S. Douglas Olson Livres

Our knowledge of the ancient theatre is limited by the textual and iconographic character of the evidence available to us: we cannot watch or otherwise experience an Athenian tragedy or comedy. These essays, by a distinguished group of international scholars, bridge the gap between the surviving literary and iconographic evidence and the realities of performance on the ancient Greek stage. This ambitious goal is reached by means of a detailed examination of several case-studies: the construction of dramatic space in Sophocles’ Antigone ; the significance of the use of deictic pronouns in Sophocles’ Trachiniae ; the theatrical and religious dynamics of the appearance of divine figures on stage; the relationship between the victory celebrations at the end of Aristophanic comedies and their counterparts in the after-performance real world; the investigation of nude or semi-nude female characters in Aristophanes; the staging of Clouds and the opening scene of Acharnians ; the meditation on the metapoetics of the use of props in 5th-century comedy; the relationship between performance context and text through a close reading of a number of Aristophanic fragments; the way the scholia vetera on Frogs imagine and use questions of staging practice; and the potential Aeschylean authorship of some of stage-direction traceable in Aeschylus’ Eumenides and Diktoulkoi .

Preface Introduction Testimonia Α?γες (Aiges) („Goats“ or „Nanny-Goats“) Introduction Fragments ?στρ?τευτοι ? ?νδρ?γυνοι (Astrateutoi ê Androgynoi) („Draft-evaders or Effeminates“ ) Introduction Fragments Α?τ?λυκος α´ β´ („Autolykos I and II“) Testimonia Introduction Fragments Β?πται (Baptai) („Baptizers“ or „Dyers“) Testimonia Introduction Fragments Δ?μοι (Dêmoi) („Rural Districts“) Testimonia Introduction Fragments Addenda and Corrections to Vols. II-III Bibliography Indices

Die Reihe Fragmenta Comica wird die vollständige Kommentierung der Fragmente der griechischen Komödie bieten. Ziel der Kommentare ist es, einerseits die in der Regel schwierig zu verstehenden Texte unter allen möglichen Gesichtspunkten zu erschließen, andererseits, wo dies möglich ist, eine Rekonstruktion der Stücke zu versuchen und eine literaturgeschichtliche Einordnung der Autoren vorzunehmen. Die Fragmente und Testimonien werden übersetzt.

Die Reihe Fragmenta Comica wird die vollständige Kommentierung der Fragmente der griechischen Komödie bieten. Ziel der Kommentare ist es, einerseits die in der Regel schwierig zu verstehenden Texte unter allen möglichen Gesichtspunkten zu erschließen, andererseits, wo dies möglich ist, eine Rekonstruktion der Stücke zu versuchen und eine literaturgeschichtliche Einordnung der Autoren vorzunehmen. Die Fragmente und Testimonien werden übersetzt.

This volume is devoted to the over 200 fragments of Cratinus for which have no play title. Much of the material has never been commented on previously. Douglas Olson and Ryan Seaberg offer a close literary, philological and historical study of the fragments, with particular attention to textual, poetic and linguistic issues of all sorts and to the lexicographic sources that preserve the material. Their general goal is to open up problems and perspectives rather than to shut them down. By teasing out some of their individual puzzles and peculiarities they want to render the fragments accessible to further scholarly work. The commentary of the Fragmenta Comica series illuminate not only the genre history of comedy, but also the Greek literary history of the Classical and Hellenistic period.

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (600s BCE?) tells the story of a brief encounter between the goddess of love and the cowherd Anchises, which led to the birth of the Trojan hero Aeneas. Less than 300 lines long, it is among the shortest of the so-called ‘major Homeric Hymns’. However, it is also richly and beautifully conceived and narrated, and of enormous importance for the Greek mythology and the history of Greek religion. Olson offers a complete new text of the poem and of ten related ‘minor Hymns’, based on a fresh examination of the manuscripts; a full critical apparatus; and a translation. The work is completed by a substantial introduction, which treats inter alia the stories of Aeneas, the problem of dating early Greek epic, and the nature of the connections between the Hymn to Aphrodite and the Homeric and Hesiodic poems. Olson furthermore offers a substantial, narratologically-oriented commentary.