Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens: IG II2 2318–2325 and Related Texts by Benjamin W. Millis, S. Douglas Olson (review)

This invaluable volume performs a major service for literary historians by making available an authoritative, comprehensive, detailed, and accessible edition of the remains of the most important inscriptions containing Athenian theatrical records, especially the so-called Fasti (each year’s winners), Didascaliae (each year’s entrants by finish), and Victors’ lists (each poet’s and actor’s total victories in either festival). This writer can testify how difficult it has been to study these texts from the brilliant but long-outdated work of Wilhelm and Capps; the inaccurate appendix of the second edition of Pickard-Cambridge’s Dramatic Festivals; or the ill-organized, cramped, and overloaded edition of Mette.

This edition is above all based on close study of the stones themselves, which are described in detail and illustrated with forty-five clear photographs. The arguments for reconstructing the length of the full text and the placement of individual fragments are set forth elegantly; for the Fasti the authors refine the calculation of Capps to reconstruct eight columns of 141 lines each. They argue that the Didascaliae must have comprised seventy columns of text with approximately 130 lines each (60). Particularly impressive is the reconstruction of IG II² 2323, where it is clear that in some years there was no comic competition, and thus just a single line of text instead of between twelve and fifteen—but how many times and in which years (76–86)?

Yet a major aim has also been clarity, and these calculations are presented first in general, then in detail, then in summary, and each fragment is followed by separate epigraphic and then prosopographic (that is, literary and historical) commentary. The large-format pages allow complex texts to be reproduced with much accompanying information, and there are well-executed full-page diagrams of reconstructions on pages 26 and 92.

In the process of discussing these texts the authors make important new arguments, some of which will doubtless prove controversial:

Their examination (59) of the types of stone refutes the attractive hypothesis of Reisch that the Didascaliae and Victors’ lists decorated a single building dedicated ca. 280 BCE. Millis and Olson accept (133) that the latter did in fact constitute a smaller structure dedicated then, although rectilinear rather than a hexagon as Reisch proposed.

They assume (76) that the phrase οὐκ ἐγένετο does not mean that the Dionysia or the competitions in general were not held, but rather that just the comedy or tragedy competition was omitted, probably in alternation (although not a regular one).

They argue (123–24) that later revivals of tragedy, comedy, and satyr play must have been exhibitions of single plays rather than competitions (despite the verb ἐνίκα applied to their actors, which they explain as a previous competition on the model of a statement in [Plut.] Lycurgus), since otherwise one or more days would have had to be added to the schedule.

For completeness’ sake, the so-called “Roman Fasti,” a catalogue of each poet’s record by festival and placement, is printed (without autopsy) and discussed in an appendix. This edition will be indispensable to any scholar of Greek theatre history. Since the indices are limited to the names in the texts of the inscriptions, a promised digital version will be particularly valuable.