126 results
Greek literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 70 / Issue 2 / October 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 12 September 2023, pp. 309-313
- Print publication:
- October 2023
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
If you cast your mind back to 2016 you may (or may not) recall Brill's Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis: a substantial volume, comprising thirty-two chapters in 754 pages of text, together with twenty-six pages of preliminaries, seventy-seven pages of bibliography, and forty-one pages of indices. Prudent readers should be cautious when handling a blockbuster volume on this scale; the risk of dropping one and a half kilos of scholarly text on one's foot is not to be treated with careless abandon. There is, then, something to be said in favour of less demanding but more accessible starting points for the exploration of the Nonnian landscape. For most readers, Robert Shorrock's The Challenge of Epic. Allusive Engagement in the Dionysiaca (2001) and The Myth of Paganism. Nonnus, Dionysus and the World of Late Antiquity (2011) would provide a more readily accessible resource. Admittedly, accessible guidance is not easy to find when it has been swamped by a tsunami of impressive editorial scholarship: for example, Konstantinos Spanoudakis, Nonnus of Panopolis in Context; Camille Geisz, A Study of the Narrator in Nonnus of Panopolis’ Dionysiaca. Storytelling in Late Antique Epic; Herbert Bannert and Nicole Kröll's Nonnus of Panopolis in Context II. Poetry, Religion, and Society; and Filip Doroszewski and Katarzyna Jażdżewska's Nonnus of Panopolis in Context III. Old Questions and New Perspectives. As for Nonnus’ Paraphrase of John's Gospel, I confess that I have barely had time to glance at it in its entirety. Perhaps I should have been paying more selective attention to Nonnus, and less to everything else.
Greek literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 70 / Issue 1 / April 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 07 March 2023, pp. 111-115
- Print publication:
- April 2023
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Stephen Halliwell has, at last, completed his three-volume verse translation of Aristophanes. The first instalment, published in 1997, covered Aristophanes’ ‘longest play, Birds, his sexiest play, Lysistrata, and two works from very near the end of his career, Assembly-Women and Wealth’. Geoffrey Arnott's review of that first volume was positive: ‘H.'s style is lively, modern, and generally effective, closer perhaps in its presentation of the complexities of Aristophanic detail and reference than most of his rivals…He is virtually always accurate without being over-literal, and far more often graphically idiomatic than flat.’ Arnott's assessment was generally favourable, although he did identify some imperfections: ‘errors in detail are few and far between (Birds 244, “marshy greens”, not “rolling hills”; 266, “like a stone curlew”, not “with a waterfall of sound”; Eccl. 1092, βολβoί not “onions”; Plut. 192, μάζα not “bread”)’, and Halliwell ‘would have benefited from having his translation of Birds vetted by an ornithologist, who would have removed the phantasmagorical blue thrush (979), and turned the moorhen (304), siskins (1079), and curlews (1140) into gallinule, chaffinches, and stone curlews’. I confess that I could not possibly have managed that menagerie myself; Arnott, of course, was an accomplished ornithologist. Halliwell's original plan was to deal with ‘the “political” plays from the 420s, Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, and Peace’ in the second instalment, and ‘the comedies on more “cultural” themes, Clouds, Women at the Thesmophoria, and Frogs’ in the third. In the event, the sequence of ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ volumes was recast in biblical form: ‘the last shall be first and the first shall be last’ (Matthew 20.16). Or, perhaps, vice versa. The format for each volume is, at any rate, consistent: each volume has a substantial introduction, with a bibliography and brief chronology; and each play has its own introduction, together with fourteen or so pages of explanatory notes. As a sample of Halliwell's translation, consider (for example) this taster from Peace (996–1,014):
- Blend all us Greeks,
- As we once used to be,
- In an essence of friendship, and mix our minds
- In a milder spirit of sympathy.
- Allow our market to teem with goods:
- From Megara bring us heads of garlic,
- Early cucumbers, apples, pomegranates,
- Fancy cloaks for slaves to wear.
- From Boiotian traders we'd like to see
- Geese, ducks, wood-pigeons, and wrens,
- As well as baskets of Kopaic eels.
