This second volume follows on from Euripides VII, Aegeus to Meleager and is similarly arranged; testimonia and fragments follow Kannicht's order. Text and translation are supplemented by brief notes and bibliography. The introduction provides a lucid, authoritative source of information and guidance for non-specialists, but with enough reference to alternative readings to discourage non-specialists from glossing over controversial issues. Specialists may disagree over the presentation of particular problems of chronology or interpolation, but cannot take issue with the honest acknowledgement of the authors' own fingerprints.
The English translation avoids the extremes of archaism and colloquialism, in a clear but elegant prose style. Although it is difficult to judge tone of voice, and the notes indicate difficulties of establishing the speaker and the context, the translation nevertheless hints at recognisable linguistic characterisation, for example Odysseus in Philoctetes for me sounded like a Euripidean Odysseus. There are a few places where the language sounds rather awkward, but this may be a backlash against the trend of smoothing out Euripidean language advanced in some recent translations.
The short notes deserve praise for providing material of interest to specialists and more general readers alike. I was particularly struck by the economical discussion of forgeries on p. 509 which deftly links the different elements of text, translation and footnotes. Comprehensive indexes cover the two volumes, with one brief section of the list yielding entries for ‘satiety; satyrs; scientific thought’. The meticulous distinctions extend to providing separate entries for ‘idleness and quietude’ and ‘peace’; here is a helpful degree of co-ordination between the indexes of names, dramatic and narrative themes and the major index. This is a volume which wears its learning lightly. Students without Greek will dip into this volume and be intrigued rather than scared by the unfamiliar, while older heads will marvel at the wealth of experience and the scholarly acuity necessary to condense such a broad range of material into such a user-friendly volume.
