CUP (2022) p/b 298pp £23.99 (ISBN 9781009200660)
It is good to welcome another commentary in Cambridge`s admirable Green and Yellow series. The (substantial) Introduction is followed by the text (without apparatus criticus), Commentary, three Appendices, a Bibliography and an Index.
The introduction covers Comedy at Rome (Andria is a fabula palliata, i.e. a Roman comedy in Greek dress), including details of its physical performance; Section 2 concerns the Career of Terence (about which little definite can be stated: he may have been a freedman; Andria was his first comedy, written [reportedly] at the age of 19;and he produced six plays in all, performed in the 160s BC, before dying young); our source is Suetonius, but he was far from confident about the accuracy of the biographical tradition. Andria (itself a long section 3) has a most unusual feature: we learn from the prologue that Terence introduced into the play material from another play, also by Menander, i.e. The Woman of Perinthos. We are not told the reason for this: was the original play too short? Or did it need to be ‘beefed up’ in some way? Of Menander himself, Aristophanes of Byzantium famously asked, ‘O Menander and Life, which of you imitated the other?’—but as for Terence, Julius Caesar called him a dimidiatus Menander.
Contaminari non decere fabulas, says the Prologue in a senarius that has a gnomic quality, but it is a practice seen elsewhere in Terence: moreover, writes G., ‘by leaving so much unsaid (it) has become the greatest single crux in Terentian studies’: he leaves it there. Elsewhere, plagiarism is added to the charge. It cannot be said that the ‘contamination’ here has added greatly to the usual rather slender plot, though at one point, four actors must be on the stage; and it does seem at least possible—see Appendix 1—that there was an alternative ending, which, however, may well not have been contemporary with the original production.
The Introduction continues with consideration of the character of the freedman Sosia, ‘Terence`s creation’, identified by the 4th century grammarian Donatus as a cook—but, G. pointedly asks, why does he not behave like a cook? G. later compares and contrasts Terence with Plautus, whose comedies appeared from up to c. 60 years before those of Terence—one need only point to the less boisterous and prominent roles played by Terence’s slaves, but there is much more of value in this (sub)section. Plautus drew on the same New Comedy sources as did Terence (Diphilus scripsit, Maccus vortit barbare), but, as Fraenkel showed in his justly famous Plautine Elements in Plautus, there is much more individuality in the older dramatist. Rather a long subsection on Reception brings out the evidence for Terence’s continued life and growing influence as a text—notably with Cicero, but he has proved important as a school text ‘well into early modern times’.
Section 4—Language and Style—covers Orthography (good examples given), Diction, Arrangement, and Aesthetic Effects (‘what passes for Terentian “street talk” sounds like the talk of a much tonier [sic] street’). Section 5, Metre, handles this subject in welcome and (considerable) technical detail: only on the Lex Brevis Brevians would the reviewer have asked for more (W.M. Lindsay’s accounts in his Early Latin Verse and edition of Captivi, despite being a century old, are palmary, the second of them even being approved by Fraenkel).
Section 6 is given to Donatus, whose commentary on Terence survives only in a compilation of disparate fragments; yet ‘what remains has shaped the course of Terentian studies for centuries … commentaries—including this one—continue to be in its debt’. We are reminded here of the citation of Eunuchus 41, and comment by Donatus, quoted by his pupil Jerome: pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
Section 7, Text and Transmission, usefully covers (mainly) familiar ground; our Manuscripts are modestly supplemented by some papyrus evidence. G. points out that the MSS share two striking features; first, they do not uniformly recognize that the plays are in verse; and secondly, all MSS of Terence accurately reflect an original Roman practice; they lack divisions into acts (a matter well handled in the Commentary). And another point of great relevance is made when G. writes that the ‘process of transmission from the original creation of a script to what Flavian scholars may have found under Terence’s name, to what Donatus knew, to what we know today as the text of Andria, is thus nearly as problematic in outline as in detail’. G. bases his text upon that of Barsby’s for the Loeb Library series (2001); six ‘significant’ changes are listed on p.65.
The Commentary is of a very high quality. In addition to ensuring that matters of dramaturgy are constantly and fully dealt with, changes of scene or act being notably well handled (there is a good example at [IV.i], lines 625-83) G. is alive to every nuance of Terence’s Latinity and style. It is always possible to find quibbles (at 555 amantium irae amoris integratiost ‘has a proverbial ring’, but it must surely deserve full proverbial status. G. also points out that integratio appears only here among classical authors). At 854 immo is scanned with both syllables short; ‘Plautus and Terence frequently shorten the first syllable with the second syllable then lightened by iambic shortening’. At 85, the usages of sodes and habuit are handled with informative clarity. Such instances of G.’s attention to detail could be multiplied indefinitely—which made this reviewer’s task exceptionally and consistently agreeable, especially as parallels and citations of other scholars’ work are limited to what is relevant: to misquote William of Ockham, exempla non sunt praeter necessitatem multiplicanda.
The three Appendices cover:
(1) Alternative Ending(s), concerning one of which, appearing in some texts in Donatus’ time, the grammarian was very doubtful; Pap. Oxy 24.2401, however, hints at a now lost additional scene (such a scene might well serve to give more (welcome) substance to Charinus, an import from Perinthia). G. gives in full a version of an actual alternative ending found in a group of inferior mediaeval MSS; of high quality in some respects, it is nonetheless ‘clearly post-Terentian’: G.’s commentary is admirably thorough.
(2) The Greek Models from Menander’s Andria and Perinthia : it cannot be said that the examples given are either convincing or helpful in establishing the text of our play. Although the full Commentary discusses individual points of comparison and contrast made by Donatus between Terence and his models, G. finds it sensible to list them all here as a group.
(3) Cicero’s Andria, which figures most prominently among his many citations of Terence; ten examples are given in full (did the play, perhaps, feature in Cicero’s early education?).
Any student who is called upon to work on this play will assuredly find all (s)he needs in this outstanding and authoritative edition, which is also far from dear in the paperback edition. Recommended without reservation for all classical libraries, at least at university level.
Colin Leach