Given the scholarly legacy of Colin Austin (1941–2010) and his many foundational contributions to, especially, the study of Greek comedy, Menander in particular, and Greek epigram on papyrus, notably Posidippus of Pella, it comes as no surprise that many have followed in his footsteps. Ten former students and colleagues, leading scholars in these fields themselves, combined results from their own research to commemorate the seminal impetus of their teacher and colleague, and thus to further an overview of the most recent insights and developments, several of them in preparation of future annotated editions. The essays vary in length, in aims and methodologies, and in their contribution to the progress in scholarship: previews of editions with commentary and overviews of recent literature and debate alternate with new editions and additions to existing commentaries. Practically all contributions are important for their readers, though the readership of the volume will be diverse. The chapters by A.K. Petridis and L. Floridi stand out because of their insightful and hands-on display of editorial practice.
The contributions are grouped under four headings. Part 1, ‘Comedy’, focuses on Menander and opens with textual notes on the Dyskolos by Petridis. He discusses a selection of passages in relation to which he proposes new supplements to appear in a new edition and commentary commissioned by Oxford University Press. E. Stigka reassesses both the establishment of the text and the presentation of the main protagonists Thrasonides and Getas in lines 1–100 (Act 1) and 401–16 (Act 2) of the fragmentary Misoumenos, the ‘Hated Man’. With due regard for emendations by Austin, Stigka argues for the assignment of fragment 4 Arnott (= fr. 1 Blanchard) to the lacuna in lines 57–77. Fragment 12 Arnott, not attributed to the play with certainty, she suggests, may equally belong to Act 1, perhaps after line 100. In her assignment of lines to speakers in 401–16 she makes the interesting suggestion to postulate a change of speakers within line 411 (as in Dyskolos 503), having restored the latter half of .φειϲ … ιϲ to a second ἀφείς. Unfortunately, the 2021 edition of the Misoumenos by W.B. Furley could not be consulted. The third chapter of Part 1 deals with Epitrepontes 908–18, the monologue of Charisios in which he blames himself for being far less tolerant towards illegitimate children within their marriage than his wife has been. Bathrellou argues against the dominant interpretation of the daimonion as referencing Socrates and his alleged ménage à trois, and the alternative reading of Charisios’ self-address as referring to an earlier epiphany or oracle, and returns to lines 913–18 as a series of rhetorical questions in which Charisios contemplates his future humiliation.
Part 2, ‘Poetry in Prose/Prose on Poetry’, features three essays. Turning to Socrates’ prayer ‘to become semi-divine’ (Pl. Phdr. 279b8–c3), though without the expected farewell to the powers of the dialogue's location, the Nymphs, but to Pan instead, N.G. Charalabopoulos argues that ‘Socrates’ possessed self would naturally be seen as a double of the male local divinity with possessing power’ (p. 81), the inspired mouthpiece of Pan. In future editions the prayer should be printed in versified form; the polymetrical analysis of the prayer offered by Charalobopoulos respects semantic units, but I consider a dochmiac analysis with a iambo-choriambic second and eight period (in the colometry as proposed by Charalabopoulos) more likely. The second contribution in Part 2, by A. Capra, provides an analysis of Plato's and Xenophon's narrative techniques in their respective Symposium as a contrast between the Platonic ‘filters’, shaping the account of the evening through a deliberately complex ‘he said that he said’ (p. 106) structure, and Xenophon's ‘magnifiers’, invisible reporters providing vivid pictures culminating in an erotic mime stirring the participants of the party into action. Avoiding the priority question, Capra is sympathetic to G. Danzig's (2005) complex exchange between two rivalling authors, but on the basis of reciprocal awareness rather than direct reply. In the third essay R. Hunter studies the changing meaning and implication of the labelling ψυχρότης, from an assessment of jokes as ‘pushing too far’ or rather ‘distant, far-fetched’ to an evaluation of rhetoric as ‘cool, unemotional’ (p. 134). The latter verdict renders speech and, by now, fully theorised irony harmless despite ψυχρότης having become more and more political and politicised, once it counts as ‘language appropriate to elite relations with the very powerful’ (p. 137).
Of the two essays in the book's third Part, ‘Epigrammatic poetry’, the first, by V. Garulli, returns to editing Posidippus of Pella's epigrams in the Milan papyrus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309), for the editio princeps and altera of which Colin Austin's contribution, together with G. Bastianini and C. Gallazzi, has been so important. The attribution to Posidippus is not disputed. Various interesting observations emerge: Darius is portrayed in the item described in 4 AB; 42 AB starts (ηεκατ[) with a label for the deceased woman (ἡ Ἑκάτη πρόπολος ‘the servant of Hecate’, already proposed by Austin and Bastianini); the soundscape of 49 AB, an epitaph, is enforced by the addition ἄπνοον ἐν to line 6. In the second contribution Floridi presents a new critical edition of and commentary on the eleven ‘new’ poems among the erotic poems that conclude the Sylloge Parisina (Par. Suppl.gr. 352, Par. Gr. 1630, Par. Suppl. Gr. 352ff. 5v–150v), a ‘minor sylloge’, corresponding for the larger part to the Anthologia Palatina and the Anthologia Planudea. These eleven poems, which do not appear elsewhere, were edited by A. Cameron (1993); five of them appeared in Floridi 2007, there attributed to Strato of Sardis. Floridi's commentary expands considerably on Cameron's, and the edition corrects a number of mistakes. Though hidden in a publication with a far wider scope, Floridi's edition of the eleven new poems will count as the standard for the coming decennia.
Di Nino's essay on the Epitaph for Bion constitutes a separate Part 4: ‘Epitaph for a Teacher’. In reassessing the anthropomorphic description of nature she introduces the terminology anthropopathic for a more accurate description of any emotional response on nature's part than ‘pathetic fallacy’. She explains the invocation of nature to sing a dirge, in the poem's opening, as the poet's encouragement addressed at his own inspiration to compose the epitaph, as the leader of the threnos. The ‘fiction of sympathy’ (p. 226) is spontaneous, but contemporaneity is compromised by adding a reference to nature's empathy towards the death of a poet in the past. As such, the Epitaph for Bion is an early example of awareness of genre.
The well-produced volume is concluded by a bibliography, an index locorum and a rich general index that enables readers with varying interests to make fruitful use of such a varied collections of essays.
