T HE CL AS S I CAL RE VIEW 613

long after the initial terror had changed to a lower-level state of tension, it would not have
been unnatural for the Antiochenes to turn to their usual entertainments as a source of relief.
This is not to say that Hill’s chronology is necessarily correct, but it is not impossible, as
B. concludes.
Whether these three homilies are to be read within the context of Lent 387 or as a
product of the period of exultation that followed, they are none the less a key part of the
history and rhetoric of this period. The publication of this new edition, after a three hundred
year gap, contributes significantly to the ongoing process of making Chrysostom’s homilies
accessible in texts as close as possible to the original.
Australian Catholic University W E N D Y M AY E R
wendy.mayer@acu.edu.au

A L P E R S (K.) Untersuchungen zu Johannes Sardianus und seinem

Kommentar zu den Progymnasmata des Aphthonios. (Abhandlungen
der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft 62.) Pp. 159.
Braunschweig: J. Cramer Verlag, 2009. Paper, €20. ISSN: 0068-0737.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X10001393
How dark was the Dark Age in Byzantium and how long did it last? Whatever answers
have been given to these questions in the past, they should now be modified in the light of
the conclusions reached in this brief but detailed and closely argued monograph, which is
dedicated to Walther Ludwig on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
One of the key manuals of rhetoric throughout the Byzantine period was the Progymnasmata
of Aphthonios (fl. c. 400). It is preserved in numerous manuscripts and was evidently so
important that commentaries on it were composed; the earliest of these, by John, bishop
of Sardis, is more than five times as long as the text it deals with and was first edited by
Hugo Rabe in 1928. The commentator proves to be a scholar who deserves more attention
than he has received, particularly as it now turns out that he lived in the first half of the
ninth century, not the tenth. A long excursus is required in order to establish some of the
main biographical facts; one that is hard to determine is when John’s predecessor in the
bishopric died. A curious detail on which A. does not comment is the way in which the 26th
of December is recorded in a hagiographical text: it is called ‘the day after Christ’s birthday,
which is the 26th of Apellaios according to the Greeks’ (p. 34). This is a reference to the
Macedonian calendar, not the Athenian, and its occurrence shows how Christians of impec-
cable orthodoxy were not averse to the occasional display of recondite information derived
from their acquaintance with pagan antiquity acquired at school. At p. 35 n. 107 reference
could also have been given to G. Fedalto, Hierarchia ecclesiae orientalis I (Padua, 1988),
p. 179.
A large part of the commentary consists of verbatim extracts from classical literary texts,
with the addition of a few references to philosophers; this last feature distinguishes John from
the general run of rhetorical commentators (p. 45). Attentive reading of his work leaves one
in no doubt that he had access to well stocked libraries. He collated manuscripts and used
his philological skills, not always successfully in matters requiring conjecture (pp. 49–50).
We find him using D-scholia on the Iliad that are known from Venetus A; since he exploits
one such scholium which is missing from A (on Y 215), it is legitimate to infer that he
worked from the ancestor of A, which presumably had text and scholia arranged in the same
way as A. This is important for the history of scholia (pp. 65–72).
I mention a few other points of interest. There is a valuable note on the date of the
rhetorician Theon (p. 12 n. 13); A. upholds the traditional view. An instructive example of
the widespread tendency to substitute Attic for Koine vocabulary occurs in John’s handling
of a passage from the pseudo-Nonnos commentary on Gregory of Nazianzus (p. 76 n. 233).
Two striking and unexpected gaps in the range of literature available to John are to be
noted: it looks as if his citations of Herodotus are not based on direct knowledge of the
text but derive from a source such as Theon (p. 88 n. 288), and it is very strange indeed
that he seems not to have had access to Euripides’ Phoenissae, which as a text included in
the school curriculum enjoyed wide circulation (p. 126). At p. 136 one might suggest that
John probably did use the lexicon ascribed to Cyril, because the very large number of extant

