Classical World

When it comes to Callimachus' Hecale, Adrian Hollis is no doubt the chief authority. The first edition of his commentary back in 1990 endowed scholars of Hellenistic literature with a substantial tool to access an otherwise obscure text. He provides a plethora of apposite remarks on style and content of the surviving fragments and undertakes a fairly convincing reconstruction of the poem's plot. The strength of the commentary lies in its editorial clarity as well as in the explanatory notes on individual fragments, which constitute models of concision and good sense. The only field where the commentary falls short is literary criticism, especially as regards incorporating recent views of Callimachean poetics and contextual practices of intertextual interpretation.

Introduction, text, commentary, and appendices have been substantially reprinted from the first edition—typos and further minor infelicities have not been removed. The reason why we should be thankful for this new edition, however, is that Hollis undertook the translation of all surviving fragments into English, which makes the book accessible to a wider audience. The translation follows the Greek text closely in all cases, offering readers a valuable insight into Hollis' subtle and sensitive readings of the original, although it would have been helpful for the so-called diegesis and argumentum to be included. Given the extent of critical attention that the first edition received, I discuss here a few cases that mostly hail from the additional commentary:

Fr. 7: Hollis cites a close lexical parallel to Callimachus' diction from Ps.-Oppian's Cynegetica, but one should also add Eur. Ion 1320 ἐπίσχες, ὦ παῖ. The alleged (and quite plausible) setting in Callimachus, where the alarmed father Aegeus recognizes his son at the last minute and saves him from Medea's machinations, is directly reminiscent of the Euripidean one: the [End Page 508] priestess tries to prevent the youth from being poisoned by using a similar expression that wards off a family disaster. Without being aware of their familial bond, Creusa, Ion's mother, intends to get rid of him as she thinks he is her future stepson. In this play, Euripides develops a tension between the notions "mother" and "stepmother" that is equally central in Theseus' coming-of-age story as narrated in the Hecale.

Fr. 28: Hollis refers to the so-called Hamburger Hydria, which depicts Theseus' encounter with Hecale, but seems to be unaware of E. Simon's illuminating article on the artistic representation of this black-figure vase (in Perspektiven der Philosophie 13 [1987] 409-16). The stressed lips of the old lady, shrewdly observed by Simon, may be linked with Hecale's loquacity celebrated in the witty, narratologically charged characterization of her lips as "ever moving" (fr. 58). Given the extent of correspondences, a detailed examination of the vase painting could have been useful to readers in order to gain insights into Callimachus' potential sources.

Fr. 48: Hollis remarks on the threefold occurrence of the "obsolete dual," which stresses Hecale's maternal profile and past family bliss. Based on the recurrent motif of the "bath of divine children," which recurs in the Homeric Hymns as well as in the hymns of Callimachus, I have tried to reconstruct lines 5-6 in the following sequence: τώ μοι] τινθαλέοισι κατικμήναιντο λοετροῖς / σπάργανα γ’ εἱλίξαι διδυμά]ονε παῖδε φερούσῃ, thus arguing for a triple deployment of the dual form t. in lines 1, 5, and 7; see RhM 152, 2009, 1-14.

Apart from the acknowledged strengths of the volume, it is, in my view, a pity that Hollis was apparently unwilling to engage in dialogue with other scholars, such as A. Kerkhecker and A. Ambühl who have ventured interpretations of their own since his first edition—the only exception is an emendation he cites from E. Livrea's influential KPECCONA BACKANIHC. Recent studies that draw significant conclusions on narrative technique and matters of reception could also have been taken into account as a means of cross-fertilizing current philological research on the poem (M. Fantuzzi-R. Hunter; G. Hutchinson).

Be that as it may, Hollis...