238   

Epimenides  ρεοµ ηοΚ with a mythographical work on Crete. The same holds for F.’s
decision to include ‘fragmenta quae nec poetica sunt neque ex poemate diserte sumpta
neque ad Λαρασνο#Κ spectant’ in the belief that ‘ex pseudepigrapho quodam prosa
oratione conscripto ·uere potuerint’ (p. 79). True, POxy 26.2442 fr. 29ii has indeed
conµrmed the existence of a prose Ηεξεαµοη%αι, but the phrasing of the clearly
genealogical fr. 7 suggests a poetic work (&Επινεξ%δθΚ δ)  Λσ*Κ ε+ξαι ν)ξ λα ο,υοΚ
ρφηαυσα &Ψλεαξο υ*ξ Τυ#ηα πο%θτε λυµ). Evidently, not all the genealogical
works attributed to Epimenides were written in prose, and to try to distinguish between
poetic and prosaic would be idle, since his fragments are generally preserved in
summary oratio obliqua. An editor less inclusive than F. might have decided, on
balance, that ‘Epimenides’ and ‘Eumelos’ are better left out of the collection.
Misprints are few and far between—which is quite a feat considering that this is a
500-page volume containing a very large amount of Greek and Latin and a large
number of numerical references. Here is a selection: p. 2 l. 9 read ‘fr. 11.9 sqq.’; p. 36
(Ag. et Derc. fr. 9, 2) read ‘τλ0πυ/’; p. 113 (Hec. test. 8A, 5) read ‘ε+0ξ’; p. 370 (l. 11
up), 442 (col. i, l. 4) read Λψσ#λιαι (cf. Xenom. fr. l, 56).
This a piece of painstaking scholarship for which one can only be extremely
grateful. Supplemented by the commentary, it will provide an indispensable tool for the
serious study of early Greek mythography.
University of Cyprus VAYOS J. LIAPIS

‘THE BEST AVAILABLE TEXT OF THUCYDIDES’

I. B. A  (ed.): Thucydides Historiae VI–VIII. Rome: Typis
O¸cinae Polygraphicae, 2000. Paper, L. 50,000. ISBN: 88-240-3656-2.
With the completion in 2000 of Alberti’s three-volume Thucydidis Historiae (Volume
I, Books 1–2, 1972; Volume II, Books 3–5, 1992) we have what should now be
regarded as the best available text of Thucydides, and an outstanding text it is too.
A.’s Volume 1 was apparently not sent to CR; Volume II was reviewed by K. J. Dover
(CR 44 [1994], 399–400), who summed-up by saying that A.’s ‘profound knowledge
of Thucydides’ language and of the subject-matter always commands the greatest
respect’. That was a well-deserved salute from a scholar to whom the same tribute
could with equal truth be paid. Going by past form, we had no right to expect the
publication of A.’s third and µnal volume until 2112, so it is a treat to have it twelve
years early. Fair and full comparisons with the standard modern text, the OCT of
Stuart-Jones/Powell, can now be made, and they are greatly to A.’s advantage. In
1994, Dover concluded by commenting that a valuable feature of A.’s apparatus is
the references to articles in which a proposed emendation has been criticized. That is
only part of a bigger and simpler point: not only is A.’s actual text superior, his
apparatus is far fuller and more useful than the OCT throughout. Until 2000, the
fullest modern or fairly modern apparatus was that of the Teubner editio maior of
Hude (1898–1901). But that book is not to be found outside good libraries and is a
papyrologically proliµc century out of date, whereas A.’s new Volume III starts with
a three-page list of relevant new papryri which have appeared just since 1992, the date
of his Volume II. It is to be hoped that all three volumes of A.’s wonderfully
up-to-date text will stay in print for many decades and that they will be made more
readily available in bookshops outside Italy than they are at present, so that A. can
displace the OCT for all serious scholarly purposes as he deserves to do. Sometimes
© Oxford University Press, 2002