- Then may we all crowd round these baskets
- And buying our food get into a jostle
- With Morychos, Teleas, Glauketes,
- And numerous other gluttons. And next
- May Melanthios come to the market too late,
- When the eels are all sold: let him ululate,
- Then sing a solo from his Medea,
- ‘I'm doomed, I'm doomed, now quite bereft
- Of a female embedded in beetroot’.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 69 / Issue 2 / October 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 September 2022, pp. 307-310
- Print publication:
- October 2022
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Lucian figured twice in the previous set of reviews, for better (Peter Thonemann's scintillating Alexander, or the False Prophet) and for worse (a posthumous completion of Diskin Clay's True History marred by a slew of editorial errors). Now Joel Relihan has furnished us with a trilogy of Menippean fantasies: Menippus, or The Consultation of the Corpses; Icaromenippus, or A Man above the Clouds; and The Colloquies of the Corpses (Dialogues of the Dead). Relihan's brief reflective Foreword reminds us that his deep and long-cultivated knowledge of the tradition of Menippean satire extends well beyond the Lucian of the second century. A slightly longer General Introduction explains the specific goals and general principles of Relihan's translation. Then each of the three Lucianic texts is given its own (longer and illuminating) introduction, with footnotes providing a modest commentary. It soon becomes clear that Relihan's ideal interlocutor is not Lucian but Menippus the Cynic. Lucian's subordinate status becomes even clearer when Relihan makes reference to ‘Lucian's evolving (in fact, ever more constricted) understanding of the potential of the person, productions, and purposes of Menippus the Cynic’ (xiv, my emphasis). Relihan's seven-page Afterword is still more disparaging: ‘Lucian drained the blood out of Menippus’ (156). His conclusion is that ‘Menippus in Lucian is good for telling Menippus stories but, after a while, Menippus needs to be put in his place and left there’ (159). On the assumption that the Menippus in question is not the Cynic but Lucian's Menippean puppet, I concur. And as I worked my way through the thirty vignettes of The Colloquies of the Corpses I realized that I was confronted with an entirely unexpected phenomenon: Lucianic tedium.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 69 / Issue 1 / April 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 07 March 2022, pp. 135-139
- Print publication:
- April 2022
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The influence of Greek poetry on Latin poetry is well known. Why, then, is the reciprocal influence of Latin poetry on Greek not so readily discernible? What does that reveal about Greek–Latin bilingualism and biculturalism? Perhaps not very much. The evidence that Daniel Jolowicz surveys in the densely written 34-page introduction to his 400-page Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novel amply testifies to Greek engagement with Latin language and culture on a larger scale than is usually recognized. That this engagement is more readily discernible in Greek novels than in Greek poetry is no reason to dismiss the evidence that the novels provide. On the contrary, the seven main chapters provide ‘readings of the Greek novels that establish Latin poetry…as an essential frame of reference’ (2). In Chapters 1–3 Chariton engages with the love elegy of Propertius, Ovid and Tibullus, with Ovid's epistolary poetry and the poetry of exile, and with the Aeneid. In Chapters 4–5 Achilles Tatius engages with Latin elegy and (again) the Aeneid, and also with the ‘destruction of bodies’ (221) in Ovid, Lucan, and Seneca. In Chapter 7 Longus engages with Virgil's Eclogues and the Aeneid. The strength of the evidence requires only a brief conclusion. Jolowicz's rigorously argued and methodologically convincing monograph deserves to be read widely, and with close attention.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 68 / Issue 2 / October 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 September 2021, pp. 294-300
- Print publication:
- October 2021
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
When I reviewed Daniel Harris-McCoy's text, translation and commentary on Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (G&R 60 [2013], 318–19), I never dreamed that eight years later I would be reviewing two more books on Artemidorus – or, rather, a co-ordinated pair of them. It would be an uncharitable joke to describe Harris-McCoy's translation as a nightmare: even so, I was not alone among reviewers in judging it unidiomatic and often defective. Martin Hammond's characteristically fluent, lucid, and (importantly) accurate translation is supplied with notes on the Greek text and an outstandingly useful sixty-two-page index; Peter Thonemann contributes an informative introduction and explanatory notes on the content.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 68 / Issue 1 / April 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 March 2021, pp. 114-120
- Print publication:
- April 2021
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
I begin with a warm welcome for Evangelos Alexiou's Greek Rhetoric of the 4th Century bc, a ‘revised and slightly abbreviated’ version of the modern Greek edition published in 2016 (ix). Though the volume's title points to a primary focus on the fourth century, sufficient attention is given to the late fifth and early third centuries to provide context. As ‘rhetoric’ in the title indicates, the book's scope is not limited to oratory: Chapter 1 outlines the development of a rhetorical culture; Chapter 2 introduces theoretical debates about rhetoric (Plato, Isocrates, Alcidamas); and Chapter 3 deals with rhetorical handbooks (Anaximenes, Aristotle, and the theoretical precepts embedded in Isocrates). Oratory comes to the fore in Chapter 4, which introduces the ‘canon’ of ten Attic orators: in keeping with the fourth-century focus, Antiphon, Andocides, and Lysias receive no more than sporadic attention; conversely, extra-canonical fourth-century orators (Apollodorus, the author of Against Neaera, Hegesippus, and Demades) receive limited coverage. The remaining chapters deal with the seven major canonical orators: Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Isaeus, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Dinarchus. Each chapter follows the same basic pattern: life, work, speeches, style, transmission