• 2013.01.54:  Elizabeth S. Belfiore, Socrates’ Daimonic Art: Loving for Wisdom in Four Platonic Dialogues.
• 2013.01.53:  Giannis Z. Tzifopoulos, Μεθώνη Πιερίας I: Επιγραφές, χαράγματα και εμπορικά σύμβολα στη γεωμετρική και αρχαϊκή κεραμική από το “Υπόγειο”.
• 2013.01.52:  Gijs Willem Tol, A Fragmented History: a Methodological and Artefactual Approach to the Study of Ancient Settlement in the Territories of Satricum and Antium. Groningen archaeological studies, 18.
• 2013.01.51:  C. Brian Rose, Gareth Darbyshire, The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion. Gordion special studies, 6.
• 2013.01.50:  David Brakke, Deborah Deliyannis, Edward Watts, Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity.
• 2013.01.49:  Neil Christie, The Fall of the Western Roman Empire: an Archaeological and Historical Perspective. Historical Endings.
• 2013.01.48:  Armand D’Angour, The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience.
• 2013.01.47:  Gerolemou auf Thumiger auf Maria Gerolemou, Bad Women, Mad Women.
  2013.01.46:  Maria Carmen De Vita, Giuliano imperatore filosofo neoplatonico. Temi metafisici e problemi del pensiero antico. Studi e testi, 121.
• 2013.01.45:  Laurent Bricault, Richard Veymiers, Bibliotheca Isiaca II.
• 2013.01.44:  Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, Salvatore Settis, The Classical Tradition.
• 2013.01.43:  Dexter Hoyos, A Companion to the Punic Wars. Blackwell companions to the ancient world. Ancient history.
• 2013.01.42:  Sébastien​ Barbara, Jean Trinquier, Ophiaca: diffusion et réception des savoirs antiques sur les Ophidiens / Ophiaca: diffusion and reception of ophidian lore in antiquity. Anthropozoologica 2012 – 47(1)​.
• 2013.01.41:  Biagio Santorelli, Giovenale, Satira IV: introduzione, traduzione e commento. Texte und Kommentare, Bd 40.

posted with permission:

Aristophanes: Acharnians, Knights, and Peace. Translated, and with theatrical commentary, by Michael Ewans. Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. Pp. xiii + 289. Paper, $34.95. ISBN 978-0-8061-4231-9.

Reviewed by Al Duncan, University of Utah

Athenian “Old Comedy,” despite its traditional title, has become accustomed to frequent renewal. Michael Ewans, an experienced scholar and director of ancient drama, offers the latest renovation with his able verse translations of Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Knights, and Peace that are complemented by a theatrical commentary. The very structure of Ewans’ book places welcome emphasis on the joint study of Attic drama as both cultural text and performance script.

Ewans helpfully supplements his translations with a chronology of Aristophanes’ life and times, lists of characters (with potential actor “doublings”) and necessary props, glossaries of both Greek terms and proper names, and an extensive cultural and thematic introduction. Despite repeated subject headings from his earlier volume of Aristophanic translations,[[1]] Ewans’ well-organized introduction has been substantially reworked and tailored to the key issues raised by these “politically engaged” plays (ix).

Ewans promises “new, accurate, and actable translations” that have been “road-tested” to give “Aristophanes a viable voice for the contemporary English-language stage” (ix, 10, 31). He delivers with verve, providing translations equally suited to the classroom, the stage, or (better still) some combination of the two. However, North American audiences may at times find the Australian English of Ewans’ prurient vocabulary unintentionally stilted. While in rehearsal it will suffice to substitute “cock” for “prick,” some puns, such as the near rhyme of “open-arsed” with “open carts of gold” at Ach. 108, pose knottier problems.

Ewans justifies yet another edition of Aristophanes by marking his work as a specifically poetic translation, inviting comparison with the abrupt parataxis of Kenneth McLeish’s verse translation for the stage which Ewans fairly considers “too free” (x).[[2]] However, Oklahoma University Press oversells this book’s contribution to the field by collapsing the distinction between verse and prose, printing on the back cover that “many English translations of the plays were written decades ago” in “outdated language.” Such complaints can hardly be lodged against Alan Sommerstein’s prose, let alone Jeffrey Henderson’s recent translations for Focus Press—thin, inexpensive paperbacks practically designed to be stuffed into an actor’s back pocket. And indeed Ewans’ poetry often passes as prose, regularly accommodating a stray beat or two with no recourse to markedly poetic diction (e.g., “o’er,” “e’er”). This metrical flexibility contributes to the actability of Ewans’ translations, but raises a fundamental question: is verse translation desirable for—or aurally detectable in—21st century comic performance at all?

