[publicclassics] David Kovacs, Euripides: Troades

[Kai Brodersen]

David Kovacs announces the publication of a new commentary on Euripides' Troades.

David Kovacs, Euripides: Troades, Oxford University Press, January 2019, 370pp, $124.95 (ISBN 9780199296156)

This book presents a new edition of Euripides' Troades with a commentary that tries to discuss all problems of text and interpretation in the play, whether they involve individual words or lines, whole speeches, scenes, or choral odes, or the architecture of the whole play. The text has been reconsidered in every syllable, and every change has been argued for, in some cases at length. In addition to textual matters, the commentary ranges from the particular (points of tragic and Euripidean style and meter, and the rhetoric of individual speeches) to the general (e.g. re-evaluating the way the play's first audience were meant to react to the worldviews of Hecuba, Cassandra, and others). It is written with the needs of both comparative beginners and seasoned classical scholars in mind. Some material of interest only to specialists is set off from the rest and may be skipped.

The Introduction has six main sections. The first treats the play's relation to contemporary history. Since Troades was performed in 415, shortly after the Athenian subjugation of Melos, scholars beginning with Schöll 1839 interpreted it as a criticism of Athenian foreign policy. This section provides numerous converging arguments against this view, not least that it does not allow us to make sense of the play's many references to the gods as destroyers of Troy. The second discusses staging, particularly what is imagined to lie at the end of the two eisodoi. There are some surprises, including an addition to the list of dramatis personae. The third section discusses the other two plays of what was clearly a connected trilogy. Received views of what happens in Alexandros are weighed and in some cases found wanting, and there is a discussion of thematic connections among the three plays. The thematic unity of Troades is the subject of a fourth section, which discusses the contribution of the various scenes, speeches, and choral odes to the play. A fifth section discusses manuscripts, papyri, and editorial principles. There is a final brief section on the reception of Troades and of Euripides generally.

On the cover is "The Judgement of Paris" by Peter Paul Rubens. I chose this picture not only for its aesthetic appeal but also to emphasize that, as is clear from a fragment of Alexandros, the Judgement, involving three goddesses bribing Paris to win the prize of beauty, is behind the events of the three plays. There is no escaping the divine dimension. 

The book has received one review: https://classicsforall.org.uk/book-reviews/euripides-troades/

Some readers may enjoy my versified summary of the book, written for the flyleaf of gift copies.

Insula Melos erat (Dori tenuere nepotes)
            paruula sed ualidis terra habitata uiris.
Hos iussere sibi socios (cladem minitati)
            in bello fieri gens cata Cecropidae.
Noluerunt iussis parere inmitibus istis,
            confisi (heu!) Spartae iustitiaeque deum.
Victi sunt: iugulatur ad unum miles inermis,
            atque in seruitium femina tristis abit.
Acta est hoc anno (Mnesarchi filius auctor)
            per Dionysiacos fabula trina dies.
Rustico Alexandro Palamedem et Troadas addit:
            materies illis Troica fata fuit.
Nonne per historiam hanc ad bella recentia uates
            adludit ciuisque increpat ipse suos?
Qui Tamesin potant, qui Rhenum, quique Potomac
            iurabant quondam uerius esse nihil.
Hoc uerum esse negat liber hic (quem euoluite cuncti!)
            non uno fretus teste uel indicio.
Praeterea cecidisse negat sine numine diuum
            Troiam, consilio sed periisse Iovis.
Quod superest, textum castigat tempore ruptum,
            tollitque e uariis plurima menda locis.