posted with permission:

The Economies of Hellenistic Societies, Third to First Centuries BC. Edited by Zosia H. Archibald, John K. Davies, and Vincent Gabrielson. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xvi + 460. Hardcover, £89.00/$165.00. ISBN 978-0-19-958792-6.

Reviewed by Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles

For much of the twentieth century the Hellenistic Period was the orphan of Greek historiography. As late as the 1990s Greek history textbooks followed Grote’s example and ended with the death of Alexander the Great. Recent years, however, have seen renewed interest in Hellenistic studies, and one of the most active areas of research has been economic history. The Economies of Hellenistic Societies is a notable addition to this growing body of scholarship.

The volume contains the proceedings of a conference entitled “Demand Creation and Economic Flows” held in Copenhagen in September 2006. The conference was the third in a series planned to contribute to the reconsideration of the nature of the Hellenistic economy by producing “detailed evidence based studies” of institutions, sites, regions and other features. The ultimate goal of the project is that from such detailed studies general patterns of economic behavior will emerge that will permit scholars to escape the sterile dichotomy between the modernizing views of M. I. Rostovtzeff and the substantivism of M. I. Finley that has bedeviled study of the Hellenistic economy for most of the last century.

As the reference to “economies” instead of “economy” in the title indicates, the emphasis in the conference and its proceedings was on the diversity of economic activity in the Hellenistic Period. As a result, no single theme unites the nineteen papers in the collection. Nevertheless, three tendencies recur in the papers: a focus on studying economic behavior from the bottom up; concern for the institutional framework in which economic activity takes place; and emphasis on sources of demand instead of supply. Their geographical and chronological range is broad, dealing with the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea and their hinterlands from the third to the first centuries BC. Equally broad is the range and character of topics. The volume includes intensive analyses of individual inscriptions, studies of local economies such as J. D. Davies’ account of how Ephesus achieved prosperity over a period of centuries by consistently pursuing policies that sought balance between the various sea and land powers that might threaten it, and Gary Reger’s use of coinage distributions to identify local economies in the Aegean, and papers that treat broader themes. Examples of the latter are Zosia Archibald’s perceptive study of connections between labor mobility and economic innovation in the period, J. G. Manning’s innovative use of social network theory to explicate the complicated business activities of the recluse Ptolemaios and the organization of Ptolemaic elephant hunting, and R. J. van der Spek’s use of comparative data from Ming China to illuminate the problems caused by the persistent need to import silver in Hellenistic Babylonia.

Four papers, moreover, stand out for the novelty and significance of their conclusions. Drawing on evidence provided by the Ps. Aristotelian, Oeconomica, Alain Bresson demonstrates in “Grain from Cyrene” that the famous Cyrenean grain inscription does not refer to gifts of grain but to grants of the right to purchase grain to cities with privileged ties to Cyrene during the famine of the early 320’s BC. In “The Economy of Koile Syria After the Seleucid Conquest: An Archaeological Contribution” Lisa Hannestad shows that the archaeological evidence indicates that the Seleucid conquest of Koile Syria was followed by a period of prosperity instead of impoverishment as might be expected. Similarly, John Lund demonstrates in “Rhodian Transport Amphorae as a Source for Economic Ebbs and Flows in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Century B.C.” that the decade-by-decade distribution of stamped Rhodian amphora handles suggests that the Roman establishment of Delos as a free port in 166 BC did not have a negative impact on the Rhodian wine trade. Finally, Christel Müller argues convincingly in “Autopsy of a Crisis: Wealth, Protogenes, and the City of Olbia in 200 BC” that the famous Olbian decree honoring Protogenes (IOSPE 12, 32) reflects a liquidity crisis at Olbia and not simply the prominence of the rich in the Hellenistic Period.

The Economies of Hellenistic Societies is a valuable contribution to Hellenistic studies. One may have legitimate doubts about the ultimate success of the program of which it is a part; experience suggests that the accumulation of uncoordinated detailed studies tends to hinder rather than promote synthesis. Be that as it may, the individual papers are of outstanding quality and will be of interest to everyone interested in Hellenistic history.

posted with permission:

A Companion to Horace. Edited by Gregson Davis. Oxford, Chichester, and Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Pp. xiv + 464. Hardcover, £156.00/$209.95. ISBN 978-1-4051-5540-3.

