It is a pleasure to find one’s unpretetious presentation of Parthenios’ Erotika Pathemata well reviewed by Jane Lightfoot, the author of what she modestly refers to as her “little volume”, but what is in fact a great modern edition, translation, and full-scale commentary of all of Parthenios’ preserved texts, in more than 600 pages, published in 1999 by Oxford University Press. So a response might seem uncharitable, but as her book is likely to be the future standard edition, as she has taken the trouble to point out the four cases where my presentation of what is transmitted in our only source for the text, the Pal. gr. 398 (P) needs to be improved, and as she claims (without references) that my edition “differs only fairly lightly” from hers, I should perhaps point out where my edition does indeed differ. I give the text as printed by Lightfoot first, and the reading of P (which I have also used for my text) second:
p.307 ind. xxvii: for Κλειτῆς read Κλείτης
p.324 line 2 (viii 8): for προὔπεμψεν read προὔπεμπεν
p.324 line 23 (ix 2): for ὁμόσειεν read ὀμόσειεν
p.332 line 1 (xii tit.): for Χάλκου read Κάλχου
p.338 line 21 (xv 3): for ἐώρων read ἑώρων
p.338 line 22 (xv 3): for ἐπεβούλευσεν read ἐπεβούλευεν
p.350 line 25 (xxiv 2): for ἐκκαίομενος read ἐκκαιόμενος
p.352 line 9-10 (xxv 2): for Δελφῶν read Δελφῶν
p.352 line 12-13 (xxv 3): for συνῶέβη read SUNέβη
p.352 line 13-14 (xxv 3): for υἱῶν read υἱῶν
p.354 line 2 (xxvi 4): for ἔχωσεν read ἔχωσε
p.358 line 16 (xxxii 2): for ἔτυχε read ἔτυχεν
p.362 line 16 (xxxv 4): for ἀνεῖλεν read ἀνεῖλε
In all these cases Lightfoot’s edition (unlike the one she reviews) prints a text which unnecessarily differs from the transmitted text, and does so without any indication of what is actually transmitted in P. Let us hope that the recently revived interest in Parthenios will soon make a second edition of Lightfoot’s great work possible, and allow her to differ from what was printed in the first edition by presenting even more correctly the evidence for this fascinating text.