of text and reception. Isocrates and Demosthenes have additional sections on research trends and on, respectively, Isocratean ideology and issues of authenticity in the Demosthenic corpus. In the case of Isaeus, there is a brief discussion of contract oratory; Lycurgus is introduced as ‘the relentless prosecutor’. Generous extracts from primary sources are provided, in Greek and in English translation; small-type sections signal a level of detail that some readers may wish to pass over. The footnotes provide extensive references to older as well as more recent scholarship. The thirty-page bibliography is organized by chapter (a helpful arrangement in a book of this kind, despite the resulting repetition); the footnotes supply some additional references. Bibliographical supplements to the original edition have been supplied ‘only in isolated cases’ (ix). In short, this volume is a thorough, well-conceived, and organized synthesis that will be recognized, without doubt, as a landmark contribution. There are, inevitably, potential points of contention. The volume's subtitle, ‘the elixir of democracy and individuality’, ties rhetoric more closely to democracy and to Athens than is warranted: the precarious balancing act which acknowledges that rhetoric ‘has never been divorced from human activity’ while insisting that ‘its vital political space was the democracy of city-states’ (ix–x) seems to me untenable. Alexiou acknowledges that ‘the gift of speaking well, natural eloquence, was considered a virtue already by Homer's era’ (ix), and that ‘the natural gift of speaking well was considered a virtue’ (1). But the repeated insistence on natural eloquence is perplexing. Phoenix, in the embassy scene in Iliad 9, makes it clear that his remit included the teaching of eloquence (Il. 9.442, διδασκέμεναι): Alexiou only quotes the following line, which he mistakenly assigns to Book 10. (The only other typo that I noticed was ‘Aritsotle’ [97]. I, too, have a tendency to mistype the Stagirite's name, though my own automatic transposition is, alas, embarrassingly scatological.) Alexiou provides examples of later Greek assessments of fourth-century orators, including (for example) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hermogenes, and the author of On Sublimity (the reluctance to commit to the ‘pseudo’ prefix is my, not Alexiou's, reservation). He observes cryptically that ‘we are aware of Didymus’ commentary’ (245); but the extensive late ancient scholia, which contain material from Menander's Demosthenic commentaries, disappointingly evoke no sign of awareness.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 67 / Issue 2 / October 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 October 2020, pp. 254-260
- Print publication:
- October 2020
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Academics have a professional need to be published; publishers have a commercial incentive to create demand. In recent years these convergent interests have released a flood of edited volumes, not all of which can demonstrate a compelling claim to intrinsic or lasting scholarly importance. So it is reassuring to be reminded that a publishing house that contributes liberally, if not recklessly, to the flood continues to produce heavyweight volumes of unquestionable scholarly importance. Consider, for example, the new edition of the Thucydides scholia, on which Alexander Kleinlogel worked from 1960 until a few months before his death on 1 January 2007. The complex task of bringing his material to publishable form was undertaken by Klaus Alpers; illness prevented Alpers from steering the volume through its final stages, which were overseen by Stefano Valente. The introduction comprises 202 pages (the chapter on transmission is incomplete, breaking off after four pages); the lavish edition of the scholia vetera occupies 705 pages. The material for a projected second volume containing the scholia recentiora was not left in a publishable state, except for the Lexicon Patmense, which is included as a forty-eight-page appendix to the present volume's introduction. Reviewing Karl Hude's Teubner edition of the scholia, published in 1927, H. T. Deas concluded: ‘obviously this is work which will not require to be done again. Indeed, were it not a praiseworthy task for the sake of completeness, one might be permitted to doubt whether it was worth doing at all’ (CR 42 [1928], 145–6). That reminder of the extremes of fallibility should strike terror into every reviewer's soul.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 67 / Issue 1 / April 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 28 February 2020, pp. 71-77
- Print publication:
- April 2020
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (CGCG) arrived just too late for mention in the last batch of reviews, but the wait has turned out to be providential: I've now had time to use CGCG as my reference grammar for undergraduate teaching. I must confess that I do not like teaching grammar, and am not very good at it; and, by happy chance, I have not been called upon to teach grammar for a surprisingly large number of years. So being assigned to teach a grammar class at short notice was a mildly traumatic experience. But at least it has made it possible for me to become familiar with CGCG in practice. The authors’ suggestion that ‘CGCG’s coverage is such…that it could be used in the context of undergraduate and graduate language courses’ (xxxii) is carefully formulated: it could be. But the undergraduate class that I have been teaching would, I am sure, have been intimidated by the mass of grammatical detail if confronted with CGCG in the raw. I can, however, testify that at least one reluctant, out-of-practice language tutor has found the volume amazingly helpful in planning grammar classes. The clarity and logic of its presentation and explanations, its well-chosen examples, and its carefully designed aids to navigation (table of contents, cross-references, index) are virtues that I do not normally associate with texts on grammar: or, at any rate, not in the same degree. CGCG’s virtues will make it an invaluable resource for advanced students, and for tutors. For a surprisingly reasonable price, purchasers get 300 pages of phonology and morphology and 350 pages of syntax, plus 90 excellent pages on textual coherence, covering particles, and word order. ‘Still’, as the authors modestly observe, ‘there are many subjects about which we might have said much more and some about which we have said almost nothing’ (xxxii).
