The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp by J.R.C. Cousland and James R. Hume (review)

This Festschift for Martin Cropp is packed with interest and suffused with the affection and respect for its honorand of a highly distinguished set of contributors. Some of the best papers (Mastronarde, Gibert, Lloyd) suggest fascinating directions in future research and, overall, this is a first-rate collection. After Part One, William Slater’s introductory essay on Cropp and Classics in Canada from the 1970s to the present, the essays are arranged in five sections: Euripidean fragments, extant Euripides, Euripides and his context, Aeschylus and Sophocles, and Euripides and his influence. Space constraints, of course, forbid me from anything remotely representing a full discussion of everything valuable in this widely-ranging book.

Through a discussion of the theme of consolation in extant tragedy James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard (11–22) sheds light on the Hypsipyle, suggesting that Euripides offered an alternative to the usual motif of tragic revenge by having Eurydice accept consolation from Amphiaraus when her son dies on Hypsipyle’s watch. John Gibert (23–34) argues that Zethus and Amphion in the Antiope do not simply represent political engagement and apragmosyne respectively, but that each contains a mixture of elements from these two fundamental positions. So many uncertainties remain, given the text’s fragmentary nature, that I was, perhaps inevitably, not entirely convinced, though look forward to reading Gibert’s promised future work on the topic. In a subtle argument, Justina Gregory (34–48) revisits the relationship between Euripides’ Hippolytus plays, suggesting that the double punishments of exile and curse in the extant play result from a revision process stimulated by Euripides’ concern to absolve both Theseus and Poseidon from full responsibility for Hippolytus’ death. Scodel (49–61) discusses Philoctetes plays in the context of contemporary Athenian politics, suggesting that whereas Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ lost plays foreground issues of direct political resonance in the Athenian empire, Sophocles’ extant play asked more fundamental questions about the morality of using people for one’s own ends in a corrupt political world.

Mastronarde (63–76) performs a superb “thought experiment” on the Phoenissae, imagining first what we would make of it if all we had were ancient quotations and then how subsequent papyrological and iconographical discoveries change this picture. Although his conclusion is not unexpected—much, though not all of the plot can be reconstructed, but details of tone, the development of thematic motifs and so on are lost—it is a fascinating context in which to view the plays that are genuinely fragmentary and points the way to similar explorations. Mastronarde also includes an Appendix (461–496) of his edition of the “lost” Phoenissae. A. J. Podlecki discusses a possible relationship between the Prometheia and Euripides’ Andromeda (77–91).

In Part Three, Eric Csapo (95–109) offers an interesting account of Euripides’ musical and literary techniques in the first stasimon of Electra, while Ian Storey (111–125) argues that the chorus of the Suppliant Women consisted solely of the mothers of the Seven against Thebes, as Euripides sought to meld a traditional patriotic theme with a radical staging. Not everyone, including myself, may agree, but he argues exceptionally well. Judith Fletcher discusses images of weaving in the Ion (127–139) while C.W. Marshall (141–156) argues for an earlier date for Iphigenia in Tauris, thereby casting doubt on the belief that Euripidean tragedy shifted to a more romantic mode after c.415. Given the prominence of broken links between word and deed in the Medea, Brad Levett (157–167) suggests that Medea should not exit at 1404 but remain silently while Jason pours out his last useless words. A particularly insightful observation of Ann Michelini (169– 181) on the complex tone of the Phoenissae concerns “circumstantiality”— explanations for things that typically...