BMCR 2009.06.14: Trzaskoma on Prince, Chariton, Callirhoe. Book I

Cashman Kerr Prince, Chariton, Callirhoe. Book I.  Bryn Mawr:  Bryn
Mawr Commentaries, 2009.  Pp. 57.  ISBN 9781931019057.  $9.50 (pb).

Reviewed by Stephen M. Trzaskoma, University of New Hampshire
([email protected])
Word count:  1316 words
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Greek prose fiction of the imperial period offers instructors a
delightful selection of texts for intermediate and advanced
undergraduates, but only a few works of the age, such as Lucian's True
History, have had any great presence in the classroom. The Greek
romances have suffered from this neglect, a situation only exacerbated
by a lack of commentaries. Longus has perhaps fared best of all, but
until recently this was a slight distinction--we had only Lowe's
brutally bowdlerized school commentary. Even that was better than the
complete lack of commentaries on Chariton, Xenophon Ephesius, Achilles
Tatius, or Heliodorus. For Longus we thankfully now have Morgan's
excellent Aris and Phillips (though like all its series companions it
is not geared toward providing consistent help for reading the Greek)
and Byrne and Cueva's student edition (non vidi), both from 2004. It is
a shame that we have had to wait until 2009 for anything at all on
Chariton, "an undeservedly neglected novelist, and a writer of good
Greek," in the words of Simon Slings. Now with the publication of
Prince's new Bryn Mawr Commentary on the first book of Callirhoe
instructors will have all the more reason to think of choosing a
romance as reading for their students. Even if the commentary has
deficiencies, some of them serious, it is an inexpensive and handy way
to get an engaging text into an intermediate class with notes geared
toward students who will often grope their way through what more
experienced readers of Greek find straightforward.

After a short but enthusiastically appreciative introduction, Prince
gives us a clean, modern text of Book 1. It is based on Reardon's fine
recent Teubner edition, though he sensibly follows Goold's Loeb text
here and there to avoid most of the lacunae and irremediably corrupt
passages marked in the former.[[1]] Very occasionally he chooses a
reading or emendation favored by neither Reardon nor Goold (e.g.,
Beck's <greek>e)ta/khmen</greek> at 1.2.3), but this is a volume
intended for undergraduates, not a critical scholarly edition, so we
need not overly concern ourselves with these instances.[[2]] Misprints
disproportionately torment beginners, and the text here is mercifully
free of them.[[3]]

Elementary commentaries of this nature have in my mind one overarching
goal: to increase significantly the speed at which relatively
inexperienced undergraduates can make their way through a Greek text
with confidence. They do so mostly by providing vocabulary, parsing
unusual forms, and explaining idiomatic or particularly difficult
passages, and the volume under review is no exception. I will confess
up front that such commentaries often make me wonder whether there is a
method to their madness. Is there some reason, for instance, that in
1.13.5 <greek>e)/paulis</greek> is glossed but just below in 1.13.7
<greek>prokatalamba/nw</greek>, the appropriate meaning of which is not
to be found in any lexicon to which students have regular access, is
passed over in silence even though it will come again shortly in 1.14.4
in a slightly different construction (cf. Lessico dei Romanzieri Greci
s.v., where these instances of the verb are defined as "assicurarsi la
prelazione" and "impegnare in un contratto" respectively)? In terms of
annotation, is there a pedagogical purpose behind telling students that
<greek>o)fqh=|</greek> is "aor. pass. subj." without person or number
and that <greek>a)ph/|ei</greek> is "3rd sing. impf." without voice or
mood but that <greek>do/s</greek> is "2nd sing. aor. imper. act."?

