Hellenistic Collection: Philetas, Alexander of Aetolia, Hermesianax, Euphorion, Parthenius (review)

The Loeb Classical Library's Hellenistic Collection spans the Hellenistic period and traverses many genres. Nevertheless, as its editor, J. L. Lightfoot, points out, it is bound together by the themes of the development of elegy and catalog poetry, and the subjects of love and literary history (x-xiii). The authors included in this volume are all listed in its title. With one exception, their work is highly fragmentary, and nearly all contain very difficult Greek. We find here wordplay, recondite vocabulary, and mythological tales boiled down to extreme brevity. Except for the last (which may be mitigated by footnotes), these phenomena present serious challenges to the translator. The exceptional work, which survives in its entirety, is Parthenius' Sufferings in Love, brief prose retellings of tragic-erotic stories from Greek myth. Only this work had been published by the Loeb Classical Library before, and Lightfoot's treatment is thoroughly new, based on her 1999 commentary. To each author Lightfoot provides a brief introduction. No more than this is possible; our knowledge of them varies from little to almost nothing—and what we do know derives immediately from their included texts and testimonia. The collected fragments are essentially complete; only some tiny papyrus scraps are omitted. They are accompanied by a healthy amount of contextual material, which proves indispensable. The apparatus, while abbreviated, is on a par with the more recent Loeb volumes, explaining all but the most obvious differences from manuscript readings. It is Lightfoot's habit to employ an apparatus on the fragments themselves, but not on their contextual material; changes to that material are noted parenthetically, a practice that sometimes becomes burdensome (e.g. Euphorion fr. 131).

In establishing the text, Lightfoot's editorial choices do not stray far from other recent editions. There are, however, more editorial errors than I would expect for a Loeb volume. I will mention just a few. A letter has dropped out of Hermesianax fr. 13.i.9, where sublinear dots have also multiplied inexplicably. Euphorion fr. 15a includes the form κοτέσσασα. This is the form found in the manuscript, but, as all previous editors have noticed, it must be incorrect—it should be κοτέσασα, as nothing else will fit the meter. Lightfoot twice prints αὐτοῦ for αὑτοῦ (Parthenius III.3, IX.4; there are other similar problems elsewhere).

Lightfoot's translation is usually quite readable, which is a real achievement for a text of this difficulty. In this process, however, the complexity of the poetry is often sacrificed. For instance, Hermesianax 3.29-30 reads λεπτὴν ᾗς Ἰθάκην ἐνετείνατο θεῖος Ὅμηρος / ᾠδῇσιν . . . which Lightfoot renders "The godlike Homer set mean Ithaca / To verse." This works, but it misses Hermesianax's playful metaphor, by which we could translate "The godlike Homer stretched Ithaca thin in his verses"—pointing out, as Hermesianax surely intended, that the Odyssey spends a lot of time at home for a story about wanderings.

At other times, errors creep in that have no reasonable justification. For instance, Philitas fr. 57d is a scholiastic note, explaining that Philitas adopts the reading ὑπαλύξει "will escape" instead of the usually preferred ὑπαΐξει "will dart up" in Iliad 6.459. Lightfoot, however, incorrectly translates both words as "will dart up," thus nullifying the point. All too often, a word is left out in translation, as when the name "Neaera" is omitted in its first occurrence in Parthenius XVIII.1; the result is to make the beginning of the story much harder to follow. Lightfoot does not always connect two occurrences of a key Greek word by giving them the same English translation. For instance, Parthenius fr. 24 gives two possible origins for the name of the Saronic Gulf. One of these comes from the verb σύρεσθαι, which is used twice in the passage. But it is translated "surge" the first time and "drag" the second, giving no indication of the connection.

I do not wish to multiply examples; this volume was never going to be easy...