This much-awaited book is the culmination of S.'s long engagement with the Parian poet. The introduction addresses the kinds of poetry that Archilochus composed, its main themes and moods, and its ‘Transmission and Reception’. ‘Text, Apparatus Criticus, and Translation’ includes the text (with translation) of the inscriptions of Mnesiepes and Sosthenes (limited to the legible parts, and without apparatus), followed by the text (with translation) and a selective apparatus of all the fragments of the latest edition by West (IEG I, 1989), but with some new texts almost universally accepted as Archilochean (e.g. the Telephus elegy) or reassessed as Archilochean by valid arguments (see below); commendably, S. adopts West's numeration (with new fragments marked ‘a’, ‘b’ etc.), but also offers new readings or supplements (with commentary ad loc.).
The commentary aims to ‘provide literary and historical analysis of Archilochus’ poetry’ (p. vii), and does so with very good results. For the same reasons, the analysis of the poetry makes less use of performative function as a critical tool: certain sentences of the introduction and the commentary suggest that the fragments are considered above all as written texts (e.g. pp. 40, 348; see below), presumably fixed in Archilochus’ own day, if not by the poet himself, rather than as records of oral poetry (and thus probably produced on occasions that were sometimes remote from the first performance).
The book is concluded by a bibliography and two indexes (locorum and general). The text is always clear and meaningful, and S. offers a balanced and up-to-date discussion of her own and others’ interpretations. Typographical and other errors are negligible: for instance, Carey 2011 (cited on p. 40) is not listed in the bibliography, nor is Corrêa 2009 (p. 307).
Likewise, the following notes offer only hints for expanding the analysis or emphasise alternative views to those espoused by S. (titles not included in S.'s bibliography are marked with *): (pp. 1–2) on the date of Archilochus, cf. *Lanzillotta, Paro (1987), 49ff. and *Ornaghi, AOFL 5/2 (2010), 18–88 (even for frr. 3 and 122); (p. 5) on the ancient biography of Archilochus, cf. also *Müller, RhM 128/2 (1985); (p. 12) for the iambic poetry in non-iambic metres, cf. e.g. *Andrisano, in *Cavarzere et al. (edd.), Iambic Ideas (2001), 41–63; (p. 17) the ‘lost narrative poem on the subject of Heracles and Deianeira’ might have been a lyric poem, not necessarily an elegy (see frr. 286–9, and pp. 413–14 of the commentary); (p. 22) point ‘b’ is entitled ‘Wisdom Poetry’, but is totally dedicated to the Hesiodic tradition and textual parallels between Archilochus and Hesiod, sometimes assuming echoes that are perhaps too subtle (Arch. fr. 195, description of a woman as φαινόμενον κακόν ~ Hes. Th. 585, καλὸν κακόν referred to Pandora); (pp. 32–4) on the ‘nuanced relationship’ between Greeks and non-Greeks in colonial contexts, cf. Ornaghi, La lira (2009), 337–43; (pp. 34–5) that ‘Archilochus’ erotic narratives are overtly sexual’ may be explained by the fact the erotic fragments almost always belong to the poet's iambic output, and so they show the aggression inherent in iambus; (pp. 36–7) S. underlines Archilochus’ ‘tendency to repeat significant words or cognates’ with many purposes, but we do not know whether this was typical of Archilochus or a common habit of archaic poetry; on Archilochus’ style, cf. also *Aloni, Le Muse di Archiloco (1981); (p. 40) the statement ‘Writing was known by Archilochus’ day, and written copies may have played a role in the dissemination of his poetry beyond its original community’ is debatable (S. adds a note with reference to the Glaucus inscription for knowledge of writing and to fr. 185.2 as a ‘possible allusion to writing’ [see also the commentary, p. 348], but the first is proof of the existence of a kind of documentary-commemorative writing, not literary, and the second is the fr. of the σκυτάλη, that is a tool for encrypted – short? – messages, perhaps just for practical use); (p. 42) on the Archilochoi of Cratinus, cf. *Bianchi, Cratino (frr. 1–68) (2016), 13–113; (pp. 44–5) the heroisation may be traced back not just to the