Review: Didymus Author(s): Craig Cooper Review by: Craig Cooper Source: The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Oct., 2008), pp. 387-389 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20482504 Accessed: 15-04-2016 22:11 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms
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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 387 orators as an integral part of the legal process, since a jury does not always need to vote for the legally stronger case. Juries sometimes voted and still vote for the candidate they like, and against the candidate they dislike, and any competent lawyer, amateur and professional, throughout time has known this.
The fourth chapter on political conspiracies begins with a rather shallow presentation of the rhetoric of plotting evolving around Cleon. Even if one did not wish to rehabilitate this important political personality, a more nuanced reading
through unequivocally hostile sources (Thucydides, Aristophanes) would be imperative. R.'s conclusion that the Athenians always had 'a continuing concern about political conspiracies in the city' also needs further work and a more nuanced interpretation in the context of the ongoing Athenian debate on the democratic constitution. The rest of the chapter is a good account of some important political conspiracies, and the next treats its natural extension, plots on legislation and political measures. The final two chapters, on foreign and domestic plots and international conspiracies, provide a good start to an interesting debate, but one is left with the feeling that the account of conspiracies related to Persia barely scratches the surface, and probably a separate monograph would be needed in order to investigate fully their complexity. The concluding section is a sensible debate which brings together the
main themes of the book, and suggests a middle line: although conspiratorial attitudes did exist in the Athenian democracy, they did not reach levels of paranoia. The view of political plotting and conspiring as an indispensable function of the democratic system, which makes possible the creation of the necessary majorities before
a vote takes place, would probably be too radical an interpretation for R.'s approach.
R. has begun a very stimulating debate on an understudied subject, but if one considers the amount and complexity of the references and the diversity of the sources, it will take more than one monograph to understand better this important aspect of ancient Greek thought and culture. R.'s very readable approach constitutes the ideal basis for further debate.
University of Florida KONSTANTINOS KAPPARIS
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DIDYMUS HARDING (P.) (ed., trans.) Didymos: On Demosthenes. Pp. xiv + 286, ills. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. Cased, ?65 (Paper, ?25). ISBN:
0-19-815043-1 (0-19-928359-1 pbk).
doi: 1.101 7/SO009840X080003 10
This full commentary on On Demosthenes, complete with a new text and facing translation, is a valuable addition to the growing scholarship on Didymus.1 H. has examined the papyrus and assessed the efforts of previous editors, and he offers useful
comments on historical details together with a thorough discussion of proposed restorations. There is, however, no apparatus criticus, which H. felt would be meaningless to the Greekless reader (p. 42). This is inconvenient for the reader who 'L. Pearson and S. Stephens (edd.), Didymi in Demosthenem Commenta (Stuttgart, 1983); R.D. Miln, 'Didymea', in I. Worthingon (ed.), Ventures in Greek History (Oxford, 1994); C.A. Gibson, Interpreting a Classic. Demosthenes and his Ancient Commentators (Berkeley, 2002), which includes a translation and commentary of P. Berol. 9780.
The Classical Review vol. 58 no. 2 ? The Classical Association 2008; all rights reserved
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388 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW has Greek, particularly when H. deals with a portion of the text that is a composite created from parallel readings. Serious students will need to have the various editions before them to check, validate and appreciate fully H.'s discussion of the text. In the Introduction H. discusses the history and state of the papyrus text, the quality of the handwriting, the scribe and his work, Didymus' sources and the scholar himself. The text is inscribed in fifteen columns, the first five very fragmentary and the remainder readable. Most columns have headings, indicating the topic under discussion; the writing in the headings differs from that of the columns, being more cursive and sloppy; the handwriting itself is not very elegant, and the punctuation is inconsistent. The scribe uses a variety of abbreviations, often in unpredictable ways (p. 5). The whole text is marred with scribal errors. It seems he corrected these errors by consulting only the copy from which he was working (p. 7). He does not seem to have consulted any other text (p. 8). Given the lack of quality, H. concludes that the scribe was not a professional and the text was intended for private use, perhaps the result of a teacher dictating to a student or slave (p. 8). The Introduction also deals with the question whether Didymus' work as preserved in the papyrus was a commentary or a monograph. H. reviews past scholarship on the question and rightly points out that the text bears the hallmarks of a commentary: it introduces lemmata from the text of Demosthenes, makes use of the diple to signpost the lemmata, and indents the notes on the quotations, all characteristic features of a commentary (p. 15). West, who believes that the work is the same commentary
mentioned by Harpocration on the whole of Demosthenes and not a separate monograph, as Leo suggested, argues that the distinction between hypomnema and syngramma is not as sharp as Leo maintained, and concludes that the defective state of the text is due not to transmission, scribal error or genre, but to Didymus himself, whom she regards as a mere compiler, who wrote hastily, inaccurately and with little originality. H. regards this assessment as too harsh (17), and seeks to rehabilitate Didymus by attempting to demonstrate his original contributions. He rejects Gibson's suggestion that the papyrus text is not by Didymus but is an excerpt of Didymus' larger original. The main argument against this suggestion is the space of ten lines left uninscribed in column 8, after a sentence that appears to introduce a quotation. The text resumes with a lemma and there is no attempt by the scribe to copy the missing quotation. H. concludes from this that the scribe found no quotation in the exemplar and that this gap was there from the beginning (p. 7). As he notes, 'it is difficult to conceive of an excerptor who excerpted an uninscribed place' (p. 18). In the end H. feels that the format and appearance of the work make it difficult to answer conclusively whether Didymus' On Demosthenes is a commentary or a monograph, or whether it is the same as or different from the commentary mentioned by
Harpocration.
