164 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

THE PICK OF AESCHYLEAN SCHOLARSHIP

HlLDEBRECHT HOMMEL: Wege zu Aischylos. (Wege der Forschung,
Lxxxvii). 2 vols. Pp. xii + 475, vii + 393. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1974. Cloth.
Aeschylus has burst asunder the single-volume format of this series and forced
Professor Hommel into a 'dilogy', divided, though with inevitable overlap, into
general studies and the individual plays. The editor has used this elbow room to
include some treasures from inaccessible places as well as the standard currency.
In both volumes over half the pages have been translated into German from
other languages, mostly English. This review will take the form of a critical
survey of the contents (omitting one or two short pieces) interspersed with
personal comments on what is not included. It blithely disregards the practical
problems of copyright and of editing extracts which in reality constrain the
compiler of any such collection.
Such practical problems no doubt explain why there is nothing from what in
my view are the three most important contributions on Aeschylus since Wila-
mowitz's Interpretationen of 1914, viz. Kranz's Stasimon, Reinhardt's A. als
Regisseur u. Theologe and Fraenkel's Agamemnon. While it was an inspired idea
to include Walter Nestie's exemplary review of Kranz (contrast Murray in CR
1934), Reinhardt is not represented at all, and all we have from Fraenkel is
a comparatively slight piece on the end of Septem, when we might have had his
superb piece on the Cassandra scene (Kleine Beitrdge i.375 ff.) or his lively first
thoughts on the new fragments in PBA for 1942 (not in KIB).
If we had to have anything on origins then a passage of Else's Origins and
Early Form or Burkert, GRBS 1966, would have been more stimulating than
Wilamowitz's old summary. Mazon's Bude introduction is enough on biography
without Herington's Sicilian speculations. Winnington-Ingram's review of Pod-
lecki's Political Background in Gnomon 1967 might have found a place here.
Freymuth's piece on transmission, which is brought up to date by a Nachtrag,
is a good choice; but John Jackson's emendations are too marginal. It is useful
to have the entry on Aeschylean papyri from Pack 2 . There is nothing on staging,
but it is hard to see what would be suitable, except of course a piece of Rein-
hardt's book (I think Wilamowitz {Hermes 1886) and L. Bolle (Progr. Wismar
1906) are both neglected).
Jens's piece on 'Strukturgesetze' is rather airy, but may deserve a place on
grounds of inaccessibility. I regret Schadewaldt's specially commissioned tract
on Origins and Early Development which is both highly speculative and too
dependent on Chapter 12 of the Poetics: a much better tribute to this great
scholar's work on Aeschylus would have been his masterly essay on Cho.
(Hermes 1932 = Hellas u. Hesperien2 i.249 ff.) or even his stimulating suggestions
about Septem in the editor's own Festschrift, Eranion (= H.u.H.2 i.357 ff.).
Dawe's piece on 'Inconsistency' is rightly included, although so long and uneven;
but hardly Rose on 'A. the Psychologist'. Easterling's sympathetic article on
characterization in G & R 1973 was presumably too late for consideration. On
religion I suppose we had to have Lloyd-Jones's dated piece on 'Zeus in A.' and
Grube's reply; but there was no call to reprint Wilhelm Nestie's stuff on Religio-
sitdt. On this subject I think the final part of Rosenmeyer's article in AJP1955 is

