Euripidea Tertia (review)

This is the third and final volume of Euripidea prepared by David Kovacs while working on his Loeb edition of the extant plays of Euripides. The first (1994) included a large selection of sources with English translations for the life and work of Euripides (this will now serve as helpful companion to the more complete collection in R. Kannicht, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 5.1 [Göttingen 2004] 39–145), as well as textual discussions on passages in the plays of Loeb Volume 1 (Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea). Euripidea Altera (1996) continued with the plays in Volumes 2–3 and the beginning of Volume 4 (from Heracleidae to Troades). We now have the completion of the series, with chapters on the plays from Iphigenia Taurica to Iphigenia Aulidensis, plus the non-Euripidean Rhesus, and brief Addenda on most of the earlier plays (none as it happens on Hippolytus, Andromache or Electra; a larger number on Troades). The Loeb volumes and Euripidea together are by now well established as a valuable resource for both scholars and general readers, and Kovacs must be congratulated on completing all of this work so successfully and expeditiously. Since it has been much reviewed already as the various volumes appeared, my own comments will be brief and selective.

This volume includes around 150 discussions, mostly confined to textual problems of varying importance and novelty, but in some cases including larger questions of staging and interpretation. Amongst the latter I noted especially helpful discussions of the use of eisodoi in Hecuba (163–164), Orestes (79–82) and Bacchae (124), of the dramatization in Or. 1503–36 (whose authenticity Kovacs defends, 102–110), of Cadmus’ attitude to Dionysus (116–118 on Ba. 189–96), and of the punctuation and interpretation of the chorus’s ethical advice at Ba. 395ff. His argument that in Ba. 810ff. Pentheus’ desire to spy on the Bacchants is motivated by religious curiosity rather than prurience perhaps creates more difficulties than it solves.

Kovacs is an acute and independent-minded textual critic, and he often proposes or reaffirms conjectures, or defends the tradition, persuasively: for example, IT 219 Köchly; Ion 222 Kovacs (with 208 e.g. Wecklein); Hel. 652–7 retain L’s assignment of four lines to Menelaus and two to Helen, and read in 653 (but see below on 654); Pho. 31 Nagel; Or. 1 (or Blaydes) taken as parenthetic (similarly J. Holzhausen, Hermes 123 [1995] 270–272); Or. 560 Kovacs (like Kovacs I find the compound out of balance with simple preceding and following); Ba. 176 Elmsley; Ba. 336 Tyrwhitt; Rh. 452 Kovacs (but against Kovacs’s at Rh. 636 see D. Mastronarde in Electronic Antiquity 8.1 [2004]); Tro. 477 Weil; Tro. 508 Dobree. In some cases I am less convinced: for example, in Ion 828 Kovacs reads (Jacobs), (L): but the first participle needs to be better balanced with 827 and the proposed sense seems convoluted (“but if he found an occasion he intended, wanting to defend himself against Time, to invest him with the kingship”). In Hel. 654 Kovacs proposes and punctuates after taking to mean “my tears are those of joy”; Hermann’s and no punctuation are surely better (“In my joy my tears have more of pleasure than of pain”).

Kovacs is not afraid to retain or reorganize a text that others doubt. He saves all of Ion’s speech at Ion 1261–81 by placing 1266–8 after 1274 and (with Musgrave) 1275–8 after 1281; likewise all of Castor’s speech at Hel. 1642–79 by placing 1650–5 after 1646 and adopting Cron’s correction of 1650. There are stout defences of Hel. 713–9 (del. Diggle—but see below on the extra line Kovacs supplies before 714), Or. 1347–8 (with all of 1347b–52 assigned to Electra; Willink had deleted both lines but now retains 1347, CQ 54 [2004] 35), Ba. 199–203 (del. Diggle: Kovacs assigns 199–200 to Cadmus and suggests a line has been lost at...