Reviewed by Timothy S. Johnson, College of Charleston

Horace’s literary career spans thirty years from the final years of the republic to the middle years of the principate. He wrote in four different poetic modes. Any collection taking the title “Companion” to Horace faces the challenge of conveying his breadth and ingenuity. In this case, the challenge is well met.

There are nineteen contributors, who together represent thirty years of Horatian studies (William Anderson, Ronnie Ancona, David Armstrong, Phebe Bowditch, Susanna Braund, Jenny Clay, Andrea Cucchiarelli, Gregson Davis, Lowell Edmunds, Kirk Freudenburg, Bernard Frischer, Leon Golden, W. R. Johnson, Michèle Lowrie, David Mankin, Michael Putnam, William Race, Catherine Schlegel, Hans Peter Syndikus). While roughly maintaining a chronological order (the Satires are delayed), the collection moves in logical fashion from Horace’s “Social Contexts” (issues of self-representation and amicitia) to poetic types (lyric [epodes
and odes]; sermo [satires and epistles]), and then to reception. The whole ends where Horace likely did—with the Ars Poetica. Although each chapter fits well the general design, rather than give short snippets on each contribution, I offer the following sampler to give a taste of the collection’s quality and the various questions it raises.

William Anderson (“Horace’s Friendship: Adaptation of a Circular Argument,” 33–52) reminds that Horace’s professed interactions with Maecenas and Augustus are more complex than is conveyed by “circle,” defined as “Latin writers … focused around a man of distinction and centered by a system of mutual benefits” (34). If “circle” is a helpful metaphor at all, then Anderson suggests it should be Horace’s circle, because the poet groups his addressees around no one else but himself. Anderson disdains reading between the lines. For example, Horace’s naming of Vergil as his alter in S. 1.5 (maybe a sly reference to Eclogue 5) and the amusing exchange of insults by the parasites (while Horace was on a trip with his patron Maecenas and may have been writing his own iambics), as well as Trebatius’ advice that Horace stop his Satires and write instead praise for Caesar (S. 2.1) are too sketchy to be evidence. There may be some value in such conservatism: trying to peek behind the veil of ancient literary relationships, “friendships,” often pushes the imagination beyond reality. Then again being too cautious lessens our literary fun by causing us to miss the poet’s artful manipulation. Overall, Anderson takes Horace’s “ego-centric” statements of independence at face-value—but should we?

In “Horace and Imperial Patronage” (53–74) Bowditch argues, as before (2001), that Rome can be identified as what anthropologists call a gift economy and that this shapes how Horace talks about his own patronage. Here again she makes clear that even his most blatant reference to his own writing for profit (Epist 2.2.46–52) does not allow us easily to objectify his poetry as commodity. This is worth hearing, but it is hard to escape the poetry/commodity paradigm. For example, Bowditch states the fundamental problem: Horace equivocates between being a “grateful recipient” and “delicately negotiating his independence.” But why use the word “delicately” (“deftly,” 58), which itself implies a certain understanding of literary patronage, that some degree of deference needed to be maintained? Do we really know this? Horace much of the time, as illustrated in Epist. 2.2.46–52, is downright edgy about patronage and puts us on edge about its attendant attachments (cf., “oppressive alliances,” gravis … amicitias, C. 2.1.3–4). There is nothing delicate about this. Horace says that he would rather drink hemlock than sell his services any longer, and since people constantly change their minds about what poetic dish to order, Florus can be the one to wait on them. The younger Horace could be equally sharp. Bowditch cites Horace’s “tender” acknowledgement of Maecenas’s benefaction, “enough and more than enough” (satis superque, Epode 1.31; auctius … melius, S. 2.6.3–4), but it is missed that Horace also turns and uses the same language in his confrontation with Canidia (dedi satis superque poenarum tibi, Epode 17.19). How does this complicate matters to pull together Maecenas and Canidia (E. Oliensis, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (Cambridge 1998) 76–91)?

