The Supplices is the only play of Aeschylus (or Sophocles) that lacks a twentieth or twenty-first century commentary from the standard-setting Cambridge or Oxford university publishers, even while rumour has it that more than one scholar has had ambitions in those directions in the last couple of decades. Moreover, the only recent (full) commentary, the Copenhagen 1980 editio maxima of Friis Johansen and Whittle (FJW), while containing an immense amount of information, is notoriously hard to use for scholars and students alike (which does not mean that it should not be used). Hence the publication of an Aris & Phillips Suppliant Women is a remarkable event, even if the scholarly accuracy of editor and publisher alike is not always palmary.

The book contains a 39-page introduction arranged in paragraphs, starting with a synopsis of the play (§1) and treating thereafter the myth (§§2–6), ‘The tetralogy’ (§§7–9, concerning the didascalia-fragment P. Oxy. 2256.3), the date (§§10–38), ‘The play's form’ (§39), its ‘people’ (§§40–3), ‘staging’ (§§44–6), ‘costumes and props’ (§§47–8), the lost plays of the tetralogy (§§49–60), literary merits (§61), MSS and editorial conventions (§§62–9), principles of translation (§70) and metre (§§71–82). Then follow a list of cited works, B.'s own Greek text with critical apparatus and a literal prose translation, commentary of 221 pages and indexes. The bulk of the work is old-school Classical philology, dealing with the constitution of the text, its language and style, and the correct nuances of words and expressions. B. has a good sense of Greek literary style and more often than not makes sound choices between the readings and interpretations available of difficult passages. He may well have discovered some correct solutions of his own. With the obligatory modest caveats, he proposes more than 20 new emendations, and he has done statistical probes of features of language, some of which, if the results are indicative of development of style rather than other factors, add to the evidence suggesting that the Supplices should be dated later than the Persians and earlier than the Oresteia. B. offers hypothetical reconstructions of the lost plays of the trilogy (taking the Supplices to be the first), which are fun to read but speculative, as is his conception, probably originating in his directing the play, of the character of Danaus as wily and deceitful (pp. 9, 28, etc.). B. admits that this is not borne out by the text of the Supplices; it is also barely hinted in other sources for the myth.

The commentary is a pleasant read. B. is musical and well-read in English literature; Shakespearian references abound. He is supremely and exclusively British, dealing with such arcane cultural lore as ‘the frivolity of Frederick Hervey, bishop of Derry and later fourth earl of Bristol’ and ‘Pelasgus of that ilk’. His contribution is not disfigured by political or ‘theoretical’ bias, and some will find it old-fashioned. B. does not eschew discussion of non-textual realities, though. Having directed the play with students, he gives proper attention to staging, which is particularly important (and difficult) in a play where the chorus is the protagonist. He knows much about ancient boats and seamanship, and appears to solve the riddle of the στρέβλαι in 441. His particular theory that the boats referred to in the play are triremes (133–6n., 716–18n.) is too categorically formulated and insufficiently supported, though. The text talks about fast ships; B. nowhere demonstrates that the details mentioned are exclusive to triremes, even if he shows that it is likely that the audience would make that anachronistic association. Another contention which is not given exhaustive argument is that Io conceived not in Egypt but in Argos, Zeus having intercourse with her there according to vv. 295 and 300–1. The question whether divine intercourse automatically leads to conception is not addressed, but this seems to be taken for granted. While B.'s interpretation of λαβοῦσα δ' ἕρμα in 580 as ‘grasping a prop’ rather than ‘receiving (Zeus's) ballast’ seems well argued, he would need to address all instances of the repeatedly mentioned eponymous ‘touch’ of Zeus, taking place in Egypt, that have been understood as describing the supernatural conception of Epaphus. This is given inadequate treatment. On the one hand, B. takes the touch to refer to Zeus acting as midwife, χειρὶ ϕιτύει in 313 meaning not ‘sow’, but ‘reap’, ‘deliver’. This argument might have improved with a fuller study of the ϕιτ-/ϕυτ-stem: the examples offered are not positively persuasive. On the other hand, he claims that the touch sometimes refers to the ravaging of Io (actually rape, according to his 576–9n.), without specifying in which instances it should be so taken: 44–6? The argument is thus thought-provoking but not fully executed.

There are further drawbacks. For natural reasons, having published scholarship on the Supplices, I am of the opinion that B. ought to have cited me more often, especially for additional arguments and evidence in cases of agreement (e.g. vv. 73, 173–5 [my 162–7n.], 282–3 [see below], 405 ‘agonise’). He ought not to have ignored my article on the symmetrical displacements of passages between strophes and antistrophes in his notes on 86–102 and 843–910 (Philologus 151 [2007], 207–29; the argument is difficult, but accurate). It is not that he neglects my work in particular, though (in fact he adopts one of my emendations, as well as one which he incorrectly attributes to me); the problem is rather a lax attitude towards secondary literature as such and in fact apparently towards all the dreary minutiae of technical scholarship. B.'s bibliography, comprising all works cited, lists only some 250 items, and when he has looked at something, he seems often to have done so cursively, after having first written down his own thoughts. This is not necessarily an unacceptable method, but B.'s notes and apparatus have not always been properly revised after consultations. One example is 282–3n. In his critical apparatus, B. takes credit for deleting these lines; so also apparently towards the end of the note in his commentary (‘[that Cypriots count among Africans, Indians, etc.] in particular … makes me reject the two lines’) – but in the short research survey at the beginning of the note (added last or forgotten?) he correctly states: ‘FJW eject the couplet’. My commentary added reasons for ejection to those of FJW, but B. gives little impression of having studied either me or the entire note of FJW here. His appropriation of the emendation is certainly not to be construed as avarice – B. is not eager to claim victories for himself and always courteous in dissent – but as distraction. He displays a contempt for formalities which comes forth as unprofessionalism, for instance when he, while citing fragments of Euripides and Phrynichus, lists only Radt's volumes (III, IV) of the TrGF in the bibliography, where furthermore ‘editions’ and ‘reference books’ are conflated, as is much else. A serious piece of disinformation is found on p. 27, where घαγρεύς is said to be the only word preserved of the Aegyptii (usually taken to be the second play of the Danaid trilogy) and to be ‘a title of Zeus’ – we are nowhere informed of the relation to v. 156 of the Supplices. These are but a few examples of the carelessness and inadequate attention to detail that mars the book and makes it perilous to use with students and unhelpful to scholars. The result is peculiar, seeing that B. is obviously not incompetent and has interesting ideas. One is almost left with the impression that he regards philology as a gentlemanly pastime rather than a profession.