Homeric form (to use one of West's favourite critical terms: verum) may look morphologically younger than the earliest possible form we can reconstruct.

If we ask, systematically, how individual forms sit within the Homeric Kunstsprache, further progress can be made. As with the evaluation of variants, this needs to be done on a case by case basis. We offer here just one example, by way of conclusion: the much debated (and very Odyssean) phrase ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι, 'in hollow caves', which has long exercised Homeric scholars. The transmitted form σπέσσι looks strange, to put it mildly.³⁷ West, following Leo Meyer, confidently declares 'σπέεσι verum est' (p. XX), on the ground that the latter is a better representation of original σπέϝεσι.³⁸ Without going into too much detail here, we note that the paradigm of σπέος seems modelled by analogy: ἐν νηῒ γλαφυρῆι ~ ἐν σπῆϊ γλαφυρῶι; ἐν νήεσσι ~ ἐν σπήεσσι.³⁹ We also note that, in the dative plural, Homeric epic includes forms in -έεσσι (ἐπέεσσι), -εσσι (ἔπεσσι) and -εσι (ἔπεσι), but not forms ending in -έεσι. Viewed from the perspective of traditional philology, this observation makes little sense: -έεσι is not, in itself, a meaningful unit of grammatical analysis (i.e. it is no 'ending'). Early Greek epic singers and their audiences did not, however, read grammar books. They were interested in sound and repeated sonic patterns, which could be used to negotiate between their spoken, everyday language, and the inherited rhythms and formulations of hexameter poetry. In the case of our particular example, the form σπέσσι is the transmitted form, and it is transmitted because that is how it was pronounced. It is by attending to what may have sounded possible to early singers and their audiences that we gain a better understanding of the Homeric text.

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Notes:

