This, the third of a three-volume commentary on Antiphanes, is the latest contribution from the monumental KomFrag project under the aegis of B. Zimmermann at Freiburg, which has now covered the greater part of Old Comedy and is making increasing inroads into what is conventionally termed ‘Middle Comedy’. Volumes on Anaxandrides (B. Millis [2015]), Timocles (K. Apostolakis [2019]), Amphis and Ephippus (A. Papachrysostomou [2016, 2021]) have appeared; they fill out a picture first sketched in works on Eubulus (R. Hunter [1983]) and Alexis (W.G. Arnott [1996]). Safe to say, then, that we now know a good deal more about this period of comedy than we did at the start of the century; Middle Comedy is now accessible to the Greekless (and the Germanless: H.-G. Nesselrath, Die attische mittlere Komödie [1990], still defines the field). The only previous commentary on Antiphanes is I.M. Konstantakos's treatment of eight plays in his unpublished doctoral thesis (Diss. Cantab. 2000), of which two, Sappho and Stratiotes / Tychon, are included in the present volume.
The KomFrag layout is familiar by now: introduction to each play, where relevant; text and apparatus; translation; metrical analysis; bibliography; text-critical analysis; citation context; interpretation; and lemmatic commentary. The indexes (sources; Greek words; people and objects) are accurate. Cross-references abound (including to the unpublished notes on frr. 1–193: may none of these escape notice!), packing the maximum into minimum space; of some facts we are continually reminded (e.g. the practice of Athenaeus' Epitomator in omitting play titles), helping to keep commentaries self-contained. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is where to come for any question about Antiphanes, an author long overdue this treatment. O. has given us every detail on the text, laden us with parallels from Greek literature and cited compendiously work on the Realien of Attic comedy. The editor of Cratinus, Eupolis and by now most of Aristophanes is uniquely qualified for the task and has spared nothing of his learning. One might occasionally have wished that alternative approaches to the fragments received a less dismissive hearing. Exploratory uses of the texts are dismissed (‘fanciful’, ‘speculative’, ‘merely a guess’), though J.M. Edmonds's daring dates are often accepted. O. naturally has every right to compose a commentary according to his own views; the ideas of others could still have been treated in more charitable ways – particularly as he himself makes occasional ‘guesses’ (‘The obvious setting for the activities in question is a symposium’, on fr. 272 K.–A. – is it?) All that said: O. deserves our thanks for building this thoroughly solid foundation for future work.
Volume 1 will clarify what text is being printed here; on the whole it agrees with K.–A., but O. has clearly reconsidered everything afresh. The variation οὐδέν / οὐθέν is normalised in οὐθέν, sensibly (justified, p. 250). He writes σόγκος for σόγχος at 225.4, again probably sensibly, though the appeal to ‘elsewhere in the Classical period’ is mysterious: we have, to my knowledge, no pre-Hellenistic evidence for this word (similar issue at p. 190 on τριπόδιον). On 203.1, he adopts G.A. Hirschig's good analysis; on 223.1 he prints the paradosis, not P.P. Dobree's conjecture. He stays his hand at 194.17, printing a text he declares ‘anodyne’ in the notes. O.'s notes make good reading for someone learning the ropes of textual criticism: each decision is related to fundamental principles, and I commend them to the attention of students. O. is quite right that no good answer has been found for 226.1; we might have been treated to some remarks about what the criteria for a good solution might be (e.g. whether the line requires ἄν for the potential optative).
The metrical schemes make a fearsome impression, but are easier on the eye than one might worry. The analyses are not impeccable, however; I ignore trivial scansion errors and concentrate on cases that affect the text. The first syllable of ἱμάτιον (pace the scheme on p. 44) is long; this means that the χρ- οf χρυσᾶ does not ‘make position’ (pace p. 45). Likewise, πίνειν has /i:/, which means a text with a split anapaest in 228.2 (-τι || τὸ πί-); the scheme does not note this (the main) caesura. This, not the line-end article in 228.1, will have been the criterion for Kassel–Austin's arrangement; G. Hermann's supplement should probably be printed. At 233.2 Σικυῶνος (accepted in the commentary, but rejected in the text and the notes) also avoids a split anapaest. Secondary caesuras are marked even after pre-positives and before post-positives. Volume 1 may explain more about the rights and wrongs of split anapaests and caesuras in Middle Comedy, but the problem is not addressed in this volume, even where it affects textual decisions; W.G. Arnott, CQ 7 (1957), is not cited.
