P. brings to the fore two features of Lycophron's style: his predilection for word-forming and its manifestation in new compound coinages. He analyses 99 nominal compounds divided into two classes: 79 hapax legomena (pp. 24–136) and 20 primum dicta (pp. 137–72). Moreover, he adopts the distinction made by M. Ciani (Lexicon zu Lycophron [1975]), who additionally specified hapax semanticum, hapax morphologicum, primum dictum semanticum and primum dictum morphologicum.
P. provides a helpful and concise introduction comprising a brief history of studies on Lycophron's language, a presentation of views concerning the date of the Alexandra as well as a morphological classification of compounds in general and Lycophron's compounds in particular. In his conclusions he divides the latter category into three groups (possessivi, determinativi and a rezione verbale, i.e. those formed from verbs). Furthermore, P. analyses the vocabulary of compounds used in the Alexandra, focusing on two themes: family connections and words related to violence, as well as two sources of Lycophron's inspiration: comedy and tragedy.
Seeing that the poem incorporates some 350 neologisms (N. Guilleux, La fabrique des hapax et des prôton legomena dans l’Alexandra [2009], p. 223), the selection of compounds that may have been invented by Lycophron is justified as it allows a thorough analysis of that particular feature of his style. The choice of compounds, as P. underlines, is arbitrary (p. 1), so not all of Lycophron's coinages are included in the book. To show the scale of the phenomenon, there is a total of about 560 nominal compounds in the Alexandra, almost 170 of which are hapax legomena and primum dicta. That is a significant number for a poem of 1,474 lines if we compare it with the rate of one compound per 5.2 lines for the plays by such a notorious compound maker as Aeschylus (R.B. Rutherford, Greek Tragic Style [2012], p. 403).
However, it should have been noted that this feature of Lycophron's style is closely related to the phenomenon of three-word lines, which appear in the Alexandra 54 times (for instance: γαμβροκτόνον ῥαίσοντα πενθεροφθόροις, Alex. 161; see S. Hornblower, Lykophron: Alexandra [2015], p. 137). It is relevant because it shows the same tendency for condensation that characterises the poem as a whole, rightly pointed out by P. as an extra narrative function of Lycophron's compounds (p. 189).
P. takes a cautious view concerning the authorship of the Alexandra and, consequently, its date (pp. 8–13; for discussion see Hornblower [2015], pp. 36–49). That attitude poses certain problems when P. tries to establish whether a word used by two Hellenistic authors is a hapax/a primum dictum. Sometimes doubts could have been dispelled if other arguments had been taken into account. For instance, the priority of the invention of τριέσπερος, a compound that P. treats as a dubium (pp. 164–5), used by both Dosiadas and Lycophron, has been plausibly attributed to the latter on stylistic and metrical grounds (J. Kwapisz, The Greek Figure Poems [2013], p. 165).
P.'s method of presentation of chosen examples generally consists in comparing them with others made up of the same or synonymous constituents. Sometimes, however, he omits intertextually relevant coinages that could have been Lycophron's source of inspiration. For instance, on pp. 129–30, when analysing φαιουρός: ‘sable-tailed’ (Alex. 334), P. might have noted that there is another word ending in (the feminine) -ουρις, which might be of importance – Callimachus’ kenning μάλουρις: ‘white-tailed’ (Hymn. Dem. 6.110). Lycophron played with Callimachus’ text and formed the triple opposition: light tail to dark tail, feminine to masculine and cat to dog. Consequently, through the change of colour, that evokes, as P. observes (p. 129), Erinys’ robe φαιοχίτων (A. Ch. 1049), he turns the comedy of Callimachus’ hymn into tragedy. There are other noteworthy examples of Lycophronic compounds drawn from Hellenistic and earlier authors: δονακογλύφος (AP 6.295.1 Phanias) for δουρατόγλυφος (Alex. 361; P. pp. 56–7), εὐπένθερε γαμβρέ (Theoc. Id. 18.49) for γαμβροκτόνον ῥαίσοντα πενθεροφθόροις (Alex. 161; P. pp. 149–50), πολυφάρμακος (Od. 10.276; cf. A.R. 3.27; 4.1677) for φαρμακουργός (Alex. 61; P. pp. 130–1), a Homeric hapax κυνοραιστής (Od. 17.300) for τεκνοραίστης (Alex. 38; P. pp. 117–19) etc.