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 66 / Issue 2 / October 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 19 September 2019, pp. 280-285
- Print publication:
- October 2019
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Belatedness is past its use-by date. As Susan Stephens observes at the beginning of The Poets of Alexandria, ‘all literature has some predecessor’ (1). Therefore coming after fails to define a difference. The difference on which Stephens focuses instead is the city of Alexandria: ‘the unique social and political demands of this new place’, and the creation of a literary culture that responded to those demands. This, then, is explicitly not a book about Hellenistic poetry (though the wider horizon is not ignored), but about four Alexandrian poets whose work is sufficiently non-fragmentary to be treated ‘with aesthetic coherence’ (18): Posidippus, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius. There is also an excellent and informative chapter on reception. Given these poets' diverse origins it is surprising how strong a sense of the poetry's rootedness in a specific time and place Stephens is able to give. Commendably, she approaches ‘areas of overlap’, not as ‘aesthetic differences, even literary quarrels’, but as ‘the by-product of an environment of intense experiment as these poets attempt to integrate a novel kingship into the experiences and value systems that they individually and as part of an immigrant collective strove to articulate’ (22). I'm on record as not being a great admirer of Apollonius as a narrator (though I concede that he is a very fine verbal craftsman). My lack of enthusiasm was reinforced (I assume contrary to her intention) by Stephens' discussion of the Argonautica. Consider, for example, this perfectly accurate statement: ‘Pindar's poem [Py. 4] stacks successive time-frames. Apollonius unfolds these layers so that events now occur chronologically’ (123). When the Odyssey is repackaged for children, the structure is usually unfolded so that events occur chronologically: that is not an aesthetic improvement. Stephens says that Longinus ‘grudgingly concedes the technical perfection of the Alexandrians’ (144); ‘condescendingly’ would be a better word, since Longinus ranks perfection as a second-rate excellence. More importantly, Longinian sublimity does not depend on ‘natural grandeur’, but on the greatness of an author's nature. Sublimity can be found in breathtakingly brilliant insights into a lover's experiences (Subl. 10.2–3), or in a figure (16.1–4), or in a subtle rhythmical effect (39.4): a pedestrian description of natural grandeur will not do the job. When I reviewed Stephens' edition of Callimachus' Hymns (G&R 63 [2016], 119), I expressed myself with unaccustomed enthusiasm. Her new book, written in concise but lucid prose, is a worthy successor.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 66 / Issue 1 / April 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 11 March 2019, pp. 113-118
- Print publication:
- April 2019
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
It felt slightly spooky when I opened The Winnowing Oar and found a lecture by Martin West on editing the Odyssey that concludes with a pre-emptive defence of his endorsement of Aristophanes’ reading at Od. 13.158: six months earlier, in my brief review of West's edition (G&R 65 [2018], 272), I had – somewhat recklessly – described that reading as ‘reckless’. It's an excellent lecture, and well worth reading. But the Aristophanic variant still fails to convince me. This difference of opinion pales into insignificance, however, next to the textual bombshell in Franco Montanari's chapter in the same volume, on the failed embassy in Iliad 9. Applying the familiar analytic argument-schema ‘X would have mentioned Y, if Y had been in the text that X read’, I am inexorably led to the conclusion that Montanari is working from a text of Iliad 9 in which the embassy concludes with Achilles’ response to Phoenix (47). The long-standing riddle of the use of duals to describe a three-man delegation is therefore solved: Ajax was a later addition to the text. The alternative explanation, that X has chosen not to mention the one member of the delegation who (even after Achilles has pointedly declared the discussion at an end) succeeds in getting Achilles to make a positive (though deferred) commitment to coming to the rescue of his comrades (649–55), is surely too far-fetched to be credible. Montanari is a very fine scholar: but the embassy that he describes is not the one that I find in my text. Eleven other fine scholars have contributed to this Festschrift for Antonios Rengakos: I will briefly mention three chapters that particularly caught my attention. Margalit Finkelberg argues persuasively for a seventh-century fixation of the Homeric texts in the light of iconographical evidence. Jonas Grethlein, in a study of Odysseus and Achilles in the Odyssey, hopes to show (and succeeds in doing so) ‘that the relation between Odysseus and Achilles in Homeric epic is far more complex than the metapoetically charged juxtaposition of βίη versus μῆτις, which Greg Nagy's The Best of the Achaeans has made a central creed of Homeric scholarship’ (140). I agree whole-heartedly: this painfully reductive antithesis never deserved the prominence it has gained. And, as Grethlein observes, ‘the Iliadic echoes make the Odyssey into more than an adventure story: it becomes a multi-facetted narrative engaged with ethical issues’ (138). Gregory Hutchinson, who can be relied upon for stimulating thoughts expressed with precision, elegance, and wit, begins by suggesting that scholars have laid ‘too much emphasis on the production’ of the Homeric poems, ‘and not enough on the effect of the works on the audience or audiences of the time’ (145). He goes on to examine the phenomenon of repetition in the light of cognitive studies (specifically, the concept of ‘attention’) and comparative literature. Oral improvisation is acknowledged as ‘a conceivable possibility’, but ‘it may be time to turn…our primary attention…to an understanding of [the poem's] impact which best fits the text and best captures its multiplicity and power’ (167).
