A new upsurge of interest in Hyperides' works has been encouraged by the recent identification of two substantial passages of the hitherto little-known speeches Against Diondas and Against Timandros in the ‘Archimedes palimpsest’: in the same year (2009) two new editions with commentary were published, by J. Herrman in English, and this Italian edition. P.'s revised Ph.D. dissertation (Università di Salerno) aims to provide an updated text and detailed commentary on this piece of epideictic oratory, obviously separate from Whitehead's superb commentary (Hypereides. The Forensic Speeches, [2000]). There is an introduction, a critical text with Italian translation, a line-by-line commentary aiming to cover every aspect of the text in a clear way; an appendix dealing with the other six funeral speeches. The book is closed by valuable indexes and a set of photographic reproductions of the papyrus.
In the first chapter P. offers a remarkable description of PLit.Lond. 133; she then focusses on the transmission of Hyperides, starting from the papyri discovered during the nineteenth century up to our modern editions. In this section P. has been able to take into account Tchernetska's identification (see ZPE 154 [2005], 1–6), but she overstates, in my view, the importance of Photius' account declaring knowledge of Hyperides and the vague evidence about the survival of the orator in Hungary during the Renaissance, which I incline to set apart from the main issue of Hyperides' transmission during the Middle Ages (see BICS 52 [2009], 229–52). Besides, the brief description of the palimpsest as reported at p. 28 (‘codice palinsesto di Archimede del x secolo, a cui furono aggiunti fogli riciclati del xii e xiii sec.’) is misleading: for an updated and more precise survey of the ‘New Hyperides’ and other texts recovered from the Archimedes palimpsest see now R. Netz, W. Noel, N. Wilson, N. Tchernetska (edd.), The Archimedes Palimpsest, I–II (2011).
In this volume there is obviously room for some disagreements or comments on points of detail. For example, the papyri mentioned passim should have been quoted according to the online database Mertens-Pack3 (http://www2.ulg.ac.be/facphl/services/cedopal); at p. 7 n. 12 the famous livre d'écolier (PCairo inv. 65445) is from the third century b.c. (not ‘III d.C.’). As for the bibliographic references, G. Martin's Dexipp von Athen: Edition, Übersetzung und begleitende Studien (1995) is regrettably overlooked in the discussion of the Dexippos passage; analogously, S. Tsitsiridis, Platons Menexenos: Einleitung, Text und Kommentar (1998) is omitted in the bibliography.
The text is generally acceptable, as far as I can judge from the photographs (but at vii, 10 I would print [τ]ọῖ[ϲ Ἕλ]ληϲιν; at xiv, 13–14 οἰ|κεία‹ι›): at § 35 (xiii, 14–19) the textual assessment endorsed by P. ἆρ' οὐκ ἂν οἰοίμεθα | ὁρᾶν Λεωϲθένη δεξιου|μένουϲ καὶ θαυμάζονταϲ | τῶν δὲ ἡγουμένων ‹τοὺϲ› κα|λουμένουϲ τοὺϲ ἐπιϲτρα|τείαν ϲτρα‹τεύ›ϲαντ[α]ϲ seems to me awkward; apart from the fact that we should write ‹τοὺϲ› ἐπιϲτρα|τείαν, the word order is suspicious and δέ is likely to be deleted; as an alternative I suggest ‹τοὺϲ› τῶν ἡγουμένων καλουμένουϲ ἐπὶ ϲτρατείαν ϲτρα‹τεύ›ϲαντ[α]ϲ (‘[are we not persuaded that we should see] those of the leaders who were summoned to fight in that famous battle [greeting and admiring Leosthenes]?’).
