CUP (2025) h/p 692pp £129.90 (ISBN 9781108479998)
When Nan Dunbar’s exceptional Birds was published by Oxford’s Clarendon Press in 1995, a reviewer described the work as ‘monumental’; and now it has been matched by CUP’s Knights, at 692pp, which is also the first major commentary on the play since that of R.A. Neil in 1901 (Sommerstein’s text, translation and commentary on all the plays [Knights 1981] are, of course, admirable on a smaller scale). The review that follows does not pretend to give it the detailed coverage which it will certainly receive elsewhere: rather, the reviewer hopes at least to bring out some of the book’s most remarkable features. The editors’ names will be abbreviated as B/O.
The book opens with a list of Abbreviations and a Bibliography which helpfully gives more detail of the 192 works listed —when relevant—than usual. Knights was produced at the Lenaia ἀγών of 424 BC and won first prize: attendance at the Lenaia was for Athenians only, foreigners being banned, as Dikaiopolis makes clear at Acharnians 504. This was the first time that the poet himself acted as Producer, rather than Callistratos: probably because Aristophanes now felt competent to act in that role, but also possibly—as B/O tantalisingly hint—because Callistratos ‘may have discovered that he had other engagements for the Lenaia’—remembering that Cleon had taken action against Aristophanes (the details are unclear) after Babylonians in 426 BC, and feared a repetition or worse with Knights. In this play, say B/O, the audience was ‘presented with a form of political satire that was unique up to that point, as far as we can judge, in its sustained and thinly veiled attack on an individual political figure.’ B/O go on to give an account of Aristophanes’ sparsely documented life, and—also imperfectly documented—of his career as a playwright: we do not even know how many prizes he won, beyond the five of which we can be certain.
B/O go on, in Section II, to consider the poetic form and dramatic character of the play, and discover a ‘high degree of uniformity in the broad contours of the plots (sc. of Aristophanic comedies) and in the deployment and combinations of formal poetic components and structures’, notably the parodos, the agon, and the parabasis (the arrival of which the editors do not formally announce in the commentary). Later in a play, there are encounters between the ‘hero’ and a variety of other characters, usually ending in the hero’s success and a riotous celebration (a feature emphasised, not to say insisted upon, by Fraenkel in his seminars).
Knights—a strikingly agonistic play—exceptionally features a second parabasis and two agon-scenes, with a hostile character on stage throughout most of the action—a ‘major divergence from Aristophanes’ earlier plays’, because here he ‘punched Cleon in the gut when he was at his height’ (Clouds 549). So here we find the ‘enemy’—Paphlagonian/Cleon—but who is the ‘hero’? The Sausage-seller? Demos (who originally supports Cleon)? B/O expertly take us through the twists and turns of the plot, during which the Sausage seller, backed by the Chorus (of aristocratic Knights) outdoes Cleon—and finally restores the decrepit and impoverished (by Cleon) Demos both to his youth and to his farm, accompanied by youths of both sexes, while the Paphlagonian is reduced to a servile role.
In Section III—Historical Background—B/O take us through the familiar story of the Pylos/Sphacteria episode, which brought Cleon to the peak of his success, though B/O—and Thucydides—make it clear that the successful outcome of the venture was down to the planning and strategy of Demosthenes. It was during the summer of 425 BC that the planning had to take place for the next year’s theatrical competitions, including the assignment of choruses and poets, i.e. in the summer or earlier of 425 BC, before the battle at Sphacteria. The section concentrates on Cleon’s character and political activity, with emphasis on the record as provided by Thucydides and, of course, the play itself, in which references to Sphacteria/Pylos are few and scattered, possibly reflecting time pressure on the poet. B/O deal in depth with what we know or can reasonably infer about Cleon, but in the end we are left with a series of questions, e.g. as Professor E. Hall has argued, was Cleon a unique and malignant cancer on his city, without whose unfortunate contribution, the world might have been (if only briefly) a rather better place? B/O do not accept Hall’s general thesis (note 21, p.26) about the ‘collusion of classical scholarship with the class agenda of the ancient sources.’
In the long Section IV—The Politics of Knights—B/O argue that the political argument of the play can be understood as beginning with two observations: on the one hand, the Athenian people (in this instance personified as Demos) are feckless and incompetent, despite notionally wielding complete power; democracy is only as good as the men who rule the demos. On the other hand, Cleon’s political behaviour is so bad—while being applauded by Demos—as to put the city at risk: thus an even worse person (i.e. the Sausage seller) will certainly prove to be better. B/O explore the implications of this illogicality at length and in depth in a way which amounts to an essay in itself: whether the audience took in all the dramatist’s devices may be doubted.
Section V handles Production Practicalities and their Implications. B/O, given that this is one of Aristophanes’ most intellectually and politically complex comedies, arrive at a distribution of parts which makes the Sausage-seller the protagonist and on stage almost throughout the play (while acknowledging that this is not certain). They go on to give reasoned accounts of the masks, costumes and props used in the play—though how the knights’ horses are represented, if at all, must remain a matter for conjecture. B/O do not discuss the question of the presence, or non-presence, of women at the Dionysia or Lenaia. A necessarily sketchy account of the staging—for which archaeological evidence is scanty—concludes the Introduction; further detail appears in the Commentary (pp. 133-135).