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 65 / Issue 2 / October 2018
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 September 2018, pp. 242-247
- Print publication:
- October 2018
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
ἄνδρά μοι ἔννεπε…: Are you shocked to find a misprint at the very beginning of Martin West's Teubner Odyssey? Then you've not been reading the poem in the editions of La Roche (1867–8) or Ludwich (1889–91), and you have not been reading the Iliad in West's edition (1998). You will need to consult the latter if you want to gain enlightenment on this and other orthographic niceties: the introduction to West's Odyssey is, inconveniently, not a stand-alone resource. Sampling his text alongside Allen's routinely derided OCT rarely revealed differences more substantive than, for example, ἐνὶ vs ἐπὶ in 1.211. But confidence in my collation may be undermined when I confess that I almost missed μηδὲ vs μέγα δέ in 13.158: West's decision to set aside the entire ancient textual tradition in favour of Aristophanes of Byzantium's conjecture strikes me as reckless. Strongly attested lines have no immunity to West's suspicions (e.g. 1.171–3). Suspect lines are variously queried in the apparatus, or bracketed in the text, or moved from text to apparatus. The last of these options is disruptive to the reading experience, and such a sharply polarized layout can hardly avoid being arbitrary: doubtfulness is a continuum. I, at any rate, was unable to extract a consistent set of criteria underlying West's choices among the three options. But his handling of these difficult decisions is more restrained than I had expected. The apparatus, once its conventions have become familiar, is clear and informative; an unprecedented range of papyri is cited; the testimonia, too, are given in unprecedented abundance. Allen, of course, but also von der Mühll (1946) and Thiel (1991) are put in the shade by West's final scholarly tour de force.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 65 / Issue 1 / April 2018
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 15 March 2018, pp. 103-108
- Print publication:
- April 2018
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Asya Sigelman can write spectacularly well. Recently I've been spending a lot of time with Longinus (a.k.a. almost anyone but Longinus), and there were points in Pindar's Poetics of Immortality which made me think: Longinus would have appreciated that! It helped that Sigelman's theme is immortality – which she rightly insists does not, for Pindar, mean indefinite temporal extension: it is realized in a perhaps momentary achievement of godlike excellence (2–3). And prophecy is ‘not simply accurate prediction’ but the ‘god-like vision’ with which poets, as well as prophets, are endowed (5), along with the ability to share that vision: ‘it is just such sharing that we encounter in Pindar's epinicians’ (6). Longinus, too, speaks of the vision of godlike authors (35.2). But the line of argument which reading Longinus had primed me to expect is not the one the one that Sigelman actually takes. She sets her face firmly against ‘extrapoetic’ circumstances and objectives (9), and insists on reading ‘intrapoetically’ (11). She is concerned with how all that is extrapoetic ‘becomes the stuff and substance of immortality within and by means of the ode, right before the eyes of the song's audience, regardless of which epoch this audience belongs to’ (10). (Note, in parenthesis, ‘eyes’: Sigelman only once remembers that audiences have ears [136]: a very un-Longinian oversight.) One might ask: can the conditions of reception really be disregarded? The question turns out to be otiose (or, rather, the prompt to the question turns out to be misleading), since Sigelman's poet, victor and audience are ‘exclusively…intrapoetic characters’ (11). From this we can infer that when she says that ‘Pindar structures his adjectives and myths in such a way as to keep constant focus on the song's ongoing work of crafting itself from within’ (14), she is not referring to Pindar, but to an intrapoetic homonym. Yet if the song is crafting itself from within, what structuring is left for the intrapoetic poet (a product, presumably, of the song's self-crafting) to do? ‘The epinician is always…structured as an address of the intrapoetic “I” of the poet to the intrapoetic “you” of the concentric, progressively widening circles of victor, family, clan, polis, and Hellas’ (56). The intrapoetic poet has a structuring function only as one of the structuring devices that the poem uses to compose itself. And the poem is strikingly self-obsessed: ‘the core underlying structure of Pindar's song is preoccupied with revealing and displaying the creative poetic effort whereby the song comes to be’ (83): that is (since this Pindar is ex hypothesi intrapoetic), whereby the song brings itself into being by means of its own ‘perpetual self-construction’ (84). When ‘Pindar lays bare and demands appreciation of his arduous poetic labor’ (85), it is not easy to believe that Sigelman is keeping her exclusively intrapoetic promise. But acquitting her of inconsistency entails convicting her of the ontological extravagance of a poem that is ‘a living creature engrossed in the ongoing process of creating itself’ (120), which, as Aristotle impishly said of Plato's Forms, is ‘empty verbiage and poetic metaphors’ (Met. 1.9, 991a20–2) or meaningless ‘tum-ti-tums’ (An. post. 1.22, 83a32–4). Nor, I confess, could I make much sense of her account of the semantics of attributive and predicative adjectives (22–3), which leads to the claim that
a story cast in the shape of an attributive adjective (i.e. as a relative clause) is not really a narrative. Semantically, such a story unfolds itself, much as how in the phrase ‘beautiful woman’ the beauty of the woman is not something we are informed about by an external agency, but something that the noun ‘woman’ discloses about itself. (27, emphasis in original)
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 64 / Issue 2 / October 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 October 2017, pp. 182-187
- Print publication:
- October 2017
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