When Gregson Davis (“Defining a Lyric Ethos: Archilochus lyricus and Horatian melos,” 105–27) faces the fundamental problem of characterizing Archilochean/Parian iambic, how to conceive of it and Horace’s adaptation of it as an organic whole (Parios ego primos iambos / ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus / Archilochi, non res agentia verba Lykamben, Epist. 1.19.23b–25), he takes a sidestep. He simply designates those poems in Archilochus that do not appear to be heavily invested in blame as non-iambic (see also David Mankin’s contribution, 96–7), and Horatian lyric has an affinity with this non-iambic Archilochus. Bifurcating Archilochus simplifies the comparison to Horatian lyric, but it says little about how Horace conceptualized in any positive way the iambic spirit (animos Archilochi) and conveyed it in his lyrics. All that is left for an explanation is a coincidence in certain themes (125–6) between the “non-iambic” Archilochus, if this is a meaningful category, and Horace’s lyric. In other words, must Archilochus lyricus not be Archilochus iambicus in order to be identified with Horatian melos? This question goes to the heart of Horace’s iambic/lyric praxis. The most concise definition that Horace gives for his lyric is that it is a “socializing” of disparate elements (verba loquor socianda chordis, C. 4.9.4), a process also characteristic of iambic. Such a vision of lyric supports the presupposition of the Roman Odes, as explored by Syndikus (“The Roman Odes,” 193–209), that “Horace sees lyric song as capable of showing the way to reconciliation and peace in the domain of state affairs and politics (203).” It is unlikely that Horace relinquishes this leading role even in the panegyrics of his later poetry; compare Syndikus (206) with Putnam (“The Carmen Saeculare,” 231), Lowrie (“Horace: Odes 4,” 210), and Johnson (“The Epistles,” 331–2).

Jenny Clay enters this conversation with one of the finest, and shortest, introductions to Horatian lyric, when she by-passes the worn-out debate over the “archaizing” versus “Callimachean” Horace and takes him at his word, that he is above all a poet of the symposion (“Horace and Lesbian Lyric,” 128–31). This stance offers Horace particular advantages inherited from his predecessors, many of whom he references explicitly (129–30, 137): a voice of equality (an imagined group of philoi); a self-consciousness in which songs can reflect the values and activities of the symposiasts; an emphasis on the immediate moment, which Horace can translate into an exhibition on the performative and re-performative nature of song. The sympotic nature of lyric presses Clay into the thorny interpretive tangle in Horace’s defense of his iambic/lyric achievement (Epist. 1.19.21–33). Here she moves a step closer to a full appreciation of Horatian carmina by arguing for continuity between the Epodes and Odes.

Only one selection considers Horace’s representation of the female (R. Ancona, “Female Figures in Horace’s Odes,” 174–92), which requires covering his works from beginning to end. Horace’s female figures are diverse (muses, gods, historical, fictive, inhabiting the present, past, and future) and deployed in a variety of literary strategies (transitional figures either divine or human, sources for or deterrents to inspiration, types of high morality or degeneracy). Nonetheless, for all their differences, they, like their male counterparts, are addressed, and therefore become a mechanism for self-fashioning on the part of the speaker. Talking about the “other” is a reflective way of talking about “self.” Also, for the most part, Horace’s women, like names in comedy, lend an imaginary quality to his poetry. But does Ancona overstate when she concludes that accordingly Roman “social conventions are, for the most part irrelevant”? This is not the case in comedy nor in regard to Horace’s Canidia, who, however amusing or menacing she may be on any given occasion, personifies deviance. Given that Horace gives Canidia the last word in the Epodes, he might well appreciate that Ancona passes over her in silence.

Cucchiarelli begins (“Return to Sender: Horace’s sermo from the Epistles to the Satires,” 291–318) with the letter as object and the premise that it is sent (epistolē) to bridge distance between the author and someone absent. Through this posture (quasi ad absentes missas, Porph. ad S. 1.1.1) there is a discontinuity between epistolary sermo and the Satires, the immediacy of which neither presents nor pretends such distance. Cucchiarelli instead proves continuity (see also Clay, supra; S. J. Harrison, “There and Back Again: Horace’s Poetic Career,” in P. Hardie and H. Moore, eds., Classical Literary Careers and their Reception (Cambridge 2010) 39–58; T. S. Johnson, Horace’s Iambic Criticism (Leiden 2011) 181–2). Through a parallel linear reading of Epistles I and Satires I, he exposes the conjunctions between them so that Horace can be reread and revitalized, the later through the earlier and the earlier through the later. Through the whole we catch a glimpse of Horace, now the older grand master, resituating himself and his poetry among a new and younger literary coterie. Perhaps this is the real distance Horace must confront—how does an “old” established artist answer/write back, when he is imitated and critiqued by the young?

