Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T17:37:33.467Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Latin Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2018

Christopher Whitton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘Statius’ Thebaid’, someone donnishly quipped, ‘has no sufficient reason to exist.’ Kyle Gervais might beg to differ. Like the Thebaid itself, his commentary on Book 2 has grown over many years, and deserves to be taken very seriously. The crisp introduction sets the tone and clearly signals priorities in its four sections, a rising tetracolon for author, problems of editing, intratexts, and intertexts; not a word on style and prosody, and reception is excluded on the ground that Statius’ own imitatio is quite enough to be getting on with. The text is newly constituted, with ample apparatus and text-critical discussion: Gervais joins Barrie Hall's rebellion against the bifid stemma, but fairly questions his view that the Thebaid should be easy reading; he accordingly diverges from his edition nearly a hundred times, and offers a translation which, if less old-falutin’ than Shack's Loeb, does an equally good job of disabusing anyone who thought it would be quicker to read Statius in English. The notes are full and rich: words aren't wasted, but both philological graft and literary interpretation amply attest to fine scholarship, good sense, and long thought.

Type
Subject Reviews
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , October 2018 , pp. 247 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jenkyns, R., Classical Literature (London, 2015), 269Google Scholar.

2 Statius, Thebaid 2. Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. By Gervais, Kyle. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. liii + 374. Hardback £100, ISBN 978-0-19-874470-2Google Scholar.

3 Hall, J. B., Ritchie, A. L., and Edwards, M. J., P. Papinius Statius. Thebaid and Achilleid, 3 vols. (Newcastle, 2007–8)Google Scholar (the editing is by Hall); Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Statius. Thebaid, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 2003)Google Scholar.

4 Horace. Odes & Carmen Saeculare. Translated by Lombardo, Stanley. Introduction and notes by Corbeill, Anthony. Indianapolis, IN, Hackett, 2018. Pp. xviii + 246. Hardback $56, ISBN: 978-1-62466-689-6; paperback $18, ISBN: 978-1-62466-688-9Google Scholar.

5 West, D., Horace Odes I. Carpe Diem (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; West, D., Horace Odes II. Vatis Amici (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; West, D., Horace Odes III. Dulce Periculum (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar. West, D., Horace. The Complete Odes and Epodes. Translated with an Introduction and Notes, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

6 Lee, G., Horace. Odes and Carmen Saeculare. With an English Version in the Original Metres, Introduction and Notes (Leeds, 1998)Google Scholar.

7 Shorey, P. and Laing, G. J., Horace, Odes and Epodes (Chicago, IL, 1919)Google Scholar.

8 Rose, H. J., ‘Mox’, CQ 21 (1927), 57–66Google Scholar.

9 Tacitus Annals XVI. By Fratantuono, Lee. London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Pp. xii + 184. Paperback £13.49, ISBN: 978-1-3500-2351-2Google Scholar.

10 Tacitus. Understanding Classics. By Pagán, Victoria Emma. London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2017. Pp. xiv + 192. Hardback £39.50, ISBN: 978-1-78076-317-0; paperback £12.99, ISBN: 978-1-78076-318-7Google Scholar.

11 Ash, R., Tacitus. Ancients in Action (London, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 Ovid's Homer. Authority, Repetition, and Reception. By Boyd, Barbara Weiden. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xvii + 301. Hardback £55, ISBN: 978-0-19-068004-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Fulkerson, Laurel and Stover, Tim (eds.), Repeat Performances. Ovidian Repetition and the Metamorphoses (Madison, WI, 2006)Google Scholar.

14 Knauer, G. N., Die Aeneis und Homer. Studien zur poetischen Technik Virgils mit Listen der Homerzitate in der Aeneis (Göttingen, 1964)Google Scholar; Nelis, D., Vergil's Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Leeds, 2001)Google Scholar; Barchiesi, A., Homeric Effects in Vergil's Narrative (Princeton, NJ, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Papaïoannou, S., Redesigning Achilles. ‘Recycling’ the Epic Cycle in the ‘Little Iliad’ (Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.1–13.622) (Berlin, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Hardie, P., The Epic Successors of Virgil. A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge 1993), ch. 4Google Scholar.

17 Silenced Voices. The Poetics of Speech in Ovid. By Natoli, Bartolo A.. Wisconsin Studies in Classics. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2017. Pp. x + 227. 2 b/w illustrations, 2 tables. Hardback $69.95, ISBN: 987-0-299-31210-7Google Scholar.

18 Julius Caesar's Self-Created Image and its Dramatic Afterlife. By Dimitrova, Miryana. Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception. London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Pp. ix + 236. Hardback £85, ISBN: 978-1-4742-4575-3Google Scholar.

19 Plant of a Strange Vine. ‘Oratio Corrupta’ and the Poetics of Senecan Tragedy. By Sklenář, Robert John. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 363. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2017. Pp. iii + 99. Hardback £63.50, ISBN: 978-3-11-051772-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Töchterle, K., Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Oedipus (Heidelberg, 1994)Google Scholar; Boyle, A. J., Seneca. Oedipus (Oxford, 2011)Google Scholar.

21 Prudentius and the Landscapes of Late Antiquity. By O'Hogan, Cillian. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. viii + 197. Hardback £60, ISBN: 978-0-19-874922-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.