Aristotle’s Poetics in recent years has claimed the attention of, and resulted in excellent contributions by, major scholars, especially in the Anglo-Saxon academic world. On the other hand, modern Greek contributions to the subject have been regrettably few and far between. Apart from the old (1937) magisterial edition by Ioannis Sykoutris, a book-length study of katharsis by E.P. Papanoutsos,1 and a recent important monograph by Grigoris Sifakis,2 there is very little in modern Greek scholarship to command serious attention: a commentary by S.I. Dromazos published in the early ’80s 3 fails to live up to even mediocre scholarly standards, while a philosophically-oriented study by S. Ramfos4 is highly idiosyncratic, and scarcely furthers our understanding of the Poetics as the all-important manifesto of literary criticism that it is.
The present book by Daniel Jacob — a collection of seven studies, all of them reproduced or translated from earlier publications by the author — goes a long way towards redressing the balance, although one may feel that it remains rather uneven in terms of argumentative force. There is no denying that each and every one of these studies addresses in typically learned fashion a specific, carefully circumscribed question. Although they do not aim at a full-scale interpretation of the Poetics, these studies have clearly been conceived as minutely crafted tesserae, adumbrating what is meant eventually to be a coherent, robust picture of the Poetics. On the other hand, these tesserae seem sometimes to be too disparate, even too colourful for comfort: although they are often provocative, and certainly provide food for thought, they are also fanciful and far from immune to counter-argument. Naturally, immunity to counter-argument is almost an impossibility when the Poetics is in question, and although the present reviewer has found quite a few bones to pick, it should not go without saying that Jacob’s book is both well-documented and vigorously argued, demonstrating on each page its author’s familiarity with the countless and complex problems of the Poetics. His arguments, even when not compelling, are bound to lead to fresh reflections on this central text. Written in clear and unpretentious modern Greek, it should be fairly accessible to any Hellenist whose knowledge of the ancient language is what it should be.
The seven studies which make up this volume are:
1. Ἡ Ποιητικὴ τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλη (“Aristotle’s Poetics “), pp. 15-54.
2. Πλασματικότητα καὶ ἀποτελεσματικότητα. Δύο εἰδοποιὰ γνωρίσματα τῆς λογοτεχνίας κατὰ τὴν ἀριστοτελικὴ Ποιητική (“Fictionality and effectiveness: two distinctive qualities of literature according to Aristotle’s Poetics”), pp. 55-71.
3. Ἰσορροπώντας μεταξὺ καθολικοῦ καὶ ἀτομικοῦ. Τὸ status τῆς λογοτεχνίας κατὰ τὸν Ἀριστοτέλη (“Striking a balance between the universal and the individual: the status of literature according to Aristotle”), pp. 73-89.
4. Ἡ ἑνότητα τοῦ χρόνου στὴν ἀρχαία ἑλληνικὴ τραγωδία. Οἱ ἀριστοτελικὲς ἀπόψεις (“Unity of time in ancient Greek tragedy: Aristotle’s views”), pp. 91-108.
5. Ἡ θέση τοῦ Μαργίτη στὴν εξέλιξη τῆς κωμωδίας (“The place of ‘Margites’ in the evolution of comedy”), pp. 109-17.
6. Το μέτρο ὡς κριτήριο τῆς ποίησης (“Metre as a distinctive feature of poetry”), pp. 119-21.
7. Ὁ πρῶτος Ὀλυμπιόνικος τοῦ Πινδάρου καὶ η( Ποιητικὴ τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλη. Μιὰ ἁπλὴ σύμπτωση; (“Pindar’s First Olympian and Aristotle’s Poetics: A mere coincidence?”), pp. 123-34.
Unavoidably, these essays, which were originally conceived and published as self-standing pieces, may slightly overlap here and there, but never to the point of becoming repetitive. At any rate, such overlaps are clearly sign-posted by meticulous and copious cross-referencing.
