Ancient Scholarship and Grammar: Archetypes, Concepts, and Contexts. by Stephanos Matthaios, Franco Montanari, and Antonios Rengakos (eds.). (review)

The collection of articles under review, resulting from a conference held in Thessaloniki in 2008, constitutes a further contribution to the flourishing field of research on ancient scholarship. The thematic spectrum of the work is wide, from the fourth century B.C.E. to the Byzantine era. The volume includes twenty-six contributions divided into five sections. A useful introduction by the editors summarizes the state of contemporary research.

The book opens with Montanari’s contribution, which provides a general historical background for ancient scholarship. The second section then focuses on the way in which ancient scholars interpreted specific authors. To mention only a few of these articles, Richard Hunter considers Plato’s Ion; Marco Fantuzzi the opening scene of the Rhesus and the Iliadic Doloneia; Matthaios Eratosthenes’ definition of grammatike; and Fillippomaria Pontani Homer’s role as a foundational text for correctness in Greek (hellenismos).

The third section investigates the views of ancient grammarians on the correct use of Greek. Jean Lallot debates whether the grammarians considered the diachronic dimension in their linguistic analysis. Louis Basset further develops this thesis in his article, revealing functions of the definite article in the Homeric text given by Apollonius Dyscolus. In an inspiring article, Philomen Probert argues that the rise of linguistic Atticism in the second and third centuries C.E. determined the evaluation of linguistic forms. Inecke Sluiter investigates the phenomenon of lexical singularity in Herodian emphasizing the functions of analogy, and analyzes Herodian’s self-representation as the embodiment of the principle of analogy.

The fourth section is dedicated to the history of ancient grammar in its historical context. Alfons Wouters and Pierre Swiggers present an unpublished grammatical papyrus, P. Berol. 9917 (dated to around 300 C.E.), a “professional” notebook, and put it into the context of the τέχνη-genre focusing on the treatment of the adverb by the grammarians in Hellenistic Egypt. Wolfram Ax examines Quintilian’s perception of the educational and scientific value of grammar and its place in his system of rhetoric. Other authors examine grammatical principles in either the Greek or Roman worlds.

The three last contributions deal with ancient grammar in its interdisciplinary (rhetorical and philosophic) context. Casper C. de Jonge places Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ criticism of Thucydides’ style into the context of ancient scholarship on Thucydides, and discusses Dionysius’ analysis of different features of Thucydides’ syntax in the context of the interaction between ancient rhetoric, philology, and literary criticism. Anneli Luhtala provides an accurate survey of the imposition of names in ancient grammar and philosophy from Plato to Late Antiquity. Maria Chriti’s contribution adds to this “nature versus convention” debate, examining how the Neoplatonic commentators further developed the Aristotelian approach to the connection between language and reality.

The general index is incomplete: some terms are given in Greek, others transliterated, and a number of terms or names discussed (e.g., techne in Matthaios) are not included here. Furthermore, although it is undoubtedly difficult to provide a unitary structure for collections of this kind, it is sometimes hard to determine the difference between sections (especially sections 3 and 4). The organizational principle within each section is chronological which sometimes leads to repetition, and on at least one occasion it is not clear that the sequence is in fact in chronological order (Wouters–Swiggers / Ax). These are quibbles. More seriously, perhaps, the first linguistic exercises of the sophists, which prepared the soil for later Platonic-Aristotelian interpretations, are not discussed, apart from some asides to Cratylus in Lallot and Luhtala. In fact, the volume is lacking a contribution on approaches to linguistics in the fifth century B.C.E., which might perhaps have provided indications for the descent of the imposition of names, the correctness of language, and other topics crucial to Hellenistic criticism. Protagoras’ ὀρθοέπεια and Prodicus’ ὀρθότης ὀνομάτων may thus be considered embryonic forms of the διόρθωσις and ὀρθοέπεια discussed in the...