To concentrate on certain selections while omitting others of necessity diminishes the whole, but those singled out illustrate the caliber of scholarship one can expect. In the Fall of 2011, the Companion was required reading for my advanced undergraduate reading course in Horatian lyric. It provided a sound introduction for students coming to Horace for the first time and still proved thought-provoking for returning readers. This Companion does what a collection should: with a broad view, it informs and raises essential questions.

posted with permission:

Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage, edited by Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjenšek. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi + 460. Hardcover, £93.00/$160.00. ISBN 978-0-19-955855-1.

Reviewed by Marianthe Colakis, Townsend Harris High School

“Old dead legends! How can we go on forever writing about gods and legends?… Come on now, be honest. Wouldn’t you all rather listen to your hairdresser than Hercules? Or Horatius? Or Orpheus? All those old bores!” —Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus

“Mozart’s” protestations to the contrary, composers continue to find inspiration in the legends of Greece and Rome. While there is a vast amount of scholarship examining the relationship between individual composers and their classical source material, books encompassing such relationships from the origins of opera to the present day are surprisingly rare. Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage is a work that does much to remedy this lack.

This book contains nineteen essays examining the relationship between ancient drama and music for the stage, from the late sixteenth century to the twenty-first. It is a companion volume to The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World, edited by Fiona Macintosh (Oxford 2010). Chapters 4–11 were written for the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) conference, “Ancient Drama in Modern Opera, 1600-1800,” held at the University of Oxford in July of 2007. The remaining chapters are either based on lectures delivered at Oxford for the APGRD, or written specifically for this volume. Most of the essays concern themselves with opera, but several discuss music written to accompany spoken performances of Greek tragedies. Greek tragedy has proven to be more influential to music than comedy, although descendants of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata receive their own chapter. The dramatic aspects of opera receive the most attention, but there is also an essay by Jennifer Thorp on “Dance in Lully’s Alceste.”

While the essays are organized chronologically, the topics discussed are eclectic. The book does not pretend to be an exhaustive survey of every musical composition based on ancient drama. For the most part, it covers only those works based on extant Greek dramas, although there are discussions of operas based on Greek myth in general, or on Roman history. Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice are too influential to omit. Ancient non-dramatists were as influential as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes in the development of opera; Aristotle receives much attention in these pages. The importance of Horace’s and Lucian’s writings on ancient art forms is also repeatedly brought out. Librettists and choreographers share space in these pages with composers. Opera is never a matter of one man re-creating a classical predecessor’s work, but a true team effort.

The opening chapters, “Precursors, Precedents, Pretexts: The Institution of Greco-Roman Theatre and the development of European Opera” by Roger Savage; and “Greek Tragedy and Opera: Notes on a Marriage Manqué” by Michele Napolitano, examine the sometimes controversial origins of the musical form we call opera. It began with a desire to re-create what “the Camerata,” the humanists and musicians of Medici Florence in the 1570s and 1580s, believed was the all-sung form of classical drama (a view no longer generally accepted, and not universally accepted in the Renaissance either). Of these introductions, Napolitano’s essay is more likely to appeal to the non-specialist in music, while Savage’s goes into greater depth on the technical aspects of the early operas and their direct predecessors.

One paradox pointed out by Wendy Heller in her essay “Phaedra’s Handmaiden: Tragedy as Comedy and Spectacle in Seventeenth-Century Opera” is that, “while the first sung dramas were presumably inspired by the desire to imitate the emotive power of Greek tragedy, Italian opera composers resisted using the tragedies of Ancient Greece as models for opera during much of the seventeenth century” (67). What happened when composers did look to ancient models comprises some of the most fascinating reading in the book. Tragic myths and dramas were transformed into grand spectacles, with vastly expanded casts, onstage battles, ballets, and often happy endings. For example, in the hands of the librettist Pietro Paolo Bissari, the composer Johann Kasper Kerll, and the stage designer Francesco Santurini, the tragic tale of Phaedra and Hippolytus ended with the resurrection and deification of the young hero.

An important transitional essay in this book is “Who Killed Gluck?” by Simon Goldhill. It shows how Gluck’s Orfeo cleared away much of the clutter of its predecessors in favor of “simple lines, emotional directness, and austerity” (216). Revolutionary in 1770’s Paris, obsolete by Napoleon’s day, it nevertheless inspired composers well known for their classically themed operas, such as Berlioz (Les Troyens) and Strauss (Elektra). The latter composers are discussed at some length in this article, but there is, oddly, no individual essay wholly devoted to either in the book.

