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  • Callimachus Aetia. 2 vols. 1: Introduction, Text, and Translation. 2: Commentary by Annette Harder
  • Richard Hunter
Annette Harder. Callimachus Aetia. 2 vols. 1: Introduction, Text, and Translation. 2: Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xii, 362; iv, 1061. $350.00. ISBN 978-0-19-958101-6.

Three score and more years have passed since Rudolf Pfeiffer’s Callimachus, but the sense of θαῦμα has not; Annette Harder’s description of Pfeiffer’s work in her new commentary on the Aetia as “still a most impressive work of scholarship” [End Page 275] (1:vii) might be thought at least a little understated. The modern student (at any level) of the Aetia will constantly be going back to Pfeiffer, whether she knows it or not. Nevertheless, very much has changed since then, both in terms of new texts—most spectacularly the Lille papyri which gave us the Victoria Berenices with which book 3 opened—and the appreciation of old ones; as Hellenistic poetry itself has come to enjoy a golden age, so Callimachus has come to regain something of the importance he and the Aetia held in antiquity.

Anglophone students of the Aetia have until recently not been well served by commentaries; it is the Italians who have had all the luck. Giovan Battista D’Alessio’s edition of Callimachus in the BUR series is far and away the best text with notes that it is actually possible to carry around; the second and concluding volume of Giulio Massimilla’s large-scale text, commentary, and translation of the Aetia appeared in 2010, and a σύγκρισις between Massimilla and Harder will no doubt structure many a review. In fact, however, the two editions share many virtues, as well (unsurprisingly) as very often tracking each other almost verbatim, and anyone who is now writing about or teaching the Aetia at a high level would be well advised not to consult just Harder, but rather to add Harder to the list: Pfeiffer, D’Alessio, Massimilla, and Harder all deserve our attention.

Harder, of course, has time on her side. She is able to print an unpublished Michigan papyrus that joins fr. 21 Pf. (Harder, unlike Massimilla, keeps Pfeiffer’s numeration) and is of considerable interest. She has excellent bibliographical coverage, even if it is not as fully up to date as one might have expected (the preface is dated April 2009 and one senses that there have been delays). She presents the text and the papyrological detail —based largely, though not wholly, on checking against “facsimiles or (digital) photographs” rather than autopsy (2:73)—on a clear and generous scale, and the apparatus seems, as far as I could tell, to give one all one needs; the English translations, not just of the fragments, but also of summaries and allusions to Callimachean narratives, add greatly to the usefulness of these volumes. The virtues of the commentary lie also in fullness. Harder sets out alternative interpretations with great thoroughness and fairness and she weighs the arguments with suitably judicious caution; the commentary on the “Reply to the Telchines” (fr. 1), for example, is a positive treasure-house of references to the extraordinary range of views which have been, and still are, held. If there is perhaps some sense of lack of adventure about the commentary—the possibility that γλώσσης at fr. 75.9 suggests “gloss” as well as “tongue” (see the following μαῦλιν) does not even rate a mention—then we should reflect that Harder has given us a wonderful tool with which to get on to the next stage. The sheer scale of the undertaking and the enormous utility of the result deserve our admiration and our thanks; I hope it will not be thought carping if I express the wish that the commentary on the ten “testimonia” to the Aetia which she chooses to print (there could certainly have been more) were not quite so perfunctory. As for the introduction, this surveys all the expected areas, particularly the structure of the poem, where Harder comes down cautiously on the side of the current communis opinio; cognoscenti will probably not find much here to surprise them, though many may want to pursue her claim that “at...

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