I began my last set of reviews by expressing doubts about the speculative literary prehistory in Mary Bachvarova's From Hittite to Homer (G&R 64 [2017], 65). Near Eastern antecedents also feature in Bruno Currie's Homer's Allusive Art. Currie displays more methodological awareness and more intellectual suppleness: he recognizes the possibility of parallels arising independently (213–15), but denies that his examples can be coincidental, while acknowledging that this confronts us with a ‘glaring paradox’ (217). To be fair, he has a point in this instance, and in many of his other case studies; and his overarching argument is beautifully conceived. On the debit side of the account, there are methodological tautologies: that we should accept conclusions if there is ‘sufficient warrant’ (29) or the evidence is ‘sufficiently compelling’ (174), and not bring charges ‘too quickly’ (32), follows from the meaning of ‘sufficient’ and ‘too’. Adverbial IOUs of indeterminate creditworthiness like ‘arguably’ (×45) are not an adequate substitute for arguments (cf. G&R 63 [2016], 235). ‘Of course’ (×50) is superfluous if it refers to what is genuinely a matter of course, and misleading if not. And, of course, Currie's use of scare quotes is arguably too extravagant. Some weaknesses are more substantive. For example, when trying to determine the Iliad’s relation to a hypothetical antecedent (designated ‘*Memnonis (Aethiops)’), Currie maintains that ‘the short life of Achilleus arguably [!] has the status of “fact” [!] because the audience knows – through familiarity with an earlier version – which way Achilleus is ultimately going to make up his mind’ (62). Regardless of their familiarity with any hypothetical earlier version, the audience of the Iliad knows that Achilles' life will be short because the extant version establishes it as a fact when it makes this a presupposition of the exchange between Achilles and Thetis (Il. 1.352, cf. 416–18, 505–6). From 9.410–5 we might infer that what is presupposed in Book 1 results from Achilles' prior choice: if so, the change of mind implied in his answer to Odysseus is implicitly retracted in his response to Ajax (650–5). ‘The choice that Achilleus is actually going to make only after the death of Patroklos' (62) had therefore already been made. It is disappointingly reductive to say that ‘Diomedes plays out the part of Gilgamesh in this episode of Iliad V, but for this part of the Iliad Diomedes serves as a “stand-in” [!] for Achilleus, and Achilleus in the Iliad more widely plays out the part of Gilgamesh’ (197): Homer's characters are not tokens, and Diomedes is always, and distinctively, himself. The point of putting Od. 19.96–604 alongside an alternative version manufactured to be parallel but different (47–55) eluded me entirely. ‘I do not see’, says Currie, ‘what is gained by refusing to speak of allusion to a particular poem’ (102). Nor do I; and some of his parallels seemed compelling, however hard I tried to resist. Nevertheless, we must balance the loss in refusing to speak of allusion against the risks of building on foundations that may have too high a proportion of sand. Currie has written a brilliant and subtle book. Its contents will need careful sifting.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 64 / Issue 1 / April 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 14 March 2017, pp. 65-71
- Print publication:
- April 2017
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Mary Bachvarova's large, complex and ambitious From Hittite to Homer argues for long-distance interactions linking the Near East to Anatolia to Greece, and constructs a model of ‘why, how, and when’ (198) those interactions operated. The general thesis is not seriously in doubt, and much of the model's detail seems plausible; but since that is beyond my competence to judge, I will stick to my remit as Greek literature reviewer and focus on what the model, if right in detail, might tell us about Greek narrative poetry. How useful is Bachvarova's speculative literary prehistory, and what is it useful for? Can it illuminate the texts we have? Referential ambiguities expose one problem. The claim that ‘the overarching plot and theme of the Odyssey speak to the values of the warrior-traders that motivated the spread of Near Eastern epic motifs’ (296) is startling: Odysseus never engages in trade; indeed, to call him a trader is a calculated insult (Od. 8.159–64). It emerges a few pages later that the reference is not to the Odyssey, but to a hypothetical original: ‘The Odyssey may have originally addressed the values of heroic trade…but as the values of the Greek aristocratic class changed and trade was viewed more negatively, the role of the hero would have lost its trader aspects’ (298). I'm not sure whether this explanation also applies to (e.g.) ‘Agamemnon rejects the interpretation of his seer, refusing to release Chryseis’ (193) or ‘it has become clear to Achilles that the gods’ intervention, the advice to avoid battle…has been at the cost of his own life’ (194). Contrast the extant Iliad, in which Agamemnon agrees to release Chryseis (1.116–17) and Achilles withdraws on his own initiative (1.169–71). These may just be inaccurate recollections of ‘the supremely sophisticated and complex works that are known to us’ (396). But to the extent that Bachvarova's interpretation of extant texts is skewed by her speculative literary prehistory, or her reconstruction of lost texts is shaped by it, the parallels are not evidence for the hypothesis but artefacts of it. Parallels per se are not, in any case, sufficient evidence of influence: Mesoamerican pyramids were not derived from Egypt. Yet Bachvarova's opening sentences jump directly from parallels to the how and why of influence (1). Is ‘negative reaction to speech’ (44) so distinctive a cultural phenomenon as to make its appearance in different narrative traditions evidence of influence? If parallels between hospitality narratives (142–5) reflect cognate hospitality cultures, why should we appeal to transmission by song to explain them? The similarities between Naram-Sin and Hector (191–5) could originate independently in any two cultures which regarded divination as a source of good advice if (as is likely) they had noticed that leaders sometimes fail to accept good advice. This is a stimulating book; but Bachvarova's approach to diagnosing influence lacks the methodological rigour of Christopher Metcalf's The Gods Rich in Praise (G&R 63 [2016], 251).
