BOOK REVIEWS The "Iphigenia in Tauris" of Euripides. Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes by GILBERT MURRAY, LL.D., D.LITT., Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. Oxford University Press (American Branch), 1910. The reader knows pretty well by this time what he may expect from a new translation by Professor Murray of a play of Euripides. Looked at as an English poem it will be certain to give pleasure. A strong sense of beauty in general will be exhibited, and an excellent technical facility. Comparison with Swinburne will inevitably suggest itself, and Professor Murray would doubtless be the first to declare that he cannot afford such a comparison. Still it must be said that if the swell and surge of Swinburne's line is not to be expected, Swinburne's characteristic vices are absent as well. As far as taste can take the place of genius Professor Murray is competent to make the substitution. He could not be guilty of bombast or redundancy or turgidity, and doubtless the restraint of his verse will cause it to be felt by many as more "Greek." "Iphigenia in Tauris" is a poem so specially adapted to Professor Murray's talents that it is surprising he has left it so long untranslated. It is a romantic play with a happy ending, altogether modern in its psychology and as tightly bound together as though it were by Sardou. The dreadful problem of the Eumenides, of sin and remorse, which makes some Greek plays such hard reading, is here treated quite simply in the spirit of Ibsen by showing Orestes as the victim of fits, apparently epileptic in character. The noble rivalry in self-devotion of the two young heroes, the quiet competence of the heroine, the sympathetic action of the chorus allow the modern reader to know where he stands-a privilege he certainly loses when Jason and Medea wrangle, when Hercules gets drunk, when the objections of Pentheus (apparently so well founded) to the doings of the Maenads bring him to ruin. In a word, Euripides and Professor Murray have here collaborated to produce what should be the most popular of their joint works. It would be interesting to secure, if we could, the opinion of Euripides on the question of rhymed verse as his English vehicle. In the matter of dramatic dialogue we may perhaps guess that he would approve the great English tradition of unrhymed verse. It is difficult to see any advantage of the rhymed couplet capable of offsetting its obvious disadvantages, but Professor Murray rhymes easily and well, and naturally likes to do it. The question of the choruses is altogether different. Here the English tradition is all for rhyme; to omit it would be to lop off one of the wings on which the lyric flies. And yet Professor Murray's lyrics, graceful, charming, and certain as English songs, are precisely the most doubtful part of his rendering of the original. They come too trippingly on the tongue. There seems to be a fallacy in supposing that because a Greek strophe can be conveniently divided on the page into short verses it can be represented by an English strophe of equally short verses with a rhyme at the end of each. The rhyme interrupts the rhythm as the natural pause does not-it is a pebble on which the stream breaks, whereas the pause is a ripple due to the laws of motion of the fluid itself. Thus the movement of τὰν πολυόρνιθον ἐπ' αἶαν, λευκὰν ἀκτάν, 'Αχιλῆος δρόμους καλλισταδίους, ἄξεινον κατὰ πόντον; (435-38) is not reproduced by the movement of Birds, birds, everywhere, White as the foam, light as the air; And ghostly Achilles raceth there, To go through Professor Murray's poem line by line with the original at hand gives a fresh sense of his dexterity as a translator. It is perhaps worth noting that he is unfortunate in retaining a discredited reading in 1. 258 and in rendering 11. 258-59 'Tis so long a time, and never yet, Never, hath Greek blood made this altar wet, since Orestes speaks at 1. 72 of the altar "where Hellene blood is shed," and Iphigenia herself explains that a captive who died at her hands wrote her letter for her. And in view of the fact that she could not write, there is something droll in the expansion of 11. 