428 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

EDDIE R. LOWRY, JR. : Thersites: a Study in Comic Shame. (Harvard

Dissertations in Classics.) Pp. vii + 301. New York and London:
Garland, 1991.
This book argues that aischistos applied to Thersites in Iliad2.2\6 means not 'ugliest' but 'most
shame-causing' (sic), and that the description of his physical appearance which follows does not
simply detail the facts of his deformity, but rather characterises him as a traditional figure, the
licensed abuser whose physical appearance marks him out as an appropriate agent and recipient
of shameful ridicule. Chapters 1 to 5 develop the first point, discussing aischos and related terms
in Homer and elsewhere, while later chapters trace the supposed recurrence of the typology of
the 'shame-causing' individual in other authors.
L.'s argument on the significance of aischros is untenable. He sees himself as following
Adkins's dictum (From the Many to the One, pp. 2-6, and elsewhere) that, where Greek uses one
word in what we regard as different contexts, we must speak not of separate 'meanings', but of
different 'uses'; but in fact he goes much further. Adkins's insistence that monoglots can have
no awareness of separate ' meanings' of the words they use may be naive, but even he would
recognise that a term's several 'uses' can make all the difference. Thus he appreciates that
personal (masculine and feminine) instances of agalhos and kakos, aischros and kalos must be
evaluated differently from impersonal, neuter uses (Merit and Responsibility, pp. 30-1). For L.,
however, words have precisely one meaning, whatever the application, whatever the context.
Hence he imagines that since aischros in the phrase aiaxpois ineeaaw refers to the abusive
character of the words employed, aischistos applied to Thersites must refer to the abusive
character of his outburst. But this entails, as L. cheerfully admits (13), the neglect of the
(copious) post-Homeric evidence on the personal use of the adjective, in which the reference
is normally to some physical deformity of the person so qualified. And even in those few cases
in which the sense of the personal use is figurative rather than physical, aischros means
not 'shame-causing' but 'base', i.e. shown up as socially/morally 'ugly' in the eyes of others
(e.g. E. Med. 501, S. Phil. 906). To be sure, what is literally ugly will normally be an object
of reproach, but L.'s insistence on the priority in sense of 'shameful' to 'ugly' ignores the
fundamentally aesthetic nature of Homeric terms of moral and social evaluation. The aischron,
whether figurative or literal, is that which excites the revulsion of others because it does not
'look nice'.
There are problems, too, in L.'s attempt to relate the particular physical characteristics of
Thersites to typologies of invective and abuse elsewhere. He makes (Ch. 6) a respectable case
(against Buttmann el al.) for accepting the ancient explanation of pholkos (II. 2.217) as
'squinting' (in spite of the incredible etymology used to support it), but wholly fails to prove that
squinting is specifically associated with abuse and mockery. Given the fundamental association
ofaidos etc. with sight and the visual, it is to be expected that the attitude of the eyes will often
be prominent in contexts of shame and embarrassment, but in characterising all such
phenomena as 'squinting' L. reduces many heterogeneous forms of ocular interaction to one.
This section also contains the worst of the book's howlers: the translation of the adverb rjpefia
as 'vacantly' (in TOUS ofidaXpovs -qpip-a Trapoufrepew [Eust. on //. 2.212, p. 130] and -qpifw.
napaoKoirutv [PI. Smp. 221b, p. 143]) is initially perplexing, but the nature of the error becomes
clear when one finds eprjfia (sic) doing duty for the same word on p. 144.
Worse is to come: credulous acceptance of the ancient biographical tradition with respect to
Solon and Tyrtaeus (Chs. 7 and 8) and of preposterous ancient etymologies (Ch. 9) is used to
support a theory of the origin of the (originally ' comic—shameful') genre of elegy in funerary
threnoi which were, however, not lamentatory, but paraenetic. That there is not a shred of
support for this in any early elegist proves no deterrent.
This is not to say that there is nothing whatever in L.'s thesis. It is surely true that Thersites'
physical ugliness is part and parcel of the aischos, the affront, that he creates in Iliad 2, and there
are persistent echoes of this relationship between ugliness and abuse elsewhere - in Hipponax,
in Attic Comedy and its ritual background, in the figures of Baubo and Iambe, and in various
manifestations of masked ritual abuse. These are the areas in which L. should have pursued his
studies; his futile concentration on elegy is a wasted opportunity.
Over 100 errors, half of which are in the Greek, should have been caught in proof-reading.
There are solecisms ('metamorphosized', 'synonymity'), wrong references, and howlers (see
above and cf. eii/cAeiay, Od. 21.331, translated as if from eu/cAcia, p. 66, and generating the form
€VK\eia - three times - on p. 67). There are also five works cited in the notes that fail to appear
in the bibliography - irritating, since L. uses the Harvard system. Three of these are standard

