W. S. Barrett – författare

W. S. Barrett (1914-2001) was one of the finest Hellenists of the second half of the twentieth century, known above all for his celebrated edition of Euripides'' Hippolytus. This volume of his collected scholarly papers includes five articles published between 1954 and 1978, together with a much larger number of others that remained unpublished in his lifetime and are made known here for the first time. They deal mainly with Greek lyric poetry (Stesichorus,Pindar, Bacchylides) and Tragedy. Students of Greek literature will welcome this unexpected posthumous addition to Barrett''s oeuvre, as well as the reappearance of the published articles.

Euripides' Hippolytos tells of an honourable youth's tragic death, contrived by his father in the false belief that his son had seduced his new wife. This edition of the play is intended for students and scholars alike. The detailed commentary deals with textual problems in full, but wherever possible the editor has sought to explain the text adopted before discussing the reasons for its adoption. It also includes a close analysis of the lyric metres, and discussion of the play's subject-matter and dramatic context.The text is based on new collations of the medieval manuscripts (two of them hitherto uncollated) and on all known papyri. The Introduction contains a reappraisal, in the light of the evidence of the papyri, of the history of the text in antiquity, and advances a new account of the relationship between the medieval manuscripts. There is also a full discussion of the early history of the legend and of the two lost tragedies on the same theme.