The publisher also advertises Ewans’ translations as “accessible” and indeed they are—at times to a fault. Proper nouns, in particular, are problematic. While Ewans retains historical names such as Kleon (readers, but not audience members, may pause to consult the included glossary), Aristophanes’ many “speaking names” are not translated with an equivalent calque. Instead, Ewans feels it “better to abandon the puns and go for the effective meaning” of the joke (33, his emphasis). In practice this regularly involves softening the punch of Aristophanes’ deftly wrought name with a comparatively bland periphrasis.[[3]] The problem posed by Old Comedy’s phonebook of proper nouns is an enduring one (cf. Plut. Quaest. Conv. 7.8.712a = Mor. 712a), but some may wish that Ewans had heeded Antiphanes’ observation (K–A 189, 17-8) that comedians must continually “invent new names.” Ewans, for his part, is puzzled why translators with “little confidence in the playwright” spuriously inject “touches of their own humor” (35). Faithfulness to the original is certainly a proper goal of translation, but this fidelity need not be literal or detail-oriented; it may be comedic as well. Speaking names suggest that humorous invention has an important and enjoyable role to play, even (or especially) in translation.

What manifestly sets Ewans apart from other recent Aristophanizers are his theatrical commentaries: scene-by-scene discussions of staging which are at once a user’s manual for directors, a theoretical exploration of Greek theater space in performance, and a comparative reception study of modern productions of ancient drama. Ewans’ commentaries are admirably sensitive to real issues of theater, particularly blocking for a circular orchestra, and his solutions are consistently practicable—a distinct advantage over certain philological editions of these plays. Ewans is best when he includes readers in his experiment; his treatment (209) of when and where to set Euripides’ many props mentioned at Ach. 448ff. is the best I have seen. And yet, partly on account of Ewans’ otherwise admirably confident prose (the word “must” is not infrequent), the commentaries too often give the impression that modern workshops have the power to definitively resolve enigmas of historical production. There is some danger that Ewans’ reconstructions of ancient staging, once “proven” on the modern stage, may circularly be taken as a historically informed benchmark for further contemporary (re)performance.

The paperback is well-made and Ewans’ text is well-edited with very few errors: variant spellings of Keleus/Keleos within a few lines of each other early in Acharnians are an atypical and unfortunately prominent oversight. However the cover—a striking, red-tinted photograph from Ewans’ own production of Peace—misses the mark by appearing unfittingly tragic.

In sum, Ewans’ twenty-seven years’ experience studying and staging Attic drama has been distilled into an attractive, approachable, and accurate text for both classroom and stage. This book serves the more advanced scholarly community by accessibly documenting a seasoned practitioner’s thoughts on Aristophanic stagecraft, both ancient and modern. Scholars and directors will find points to dispute in the commentaries’ prescriptions, and neophytes may come away with false confidence in modern knowledge of ancient stagecraft. Nevertheless, Ewans has not only renewed Aristophanes’ comedies themselves but also reinvigorated debate over their performance—an extensive and fruitful discussion that had fallen silent for too long.[[4]]

NOTES

[[1]] Michael Ewans, Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Women’s Festival, and Frogs (Norman, 2010).

[[2]] Kenneth McLeish, Aristophanes: Plays (London, 1993).

[[3]] In the first line of her recent monograph, Aristophanes’ Comedy of Names: A Study of Speaking Names in Aristophanes (Berlin, 2011), Nikoletta Kanavou has rightly called proper names “one of the most entertaining aspects of Aristophanes’ art.” Their suppression in any modern translation is felt.

[[4]] No monograph-length work dedicated to the staging of full Aristophanic comedies has been produced since Kenneth McLeish’s The Theatre of Aristophanes (London and New York, 1980), though Carlo Ferdinando Russo’s evergreen Aristofane: Autore di Teatro (Florence, 1962) has had subsequent editions in Italian and was translated into English by Kevin Wren (London and New York, 1994).

posted with permission:

Homer: Iliad Book XXII. Edited by Irene J. F. de Jong. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. x + 210. Hardcover, £47.50/$90.00. ISBN 978-0-521-88332-0. Paper, £19.99/$36.99. ISBN 978-0-521-70977-4.

