Customer Reviews

Aeschylus: Choephori (Greek Edition)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

(Note: for those who do not know: this edition is in ANCIENT GREEK and if you do not know that language, you may wish to buy a translation instead, such as Lattimore or Lloyd-Jones or Loeb Library's Smyth. This is not a translation but an edition of the text with a long and detailied commentary on said text.)
This semester we read selected long passages from the entire "Oresteia" in Greek. We read a lot more than half of the entire trilogy, and for me, a second-year Greek student, the experience was very intense and pleasantly challenging. My head is still ringing from choruses that never leave roofs, making a song that is not good and with Pylades urging Orestes to make his horrible choice.
I liked Garvie's "Choeporoi" much better than Denniston and Page's edition of the "Agamemnon" because Garvie's commentary is longer and more detailed (it is 8 times the length of the actual text, in smallish print) and Garvie has a more current poetic sensibility which does not dictate ONE POSSIBLE READING AND ONE ALONE for each line of poetry, unlike the older school.
There is also an really fine section in the Introduction on pre-Aeschylean versions of the story of Orestes, including that of Stesichoros, and a section on staging, as well as complete metrical notes.
Throughout the commentary are extensive and formidably learned references to other Greek literature for comparison and to a good array of secondary articles and commentaries. The bibliography is large.
Overall the book is a very fine achievement and deserves great respect and broad usage.

This is a review of the specific edition of Aeschylus' Choephori edited by Anthony Bowen. I trust Amazon will file it correctly. The Product Review and the first Customer Review for this book refer to the edition by A.F.Garvie.
The Bowen book consists of the Greek text and some 160 pages of commentary. There is no translation into English. There is no introduction, the author chooses rather to put such historical, literary and cultural matter into the commentary at the points where it is most relevant. I like that approach.
This was my first experience of reading Aeschylus, and Bowen was an exemplary guide. I had previously studied two plays each of the two other tragedians, and much Homer, and that was very valuable experience for attempting the more difficult writer Aeschylus.
Bowen's Greek text seems to be same as Garvie's. But in the Bowen the font is large, attractive, and easy to read. I did notice three possible misprints (at 600,759,898). There is no ap.crit., but significant alternative readings are explored in the commentary. btw, this text is very different to that in the Loeb ed. Smyth, so that the Loeb translation is quite misleading in places.
I give my highest praises to the commentary -- it it at just the right level to give me learner's delight without overwhelming me, as some commentaries do, with textual criticism and other academic controversies. Bowen gives much help with vocabulary, especially the implications of the particles and the origin of compound words. Phrases susceptible of double-entendre are pointed out. There are numerous cross-references to other passages in the play and the trilogy. The choral passages get their metrical analysis, and what is especially helpful, a discussion of the emotional moods which the various metres create. Staging is also thoroughly considered.
All in all, an excellent text and commentary for a student at my level, and if that were all that mattered, I would have given the book five stars.
The commentary is presented as a typescript in the courier font. In a future edition of this very worthy book, I strongly recommend that it be reset to be more legible, and that the Greek words within the commentary be printed in bold-face, to be more easily spotted.
Also Indices would help, to the key English concepts and to the key Greek words.