P.'s method allows him to highlight different semantic and interpretative relations that come into play between the coinages in each class and, therefore, exhibit Lycophron's poetic creativity. To do the poet more justice, in some cases it would have been worth emphasising some non-obvious relations between the newly minted compounds and their predecessors.
We can get a closer look at Lycophron's technique of compound-making when juxtaposing τριάνωρ (Alex. 851), discussed by P. on pp. 119–21, with two verses of Stesichorus’ Helen. As M. Davies and P.J. Finglass (Stesichorus: the Poems [2014], p. 324) note, Lycophron was ‘probably influenced’ by the following fragment:
I would strongly agree that the word τριάνωρ deliberately evokes the Stesichorus passage. Firstly, the poem's abusive tone towards Helen was well known (cf. Isoc. 10.64; Pl. Phdr. 243a–b) and thus fits in with the Alexandra's tendency to depreciate the Greeks. Secondly, in this short passage there are three primum dicta compounds that certainly caught the eye of such an obsessive compound maker as Lycophron. Thirdly, two of them (τρίγαμος and λιπεσάνωρ), when cut in half and put together, produce the word τριάνωρ. Consequently, the echo of the passage makes Helen in the Alexandra not only a detestable woman and a wife of three men but also one who abandoned her husbands. The technique is repeated elsewhere (compare ἱππόβροτοι at Alex. 842, discussed by P. on pp. 70–1, with two verses of Euripides’ Phaethon, fr. 771.4–5 Kannicht: καλοῦσι δ’ αὐτὴν γείτονες μελάμβροτοι | Ἕω φαεννὰς Ἡλίου θ’ ἱπποστάσεις).
Lycophron engaged in deep intertextual dialogue not only with earlier and roughly contemporary poets but also with other cultural traditions. For instance, as P. rightly claims when analysing compounds formed with the βαρυ- component (p. 146), they reflect Hellenistic interest in medical lore. I would risk saying that there is another such coinage in the Alexandra, πρωτόσφακτος (Alex. 329), discussed by P. on pp. 110–11, which directly refers to the latest surgical discoveries. No other examples of compounds with -σφακτος are attested before Lycophron's time – whenever that was – except for Aristotle's νεόσφακτος (Arist. HA 581b2), duly mentioned by P. (p. 111). However, there is another compound that might be relevant here: ἐμβρυοσφάκτης, preserved in Tertullian's De anima (25). It means an instrument used to remove a foetus from a womb. This tool was owned by Herophilus, a physician living in Alexandria in the third century bce. Herophilus was the author of the treatise Midwifery (cf. H. von Staden, Herophilus. The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria [1989], pp. 296–9; 365–74), so he most probably performed gynaecological surgeries too. It seems possible that the tool's name was known to Lycophron; and taking into account Alexandrian interest in medical terminology (for example A.R. 3.763–5), Lycophron might have used the word ἐμβρυοσφάκτης for artistic effect, to emphasise the shocking nature of Polyxena's sacrifice, implicitly compared to the extraction of the foetus. The poet's intention here is the reverse of his presentation of the Greeks, as he is now stressing the vulnerability of the Trojan princess. Consequently, the reader's sympathy is directed towards her.
P.'s book is a thorough and detailed study of Lycophron's compound neologisms, and at the same time, it opens up further discussion on this particular feature of his language. As a result, it provides a stimulus to find yet other coinages that sparked the poet's interest and which demonstrate his multifaceted dialogue with Greek culture. In both respects, the book is a welcome contribution to the advance of research in this area.
