Georgios A. Xenis - Böcker

The Praecepta Tonica by John of Alexandria (5th–6th cent. AD) ranks beside Pseudo-Arcadius’ epitome as one of the two most important surviving epitomes of Herodian’s monumental De Prosodia Catholica: it is a particularly rich depository of well-argued teaching on ancient Greek accentuation, and constitutes an indispensable tool for the reconstruction of Herodian’s work. However, despite its importance, it is available only in a seriously flawed edition prepared by Karl Wilhelm Dindorf in 1825.This edition by Georgios Xenis offers an authoritative new critical text based on a thorough examination of not only the direct and indirect witnesses, but also of some special sources of evidence. These include authors such as Michael Syncellus and Theognostus who, although they did not use John himself, drew directly on John’s source, thereby providing parallel material that serves to fill gaps in John’s textual tradition. In addition, the critical text benefits from conjectural emendation, deriving either from the editor’s own activity or from his predecessors. The division of the text into thematically coherent sections brings out its logical structure and renders it more readable, while the rich collection of parallel passages places it in its grammatical context. Exhaustive indices are provided at the end of the volume.The edition will be an invaluable resource for those engaged in critical editions of Greek authors, and will be of interest to classicists and/or linguists working on Aelius Herodian, John of Alexandria, Greek accentuation, or Greek scholarship.

The ancient scholia to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus shed light on Alexandrian ways of engaging with this play, and are richer than those to the other Sophoclean plays. The last editor, Vittorio de Marco (1952), established a better text of these scholia than his predecessors, in as much as he had a fuller knowledge of their manuscript tradition and a better understanding of their stratified nature. Still, his work is marred by a number of inaccuracies, omissions and methodological shortcomings. The new edition by Georgios Xenis improves on de Marco’s work by a careful examination of all the sources of the text and the conjectures proposed by scholars, and by relying on a clearly defined methodological framework. In this edition the scholia to the Oedipus at Colonus are restored in a textual state that is arguably the earliest we can recover, and is free of contradictions, unacceptable repetitions, and hybridisation or blending of elements from different versions. The critical text is accompanied by a detailed apparatus criticus, and is contextualised in its ancient scholarly tradition by means of a rich array of passages drawn from comparable sources. Extensive indices are provided at the end of the volume. The edition will be an invaluable resource for those engaged in the interpretation of Sophocles’ tragedies and, in particular, of the Oedipus at Colonus, and will be of interest to classicists working on ancient literary criticism and ancient scholarship.

Scholars have been seeking to understand Sophocles’ Antigone for over two millennia. The origins of this long tradition of the play’s interpretation are now represented mainly by a series of notes that have survived in the margins of medieval manuscripts. The book offers an English introduction and an authoritative critical text, which is accompanied by a detailed apparatus criticus.