Papers by Alan Sommerstein
Preverbs and Dowries
The Classical Quarterly, 1987
A fairly frequent syntactic phenomenon both of Greek and of Latin is, in the words of Calvert Wat... more A fairly frequent syntactic phenomenon both of Greek and of Latin is, in the words of Calvert Watkins, ‘the iteration of a compound verb in a succeeding clause or sentence by the simple verb alone, but with the semantic force of the compound’.
Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece, 2014
Rezension zu: Sabine Föllinger, Aischylos. Meister der griechischen Tragödie. München: C.H. Beck ... more Rezension zu: Sabine Föllinger, Aischylos. Meister der griechischen Tragödie. München: C.H. Beck 2009, 224 S., 5 Stammtafeln und 5 Abb. im Text
La tetralogia di Eschilo sulla guerra persiana
Starting from a reference to Sicilian Himera in one of Aeschylus' Glaucus plays (fr. 25a), th... more Starting from a reference to Sicilian Himera in one of Aeschylus' Glaucus plays (fr. 25a), this paper argues that the tragedies produced together with Persians in 472 BC both contained prophetic references to the Persian and Punic wars of 480/79 – Phineus to the wrecking of much of the Persian fleet at Cape Sepias by a north-easterly gale (answering the Athenians' prayers to Boreas and Oreithyia, whose sons had saved Phineus from the Harpies) and Glaucus of Potniae to Himera and possibly also to Plataea or its aftermath (when the Greek army had marched on Thebes via Potniae). The three together can thus be seen as constituting a Persian War trilogy, and some other previously unnoticed thematic links between them are pointed out. The satyr-drama, Prometheus Pyrphoros (as it should be called), could without difficulty have been linked to the same theme via the burning of Athens (home of the only major cult of Prometheus). It is considered what light this view of Aeschylus'...
Persians ; Seven against Thebes ; Suppliants ; Prometheus bound
Aeschylus (ca. 525-456 BCE), the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great... more Aeschylus (ca. 525-456 BCE), the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms, witnessed the establishment of democracy at Athens and fought against the Persians at Marathon. He won the tragic prize at the City Dionysia thirteen times between ca. 499 and 458, and in his later years was probably victorious almost every time he put on a production, though Sophocles beat him at least once.Of his total of about eighty plays, seven survive complete. The first volume of this new "Loeb Classical Library" edition offers fresh texts and translations by Alan H. Sommerstein of Persians, the only surviving Greek historical drama; "Seven against Thebes", from a trilogy on the conflict between Oedipus' sons; Suppliants, on the successful appeal by the daughters of Danaus to the king and people of Argos for protection against a forced marriage; and Prometheus Bound (of disputed authenticity), on the terrible punishment of Prometheus for giving ...
Comedy and the Unspeakable
Law, Rhetoric and Comedy in Classical Athens, 2004
Exemplaria Classica, 2014
This volume consists of fourteen studies on tragedy and two on comedy. All but one (ch. 11, on pr... more This volume consists of fourteen studies on tragedy and two on comedy. All but one (ch. 11, on problems in the text of Euripides' Phoenissae) have appeared previously-in journals, in edited volumes, or as introductions to translations-between 1997 and 2007; they are republished essentially unchanged (except for ch. 10, to which has been added a one-page response to critics), but references have been updated when necessary, cross-references inserted, and occasionally an important new item of bibliography has been added (marked off by square brackets). The plays most fully discussed are Sophocles' Ajax (ch. 2) and Electra (ch. 3, 4) and Euripides' Electra (ch. 4), Orestes (ch. 5-7), Phoenissae (ch. 8, 9, 11) and Cresphontes (ch. 12 and part of ch. 13). Aeschylus, on whom M. has also worked extensively, has only two chapters (ch. 10 on Agamemnon 1649-54, ch. 16 on Pasolini's treatment of the Oresteia), but M. intends to devote a subsequent volume to him (p. xi). Of the remaining studies, ch. 1 is concerned with the ways in which tragic dramatists make it clear to their audience that a character is to be imagined as weeping, ch. 14 with Aristophanes' use of the monologue, and ch. 15 with hymnic language and motifs in the passage in Aristophanes' Wealth (124-221) where Wealth is persuaded that if he is healed of his blindness he can be master of the world. In his introduction (pp. ix-x) M. defines an important theme of the book: the relationships constructed in particular plays between the characters and the dramatic space in which they move, a construction largely effected by means of 'verbal illusion'; hence the book's title, alluding to the famous saying of Gorgias (fr. 23 D-K) that in the theatre 'he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived' (see p. x). Many of M's discussions are highly illuminating or at least valuably thought-provoking. These include (the listing is not exhaustive) his analysis of the gestural business associated with weeping (pp. 10-18); his emphasis on the continued loneliness of the Sophoclean Electra even after the return of Orestes (pp. 69-73) and on the importance of the city-country contrast in Euripides' play of the same name (pp. 97-108); his perception of the strong tendency in Orestes for characters to converge on the palace (p. 114)-though we may add that at the end not one of them remains in it, or even in Argos at all; the comparison (pp. 145-150) between the exit of Orestes and Pylades at Or. 806, and the aborted exit of Neoptolemus and Philoctetes near the end of a play of the previous year (Soph. Phil.