The commentary is generally sound and tackles a broad range of textual and historical issues, all clearly covered. Other minor criticisms: p. 26 beside Hermippos one could take into account Caecilius' work On the Stylistic Character of the Ten [Attic] Orators (see Suda s.v.). p. 166 (viii, 16–17): for the sequence εἰϲ τὸ | κινδυνεύειν [πρ]οχείρωϲ cf. Plb. 18.3.7 διακινδυνεύειν … προχείρως. p. 126 (viii, 18): in the apparatus Harpocrat. s.v. Πύλαι (mentioned at p. 67) should have been quoted. p. 165 (viii, 11–12): the use of ϲώματα as ‘war captives’ is also in the new fragment of the Contra Timandrum (ff. 138r + 125v, ll. 29–30 τῶν / σωμάτων). p. 147: I find it unconvincing that the sentence τὸ μὴ καταισχῦναι τὰς | τῶν προγόνων ἀρετάς (‘to not dishonour the virtues of the ancestors’) only alludes to Tyrtaeus fr. 10.9 West as P. asserts; it more likely matches what the Athenian audience expected to hear in an epideictic discourse by showing off the present case as consistent with the glorious behaviour of the ancestors, in particular mythical and historical accounts of the Persian Wars, a set of achievements commonly recorded in the epithaphioi (see Lys. 2.4ff.). There is, for example, a conceptual echo in Thuc. 7.69.2; moreover, it is worth noting that the same phrase occurs in Diod. Sic. 13.15.4 τοὺς δ' ἐνδόξων γεγονότας πατέρων παρακαλῶν τὰς τῶν προγόνων ἀρετὰς μὴ καταισχῦναι (Nicias' speech with a similar laudatory value), which may be reminiscent of Hyperides' passage. p. 197: the poetic form ἀντίπαλοϲ (instead of ἐχθρόϲ) is also in the ‘New Hyperides’ (see ff. 137v + 136r, ll. 25–6 πρὸϲ τοὺϲ ἀντι/πάλουϲ); nevertheless it is not unusual in fourth-century oratory: see Lys. 38.5 and Isocr. Pax 139.6. p. 140 (§ 42): the same image also in Lib. 18.303, as envisaged by S. Feraboli, Helikon 13–14 (1973–74), 460. p. 198: P. erroneously links the spelling οὐθένουϲ (instead of οὐδένουϲ) with the choice of vocabulary (ἐκλογὴ τῶν λέξεων) which was strongly censured by puristic grammarians and rhetoricians such as Phrynichos and Hermogenes, but this is merely a phonetic issue strictly linked to scribal habits. p. 208: Gorgias' epitaphios is not directly transmitted by Maximus Planudes as is commonly stated in the standard editions: Planudes limited himself to transcribing anonymous scholia (printed in Rh. Gr.VII/2, 1084 Walz); the ultimate source is the fifth-century rhetorician Syrian (see Diels-Kranz, VS II, p. 285: ‘Planudes aus Paris. gr. 1983, 2977, cent. XI’), who in turn may have quoted from the lost On the style of Demosthenes of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Another neglected source for Gorgias' text is Athanasius of Alexandria, a rhetorician and Hermogenes' commentator of the late fourth century a.d. (see Proleg. 12, p. 180, 9 Rabe).
There are some oversights or typesetting errors: p. 26: read Praeparatio evangelica (Eusebius' passage is a long excerptum from Porphyrius' Philological Discourses, fr. 408 Smith); p. 47: at l. 5 read πονοῦϲιν for πόνουϲι; p. 48: at l. 8 write ‹ἡμ›εῖϲ, ὦ instead of ἡμεῖϲ ὢ; p. 73: the discussion of the παραμυθία-section (§§ 41–3) implies Fuhr's conjecture καὶ κηδεμονίαϲ which P. does not introduce into her critical text at § 43: see apparatus and commentary ad loc.; p. 110 (bibliography): read M.L. West for S. West; pp. 126–7: at viii, 43 write περι]έθηκαν.
Many of these remarks are minor quibbles and none of these criticisms really affects the soundness of this well thought-out commentary, which will be of use for those interested in Hyperides and in the Epitaphios genre.
