03/09/2013 12:23 Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.04.22 Page 1 of 7 http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2000/2000-04-22.html Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.04.22 P. Kobiliri, A Stylistic Commentary on Hermesianax. Classical and Byzantine Monographs 43. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1998. Pp. 262. ISBN 90-256-0638-5. ISBN 90-256-1126-5. Reviewed by Martijn Cuypers, Leiden University (mcuypers@rullet.leidenuniv.nl) Word count: 3795 words Hermesianax of Colophon1 (3rd c. B.C.E., hereafter H.) is chiefly known as the author of a long elegiac poem addressed to, and named after, his mistress Leontium. The work seems to have treated famous love affairs, framed by the poet's own, which was doubtless as ill-fated as his exempla. Preserved are a single line from the section on Polyphemus (fr. 1 Powell), prose reworkings of several others (fr. 2-6 P.), and, most important, a 98 line catalogue of amorous poets and philosophers (from Orpheus to H.'s older contemporary and alleged teacher Philitas, including Pythagoras, Socrates, and Aristippus), which is cited by Athenaeus (fr. 7 P.). Whereas Leontium as a whole is clearly influenced by the Lyde of H.'s townsman Antimachus, the surviving part most resembles Phanocles' Erotes e kaloi. Both Phanocles and H. state their debt to Hesiod's Ehoea in the first line of the surviving text. Because H.'s catalogue is both the longest continuous fragment of a Greek elegiac poem to survive and an important bridge between early Greek and later Roman (love) elegy, it has, in the past, attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention. Yet since the beginning of our century interest in the poem has dwindled -- reflecting, I suspect, a diminished appreciation of its quality (which critics now agree is rather mediocre) and exasperation with the tantalizing problems of interpretation it poses. As a result, students of H. are forced to consult antiquated commentaries in Latin and to sample more recent work on the poem themselves. A new commented edition is clearly welcome. Kobiliri's book, the revised version of her 1979 (!) Birbeck doctoral dissertation, consists of a two-page introduction, an edition without critical apparatus, a translation, and an extensive word-for-word commentary. The volume concludes with Greek and analytical indices (which somewhat compensate for the absence of a proper introduction), and a bibliography. I will first deal with the bibliography, because it is illustrative of the nature of K.'s undertaking. Bibliography K.'s revisions of the original dissertation did not include incorporating advances in the field of Greek poetry made since 1979: the most recent title in her bibliography is Hatzikosta's 1982 commentary on Theocritus 7. No explanation for this is given. As regards H. himself, one can excuse the omission of Hardie's thorough article on the