BMCR 2009.03.02, William Allan, Euripides: Helen. Cambridge Greek

William Allan (ed.), Euripides: Helen. Cambridge Greek and Latin
Classics.  Cambridge/New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2008.  Pp.
xiii, 371.  ISBN 9780521545419.  $38.99 (pb).

Reviewed by Brian V. Lush, College of Charleston ([email protected])
Word count:  2053 words
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After a hiatus of nearly four decades, during which no commentary was
devoted to Euripides' Helen, William Allan's is the second in as many
years to be published.  Readers need not, however, be concerned about
redundancy or competition for audiences among these two recent
offerings.  Although Peter Burian's Aris and Phillips commentary
precedes Allan's by only a year, Burian's is keyed to readers with a
limited exposure to Greek.  Allan's commentary, on the other hand,
appeals to more advanced readers of Greek, and will undoubtedly prove
to be a valuable resource for experienced undergraduates, seasoned
readers who are yet unfamiliar with the play, and for professional
scholars of Euripidean tragedy.  Readers will also find that Allan's
work constitutes a worthy successor to A. M. Dale's (1967) Oxford
commentary, which has until now been the standard English language
commentary.  Although scholars will continue to find Kannicht's
(Heidelberg 1969) masterful commentary indispensable, Allan's
commentary does the much needed work of filling the gap between
previous treatments of the play and present time.

Allan's introduction to the play is long (85pp.) by comparison to other
commentaries in the Cambridge Green and Yellow series, and is of a
piece with Mastronarde's (2002) introduction to Euripides' Medea in the
same series.  This comprehensive introductory essay includes sections
on (1) the production of Helen in its Athenian context and with
reference to the poet's life and works; (2) the figure of Helen in
earlier Greek culture and religion; (3) Euripides' introduction of
Helen to the stage; (4) literary treatments of Helen by Stesichorus,
Herodotus and Euripides; (5) production, staging and tragic diction;
(6) the intellectual context within which Euripides produced his Helen,
and how the Helen draws from contemporary ideas of epistemology,
ethnicity, social relations and the Gods; (7) the question of genre and
late Euripidean tragedy; (8) the Nachleben of Euripides' Helen; and (9)
text and transmission.

Allan's introduction does a particularly good job of engaging with
previous scholarship on the play, and his analyses are useful both in
their contribution to our understanding of the play, and in introducing
new audiences to the numerous treatments of a unique tragedy that
sometimes confounds modern expectations.  In general, Allan seeks to
respond to broader interpretive trends that have dominated discussion
of the Helen over the past four decades.  The commentaries of Dale and
Kannicht were, of course, written prior to the publication of
Podlecki's (1970) seminal defense of the "basic seriousness of
Euripides' Helen," and although neither denies the play's status as a
genuine tragedy, current users of Dale's work, for instance, will
likely be vexed by her treatment of certain elements in the Helen
which, as she claims, "for Greek taste would be out of place in a
'tragic' tragedy" (xi).  Such generic criticism, among other points of
scholarly criticism, has continued, though with decreasing frequency,
to beleaguer Helen, and it is against this backdrop that Allan sets his
own analysis of the play.

The language of Allan's preface and introduction reflects his more
focused aim of counteracting negative judgments of the play based upon
the often narrow, anachronistic and essentialist theories of tragedy
that a number of previous scholars have applied to it (ix, 68).
Similarly, Allan successfully demonstrates that the Aristophanic
portrait of Euripides cannot be taken at face value, and that his later
tragedies were substantive, coherent and "intellectually serious"
(46ff.).  Far from being a religious, political and literary radical,
Euripides fit well within the diverse and inclusive purview of
fifth-century Athenian tragedy.  This important message is emphasized
repeatedly in both the introduction and in the commentary.