The first essay, reprinted from the author’s earlier book on the poetics of Greek tragedy,5 presents a welcome, if necessarily selective, introduction to the content, the structure, and the problems (both philosophical and exegetic) of the Poetics. Equipped with abundant doxography, and engaging in intelligent dialogue with a number of interpreters, this chapter raises a host of interesting points: the Poetics as a constitutive text of literary theory (as opposed to earlier inklings of literary criticism in e.g. Gorgias or Plato); Aristotle’s rehabilitation of poetry as against its most famous detractor, Plato; the cognitive and creative aspects of Aristotelian mimesis; the differences between history and poetry; the overarching importance of tragedy over epic in Aristotle’s conception of the literary genres; his construction of the function of epic in terms of that of tragedy; etc. Special emphasis is placed, appropriately, on Aristotle’s radically anthropocentric approach both to the process of poetic creation (tacitly discarding Plato’s notion of inspirational madness in favour of a concept of poetry as a product of techne) and to the construction of the tragic plot (change of fortune is induced by human failure, hamartia, rather than divine intervention). In a similar vein, Jacob adopts Elizabeth Belfiore’s theory of the tragic emotions of pity and fear as conducive to the fundamentally social virtue of aidos.6 Concise, learned, and crystal-clear, this essay is a serious and compact introduction to the Poetics. It does not obscure or oversimplify problems and does not shy from offering tersely-phrased solutions wherever possible. Only incidentally does Jacob seem to exaggerate the complexity of a question, as e.g. with regard to Aristotle’s statement (Po. 1456a25) that the Chorus should be “one of the actors” and take part in the play “as happens in Sophocles, not in Euripides”. As Jacob rightly points out, such integrated Choruses are neither wholly absent from Aeschylus (e.g. Supplices, Eumenides) or Euripides (e.g. Bacchae), nor are they ubiquitous in Sophocles (cf. Trachiniae). But what we have here is, apparently, a typically Aristotelian generalisation which one should take with a pinch of salt rather than make bones about it, as J. seems to do: it is Euripidean tragedy that seems to offer the most glaring (although not, of course, the only) examples of obtrusive, unintegrated Choruses, e.g. in Phoenissae.
The second essay focuses on Poetics 9, which it proposes, rightly, to see as a discussion not of the relation between poetry and history, but rather of the preconditions for the production and enjoyment of good mimetic literature. The distinction Aristotle draws between poetry and history is, Jacob argues, merely meant to show that poetry should not necessarily concern itself with “things that happened” ( γενόμενα) but rather with “things possible” ( δυνατά), or even with things which, albeit “impossible” ( ἀδύνατα), do however appear plausible ( πιθανά) by virtue of their being constructed according to the principles of necessity or likelihood. (Jacob appositely compares here [p. 60 n. 8] Pindar’s statement [Ol. 1, 30ff.] that poetic charis often renders credible the incredible.) Naturally, “things that happened” are credible because they are ipso facto possible (Po. 1451b16-18) and so offer an apt theme for mimetic literature, so long as they comply with τὸ εἰκός or τὸ ἀναγκαῖον (cf. e.g. Aeschylus’ Persians). The specificity of the historical event is thus contrasted to the universalityof the poetic construction. It is principally as a plausible construct that poetic fictionality gives pleasure (although other factors, such as e.g. workmanship, cannot be excluded, cf. Po. 1448b18-19).
The third essay tackles a notorious crux of the Poetics: Chapter 4 (1448b15-17) claims that people take pleasure in contemplating the products of mimesis (for instance, a painted portrait of Mr X) because they are able to associate the μίμημα with its original — to recognize that, say, the aforementioned portrait is an attempt to “imitate” (to render, to represent) the features of a real-life model, Mr X himself. This explanation has struck many as inadequate, not least D.W. Lucas who complained (in his comment on Po. 1448b13) that “when we have learnt what already familiar thing a picture represents we have not learnt much”. Jacob, in the wake of e.g. Sykoutris and Halliwell, seeks to invest Aristotle’s seemingly over-simplistic statement with appropriately philosophical depth: confronted with the crushing moral dilemmas of tragedy, with its larger-than-life complexities, the man in the street will be encouraged to “broaden his cognitive horizon” (the phrasing is Jacob’s, p. 77) by matching his intellectual abilities against the tantalising magnitude of tragedy’s anthropological puzzles.