WHAT IS THE SUBLIME? - (J.I.) Porter The Sublime in Antiquity. Pp. xxii + 690, ills. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Cased, £99.99, US$160. ISBN: 978-1-107-03747-2.
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- The Classical Review / Volume 67 / Issue 2 / October 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 March 2017, pp. 541-543
- Print publication:
- October 2017
-
- Article
- Export citation
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 63 / Issue 2 / October 2016
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 16 September 2016, pp. 251-255
- Print publication:
- October 2016
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Let us begin, as is proper, with the gods rich in praise – or, more precisely, with The Gods Rich in Praise, one of three strikingly good monographs based on doctoral theses that will appear in this set of reviews. Christopher Metcalf examines the relations between early Greek poetry and the ancient Near East, focusing primarily on hymnic poetry. This type of poetry has multiple advantages: there is ample primary material, it displays formal conservatism, and there are demonstrable lines of translation and adaptation linking Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite texts. The Near Eastern material is presented in the first three chapters; four chapters examine early Greek poetry. Two formal aspects are selected for analysis (hymnic openings and negative predication), and two particular passages: the birth of Aphrodite in Theogony 195–206, and the mention of a dream interpreter in Iliad 1.62–4. In this last case, Metcalf acknowledges the possibility of transmission, while emphasizing the process of ‘continuous adaptation and reinterpretation’ (225) that lie behind the Homeric re-contextualization. In general, though, his detailed analyses tend to undermine the ‘argument by accumulation’ by which West and others have tried to demonstrate profound and extensive Eastern influence on early Greek poetry. Metcalf finds no evidence for formal influence: ‘in the case of hymns, Near Eastern influence on early Greek poetry was punctual (i.e. restricted to particular points) at the most, but certainly not pervasive’ (3). His carefully argued case deserves serious attention.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 63 / Issue 1 / April 2016
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 29 March 2016, pp. 116-121
- Print publication:
- April 2016
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
As Aeschines famously said, phēmē (‘fame’) can't be trusted: that's why ‘famously’ so often prefaces a mistaken report. Karen ní Mheallaigh knows that in Gorgias B23 it is the sophisticated audience which is deceived, and she understands the ‘contractual’ relationship that Gorgias posits between audience and author (e.g. 30, 32, 78). But, making the fatal mistake of calling it ‘Gorgias’ famous dictum’, she hallucinates a reference to madness and says that ‘what is at stake…is the confusion between reality and representation, which is a measure either of the audience's lack of sophistication, or of the artist's supreme skill’ (29). Her invitation to ‘read with imagination, and with pleasure’ (xi) succeeds admirably. Reading her exploration of the self-conscious, extremely sophisticated, and persistently playful fictionality of Lucian (Toxaris, Philopseudes, True Stories) and others (Antonius Diogenes, Dictys and Dares, Ptolemy Chennus) was, for me, an intensely stimulating and pleasurable experience. But the Gorgias aberration was not the only thing that also often made it annoying. ‘The irony that pervades Lucian's work…is not a symptom of exhaustion but of exuberance’ (37): doesn't that state the obvious? ‘Having read Toxaris, it is difficult to read Chaereas and Callirhoe without feeling its improbable storyishness’ (49): is that any less difficult for those who haven't read Toxaris? ‘Is Toxaris a dialogue about friendship, or about fiction?’ (67): the headline answer (‘both: for the theme of friendship is itself entwined with the dynamics of fiction in the dialogue’) is undercut by what follows, which reductively treats the friendship theme as a pretext and pretence (‘in Lucian's work, fiction is almost invariably enjoyed under the pretext of doing or talking about something else, and Toxaris is no exception: it is a dialogue about novelistic narrative, masquerading as a dialogue about friendship’; my emphasis). A fictional speaker's oath ‘compels the reader into acquiescence that the story he is listening to is true’ (68, original emphasis): how is that possible when (given the existence of perjury) even non-fictional oaths don't have that power? Is it true that a ‘constant oscillation between the poles of belief and disbelief…takes place in the reader's mind when (s)he reads fiction’ (70)? The internal audience may be waveringly doubtful about the status of what they are hearing, but sophisticated external audiences of fiction are capable of maintaining a complex attitude free of oscillation. ‘The reader must wonder whether (s)he is him or herself contained within that remote specular image on the Moon, a minute mirror image of a reader and a book, within the very book (s)he is now holding’ (226): that's not the ‘must’ of necessity, since I don't wonder that at all. Am I violating some ‘must’ of obligation? But why should anyone be obliged to wonder anything so daft? I was not disturbed by ‘the disturbing idea that every reality may be a narrative construct, another diegesis in which we are the characters, being surveyed by some remote and unseen reader, perhaps right now’ (225; compare 207), nor unsettled by ‘the unsettling possibility that the real world outside Lucian's text could be just as fictional, if not more so, than the world inside the book’ (230; compare 8). If you are of a nervous disposition, do not read this book: thirty-six occurrences of ‘anxiety’ and ‘anxious’ might make you jittery. Otherwise, read it, enjoy it, and (from time to time) shout at it in frustration.