Reviewed by Jonathan L. Ready, Indiana University

De Jong’s commentary will enable advanced undergraduates and graduate students to work confidently through Iliad 22. It will also prepare students to read other books of the Homeric epics without the support it offers—the ultimate service a commentary of this sort can provide. I stress below the utility of the book in the classroom, but I hasten to add that those whose scholarship brings them to Book 22 will also want to consult this commentary.

An introductory essay precedes the lemma-based commentary. De Jong first surveys the possible range of dates for an actual Homer, “the oral background of his poems,” and strategies for interpreting the epics as literature. After summarizing the Iliad’s plot, she then elucidates the intersections between Books 6, 22, and 24 and between the deaths of Sarpedon, Patroklos, and Hektor. This second section concludes with a discussion of Achilleus’s characterization. The next section, entitled “Narrative Art and Oral Style,” comprises introductions to the narratologist’s narrator and narratees, to comparisons and similes, and to epithets. Few teachers will start a Homer course with Book 22, but they may wish to direct their students early on to de Jong’s judicious summaries of these complex issues in Homeric scholarship. The final section covers features of Homer’s art language and of the dactylic hexameter and ends with a brief treatment of the transmission of the Homeric text. Especially valuable here are the twenty-three points concerning Homeric “Language”—that is, phonology, morphology, and syntax. (Readers will want to familiarize themselves with this section on “Language” because de Jong references it in the lemma-based commentary: e.g., “anaphoric pronoun [L 17]” (ad 18) or “third person thematic subjunctive with athematic ending [L 13]” (ad 93).)

There are now several Cambridge commentaries on books of the Iliad and Odyssey, and we can ask the following questions when evaluating the lemma-based portion. First, does the author provide what any competent Homerist should be able to provide? Second, are we in the hands of a seasoned pro, one deeply familiar with the structural and thematic mechanisms of Homeric poetry? Third, do distinctive attributes show the commentary to be the work of a particular individual? In the present case, the answer to each question is, “Yes.”

First, de Jong’s comments on lexical, morphological, and syntactical matters are always helpful. The note on verse 329’s ὄφρα clause is alone worth the price of admission (it shows result, not purpose) (ad 328–9). Occasionally, a teacher may need to give a fuller explanation on a point of grammar. For instance, about the phrase οἷον ἔειπες at verse 178, de Jong writes, “exclamatory, ‘what a thing to say’,” but a student may not understand what is “exclamatory” here. The note on verse 321’s εἴξειε speaks of “an oblique optative” and the note on 431’s βείομαι of “a dubitative subjunctive” (ad 431–2); few students (especially in the US) will know either phrase. De Jong orients the reader well when it comes to bibliography. On only a handful of topics would I direct students to additional scholarship. Daniel Turkeltaub’s “Perceiving Iliadic Gods” (HSCPh 103 (2007) 51–81) should appear in a discussion of Achilleus’s recognition of Apollo (see ad 15–16; cf. ad 214–25), Egbert J. Bakker’s “Discourse and Performance: Involvement, Visualization, and ‘Presence’ in Homeric Poetry” (CA 12 (1993) 1–29) in a discussion of the particle ἄρα (see ad 98), and Deborah Beck’s Homeric Conversation (Washington, DC (2005), e.g., 29–43) in a discussion of formulae that introduce speeches (see ad 33–7).

Second, the commentary abounds with incisive observations on various words, phrases, and verses and on various aspects of Homeric presentation. I give a representative sample. The verb ἦ (he/she spoke) rounds off a speech “when words are immediately followed by action, usually by the same subject” (ad 77). Athene’s vocatives addressed to Zeus at verse 178 contrast with Hera’s at Il. 16.440 (ad 178–81). In Athene’s disguise as Deiphobos, the poet links “two motifs: (1) two heroes joining forces against a stronger opponent … and (2) two brothers fighting together” (ad 226–47). The particle combination ἦ μάλα δή “presents what is said as an objective truth…, shared by speaker and addressee alike” (ad 229). Hektor describes the gods as ἐπίσκοποι (guardians) because they ensure that men adhere to their oaths “in the future” (ad 255, emphasis in original). “Laments are addressed to same-sex audiences” (ad 430). Throughout, de Jong keeps us informed about the typicality or atypicality of what we are reading, essential information for the student of Homer.

Third, as is to be expected in a work by one of the leading scholars of Homeric narratology, numerous comments have a narratological bent. Again, a few examples suffice. The scene in which Zeus ponders sparing Hektor but finds Athene adamantly opposed to the idea instantiates “the ‘fill-in’ technique” (ad 166–87). In using a phrase deployed elsewhere only by characters, the narrator “shows his emotions at this high point of the story” (ad 203). The perplexing ἀεικέα … ἔργα at verse 395 “form part of the focalisation of Achilles,” a fact that bolsters the notion that “this line is best taken as not implying moral criticism.” Indeed, matters of focalization receive frequent illumination, as do issues of narrative pacing.