206-7 into From the beginning Strife, As a book to read, Fate gave me for mine own. Expansion is in fact the temptation Professor Murray cannot resist, but a single example must suffice to warn the reader that he is not reading Euripides. Whereas Iphigenia said in Greek (369) she says in English: "Αιδης Αχιλλεὺς ἦν ἄρ', οὐχ ὁ Πηλέως, Is he a vampyre, is he one That fattens on the dead, thy Peleus' son? But this is captious. Professor Murray's versions are to be received with gratitude. They are of great interest to scholars, and they have had a surprising effect in mollifying a public disposed to eliminate scholarship. EMILY JAMES PUTNAM Die Komposition der pompejanischen Wandgemälde. Von GERHART RODENWALDT. Berlin: Weidmann, 1909. Pp. 270. Mit 38 Abbildungen im Text. This book, a dissertation presented at Halle in 1908, of which the first three chapters were printed under the title "Qua ratione pictores Pompeiani in componendis parietibus usi sint," is an interesting attempt to solve the much-debated problem how much is Greek and how much Roman in the Pompeian wall paintings, or, at least, to contribute to the solution of the question by a careful study of one aspect of the paintings, namely, the composition. Briefly stated, Dr. Rodenwaldt's contention is that landscape painting and, in general, the elaborate backgrounds and attempts at spatial effect which are so common in the Pompeian wall paintings, represent a development of the Roman period and do not go back, as has often been maintained, to Greek originals of the Hellenistic age. In expounding this thesis, Rodenwaldt in his first chapter discusses "Raumdarstellung auf griechischen Tafelbildern," arguing, from various bits of evidence, both literary and monumental, that the Greek painters of easel pictures never advanced very far in the direction of giving depth to their compositions by the use of perspective and a free distribution of the figures in space. Even in the post-Alexandrian period, he maintains, the figures in Greek easel pictures were commonly all placed on the same level and moving parallel to the plane of the picture like figures in relief; and the frame of the composition was never more than a narrow, stage-like space, bounded at the back by a wall or a mass of trees and rocks, or by a group of figures crowded close together as in the famous Alexander mosaic in Naples. In his second chapter, then, which treats of "Römische Wandbilder," the author calls attention to the marked contrast between such Greek paintings and works like the Vatican landscapes with scenes from the Odyssey, and on the basis of paintings of the second Pompeian style found in Rome postulates a development in the art of wall painting from (1) simple landscapes to (2) landscapes with figures and (3) landscapes with figures combined into mythological scenes. For such a development he finds evidence in literature, especially in the often-quoted passage in Vitruvius (vii. 5. 1) and in Pliny's account of Studius (N.H. 35, 116). The beginnings of such landscape painting he would place some time between 60 or 50 B.C. and the date of the De architectura. Furthermore, in the landscapes with figures, the figures themselves are often absolutely different from the relieflike types of the Greek painters. Not only are they freely distributed in space, but they usually move obliquely to the plane of the picture, and are represented in very lively action; the proportions are notably slender, the joints small, the whole effect un-Greek. On the other hand, in many of the wall paintings found in Rome, and even more in the paintings from Pompeii, figures and groups of pure Greek style appear in elaborate settings which show the influence of the Roman development. Such contaminatio, Rodenwaldt maintains, is due to the influence of Greek easel pictures, an influence that made itself felt as soon as the simple landscape developed into the landscape with figures and increased in importance as time went on. Having thus expounded his theory, Rodenwaldt next proceeds to an analysis of a great number of Pompeian wall paintings, with a view to showing how the Greek and the Roman elements were combined in the second, the third, and the fourth Pompeian styles and for different classes of subjects (chaps. iii-ix). The concluding chapter, "Ein griechisches Kompositionsprinzip," is an excursus on the principle of composition embodied in the Alexander mosaic and other works. Against the theory which is here advanced many objections can be urged. The evidence on which Rodenwaldt relies to determine the character of Hellenistic painting is not sufficient to establish his contention that the Greeks never advanced beyond a simple "Ausfüllung der Fläche" or the production of "einen engen bühnenartigen Raum"; he does not consider the possibility of the development in the post-Alexandrian period of an art of wall painting independent of the development of the easel picture; his interpretation of Vitruvius vii. 5.1 f. (pp. 22 ff.) is less satisfactory than the older interpretation of Helbig and Woermann which makes antiqui (i.e., the painters of the Hellenistic period) the subject not only of imitati sunt but also of ingressi sunt; and many will hesitate to accept as Roman compositions the landscapes with scenes from the Odyssey and the paintings from the casa degli epigrammi with their Greek inscriptions. But whatever one may think of Rodenwaldt's theory, there can be no doubt as to the value of his analytical chapters. These are full of interesting comparisons and suggestions, not only in respect to the Pompeian paintings themselves, but also in respect to the Greek originals on which they are based; see, for instance, the remarks on the "Master of the Europa Picture" (pp. 69 ff., 85 ff., 108 ff.) and the proposed attributions to Timomachos or his school (p. 58) and to Nikias (p. 77). In these chapters the author displays a knowledge of his material which is at once comprehensive and intimate, and it is here that he has made his most important contribution to the study of the Pompeian wall paintings. This part of the book, at least, can be heartily recommended to all who desire more than a superficial knowledge of these important monuments of ancient art. GEORGE H. CHASE HARVARD UNIVERSITY Scholia Vetera in Pindari Carmina. Recensuit A. B. DRACHMANN. Vol. II: Scholia in Pythionicas. Leipzig, 1910. Pp. xvi+270. M. 6. The first volume of this work, containing the scholia on the Olympians, was issued in 1903, before Classical Philology had begun publication. The present notice will therefore include some account of the book as a whole, which is to be concluded with a third volume, containing the Nemean and Isthmian scholia. The scholia to Pindar are among the most important which we possess for any classical author, and are not only indispensable for the understanding of Pindar himself, but also are full of information concerning ancient history, myth, and religion. Indeed they have probably been studied quite as much for their bearing upon these more general subjects as for the light they throw upon the meaning of the most difficult, and yet most rewarding, of poets. A new edition of these scholia was very much needed, for the great work of Boeckh (1819) does not separate the scholia according to their manuscript sources, as indeed was scarcely possible with the scanty evidence at Boeckh's disposal. The edition of Abel (1884), and particularly of his successor (1891), is chiefly valuable as showing how such a work ought not to be done. The present work, prepared in close connection with Schroeder's masterly edition of the text of Pindar (1900), must form, with Schroeder's, the basis of all serious study of Pindar for many years to come. Drachmann's first volume has now been before the public so long that it is unnecessary to dwell upon the accuracy and fidelity with which he has performed his duty. The endless labor which he has spent upon the manuscript study of the scholia— the most difficult of all paleographical work-is amply rewarded, and he presents to the philological world, in these modest volumes, a masterpiece of solid but unpretentious scholarship. The Pythian scholia are but little more than half as voluminous, in proportion to the text, as the Olympian. The student will therefore not expect the fulness of explanation, or the variety of alternate interpretations, which was found in Vol. I. Yet even here he may choose between no less than four slightly different views of κτίλον ̓Αφροδίτας (Ρ. 2. 31), and similarly of τὸ πλουτεῖν δὲ σὺν τύχα (Ρ. 2. 101), γένοιο δ ̓ οἷος ἐσσὶ μαθών (Ρ. 2. 131), and elsewhere. Drachmann complains that he has not been so successful in emending the text of the scholia in this second volume as in the first. He is inclined to attribute this partly to weariness of brain, and partly to the different nature of the errors in the Pythian scholia, which seem to be less simply verbal than in the Olympian scholia. But the reader will detect no falling off in our editor's insight, for the traces of Drachmann's improving hand are by no means rare. So in a scholium on 'Ιξίονα φαντὶ ταῦτα (Ρ. 2. 40) he reads παρεκβέβηκε for παρεμβέβληκε, a manifest improvement; and two pages later, on ἔμαθε δὲ σαφῶς (Ρ. 2. 45), he substitutes διατεθεῖσιν for the unintelligible duare eís, though the note still seems incomplete. In the note on the Centaurs (on P. 2. 85), Drachmann's où Karéσxov čavtoús is far better than any reading in the manuscripts, and the same may be said of τῆς ̓Αρχιλόχου δυσφημίας, φησὶν ὅτι, in the note on P. 2. 113. But the emendations which Drachmann has adopted from his keen-sighted friend Schroeder far outnumber his own-evidence of a modesty as rare |