Oxford (2016) p/b cvi + 385pp £37.50 (ISBN 9780199550104)
This is a substantial edition: just how substantial it is, at not far short of 500 pages, can be simply shown by comparison with the editions of Platnauer (OUP, 1938), which had 206 pages in all, and Cropp (Aris & Phillips, 2000), which ran to 300 pages, excluding the translation. Of course, this is entirely in concert with the modern trend: examples could be multiplied, and no value judgment is implied.
The introduction is generous, with sections on Iphigenia (‘In Cult’, ‘Before Euripides,’ ‘Iphigenia and Euripides’, ‘Iphigenia after Euripides’, ‘Iphigenia and the Critics’), the play’s date, its metres, the transmission of the text, MSS and sigla, and papyri (which give little help). This is followed by the text, with full apparatus criticus, seemingly based on, but not identical to, Diggle’s OCT, the commentary (where textual notes are placed in square brackets) and a full bibliography and indexes.
The first two sections on the heroine, however necessary for the sake of completeness, do not much more than tell us, in effect, what the Athenian playgoer is likely to have in his (her) mind about Iphigenia (henceforth Iph.) when the play opens: whereupon the long opening speech by Iph., acting as a programme, sets the scene and reveals, after reminding us of her terrible family history, that—perhaps an innovation—it was as a mortal that she was saved from sacrifice at Aulis (one immediately recalls that Helen, in the play named after her, also made a startling opening revelation—namely that not she, but a phantom, had been at Troy). In Iph. and Euripides, P. (inter alia) considers the similarities (starkly set out by Platnauer) and differences between I.T. and the later Helen, making the important point that, although the structure and outcome of the plays are indeed similar, one might see the two plays as a ‘demonstration of Euripides’ virtuosity in using basically the same plot to completely different effect’: the case is convincingly argued and deserves to be studied with attention. P.’s lengthy section on Iph. after Euripides is a ‘fuller version’ of a paper delivered in Poland in 2009, and needs no comment here.
‘Iph. and the Critics’ is another matter. I.T. has not normally been regarded as being among Euripides’ most important plays, yet, says P. with full detail, Aristotle (in the Poetics) seems to regard it as one of his favourites; then, after further consideration of Euripides in general, we return to I.T .via Verrall (in characteristically Verrallian mode: fanciful and wholly implausible), and to Gilbert Murray, who regarded it as ‘one of the most beautiful of extant plays’, but had to resort to extreme measures to do so and show it to be truly ‘tragic’. Later, A.P. Burnett’s Catastrophe Survived (1971) comes, not before time, under justifiably heavy fire (‘What play has Burnett been reading?’), and E. Hall’s Suffering under the Sun (2010: another catchpenny title) is criticised, in note 124 on p. lxxv, for hypothesising a lonely ‘middle-aged’ woman (on stage, she wore a mask!). P.’s comments on these and other modern critics, including Kitto, Conacher, Foley, Belfiore, Seidensticker and Wright, make many needed and valid points and are, frankly, highly enjoyable to read, even when they stray, strictly speaking, from the play under consideration.
On the date, P. agrees with K. Matthiessen on stylistic grounds in placing the play to 414 BC, a date which concurs with the highly detailed evidence—well presented here—from metrical analysis; no more need be said, except that E. Hall, who favours a markedly earlier (even 426 BC) date, again comes under fire (note 167, p. lxxx) for discounting the metrical evidence: ‘there is no sign that Hall has ever considered the matter seriously. Nor does she mention Matthiessen’s work’.
In the section on metre, in line with indications given in the Preface, we find the subject introduced at the most basic and elementary (‘Sidgwick and Morice’) level before P. moves on to analyse the iambic trimeter (Descroix’s Le trimetre iambique (1931) is ‘highly unreliable’), tetrameters and anapaestic verse, before she enters the difficult area of lyric. Only specialists are likely to follow this long section with the attention it deserves: there is a ‘comprehensive study’ by F. Lourenco, The Lyric Metres of Euripidean Drama (2010), but one mourns the unavailability for further comment of the late Martin West. (Platnauer and Cropp consider the choric metres only as they arise in the course of the play, as of course P. also does here.) Perhaps surprisingly, A.M. Dale’s (The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama [1968]) receives rather little attention.
The transmission of the text is given welcome attention, though of course the tradition depends on one MS. of the fourteenth century of our era, Laurentianus 32.2 (L), which, however, benefited from attention by Triclinius (also fourteenth century); the MS. P (Palatinus graecus 287, circa AD 1500) is a copy of L, as was proved by G. Zuntz in 1965. P. mentions editions by scholars including Markland, whose name appears often in the apparatus criticus, Hermann, Elmsley, Prinz-Wecklein, Weil, Cropp, and Platnauer (‘valuable in linguistic and textual matters’): Gilbert Murray’s OCT is not mentioned, but the texts of Diggle and Sansone (Teubner) are cited as editions of reference.
P. tells us in her Preface, as hinted above, that she has ‘provided help [in the commentary] with syntax and vocabulary which will seem elementary to experienced readers’, thereby seeing to the needs of ‘adult readers who have studied Greek for a relatively short time’: thus there is more translation, too, than one might expect. One wonders whether an edition of this scope is likely to be the natural port of call for such readers, for whom Cropp’s edition, with its translation and stage directions (but see below) would arguably be better suited, for here we have 300 pages of concentrated commentary, including (as mentioned) many detailed textual notes in square brackets, since the text is unquestionably imperfect in many places.
The commentary itself is one of robust commonsense and laudable fairness to earlier editors, while being iurata in verba nullius magistri; Anglophone readers may welcome the limited use of (e.g.) German scholarship. If she does not know what Euripides wrote, she will say so—and does so on numerous occasions. Stagecraft is dealt with unobtrusively (she expresses a lack of confidence in Cropp’s optimistic stage directions) or, as at 1068, firmly, and there is the occasional character sketch, as of the herdsman (at 260), or, more deeply, at Iph.’s long speech at 344. It is greatly to her credit that what we have are her own opinions and decisions, and if this involves, say, a transposition or an athetesis of a line or two (or the refusal to athetise, against Diggle, at 572) so be it. In other words, she proceeds on the basis that Euripides did not write nonsense, and her text reflects this: thus, she is not afraid to resort to ‘drastic surgery’ at the difficult passage around 1345.
Some minor points: P. would not claim to specialise in emendation (any more than did Jebb), and her own contribution to the apparatus criticus is limited, I think, to a cleverly changed accent at 278. A breach of Porson’s Law at 580 is briskly dealt with by emendation; at 575 there occurs the typical Euripidean figure [olôlen hôs olôle], where P. rightly points out that it can refer ‘inexplicitly’ to something unpleasant: I would have welcomed a reference here to Eur. Electra 289, a truly sinister line. Such trivia could be added to.
This is a most welcome addition to the corpus of Euripidean scholarship. The first ‘Oxford Red’ was, as it happens, Platnauer’s I.T. of 1938. That edition receives many references here, favourable or the reverse, but always judicious: however, we have come a long way from then. In the light of current trends, the price can only be regarded as very reasonable. Strongly recommended at university level.
Colin Leach