As far as I can see, however, the Poetics furnishes no corroborative evidence for such an interpretation. Jacob is especially anxious to associate the pleasurable appreciation of mimetic art with the καθόλου with which poetry is supposed to concern itself (Po. 1451b7). He conveniently finds these “universals” instantiated in the perennial, ecumenical issues raised in tragedy. He even goes so far as to launch (however tentatively, in the context of an interrogative phrase hesitantly enclosed in brackets, p. 80) the hypothesis that, in the case of tragedy, the καθόλου are in fact manifested in the primordial (and conjectural, and non-recoverable) nucleus of tragic myth whose variant forms have reached us enshrined in the works of the great tragedians. It is the spectator’s privilege, according to Jacob, to come to grips with the specific issues (primarily of anthropological nature) raised in the various versions of the “original” myth. The “primordial nucleus” concept, in itself highly doubtful, and nowadays largely discredited by students of mythology, not only involves a huge argumentative leap (upgrading a hesitant, tellingly bracketed hypothesis into a major premise of interpretation) but also flies in the face of Aristotle’s statement that tragedies with wholly fictional plots — i.e. not based on traditional myth — are perfectly acceptable: what becomes of Jacob’s “primordial nucleus” of the myth, if myth itself can be so easily abolished? Would a non-mythic subject-matter impair tragedy’s aspiration to deal with the καθόλου ? Surely not. The true intent of the Aristotelian καθόλου (one which it is hardly at issue in current scholarship,7 and of which Jacob himself elsewhere seems to be fully aware, cf. his p. 22, 65, 87 n. 24, 112 etc.) has nothing to do with mythical nuclei and suchlike. Rather, it means constructing a play with a unified, coherent, well-rounded plot in which nothing superfluous, nothing irrelevant, nothing “episodic” is admitted. On the other hand, focusing on specific persons or events ( καθ’ ἕκαστον) entails the risk of presenting a “slice of life”, of dramatising events which, as often happens in real life, are fragmentary, incomplete, incoherent, even irrelevant.
The fourth essay, based on the first chapter of the author’s unpublished doctoral dissertation (Thessaloniki 1982), is a fine discussion of Aristotle’s concept of narrative speed, i.e. the relation between the (fictional) duration of events in the narrated story and the duration of the narrative act itself, i.e. essentially the length of text — one of the central concepts of modern narratology from Genette onwards. The crucial text here is Po. 1449b9-16: one of tragedy’s differences from epic is “length” ( ἔτι δὲ τῷ μήκει); tragic action is accomplished, generally speaking, in the space of a single day (or almost), whereas epic narrative time is indefinite ( ἀόριστος τῷ χρόνῳ). The question Jacob sets himself is a long-debated one: does μῆκος refer to the length of the tragic or epic text per se (in terms e.g. of rolls of papyrus), or to the concomitant notion of the duration of its performance? Jacob effectively discards the latter possibility. Or does μῆκος denote rather “fable time”, i.e. the (fictional) duration of the events narrated in epic or acted out in tragedy? A considerable number of scholars seem to have settled for this last alternative, but Jacob challenges this. If it is “fable time” that Aristotle had in mind, then why did he use μῆκος rather than the obvious uox propria, namely χρόνος ? After all, elsewhere Aristotle uses μῆκος as a synonym for μέγεθος, “physical length of an epic or tragic poem” (Po. 1451a4-6, 1459b17-23, 1462a18), whereas he reserves χρόνος for fable time (1449b14). Jacob’s solution is an interesting one. Aristotle uses μῆκος in its proper sense of “physical length”; subsequently, however, he introduces a semantic shift, attributing to the term the sense of “fable time” (which would have been properly denoted by χρόνος); this semantic shift is made possible by the frequent, although by no means ubiquitous, association between physical length and duration of narrated events. As a parallel, Jacob appositely adduces (p. 99 n. 17) Po. 1449a19-20, where μέγεθος undergoes a comparable semantic shift from “physical length” (in terms of lines in a play) to “magnitude”, viz. “moment” (cf. ἀπεσεμνύνθη). In other words, for Aristotle the difference in μῆκος between tragedy and epic is one of physical length of text corresponding (as a rule) to the (fictive) duration of events narrated in the text: tragedies are shorter than epic poems in terms of their respective number of lines; accordingly, their action is (or should be) completed in the space of a single day.8 Of course, it has often been argued, as if it were a fatal objection, that a poem’s physical length is not necessarily commensurate to the length of its fable time, and that, as D.W. Lucas put it (ad Po. 1449b12-16, drawing on G.F. Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument [Cambridge, MA 1957] 218 n. 123), “the longest periods of time in the Iliad are accounted for in the fewest words”, cf. e.g. Il. 24.784. However, as Jacob points out, it would be grossly unfair to attribute to Aristotle so rank an ignorance of Homeric narrative technique or so blatant a departure from common sense. Aristotle is simply thinking of representative samples of both epic and tragic poetry, such as the Iliad and the Oedipus Tyrannus respectively, in which fable time as a whole (i.e. excluding such “marginal” passages as 24.784) largely corresponds to physical length. The essay concludes with a rehearsal of the evidence for what is nowadays a universally accepted tenet of Aristotelian criticism, namely that the notorious “unity of time” rule (one of the three “unities” postulated by Renaissance commentators of Aristotle and French neoclassical playwrights) is not a yardstick to be applied indiscriminately (Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Eumenides are irreducible exceptions), but rather a corollary of Aristotle’s preference for the “geschlossenes Drama” in which a single, temporally circumscribed, coherent action is dramatised (as against e.g. the “episodic” dramas of Agathon).