1.   Stephanie West saw the edition through to publication and, in a paragraph placed at the end of the Preface, explains that Martin West prepared the edition and wrote its Preface; she then checked the whole work and made some further corrections and additions: pauca quidem corrigenda vel supplenda repperi.
2.   https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/455813.
3.   The importance of this is underscored by the fact that one of its predecessors, the Oxford Classical Text edited by Allen (2^nd edn 1917), is still widely used with little awareness of its shortcomings – despite the detailed criticism in N. Tachinoslis, Handschriften und Ausgaben der Odyssee. Mit einem Handschriftenapparat zu Allen's Odysseeausgabe, Frankfurt am Main 1984. Allen's Editio Major of the Iliad (Oxford 1931) is, as has often been noted, equally problematic: see H. van Thiel, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim 1996, pp. VII-VIII and West himself, Homeri Ilias, vol. 1, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1998, p. X.
4.   For details see M. L. West, The Making of the Odyssey, Oxford 2014, esp. pp. 92-142 (process of composition), pp. 35-43 (dating) and pp. 82-91 (background).
5.   West acknowledges the help of Oxford graduate students in this enterprise: Odyssea, p. VIII.
6.   We repeat here what M. J. Apthorp already pointed out in relation to West's Iliad in 'Homer's winged words and the papyri: some questions of authenticity', ZPE 128 (1999), p. 16: 'It should be stressed that the appearance of Vol. I of West's splendid new Teubner edition of the Iliad…is a major event in the history of both Homeric studies and papyrology.'
7.   Van Thiel, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim 1991, p. xxiii.
8.   See West, Odyssea, p. IX and, e.g., app. crit. ad 2.379a, 11.549.
9.   West, Odyssea, p. XVIII: 'sed cum in Iliade, cuius traditio tanto firmioribus stat fundamentis, illud ἴμεναι fere nusquam sit, tutius esse arbitror, id etiam ex Odyssea excludere'.
10.   See P. Chantraine, Grammaire Homérique, vol. 1, 2^nd edn, Paris 1948, pp. 46-7 and R. Wachter, 'Grammar of Homeric Greek', in A. Bierl and J. Latacz, eds, Homer's Iliad: The Basel Commentary. Prolegomena trans. B. W. Millis and S. Strack, ed. S. D. Olson (German edn 2000), Berlin and Boston, pp. 84-5, n. 24.
11.   Wachter, 'Grammar', p. 85, n. 25.
12.   Cf. R. Payne Knight, Prolegomena ad Homerum sive de carminum Homericorum origine, auctore et aetate itemque de priscae linguae progressu et praecoci maturitate, 2^nd printing, Leipzig 1816, p. 29, para. 32: neque alia ratione recentiora ab antiquis secernenda esse videntur nisi vera indole ac specie veterrimae linguae e tenebris eruta quam quidem certissimam normam in carminibus in pristinum nitorem ac formam integram restituendis adhibere licet.
13.   F. J. Messmann, Richard Payne Knight: The Twilight of Virtuosity, The Hague 1974, pp. 131-2. For 'Knightianismus' as an insult in a polemic among competing German scholars, see A. Ludwich, 'Knightianismus und homerische Textkritik', Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie und Paedagogik 153 (1896), 1-16.
14.   Payne Knight, Prolegomena, pp. 36-7: E brevibus titulis, in laminis et lapidibus insculptis, linguae veteris reliquiae eruendae erant atque ex iis norma aliqua constituenda, qua, exemplaribus inter se collatis, et metri analogiaeque justa ratione habita, e diversorum discrepantiis unum congruens et sincerum, ab omnibus rhapsodorum sordibus purgatum, confici potuisset.
15.   West briefly dismisses 'the oralists' in The Making of the Iliad, Oxford 2011, pp. 4-5: his focus there is on theories of composition, rather than on the influence of oral poetics on the development of Homeric language.
16.   R. Janko makes exactly the same observation in relation to West's edition of the Iliad: 'West's Iliad', CR 50.1 (2000), p. 1.
17.   G. Nagy, Homeric Questions, Austin 1996; id. Poetry as Performance. Homer and Beyond, Cambridge 1996; and several publications since. Milman Parry demonstrated that the Iliad and the Odyssey stem from a long tradition of composition and re-composition in performance, but did not claim that many written versions of those poems once existed. He first suggested and his direct collaborator, Albert Lord, fully articulated the so-called 'oral- dictation theory', cf. The Singer of Tales 1960, p. 153: 'to Homer belongs the distinction of having composed the longest and best of all oral narrative songs. Their unusual length predicates exceptional circumstances of performance. If I be not mistaken, dictation to a scribe provides this opportunity.'
18.   G. Nagy, Review of West, Homeri Ilias in BMCR 2000.09.12.
19.   S. Reece points out, 'Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: from oral performance to written text', in M. C. Amodio, ed. New Directions in Oral Theory, Tempe, AZ 2005, p. 52: 'Among younger Homeric scholars, at least in the United States, the evolutionary model has almost achieved the status of orthodoxy'. He goes on to mount a patient and systematic case against the multitextual model.
20.   E.g. Od. 2.393 (retained by van Thiel and von der Mühll; West brackets), 407 (van Thiel retains, von der Mühll brackets; West omits), 429 (van Thiel retains, von der Mühll brackets; West omits). The picture is complicated by the fact that West also adopts ancient and modern deletions without papyrus support, or even against papyrus evidence (as e.g. at 1.140).
21.   See S. Reece, 'Iliad and Odyssey: from oral performance to written text', in M. C. Amodio, ed. New Directions in Oral Theory, Tempe, AZ 2005, pp. 65-78.
22.   B. Graziosi and J. Haubold, 'The Homeric text', Ramus 44 (2015), p. 2.
23.   West attributes to the 1^st-century BCE scholar Didymus the work of collating manuscripts, where others credit Aristarchus himself with collation, see Homeri Ilias, vol. 1, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1998, p. VIII and the more elaborate restatement in Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad, Munich and Leipzig 2001, pp. 36-7. On this issue see now F. Schironi, The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad, Ann Arbor 2018, pp. 63-78, who gives a more measured account, suggesting that Aristarchus collated in some cases. See also F. Montanari, 'Alexandrian Homeric philology. The form of the ekdosis and the variae lectiones', in M. Reichel and A. Rengakos, eds, Epea Pteroenta. Festschrift für Wolfgang Kullmann zum 75. Geburtstag, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 119-40; 'Ekdosis: a product of the ancient scholarship', in F. Montanari, S. Matthaios, and A. Rengakos, eds, Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship, vol. 2, Leiden 2015, pp. 660-71.