Prometheus: Rivista quadrimestrale di studi classici, 2010
These notes are mostly designed to explain some of the textual choices made in passages from the ... more These notes are mostly designed to explain some of the textual choices made in passages from the seven surviving plays of the Aeschylean corpus in the first two volumes of my Loeb edition (Cambridge MA 2008). I intend subsequently to publish a further article containing notes on the fragmentary plays. Reports of the manuscripts and testimonia are based on M.L. West's Teubner edition (Stuttgart 1990) 1 , and the sigla are those set out on pp. lxxxi-lxxxv of that edition except that (i) some of the superscript abbreviations have been expanded, (ii) West's symbols for scholia-S, F, Q, T s-are replaced by S M , S F , S Q , S T referring to the four main classes of scholia which West describes on pp. xx-xxi, and (iii) West's siglum t, denoting in effect the recension of Demetrius Triclinius, is replaced by "Tricl." in the plays of the Byzantine triad and by f in Agamemnon and Eumenides (where, except in Ag. 1-348, copies including emendations by Triclinius are our sole primary witnesses to the text other than M where available). The passages discussed are printed at the head of each section, normally in a form as close as possible to the paradosis (on matters relevant to the discussion). (1) Persians 162 eij " d∆ uJ ma' " ej rw' mu' qon ouj damw' " ej mauth' " ou\ s∆ aj deiv manto", fiv loi, 162 mh; mev ga" plou' to" koniv sa" ou\ da" aj ntrev yh/ podi; o[ lbon, o} n Darei' o" h\ ren ouj k a[ neu qew' n tino". 162 ou\ s∆º ouj de; Q sscr : v.l. ouj k noverat S F ut vid. (eij " uJ ma' " de; ei[ pw lov gon ouj damw' " ej mauth' " ou\ sa h[ toi ouj dov lw" ej mauth' " kuriv a tugcav nousa, ouj k a[ fobo"). * I regret that A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus: Persae (Oxford 2009), appeared too late for me to make use of it in this article. 1 West's companion volume, Studies in Aeschylus (Stuttgart 1990). First references consisting only of the name of a scholar with a place and date of publication are to editions or translations of Aeschylus or of the play under discussion. 2 Syntactically parallel is the construal of W.J. Verdenius, "Museum Philologicum Londiniense" 7, 1986, 141, who takes the genitive as one "of limitation". The parallels he citesthe use of the genitive after frontiv zw and khv domai, also Prom. 416 mav ca" a[ trestoi and Eur.
The prologue of Aeschylus's Palamedes
Rheinisches Museum Fur Philologie, 2000
Gerrit Kloss: Erscheinungsformen komischen Sprechens bei Aristophanes
Gnomon, 2004
Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece, 2014
For the purposes of this book, an "informal oath" is defined as an oath which meets both the foll... more For the purposes of this book, an "informal oath" is defined as an oath which meets both the following specifications: (a) The sole linguistic marker is the presence of a phrase consisting of an affirmative or negative particle (in Attic ναὶ μἀ, νή, οὐ μά, or μά; for the equivalents in other dialects, see §5.1, pp. 80-1) followed by the name of a god, hero, or Eideshort in the accusative case1 (with or without a definite article),2 or alternatively (in Boeotian dialect) ἴττω followed by the name of a god or hero in the nominative. (b) The oath occurs in a prose text or in one of the less elevated poetic genres such as satyrdrama, comedy, elegy or iambus (for oaths of the same form in epic, lyric and tragedy, see §5.1, pp. 81-3), or in an inscription of informal nature.3 These oaths are very unevenly distributed in our data. The following table shows their frequency in texts of various kinds in our period. In the case of satyr-drama the figures are necessarily approximate, since it is often uncertain whether a quoted fragment comes from a satyr-play or a tragedy, particularly when the quoting author does not name the play. In the case of some of the better-preserved authors, an approximate figure is given for the total surviving wordage of that author's works4 and for the frequency of informal oaths per thousand words. 1 Or by a plural or dual expression meaning "the gods". 2 If the god sworn by is Zeus, the article is optional; everywhere else it is normally obligatory. Apart from a series of comic passages (Ar. Birds 194; Antiphanes fr. 288; Timocles fr. 41) which all seem to be quoting or parodying a tragic line (trag. adesp. 123a), there is only a single exception, among passages meeting the above definition of informal oaths-in Plato's Symposium (219c), where Alcibiades swears μὰ θεούς, μὰ θεάς that his attempt to carry out a reverse seduction of Socrates had proved an abject failure. This formula occurs nowhere else in Greek literature, but the shorter forms μὰ θεούς and νὴ θεούς appear in a fourth-century lyric poem of elevated style if not of elevated subject, the
Brill's Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy, 2010
