Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays: Volume I

355 Pages·2006·4.468 MB·English

by  David Fitzpatrick, Thomas Talboy, Alan H. Sommerstein

SOPHOCLES

SELECTED FRAGMENTARY PLAYS

VOLUME I

ARIS & PHILLIPS CLASSICAL TEXTS

SOPHOCLES

Selected Fragmentary Plays

with Introductions, Translations and Commentaries by

Alan H. Sommerstein, David Fitzpatrick
and Thomas Talboy

Volume I

Hermione, Polyxene, The Diners, Tereus, Troilus, Phaedra
Aris & Phillips Classical Texts
are published by
Oxbow Books, Park End Place, Oxford OX1 1HN

© A.H. Sommerstein, D.G. Fitzpatrick & T.H. Talboy 2006
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including
photocopying without the prior permission of the publishers in writing.

ISBN 978 0 85668 765 5 0 85668 765 0 cloth
ISBN 978 0 85668 766 2 0 85668 766 9 paper

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover illustration: Procne/Aedon in the act of killing Itys.
After a fragment of a red-figure kylix, perhaps by Onesimos:
Basel (H. Cahn) HC599.

Printed and bound by Short Run Press, Exeter
To the memory

of

MALCOLM WILLCOCK

CONTENTS

Preface ix

General Introduction (AHS) xi

References and Abbreviations xxx

Hermione or The Women of Phthia (AHS)
Introduction 1
Text and Translation 26
Commentary 32

Polyxene (AHS)
Introduction 41
Text and Translation 68
Commentary 76

Syndeipnoi (The Diners) or Achaiôn Syllogos
(The Gathering of the Achaeans) (AHS)
Introduction 84
Text and Translation 104
Commentary 116

Tereus (DGF/AHS)
Introduction 141
Text and Translation 160
Commentary 174

Troilus (AHS)
Introduction 196
Text and Translation 218
Commentary 228

Phaedra (THT/AHS)
Introduction 248
Text and Translation 290
Commentary 302

PREFACE

This edition was inspired by the edition of selected fragmentary plays of Euripides
by Christopher Collard, Martin Cropp and the late Kevin Lee, published in this
series in 1995 and recently (2004) followed by a second volume edited by
Collard, Cropp and John Gibert. In 1998 Alan Sommerstein, then director of the
newly-founded Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception (CADRE) at the
University of Nottingham, established there a project for the study of the
fragmentary tragedies of Sophocles, which has had two main outcomes. The first
was an international conference, held in Nottingham in July 2000, twenty papers
from which (including one by each of the editors of the present volume) were later
published as Shards from Kolonos: Studies in Sophoclean Fragments (Bari,
2003); the second is the edition of which the present volume is the initial
instalment.
The original plan was for an edition comprising some nine or ten plays, with
contributions by Alan Sommerstein, David Fitzpatrick, Thomas Talboy and Amy
Clark (who was likewise a participant in the 2000 conference and a contributor to
Shards from Kolonos). There were various subsequent changes to the plan, the
most important, and most regretted, occurring when Amy Clark found she would
be unable to complete her contribution – comprising the two Tyro plays and Niobe
– within the time scale envisaged, owing to health and other problems. As a result
of this the team have decided to bring out a second volume, to which all four
members will contribute, and which will contain the three plays just mentioned
together with (probably) Ajax the Locrian, The Epigonoi, the two Nauplius plays,
Oenomaus, The Shepherds and Triptolemus. It is envisaged that this volume will
be published in 2010.
We were able to plan the format and norms of the edition at the 2000
conference and at a subsequent meeting in Nottingham; for the most part,
however, our collaboration has been by email. It has felt none the less close for
that: in the cyberworld there has been no distance between the banks of the Trent
and the shores of the Pacific.
Alan Sommerstein has acted as general editor of the volume. The Tereus and
Phaedra sections were drafted by David Fitzpatrick and Thomas Talboy
respectively, and revised in close consultation between them and Alan
Sommerstein; in the Table of Contents each therefore bears the initials of two
editors, and uses of the first person plural in the introductions and commentaries
to these plays refer to these two editors unless the context requires a broader
interpretation.
Alan Sommerstein gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Arts and
Humanities Research Board (as it then was), which awarded him a semester of
research leave in the latter part of 2003, additional to a semester granted by the