This new edition of Samia, the best preserved comedy by Menander after Dyskolos, represents the first appearance of a Menandrian text in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics and, as advised by S. in the preface, it ‘will serve to encourage the study (especially at undergraduate level) of Greek New Comedy, the ancestor of an entire western tradition of light drama’ (p. ix). This purpose is immediately clear in the extensive introduction, organised in thirteen chapters which set Samia in the context of Menander's production and analyse its most significant aspects: for example, the characters, the eros theme, the tragic models, its dating (‘no later than 314’), the performance and the iconography.
Despite the limitations imposed by the editorial policy of the series, in the introduction S. demonstrates his excellent qualities as a scholar. For example, in the fourth chapter, ‘The Characters and their Relationships’, in which the characters of the play are perceptively analysed, the section ‘Adoptive father and adoptive son’ deserves special attention: it focuses on the relationship between Moschion and Demeas, ‘a crucial feature, perhaps the crucial feature, of the play’ (p. 14), made more problematic by the playwright's choice to stage an adoptive relationship rather than a biological one. In particular, Moschion's character flaws are highlighted, as ‘the only free man in all of known Greek drama to call himself a coward’ (δειλός, 65; pp. 16, 120–1). However, S. recognises a profound process of maturation in Moschion over the course of the drama, because the young man ‘may have begun the play as a spoilt post-adolescent’ but, in the end, he behaves ‘as a man capable of playing the role he now holds, that of head of a nuclear family’ (p. 17). Considerable space is devoted to Demeas and his tendency to be overwhelmed by passion: this character also shows a ‘different side’ at the end of the play and, aware of the mistakes he has made with his loved ones, reveals his rational side which he ‘has learned from this experience’ (p. 19). The sixth chapter, ‘Tragic Themes and Reminiscences: Hippolytus and Others’, in which S. examines the tragic models of Samia, is also exemplary: it has been recognised by scholars that the play is connected, on the level of the fabula, with Euripides' Hippolytus, with Demeas, Moschion and Chrysis corresponding to Theseus, Hippolytus and Phaedra respectively. Scholars have also identified ties between Samia and the lost Phoenix; but S.'s proposal of a close relationship between Menander's Samia and Hipp(olytos) K(alyptomenos) (widely discussed in S.D. Olson [ed.], Ancient Comedy and Reception. Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson [2014], pp. 167–79) is undoubtedly original and compelling.
In the light of Hipp. K. test. II a + b Kn., and of the nineteen fragments of the play (428–47 Kn.), S. makes it clear that there are several elements of closeness between the two plays: the obvious analogy between the way in which Theseus, in Hipp. K., and Demeas in Samia, learn of their own unsettling truth (the two, unseen, listen to Phaedra and to the old nurse respectively); the role of seductress that Demeas attributes to Chrysis (336–48) fits the Phaedra of Hipp. K. (guilty of an attempted seduction) more than the one in Hippolytus; the affinity of Samia 343–7 not only with Phoenix fr. 812 Kn. (already detected by Jacques), but also with fr. 1067 Kn., which, as S. suggests, could belong to the same scene of fr. 440 Kn., in which a slave tries to persuade Theseus of Hippolytus' innocence. Among the other Euripidean reminiscences recognised by S., particularly interesting is the comparison (p. 276) between 572–3, in which Niceratus tries to take the child hostage, forcing the women to reveal the truth about his birth, and the famous scene of Euripides' Telephus (parodied by Aristophanes in Ach. 321–51 and Thesm. 688–762) in which the main character takes little Orestes hostage in order to get an audience with Agamemnon.
The text is accompanied by a critical apparatus including ‘only those passages where the user needs to be warned that the text adopted is conjectural or otherwise uncertain’ (p. 57). Therefore, S. does not point out cases in which the two main witnesses (B and C) are clearly in error; and for the attribution of the conjectural supplements unanimously accepted by scholars, he refers the reader to the edition of Arnott (2000).
Among the numerous noteworthy textual interventions, I will only point out the following: (i) having learned that Moschion intends to take Niceratus' daughter as his wife, Demeas says that he wants to go to Niceratus' house to announce the happy news (153–6a); but, in the following 156–8a, the distribution of lines is controversial: for example, Austin and Sandbach assign them to Demeas, while S., following Arnott, attributes them to Moschion on the basis of the cogent annotation that Demeas ‘cannot embark, or allow Moschion to embark, on the preliminary rituals of a wedding when he has as yet no idea whether Nikeratos will be willing to hold it today’ (p. l55). (ii) At 724, after πάνυ μὲν οὖν, B has a dicolon: therefore, all the editors refer the next speech εἰ τοῦτ’ ἐποίεις … ἄρτι (724b–25a) to Moschion; S. instead, also attributes πάνυ μὲν οὖν to Moschion, rightly observing that Niceratus asks the young man δοκεῖ; (723b): B's error will have resulted from mistakenly interpreting the dicolon after πάνυ μὲν οὖν as indicating a change of speaker, ‘when in fact it indicated change of addressee’ (p. 315).
The broad commentary is noteworthy for the accurate, balanced and often original notes on dramaturgical, historical-antiquarian and grammatical aspects of the comedy. For example, the stage reconstruction suggested on pp. 95–6 (and see pp. 312–13) is convincing: in Samia the two doors on the sides of the skene represent Demeas' and Niceratus' houses respectively and, as is clear from Sam. 96, eisodos A leads to the city and to the harbour, whereas eisodos B leads to the countryside, and Demeas' house is near eisodos A. I feel that S. is right when he observes that ‘these directionalities would have to be established afresh for each play: there was no fixed convention’ (p. 95); but I have to disagree when he states that in Aspis, in which the characters move only in the direction of the harbour and the city, ‘one would not want them to be all the same side’ (ibid.): as J.-M. Jacques (Ménandre. Le Bouclier [1998], pp. xxvii–xxviii, 2, 33 n. 1) argues, it can be proved that the eisodos closer to Smicrines' house leads to the harbour and the city since, at the beginning of the play, Daos, who is arriving from the harbour, heads towards Chaerestratus' house and is forced to pass in front of Smicrines' house who, at the threshold, speaks at 18b; and, in 455–7, the false physician, after examining Chaerestratus, announces that he is moving away in the direction of the city (455), and Smicrines, at 457, invites him to come closer to his house, which is obviously closer to the eisodos which the physician is directed towards. In the staging of the fake departure (665–9), Moschion states: πιθανόν εἶναι δεῖ μόνον/ ὃ μὰ τὸν Διόνυσον οὐ δύναμαι ποεῖν ἐγώ (667–8). S. observes that the oath μὰ τὸν Διόνυσον is also said in Asp. 347 (and previously in Aristophanes, Clouds 519; Wasps 1046; Eccl. 344, 357, 422) ‘by one who is about to act a part’ (p. 299); and I would point out that πιθανόν is used in a similar ‘metatheatrical’ sense by Daos in Asp. 390 (πιθανότητα). The slave, author, as Moschion, of a ‘play within the play’, is aware that to get the desired result the plot of his staging must be plausible.
The volume concludes with a list of works cited and with useful indexes (subjects, passages discussed and Greek words).
There are very few typographical errors; in the well-edited Greek text, I noted only 560: ϕησιν read ϕησίν; 730: λουτροϕορον read λουτρόϕορον; 734: εὐρωστως read εὐρώστως. On pp. x and 331, the first edition (1971) by J.M. Jacques, Ménandre, tome II: La Samienne, is cited instead of the second (1989).
This is a work of unquestionable value as, after all, it was fair to expect from S., whose extraordinary proficiency in Greek theatre is universally recognised by the scholarly community.