24.   For some Iliadic examples, see B. Graziosi and J. Haubold, Homer: Iliad VI, Cambridge 2010, ad 6.112, 6.157, and 6.285.
25.   Il. 24.197-8 (αἰνῶς γάρ) is a particularly close parallel; see also Il. 3.441-2 (γάρ), 6.354-5 (ἐπεί); 11.314-15 (γάρ), 22.254-5 (γάρ), 24.380-5 (γάρ), 522-4 (γάρ), Od. 1.169-73 (μὲν γάρ), 223-6 (ἐπεί), 2.212-14 (γάρ), 6.36-40 (καὶ δὲ … γάρ), 8.389-90 (γάρ), 572-86 (ἐπεί), 11.370-4 (δέ), 457-61 (γάρ), 492-503 (γάρ), 13.296-9 (ἐπεί), 17.190-1 (γάρ), 21.73-4 (ἐπεί, γάρ), 23.20-4 (γάρ), 171-2 (γάρ), 24.256-65 (ἐπεί, γάρ). See also J. D. Denniston, Greek Particles, 2^nd edn, Oxford 1950, p. 59 ('[γάρ] after an expression denoting the giving or receiving of information, or conveying a summons to attention').
26.   K. F. Ameis and C. Hentze, Homers Odyssee für den Schulgebrauch erklärt, 12^th edn, Leipzig and Berlin 1908, p. 18, explain 'μέν gleich μήν', but neither αἰνῶς μέν nor αἰνῶς μήν can be paralleled in early Greek epic, whereas αἰνῶς γάρ is formulaic both in this position and elsewhere in the hexameter line: Il. 10.93, 24.198, Od. 4.597, 17.24 (αἰνῶς γάρ in verse-initial position); cf. HAp. 64 (‒ᴗᴗ αἰνῶς γάρ …), Od. 1.264, 4.441, 22.136, Hes. fr. 29.6 M-W (γὰρ αἰνῶς at line-end).
27.   A. Bedke, Der gute Ton bei Homer: Ausprägungen sprachlicher Höflichkeit in Ilias und Odyssee, Münster 2016, shows how important it is to strike the right tone when it comes to giving orders or asking a favour in Homer.
28.   E. J. Bakker, Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse, Ithaca, NY 1997. In the classical period, arguably under the influence of prose, we start to see rhapsodes playfully exploring the possibilities of backward rearrangement and manipulation of syntax: the stichomythic exchange in the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi is our best evidence for that, see B. Graziosi, 'Competition in wisdom', in F. Budelmann and P. Michelakis, eds, Homer, Tragedy and Beyond. Essays in honour of P. E. Easterling, London 2001, 57-74; D. Collins, Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry, Cambridge, MA 2004; and soon P. Bassino, Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi: A Commentary, forthcoming with de Gruyter.
29.   A. C. Cassio, 'Early editions of the Greek epics and Homeric textual criticism in the sixth and fifth centuries BC', in F. Montanari, ed., Omero tremila anni dopo. Atti del congresso di Genova 6-8 luglio 2000, Rome 2002, p. 114.
30.   Here we draw attention to an aspect of West's editorial approach that seems to us problematic. As already in his text of the Iliad, West seeks to justify modern emendations by identifying 'traces' of them in the ancient and medieval transmission; see e.g. Odyssea, pp. XX (Veri vestigia manent…), XXI (Accedunt vestigia plura …), and XXV (Vide quam recte agat papyrus …). The emendation, in other words, is presented as an act of preservation – even though a reading that looks attractive to modern readers may appear in the textual tradition for reasons wholly unrelated. For example, Aristarchus recommended the 'correct-looking' κακὰ μήσατο (printed by West) for transmitted κάκ' ἐμήσατο in Il. 6.157: this need not be because he was concerned to preserve Hermann's bridge, since we know that he preferred unaugmented forms. Likewise, a second-century Odyssey papyrus that preserves the forms τεινύμενος, ἔτεισαν, τεισόμεθ', τείσεσθαι, ἐτείσατο (Odyssea, p. XXV) is unlikely to preserve early Homeric forms: the spellings can, and should, be otherwise explained, see A. C. Cassio, 'La più antica iscrizione greca di Cuma e τίν(ν)υμαι in Omero', Die Sprache 35 (1991-1993), 186-207, esp. pp. 199-200.
31.   The issue is raised with characteristic clear-sightedness in M. Leumann, Homerische Wörter, Basel 1950, pp. 24-6. On Aristarchus' understanding of grammar, see S. Matthaios, Untersuchungen zur Grammatik Aristarchs: Texte und Interpretationen zur Wortartenlehre, Göttingen 1999 and now F. Schironi, The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad, Ann Arbor 2018, especially pp. 597-622.
32.   J. Wackernagel, Vermischte Beiträge zur griechischen Sprachkunde, Basel 1897, pp. 50-1.
33.   C. Watkins, 'Observations on the "Nestor's Cup" inscription', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 80 (1976), 25-40.
34.   A. Ludwich, Aristarchs homerische Textkritik nach den Fragmenten des Didymos dargestellt und beurteilt, vol. 2, Leipzig 1885, p. 232.
35.   M. Peters, 'Homerisches und Unhomerisches bei Homer und auf dem Nestorbecher', in J. H. Jasanoff, H. C. Melchert and L. Oliver, eds, Mír Curad: Studies in Honor of Calvert Watkins, Innsbruck 1998, 586-602, esp. pp. 594-596.
36.   M. Parry, 'The Homeric language as the language of an oral poetry', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 43 (1932), 1-50.
37.   In the manuscripts, ἐν σπέσσι is often spelled without the double consonant, but this is not an issue: σσ is often spelled with a single σ in the manuscripts; the double consonant is guaranteed by metre.
38.   West, Odyssea, p. XXIV, referring to L. Meyer, 'Die homerischen anlautsgruppen δF und ϰF', Zeitschrift für Sprachforschung 7 (1858), p. 204. West misreports Meyer's argument: the suggestion that the Homeric form derives from *σπέ-εσ-σι is not in fact drawn from Meyer (who derives it from *σπέϝεσι) but from the ancient grammarian Herodian, who cites the otherwise unattested form *σπέεσσι to justify the accentuation of Homeric σπέσσι; see A. Lentz, Grammatici Graeci, vol. 3.2, Leipzig 1867, p. 129.
39.   That the entire paradigm is problematic has long been recognized: P. Chantraine, Grammaire Homérique, vol. 1, 2^nd edn, Paris 1948, p. 7, for example, describes it as 'embarrassing': 'La flexion de σπέος présente des difficultés caractéristiques. Ce mot …était embarrassant et les graphies de la vulgate trahissent cet embarras'. We argue here that the paradigm can be explained by morphological analogy and the generative power of formulaic language. For example, the accusative σπεῖος γλαφυρόν (hapax legomenon at Od. 5.194) is 'reverse-engineered', as it were, on the basis of the genitive formula σπείους γλαφυροῖο (Od. 5.68, 5.192; cf. 12.93).

