This volume is a collection of nineteen book chapters and articles (primarily the latter) published by R. between 1975 and 1997. Most chapters focus on a single topic or text of Greek poetry of the archaic period: various of Pindar's epinicia receive the lion's share of attention, with eight chapters, though Homer, Alcman, Sappho and Sophocles also feature prominently. Each chapter begins with a note giving details of its original publication, and besides cross-references to other chapters within the volume (and one interesting editorial postscript, discussed below) each is reprinted without substantial alterations.
It is natural to ask, when considering a volume of previously published work, and all the more so with one like this, in which most of the chapters first appeared in widely available journals: what is gained by consulting the work as a whole rather than its discrete parts? The answer in this case is a great deal indeed. For those who are interested not only in the specific topics at issue in each chapter but also in early Greek poetry in general, this book is a rich source of both background information and analytical insight. R.'s attention to detail in his analyses is such that he often provides a level of information on texts and previous scholarship which rivals even scholarly commentaries. To give just one example: the first of two chapters on Sappho 94 begins with a full description of the provenance of the fragment and a brief history of its publication, an account that is both relevant to the argument of the chapter and useful to anyone with an interest in the poem.
In a similar way, we find scattered throughout opinions and analyses relevant not only to the topic at hand, but also to broader concerns in classical scholarship. For instance, buried in a footnote in Chapter 4 (on the relationship of Achilles and Thetis in the Iliad) we read, ‘The tendency to quarry the Iliad for lost pre-Iliadic sources is less fashionable today than it was a generation ago and it seems, certainly, unnecessary in this case: what is consistent within the poem, even if that consistency is perceived only as details accumulate, does not have to point outside the poem’ (p. 82 n. 28). Here, R. offers a rule for when it is and is not appropriate to deploy Quellenforschung upon (or against?) the Homeric epics, still a point of debate, as witnessed most recently by West's The Making of the Iliad (2011) and the critical response thereto. The book under review would be of use to a scholar interested in this topic, who might otherwise miss a valuable contribution to the discussion because the article in which it appeared originally does not advertise its relevance.
Even more background information and useful analysis of this type is not stated so explicitly as the examples above, but is developed over the course of several chapters. The history and character of Cheiron the centaur, a lifelong interest of R.'s, is examined in several chapters, and thus readers with a similar interest will benefit from finding essentially a comprehensive account of early sources on him gathered into one place. In a similar way, many of the chapters deal with the role of myth in lyric poetry, and while none approaches the theoretical underpinnings of this question directly, reading the case studies offered by individual chapters gradually reveals a clear and coherent viewpoint on this important topic in lyric scholarship.
I turn from the book at large to individual chapters: these show considerable variation in their style and interests, although all are of quite high quality. Chapter 1, reprinted from Gerber's 1997 Companion to the Lyric Poets, provides a general overview of the biography and surviving works of Alcman, Stesichorus, Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides. This is an interesting chapter, and more deeply analytical than one might expect of a general introduction from a Companion volume, though the age of its bibliography does limit its usefulness somewhat.
Chapter 4, ‘Alcman's Partheneion: Legend and Choral Ceremony’, concerns the relationship between the (relatively) well-preserved second half of the Louvre Partheneion with the mostly lost, probably mythic, first half. R. argues for reading the chorus leaders, Hagesichora and Agido, as parallel to the Dioscuri on whom the mythical section seems to have centred, a strong attempt to wrest sense from a notoriously difficult text.
Chapter 8, ‘Sappho, Aphrodite, and the Muses’, wades into ‘one of the most envenomed and inconclusive debates of the twentieth century in the field of early Greek poetry’ (p. 121), namely whether Sappho led or participated in a thiasos. After providing an excellent history of the debate, R. unconventionally argues that she did, drawing on a substantial number of fragments to reconstruct a ‘school’ for unmarried girls, centred on Aphrodite and the Muses. This chapter concludes with an editorial postscript, adducing the New Sappho as evidence for R.'s assertions, though it does not seem to strengthen his case materially.
Chapters 9–16 are each focused on a different Pindaric ode, and are mostly concerned with reconstructing the circumstances of their performance (when this is in doubt) and how the myth of the poem fits into that context. Chapter 15, ‘Pindar's Oresteia and the Tragedians’, stands out from this group, both in arguing that Pythian 11 must be older than Aeschylus' Oresteia and in exploring the possibility that the context for the ode's performance was ‘a local festival in Thebes about which we know nothing’ (p. 225).
The final three chapters differ from most of their predecessors in that the primary focus of each is a character or theme rather than a particular text. Chapter 17, ‘The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry’, explores the parallels between the Dioscuri and the Aśvins of Indic mythology, and seeks to extract from these parallels some insight into Indo-European society. This is probably the weakest chapter, as its almost exclusive focus on the Greek sources means that the parallels drawn are never more than superficial. Much stronger is Chapter 18, ‘Famous Orpheus’, by far the most cited of the works in the book, in which R. distinguishes the shamanistic Orpheus of Greek sources from the more familiar romantic hero of Virgil and Ovid. Chapter 19, a comparison between the deaths of Sophocles' Heracles and Wagner's Siegfried, ends the volume on a strong note, teasing profound nuance from both texts. It is also the least cited of the collection, though hopefully the easier accessibility wrought by its republication here will change this.
This is a book strong in its parts, and made stronger by their gathering into a unified whole. The one change I would make, invoking the reviewer's privilege as ‘armchair editor’, is in the ordering of chapters. An order that was chronological by publication date, rather than chronological by topic, would foreground the uniqueness of R.'s thought and style, expressed so eloquently in the foreword and preface, and allow the reader to discern more clearly the evolution of that thought and that style through the years. Such quibbles aside, this is an excellent book, and certain to be of use and interest to any interested in early Greek poetry.