The fifth essay expands on a fundamental article by Malcolm Heath9 on the nature and development of comedy according to Aristotle. Its major contribution is a new assessment of the place of the “Margites” in Aristotle’s evolutionary scheme. For Aristotle, Jacob argues, the “Margites” is a precursor to the innovation attributed to Crates (see Po. 1449b7-8), namely the abandonment of the ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα for the sake of καθόλου ποιεῖν λόγους καὶ μύθους. As Jacob points out, Crates’ innovation consisted in constructing plots focused not on specific individuals or situations but rather on generic human types and patterns of behaviour, which is what Aristotle summarily refers to as καθόλου (cf. Po. 1451b8-9). In Aristotle’s evolutionary scheme, according to Jacob, the “Margites” occupies the same position in relation to the ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα, as do the Iliad and the Odyssey in relation to those epic poems (the Cypria, the Little Iliad etc.) that attempted to narrate long, variegated, “episodic” myths at the expense of internal cohesion. As such, the “Margites” would be a direct forerunner of the kind of comedy exemplified by Crates, as opposed to those comedians who still adhered to the “iambic form”; likewise, the Homeric epics would directly prefigure the best of Greek tragedy, as opposed to the “episodic” plays exemplified by Agathon (cf. Po. 1456a10-19). This interpretation allows Jacob ingeniously to reconstruct two exactly parallel schemes for the evolution of tragedy and comedy according to Aristotle: firstly, as regards tragedy, primitive hymnic or encomiastic poetry would have bifurcated into the epic cycle on the one side and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey on the other; these two branches would, in turn, have yielded the “episodic” tragedies of e.g. Agathon and the καθόλου tragedies of e.g. Aeschylus and Sophocles, respectively. Secondly, as regards comedy, primitive invective bifurcated into poems adhering to the “iambic form” on the one hand, and (departing from the “iambic form”) Homer’s “Margites” on the other; these, in turn, would have yielded the καθ’ ἕκαστον plays of early comedians and the “non-iambic” works of e.g. Crates. Jacob’s astute reading rehabilitates the “Margites” as a landmark in the evolution of comic poetry, a work deserving of the (only seemingly puzzling) admiration of Callimachus (fr. 397 Pfeiffer).
The overall value of this book is somewhat diminished by the fact that the last two essays leave rather a lot to be desired. The last-but-one, by far the briefest of the whole book, takes as its point of departure a passage in Himerius (Or. 48.10, p. 200.105-9 Colonna), itself a conscious echo of Plato’s Republic 393d, where the author promises to offer a remaniement of a passage of classical poetry. Himerius, like the Platonic Socrates before him, explicitly foregoes the idea of offering a metrical remaniement : since he is not ποιητικός, he will have to make do with mere prose. The traditionally close association between poetry and metre, which goes at least as far back as Gorgias,10 was famously challenged by Aristotle (Po. 1447a28-b20): Empedocles’ work may be cast in hexameters but there is very little poetry in it. Jacob sets out to challenge the challenger, and at his own game at that: elsewhere in the Poetics, says Jacob, Aristotle seems to succumb to, and even propagate, the traditional view of poetry as literature written in metre. For instance, in one passage (Po. 1448b30-2) Aristotle says that iambic metre is ideally suited to skoptic poetry; in another (1449a21-3), he points out that trochaic metre, due to its satyr- and dance-like nature, was typical of an earlier, more light-hearted stage in the evolution of tragedy. Few will take issue with all of this, but some may wonder whether Jacob is not stating the obvious — or pettifogging about a non-existent incoherence. Aristotle’s statement “not everything that is in metre is poetry” implies that there are metrical texts which are not poetry, but not that poetry can be dissociated from metre (although, of course, there exists mimetic prose, cf. Po. 1447a29 with Lucas ad 47a28-47b2). Those texts that are indubitably poetic will of necessity be associated with this or that metrical pattern, just as skoptic and tragic poetry are associated with iambics and tetrameters respectively.
