Nicander of Colophon (second century b.c.) is perhaps not well-studied even among scholars of Hellenistic literature. His poetic works, including the Theriaca, treat topics of specialist knowledge: local history (e.g. Thebaica, Sicelia, Europia), agriculture (Georgica), snakes (Ophiaca) and cures (Alexipharmaca). The Theriaca is a didactic poem of 958 lines outlining the bites of certain snakes, spiders and scorpions, and their cures. In contrast to Jacques' commentary (J.-M. Jacques, Nicandre: Œuvres, Tome II: Les thériaques. Fragments iologiques antérieurs à Nicandre [2002]), O. does not aim to focus on the technical aspects of zoology, botany and medicine which Nicander discusses in the Theriaca. Rather, he has produced a commentary which makes accessible the Theriaca’s recondite poetics of deadly beasts and curative concoctions, while also locating the work within wider Hellenistic literary trends. Thus O.’s commentary will be indispensable not only for those studying the Theriaca, but for those looking to engage with late Hellenistic and Early Imperial didactic and technical poetry more broadly.
The study has a traditional format, providing introductory direction for reading the work, the Greek text, then a lemmatic commentary. The work concludes with two appendices, one on the structure of the text (a delayed positioning not entirely helpful), another of the Ascalabus story (vv. 483–7), and a bibliography separated into primary and secondary works. The text is Jacques' with some emendations (cf. pp. 142–3). O.’s changes based on intertextuality will not please everyone. For a work requiring specific learned vocabulary in both Greek and English, i.e. names of plant and animal species, a translation would have been useful.
The 142-page introduction is divided into eleven topics: preliminaries; Nicander the poet; didactic poetry; narratological aspects; structure; language and metre; intertextuality; literary motifs; dissemination and reception; conclusions; and notes on the text. As a monograph which claims to be a literary commentary, this introduction certainly does a lot of work for the reader; the explanation of language and metre is particularly thorough, and the discussions of didactic poetry, intertextuality and literary motifs argue successfully for reading Nicander as a sophisticated and playful Hellenistic poet.
Other sections are less successful. The section on narratological aspects of the poem (doubtless influenced by I. de Jong's school of thought; cf. acknowledgements) sees O. identifying ‘four different layers in which author and audience can “exist”’ (pp. 31–2; a fifth layer is alluded to but not developed: p. 33 n. 150), which distinguishes between the real Nicander, the ideal author and the didactic persona. To the mind of this reviewer such an approach leads the reader down some bewildering paths. For example, the external addressee, ‘who “gets” the artful play contained in the Theriaca’ (p. 32) and matches the ideal author, is really simply the reader. There is in fact no acknowledgement of any addressee other than the Hermesianax of line 3, and the idea that aetiology or mythology is aimed at an external addressee ‘since they are of no instructional use to Hermesianax’ (p. 33) is to misunderstand the nature of the didactic fiction of the internal addressee. More confusingly still, O. identifies an external narrator in the final lines of the poem (vv. 957–8) and even suggests that the poet might be ‘introducing a new speaker here, an anonymous commentator evaluating the merits of the poem’ (p. 34). This ignores both the information from the Vita, which states that Nicander says these words about himself, and numerous other poets, from Hesiod onwards, who self-identify in the third person at key poetological moments.
So too, while the section on structure is illuminating, the discussion of the proem (vv. 1–7) and of the mythological transition (vv. 8–20) is dealt with too cursorily. Neither in the introduction nor at the lemma to line 1 does O. mention relevant comparanda to the first word, ῥεῖα (‘easily’). Eratosthenes' use of ῥεῖα in a didactic epigram on a mechanical device (CA fr. 35.12) and the use of the cognate ῥᾳδίως in ps.-Scymnus (v. 39) shed light on both the term's significance as part of a didactic poetics and the Hesiodic resonance. Nor does he consider the relevance of a bucolic work opening with an aesthetic term, i.e. ἁδύ (‘sweet’) at Theocritus 1.1, which has implications for his interpretation of the Theriaca as ‘anti-bucolic’ (cf. CQ 64 [2014], 623–41). By not considering these cases, he too readily dismisses J.J. Clauss's suggestion (SIFC 4.1 [2006], 168) that the opening word alludes to Rhea queen of the Titans, which feeds into the mythological transition describing how snakes and spiders were born from the Titans’ blood (cf. vv. 8–12). One feels in this section that an opportunity to expose the complex workings of Nicander's opening lines was missed: Clauss's article is still to be read in parallel.
The lemmatic commentary, however, offers much useful guidance and detailed literary analysis for the reader. Particular noteworthy is the way O. negotiates the different levels of allusion on which Nicander is operating. Where words re-contextualise or slightly re-write Homeric diction, O. picks apart the effect this has on the reader in light of their knowledge of the Homeric text. See, for example, the Homeric adjective ἰοδόκος (‘holding arrows’, Il. 15.444) as applied to a snake's fangs based on the alternative meaning of ἰός, ‘poison’ (p. 257). Where the implications of an allusion are more tenuous, O. admits as much, but always with the aim of explaining what literary intent might lie behind a lexical choice. Equally, where a passage has an extended literary background, for example the myth of Hyacinthus introduced as an aetiology for the hyacinth (vv. 902–6), O. lucidly develops his interpretation across lemmata. It is thus unclear why he treats the myth of Ascalabus turned into a gecko (vv. 483–7) in an appendix. Theocritus, or rather [Theocritus], Idyll 25 is referred to numerous times in the commentary as are Lycophron's Alexandra and Callimachus’ Molorchus episode in Aetia 3; it would have been helpful to have a brief discussion of their relation to the Theriaca in the introduction.
The fine quality and helpful layout of the book is what one expects from the publishers, Brill. However, it has not been copy-edited to the same high standard: the ratio of page to typographical error is rather high. Moreover, certain slippages, for example the use of ‘irreverent’ (p. 42), lead to infelicities in the English. The repetition of material in the commentary from the introduction results in numerous remarks sending one back to the introduction (e.g. ‘see Introduction 7.3’) to read the same information already given at the lemma. While reiterating a point is often welcome, one feels that, when coupled with O.’s often less than concise prose style, a ruthless editor would have helped in producing a more succinct volume. That being said, too much information is to be preferred to too little.
Setting these minor quibbles to one side, however, O. has succeeded in producing a commentary which lives up to the challenge that Nicander's abstruse language and recherché topic have set. Engaging with Nicander will now mean engaging with O.’s illuminating commentary.