This sort of thing, however, is a problem common to the format, and it
may not be as troublesome to students as it is to a reviewer. The real
key is accuracy, and unfortunately there is inconsistency in this
regard. The vast majority of the information is correct and on the
whole students with this commentary at hand will make their way through
the text more quickly than they would without it. Helpful hints about
forms and lexical information abound. [[4]] With enough frequency to be
bothersome, however, Prince sometimes fails to give a properly
contextualized gloss or identifying information. The
<greek>e)/paulis</greek> I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, for
instance, is not merely "quarters, lodgings" in Chariton but, as
frequently in later Greek, specifically a country house or villa. This
is hardly an isolated instance.[[5]] So yes, all of the glosses and
identifications will cut down on the brutally slow business of
students' having to look absolutely everything up for themselves, but
some of that time is stolen back by every inaccuracy and, what may be
more problematic, student confidence is undermined. On p. 36 when we
read that <greek>a)/cioi/ ei)si</greek> is an impersonal construction,
we disagree and move on. We instantly recognize a simple typographical
slip further down on the same page when we are told
<greek>kataneu/santos</greek> comes from <greek>katanoe/w</greek>. And
later, still on the same page, we pass over the gloss of
<greek>ei)dui=a</greek> as a present participle, knowing what Prince
meant. We have these reactions, but the most careful of our students
are not likely to. And even the most easygoing instructors are probably
going to balk at the bottom of that same page when they find that
adverbial <greek>au)tou=</greek> in a citation of Homer is supposed to
be an emphatic adjective in agreement with a feminine singular pronoun
or that students are given no more help with epic <greek>lu/to</greek>
than the note that it comes from <greek>e)/luto</greek>, which, even if
it were an attested form, is of no help at all. Most pages do not have
quite so many problems, but some others do.

Similar difficulties extend to syntax. On p. 35 we are told that
<greek>mh\ u(brisqw=men</greek> is a prohibitory subjunctive and the
reference to the appropriate section in Smyth is given, but it is hard
to see how this can be anything but a negative purpose clause.
Throughout, several of the explanations given for the use of
<greek>mh/</greek> in place of <greek>ou)</greek> fail to account for
Chariton's first-century usage, upon which Smyth was not based.[[6]]
Students will in my experience rarely stumble in their translations in
such places, much less even notice that Chariton "ought" to have used
<greek>ou)</greek> in a given place, but I think it is worth pointing
out and explaining such an occurrence as correctly and unobtrusively as
possible. On a related note, other features which are not unusual for
late Greek are passed over without comment (e.g., <greek>i(/na</greek>
introducing a result clause, the third-person reflexive standing for
the first-person, or the active of <greek>le/gw</greek> taking an
infinitive in indirect statement). These will not necessarily cause
difficulties (it is a rare student in second or third year Greek who
remembers all the rules for indirect statement), but one should have a
policy in a commentary about when and how to broach such subjects.
Perhaps a short description of some of the major features of Chariton's
language could have been included in the introduction.

The upshot is that there are problems throughout the 24 pages of notes,
though they are not evenly distributed or uniformly serious. I have
detailed many of them in the notes below. They are not overwhelming,
but they are unfortunate and too numerous. As Tyche would have it, I
have been teaching Callirhoe to a group of third- and fourth-year
students this term. In the end, if this commentary had been available
to me I would likely have assigned it, warts and all. The errors and
slips cannot entirely efface the good aspects of the work Prince has
done. I am certainly pleased to see Chariton get a little attention and
pleased to see that it will now be easier to teach him in Greek.
However, instructors will want to look this commentary over carefully
before deciding whether in its current form it will suit their needs
and the needs of their students. I also hope that an improved edition
will be possible down the road. We have a nice basis for a good student
commentary here, and it would not take so very much to bring it to
fruition.


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Notes:


1.   Prince does, however, leave Reardon's <greek><...>genei</greek> at
1.1.6 instead of adopting Cobet's <greek>[th=| eu)]genei/[a|]</greek>
with Goold and others, leaving his assurance in the commentary that the
genitive absolute "makes sense in its own right" at odds with the text
students have in front of them.

2.   The one exception is 1.11.5, where, following Reiske, we either
need <greek>o(/pou...o(rmi/sai</greek> or
<greek>o(/poi...o(rmh=sai</greek>, but not Prince's mixed
<greek>o(/poi...o(rmi/sai</greek>. One curiosity: Prince adopts Blake's
<greek>deinote/ran</greek> at 1.8.1 but then goes ahead and brackets it
for deletion anyway.

3.   I noted a few stray accents and a missing period after
<greek>qala/sshs</greek> at 1.14.7 (Prince's line 47), only the latter
being likely to cause any trouble. There is a slightly higher rate of
typographical errors in the notes.