O.'s linguistic notes raise some interesting methodological issues. For O., ‘Greek’ equals ‘attested literary Greek’; fair enough. Nonetheless, Greek for Antiphanes (et al.) was a good deal more, and while that is not strictly accessible to us, we can take account of it. T. Kock's conjecture λογίσκος (205.2) is rejected because the word is not attested (p. 60); γλαυκίδιον and λαβράκιον are ‘rare’ and mark ‘precious elevation’ (p. 124); στέμματα is ‘not the normal word’ (p. 178). The problem is that lexemes formed, as these are, with productive suffixes can be used without being lexicalised; speakers can produce such words in speech more widely than they might in writing (diminutives are cross-linguistically colloquial in any case). As for στέμμα, the form could represent a new formation (< στέφ-μα) or a reanalysis of the older word, rather than an unusual usage. An approach rooted in more general linguistic concerns might have assisted here.
To finish, some detailed observations. ‘σοβέω (no etymology)’ (p. 41): in fact, unproblematically reconstructed as *ti̯ogu̯-ei̯e-, causative of *ti̯egu̯-eti, cf. Skt. tyájati ‘abandon’; thence related to σέβομαι (‘I distance myself’ or the like). P. 45: Konstantakos (2000), p. 238, comments on the artful arrangement of the verbs in this fragment; O. on the whole eschews stylistic remarks of this kind, which remind us of the beauty of comic verse. P. 61: no note on καί τι καί, only here in comedy apart from Ar. Eq. 1242 (J.D. Denniston, GP, p. 294); more recent work on particles (e.g. A. Rijksbaron [1997]) is missing. P. 71: 207.9 add R. Nünlist, Poetologische Bildersprache (1998), pp. 110ff.; M. Asper, Onomata Allotria (1997), pp. 229–30. P. 104: I wonder if we will get a note somewhere on Antiphanes' elision of -αι (as e.g. 216.4)? It is a standard enough feature in comedy (though, as this line shows, it could trigger textual corruption), but a statement on what the fragments tell us about this would be helpful. P. 131: τραγέλαφος is not strictly a dvandva (Schwyzer, Gr. Gr. 453). P. 146: we might be told to find Asius in West, IEG, vol. 2. P. 154: on βάσανος, add Eur. Med. 516ff. P. 166: Kaibel's δαφνόσκιον deserves mention on 234.2. P. 169: κύκλῳ χορεῦον (234.3): an image drawn from dithyrambic performance matching dithyrambic language, perhaps (cf. Men. Dysk. 951)? For the fourth-century chorus, see L. Jackson, Chorus of Drama (2019), also to be cited on 202.6. P. 186: Kaibel's suggestion for 242.3 has the interesting feature of introducing κεἰ, which Antiphanes is the only comic poet to use besides Aristophanes. P. 190: θυεία is not attested in Mycenaean – tu-we-a in PY Un 267 stands for /thuweha/, i.e. plural of θύος –, and the etymology is well-established (see Frisk, s.v.). P. 204: the usage of ἐργαστήριον as a form of address in Menander should be more strictly distinguished (CP 112 [2017], 248 n. 9). P. 236: O. has ‘Herwerden’ for ‘Headlam’, ‘Text’, para 2. P. 251 n. 87: O. puzzles over the citation of D.Chr. 59.4 by Kassel–Austin on Philemon fr. 2. The correct parallel is D.Chr. 69.4 (not to my knowledge picked up in K.–A.'s own errata). P. 312: M.J. García Soler (2001) is missing from the bibliography. P. 333: for ‘charcoal: 10’, read ‘109’.