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T. Corey Brennan, Sabina Augusta: An Imperial Journey. Women in antiquity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xxiv, 302. ISBN 9780190250997. $85.00.

Reviewed by Caillan Davenport, Macquarie University (caillan.davenport@mq.edu.au)

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This is not a biography. A complete scholarly account of the life of Sabina, the wife of the emperor Hadrian, is impossible, given the exiguous nature of the literary sources. As T. Corey Brennan points out, only 200 words about Sabina survive in ancient texts. He remarks than an 'average adult could comfortably read aloud a translation of that amount of text in about 90 seconds' (p. xvi). This book therefore concentrates on the representation of Sabina, not only in the literary sources, but also in the epigraphic, numismatic, and artistic material. Brennan is a genial and reliable guide to the sources, clearly explaining what they can—and cannot—tell us about Sabina and her life. In interpreting this evidence, he proposes that 'whatever the (much-discussed) dynamics of their marriage, Hadrian meant for Sabina to play a key role in promoting the public character of his rule' (p. xxiii). This is a sensible and convincing argument, and the book raises important questions about the roles and functions of Roman imperial women.

Sabina Augusta falls into two halves. The first five chapters are largely introductory, providing important historical background on the Roman monarchy (Chapter 1: '"Empress" at Rome') and the dynasty of Nerva and Trajan (Chapter 2: 'Trajan and the Imperial House'), before moving on to examine Sabina and Hadrian in detail (Chapter 3: 'Sabina's Personal History'; Chapter 4: 'Hadrian's Personality'; Chapter 5: 'Hadrian's Relationships'). This material will be largely familiar to scholars of early second century A.D. Rome, but it will be of great benefit to undergraduates or researchers from other disciplines who are interested in the representation of imperial women. Brennan offers comprehensive overviews of issues such as the chronology of Hadrian's reign and travels, the literary sources (especially Marius Maximus as a source for the Historia Augusta), and key personalities, including the emperor's lover Antinoös and his chosen heirs, Aelius Caesar and Antoninus Pius.

In Chapter 6: 'Sabina Augusta', Brennan analyses Sabina's position and representation after Hadrian's accession in A.D. 117. This chapter discusses topics such as Sabina's presence on Hadrian's second journey and the infamous incident that saw the praetorian prefect Septicius Clarus and the ab epistulis Suetonius Tranquillus dismissed from court. But its most important scholarly contribution concerns Sabina's public representation. For the first decade of Hadrian's reign, Sabina is all but absent on coins minted at Rome and on provincial issues, except for an appearance on types from Gaba in Galilee (p. 68). This changed in A.D. 128, when Sabina was awarded the name of Augusta and Hadrian that of pater patriae. Brennan shows that these honours were not bestowed simultaneously: Sabina became Augusta first, probably as a way to 'heighten the drama of the emperor accepting his title' (p. 89). This demonstrates that the awarding of imperial honours and titles was never a pro forma act, but was carefully organized and choreographed. The large volume of coinage produced for Sabina set a standard that would be followed by Hadrian's successors, cementing women as an important part of imperial representation in the Antonine age. Chapter 6 also includes a detailed discussion of Sabina's first official portrait types, which were probably created in A.D. 128 to coincide with her acclamation as Augusta. Although Brennan's account is clear and straightforward, it is a pity that the book does not include illustrations of the portrait styles to accompany the text (pp. 90-4).

The next two chapters, entitled 'The Journey to Egypt' and 'Egypt and the Journey Home', examine Hadrian's third provincial tour and the notorious death of his lover Antinoös in Egypt. The narrative is supported by two very good maps (Figures 7 and 8), prepared by the Ancient World Mapping Centre, which provide a helpful guide to provinces and cities visited by Hadrian and mentioned in the text. Brennan includes an extended discussion of the death of Antinoös and the extent of his commemoration, as a way of highlighting differences between his representation and that of Sabina (p. 119). Sabina herself enters the picture more fully in an excellent discussion of the Colossus of Memnon, which the Augusta visited during the court's time in Egypt. Brennan's skills as a historical storyteller come to the fore in his engaging account of the visits of the poet Julia Balbilla, Sabina, and Hadrian to this monument, and his exegesis of the surviving inscriptions (pp. 125-137).

Coinage and portraiture take centre stage once again in Chapter 9: 'Final Years in Rome'. Drawing on Richard Abdy's detailed numismatic analysis of Sabina's coinage, Brennan provides the reader with a careful chronology of the issues and a discussion of the Augusta's publicly promoted virtues. The chapter then proceeds to examine provincial coinage featuring Sabina issued in the eastern provinces after A.D. 128. A crucial point emerges from this discussion: in the reign of Trajan, the eastern mints produced types for the emperor and his wife Plotina at a ratio of 85:1. Under Hadrian, the ratio of his provincial types to Sabina's was 14:1, signifying a major increase in the number of types representing the emperor's female partner (pp. 158-9). Brennan sensibly cautions that many of the reverse images on these coins are themselves conventional (p. 163), but the increase in types remains significant. The second major iconographical development highlighted in this chapter is the change in Sabina's portraiture after her return to Rome in A.D. 133. She is now depicted in a more timeless way, as a 'young serene beauty', which marks a change from her earlier representation in the style of the Trajanic women (pp. 170-2). Once again, this chapter could have benefited from a wider range of illustrations, particularly of the provincial coinage and of the hair-knot which features on some of Sabina's later portraiture (discussed on pp. 172- 4).