In 2001, de Jong published her masterful A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge). We are grateful that she has continued her efforts in this genre.

• 2013.01.40:  Luuk De Ligt, Peasants, Citizens and Soldiers: Studies in the Demographic History of Roman Italy 225 BC – AD 100.
• 2013.01.39:  Hans-Friedrich Mueller, Caesar: Selections from his Commentarii De Bello Gallico. Text, notes, vocabulary.
• 2013.01.38:  Naoise Mac Sweeney, Community Identity and Archaeology: Dynamic Communities at Aphrodisias and Beycesultan.
• 2013.01.37:  Richard F. Thomas, Horace: Odes Book IV and Carmen Saeculare. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.
• 2013.01.36:  Pierre Carlier, Études mycéniennes 2010. Actes du XIIIe colloque international sur les textes égéens, Sèvres, Paris, Nanterre, 20-23 septembre 2010. Biblioteca di Pasiphae. 10.
• 2013.01.35:  Eckard Lefèvre, Plautus’ Bacchides. ScriptOralia, 138. Reihe A: Altertumswissenschaftliche Reihe, Bd 40.
• 2013.01.34:  James Allan Evans, Daily Life in the Hellenistic Age: from Alexander to Cleopatra (first published 2008).
• 2013.01.33:  Christopher Smith, Liv Mariah Yarrow, Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius.
• 2013.01.32:  Paula James, Ovid’s Myth of Pygmalion on Screen: in Pursuit of the Perfect Woman. Continuum studies in classical reception.
• 2013.01.31:  Marco Fernandelli, Catullo e la rinascita dell’ epos: dal carme 64 all’ Eneide. Spudasmata, Bd 142.
• 2013.01.30:  Luca Grillo, The Art of Caesar’s ‘Bellum Civile’: Literature, Ideology, and Community.
• 2013.01.29:  Irene J. F. de Jong, Homer: Iliad. Book XXII. Cambridge Greek and Latin classics.
• 2013.01.28:  Ray Laurence, David J. Newsome, Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space.
• 2013.01.27:  Angeliki Tzanetou, City of Suppliants: Tragedy and the Athenian Empire. Ashley and Peter Larkin series in Greek and Roman culture.
• 2013.01.26:  W. R. Paton, F. W. Walbank, Christian Habicht, Polybius: The Histories. Vol. V, Books 16-27 (revised edition). The Loeb Classical Library 160.
• 2013.01.25:  Victor Coulon, Pierre Judet de La Combe, Aristophane. Les Grenouilles. Classiques en poche. Paris: 2012. Pp. l, 311. €13.50 (pb). ISBN 9782251355009.
  Reviewed by Alan H. Sommerstein.
• 2013.01.24:  Kirk Ormand, A Companion to Sophocles. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Literature and Culture
• 2013.01.23:  Debra Hamel, Reading Herodotus: A Guided Tour through the Wild Boars, Dancing Suitors, and Crazy Tyrants of “The History”.
• 2013.01.22:  Thomas Kuhn, Die jüdisch-hellenistischen Epiker Theodot und Philon: literarische Untersuchungen, kritische Edition und Übersetzung der Fragmente. Vertumnus Bd 9.
• 2013.01.21:  Giuseppe Squillace, Menecrate di Siracusa: un medico del IV secolo a.C. tra Sicilia, Grecia e Macedonia. Spudasmata, Bd 141.
• 2013.01.20:  Giorgos Georgiou, Jennifer M. Webb, David Frankel, Psematismenos-Trelloukkas: an Early Bronze Age Cemetery in Cyprus.

posted with permission:

Luck, Fate and Fortune: Antiquity and its Legacy. By Esther Eidinow. Ancients and Moderns. London: I. B. Tauris; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. viii + 213. Paper, £12.99/$24.95. ISBN 978-1-84511-843-3 (Tauris); 978-0-19-538079-8 (Oxford).