An interval of twenty-four centuries separates the scripts that Aristophanes wrote for the first ... more An interval of twenty-four centuries separates the scripts that Aristophanes wrote for the first performances of his comedies from the texts of those comedies as they appear, for example, in Wilson (2007b). This chapter attempts to trace the chain of transmission that leads from the former to the latter. 1 The basic process in this chain is that of copying-by hand, for the first nineteen centuries, and thereafter with mechanical, and very recently with electronic, assistance. Copying, however it is performed, is always liable to error. Those who copy texts are normally aware of this, or at least are supervised by persons who are aware of it and are on the lookout for possible errors in the text they are copying. Often an error will be detected and successfully corrected, thanks either to the copyist's or editor's own understanding of language, style, and context, or to comparison with another copy that has escaped the error; but there is always also the possibility that an attempted ‗correction', far from restoring the text as it was before the error appeared, may actually take it further away from that state, 2 or that an ‗error' may be detected where the text was in fact sound. 3 When all copying is by hand, the net outcome of this process, at most times and in most circumstances, will be a slow increase in the distance between the original and the current state of the text. If this tendency has been reversed in the last half millennium, as on the whole it has, this is due partly to the technology of printing (and later developments that have built upon it), which has both vastly increased the dissemination of texts and reduced the number of separate acts of copying required to effect it, thus putting a virtual halt to the long process of random deterioration; partly (though for most texts, including Aristophanes, only to a rather small extent) to the discovery, mostly in Egypt, in and since the nineteenth century, of fragments of copies far older than any previously known; partly to improvements in communications that have made it possible, as it never was in ancient or mediaeval times, for one editor to have access to virtually all the significant evidence existing in the world that bears on the constitution of the text; and partly to the advancement of our knowledge and understanding of the transmission of texts, the ways in which errors can occur, and the forms they can take. The above remarks apply, with minor variations, to all ancient Greek texts. I now turn to consider the text of Aristophanes in particular.
A Nonargument for Derivational History
Page 1. 184 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION Bach, E. and G. Horn (1976) "Remarks on 'Conditions o... more Page 1. 184 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION Bach, E. and G. Horn (1976) "Remarks on 'Conditions on Transformations'," Linguistic Inquiry 7, 265-299. Chomsky, N. (1970) "Remarks on Nominalization," in R. Jacobs and PS Rosenbaum, eds. (1970). ...
Journal of Linguistics, 1979
The present publication by three Albanian specialists at the Humboldt University, East Berlin-the... more The present publication by three Albanian specialists at the Humboldt University, East Berlin-the culmination of many years' effort and research-may be fairly described as a milestone in the field of Albanian lexicography. For the first time in a comparable work the entries, some 30,000 in number, are given in the standard literary forms as used officially in Albania since the orthographical reforms of 1972. However, a limited number of variants, such as are met in earlier sources, are duly recorded. Furthermore, a summary characterization of Gegh forms will be of value to those reading materials printed in that variety of the language which is, of course, in regular use in the Albanian-speaking parts of Yugoslavia. Every effort has been made to present up-to-date matter. In addition to the largely traditional vocabulary of everyday life, we find many neologisms from science, technology and politics, in the main international terms, but the authors have been at pains to draw attention to special Albanian developments, as 'KONDICIONAIJSHT Adv Jur bedingt, unter bestimmten Bedingungen, KONDICION^L, e Adj bedingt; DENIM~ bedingte Verurteilung 1 or (with fine touch) 'AKTIV(ST Aktivmitglied' but 'STAKANOVIST Aktivist'. A novel feature is an outline of standard grammar (649-739), including a comprehensive morphology, all the more appropriate in the absence so far of a comparable account in a foreign language. This dictionary has been carefully thought out. The entries are lucid and well arranged, and the typography leaves nothing to be desired. It goes without saying that a work of this nature, which breaks new ground, will be a desideratum wherever studies involving the Albanian language are pursued.
