Commentators on ancient historiographical texts face at least a double task: their commentaries have to do justice both to the realia and to the literary and linguistic aspects of the text. Commentators writing for the Cambridge ‘Green and Yellow’ series face a further difficulty: these commentaries are ‘aimed primarily at undergraduate and graduate students’ (CUP website), although they have certainly addressed a more scholarly audience over the last few years. In their commentary on Livy 22 B. and H. balance and master these sometimes conflicting demands. However, a seasoned student of ancient history may feel more targeted by this fine work than an undergraduate with a focus on literature (compare, for instance, C. Kraus's commentary on Livy 6 or C. Damon's on Tacitus’ Histories 1 in the same series).
The volume opens with a learned introduction of 87 pages, including 287 footnotes. In what follows I will review only a selection of its eleven sections. Section 3 treats the vexed question of Livy's sources. Especially Polybius’ role has caused dissent in scholarship. In the vein of H. Tränkle's 1977 monograph B. and H. acknowledge that Polybius’ influence on Livy in the third decade is not as strong as in Books 31–45, where we find the most significant linguistic overlaps. Yet, following D.S. Levene (Livy on the Hannibalic War [2010], pp. 126–63), and in this point revising Tränkle, B. and H. refute that Livy did not consult Polybius here, and argue that there are clear traces of direct use, especially but not only in the later books of the third decade. This makes it plausible that Livy made use of Polybius in Book 22 too – albeit together with Roman annalistic sources. Throughout the commentary B. and H. demonstrate how fruitful an endeavour it is to compare Livy's and Polybius’ narratives. As for further sources, B. and H. harbour scepticism about Silenus, Eumachus and Xenophon and Roman annalists down to Piso (FRHist 9), but are confident about the three more recent historians Coelius, Quadrigarius and Antias (FRHist 15, 24 and 25), whom Livy cites more than 50 times in total. Section 3 is rounded off by a list of the five occasions in Book 22 where Livy refers critically to his sources. With this account B. and H. draw a vivid picture of Livy as a historian who gathers, reads and evaluates his literary sources.
Sections 4 and 5 on ‘Structural Questions’ and on ‘Chronology’ are equally strong. The main argument is that both Book 22 and the third decade in its entirety can be read as monographs, held together by a number of structural links and the numbering of the years of the war at nine occasions.
Section 7 on ‘Literary Aspects’ is by far the longest part and can serve as an excellent introduction to Book 22 in its own right: while in subsections (b)–(d) B. and H. paraphrase and interpret the bulk of Book 22 in its sequence and vis-à-vis the respective narratives in Polybius, subsections (e)–(i) are arranged along categories. I found subsections (g) on counterfactual history and (i) on future knowledge especially illuminating. In subsection (h) on speeches B. and H. could have referred to D. Pausch's edited volume Stimmen der Geschichte (2010), which is more recent than much of the literature gathered in n. 128 and contains pertinent contributions by the editor and C. Leidl, who both discuss speeches in Livy (though not from Book 22).
Section 8 on ‘Religion’, divided into five subsections, seems a bit too long. The knowledge presented is not always as clearly directed to the content of Book 22 as it is in other sections. For example, I was wondering if it was necessary to devote two pages to dreams when, as B. and H. admit, there is no dream in Book 22, and Hannibal's famous dream in Book 21 is only discussed in passing. To B. and H.'s (already substantial) bibliography on dreams one could add C. Walde's studies on this topic.
The concluding brief appendix, which explains technical terms used in textual criticism, seems somewhat basic after the high-level discussions in the previous sections, but meets the initial purpose of the series as a convenient tool for undergraduate teaching.
The commentary is of the highest standard: a treasury of reliable, learned and accurate information, usually tailored straight to the relevant point of Livy's text. By way of example, one can consider B. and H.'s treatment of the famous ‘Strategem of the Oxen’ (22.16.6–17.7, pp. 204–9). B. and H. impressively unite a wide range of information and present it conveniently, ranging from the parallel tradition, the role of military handbooks such as Aeneas Tacticus, mythological allusions (Jason's fire-breathing bulls), the question of oral recitation and archaeological sites to narratological issues such as focalisation (particularly important here), syntactical remarks on correspondences, and lexicographical and textual comments, documented by references to the relevant literature. The only reference one may miss here (as well as in the introduction and in the other sections where B. and H. treat trickery and deceitfulness, e.g. on 22.41.4–42.12) is F. Wittchow's Ars Romana. List und Improvisation in der augusteischen Literatur (2009), which has an extensive chapter on Livy (pp. 73–180), including a section on Hannibal (pp. 153–77).
I tested the commentary's practical usefulness in an undergraduate translation class, where we read Minucius’ speech (chapter 14) and part of the section on the aftermath of Cannae (chapter 51). Both my students and I found the commentary a most useful tool. Many of my past and current students are fond of some older German commentaries (such as Kroll for Catullus, Heinze–Kießling for Horace, Nipperdey for Nepos etc.), but in this case my group unanimously preferred B. and H. over Weissenborn–Müller's work. W. and M.'s commentary still has its strengths, when the authors offer help for less experienced readers on grammatical issues at 14.1 and 14.3 (ut with the imperfect indicative instead of perfect) or 14.6 (head noun in the relative clause [praeter quam oram …]) – B. and H. remain silent here. In general, B. and H. provide richer and more detailed information than W. and M., and they usually do not omit basic information for beginners. When it comes to interpretation, B. and H. nicely point out the visual aspects (verba videndi etc.) in 14.4, give the fuller Greek background at 14.9 and draw excellent parallels at 14.14 (to 22.53.7 and 28.40–4). B. and H. could have gone even further at some points; for example, it would have been easy to connect the visibility issue with the notorious inlustri and intueri in Livy's preface (praef. 10 with C.S. Kraus's remarks in ead. and A.J. Woodmann, Latin Historians [1997], p. 55). Another opportunity to refer to the preface is missed when B. and H. comment upon the medical language at 8.3–5 and 14.9 (cf. praef. 9: remedia pati). Also, one could have elaborated on the phrasing seditio accensa (14.1), where the fire metaphor corresponds to the manifest fires in the surrounding narrative (a technique paralleled in Virgilian similes; cf. D. West, JRS 59 [1969], 40–9). At 51.5 (insistere + ad [+ gerundive]) B. and H. refer to Caes. Gall. 6.5.1 without giving the Latin phrasing. If they had done so, it would show that the verb is not used absolutely, as B. and H. claim, but with in + accusative (in bellum … insistit), which relates the phrase even closer to the passage in Livy. Yet it remains noteworthy that insistere + ad in the sense of ‘to proceed, to set to work (on)’ is otherwise not attested in Latin literature until Juvencus (cf. TLL 7/1, col. 1925, ll. 58–60). Moreover, B. and H. do not comment on the heavy clausula at 51.5 hostibūs spēctāndām strāgem īnsīstūnt, which prepares the darkness of the sentences to follow. (In general, it is a pity that, in a commentary of this scale, Livy's prose rhythm is not discussed; H. Aili's 1979 monograph remains the standard work here; see also T. Keeline and T. Kirby, JRS 109 [2019], 189, for Livy's preference for non-Ciceronian clausulae.)
But all these are mere quibbles. There is no question that this volume will be the standard commentary on Book 22 as well as an authoritative work of reference in Livian studies for years, if not decades to come.
