Classical World

This is an important and thoughtful collection that offers a clear overview of the development of Greek tragedy after the fifth century. Increasingly, this period has been seen as a time tragedy became international, though its appreciation is inevitably limited by the lack of available evidence. The passionate advocacy expressed by the thirteen scholars assembled here yields a rich and easily readable guide to the surviving material. Many are summarizing their own previous work, and so are established experts, but that is not the liability that it might seem. Summaries are fresh and reflect much of the latest thinking, and small disagreements between the perspectives offered can still be detected.

Six chapters focus on the fourth century. Following an overview of the volume by Petrides (1-21), Liapis and T. K. Stephanopoulos provide a concise survey of the fragmentary fourth-century tragedians (25-65), followed by A. Fries summarizing his understanding of the Rhesus (66-89), which he plausibly dates to the first third of the fourth century. A. Duncan and Liapis describe the principal characteristics of late-classical performance and stagecraft (180-203), discussing the changes instituted by Lycurgus particularly, and M. Griffith describes the innovations in music at this time (204-242). His explanation of tetrachords and musical tuning is exemplary in its clarity. Both F. Dunn (243-269) and D. M. Carter (270-293) stress the fundamental continuity of tragedy in this period with what had gone before. While rhetorical aspects develop, they argue against any substantial disjunction caused by the deaths of Sophocles and Euripides.

Discussion of Hellenistic tragedy occupies three chapters, as one feels the evidence slipping away. Discussions of Lycophron's Alexandra by S. Hornblower (90-124)—boldly described as "the greatest work of literature treated in the whole of the present volume" (107)—and of Ezekiel's Exago¯ge¯ by P. Lanfranchi (125-146) are generous in their assessments of the literary merits of these texts, with Hornblower advocating for a (late) second-century date for the Alexandra, and Lanfranchi suggesting that Latin praetextae might offer the nearest parallel for the Exago¯ge¯. Hornblower also presents a survey of fragmentary Hellenistic tragedians (the Pleiad) and provides the volume's fullest discussions of the Gyges fragment (P.Oxy. 2382) and satyr-drama, though these are brief and [End Page 360] stilted. The larger picture of the Hellenistic expansion of tragic performance is described by B. Le Guen (149-179), who provides the fullest discussion of the Technitai or Artists of Dionysus, which might have warranted a separate chapter. A particular emphasis on the contest for Old Tragedies (also described by Duncan and Liapis as well as Griffith) points to the ongoing importance of the fifth-century tragedians in the larger performance culture. Le Guen's summaries of non-Athenian dramatic contests provide a rich bibliography that is often missed; the lists of Dionysia (and other festivals) in other poleis, with reference to the attesting inscriptions, will make a useful hand-list as they demonstrate effectively the spread of theatre contests.

R. Webb describes the ongoing presence of tragedy in Roman-era orators and writers such as Lucian, Dio Chrysostom, and Longinus (297-323). While she acknowledges that tragedy was still performed at this time, that is not her focus. Finally, J. Hanink surveys the history of scholarship on tragedy in antiquity, summarizing both the emergence of dedicated inscriptions such as the Fasti (IG ii² 2318), and scholarly approaches including Aristotle's Poetics, the works of Aristophanes of Byzantium, hypotheseis, and Lives of the poets, leading to the emergence of scholia (324-349). This is an incredibly rich and comprehensive summary that spans the full length of the volume's purview.

As a survey, the collection is effective, though a few subjects perhaps deserved fuller treatment. I would have...