Musaeus’ “Hero and Leander”: Introduction, Greek Text, Translation, and Commentary by Silvia Montiglio

346 PHOENIX more enjoyable than its satisfaction. Smith sees this posture as unusual and distinctive, and he reads the epigram as engaging with conceptions of manhood: since self-control (enkrateia) was “traditionally” the way to express manliness, the door deprives the speaker of an opportunity to express his masculinity and instead provokes “a complete disregard of encratic practice and an impulse to luxuriate in apparent powerlessness” (125). Here, the adverb “traditionally” does a lot of work and effaces some nuance. From the standpoint of the tradition, Paul’s speaker is also a descendant of the numerous excluded lovers of Hellenistic epigram who stand outside, and sometimes directly complain to, the door of a would-be lover, and who often seem to derive an analogous, self-indulgent pleasure from their exclusion and from their suffering and lack of control. In other cases, too, some additional consideration of Hellenistic intertexts would be beneficial. To give a single example, in Paulus AP 10.15.3, Smith sees a specific allusion to A.R. 2.594–595, where a ship at sea rides the waves “as if on a cylinder” (ºste kul’nd~), but the reference in both passages is to the practice of launching ships on rollers such as is recounted at A.R. 1.375–377 (cf. A.R. 1.377: ¥lisya’nousa). In any case, the idea that encouraging sailors to set sail without fear “exposes the fear and anxiety at the heart of masculine identity” and that it evokes the sailors’ shortcomings relative to the Argonauts in the alleged intertext (154) does not adequately address the direct model provided by Satyrus AP 10.6.5 or account for the tradition, grounded in reality, that all sailors, no matter how brave, had good reason to be anxious, especially outside of the sailing season (e.g., Leonidas AP 7.665.1–2). Such quibbles hardly detract from Smith’s achievement in this pathbreaking book. I have learned a tremendous amount from it, and it has led me to think about the ways that the approach could be applied productively to earlier poetry. It is essential reading not only for specialists in Byzantine literature, but also for anyone working on epigrams or interested in the treatment of sex, gender, and power in antiquity. Georgetown University Alexander Sens Musaeus' “Hero and Leander”: Introduction, Greek Text, Translation, and Commentary. By Silvia Montiglio. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 2020. Pp. 123. The tale about Leander, the nighttime clandestine lover who crosses the dangerous waters between Sestos and Abydos to see his beloved Hero and drowns in the process, is among the “classics” of European literature. Since the editio Aldina of 1495, Musaeus’ poem has been associated above all with tragic romantic love. Manutius’ choice to print this poem even before the Homeric epics—Musaeus was thought a forerunner of Homer—has marked the reception of the poem as one of the hallmarks of humanism. The present work is a convenient and useful edition. It includes an extensive introduction of forty-nine pages, taking up almost half the book; a Greek text with a facing English translation; and a concise line-by-line commentary. The up-to-date bibliography provides an excellent reference tool as it includes all past and even forthcoming scholarly works. Below I present some of the highlights of Montiglio’s edition as well as some personal thoughts on the poet in his late antique context. The author has succeeded in producing a modern English translation and an excellent literary discussion accessible to novice and expert readers alike. By contrast to C. Whit- BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 347 man, who attempted to maintain the poetic effect of the text by adopting a loose fourbeat verse,1 Montiglio’s adaptation is in free verse and resembles rather Orsini’s poetic French prose for the 1968 Budé edition.2 The interpretation of pœmatow (“hindmost,” “last”) in line 343 (úll}lvn d' úp—nato ka“ \n pum‡t~ per ¥lŽyr~), for instance, translated as “and they had joy of each other even in the extremity of death,” evokes Orsini’s “et ils jouirent l’un de l’autre éternellement, jusque dans l’abı̂me...

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