Sabina probably died in late A.D. 137, and Chapter 10 deals with representations of her death and deification on coinage and on the panel relief from the Arco di Portogallo. Brennan is a sure-footed guide to the chronology of Sabina's death and that of Hadrian's heir Aelius Caesar, as well as the details of conspiracies against the emperor (pp. 182-5). But he also strikes a controversial note, entertaining the idea that Hadrian may have had a hand in Sabina's death. This stems from the ancient sources. The Historia Augusta (Hadr. 23.9) reports that after Sabina passed away, there was a rumour that Hadrian poisoned her, while the Epitome de Caesaribus (14.8) says she was driven to suicide. For a book that spends much of its length distancing itself from the hostile account of the ancient sources, the possible acceptance of Hadrian's responsibility for his wife's death comes as a surprise. Brennan's reasoning is that 'it was very much to Hadrian's advantage for Sabina to predecease him', because of the role she could play in his public image as a deified wife (p. 186). He even suggests that there were 'disquieting signs that the regime … started laying the groundwork for the empress's death and apotheosis' (p. 186). Brennan cites in this context a series of coins minted at Rome depicting Sabina with a range of hairstyles worn throughout her lifestyle. Yet this re-use of earlier obverse types of Sabina could have had a purely commemorative purpose. If they were issued because the mint expected Sabina to die soon, it could have been because she was seriously ill, rather than because Hadrian was plotting to kill her.

The book's conclusion offers a brief survey of the reception of Sabina in the art, literature, and history of the early modern and modern period, before summarising the main themes of each chapter. The takeaway point from this discussion, and from the book itself, is that Sabina was virtually absent in official media between A.D. 117 and her proclamation as Augusta in A.D. 128. This acclamation resulted in the commissioning of portrait types representing Sabina and her appearance on coins produced at Rome in large numbers. The impact of Sabina's new status reverberated around the Roman Empire, as shown by the range of provincial coin issues featuring the Augusta. Brennan is to be commended for producing a clearly written and accessible book that thoroughly documents these changes in the representation of Sabina. She and Hadrian never had children, but she nevertheless became an important part of the public image of his regime. This conclusion encourages us to think beyond the significance of child-bearing to the official representation of imperial women and consider their wider importance as exempla, role models, and partners.

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Jessica Piccinini, The Shrine of Dodona in the Archaic and Classical Ages: A History. Macerata: EUM-Edizioni Università di Macerata, 2017. Pp. 203. ISBN 9788860565471. €14,00 (pb).

Reviewed by Anna Kouremenos, University of Tübingen (anna.kouremenos@gmail.com)

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The shrine of Dodona was one of the foremost religious sites in the Archaic and Classical periods in Greece. Located on the fringes of the Greek world beyond the Pindos mountain range, it gradually acquired a Pan-Hellenic reputation, second only to the shrine of Delphi. This book stems from the author's DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford with additional research conducted in subsequent years.

In the Introduction, Piccinini lays out the history of Dodona´s discovery by focusing on travel accounts from Pausanias to the nineteenth century, with Lord Byron being the most famous visitor and the site featuring in his Childe Harold´s Pilgrimage, Canto II, 53. Dodona captured the imagination of generations of historians and antiquarians, not least because its precise location was unknown until it was identified correctly by the architect Thomas Leverton Donaldson in 1819 and later by Christopher Wordsworth, the bishop of Lincoln.

In Chapter 1, the author presents the place of Epirus in the Greek world and Dodona´s central point within it. For most of its history, the region was on the periphery of the Greek world and ancient writers, most of whom were Atheno-centric or Sparto-centric, did not concern themselves much with it. However, the geographical and cultural isolation of Epirus did not hinder pilgrims from various parts of the Greek world from paying a visit to the shrine of Dodona. The earliest activity in the area dates to the Bronze Age, when a population that may have been composed of transhumant shepherds occupied an area that later became the bouleuterion, as remnants of structures and portable objects suggest. Traces of occupation in the area appear to have ceased by the Early Iron Age, however, when the rise of cultic activity, attested by the presence of bronze tripods and cauldrons, iron double axes, spearheads, and small pendants, indicates that there was both votive and perhaps communal dining activity on the site. According to the author, the presence of figurines of people and horses dating to this time period suggests that local elites made these offerings, although I am not convinced by this point as no further evidence is offered to support this view.

Chapter 2 focuses on the presence of Euboeans in Dodona. In the second half of the seventh century BC, the fame of the oracular sanctuary at Dodona rose and seems to have attracted Euboean visitors in particular, who likely frequented Dodona during their colonization ventures on both sides of the Adriatic and Ionian seas. The Euboeans were probably not simply visitors to the site but may have set up settlements along the Epirote and Illyrian coast. Ancient authors (Lycophron, Plutarch) state that Euboean men settled on the nearby island of Corcyra but later were expelled by the Corinthians. The presence of Euboean settlers in Corcyra and Epirus is absent from the archaeological record, so Piccinini puts forward the attractive hypothesis that the Euboeans in Epirus and the Ionian Islands were not stable colonizers but transient seafarers with no interests in establishing firm trade-network settlements there.

Chapter 3 focuses on the main players in the Epirote-Illyrian area during the Iron Age – the Corinthians. They were attracted to the Epirus region due to its metals – mainly silver – and iris roots (used in perfumes). Corinthian offerings to the sanctuary of Dodona were made as early as the late 8^th- early 7^th century BC, but it is difficult to discern whether these were from elite Corinthians, Corcyreans, or from local Epirote elites that had acquired them from Corinth through trade or gift-exchange. The close ties between Dodona and Corinth are best illustrated by a scholion to a verse in Pindar's 7^th Nemean, where a certain Aletes re-founded Corinth after consulting the oracle of Zeus at Dodona. This legend bound the two regions together and cemented the contact of Corinth with northwest Greece.

