The Lyric of Ibycus: Introduction, Texts and Commentary by Claire Louise Wilkinson (review)

This book, a revised version of the author’s doctoral thesis, offers us a commentary on “those fragments which offer the greatest scope for an analysis of Ibycus as a writer” (preface), along with a text based on Wilkinson’s examination of the papyri, her own translations, and a general introduction dealing with Ibycus as an author. While the reader may regret the fact that Wilkinson was unable to pursue her original aim of providing a commentary on every fragment of Ibycus, we should not overlook how thorough a resource she has provided us with, for the detail and scope of this book far exceeds any other publication on this author.

The introduction is relatively short, but it covers all the main bases, and offers discussion of Ibycus’ life and dates, the major themes of his poetry (myth, love, and praise), his use of imagery, likely performance contexts, dialect, meter, and the transmission of the poetry. For me, the most interesting section was that on myth, which begins with a helpful list of the range of myth categories to which Ibycus refers and uses this to discuss where he is similar to other lyric poets (such as his interest in Trojan myth) and where he differs (in his use of Sicilian themes, which Wilkinson connects to the desires of local patrons). The discussion of Ibycus’ relationship to epinicia, and the question of whether he can be considered an epinician poet, will also be useful, since, as Wilkinson notes (24), this is an issue that has been overlooked in Anglophone scholarship. The table of Ibycus’ use of imagery (28) provides a quick overview of a dense topic and helps the reader to draw out major strands.

The commentary itself forms the bulk of the book, and can fairly be described as exhaustive. Each fragment is given its own miniature introduction, dealing with questions such as the content and type of poem, the papyrus, metrical analysis, or further general points about style and imagery (as applicable). In the lemmatic commentary itself, almost every line of Greek included receives detailed discussion, whether for the choice of an adjective, the parallels for a usage in other authors, or papyrological description. Wilkinson is well versed in the scholarship on the relevant questions, and this is a rigorous and thorough piece of work. At times the commentary could have done with a little streamlining: for example, discussions of parallels could sometimes do with trimming, or with the author making it clearer what the payoff of discussing these parallels is for our understanding of Ibycus. Similarly, while Wilkinson’s desire to take account of the full range of views in the scholarship is admirable, we can get a bit bogged down in the detail at times. Nevertheless, the level of commentary offered will certainly be useful for those wishing to pursue matters further. It is particularly valuable for the less famous fragments, which do not feature in anthologies of lyric or articles other than technical and papyrological ones, and Wilkinson’s patient analysis of these fragments will make it much easier for scholars to see what is interesting or important about them in the future. A gripe aimed at the publisher has to do with the ease of navigation within the volume: it is irritating that the page headers list only the broad grouping of fragments (e.g., “Manuscript Fragments,” or the number of the papyrus which preserves this set of fragments), instead of the individual fragment number, which means that readers cannot simply flick through and find the poems they are looking for, but must use the table of contents each time.

This is not a book for beginners to Greek lyric, and Wilkinson at times could ease the reader better into the material, or foreground the important issues more clearly. For graduate students and scholars working on Greek lyric, however, this detailed and scholarly discussion of Ibycus’ poetry...