Gorgias: Encomium of Helen by D. M. MacDowell (review)

176 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS D. M. MACDOWELL. Gorgias: Encomium of Helen. Text, notes, translation. Bristol Classical Press, 1982. Paper. ISBN 0-86292-053-1. Gorgias had a talent for the one-liner to go with his taste for the outrageous: "Plato is a good satirist. II He gets his from Denniston: " starting with the initial advantage of having nothing in particular to say, he was able to concentrate all his energies upon saying it. II How good of D. M. MacDowell and the Bristol Classical Press to give us the Liberace of Attic Prose in a valuable little edition. M. provides a select bibliography, an informative and interesting introduction, text, translation, and commentary lito help readers approaching Gorgias for the first time". The Encomium of Helen may be a jeu d l esprit. but it is worth having as an example of sophistic rhetoric, espeCially since so little survives, it is significant for the discussion of ~, and it is of interest because of its famous subject. In his introduction M. wonders what it was about Gorgiasl style that astonished the Athenians (Diodoros 12.53.4) and rightly agrees with Diodoros that it was Gorgiasl use of anthithesis and parallelism. But then he questions " whether the Athenians were right to admire (emphasis mine) Gorgias on that account". Why understand tE;{TTn~£ as " admire"? There is no problem. Of course Gorgias overdid it, of course it amused him, of course it stunned the Athenians. (Why "Aiskhylos" but Thucydides"?) The other Bristol texts are properly without translation. But a translation enhances the value of this edition since translations of the Encomium are not readily available. Mis bibliography lists one, but misses another, and that is a pity. Mis translation is correct and dependable, but it lacks the rococo splendor of a LaRue Van Hook's (incomplete) translation in CW 6 (1912-13) 122-3 and in his Loeb Isocrates vol. III, 55-7, of -which a sample from section 19 (Parisi power over Helen): If then, the eye of Helen, charmed by Alexanderls beauty gave to her soul excitement and amorous incitement, what wonder? How could one who was weaker, repel and expel him who, being divine, had power divine? If it was physical diversion and psychical perversion, we should not execrate it as reprehensible but deprecate it as indefensible. For it came to whom it came by fortuitous insinuations, not by judicious resolutions; by erotic complusions; not by depotic machinations. That is Gorgias. Nevertheless students of rhetoric and of philosophy, Hellenists and Helenophiles will welcome this useful little text. UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY ROBERT SCHMIEL ...