The Journal of Hellenic Studies

http://journals.cambridge.org/JHS

Additional services for The Journal of Hellenic Studies:

Email alerts: Click here

Subscriptions: Click here
Commercial reprints: Click here
Terms of use : Click here

Sonnino M. Euripidis Erechthei Quae Exstant, a cura di Maurizio

Sonnino. Florence: F. Le Monnier, 2010. Pp. 520, illus. €37.
9788800740067.

Michael Lipka

The Journal of Hellenic Studies / Volume 133 / January 2013, pp 171 - 172
DOI: 10.1017/S0075426913000219, Published online: 19 September 2013

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0075426913000219

How to cite this article:

Michael Lipka (2013). Review of M. Sonnino 'Euripidis Erechthei Quae Exstant, a cura di Maurizio Sonnino' The
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 133, pp 171-172 doi:10.1017/S0075426913000219

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/JHS, IP address: 194.95.59.195 on 19 Nov 2013

 LITERATURE
and prophecies which come to fulfilment during or
immediately after the present time of a given play.
Although her discussion would be strengthened by
further engagement with the question of how
oracles delivered in the past differ from less
obviously forward-looking past events, Kyriakou
says much that is useful on the subject of tragic
oracles. Her discussion of the extent to which
Calchas’ prediction in Ajax implies any hope for
the hero’s survival is particularly helpful; she
argues convincingly that, given Athena’s known
hostility, Calchas’ claim that Ajax might be saved
‘with the help of god’ (Aj. 779) indicates ‘the
virtual futility of the attempt’ (190) to save him.
After discussing her 12 plays in detail,
Kyriakou comes to the conclusion that the past in
Aeschylus is primarily the concern of the chorus,
while the past in Sophocles is primarily the
concern – and often the primary concern – of the
principal characters. This distinction is both
useful and well supported, but it also raises
questions about the differences between characters
and chorus which, although beyond the already
vast scope of Kyriakou’s book, would have made
her conclusions more compelling. Although more
thorough discussion in this vein of her use of key
terms would have helped Kyriakou’s argument
throughout, the volume contains many careful
readings and has much to offer those who are
interested in the temporal complexity of Greek
tragedy.
LUCY VAN ESSEN-FISHMAN
University of Oxford
lucy.vanessen-fishman@classics.ox.ac.uk
SONNINO (M.) Euripidis Erechthei Quae
Exstant, a cura di Maurizio Sonnino.
Florence: F. Le Monnier, 2010. Pp. 520, illus.
€37. 9788800740067.
doi:10.1017/S0075426913000219
This is a new full-scale text, commentary and
translation of the extant fragments of Euripides’
Erechtheus. The edition’s analytical and metic-
ulous nature is apparent if compared to the last
endeavour of a similar kind by Paolo Carrara more
than 30 years ago (Euripide. Eretteo. Introduzione,
testo e commento, Florence, 1977). Suffice it to
say that Carrara’s edition offers some 25 pages of
concise introduction, while Sonnino grants us
some 120 pages of no less concise prefatory
remarks on a text mass of less than 250 verses
(many of which severely truncated).
171
Sonnino’s introduction is exclusively
concerned with the plot and central characters of
the play, while linguistic, stylistic and metrical
questions as well as other considerations of poetic
technique are relegated to the relevant lemmata of
the extensive commentary. I single out four topics
that are tackled in Sonnino’s introduction.
(1) The choice of the local hero Erechtheus as
protagonist and the Athenian-centred topic.
Sonnino rightly remarks that myths underlying the
plots of Attic drama are usually more pan-helladic
in nature than is the case in the present play. In
order to explain this deviation, Sonnino ingen-
iously refers us to the (exclusively Athenian)
literary genre of funeral speeches, in which the
laudatory section (epainos) plays a particular role
(36–42). This reference is illuminating not only
because there are clearly strong nationalistic and
epainetic elements in Praxithea’s long speech in
which she endorses – and even encourages – the
sacrifice of her daughter for the sake of Athens (fr.
12, cf. pp. 113–19), but also because the whole
plot (at the end of which Erechtheus and his three
daughters lie dead, but Athens stays victorious due
to Athena’s intervention) must have reminded the
Athenian audience of its own perils during the
Peloponnesian War. This is all the more appro-
priate if we follow Sonnino (and most others) in
dating the piece to the period of the Athenian-
Spartan truce of 423/422 (27–34). Mutatis
mutandis, part of the text may then be read as an
epitaphios of the Athenian dead of the
Archidamian War in disguised dramatic/poetic
rather than the usual rhetoric/prosaic form.
(2) Erechtheus occupying the position of Ion as
the defender of Athens against the Thracian
Eumolpus in the mythic tradition. Concluding his
extensive discussion (45–63), Sonnino remarks
that the key to understanding this role switching is
Erechtheus’ unquestionable credentials as the
autochthonous Athenian par excellence (while Ion
on his father’s side was not Athenian; 62).
(3) Eumolpus’ role in Euripides’ drama as
compared to his appearance in other sources.