The latter part (nearly half) of the book deals with composers from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Some of the composers discussed here are well known (Stravinsky, Orff); others less so (Taneyev, Xenakis). Several essays touch on a paradox: While many associate “the Classics” with tradition and traditionalism, they have often been a starting point for the avant-garde. At the start of his essay “Sing Evohe! Three Twentieth-Century Operatic Versions of Euripides’ Bacchae,” Robert Cowan states, “… under the influence of the ritualists, of Freud, and especially of Nietzsche, Hellenism could also have a very different meaning” (320).

Readers searching for a discussion of the best known operas with classical predecessors should read Marianne McDonald’s Sing Sorrow: Classics, History, and Heroines in Opera (Greenwood Press, 2001), which contains chapters on Breuer’s “The Gospel at Colonus” and Theodorakis’ “Medea” as well as Mozart’s “Idomeneo,” Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex,” and the above mentioned works by Berlioz and Strauss. Those seeking depth of information on the work of some less well known musicians and librettists will find much in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage to send them on quests to the nearest music library.

posted with permission:

Philodemus: On Poems, Books 3–4. With the Fragments of Aristotle, On Poets. By Richard Janko. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xvi + 629. Hardcover, £105.00/$175.00. ISBN 978-0-521-11016-7.

Reviewed by David Sider, New York University

Is traveling summer after summer to Naples in order to read the world’s most recalcitrant (“illegible” is not always strong enough) papyri your idea of a good time? It is for Richard Janko, who describes one part of a his plan to make sense of the scraps before him—a part an ordinary classicist might regard as tedious—as “enthralling.” Having already published full-scale scholarly text and commentary of Book 1 of Philodemus’ On Poets (Oxford 2000; see my review at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2002/2002-06-16.html), a mere eleven years later he has produced a similarly impressive volume on Books 3–4. “Mere,” by the way, is not meant to be snarky; first, the time from submission of the typescript until publication of a text this complex could not have been short; moreover, few people can equal Janko’s industry, as is shown by the fact that while other scholars are working on other texts for the Philodemus Translation Project, only Janko has so far published; and now twice (Dirk Obbink’s equally impressive text/commentary on Phil. Piety I is not part of the Project.) He has, furthermore, already produced a rough text of Book 2 and has begun his commentary. (Book 5, long known from Jensen’s 1923 edition, will be edited for this series by David Armstrong, Jeff Fish and Jim Porter, but in the book under review Janko has occasion to quote his own transcriptions of many as-yet unpublished passages from Book 5.)

Ordinary papyri may come in incomplete jigsaw puzzle sets, but for the most part they lie flat and can be read with the naked eye, with a binocular microscope providing further help in reading abraded letters. Those from Herculaneum have been steam heated, stuck together like a newspaper brought in from the rain and left to dry, now impossible to unroll without significant physical loss. Janko, however, not only does the best he can with whatever has been separated over the two and a half centuries since discovery, he even learns from the stiff curved surfaces what is denied papyrologists reading rolls found in Egypt. By calculating diameters of curved sections containing only a few columns, he can determine the length of the original roll and hence the length of the book. C = πd is only the beginning of pages of painstaking calculations most of us have forgotten how to read. (Janko in the introduction is right to thank his father for forcing him to learn algebra when all he wanted to do was read Greek.)

If reading the papyri is not enough—with naked eye, with binocular microscope, with photographs taken through an infrared lens, with computer enhancement—there may also be the disegni now in Naples and Oxford, the drawings made in the eighteenth century of layers that were then destroyed in order to get to the layer stuck below. Further, as is the case with Poet. Book 4, there may be a vast amount of unpublished notes made by scholars over the last two centuries. Janko has tracked down, even discovered, many of these; and learned of notes made by Jensen that were destroyed during World War II.

This has been a long prolegomenon to hint at Janko’s extensive proprattomena. Book 3 is included in this volume (if indeed it is from the third book) along with the meatier Book 4 because there is too little for it to be published separately, but has little solid to offer.

Book 4 is of great interest because in it Philodemus discusses poetic theorists, beginning (perhaps) with Democritus. As usual, Philodemus’ modus operandi is to review seriatim the views of his opponents (Janko calls them “adversaries,” which has a nice devilish ring). This produces great obstacles for modern readers, as the fragmentary nature of the papyri often makes it quite difficult to determine whether a particular sentence (which may in itself be largely comprehensible) is a belief of Philodemus or an opponent. Janko’s keen sense of Greek style is valuable here, as he examines even the smallest passage for hiatus (assiduously avoided by Philodemus) and particularities of vocabulary usage, such as μίμησις, which Janko translates as “representation” when Philodemus is quoting Aristotle, and as “imitation” when part of Philodemus’ own words.