4.   Forms are very occasionally misidentified: p. 45 "indicative" has
slipped into the identification of <greek>r(hqei/shs</greek>; p. 48
<greek>a)nerri/fqw</greek> is a perfect mid./pass. imperative not
aorist passive and <greek>e(wra/kate</greek> is plural, not singular.

5.   Examples: on p. 34 there is no hint given as to the existence of
the idiom <greek>fe/resqai ta\ deu/tera</greek> when <greek>ta\
deu/tera</greek> is glossed, <greek>te/ws</greek> cannot mean
"meanwhile" here, and no explanation for the middle of
<greek>politeu/w</greek> is offered; p. 35 <greek>tugxa/nw</greek> here
means "obtain, succeed in getting," not "happen upon"; p. 36 the
specific connection of <greek>mnhsteu/w</greek> to marriage could be
mentioned and <greek>e(rmhneu/w</greek> means "describe, put into
words," here not "interpret, explain"; p. 37 <greek>e)kpne/w</greek>
often implies "breathe one's last, expire" and is usually so taken
here; p. 41 (where we have more than the usual number of these sorts of
problems) <greek>a(/ptw</greek> means "undertake" here, not "fasten,
fix upon" and we probably need <greek>loipo/n</greek> in the sense
"next, now" and <greek>stwmu/los</greek> in its positive sense of
"suave." The noun <greek>a(/bra</greek> is not the adjective
<greek>a(bro/s</greek>. It would help to have some mention of the force
of the middle in <greek> a)pa/gesqai</greek>. <greek>a)lu/w</greek>
means "hang out," not "wander, roam" here. These sorts of problems
occur throughout the commentary, not on that page alone. On p. 46
<greek>e)ntafi/wn</greek> refers not to generic "funerary honors" but
to physical grave goods. On p. 47 <greek>peirath/rion</greek> is a
pirate crew, not a pirate's nest. On p. 50 <greek>e)pita/ssw</greek>
can mean "place behind," but here it means "give orders," its usual
meaning. On p. 53 <greek>a)cio/w</greek> means "demand, ask" not merely
"consider worthy, right" and <greek>mega/lh *)Asi/a</greek> is not
"modern Asia Minor" but the Asian continent proper. Almost all of these
are to be found in LSJ.

6.   There are several examples of syntactical misdirection, hardly
limited to late usage or the unusual. On p. 39
<greek>a)ndri\...i(kanw=|</greek> is not a dative of association, but
dative after <greek>e)gxeiri/zw</greek>; on p. 41
<greek>a)kou/sh|</greek> is indeed "middle in form but active in
meaning," but sending students to Smyth 540, which discusses contracted
"Doric futures," seems a cruel way to repay their diligence when they
will want 805-806; p. 46 the romantic interpretation of
<greek>a)du/naton e(autw=| th\n swthri/an</greek> as "it was impossible
for him to save himself" based on Polycharmus' thinking of Chaireas "as
an extension of himself" goes too far--it means nothing more than that
it was impossible for him to save Chaireas; p. 46 <greek>numfikh\n
e)sqh=ta</greek> is not an accusative of respect, especially not of the
kind in Smyth 1601.b; see instead 1604: "Not to be confused with the
accusative of respect is the accusative after...the passives of 1632";
in 1632, one will find the passive of verbs of clothing with the
accusative; p. 47 <greek>to\...gegone/nai</greek> is identified as an
articular infinitive, but it is translated as if it were <greek>to\
gegono/s</greek>; the subject is, rather, the substantive <greek>to\
dokou=n</greek> and the infinitive follows that participle; p. 49
<greek>a)namimnh/skw</greek> is not a middle deponent,
<greek>a)napnoai=s</greek> is not a dative of respect, but dative after
the prefix of <greek>e)ggenome/nhs</greek>, and I do not believe that
<greek>e)geirome/nhs</greek> is a genitive absolute but a genitive
limiting <greek>ai)/sqhsin</greek>; p. 52-3 the use of
<greek>mh/</greek> is said to belong to the category of "emphatic
declaration" described at Smyth 2723, but Smyth there makes it clear
that such constructions implicitly "involve a wish that the utterance
may hold good" and this example does not pass that test (nor that of
preceding the main verb).