Taking its lead from an en passant observation by M. Puelma,11 the last essay seeks to establish an intertextual relation between Pindar’s First Olympian and Aristotle’s Poetics. As is well known, Aristotle pitches himself against a long tradition, culminating with Plato, which decried poets as mere fabricators of lies. In his defense of poetry, Aristotle points out that poetic works are not to be judged by the standards regulating the rest of human activity, such as commitment to veracity (Po. 1460b14-61a9, esp. 60b32-5), but rather by their efficacy in producing the pleasure that is “peculiar” to this or that poetic genre (cf. esp. Po. 1459a18-21), as well as by the degree of their conformity to the principles of verisimilitude or logical coherence (Po. 1451a12-13, 38). That this is meant as a refutation of Plato’s rejection of poetry is beyond doubt, and has been pointed out countless times; what is very much open to doubt is Jacob’s contention that Aristotle’s primary intertext is in fact not Plato but Pindar’s First Olympian 28-34. True, Pindar draws a distinction between the enrapturing but deceptive grace of poetry and the sobering effect of “days to come” which permit to disentangle, with the benefit of cool hindsight, fiction from reality (in W.H. Race’s Loeb translation: “Charis, who fashions all things pleasant for mortals, by bestowing honor makes even what is unbelievable often believed; yet days to come are the wisest witnesses”). However, Pindar’s statement is a double-edged one: for his own epinician poetry also concerns itself with Charis, things pleasant, and honour; it aims at endowing itself with grace, as well as at bestowing it on the victor who is to be gratified and honoured.12 Rather than being taken out of context as a sweeping epistemological value-judgement, Pindar’s proclamation must be interpreted primarily in the context of his poetics of praise: if he takes pains to demonstrate the veracity of his own version, it is in order to consolidate the validity of his encomium by forestalling potentially harmful slander from the charmingly elaborate lies of blame-poetry.13 Since E.L. Bundy’s pioneering Studia Pindarica (which, incidentally, are missing from Jacob’s otherwise very rich bibliography), it has long become a tenet of Pindaric criticism that the essence of epinician poetics is eulogy of the victor and of his community. Philosophical or moralistic sentiments are relevant insofar as they further the poem’s encomiastic programme. After all, as Jacob is aware (his p. 126), Pindar elsewhere (Nem. 5, 14-18) pleads guilty to passing over in silence a gruesome but indubitably “true” detail of traditional legend. In other words, Pindar is not concerned with truth or falsehood as moral or societal values per se: such claims to veracity (or, inversely, accusations of falsehood) as are found in his poetry are little more than rhetorical strategies designed to bolster the epinician’s encomiastic function as against the πσογεροί, who are by default associated with lying and deception. A comparable device is the famous statement by the Muses in Hesiod (whom, incidentally, Jacob also turns into a fervent upholder of truth “in the service of society”),14 to the effect that they are (like the poet whom they inspire) able to manipulate language so as to produce enunciations which may be true or false (but seemingly true):15 there is no means of telling. Poetry places itself beyond truth and falsehood, either in accepting and even espousing unknowability (as in Hesiod), or in manipulating its claim to veracity in order to further its poetic purpose.
The book, which is rounded off by detailed indexes of proper names and passages, has been elegantly produced, as a whole. though, I have noted a number of typos, a few of which could be detrimental to the sense.16
All in all, this is an interesting, if uneven, collection of studies. It is thoroughly researched, and in its best moments offers well thought-out and thought-provoking interpretations. Its weaker points, some of which have been singled out above, will undoubtedly raise many an eyebrow: one hopes they will be remedied or simply eliminated in a second edition. There is however considerable profit to be had from the careful study of this book, even in the rather numerous cases in which one will feel inclined to disagree with its argument.17
Notes
1. I. Sykoutris, Ἀριστοτέλους Περὶ Ποιητικῆς, Athens 1937; E.P. Papanoutsos, Le catharsis des passions d’après Aristote [Collection de l’Institut Français d’Athènes 71], Athens 1953.
2. G.M. Sifakis, Aristotle on the Function of Tragic Poetry. Herakleion: Crete University Press, 2001. Cf. the review by E. Belfiore, BMCR 2002.06.34, and the response by Sifakis in BMCR 2002.08.16. Cf. also C. Wagner, Gnomon 77.4 (2005) 294-9.
