Lycophronians rejoice! This book is a very welcome addition to studies on Hellenistic poetry. It also offers something for the reader of Classical epic and Greek drama. Lycophron's Alexandra is an impressive exposition of Greek identity as well as a radical experimentation with Greek literary forms and literary history. It is a poem of 1474 iambic trimeters, consisting of a reported imitation and retelling of the prophecies of Cassandra to Priam by an anonymous messenger. It tells of the sorrows of Troy (31–364), the sorrows of the Greeks (365–1282), the conflict of Europe and Asia (1283–450) and ends in a short reflective conclusion (1451–60) before Cassandra returns to her cell. The authors use Hornblower's Greek text, with a few minor deviations; the translations, unless otherwise indicated, are their own.
This book shows the literary tapestry and archaeology of the poem. It analyses its relationship and literary heritage with several traditions, mainly epic, tragedy and history. The authors make extensive use of scholia and lexicography as an interpretative aid to demonstrate Lycophron's own methods. Each of the nine chapters can be read as an independent piece, but they also form a coherent whole. The authors stress the unity of the Alexandra and favour a later dating of the poem in the second century bc. I also am inclined to these two points of view. The latter point is not a topic of lengthy discussion in this book as it would rightly detract from its primary aim.
The introduction outlines some aspects of Lycophron's poetry, notably on truth and authority in poetry and the tradition from Hesiod onwards, has a brief note on the biography of Lycophron and summarises the remaining eight chapters. Some may wonder why McN. and S. did not start with the various comments from ancient and modern literary criticism and scholarship on the difficulty/obscurity of Lycophron. To do so would have defeated the object of the book. By not front-loading the reader with these perceptions and observations, the reader can see how Lycophron's style works as it is rather than with pre-established notions. This is a very sensible approach.
Chapter 2 is on the imagery of the Alexandra, which McN. and S. use as a means to understanding the language of Lycophron. They successfully tackle one of the key obstacles to reading Lycophron – its figurative language. It is a series of studies of divine cult epithets, with increasingly complex examples, on the metaphors, similes, oracular terminology and metonyms that illustrate some of the intricacies of the language and style. McN. and S. apply the concept of ‘blending’, derived from F. Budelmann and P. LeVen's work on Timotheus, which is the use of multiple and disparate images that form a dynamic and complex whole. Commendably, they also make use of ancient literary scholarship on interpreting imagery in other authors to show how Lycophron's own interaction between narrative and simile works. From these cult epithets, it can also be seen that a part of understanding Lycophron's literary strategy is the process of decoding the various references used within the poem in order to appreciate the poet's book learning as well as to develop one's own. The Alexandra is a crossword puzzle, and so McN. and S. also suggest the resources (literary and scholastic) that Lycophron may have used to compose the poem and arrange his clues.
Chapter 3 is on the messenger's framing speeches (prologue and epilogue) to Cassandra's prophecies. It examines how the prologue sets up the reader for reading the rest of the poem and the prologue's relationship with Callimachus’ Aetia, and how the epilogue comments on the poem's dynamics and is a sort of sphragis. Attention is drawn to the influences of narrative speeches in epic poetry and the messenger speeches in tragedy on the prologue and epilogue. Chapter 4 summarises Cassandra's prophecy, followed by chapters on her treatment of Greek heroes: Achilles (Chapter 5), Odysseus (Chapter 6), and Diomedes, Philoctetes and Agamemnon (Chapter 7). These chapters show how individual passages are linked thematically and verbally, and the internal logic of the poem as a whole. In particular they draw attention to Cassandra's negative portrayal of the Greeks in contrast to the retributive future success of her Trojan descendants. They show how Lycophron mirrors, refracts and detracts from established Homeric and tragic representations of these figures.
Chapter 8 switches to the successful legacy of the Trojan heroes and the placement of the famous ‘Roman passages’ within the Alexandra. It also shows several points of contact between Lycophron and Virgil's Aeneid. Chapter 9 analyses the poem's treatment of the gods, including the ‘Plan of Zeus’ and the handling of divine justice, contrasting the initial successes and defeats of the Greeks and Trojans respectively with the subsequent sufferings of the Greeks and the triumph of the descendants of the Trojans.
While McN. and S. rightly draw attention to the influences of epic poetry and tragedy (Trojan-themed plays in particular) on the Alexandra, and how Lycophron manipulates them, there are other literary genres to consider. The authors stress how Lycophron aims to denigrate or mirror and refract from established literary accounts. Taking this idea further, one wonders about the influence of cultic lyric and mythography (to a lesser extent) on Lycophron.
Cultic songs (e.g. paeans, dithyrambs and partheneia) narrate stories about the foundation of local settlements or places of worship, mythological stories connected with a wider Panhellenic framework, and may contain oracular pronouncements. All things that the Alexandra does. The poetological imagery in the prologue and epilogue of the Alexandra can be paralleled with the openings, settings and poetological imagery of Pindar's paeans (e.g. Pae. 6, 7b, 8a), for example the divine/Apolline inspiration of poetic ability, and the special learning of the poet-narrator and the audience. One may suggest then that the Alexandra is also a ‘perverted’ or ‘inverted’ paean when Cassandra, as she distils Apollo's revelation of the universal history into words, makes use of features found in cult-songs such as paeans and redeploys them as a not to be believed Apolline-inspired denigration of Greek victories and promise of later Trojan success.
Both lyric and mythography may well be other sources for Lycophron's own mythography and narrative techniques, such as Lycophron's summary narrative of the Argonautica (Alex. 1309–21). Naturally, Lycophron draws upon and compresses the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes and Euripides’ Medea, yet there are also Pherecydes and Pindar's Pythian 4 to consider. Lycophron's structure and key features of this mini-Argonautica are framed by the items alluded to in the Abbruchsformel of the Argonautica narrative of Pythian 4, and some of the vocabulary can be paralleled in Pherecydes. Other examples include the abduction of Helen by Theseus and Perithoos, and her subsequent recovery by her brothers (Alex. 503–10). McN. and S. (p. 85) focus on the Cypria as they argue that through the figure of Acamas, Lycophron associates the Cypria with the island of Cyprus. Continuing the notion of the mirroring or inverting of stories and characters, and the influence of lyric and cultic lyric in particular, Pausanias (1.41.4–5) says that Alcman (21 PMGF = 210 Calame) told a story of the Dioscuri capturing Athens and taking Theseus’ mother (Aithra) away. Pindar (fr. 243 + 258 S-M) apparently follows this account by describing Theseus as capturing Helen so that he might be related to the Dioscuri (cf. also Ibyc. S166 PMGF; Stes. 86 Finglass; Hellan. 168 EGM). In Lycophron (Alex. 508–9), the brothers leave Attica untouched apart from seizing Aithra and rescuing Helen.
Lycophron's poem, described by McN. and S. as a ‘bold generic experiment’ (p. 2), is the ongoing shaping of the Classical literary and mythological traditions, as a whole as well as the religious and social life of the ancient world. The book is a very well-written contribution to our understanding of Lycophron and Greek poetry and would serve as a model for other difficult authors or genres.