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. The Librarian-Seeley Historical Library, on 06 Jan 2020 at 08:54:21, subject to the
Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X00223561
 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 165
neglected. Lesley's 'Decision and Responsibility' is a good choice, though Rivier
(REG 1968) might have found a place. As for style, Haldane on musical imagery
is good, but the editor himself spends too long on napfkiv-,1 would prefer, for
instance, something from De Romilly's La Crainte et I'angoisse on the language
of fear. The Nachleben section is well done: Cantarella on Aristophanes and the
reproduction of A., Opelt on A. in early Christian writings, and Melchinger on
modern performances. Melchinger, whose essay is an Originalbeitrag adds good
material to Schadewaldt's well-known article (H.u.H.2 ii.664 ff.).
To turn to volume ii: on Persae we have Schadewaldt's brief production-
notes; but I should not have chosen Adams's Salamis-Symphony rather than
Reimschneider, Hermes 1938, or Lattimore, The Poetry of Gr. Trag. pp. 29 ff.
There is a shortage of good things on Pers., but it is the opposite with Septem.
The short pieces by Engelmann on the Curse and Fraenkel on the end are fine,
but the terrific dispute over the central scene is not properly represented by
Lesky on 'Eteocles'. What about Solmsen's seminal note (TAPA 1937) or E.
Wolff (HSCP 1958) or von Fritz (Antike u. Moderne Trag. pp. 193 ff.) or
Kirkwood (Phoenix 1969)? Burnett, GRBS 1973, was presumably too late.
Too little on Septem--but possibly too much on Supplices. Lesky on the date
and Lloyd-Jones on 'New Date and Old Problems' are both obviously right, and
Wehrli on Io is an inspired choice; but Booth on lines 86-95 and Winnington-
Ingram's speculations about the trilogy are not beyond exception. Burnett's
neat review of Garvie's book (CPh 1971) would have been better value.
To have to choose even 200 pages on the Oresteia must have been an agony.
Dodds on 'Morals and Politics' is the only choice on the whole trilogy. Winning-
ton-Ingram's article on Clytemnestra and Athena in JHS 1948, which is at last
finding the recognition it deserves, should surely be in. Also Goheen (AJP
1955) and Vidal-Naquet (P del P 1969) must be serious candidates; and their
omission is perhaps an index of the comparative neglect of American and French
scholars in this collection. None the less we do have de Romilly on 'L'Evocation
du passe' in Agam. and Knox on 'The Lion in the House', one of the first and
best studies of Aeschylus' complexes of imagery. Gundert's scrutiny of the
stichomythia at 931 ff. is at last made as easily available as it should be. But I
do not feel so grateful for Stark on lines 12 ff., Bergson's reply to Dawe's fan-
tasy about the Zeus-hymn, or the editor's thirty-two pages on the final scene,
when we might have had, to accompany Gundert, Fraenkel on Cassandra (see
above), Neustadt (Hermes 1929), Jones On Aristotle and Gr. Trag. 72 ff. To
represent Cho. we have Kenner on the influence of Aeschylus' Electra on art
and Solmsen's monograph on Three Recognition Scenes, worth making more
accessible but rather long uncut. But I sorely miss Schadewaldt here (see above),
and, assuming we are not allowed any of Lebeck's book, we really should have
her brilliant note on the central song (CPh 1967). As for Eum. we have only nine
pages on the trial by Schneider. I would rather have Winnington-Ingram (CR
1933) or Dover (JHS 1957) or Peradotto (AJP 1964) or several others. And a
new chapter on the study of this play, too late for inclusion, has now been
contributed by Macleod inMaia 1973.
Prometheus obviously presents a problem. Here we have Zawadzka on the
authenticity problem, and Unterberger for the defence. Korte (NJbA 1920) and
Focke (Hermes 1930) might have filled these slots better. I would have been

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. The Librarian-Seeley Historical Library, on 06 Jan 2020 at 08:54:21, subject to the
Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X00223561
 166 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
tempted to include some of Herington's Author for the defence, and some of
Schmid's Untersuchungen, or at least Walter Nestle (in the Droysen translation,
Stuttgart, 1962), for the attack. Dodds's Concept of Progress pp. 26 ff. came out
too late. Finally the fragments are represented by Ph. Kakridis on the Dike-
fragment: I would have preferred Frankel (see above), Siegmann (Philol. 1945),
or Reinhardt (Hermes 1957).
I have taken this opportunity for a dogmatic survey of the pick of modern
Aeschylean scholarship. I should not like this format to obscure my over-all
judgement that Professor Hommel has made a valuable and enterprising
collection: would that English or American publishers could do the same sort
of thing.
Magdalen College, Oxford OLIVER TAPLIN

THE LAST ROSE

(C. A. TRYPANIS), T. GELZER, C. H. WHITMAN: (Callimachus, Aetia
Iambi, Hecale and other fragments.) Musaeus. Hero and Leander.
(Loeb Classical Library.) Pp. xvi + 422. Cambridge, Mass., and
London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1975.
Cloth, £3-40.
Musaeus' Hero and Leander, 'the last rose of the fading garden of Greek
literature', has such a widespread reputation that many scholars will be sur-
prised to discover that this edition (an expansion of an earlier Loeb volume
which contained only the Callimachus fragments) is in fact the first this century
to make the poem easily available to English readers.1 Loeb secured the colla-
boration of two Greek scholars of international repute, Thomas Gelzer to pro-
vide the introduction, text, and notes, and Cedric Whitman for the translation,
and the result is a huge success.
Gelzer's work on Musaeus was already well known from two major articles
which appeared in 1967 and 1968, 'Bemerkungen zu Sprache und Text des
Epikers Musaios', Museum Helveticum 24 (1967), 1 2 9 ^ 8 , 25 (1968), 11-47
(hereafter referred to simply as 'Bern.'), and the present edition is built upon
that groundwork. The Introduction consists of forty-six pages of characteristi-
cally learned but concise and lucid exposition, covering the poet and his work
(biography, literary history, linguistic and stylistic analysis, Nachleben) and the
transmission and editing of the text (including a survey of earlier editions), and
these pages easily supersede P. Orsini's Bude edition (1968), to which most
readers will previously have turned for introductory material, and rival K.
Kost's mammoth work;2 the Introduction also contains full bibliographical
guidance for further reading.
The text of Musaeus is notoriously in need of a complete reassessment based
on a comprehensive recollation of the manuscripts,3 and G. has rightly not
attempted this within the confines of the Loeb series: he has relied on the
1
The elegant edition by E.H. Blakeney (Blackwell, Oxford, 1935) was limited to 175 copies
2
Bonn, 1971: introduction, text, translation, commentary, etc.
3
See particularly R. Keydell, Gnomon 41 (1969), 738-+O.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. The Librarian-Seeley Historical Library, on 06 Jan 2020 at 08:54:21, subject to the
Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X00223561