Journal of Linguistics, 1974
The main thesis of this paper is that the grammars of natural languages contain an exhaustive set... more The main thesis of this paper is that the grammars of natural languages contain an exhaustive set of conditions on the output of the phonological rules – in fact, a surface phonotactics. I shall show that, contrary to what is usually assumed in generative phonology, a surface phonotactics is not redundant in a generative grammar if the grammar is indeed intended as ‘a theory of linguistic competence’ (Chomsky, 1965: 3), and that if any set of rules in the phonological section of the grammar is redundant it is the morphophonotactic rules, better known as morpheme structure conditions. I shall propose a format for the statement of rules (including so-called ‘conspiracies’) which are ‘motivated’ by the phonotactics in the sense of Matthews (1972: 219–220). Finally, I shall present a set of phonotactic rules for consonant clusters in Latin, and show how the statement of certain rules of Latin phonology can be simplified by taking their phonotactic motivation into account.
(M.) Heath Political comedy in Aristophanes. (Hypomnemata, 87.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 1987. Pp. 61. DM 24
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1989
Aristophanes: Peace. Ed. and comm. S.D. Olson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. lxxiv + 330. £55. 0198140819
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2000
these passages, on the ground that, with its Herodotean connotations, it 'legt einen Abbruch ... more these passages, on the ground that, with its Herodotean connotations, it 'legt einen Abbruch des (dedanklichen) Fortschritts, eine Richtungsanderung des Gedankengangs nahe ... Eine solche Annahme soil aus der vorliegenden Untersuchung fernbleiben; es wird vielmehr von dem Postulat ausgegangen, dass die Berichte iiber die Vergangenheit einen unentbehrlichen Bestandteil des thukydideischen Gedankengangs bilden und zur Interpretation ihres Kontextes wesentlich beitragen' (3). For T., this postulate proves well founded: he concludes that, properly understood, these sections of Thucydides' History emerge 'als der wichtigste Ort (nach Thukydides' expliziten Kommentaren), an dem Thukydides' personliche Meinung iiber die von ihm in der Haupterzahlung dargestellten Vorgange zu suchen ist' (234). T. goes further: 'Die Berichte liber die Vergangenheit Musterbeispeile dafiir sind, wie Thukydides historische Erfahrung praktisch verwertet; an ihnen soil auch gezeigt werden, wie er die Niitzlichkeit seines eigenen Werkes verstand' (235).
(F.) McHardy, (J.) Robson and (D.) Harvey Eds. Lost Dramas of Classical Athens. Greek Tragic Fragments. U. of Exeter P., 2005. Pp. 248. £40. 0859897524
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2006
As for the text itself, there are few differences from TrGF, to which the editors had access in a... more As for the text itself, there are few differences from TrGF, to which the editors had access in advance of publication. In a review of this length it is impossible to go into much detail, but a comparison of Gibert's Andromeda in this edition with Kannicht's text serves by way of illustration. Aside from minor matters of punctuation (use of commas here is kept to a minimum), there is little of significance to note. Fr. 120a [P.Oxy. 2628] is omitted. Fr. 122: lines 1034-5 appear as a single sentence; a greater proportion of the Aristophanic text is attributed to Euripides, and the division of lines is slightly different; on 1039 Scaliger's akk' is preferred to Aristophanes' dM.av. Fr. 130: ov Jiumoxe is printed (otrno) Kannicht). Fr. 137 is printed after fr. 143, among 'unplaced fragments'. Frr. 145-6 are transposed to follow fr. 137. Fr. 145: xr\c, (Tiberius) is retained in preference to xa (Kannicht, Nauck et al). Fr. 152: line 2 is obelized, but the apparatus does not record emendations (e.g. Grotius' uoipot(<;), accepted by Kannicht). Fr. 154: on line 2, Musgrave's (surely correct) ewojcEiv is adopted in preference to Stobaeus' eufoxei (printed, but obelized, by Kannicht).
Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos, 2011
This article, in response to Harris (2010), reconsiders whether Oedipus, on his own account in So... more This article, in response to Harris (2010), reconsiders whether Oedipus, on his own account in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus (798-813) of his encounter with Laius, would have been regarded by fifth-century Athenians as legally guilty of homicide (either wilful or unwilful), and concludes that he would not, because he was responding to a potentially lethal attack. There is no inconsistency between the treatment of this issue in Oedipus Tyrannus and its treatment in Oedipus at Colonus.
The Classical World, 1998
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Papers by Alan Sommerstein