This contribution by B. is a most welcome addition to the bookshelves on ancient Greek music theory, which surely readers will appreciate as much as the translations of the fundamental ancient sources on music B. provided in his Greek Musical Writings II, Harmonic and Acoustic Theory (1989) (GMW from now on). This new book completes the set and follows the pattern of his earlier groundbreaking work: it consists of an accurate translation with frequent footnotes (occupying roughly a third of the page on average) providing the necessary background for the understanding and a preliminary discussion of this difficult text. The book obviously benefits from the annotated translation of Ptolemy's Harmonics included in GMW, since B. takes the text almost unchanged from there for Porphyry's lemmata.Footnote ¹ Most of the fragments of writers on music quoted by Porphyry had also been translated in GMW, but these appear newly translated now. To avoid repetition, the notes on lemmata are understandably suppressed, and those on the fragments are reduced; normally Porphyry's discussion together with B.'s notes on it are sufficient, but in some cases the reader must consult GMW for clarification.Footnote ²

As with some of the texts in GMW, B.'s translation of Porphyry's commentary has the merit of being the first complete one into English – it is probably just the second ever after J. Wallis, Porphyrii in Harmonica Ptolemaei commentarius (1699) – and has almost coincided with the Italian version of M. Raffa, Claudio Tolemeo, Armonica con il Commentario di Porfirio (2016); this attests to the current vitality of the always rather marginal field of ancient music theory. Even if B. only relates this to the surge of interest in the philosophy of Late Antiquity (pp. 6–7), the truth is that B.'s own scholarly work on ancient musical writings and their diffusion is an impressive background upon which his new book stands.

Following the guidelines of the previous translations, B. preferred to complete the job in a reasonable period of time instead of taking the pains of collating the manuscripts (p. 56) – a task that he could nevertheless have fruitfully limited without much effort to a brief inspection of some crucial passages (e.g. p. 71 n. 20), and which would probably have spared him the repetition of some obvious errors in Düring's examination of the manuscripts.Footnote ³ The important new feature of the present book is that it provides the Greek text and a detailed apparatus facing the translation, both modified from I. Düring's edition (1932) with others’ – especially B. Alexanderson, Textual Remarks on Ptolemy's Harmonics and Porphyry's Commentary (1969) – and his own emendations. In general, they are perfectly plausible corrections of an apparently often damaged text; B. is wary of altering the text excessively to accommodate it to his own expectations, resorting to the footnotes for the exposition of conjectures that are not absolutely necessary (e.g. p. 227 n. 258).

Transparency is also a much appreciated feature of the translation, since B. frequently embarks on a discussion of his doubts about the correct rendering of a specific word or expression (e.g. pp. 65 nn. 5–6, 73 n. 22, 219 n. 234, 235 n. 275), even pointing out his own initial errors when tackling a difficult passage (p. 237 n. 277). In some cases, a little more searching of parallels in the TLG would have provided a quick solution to these dilemmas,Footnote ⁴ but generally the fact that B. reveals his thought process is very illustrative of the complexities of the text. Altogether, the translation reflects well B.'s solid understanding of the topics under discussion, the difficulties being imputable to the difficulties in the Greek text itself. Porphyry's frequent quotations make the feat even more commendable due to the changing uses of technical terminology by different authors. B.'s translation is successful in taking these issues into consideration, both with a careful and consistent choice of technical terminology (whenever possible) and by informing the reader of any such problems in the footnotes. New ingenious solutions are sometimes offered, such as when the names for the epimoric ratios are literally translated in a relevant passage, as ‘quarter-in-addition’ (5:4), ‘fifth-in-addition’ (6:5) and so on (p. 437 n. 661).

The footnotes on the content are one of the great attractions of the volume. They provide a handy treatment of virtually any of Porphyry's assertions worthy of discussion, always clear and often introducing illuminating ideas from readers of B.'s manuscript, especially S. Hagel and M. Raffa. Nevertheless, even if it is understandable that for reasons of scope the notes do not proceed to an in-depth treatment, it would have been interesting if B. had included more bibliography – it is striking that the list of references takes a meagre six pages.

The long introduction (pp. 1–59) deserves special mention. It gathers together both general issues and highlights of the commentary. B. deals in order with (1) Porphyry's life and writings, (2) the commentary's general profile, (3) its incompleteness, (4) philosophical content, (5) musicological content, (6–7) circumstances and purposes, and (8–11) technical issues of the Greek text and the translation. In particular, section 4 is divided into an initial survey of the first five chapters (the most philosophically charged) and two selected passages, one on the criteria of hearing (Düring 11.1–15.29) and the other a long and intricate rebuttal of Ptolemy's concept of pitches as differences of quantity (43.23–67.14). Section 5 explores five topics of interest among the vast array of possibilities: (a) the schools of musical thought, (b) the monochord, (c) the tonoi and the attunements of performing musicians, (d) continuous and intervallic sound, and (e) Porphyry's concept of melody as ‘broken sound’. It is striking that sometimes B. jumps to a quick conclusion after a superficial treatment of a question, as in the discussion of the target audience of the commentary as an erudite circle of students of the Timaeus (sections 6 and 7) – I prefer to give more weight to the fact (mentioned by B., p. 48) that the Timaeus is almost entirely absent from Porphyry's discussion, and to Porphyry's own words in the preface describing Ptolemy's text as canonical in the field of music theory (4.9–21 Düring). None the less, this and the others mentioned above are only minor qualms compared with the many achievements of this book.