The reviewed volume contains the Greek text of Lucian's True History with an English translation, accompanied by an introduction and commentary. As implied in the preface, it has been published for the needs of graduate students in the early stages of their programme. It clearly aims at more advanced students than the recent volume by E. Hayes and S. Nimis (Lucian's True Story. An Intermediate Greek Reader [2011]), but also differs in focus as it hopes to expand students’ understanding of Greek culture while they practise their language skills. The volume was initially prepared by Clay and, after his death, completed by Brusuelas upon the publisher's request. As we learn from Brusuelas's preface, the translation is Clay's, while the supplementary parts – the introduction and the commentary – combine contributions by Clay and Brusuelas.
The introduction provides a short overview of our limited knowledge of the ‘real’ Lucian, discusses the unstable and slippery authorial figure that emerges from his writings, and sketches the evolution of scholarly approaches to Lucian throughout the twentieth century. It then focuses on the unique character of True History and its distinctive features. The spotlight centres on two key aspects of the text: Lucian's play with truth, falsity and fiction as well as his mimetic (linguistic, literary, philosophical) engagement with the Greek cultural past. These two aspects constitute crucial programmatic dimensions of True History and, at the same time, provide a great platform for acquainting readers with both ancient literary criticism and current critical approaches to reading ancient post-classical fiction. The introduction does a good job of contextualising them by discussing ancient theoretical and philosophical approaches to fiction and outlining the imperial period's modes of interaction with its literary past. However, it also introduces readers to and familiarises them with the lively modern scholarship on these topics by relating selected contributions and interpretations by anglophone scholars such as R. Bracht Branham, T. Whitmarsh and K. ní Mheallaigh. While the introduction occasionally loses its own voice and reads like a summary of other scholars’ input (e.g. pp. 24–6, which refer to three articles from C. Gill's and T.P. Wiseman's Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World [1993]), there is merit in giving students a taste of modern approaches that nuance and problematise the process of reading and interpreting the multi-layered post-classical prose of the Roman empire.
Some incongruities and occasional disruptions in the flow of thought are perhaps a result of the volume's shared authorship. For instance, section 1.2 suggests an uncritical reading of Lucian's autobiography as presented in the Dream (p. 5: ‘In his youth he abandoned a short apprenticeship as a sculptor for the culture of Greek rhetoric’), which is later more accurately nuanced (p. 10); section 1.4 ‘Lucian's afterlife’ would benefit if the information on Lucian's reception, appearing in ‘A Note on the Text’ on p. 53, were incorporated into it. A bigger problem is that the introduction suffers from a lack of editorial oversight. There are multiple typos in proper names, e.g. p. 20 has both ‘Creperius Calpurinanus’ and ‘Crepereius Calpurianus’; p. 37 has ‘Phelgon’ instead of ‘Phlegon’; P. von Möllendorff's name is frequently (but not always) spelled as ‘von Möllendorf’, including in the bibliography; ‘Kezamis (2010)’ in n. 46 on p. 20 is probably a misspelling of Adam Kemezis’s name (the referenced publication is not featured in the ‘Select Bibliography’). The principle behind the choice of works included in the bibliography is unclear, as a fair amount of secondary literature cited in the introduction is not found there, including for example Baldwin (1961), Hubbard (1991), Pelling (2009), Whitmarsh (2014) (probably the 2013 [not 2014] paper ‘An I for an I: Reading Fictional Autobiography’, in: A. Marmodoro and J. Hill [edd.], The Author's Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity [2013]) and many more. If we add that the bibliography does not always follow an alphabetical order, then one must conclude that something went wrong during the publication process. As the book is available in an e-book format, it might be possible to rectify these defects.
The English translation of True History, accompanied by the Greek text from M.D. Macleod's OCT edition, is clear and readable. The text has been divided into segments preceded by titles, which makes it easy to follow. It is in general a pleasant read, though frequently I found myself questioning Clay's decision to cut Lucian's sentences into short, terse utterances, many of which are shorter than a single line. As a result, not only has the text acquired an un-Lucianic staccato feel, but logical relationships between clauses are sometimes lost or distorted. For instance, in 2.22 the sentence πυγμὴ δὲ ἴση ἐγένετο Ἀρείου τοῦ Αἰγυπτίου, ὃς ἐν Κορίνθῳ τέθαπται, καὶ Ἐπειοῦ ἀλλήλοις συνελθόντων is translated as ‘The boxing match between Areius the Egyptian and Epeius was declared a tie. Areius is buried in Corinth.’ In Greek, the burial place of Areius is mentioned in a relative clause, which specifies which Areius is meant; but the translation conveys the sense that the tomb location is somehow related to the result of the boxing match. For the staccato style, see, for example, 2.30: ‘The innermost river was of fire. It was wide and could not be forded. The fire flowed like molten water and it crested in waves like the sea. Many fish swam in it’, or Lucian's famous confession in the introduction (1.4): ‘For this reason, I too, prompted by vanity, have made this effort to leave something to posterity. I did not want to be the only author who could not enjoy the license of telling tall tales. I had nothing true to relate. I have had no experiences worth recording. I turned to a fiction that is much more sensible than those of the others.’ Disposing of long sentences makes the text an easy read, but as it is aimed at university students, the degree of simplification seems excessive and hard to justify. Some of the Greek has been omitted in the translation (e.g. τοὔνομα Ἐνδυμίων in 1.11; in 2.28 στήλην βηρύλλου λίθου ἀναστήσας ἐπέγραψα πρὸς τῷ λιμένι is rendered as simply ‘I had it inscribed’), and most of Chapter 6 of Book 1 is missing in English.
The commentary that follows the translation combines philological notes on grammar, in particular on verbal forms, with notes explaining the cultural background and references to preceding literature. It makes no pretence to being comprehensive and refers readers desiring more detail on specific problems to the commentaries by A. Georgiadou and D.H.J. Larmour (1998) and P. von Möllendorff (2000). The selection of issues discussed and explained serves well the purpose of showing readers the richness of the text, Lucian's play with the literary past and his inventiveness, as well as cross-referencing other texts in the Lucianic corpus, and highlighting recurrent themes and motifs. Commendably, the commentary avoids becoming a tedious list of identified allusions and references. It manages not to lose sight of Lucian and keeps the spotlight on how he adapts and refashions traditional material.
Students and teachers will find Clay's and Brusuelas's work useful and enjoyable, but the errors and defects may distract from its value. It is to be hoped that the publisher will find a way to correct them, so that they do not haunt this otherwise serviceable work.