The region around the shrine is the subject of Chapter 4, "The Greeks of the North-West." Dodona's place as an oracular shrine was paramount for the populations living in its vicinity. Both local individuals and poleis made dedications and consulted the oracle, with Apollonia in Illyria and the island of Corcyra perhaps being the most prolific. In the case of the latter, public consultations preserved on lead tablets and an anathema dedicated by the polis are a testament to the close ties between island and sanctuary.

Chapter 5 focuses on Spartan activity at Dodona. Both material and literary evidence indicates that the Spartans frequented the shrine from the 6^th century BC onwards. Some of the most prevalent offerings were large bronze craters and statuettes, although whether these were produced in Laconia or Dodona is a matter of speculation, with the author favoring the former as a place of production. Literary evidence also points to a series of consultations made by Spartans, the most prominent of which is that of Lysander and his plot to bring about a constitutional change. Further consultations by the Spartans pertained to battles, with the most well-known one being the request for the outcome of the battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. A series of oracular tablets also confirm that individuals from Laconia and Messenia went to Dodona to consult the oracle about private matters.

Chapter 6 deals with the presence of Boeotians in Dodona, in particular their ritual of tripodephoria; every year, a tripod was stolen overnight from a Boeotian shrine and delivered to the sanctuary at Dodona. The Boeotians performed the tripodephoria ritual as an expiation rite from the last quarter of the fifth century BC. Recently, a Pindaric fragment mentioning the tripodephoria of the Boeotians at Dodona and the mythical wandering of the Boeotians and Thessalians sixty years after the Trojan war was discovered in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus. This fragmentary poem, which probably belongs to Pindar's tripodephoric melos, confirms the arrival of the Boeotians from Thessaly and the close ties of the former's relations with Dodona.

Chapter 7 highlights the relationship of Athens and Dodona. The first attested Athenian to visit the shrine was Themistocles, who as the guest of the Molossian king in 480 BC, consulted the oracle about a private matter. After the mid-5^th century BC, Dodona attracted many Athenians, as the shrine's role in several ancient dramas suggests (i.e., The Suppliants; Women of Trachis; Prometheus Bound). Athens' relationship with Dodona probably reached its peak after 331 BC, when Zeus Dodonaeus was frequently consulted by Athenians, as both literary sources and archaeological remains within the temenos indicate.

The book would have greatly benefited from the inclusion of additional illustrations, as well as a conclusion tying the chapters together. Apart from two maps in the Introduction and Chapter 1 respectively, there are only two additional images (on pp. 91 and 110) to illustrate a plethora of texts and artefacts mentioned throughout the text. There are several typographical errors and missing or repetitive words throughout the book (e.g., on p. 87, "Their recourse to oracles for private and private matters was particularly intense."; p. 93, "In either case, whether Lysander's plot was invented or a real, the fact…"; p. 111, "Oxyrincus" instead of Oxyrhynchus) but these are only minor. Another point that would have made the book stronger would have been the inclusion of a chapter on comparisons between the shrine of Dodona and other shrines of Zeus in the Greek world; although Piccinini does mention Nemea, Kalapodi and other shrines in passing, the reader is left with the impression that Dodona was perhaps the pre-eminent shrine in the Greek world, which was not the case. Despite these minor problems, however, the author is to be commended for producing a publication that is both accessible and concise, well-written and well-cited in addition to being informative for both academic and general readers.

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Oliver Taplin, Joshua Billings, Aeschylus, 'The Oresteia': The Texts of the Plays, Ancient Backgrounds and Responses, Criticism. A Norton critical edition. New York; London: Norton & Company, 2018. Pp. xxxv, 251. ISBN 9780393923285. $15.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Andrew Brown, Kent, UK (andrewlbrown5@gmail.com)

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Don't be fooled by the title page: you can't expect a Greek text for this price and you don't get one. What you do get, however, is still good value: a new translation (with introduction, map and notes) by one of the foremost Aeschylean scholars, a collection of relevant Greek material, an anthology of modern criticism, glossary and bibliography.

For scholars the main interest here will lie in seeing how far Taplin's views have changed since The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), but in fact the book pays surprisingly little attention to matters of staging. The chorus still numbers 15. Use of the ekkyklēma is now 'likely' at Ag. 1372 and presumably Cho. 973 but the chorus of Eum. still does not enter until 140 (though the notes admit uncertainty). There is still (against Scullion and Sommerstein) a 'refocusing' of scene at Cho. 653, so presumably Electra and the chorus enter by an eisodos at 10–22, but we are not told this, though we are told that the chorus 'depart into the palace' at 1076 (against Stagecraft). In the Slave's scene at Cho. 875–86 we are given no hint of any problem with doors; I would sympathise, since the difficulty has often been exaggerated, were it not for the fact that Taplin exacerbates it with 'unbolt the women's quarters too' (my italics) at 878–9. Then Pylades still enters with Orestes at 892 but neither he nor the Slave ever exits!