3. S.I. Dromazos, Ἀριστοτέλους Ποιητική, Athens 1982.
4. S. Ramfos, Μίμησις ἐναντίον μορφῆς, vols. 1-2, Athens 1992/3.
5. Ἡ ποιητικὴ τῆς ἀρχαίας ἑλληνικῆς τραγωδίας, Athens 1998. I reviewed that book in the Athens daily Kathimerini, 19 September 1999, p. 57.
6. See E.S. Belfiore, Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion (Princeton 1992) 339-60.
7. See most recently J.M. Armstrong, “Aristotle on the Philosophical Nature of Poetry”, The Classical Quarterly 48 (1998) 447-55, who introduces the useful concepts of “event-types” ( καθόλου) and “event-tokens” ( καθ’ ἕκαστον), or as they should perhaps more appropriately be called, “plot-types” and “plot-tokens”.
8. Incidentally, on p. 101 n. 19 Jacob seems to misrepresent Elizabeth Belfiore’s argument that ὑπὸ μίαν περίοδον ἡλίου is both a literal designation of time (“a single revolution of the sun”, a single daylight period) and a figurative reference to the frailty and mutability of human life as especially exemplified in the single-day catastrophes of Greek tragedy. See E. Belfiore, “Dramatic and Epic Time: ‘Magnitude’ and ‘Length’ in Aristotle’s Poetics” in O. Andersen & G. Haarberg (eds.), Making Sense of Aristotle: Essays in Poetics (London 2001) 25-49, esp. 27-31.
9. M. Heath, “Aristotelian Comedy”, The Classical Quarterly 39 (1989) 344-54.
10. Encomium of Helen 9 τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν … νομίζω … λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον; cf. Isocrates, Euagoras (9) 10: poets μετὰ μέτρων καὶ ῤυθμῶν ἅπαντα ποιοῦσιν.
11. See M. Puelma, “Der Dichter und die Wahrheit in der griechischen Poetik von Homer bis Aristoteles”, Museum Helveticum 46 (1989) 65-100, here 88 n. 46.
12. On the central role of Charis in epinician poetry see (esp. since it is not cited by Jacob) Bonnie MacLachlan, The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry (Princeton 1993) 87-123.
13. See in this respect the excellent discussion by Louise H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar: Falsehood and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics (Ann Arbor 1993) 115-29. Contra Grace M. Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato: Interpretation and Authority in early Greek Theories of Poetry (Princeton 2003) 68-77, esp. 72-4.
14. The phrasing is Jacob’s (p. 124): ” Στὴν ὑπηρεσία τοῦ κοινωνικοῦ συνόλου“.
15. For discussion and recent doxography on this celebrated passage see Ledbetter (here n. 14) 43-8.
16. Here is a selection of both serious and relatively harmless ones: p. 29 n. 28 for “Sofokles” read “Sophokles”; p. 41 for ἀφ’ read ἐφ’; p. 41 n. 49 for “Readings” read “Reading”; p. 43 n. 51 for “Whitllock” read “Whitlock”; p. 55 n. 1 for “Warscheinlichkeit” read “Wahrscheinlichkeit”; p. 57 for λεγόμενα read γενόμενα; ibid., for ἐπιτιθέμενη read ἐπιτιθεμένη; ibid., for ᾗττον read ἧττον; p. 68 for αἰσχύνης read αἰσχίνης; p. 112 for ποιῷ read ποίῳ; p. 114 for ἐποποιϊκὸν (bis) read ἐποποιικὸν; p. 114 n. 18 for ᾗ read ᾖ; p. 124 n.2 “Poetik” should not be italicized; p. 127 n.13, for “Interanzionale” read “Internazionale”, and for “Iuglio” read “luglio”; on p. 131 a mention of G. Danek in the main text is oddly followed by a footnote (n. 25) citing (not Danek but) J. Strauss-Clay. There are also a few points of style: πρόπλασμα on p. 75 should be προτύπωση; ἐπιζητεῖ on p. 83 should be simply ζητεῖ; also, ἐξάγεται on p. 100 should be συνάγεται.
17. The reviewer would like to extend his warmest thanks to the following for criticism and suggestions: Richard Bodéüs (Montreal), Malcolm Heath (Leeds), Stavros Tsitsiridis (Patras), and Benjamin Victor (Montreal).