VI: The Text. In recent years, less attention has been given in commentaries to texts and their transmission than used to be the case, perhaps influenced by the dictum of E.R. Dodds that in general our texts are now as good as they are ever likely to be. This trend—if trend it is—is now abruptly reversed by B/O. Papyri (eight fragments) are described in detail, but give little help, while confirming two conjectures by the prolific 19th century scholar Blaydes.
B/O take systematic account of eight manuscripts, which they refer to collectively as x: others, including the much later editions of the play by Demetrius Triclinius, are cited only where their innovations improve the text. However, the relationship between the eight witnesses considered is ‘complicated and to some extent obscure’. That is no less than the truth, and the reviewer found it convenient to have a magnifying glass at hand. B/O carefully examine the selected MSS, which they divide into a family (χ), which in turn has two sub-families and two sub-sub-families: of course R, the Ravennas (10th century AD) is the oldest and best MS, and the only independent witness to one of the two main branches of the tradition. V, the Venetus, leads sub-family y; there is also a sub-family z, identifiable by a set of common errors and eccentric readings. The Suda cites Knights almost 300 times, but these citations must be evaluated on their merits rather than as representative of a tradition.
One thing more needs to be said. With remarkable care and diligence B/O provide five tables, in which they list individually incidences of common variant readings. The tables rather resemble complex apparatus critici. The longest of these, on p.48, lists by my count 112 items; the others are only less long, but still substantial. Whether this arduous labour has led to significant improvement in an already stable text is not obvious, but the work surely need never be done again, not least because where other reports of readings differ from theirs, discrepancies have been noted, and the readings of B/O have been checked and verified (see note 52 on p.54). The stemma codicum is illuminating and does much to clarify the transmission. (This and more is aimed nominatim at Nigel Wilson, whose readings are based on reports, and not on collation, of MSS, and in particular his OCT: elsewhere one conjecture is dismissed as ‘unnecessary’ [358] and others which appear sporadically fail to find favour.)
The text is preceded by Metrical Symbols and Terms (a cretic is unexpectedly symbolised by e, while the proceleusmaticus (of which an instance makes a solitary appearance at 503: see note ad loc.) is omitted; consensus codicum and the like are given, including some which refer solely to the testimonia. The three Hypotheses are given with full apparatus critici, followed by six lists which name the personages of the play according to the manuscript—in one case the two MSS—to which they are attached. There follows the text, naturally with full Testimonia and apparatus criticus (in which the name of Blaydes appears with unexpected frequency).
A commentary can be expected to explain and illustrate the text: this is achieved here in generous measure, with 543 pages to cover 1400 lines of text. Some notes deserve especial attention, e.g. on Themistocles (pp.177-8,) tuna fishing (p.278), the Prytaneion (pp.213-4), metics (p.293). On the Knights themselves, see pp. 235, 245. On p.221 Wackernagel’s Law is invoked, but without reference to its genesis in Indogermanische Forschungen 1 (1892)—unusual, because B/O are scrupulous in giving references, often to B/O’s earlier edition of Wasps (2016), which the reviewer wishes he had had at hand. On a point of stagecraft, it would have been helpful if the Commentary had noted the various entrances and departures of the actors—R.A. Neil’s edition of 1901, though generally lauded, is similarly lacking; the omission is made good in Stephen Halliwell’s translation for Oxford World Classics (2022), which also marks the arrivals of the parados (242), agon (303) and parabasis (498).
The editors cannot be faulted on matters of syntax, grammar, metrics—or Realien, as at (e.g.) 600, 984, nor are they squeamish in discussing the sexual/scatological references or sous-entendu, which, as in most other plays by Aristophanes, occur frequently (at 888 B/O note the desiderative form χεσείῃ, but don’t add that the perhaps more usual desiderative is χεζητιᾶν, as at Frogs 8 or Clouds 1387; I had expected an Index entry for hapax legomena or nonce-words, but was disappointed, though they may be included in a long but undifferentiated entry for Colloquialisms.
The editors have adopted what feels like a ‘take no prisoners’ policy, so generously conceived has been this edition, especially in their consideration of the transmission of the text, but also in the completeness of their notes on the play’s contents: the reviewer found that few indeed were the instances where a doubt in his mind was not resolved. Production values are very high (perhaps ‘there’ should be ‘their’, p.389, note on σίτησιν).
We waited over 100 years for a commentary on Knights to match that of R.A. Neil; another commentary on this play may not be needed for a similar length of time, and one imagines that this commentary will occupy graduate seminars for years to come. It need hardly be said that a markedly less expensive paperback version would be welcome but, as it is, the editors deserve our thanks for their successful completion of this formidable enterprise.
Colin Leach