On two points of staging Taplin is positively and oddly misleading: at Ag. 1372 Cassandra's corpse shares Agamemnon's net and bath (and at 1446 she is 'on top of him'), as though Clytemnestra had caught them together (no warrant for this in the text or in Stagecraft); and at Cho. 6–7 Orestes dedicates two locks although only one will be found by Electra. 'Does she ignore one, or bunch the two up into one?'¹

Only in the Trial Scene of Eum. do the concerns of Stagecraft come to the fore, and here Taplin responsibly retains the transmitted order of lines in the main translation while setting out his own attractive restoration in a note at the end. We are not, however, told how many jurors there are, and this looks more like conscious evasion than inadvertence.

This is not, of course, a book for experts but for beginners. The brief Introduction is very well judged for their purposes and finds room for some pages on reception. The plays are now Agamemnon, Women at the Graveside (a dreary title – why not Orestes' Revenge?) and Orestes at Athens. The text is based mainly on those of West and Sommerstein, as it should be (this is no place to discuss textual issues but I cannot suppress a squawk of protest at acceptance of the vile conjecture πρόμος at Cho. 965). There are explanatory footnotes as well as endnotes on textual variants, all helpful as far as they go but (except on the sequence of the Trial Scene) very brief. The notes below the Parodos of Ag. should have given a name to Agamemnon's daughter.

The translation is in verse: spoken dialogue rendered in a faint and irregular iambic rhythm, anapaests in Hiawatha trochees, and lyrics in various metres, with strophic responsion and with rhymes and half-rhymes.² This has the advantage of making a clear distinction between the spoken and the sung and avoiding the stiff and stilted effect that can come from lyrics rendered in prose or free verse. There is naturally some sacrifice in literal fidelity to the Greek but the spirit is generally well conveyed. For the modern reader the effect is more fluent and natural than, for instance, that of Christopher Collard's excellent 2002 translation for OUP, largely owing to Taplin's willingness to abandon Aeschylus's syntactic structures for simpler, punchier phrases (but at Ag. 1438 he is for once too literal as readers will take 'the violator of this woman here' to mean 'the violator of Cassandra' instead of 'the man who ruined my life'). The rhymes are occasionally clunky and contrived but there is some effective poetry. Here is a fine example (Ag. 1560–6):

Damnation meets with condemnation back:
to judge is difficult.
The plunderer gets plundered in his turn,
the killer pays for guilt.
Yet this remains as long as Zeus remains
upon his throne secure:
who does the deed must suffer for the deed —
that's the eternal law.
Who can eliminate the seed, expel
the household curse at last?
This family and dire catastrophe
are glued together fast.

However, the temptation to try to improve on Aeschylus is not always resisted; at Ag. 435–6, for instance, 'voiceless and cold: a hollow urn | filled with crumbling ashes' reads well but none of the four adjectives is in the Greek.

Moreover the translation is not quite complete. A whole antistrophe (167–75) is omitted from the Parodos of Ag., then six lines from the Beacon Speech, and so on; the stasimon Cho. 935–72 is reduced from 36 lines (in West's text) to 22. Taplin is frank about this, estimating that 'somewhat more than 5 percent of the Greek text has been left out' and listing most of the omissions in the notes (but not all; without checking systematically I spotted also Ag. 394, 1014–16, Cho. 285, Eum. 387–8). Some of these are lines believed spurious; they include Eum. 858–66 (against West and Sommerstein) but at least that passage is translated in a note. Others are lines deemed obscure or incurably corrupt; this has the advantage of not tempting the reader to rely on interpretations and readings that are in fact unreliable, but perhaps Taplin gives up rather easily (is Eum. 30 really 'too unclear'?). Others again, however, are omissions on purely subjective grounds: lines that are 'rather recherché' or 'Labored to modern ears' or omitted 'To tighten the dialogue'. The reasoning is not always obvious: at Eum. 703, for instance, where Taplin could easily have told readers what the line means ('neither among the Scythians nor in the territory of Pelops'), he reveals only that it is an 'Intrusive line with little point'. Does he mean that it is spurious (why should anyone have inserted it?) or merely that it is not to his taste?

This is a serious matter. In performance, to be sure, cuts will generally be needed, but they are the responsibility of the director, not the translator. Anyway the 'Criticism' section of the book is surely aimed at students who encounter the Oresteia in an academic context and such readers will want (or certainly should want) to have access to the whole trilogy, flaws and all. For this reason alone students will still have to be referred to other translations, probably Collard's (which also has much fuller notes) or even, if they don't faint at the sight of Greek, A. H. Sommerstein's Loeb (2008).

The section 'Ancient Backgrounds and Responses' provides photographs and descriptions of five well-chosen vases; extracts from Odyssey 1, 3, 11 and 24; an excessively brief account of Stesichorus's Oresteia, not mentioning Iphigeneia or the Nurse; and extracts from Pindar's Pythian 11 and the Electras of Euripides and Sophocles. The translations are by Taplin. Space could have been saved by omitting the Electra extracts since anyone wanting to make a comparison will have to read the plays in full.

The 'Criticism' section consists of material by Hegel, Nietzsche (notes on lectures on Cho., newly translated by Billings but quite scrappy), Thomson, Dodds, Goldhill, Lebeck, Zeitlin, Vidal-Naquet, Herington, Sommerstein, Macleod, Winnington-Ingram, Rosenmeyer, and Taplin/Wilson. This provides a taster for a wide range of critical viewpoints, though some of the material will be heavy going for beginners – or at least for such as need to be told by the editors the meaning of 'virago' and 'coup de grâce'. Almost all the pieces, however, are extracts (themselves often abbreviated) from longer works and this gives the whole section a rather Reader's Digest air. It will be helpful if it whets students' appetites to read further, less helpful if they see it as an excuse to avoid doing so.