Another aim of Allan's introduction, "to reconstruct the original
audience's core values and expectations as a more accurate guide to
understanding the play" (ix), occasionally leads to a rigid discussion
of the play's treatment of issues such as war and ethnicity.  Allan's
approach focuses upon the "affirmatory impact of tragedy," and responds
to previous, one-sided discussions of the play as "anti-war" or
politically subversive (e.g., 5, 200-1, 213, 279, 335).  Allan is
correct in his avoidance of a reading that ties the play too closely to
particular historic events (e.g., the Sicilian Expedition), or which
assumes definite criticism of contemporary events where none is
evident.  However, his assumptions about the audience's reception of
the play at a charged and tenuous period in Athenian history seem
overly prescriptive.  The Helen is, among other things, a play about
war and the suffering incurred as a result of martial conflict.  Allan
is careful to remind his readers not to exaggerate characters' claims
about the futility of the Trojan War as condemning war per se (e.g.,
201).  However, too little is known about the responses of
fifth-century audiences to assume that the play had nothing to say
about war in general, or nothing to imply about the Peloponnesian War
in particular.

Allan uses Diggle's edition (Oxford 1994) as a point of departure for
his own text, though it differs from Diggle's significantly:  Allan
departs from Diggle's text in some 123 places, and proposes new
punctuation in another 23, making this version of Helen a new and
important contribution to the textual analysis of the tragedy.  The
apparatus criticus provides only a limited selection of textual
alternatives that Allan deems of primary importance, but discusses
numerous other passages and loci of interest in the commentary.
Readers are referred to the apparatus critici in the editions of
Kannicht and Diggle for a fuller record of previous emendations and
manuscript evidence.

The commentary itself is detailed, judicious and consistently
gratifying throughout.  Allan explains difficult textual choices with
the utmost clarity, as with his treatment of the contentious vv.
744-57, in which the Servant famously condemns prophets and seers as
liars.  As Allan explains, "[a]lleged linguistic and stylistic
difficulties boil down to one real problem (that later Attic temporal
augment in 752 <greek>h)bou/leto</greek>..." (232).  In response to
this difficulty, Allan simply adopts Herwerden's emendation
<greek>e)bou/leto</greek>, which employs the temporal augment typical
of fifth-century tragic diction.  Further, such <greek>gnw=mai</greek>
as are uttered here by the Servant are often thought to be removable or
irrelevant to the context, at least in part, on the grounds that they
are "detachable from a context" (Dale xxxiii) and "auffaelig breit"
(Kannicht 208 ad 726-33).  Allan, on the other hand, argues that such
statements, although broadly applicable, are "highly relevant to the
play" and that the Servant's comments "characterize the speaker as a
shocked yet spirited old man, prone to moralizing reflection" (232).
This comment is emblematic of Allan's willingness to accept the text on
its own terms--a practice that he follows consistently throughout his
commentary.

Although Allan does not use a dogmatically conservative model of
textual criticism, he preserves the text as it is transmitted by L as
closely as possible.  At the recognition duet at vv. 625-97, a passage
particularly troubled by textual difficulties, Allan affirms that Pap.
Oxy. 2336 "confirms the high quality of L's text, but offers several
improvements."  Vv. 711-33, of which over half is deleted in Diggle's
OCT edition, are largely retained by Allan on the grounds that "it
would be misleading to treat sententiousness per se as a mark of
interpolation (especially in Euripides)."  On Helen's epode at vv.
229-52, Allan objects to Lourenc,o's allegations of "inapposite imagery
and wooly phraseology" and asserts that these verses "represent a
typical example of late Euripidean lyric."  Such judiciousness is a
consequence of his general strategy of avoiding anachronistic judgments
of style and content.  Finally, Allan responds to a particularly
difficult crux at vv. 1148-50 by adopting Kovac's (2002) Loeb version
of the text (which includes the conjectures of Schenkl and Willink, as
Allan notes):

<greek>prodo/tis a)/pistos a)/dikos a)/qeos; ou)d' e)/xw</greek>
<greek>o(/ ti safe\s, o(/ ti pot' e)n brotoi=s tw=n qew=n</greek>
<greek>e)/pos a)laqe\s eu(/rw.</greek>

In this case, Allan opposes the emendations of Paley, Murray and Alt,
and explains that this decision retains as much of the transmitted text
as possible.