Reviewed by Vasiliki Giannopoulou, University of Oxford

This is an insightful study examining μοῖρα (fate), τύχη (luck, fortune) and related ancient Greek concepts (discussed in Chapter 2) as cultural models, “which explore how we make meaning out of our experiences, and communicate that meaning to each other” (9). Eidinow is very good at discussing both modern and ancient ideas on the question of human responsibility (Chapters 1 and 8), at explaining the analytical tools of cognitive anthropology (Chapter 4), and at using cultural models to explore luck, fate and fortune in Solon and Theognis (Chapter 5). She is aware that she tends towards “generalisations about ancient society” (8) and states that her case studies “are not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of either ancient literature or ancient attitudes” (75). However, organizing her discussion of Thucydides under titles such as “Luck and the Author” (131) or “Luck ‘Happens’” (133), but without considering corresponding phenomena in her discussions of Herodotus and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, seems to undercut the validity of some of her generalizations.

In Chapter 3 Eidinow explores the different ways in which μοῖρα, τύχη, and δαίμων (god, gods, supernatural entities, fate) are presented in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and does this well. However, the reviewer has encountered here some imprecision or lack of clarity. For example, Eidinow describes lines 1297–1302 as introducing “a whole retinue of misfortune-makers all working together” (56) when the Chorus wonders only about two powers: what madness (μανία) has come upon the now blind Oedipus and who is the god (δαίμων) that has sprung upon his miserable fate (δυσδαίμονι μοίρᾳ); μοῖρα here is not an active agent. That “the precise relationship of each of these supernatural entities to the other is never explicitly described” (60) is true, but the weakness of this chapter is that authorial choices are not discussed; this would have been consonant with Eidinow’s concern with cultural models elsewhere in the book and is necessary if we are to get an idea about the patterns of thought and behavior promoted by the author as well as their relation to similar ideas in Herodotus and Thucydides.

The reviewer thinks that the multivalence of τύχη and τυχ-stem words (good fortune, success, hitting the mark, fortune, happenstance, chance, misfortune) is employed by Sophocles to show how Oedipus sees himself (successful and fortunate: 998, 1080; an unexpected chance/happenstance sprang upon him: 776–7; subject to chance and circumstance: 1025; cf. 1036), how Oedipus sees the misfortune of others without realizing that the misfortune is actually his own (tragic irony: 102, 263) and how the prophet Teiresias sees Oedipus (reading the riddle was a fortunate accident that has turned out to be his ruin: 442; lucky: 423, but with horrible consequences: 415–25). Multivalent and ambivalent terms (such as τύχη and δαίμων) are chosen to construct the archetype of king Oedipus and of the tragic reversal of his life (from seeming happiness to decline: 1189–92; 1206); what is created in effect is the mental image of the reversal of fortune that epitomizes the frailty, misfortune, and suffering of the whole human race (1186–1206). Since archetypes or prototypes are related to cultural models, as Eidinow shows (68–9), it would be fruitful to discuss how the archetype promoted by Sophocles relates to Herodotus and Thucydides.

In Chapter 6 Eidinow’s analysis of patterns of fate in Herodotus’ Histories is in general carefully nuanced, although the relation of τύχη with the “reversal model” and “the model of inevitable fate” (115–6) is not adequately explained. Similarly, Eidinow never explains how “Lady Luck’s Lighter Touch” (the title of her section on τύχη: p. 105) can be squared with “the tragic irony of misunderstood tuche” (109).

In Chapter 7 Eidinow rightly says that Thucydides’ presentation of τύχη “evokes the unpredictability and randomness of lived experience” (131) and that his use of the verb τυγχάνω expresses unpredictability and coincidence (133–5). But with no discussion of similar usages in Herodotus, Sophocles and Euripides (that is, of similar modes of thought being formed in the same culture), Eidinow ends up overstating what distinguishes Thucydides from Herodotus (140–2).

The reviewer has not noticed any typographical errors but has encountered some imprecision in the footnotes (e.g. n. 11, p. 186 does not make sense and n. 65, p. 195 should be “Solon, fr. 13.65–70”).

The reviewer’s overall opinion is that Eidinow succeeds in establishing a close link between the question of responsibility and the language of fate and fortune in Greek texts of political and rhetorical discourse (Solon: Chapter 5 and Demosthenes: Chapter 8), although how “Herodotus’ search of causes” or “Thucydides’ careful account of the sequence of events” (154) is linked with mortal responsibility is not clearly spelled out. Similarly, what some readers may miss is a discussion of Greek popular beliefs arising from popular texts such as proverbs and fables (masterfully done by Teresa Morgan in Popular Morality in the Early Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2007)), especially since Eidinow gives examples from modern popular culture and her intention is to explore “the perceived role” of fate and fortune “across various aspects” of Greek “daily life” (153).