The 'Selected Bibliography' is generally well chosen and includes some quite advanced material (though all in English). A. J. Podlecki's Aris & Phillips Eum. (Warminster, 1989) might have been mentioned and it seems odd to cite Loeb editions of other authors and not that of Aeschylus. C. W. Marshall's Bloomsbury Companion to Cho. (London and New York, 2017) and my Aris & Phillips edition of the same play (Liverpool, 2018) evidently came out too late to be included.

This book will be deservedly popular for its convenience and will contribute usefully to the task of making the work of Aeschylus more widely accessible. I had expected, however, to recommend it wholeheartedly and am disappointed that I can do so only with reservations. I hope Taplin and Billings will produce a companion volume on the other three authentic plays – but without cuts, please!

---

Notes:

1.   I quote M. Ewans, Aischylos: the Oresteia (London, 1995), 169 n. 15; but it is almost certain that the lock for Inachus has been dedicated offstage.
2.   Another new translation, by David Mulroy for the University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, 2018), is also in verse but more strongly and traditionally metrical. I find the effect pleasing in some places but in others incongruously Victorian.

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Books Received December 2018.

Version at BMCR home site

This list contains all books and notifications of new books received in the previous month by BMCR. Potential reviewers should not respond to this email, but should use the request form linked here (Books Available for Review). Some books listed in this email may already have been assigned to reviewers.)

Albanese Procelli, Rosa Maria. Recipienti bronzei a labbro perlato: produzione, circolazione e destinazione. Biblioteca di Studi etruschi, 60. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider Editore, 2018. xi, 245 p., 62 p. of pl. $56.05 (pb). ISBN 9788876893087.

Alföldy, Géza, Angelos Chaniotis and Christian Witschel (ed.). Die epigraphische Kultur der Römer: Studien zu ihrer Bedeutung, Entwicklung und Erforschung. Alte Geschichte, 50. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2018. 588 p., [88 p. of plates]. €89,00. ISBN 9783515122368.

Allen, Danielle S., Paul Christesen and Paul Millett (ed.). How to do things with history: new approaches to ancient Greece. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiii, 406 p. $85.00. ISBN 9780190649890.

Arjava, A., J. Frösén and J. Kaimio (ed.). The Petra papyri V. Amman: ACOR, 2018. xxiii, 338 p., clx p. of plates. $135.00. ISBN 9789957854379.

Arruzza, Cinzia. A wolf in the city: tyranny and the tyrant in Plato's Republic. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. xi, 296 p. $74.00. ISBN 9780190678852.

Bauer, Thomas Johann and Peter von Möllendorff (ed.). Die Briefe des Ignatios von Antiochia: Motive, Strategien, Kontexte. Millennium-Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. 72. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. 288 p. €89,95. ISBN 9783110604467.

Bénatouïl, Thomas and Katerina Ierodiakonu (ed.). Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xi, 391 p. $105.00. ISBN 9781108471909.

Beyer, Andreas (ed.). Die Präsenz der Antike in der Architektur. Colloquia Raurica, 12. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. 203 p. €109,95. ISBN 9783110371253.

Bloxham, John. Ancient Greece and American conservatism: classical influence on the modern right. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018. x, 284 p. £72.00. ISBN 9781788311540.

Boardman, John. Alexander the Great: from his death to the present day. Lawrenceville: Princeton University Press, 2019. 152 p. $29.95. ISBN 9780691181752.

Bosnakis, Dimitris and Klaus Hallof (ed.). Inscriptiones Graecae. Volumen XII, Inscriptiones insularum maris Aegaei praeter Delum / Fasciculus IV, Inscriptiones Coi, Calymnae, insularum Milesiarum / curavit Klaus Hallof. Pars IV, Inscriptiones Coi insulae : tituli sepulcrales demorum. Tituli varii incerti alieni. Inscriptiones insularum milesiarum / ediderunt Dimitris Bosnakis et Klaus Hallof. Inscriptiones Graecae, 12,4,4. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. vi, 1043-1292 p., iii-x p. of plates. €299,00. ISBN 9783110601688.

Bravo, Jorge J. and Michael G. MacKinnon. Excavations at Nemea. IV: the shrine of Opheltes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. 608 p. $250.00. ISBN 9780520294929.

Brélaz, Cédric. Philippes, colonie romaine d'Orient: recherches d'histoire institutionnelle et sociale. BCH. Supplément, 59. Athens: École Française d'Athènes, 2018. 399 p. €35,00. ISBN 9782869582996.

Brodersen, Kai (ed., trans.). Ailianos. Tierleben. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. 860 p. €79,95. ISBN 9783110609325.

Brügger, Claude. Homer's Iliad, the Basel commentary: Book XVI. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. xii, 428 p. ISBN 9783110554151.

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Gray, Patrick. Shakespeare and the fall of the Roman Republic: selfhood, stoicism and civil war. Edinburgh critical studies in Shakespeare and philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. xii, 308 p. £80.00. ISBN 9781474427456.

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