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 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 429
works which most will know, while Rose (1988) is in Arethusa for that year; but Sorrell (1972)
eludes me.
University of Leeds DOUGLAS L. CAIRNS

GRAZIANO ARRIGHETTI, GIOVANNA CALVANI MARIOTTI,

F R A N C O M O N T A N A R I (edd.): Concordantia et Indices in Scholia
Pindarica Vetera. (Alpha-Omega, Reihe A, 87.) 2 vols. Pp. ix + 687;
689-1376. Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Olms-Weidmann,
1991. DM 298 each vol.
The first sentence of the preface runs as follows: 'Se non ci inganniamo, questo e il primo
esempio di elaborazione computerizzata di un corpus di scoll ad un classico greco'. I hope it is
also the last, if this is any indication of what we may expect in future. What we have here is a
prime example of the mindless use of a computer, for we are presented with simply an
alphabetical list of every occurrence of every word-form, often with either more of the source
cited than is necessary or with less. Such a presentation means that if we wish to find out whether
a particular verb occurs in the scholia, we must look up the augmented and reduplicated forms
as well, forms which are likely to be separated by many pages. It also means that we are given,
for example, 6698 citations of /ecu (and 68 separate citations of <coi!), covering 41 large pages
with two columns per page. I suppose there is the remote possibility that someone someday may
want this information, but it is surely remote in the extreme.
It does not appear that any critical judgement has been exercised with regard to the entries.
A good illustration of this is the presence of separate entries for wou's and novs- The latter
accentuation appears three times in Drachmann, twice in the metrical scholia, both of which
were corrected by Tessier in his recent Teubner edition. The editors state that they decided not
to use Irigoin's edition of these scholia or to wait for Tessier's, since 'qualunque vantaggio non
avrebbe potuto compensare gli svantaggi derivanti dall'utilizzazione di un testo base non
omogeneo'. One can have some sympathy for this point of view, but would it not have been
possible at least to draw attention in some way to obvious errors in Drachmann's text?
At the end there are five indices, the three most important being lists of authors cited in the
scholia, of proper names in the scholia, and of proper names in the authors cited in the scholia.
The other two, a list of Pindaric lemmata and a list of authors in the order in which they are cited
in the scholia, do not seem to me to be of much value.
I deeply regret the negative tone of this review, since the project itself is commendable and the
three editors are sound scholars who have significant publications to their credit, but in view of
the criticisms given above and the astronomical price, and with shrinking library budgets and
the consequent necessity of careful selection, other books should receive higher priority.
University of Western Ontario DOUGLAS E. GERBER

JEAN B O L L A C K : L'Oedipe Roi de Sophocle: le texte et ses

interpretations. (Cahiers de Philologie, 11, 12, 13a, 13b (Serie: Les
Textes).) 4 vols. I: pp. xxxi + 392; II: 528; III: 376; IV: 416. Lille:
Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1991. Paper, 450 FF.
•ndvr' fiaav ot (jv/jLiravres, says Iocaste (OT 752-3), iv S' avroiaiv •qv Kr)pv£: at least, that is the
reading adopted by all modern editors. But L (and also the Roman family and several of the so-
called veteres, though M. Bollack does not tell us this) have the 8' after avroioi, and this is the
reading which B. puts in the text. The choice is not explained anywhere in the extensive
commentary that occupies three volumes of this vast work; but it would not be altogether safe
to assume that B. prefers this reading because he is unaware that it is unmetrical.
For B.'s edition does not aim simply to constitute a correct text and to explain its meaning;
his purpose, he tells us (I, p. xiv) is' montrer dans un cas particulier, pour une oeuvre continument
present dans le patrimoine culturel, ce que recouvrent des lectures qui ont eu cours, en relation

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