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614 T HE CL AS S I CAL RE VIEW

copies is a strong hint that it was the lexicon most generally available. At p. 150 it might
have been worth adding that Photius makes unmistakeable allusions to Aristophanes (see my
Scholars of Byzantium, p. 112). At pp. 154–5 in the appendix on Hesychios Illustrios there
is an important correction to a recent article by Kaldellis.
A. is to be thanked for having proved that the work of John of Sardis is good evidence
for the proposition that the Dark Age in Byzantium was of shorter duration than has often
been claimed. The only disappointing feature of the book is that there are rather a lot of
misprints.
Lincoln College, Oxford N.G. WILSON
nigel.wilson@lincoln.ox.ac.uk

G A L E (M.R.) (ed., trans.) Lucretius: De Rerum Natura V. (Aris &

Phillips Classical Texts.) Pp. viii + 222, figs. Oxford: Oxbow Books,
2009. Paper, £18, US$36 (Cased, £40, US$80). ISBN: 978-0-85568-
889-8 (978-0-85568-884-3 hbk).
doi:10.1017/S0009840X1000140X
G.’s new edition of Lucretius Book 5 joins previous volumes on Books 3, 4 and 6 in the
Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series. Classicists will know the format: a Latin text with
a limited apparatus and a translation is supplemented by a brief introduction and a fuller
commentary. These are hybrid volumes: not full critical editions or monumental commentar-
ies, nor again mere grammatical guides or student cribs, but something in between. Their
largest audience is no doubt students and general readers, but they are, or can be, of use
to scholars as well. Within these limits, this edition is well executed, though it occasionally
leaves something to be desired. A generally accurate translation and a useful commentary
are marred slightly by an imperfect Latin text.
The Introduction is brief: G. elegantly lays out essential points about Lucretius and
Epicureanism. Implicitly following the lead of recent scholarship (e.g. D.P. Fowler, A.
Schiesaro), she locates Lucretius within the milieu of the Late Republic without ignoring
the limits of our evidence. Her summary of Epicurean doctrine is also on target, though it
might have made more of how distinctive Epicurean epistemology (often called ‘canonic’)
is by comparison with other Hellenistic and Roman philosophical schools, especially with
regard to logic and language.
G.’s translation is fluid. Her rendering is literal prose, not poetry, but the English is clear
and direct. For example, she skilfully turns multaque tum tellus etiam portenta creare/ conatast
mira facie membrisque coorta,/ androgynum, interutrasque nec utrum, utrimque remotum
(5.837–39) into ‘At that time, the earth also tried to produce many monsters, and beings
of amazing appearance with amazing bodies came forth: the hermaphrodite, intersexual and
not belonging to either sex, but separate from both’ – good modern phrasing from difficult
Latin. At times, though, she is a bit imprecise: she renders (e.g.) illud in his rebus tacitus
ne forte requiras (5.1091) by ‘Should you perhaps be silently asking yourself something, in
this connexion’, translating ne as if it were si (i.e. as a conditional rather than a negative
purpose clause). But such infelicities are rare.
The commentary is useful. It explains inter alia archaic linguistic forms, ancient astro-
nomy, alliteration and metrical matters. I have only two concerns: first, the bibliography is
limited (a fault of the series more generally); second, the sense of audience wavers at times.
Terms like polyptoton (p. 183) are fine, but G. should explain them parenthetically if she
aims to reach neophytes.
My greatest reservations centre on the Latin text. G.’s edition does not print bad Latin,
but it represents a missed opportunity. She bases her version on Cyril Bailey’s 1922 Oxford
Classical Text, once a fine volume but now out of date. It would have been possible to
modify Bailey’s text thoroughly in response to more recent critical studies and conjectures,
but G. changes surprisingly little, listing only ten divergences on p. 14; and nine of these
simply follow the M.F. Smith – W.H.D. Rouse Loeb. Further, although G. cites some recent
Anglophone textual criticism (M. Winterbottom, C. Murgia), she seems to ignore much
continental writing, including the work of Marcus Deufert (cf. e.g. Deufert’s review of E.
Flores’ Lucretius at Gnomon 77 [2005], 213–24 or M. Deufert, Pseudo-Lukrezisches im Lukrez

The Classical Review vol. 60 no. 2 © The Classical Association 2010; all rights reserved