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    239
A. almost offers us a commentary: on p. 229 (on 2ηαη ξυεΚ at 8.30.2) he rejects a
conjecture of Krüger’s with the remark ‘4ηοξυεΚ Krüger, sed variatio Thucydidea est’
(cf. para. 1).
One feature of A.’s text is that it makes regular and proµtable use (more so than
OCT) of the µfteenth-century Latin translation by Lorenzo Valla, of whom L. D.
Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, in Scribes and Scholars (19742), p. 137, remark ‘Valla’s
contributions to the text of Thucydides are more probably due to the merits of the
manuscripts he used than to his own ingenuity’. That is, Valla ranks almost as a
separate manuscript tradition. Thus at Thuc. 6.89.6, part of Alkibiades’ µ#τιΚ
διαβοµΚ at Sparta, the manuscripts’ reading . . . πε δθνολσαυ%αξ ηε λα
ηιηξτλονεξ ο5 ζσοξοξυΚ υι! λα α7υ8Κ ο7δεξ8Κ 5ξ γε;σοξ! <τ/ λα
µοιδοσταινι is printed by OCT and Hude with no indication in text or apparatus that
there is anything wrong. But it is virtually untranslatable as it stands. Valla had tum
vero ipse quo maiore iniuria affectus sum, eo magis vitupero and the scholiast <τ/ λα
νηιτυα =π& α7υΚ >δ%λθναι. A. therefore rightly prints λα α7υ8Κ ο7δεξ8Κ 5ξ
γε;σοξ! <τ/ λα <νηιτυ& >δ%λθναι>! µοιδοσταινι. Alkibiades is saying that he
might well abuse the democracy to the extent that he has been injured by it. Another
example is the addition of λα λαυ ξ at 7.16.2 (the Athenians sent Eurymedon to
Sicily with 120 talents, not 20), where OCT prints ε?λοτι <λα λαυ8ξ> υ0µαξυα and
says merely ‘λα λαυοξ add. rec.’ in the apparatus. A. dispenses with the angled
brackets in his text, and not only points out in the apparatus that Valla has centum, but
adds ‘cf. Diod. Sic. XIII 8, 7’ (which has λαυ8ξ υεττασ0λοξυα). On the other hand, at
8.19.2, A. rejects a Valla reading, here following Andrewes (cf. below).
One item taken over from Valla into A.’s apparatus is the form of the name of the
oikist of Thapsos, Lamis (6.4.1). Valla had ‘Lampis’, and some MSS, as A. and Dover
point out, support something like this reading. Another possible oikist name has
escaped even A.’s vigilance. In 1970 Dover noted the likelihood that the name of the
co-founder, with Pamillos, of Selinus has been lost from the same paragraph of Thuc.
(6.4.2). The publication in 1992 by M. Jameson and others of the lex sacra from
Selinus may have supplied us with the missing name: either Myskos or Euthydamos
(GRBM no. 11 at p. 121).
On historical matters calling (or not calling) for emendation, A. follows Dover
closely and therefore wisely, though on one occasion perhaps too meekly. Books 6 and
7 have over twenty references of the form ‘at cf. Dover’ vel. sim., most of them in Book
6, where Dover is ampler than in his unexpectedly spare commentary on the more
‘purple’ Book 7; and something like ‘sed cf. Andrewes’ occurs ten times in Book 8. The
over-meek occasion is (I suggest) 6.104, where according to OCT the Spartan Gylippos
‘renewed the citizenship’ at Thurioi of his father Kleandridas, υ*ξ υο παυσ8Κ
2ξαξεψτ0νεξοΚ ποµιυε%αξ. Dover, followed I assume by A., preferred the alternative
reading λαυ0 υ*ξ υο παυσ Κ πουε ποµιυε%αξ, although admitting that normally the
weight of MS authority would be the other way (‘the text of B is for once inferior to
that of ACEFGHM’). Dover’s grounds were that citizenship, let alone one’s father’s
citizenship, ‘is not something which can be renewed’; but we know too little about
citizenship rules outside Athens to be conµdent of any such thing: Pindar Ol. 6 shows
that élites did not always obey the ‘rules’.
The feature commended by Dover, namely citation of articles containing
emendations, is still admirably carried through, but note that at 6.2.3, A. cites only
Nenci’s 1987 rejection of Ridgeway’s old suggestion ΖσφηAξ for the historically
startling Ζψλψξ, without also telling us that in the same year (1987), K. Rigsby had

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 240   
revived the suggestion (CQ 37, 332), or that E. Gruen had again rejected it in 1992
(Culture and Identity in Republican Rome, p. 14 n. 39).
Misprints are rare, but p. 23 l. 17 (6.20.4) 2λοτυιτυα% should be 2λοξυιτυα%, and the
bold marginal chapter-indication has disappeared at the beginning of 8.11 (p. 212 l.
21).
University College London SIMON HORNBLOWER

TRAGIC HEROINES
H. P. F  : Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. Pp. x + 410. Princeton
and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001. Cased, £26.95. ISBN:
0-691-05030-9.
This wide-ranging and important book explores the ways in which tragic women
disrupt, invert, or otherwise depart from the cultural norms that circumscribed their
real-life counterparts in classical Athens. In particular, it focuses on female ethical
interventions that revolve around funerary ritual, marriage rights, and inheritance.
Much in this volume will be familiar to readers of tragedy, not only because six of the
ten chapters have appeared previously, but because Foley’s work has had a major
impact on the study of women in Attic drama for over two decades. This book is
more than just a collection of essays, however: individually, the chapters gain depth
by their juxtaposition; taken together, they are uniµed by the overarching focus on
moral agency.
Throughout the book, Foley characteristically combines evocative and original
readings of a staggering array of sources with a detailed analysis of their cultural and
historical milieux. Indeed, one of the book’s pleasures is the unexpected and fruitful
juxtaposition of plays and characters not always considered together: Helen and
Alcestis, Clytemnestra and Medea, Aethra and Hecuba. Foley’s method is brilliantly
encapsulated in Section II, ‘The Contradictions of Tragic Marriage’. After discussing
the marital systems of Homeric society and classical Athens, she adduces numerous
passages from tragedy, including fragments, to show how central a concern this
institution was for the tragedians and their audience. The section on concubines, a
familiar but underinvestigated staple of Attic drama, is particularly strong. Like the
hetaira in New Comedy, the ambiguous social and political status of this µgure makes
her an ideal vehicle for conveying broader social and political concerns.
The argument for women’s moral agency is developed over the six chapters that
comprise Section III, ‘Women as Moral Agents in Greek Tragedy’, half of which
represents new material µrst delivered as the Martin Classical Lectures. The emphasis
on women as moral agents implies that they are capable of public actions and that they
undertake them in service of some greater good, capacities not normally associated
with women in Greek ethical thought. Foley rightly observes, however, that tragedy is
preoccupied with ·awed individuals confronted by morally ambiguous dilemmas;
in just such situations, alternative forms of morality can be effectively explored. Thus
the decision of Homer’s Penelope to remarry in her husband’s absence typiµes
female moral agency and tragic choice, because it a¸rms the importance of social
cooperation over self-interest. This ethic similarly informs the actions of the virgins
who use funerary ritual to set aright disrupted households and a¹icted cities. Foley
convincingly argues that the actions of Electra and Antigone, although masculinized,
assume a positive form because they occur in the absence of male relatives.

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