Thirty-two years have elapsed between the first edition of H.'s Hellenistic Anthology and the second edition under review here, and it would be difficult to overstate the profound changes – particularly with reference to new editions, commentaries and foundational studies – that the field of Hellenistic poetry has undergone in the intervening period. For Callimachus we have had major editions with commentary on the Hecale (A.S. Hollis [1990, 20092]), Iambi (A. Kerkhecker [1999]), Aetia (G. Massimilla [1996–2010] and, separately, A. Harder [2012]), and ‘Lyrica’/‘Iambi 14–17’ (E. Lelli [2005]); as regards other writers, R. Hunter's Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica 3 (1989) and 4 (2015), as well as his selections from Theocritus (1999), all likewise in the ‘Cambridge Green and Yellows’; D. Kidd's Aratus (1997), J.D. Reed's Bion (1997), E. Dettori and L. Sbardella's Filita (2000), A. Sens's Asclepiades (2011), S. Hornblower's Lycophron (2015), J.L. Lightfoot's Loeb Hellenistic Collection (2009) as well as H.'s Loeb of Theocritus, Moschus and Bion (2015), not to mention the New Posidippus – οὐδ’ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι …
The design is almost unchanged from the first edition. A brief introduction orientates the reader in the historical, cultural and literary milieu of the Hellenistic world. Sixty-nine pages of Greek text follow, in which potentially less familiar names – Cleanthes, Simias, Phanocles, Rhianus – are given their due alongside such famous names as Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, Aratus, Nicander and Lycophron. The commentaries occupy 234 pages, and each author is given his or her (Anyte) separate introduction. The volume is rounded out by an appendix on the literary Doric dialect of some of the fragments (a familiarity with the epic-Ionic of the majority of fragments is tacitly assumed), a full list of works cited (the addition of which corrects a notable shortcoming of the first edition) and three indexes.
From the very first word of the first text in the collection the progress of the intervening years is reflected, with 2020's Πολλάκ⌋ι in place of 1988's Πολλάκ]ι following Pontani's adduction of Sch. Od. 2.50 to confirm Lobel's suggested reading. There is indeed much that is new. Throughout the volume, bibliographic references have been thoroughly updated to point readers towards the most recent editions and discussions, a critical aid to both neophytes and more advanced non-specialists alike. And, perhaps most importantly, there are some new texts, most notably the welcome inclusion of Theocritus 15, a mime-like poem in which Praxinoa and Gorgo, suburban housewives of Alexandria, attend the Adoneia at the palace of the Ptolemies.
The new does not come at the expense of the old, and in many respects the original edition lies just beneath the surface. This is welcome and is a testament to the enduring quality of H.'s work, for all the progress of the intervening years. In those places where there is a difference between the editions, it is often amplification, with further analysis and discussion integrated into or appended to the original notes, as for instance in the commentary to Call. Aet. fr. 1.29–36 (p. 98), where the text of the first edition is repeated verbatim, with the addition of a new sentence in which H. suggests that, with reference to Callimachus’ wish to be like the cicada feeding on dew, ‘[i]n the background is perhaps the story of Tithonus, who according to some accounts was turned into a cicada …’. Perhaps. Again, on Theoc. 11.20, λευκοτέρα πακτᾶς ποτιδεῖν, the original's ‘“fairer than cream-cheese to behold” … a suitably rustic comparison’ has been expanded with a further clause, ‘amusing because the Cyclops is an expert on cheese (Od. 9.216–23, 244–9)’ (p. 160). While comparisons such as this are likely meant to characterise the Cyclops’ song as rustic and clumsy (cf. Dover's estimation of the Adonis song in Id. 15), reference could perhaps be made to Sappho, fr. 167 V. ὠίω πόλυ λευκότερον, an author whose hyperbolic comparisons, from the sublime to the mundane, are singled out by Demetrius, De eloc. 163–7. Incidentally, I do not see why λευκοτέρα should be translated ‘fairer’ rather than ‘whiter’, cf. Gow's translation (pace Hunter ad loc., Galateia's name does not preclude the latter).
At times, some changes do not appear to be an improvement on the first edition. In the note on Aet. fr. 1.29–36 (cf. above) the first edition cites Gow on Theoc. 4.16 for the cicada's diet of dew, while in the second edition this has been replaced with a reference to Ps.-Hes. Sc. 395. While this might be the earliest reference to the cicada's diet, thus fulfilling the commentator's thirst for adducing a fons et origo, it deprives the reader of a valuable contemporary reference in Hellenistic poetry. Recourse to Harder will supply the Theocritus reference, and much more, including Hellenistic, besides. But could we not have had both?
In keeping with the first edition, only ‘literary’ texts are included, and thus none of the large body of inscriptional poetic texts from the Hellenistic period, found in, for example, J.U. Powell's Collectanea Alexandrina (1925) and É. Bernand's Inscriptions métriques de l'Égypte gréco-romaine (1969), are included. While recent scholarship has done much to bring the performance culture of the Hellenistic period into clearer focus, there remains a considerable gulf, in terms of both ‘quality’ and later legacy, between works preserved in papyri and manuscripts on the one hand and those that never made it off the stone on the other. A more holistic picture of the literary output of the age might thus be lost by their exclusion, but an anthologist must make difficult decisions, and their omission is understandable given the scope and prospective audiences of the book. A number of these texts are now available with commentary in D. Sider's edited, multi-commentator collection Hellenistic Poetry: a Selection (2017). Perhaps more surprising an omission is anything from the New Posidippus. While debates about the artistic merits and ascription of the epigrams will no doubt continue, the 33 epigrams in H.'s selection, drawn exclusively from the Palatine and Planudean Anthologies, are increasingly an ἀνθολογία in the true sense of the word.
But quibbles are tedious. This is an excellent book. Pretty much all that was good in the first edition is preserved, and pretty much all of the considerable new material, from updated texts and references to the expansive additions to the commentary – a σύμβολον of H.'s own ἀγρυπνία – are an improvement. In its economy of presentation, clarity, judiciousness of judgement and expert perspective, there has been, and remains, no better synoptic introduction to the texts of Hellenistic literature, delivered from the hand of a scholar who has been in the vanguard of the field for nearly 40 years. Barely a month after publication, on 5 January 2021, Neil died, suddenly and far too young. His legacy, however, built upon a foundation of seminal works covering the gamut of Greek literature from the Hellenistic period to late antiquity, will endure, and it is perhaps fitting that his revised Hellenistic Anthology, now fortified to further withstand the depredations of time, should serve as a capstone to his career.