Sonnino singles out two mutually incompatible
sides of this mythical character: on the one hand,
the pious and just Eleusinian hierophant and
archēgetēs of the priestly family of the
Eumolpidae, and, on the other, the Thracian, son
of Poseidon and sworn enemy of Athens, in short
the character of Euripides’ Erechtheus (63–90). In
a separate section, Sonnino offers the relevant
testimonia, organized along the lines of the two
aforementioned natures of Eumolpus (143–72).
172 REVIEWS OF BOOKS
This section forms a welcome contribution to
research into this mythical figure, but it is
unexpected because partially irrelevant to
Sonnino’s declared main objective, which is the
illumination of the Euripidean text as it survives.
For, interesting to note, Eumolpus’ character
despite its protagonistic role in the overall plot
(according to Lyc. In Leocr. 98–101 = test. 37,
p. 153) is next to absent in the extant fragments
(he is mentioned by name only twice – fr. 12.48
and fr. 17.100 – and no speech lines can be
attributed to him with certainty).
(4) Transformation by Athena of Erechtheus’
daughters into the astral constellation of Hyades and
their worship as Hyakynthides (90–110). Sonnino
tries to make sense of the conceptual relation
between the Athenian Hyakynthides, daughters of
Erechtheus (whose Athenian cult is attested also in
other sources), and the Spartan Hyakynthides, sacri-
ficed by their father Hyakynthos in order to avert a
pestilence from Athens. Sonnino concludes that just
as Euripides replaced the foreigner Ion for the
Athenian Erechtheus, ethnicity and democratic
fervor were the reasons for the attribution of the
well-known Athenian cult of the Hyakynthides to
Athenian rather than Spartan maidens (95).
However, when analysing the different traditions of
the sacrifice of the Hyakynthides, Sonnino could
have been more generous in comments on the aetio-
logical nature of the relevant passages and their
relevance for Athenian religion (cf. especially fr.
17.73–89). For, as it seems, in this play Euripides
does not only recast foreign dramatic characters and
turn them into autochthonous Athenian protago-
nists, but he also claims potentially foreign cults and
cult practices for Athens.
To give a very short impression of the
commentary, among the 22 fragments offered by
Sonnino, the famous Sorbonne Papyrus 2328 (fr.
17 = TrGF 370) is alone granted 90 pages of
extensive notes, not rarely concerned with the
proper restitution of the text. In fact, this section
of the commentary could be published independ-
ently and would warrant a separate review.
Suffice it to say that Sonnino’s argumentation of
textual matters is extremely meticulous, cautious
(normally following Kannicht’s edition of the text
in TrGF V) and generally convincing (for example
336–38 on 17.8, 346–48 on 17.14, 370 on
17.47–49), although at 17.81 Austin’s restitution
of the line may well be right (pace Kannicht
followed by Sonnino).
All in all, Sonnino’s edition is an important
step towards a new appreciation of Euripides’
Erechtheus. No doubt, it will satisfy the needs of
critical and informed professional classicists, be
they interested in technical, factual or more
literary questions. If there is one side which I feel
could have been dealt with more extensively, it is
the broader issue of Athenian religion, namely a
discussion of the notions of cult and worship in
drama, human sacrifice, religious aetiology as
linked to Athenian nationalism, etc. Still, this lack
does by no means diminish the overall value of
this important contribution.
MICHAEL LIPKA
University of Patras
lipka@upatras.gr
LIAPIS (V.) A Commentary of the Rhesus
Attributed to Euripides. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp.
lxxviii + 364. £90. 9780199591688.
doi:10.1017/S0075426913000220
In this volume, Liapis offers a thoroughly detailed
commentary on [Euripides’] Rhesus. The text of
the Rhesus has caused numerous problems to
scholars over the years, including issues of authen-
ticity, authorship and composition.
From early on, and rightly so, Liapis aligns
himself with those scholars rejecting the play as a
genuine Euripidean tragedy. His reasons are
thoroughly explained in the ‘Introduction’ and
throughout the commentary, and they make for a
convincing argument.
The major issues of the play are summarized in
the ‘Introduction’ and later identified within the
commentary itself. Liapis starts with the various
literary representations of the Rhesus myth as seen
in the Iliad and the epic cycle, Pindar and the
oracle version of the story (later found in the
Aeneid as well), which have all – some more than
others – found their way into the tragedy. This
combination of elements from different sources is
also identified by Liapis as the first major short-
coming of the tragedy: it makes for a rather clumsy
compilation of elements from sources that are
incompatible with one another. His rejection of the
idea that the author of Rhesus had only indirect
knowledge of the story via now lost or fragmentary
plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles is convincing,
since the evidence for the contrary is thin and
speculative in its majority. Liapis does not fail to
refer to representations of the night-raid motif in
art and later literature, thus completing the picture
of the treatment of the myth in antiquity.