Aristophanes' Clouds: A Commentary PDF
Preview Aristophanes' Clouds: A Commentary
Aristophanes Clouds MICHIGAN CLASSICAL COMMENTARIES 5. Douglas Olson Aristophanes’ Clouds: A Commentary Andrew R. Dyck A Commentary on Cicero, De Divinatione II Carl Arne Anderson and T. Keith Dix A Commentary on Aristophanes’ Knights Patrick Paul Hogan A Student Commentary on Pausanius Book ı Celia E. Schultz A Commentary on Cicero, De Divinatione I Erin K. Moodie Plautus’ Poenulus: A Student Commentary Donka D. Markus Reading Medieval Latin with the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat Patrick Paul Hogan A Student Commentary on Pausanius Book 2 Charles Platter A Student Commentary on Plato's Euthyphro Aristophanes Clouds A Commentary S. Douglas Olson University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Copyright 2021 by 5, Douglas Olson Allrights reserved For questions or permissions, please contact [email protected] Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper First published March 2021 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-472-07477-8 (hardcover : alk. Paper) ISBN 978-0-472-05477-0 (paper : alk. paper) For Rachel seni cok seviyorum Contents Preface Introduction ARISTOPHANES’ CLOUDS TEXT COMMENTARY Appendix I 243 Appendix IT 245 Appendix III 249 Index of People, Places, and Objects 255 Index of Greek Words 261 Preface No substantial scholarly edition of Aristophanes’ Clouds has been published since K. J. Dover’s over 50 years ago. Dover’s Clouds was a landmark in English- language scholarship on ancient Greek poetry, and on comedy in particular, and the present volume does not aim to replace it. Instead, I have deliberately aimed the bulk of my comments at an intermediate audience: readers who know the basic forms, vocabulary and structures of classical Greek, but who may be unfamiliar with some of its complexities, with colloquial words and constructions, and with the cultural and literary environment in which Aristophanes’ play was composed and performed. More advanced readers may find that I sometimes belabor points that seem obvious to them, including how Greek words are formed and how Greek syntax works. I hope that they too will nonetheless find useful observations here, especially in regard to matters of staging, usage and overall dramatic structure. I have done no manuscript work—a task a full new edition of the play will eventually require. But the text is my own, and more advanced readers may find it interesting to consider it beside those of Dover and Wilson. After consultation with the press and the series editor, I have made a series of content and formatting decisions regarding the commentary portion of this text intended to render it as useful and transparent as possible for my primary audience. First, bold print is reserved for words that appear in precisely that form in the text itself; in the second note on 10, for example, ciovpa is not in bold because the word appears in the text in the form σισύραις. Second, I have broken up individual lexical items in the notes into their constituent parts, so that ἀπέραντον (“endless”) in 3, for example, appears as d-népavtov as a shorthand way of making it apparent that the word comes from privative alpha + nepaivw. Because the vocabulary of ancient Greek is so large, attempting to memorize every item is not a useful way to approach the language, and an argument implicit throughout the commentary is that it is a better strategy to learn by seeing how words are formed and thus what they must mean even without consulting a dictionary. Third, and connected with this, I have kept Χ PREFACE the glossing of individual words to a minimum, and have concentrated instead on explaining syntax, usage and to a lesser extent forms. My assumption is that 21°-century “born-digital” students have constant, ready access to online lexica and form-analysis tools such as those available on the Perseus and TLG sites, and that the limited space available to me is better used for explaining issues that are not easily dealt with by a click of a mouse. Fourth, and perhaps more controversially, I have chosen not to offer references to standard grammars such as Smyth. This reflects a practical conviction, born out of many years of teaching, that—whatever their instructors may believe or desire—students neither want nor use such references and are in any case perfectly capable of consulting an index in a standard grammar should the mood strike them. Fifth and finally, I have occasionally omitted complete identifications of verb forms in particular where no confusion seemed possible; in such cases, the easiest and most obvious sense is the one I intend. In the notes, “<” means “is derived from” or occasionally “is cognate with”; “~” means “is approximately equivalent to”; “cf” means “compare”; and “e.g” means “for example” A line-number reference followed by “n.” refers the reader to the note on that line or set of lines for further information. “LSJ s.v” refers to the entry in the large Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek lexicon for the word in question. For the reader's convenience, the titles of Aristophanes’ other ten plays are given in English translation rather than in the standard abbreviated form (thus, for example, “Wasps” rather than “V.”). The names of other ancient authors and their words are similarly given in full. Comic fragments are cited from the now-standard Kassel-Austin edition. The numbering of the lyric sections of Aristophanic comedies has become confused over the years, and a pedantic insistence on the original Brunck numbers (which on modern divisions of the text yields numerous half-lines, combined lines, and the like) serves the interest of no one. I have therefore retained Dover's numbering wherever possible. Thanks are due Alexander Sens and especially Benjamin W. Millis for careful comments on earlier drafts of the introduction, text and commentary. I would also like to extend my gratitude to two anonymous referees, who helped shape the project in its early form. In addition, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the contributions of Richard Culbertson and Stephen Self, who worked through the first half of the play with me at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 2019, caught several significant errors, and led me to rethink, restructure or expand a number of individual notes. Much of the work on this project was completed at Bilkent University in Ankara (Turkey). I am grateful to Mustafa Nakeeb and Adnan Akay for making my time here possible. Like all my recent work, this book is dedicated to my lovely wife Rachel.
The list of books you might like