Finally the Introduction discusses the many sources used by Didymus, and tackles head on the question of Didymus' scholarship, which is not highly rated by modem scholars. As H. notes, Didymus' critical abilities can best be compared with other ancient commentaries; against these he fares favourably. H. argues that Didymus was responsible for introducing detailed citations from original sources into his exegesis; these quotations he did not derive from intermediary sources, as some scholars believe, but always introduced them to support his own views. That is to say he did his own research and collected his own material. This assessment H. tries to substantiate in the commentary. The translation is clear, lucid and close to the Greek. For the commentary, I limit my discussion to a single example: Columns 4-6, the Hermias digression (pp. 117-30;
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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 389
text and translation pp. 54-7). H.'s commentary begins with a discussion of column 4 and Didymus' purpose for quoting a decree by the Amphictyons, which is not mentioned in Demosthenes 10, though Didymus seems to be commenting on some passage between 10.11 and 10.32. H. rejects the notion that this is a digression by Didymus on Speech 5 and follows the suggestion of Osborne and Gibson that the connection lies in the unique usage of the title euergetai requested in the decree by the Amphictyons and mentioned in 10.31. Next follows a discussion of the decree itself (pp. 119-24); then we have the excursus on Hermias (pp. 124-64) which begins at least at column 4.59 and extends to 6.62. I can highlight only a few points here. After perhaps a brief description of Hermias' capture and death, Didymus passes on to a discussion of his character, about which there was disagreement in antiquity. For this purpose Didymus provides a series of extensive quotations about Hermias. H. follows recent scholars who tend to believe that Didymus himself was responsible for these quotations and did not find them in some intermediate source like Hermippus (p. 126). So for instance the reference at Col. 4.66 to 'Theopompos in the [...] sixth (book) of his Concerning Philip' (p. 57), for H. is evidence that Didymus 'is not deriving the whole section from one source, like Hermippos, but that the citations are his own' (p. 127). Col. 4. 69-col. 5.52 are very fragmentary with little being readable between lines 31 and 53 (p. 139). A good deal of the commentary here is given over to discussing restorations, though we have good historical discussion about Assus and Atameus. In particular I would like to summarise H.'s discussion of the restoration of lines 23-30 (pp. 136-7) to illustrate his overall approach in the commentary. What we learn is that Theopompus introduced a series of antitheses, arranged chiastically. Thus the surviving participial clause 'yet [...] being refined andfond of honourlculture' at line 24 should be preceded by a negative statement expressed with a finite verb, since the sentence that follows at 24-5 reverses the order with a negative participial clause ('though he is not of Greek origin') balanced by a positive main clause ('he studies in the company of Platonists') to create a chiastic arrangement. According to H., the assumption that Theopompus created such a chiastic arrangement excludes from consideration certain restorations suggested by previous scholars (p. 138). The work overall is a valuable piece of scholarship that will be of benefit to those working both on the ancient scholarly tradition on Demosthenes and on Greek history and historiography.
University of Winnipeg CRAIG COOPER
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ARISTOTLE SHIELDS (C.) Aristotle. Pp. xvi + 456. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Paper, ?13.99, US$24.95 (Cased, ?55, US$90). ISBN: 978-0-415-28332-8 (978-0-415-28331-1 hbk). doi: 10. 1017/S0009840X08000322
In this new introduction to Aristotle's philosophy, S. adopts an effective pedagogical
approach, which, as it turns out, is in keeping with Aristotle's own frequent methodological advice: he argues from the general to the particular, first (in Chapters
1-3) orienting the reader to the foundational principles, terminology and explan atory structures of the Aristotelian sciences (including, inter alia, the four modes of
causal explanation, essence and accident, demonstrative knowledge and dialectical The Classical Review vol. 58 no. 2 (C The Classical Association 2008; all rights reserved
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