De Gruyter (2022) h/b 334pp £109 (ISBN 9783110796483)
This book is not for the faint-hearted. The editor takes papyrology down to the atomic (or even subatomic, when a microscope is called on) level: no trace is too tiny to be ignored, no sheet-joins (kolleseis) too puzzling to be conjecturally assembled (see especially p.50). If there is a hero in this book, it is Edgar Lobel, who published P. Oxy. 2162 in 1941—but even his readings and conjectures are from time to time disputed or even shown to be incorrect, with T., on one occasion, using discourteous language, naturally in Latin. The reviewer noticed, but sees no need to comment on, some inelegancies in T.’s use of English, or an instance where T.’s Latin is at fault.
The play which receives the most attention is the first, a satyr play called Theoroi or Isthmiastai, and it may be helpful to set out the editor’s approach. After a very short introduction, T. prints the text from P. Oxy. 2162 in two main, and several minuscule other, parts. The texts are accompanied by apparatus critici on a formidable scale—consisting, of course, of scholarly supplements and conjectures, themselves backed by a list of scholars (more than 20) and works cited.
There follows a line-by-line Commentary, much of it papyrological (e.g. the simplest example ‘The initial trace, the foot of a vertical, can be many things … a high horizontal can belong only to π or τ’). But of course the Commentary also seeks to elucidate both the plot of the play (it seemingly involves Dionysus, Silenus, satyrs, [possibly] Poseidon, and the Isthmian Games), and the dramatic action, to the extent that that is possible from the fragments, which total about 106 lines, often far from complete (there is also a small number of extremely fragmentary lines).
This Commentary occupies 78 pages, and is itself followed by an Appendix, which looks, inter alia, at the Tetralogy (‘it has proved impossible to place the surviving part of the Theoroi unequivocally in any known mythical cycle’—so [the late] N. Ch. Hourmouziades)—and at Dating and the Dramatic date (T. opts for the 11th of Elaphebolion of a year in the 460s BC). There is also a Translation.
Such are the doubts about Aeschylus’ Hypsipyle, of which P. Oxy. offers us 46 heavily mangled lines, (known to be by Aeschylus thanks to a citation in the Homeric Scholia) that Sommerstein in his Loeb edition of Aeschylus’s Fragments simply calls it ‘The Dike Play’: Dike is the only identifiable speaker. T., after detailed speculation, believes that the play concerns the Lemnian women, who faced justice (Dike) after murdering their husbands. The tentative title Hypsipyle is owed to T.’s colleague Hourmouziades, who pointed out that the form ‘Hypso’, a diminutive on the lines of Eido for Eidothea, is found, apparently in this play, in a fragment cited by Radt. Sommerstein suggests that Hypsipyle was part of an Argonautic tetralogy (Lemnian Women, Hypsipyle, Cabeiri, Argo), and, of course, Hypsipyle later gave the title to a play by Euripides (a fact not mentioned by T.); but the diminutive form would not be appropriate to a tragedy, and hence it would be the satyr play of the tetralogy: but thematically Hypsipyle precedes Cabeiri, who also receive (?excessively) detailed discussion over no fewer than six pages, nor is Hypsipyle an obvious title for a satyr play.
That is not the only bone of contention: reference to an unnamed παῖς μάργος has caused no little dispute: as the known son of Zeus and Hera, Ares is Sommerstein’s choice, but from a fragment of Alcman, he might (it has been suggested) be Eros, favoured by T. at great length. As with Theoroi, there is detailed Commentary examining the papyrus line by line: at line 23, Lobel read ηι (inepte, T.; perperam would have been both appropriate and less discourteous) now corrected to ω by Mette. For all T.’s devoted work on possible solutions, it is hard to accept that the last word on this puzzling papyrus fragment has been said. Fourteen authors are cited in the more than thorough apparatus criticus for P. Oxy. 2256 as restored by T.
Of the play Laïos by Aeschylus, there is less to be said because so little is known. T. offers us a ‘reconstructed’ text of the Hypothesis (from P. Oxy. 2256) and proposes that two fragments (6 and 8) also come from Laïos, follow the Hypothesis, and are spoken by Laïos. Much of the Commentary that follows is technical analysis of the papyrus: his thesis is defended at 165ff, but the conclusions are highly speculative. Sommerstein does not offer any text at all, merely saying that it was the first play of the Theban tetralogy.
