Greek Literature

Abstract

ἄνδρά μοι ἔννεπε…: Are you shocked to find a misprint at the very beginning of Martin West's Teubner Odyssey? Then you've not been reading the poem in the editions of La Roche (1867–8) or Ludwich (1889–91), and you have not been reading the Iliad in West's edition (1998). You will need to consult the latter if you want to gain enlightenment on this and other orthographic niceties: the introduction to West's Odyssey is, inconveniently, not a stand-alone resource. Sampling his text alongside Allen's routinely derided OCT rarely revealed differences more substantive than, for example, ἐνὶ vs ἐπὶ in 1.211. But confidence in my collation may be undermined when I confess that I almost missed μηδὲ vs μέγα δέ in 13.158: West's decision to set aside the entire ancient textual tradition in favour of Aristophanes of Byzantium's conjecture strikes me as reckless. Strongly attested lines have no immunity to West's suspicions (e.g. 1.171–3). Suspect lines are variously queried in the apparatus, or bracketed in the text, or moved from text to apparatus. The last of these options is disruptive to the reading experience, and such a sharply polarized layout can hardly avoid being arbitrary: doubtfulness is a continuum. I, at any rate, was unable to extract a consistent set of criteria underlying West's choices among the three options. But his handling of these difficult decisions is more restrained than I had expected. The apparatus, once its conventions have become familiar, is clear and informative; an unprecedented range of papyri is cited; the testimonia, too, are given in unprecedented abundance. Allen, of course, but also von der Mühll (1946) and Thiel (1991) are put in the shade by West's final scholarly tour de force.