The passage on Democritus is exiguous but still useful:

—……]ν Δημοκ[ριτ—

—….
εἴ]δωλα τ[—

—
(.) παρι]στάμεν[α

—
μου]σικ[—

 

“Democritus … images
… that present
themselves … music(?)”

 

Even if Janko’s “music” is wrong, Philodemus’
context alone
sets this passage in such a context. Scholars have often tried
to find a
unified field theory that would explain all of Democritus’
views, usually his
scientific and ethical theories—an especially good attempt is C.
H. Kahn, “Democritus
and the Origins of Moral Psychology,” AJP
106 (1985) 1–31—, but now
Janko can show
how his views of the inspired poet can also be folded into this
unity (pp.
208-213), giving powerful support to the conclusions reached by
I. G. Dellis, “Οἱ
ἀπόψεις τοῦ Δημοκρίτου γιὰ τὴν ποιητικὴ ἔμπνευση,” in L. G.
Benakis, Proc. 1st Int.
Cong. on Democritus (Xanthi
1984) 469–83. My only objection is that Janko makes too much of
the subtitle
given the Democritean work, ἢ προνοίης, which has been added to
περὶ εἰδώλων,
as if it were Democritus’ own, but surely this is Thrasyllus’
addition, just
like his subtitles to Plato’s dialogues, using what can be
thought of as an
exegetical ἤ. Still, whether due to the author or to Tiberius’
astrologer, it
must say something about the contents of περὶ εἰδώλων, itself
not necessarily a
title given the work by Democritus himself; cf. J. Mansfeld, Prolegomena: Questions to
be Settled before
the Study of an Author, or a Text (Leiden 1994) 71–4 (on
subtitles), 97–104
(“Thrasyllus on Democritus”).

 

Among other topics, epic and lyric poetry are
discussed,
often, it would seem from the number of other poets named (e.g.,
Sophocles,
Archilochus, Xenophanes), in comparison with and contrast to
other genres, in
order to point out ἴδια, “particularities” as Janko translates,
which
distinguish one genre from another. This could have been done
without naming
individuals, but—and this is an important part of Janko’s
argument—Philodemus
is here discussing the views of Aristotle, who likes to support
his general
points with references to individual poets, as we see in his On Poetry. Since
ancient testimony
strongly suggests that he did this even more so in his On Poets, Janko makes a very good case that
Philodemus’ opponent
for much of this book (and into Book 5) is Aristotle, chiefly
for his views in
this no-longer-extant dialogue. His name can be found for sure
only once: col.
104.6–9 [τῶν περὶ τὸ]ν Ἀριστοτέ[λην]. (In fr. 3 col. i.7, ἀρισ[,
was supplemented as Ἀρισ[τοτέλ-
by Sbordone, but not by Janko.)

 

Janko
has no
trouble arguing that the phrase οἱ περὶ τὸν δεῖνα can mean ὁ
δεῖνα himself, here
Aristotle, but sometimes it can indeed simply mean the school
of ὁ δεῖνα, in
this case the Peripatus. Still, given Philodemus’
regular practice, einmal
is surely much more than zweimal. Moreover,
Janko has no trouble
finding Aristotelian origins or parallels for many of the
passages in this
section. The question is whether the references are, as he
argues at length, to
Aristotle’s lost dialogue Περὶ Ποιητῶν or to one or another of
his other works,
especially given the number of parallels Janko himself cites
from the Poetics or
Rhetoric.

 

Believing that the former is indeed the case,
Janko now
gives us as the third part of his book the largest number of
fragments ever ascribed
to On Poets, one of
the few
Aristotelian dialogues not to have its own separate edition,
such as those On Ideas (Fine),
Justice (Moraux), Philosophy (Untersteiner),
and
the Protrepticus (Düring).
 Appearing here as a
natural outgrowth of Phil.
Poems 4, however,
this long section
cannot serve as a stand-alone commentary on its own, as would be
desired by
Aristotelians, since for the most part the brief commentary on
the fragments
refers the readers back to discussions tightly embedded in
Janko’s discussions
earlier, within the Philodemus sections.