With Aeschylus’ Prometheus Pyrkaeus, T. enters a minefield. Is Pyrkaeus the same play as Prometheus Pyrphoros? Does Pyrkaeus, a word known only from Pollux, lead to confusion resulting from a Sophoclean play, Nauplios Pyrkaeus? So Sommerstein, who points out that Prometheus does not kindle fire; he brings it to men (or satyrs). T. refers to, but does not accept, the possible conflation of the names, citing only a reference from the early 19th C. Such evidence as exists comes mainly from ‘book’ texts; here I give only T.’s conclusions about the order of productions of Prometheus plays: 472 BC (City Dionysia): Phineus, Persae, Glaukos, Prometheus (Desmotes); 470 BC (Sicily): Persae, Prometheus Desmotes (more plays?); 469 BC (Anthesteria): P. Desmotes, P. Lyomenos, P.Pyrphoros, P.Pyrkaeus. (No participation in 471 BC).
The problems involved in this reconstruction are set out lucidly by Sommerstein, who accepts that Pyrphoros and Pyrkaeus are a conflation, with Pyrphoros being the satyr play: that leaves the question mark over the construction of the tetralogy as a whole. T. spends learned pages on Athenian topography, especially τὰ ἴκρια (wooden benches) but without advancing the central question; nor does T. here (but see later under Inachos) attempt to discuss any question of authorship; he has, however, argued elsewhere that Desmotes was originally a fourth place prosatyric play, performed in 472 BC. Papyrology plays only a relatively small part in this chapter. (In an Appendix to his commentary on PV (1983), Mark Griffith put forward the interesting suggestion that Pyrphoros was the first play of the trilogy, with the satyr play being unidentified: this strikes the reviewer as worthy of consideration.)
For Sophocles’ Inachos we have two relatively substantial papyrus fragments (P. Oxy. 2369, P. Tebt. 682) and a lot of scraps, both papyrus and ‘book’ (e.g. Hesychius, Suda), but no decisive judgment has been reached on whether the play is a tragedy, a satyr play, or the ‘Get out of jail’ alternative—i.e. a prosatyric play, as T. is inclined to believe: Lloyd-Jones, in his admirable introduction (in Sophocles: Fragments, 1996), prefers to call it a satyr play. T.’s method is as before: transcription of the papyrus fragments with substantial apparatus criticus (15 scholars are named, including Pfeiffer and Martin West), followed by a line-by-line Commentary, which concentrates on papyrological issues. Noteworthy is T. on lines 16-21, which point to a predecessor of Sophocles as well as using a word, τρόφις, found only here and in PV. T. uses this as evidence that PV was written by Aeschylus, but he may well be unaware of recent computer-generated evidence which points unequivocally to non-Aeschylean authorship—perhaps to one of his sons (see this reviewer’s brief mention in https://classicsforall.org.uk/reading-room/book-reviews/rhesus-attribut…).
The Commentary on these lines extends to nine pages, including a discussion on whether a deictic ὅδε need imply physical presence in the theatre. On p. 288ff T. raises the question of the nature of the play: he suggests that, in addition to Inachos and Alcestis, Prometheus Vinctus should be regarded as a prosatyric fourth-place play: this discussion will, one suspects, continue to generate scholarly debate: see here pp.288-290, from a section of the book (pp.286-309) entitled ‘Observations on the book fragments of Inachos’. (Geographers may be interested in an account [p.287] of the course of the river; milliners and modistes will go to p.294 for a discussion of Iris’s clothing and headwear.)
The Bibliography is of substantial (but not inordinate) length and is followed by a General Index. There are eight figures: the two displaying sections of P. Oxy. 2256 serve to show the difficulties facing the papyrologist. The reviewer comments that on occasion he found the Loeb editions of both the Aeschylean and Sophoclean Fragments helpful to declutter his mind, though Laïos is allotted no fragment at all, and Hypsipyle becomes ‘The Dike play’. Yet, as so often with books offering commentary on papyri fragments, one feels conscious that enormous amounts of effort and learning—and T. has both diligence and learning in abundance—have ultimately produced less in the way of advancing our knowledge than one might have hoped.
De Gruyter’s production values of this complex text are, as ever, beyond praise.
Colin Leach