fourth century bc, because Aristotle (Rh. 1398b, 10–20) quotes Alcidamas (late fifth century/fourth century bc), and the inscription CEG 674 (= Dokimos inscription) was written in the second half of the fourth century bc, but on a Ionic capital of the sixth century bc, which perhaps presumes a reuse of an object already dedicated to Archilochus as hero; that the cult of Archilochus ‘was the most important cult on Paros’ is uncertain, because such assertions require a chronological setting (for the archaic and classical periods, for instance, Demeter Thesmophoros and Athena Poliouchos were probably the major polis cults); (pp. 58ff.) for the critical text of the Archilochean inscriptions, cf. *Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker (1988), 23–34, 57–68 and Ornaghi 2009, 37–63; (fr. 17a = Telephus elegy) for the elegy fragment as the remains of a sympotic chain see Aloni (‘Appendice’, in Aloni and Iannucci, L'elegia greca [2007], 205–37); the detail of Heracles’ appearance to urge on his son may be a tradition that is hitherto unattested, not necessarily an ‘invention’ (p. 230); (fr. 89) rather than a single poem, the mise en page of the inscription of Mnesiepes (i.e. the paragraphoi) suggests a brief anthology of quotations from different poems on the same subject; (fr. 93a) the argument for the Naxian provenance of Pisistratus’ son may be strong (cf. Huxley, GRBS 5 [1964]), due to the Neleid associations of the name Pisistratus; on l. 6, S.'s reading φύσι (which ‘suggests the idea of a “natural” difference between Greeks and non-Greeks’, p. 283), instead of φωσί, is questionable, and the translation sounds unusual (‘for men of Thracian birth’), because the part. (ὁ) φύς means ‘son’ in opposition to the transitive form (ὁ) φύσας (‘father’), and we would expect also an article if it is used as a noun; (fr. 94) on l. 3, the correction of αὐτῆς τῆς (as in the inscription of Sosthenes), referred to λεώ, in αὖτις γῆς seems unnecessary, because the use of gender switch with a scommatic function is attested, cf. *Aloni, AOFL 4/1 (2009), 64–103 (esp. n. 94); as fr. 115a has been recognised as Archilochean only on the basis of thematic and stylistic arguments, perhaps it would have been better to put it among the dubia (as S. has done with the new fr. 313a, or with fr. 321a [ = the First Strasbourg Epode = Hipponax fr. 115]); (fr. 118) the correction of χεῖρα (codd.) to χειρί (Elmsley, followed by West) may not be necessary, even that would make the fragment seem ‘chaste’ (but not all the fragments have to express necessarily a sexual or aggressive approach); (fr. 120) cf. also *Ieranò, Il ditirambo (1997); (fr. 168) as a parallel, one should add Cratinus, fr. 11 K-A; (fr. 251) on l. 5, cf. *Lehnus, Scripta philologa II (1980), 159–86; (fr. 324) it is worth adding that schol. Ar. Av. 1764 probably connects the τήνελλα to a hymn to Demeter sung as part of a Parian celebration; (bibliography) among the Italian editions of Archilochus, also Russello, Archiloco. Frammenti (1993), should be mentioned. Finally, on the consistency of text with commentary, it is odd that fr. 243 is the only one without a commentary; fr. 295a West is neither printed nor commented on; conversely, fr. 306 is not printed among the fragments (because it has been recognised as Soph. fr. 33a Radt), but the commentary has an entry that explains why this fragment has not been included; fr. 329 is merely marked as ‘= Callim. fr. 195.22 Pfeiffer’, without any reference, but is then discussed in the commentary.
As noted above, these remarks by no means detract from the value of the book, which is welcome for many reasons: it offers a text with a rich commentary of the complete fragments (the detailed pages on the epodes, the dubia and the spuria, reconsidered in light of the new Archilochus, deserve particular praise); it includes the text of the two Archilochean inscriptions; it updates the group of the Archilochean fragments with the most recent discoveries and attributions; it offers a complete translation of all the ancient texts. For these reasons, S.'s edition of Archilochus will become a standard point of reference for all those interested in the poet and his work.