 

More important, though, is the question of
how surely
Janko’s new fragments can be assigned specifically to On Poets. As with his equally problematic list of
Theophrastan
titles, Diogenes Laertius’ compendious list seems to contain
variants as
separate works. The Theophrastus team (Fortenbaugh, Huby,
Sharples, and Gutas)
took the bull by the horns and simply arranged the many
fragments ascribed to
Theophrastus by subject matter, for the most part not bothering
with assigning
individual fragments to individual titles. For all the detailed
argumentation
Janko brings to bear on the nature of Aristotle’s Poetics 2 and On Poets 1–3,
absolute proof is lacking, barring a new papyrus discovery.

 

Nonetheless, even if my doubts (which is all
they are) are
valid, the crucial point is that Janko’s reconstruction of the
text would not be
weakened in any way if Philodemus were arguing against one or
more unidentified
works of Aristotle—or even an unnamed Peripatetic associated
with οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀρστοτέλη.
As with his first volume, which won the APA’s
Goodwin Award, and as no doubt will also be true of his
forthcoming third
volume on Philodemus’ On
Poems, Janko
has produced a monument of classical scholarship.

posted with permission:

The Fate of Achilles: Text Inspired by Homer’s Iliad and Other Stories of Ancient Greece. By Bimba Landmann. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011. Pp. 32. Hardcover, $19.95. ISBN 978-1-60606-085-8.

Reviewed by Parthena N. Karatzoglou, Centre for the Greek Language in Thessaloniki

Although this book’s target audience is young children, it can be pleasantly read by adults. Landmann once again, after the successful editing of “The Incredible Voyage of Ulysses,” tackles in a competent way the story of Achilles, which is difficult to reconstruct as a complete whole due to the diverse and fragmentary nature of the surviving sources. The Iliad is undoubtedly the main source, and hence the starting point, which presents a portrait of Achilles during the Trojan War. However, the material about his birth, early years, unique fate and death is sparse and drawn from early Greek poetry, tragedy fragments and later mythographers, such as Apollodorus. The author knows her material and manages to combine the different versions of the myth into a coherent story that focuses on the unique fate of the hero and the way he faced it.

Being the son of a man and an immortal goddess, Achilles was destined to possess extraordinary power and heroic temper. However, he was still a mortal and, as such, pain and death were inherent in his nature. Although the gods and Fate defined his destiny, he made his own choices based on his desire for honor and recognition that would eventually cost his life. He overcame the boundaries that restrict mortals and became a hero. This heroic world and the ideology that pervades it are very well reflected in Landmann’s work, despite its orientation as a book for children. It represents a magic heroic world that could easily draw the interest of young children who are attracted to stories about heroes.

The narration starts with Thetis’ marriage to Peleus after a prophecy. It includes Achilles’ birth, his baptism into the river Styx and the Trojan War up to the point of the return of Hector’s body to Peleus. It ends with the quick reference to Achilles’ death, and his eternal glory, thus closing the circle of his short life. His tale is satisfactorily brought to life since it includes almost all of the important events that proved Achilles to be a legendary hero. Perhaps the only episode that is omitted and could have contributed to the understanding of the hero is the one taking place in Syros: Peleus, eager to prevent his son from taking part to the Trojan war, tried to hide him by dressing him as a girl, but Achilles spontaneously responded to the sight of a sword, an action that betrayed him to be a man.

Written in rich verse, the story follows closely its main source, the Iliad, which was also written in verse, and succeeds in conveying the poetic atmosphere of the original. The third-person narrative is interrupted by directly addressing the hero in the same way that Homer addresses his favored heroes in the Odyssey, thus rendering the text more dramatic. The language is simple and the book is straightforward for a child to read, whereas the short sentences add to its dramatic and poetic style. The Arial fonts may allude to ancient Greek writing but their small size makes reading tedious and tiresome.

The bold and extraordinary illustrations are reminiscent of ancient Greek art and, in that respect, their use is felicitous especially with regards to the human characters depicted. The lunar landscapes are fitting the divine episodes of the story concerning Thetis and the gods. However, it could be argued that the “cosmic” landscapes look a little over the top for the world of mortals and, perhaps, superfluous. Indeed, the aesthetic of the illustrations creates reservations as to their potential appeal to children, but does nevertheless add to the overall magic of the book.