In addition to Allan's careful treatment of the text itself, his
comments are generally illuminating and invoke a wide range of
contextual information and critical analysis.  He is particularly
strong in the areas of contemporary intellectual strains and metrical
analysis.  Theonoe's peculiar theology, explained by her at vv. 1002ff,
has been repeatedly mined for contemporary philosophical influences.
Allan, in a note that is typically rich in detail, identifies the
relevance of Anaximenes, Empedocles, Diogenes of Apollonia and
Anaxagoras, reminding his readers that Euripides did not compose his
tragedies in an intellectual vacuum, and that his use of contemporary
ideas places him squarely within his own social and historical milieu.
In particular, Allan traces the use of nouns in -<greek>sis</greek>
throughout the tragedy, explaining that they are "a feature of the
intellectual revolution of the late fifth century" (152).

Elucidation of lyric meters, and the connection of these meters to
their literary context, is also a noteworthy and positive feature of
Allan's commentary.  Comprehensive metrical analysis is given at the
start of each choral ode or exchange with a dramatis persona, along
with a discussion of the content of the passage and its relationship to
the play as a whole.  For example, about the choral parodos at vv.
164-252, Allan identifies the iambo-trochaic exchange between Helen and
the chorus as a "form of antiphonal lament which the fifth-century
audience can relate to the antiphonal dirges ...of their own mourning
rituals" (166).  Consistently and sensitively tying meter to context
proves to be a valuable contribution both for scholars of the tragedy,
and for newcomers to Euripidean lyric who may be yet unaware of the
power and importance of these often difficult passages.

Points of criticism about the commentary are few and relatively minor.
In his approach to issues of production and staging, Allan might have
devoted more attention to the visual dynamics of the tragedy, and the
potential impact that staging may have had upon the play's initial
audience.  Allan devotes some 8 1/2 pages of his introduction to a
general explanation of tragic staging, and to providing a thorough
overview of the dramatic structure of the Helen.  However, relatively
scant attention is given to a moment of particular interest:  in
treating the exit of the chorus and Helen into the palace, Allan
comments only briefly that this unique coup de the/a^tre "emphasizes
H.'s isolation and helplessness" (179).  This moment is, in fact, the
only instance in extant tragedy at which all characters and the chorus
exit into the ske^ne^, leaving behind them an empty stage.  Despite
Allan's general thoroughness, more could have been made of this
important dramatic moment, after which Menelaus enters an empty stage
and delivers a second prologue.  Less experienced readers might also
have benefited from a brief introduction to lyric meter in the
Introduction, and from a more thorough treatment of contemporary ideas
in the introductory section entitled "Knowledge and Reality."
Introductory resources for both topics are, however, abundant and cited
by Allan. Allan's own contribution to the recently published Blackwell
Companion to Greek Tragedy (Gregory 2005), entitled "Tragedy and the
Early Greek Philosophical Tradition," will provide an excellent
complement to the commentary for readers who are less familiar with
pre-Socratic and Sophistic thought.

Errata in the commentary are rare and trivial.  The only places
requiring correction that I have identified are as follows:  in the
<greek>*T*A *T*O*U *D*R*A*M*A*T*O*S *P*R*O*S*W*P*A</greek> on p. 90,
<greek>teu=kros</greek> should read <greek>*Teu=kros</greek>; at p. 239
ad 828 <greek>peisa/nte</greek> should be proparoxytone
(<greek>pei/sante</greek>); at p. 272 ad 1109-10 (sixth line from the
top of the note), <greek>a)oidota/tos</greek> should be proparoxytone
(<greek>a)oido/tatos</greek>); at p. 273 ad 1117-21,
<greek>barba/rw</greek> should include an iota subscript (adscript in
this series) after the omega (<greek>barba/rw|</greek>); at 340 ad 1642
(fourth line from the top of the note), "ixmmediate" should read
"immediate".

In summary, Allan's commentary is a valuable and needed contribution to
the study and dissemination of Euripides' Helen.  It is rich in
contextual information, straightforward in its analyses and
contentions, and judicious in its treatment of the text.  Additionally,
it does a significant portion of the necessary work of bringing the
last four decades of scholarship to bear upon our reading of the play.
For all of these reasons, Allan's new commentary will go a long way
towards achieving his stated goal of demonstrating that "Helen is an
extraordinarily exuberant and inventive drama that deserves to be read
(and performed) more widely" (ix).