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 62 / Issue 2 / October 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 September 2015, pp. 218-223
- Print publication:
- October 2015
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
In the latest Cambridge Green and Yellow Homer, Angus Bowie tackles Odyssey 13–14, intent on ‘rescuing the reputation of these books’ (ix): a worthy project, to which he makes a significant contribution. He has good things to say on the dovetailing of the two parts of the epic, and provides illuminating analyses of some of the conversations in Book 14. He places particular stress on the major roles given to lower-status characters, in which he discerns ‘a new type of epic’ (16) – a phrase qualified by a cautious question mark. Caution is abandoned, however, when he goes on to say that ‘the ideology of the Odyssey…represents a parity of status of the rich and poor’ (22): the hyperbolic ‘parity’ distracts from a valid underlying point. As in his commentary on Herodotus 8 (G&R 56 [2009], 99), Bowie is generous in providing linguistic support. In this case, perhaps over-generous: is the attention paid to historical linguistics disproportionate to student needs? It is true that ‘if one has an idea of how linguistic forms and constructions came about, they are more comprehensible and so easier to learn and retain’ (ix); my own Greek teacher applied the principle to good effect – but less relentlessly, and with a lighter touch. (The introductory section on Homeric language has four subsections, the third of which has up to five nested sublevels: incorrect cross-references in the glossary under ‘grade’ and ‘laryngeal’ suggest that even Bowie struggled with this elaborate hierarchy.) Some points are forced. When the Phaeacians put Odysseus ashore asleep in a blanket, Bowie comments: ‘Od. is treated almost like a tiny child coming swaddled into the world for the first time; again, the idea of a new start is evoked’ (117): I am not a qualified midwife, but am fairly sure that babies do not come into the world ready-wrapped and slumbering soundly. In his note on 13.268 Bowie cites three passages in the Iliad in which ambush ‘is presented as a cowardly tactic’: one is about the use of distance weapons, not ambush (11.365–95), while the other two celebrate the target's victory without reference to the ambushers’ courage or lack of it (4.391–8, 6.188–90). Ambushes are hard to execute successfully, and therefore dangerous. That is why the best men are chosen for operations of this kind (6.188–90, 13.276–86), and why Achilles is not paying Agamemnon a compliment when he claims that he takes no part in them (1.227–8).
Contributors
-
- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Greek Literature
- Malcolm Heath
-
- Journal:
- Greece & Rome / Volume 62 / Issue 1 / April 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 March 2015, pp. 92-97
- Print publication:
- April 2015
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
When I started writing these reviews I presaged aggravated grumpiness in reaction to proliferating guides, handbooks and companions (G&R 52 [2005], 250). Subsequent experience has disconfirmed that prediction. I am not quite megalomaniac enough to believe that my threat cowed editors into raising their standards, nor modest enough to believe that my own standards have been subverted by mere habituation. Perhaps, then, proliferation itself has raised standards by increasing competition. However that may be, the current crop illustrates two ways in which specimens of the genre can earn their keep. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy achieves success by combining consistent excellence on the part of the contributors with a well-conceived and well-executed editorial plan. Martin Revermann's introduction is a model of how it should be done: he sets out the agenda (approaching the Greek comic tradition as a continuum, and moderating as far as possible the Aristophano-, Menandro-, and Athenocentricity of our evidence) and provides an overview, giving lucid summaries of individual chapters that also highlight their interconnections and their contributions to the overall structure (‘Setting the Stage’, ‘Comic Theatre’, ‘Central Themes’ ‘Politics, Law and Social History’, ‘Reception’). Andreas Willi, on ‘The Language(s) of Comedy’, does an especially fine job on a difficult brief; I was also impressed by Ralph Rosen's thoughtful essay on the ‘comic hero’ (a category with which I feel uncomfortable). But, in singling out those two for mention, I do not mean to detract from the high quality sustained throughout.