In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristophanes: ThesmophoriazusaeElizabeth W. ScharffenbergerColin Austin and S. Douglas Olson, eds. Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae. With intro. and comm. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. cviii + 363 pp. 2 color plates. Cloth, $195.This long-awaited edition of Thesmophoriazusae is a welcome newcomer to the Oxford University Press series of commentaries on the comedies of Aristophanes. Colin Austin and S. Douglas Olson have collaborated to produce a generous work of scholarship that offers (...) a comprehensive perspective on this Aristophanic comedy, which playfully imagines the tragedian Euripides and his kinsman-by-marriage (the "Inlaw") fighting for their lives as they seek to allay the wrath of the matrons of Athens, who have been angered by Euripides' representations of female characters, during an annual women's festival (the Thesmophoria) honoring Demeter and Persephone. The volume offers a new and carefully edited text, which incorporates emendations that Austin has already proposed in separately published articles, and an informative apparatus criticus. On every page of the text there is a second apparatus (standard in Oxford University Press's recently published editions of Aristophanes) that indicates where words and verses are cited in the works of later authors (e.g., Philostratus, Lucian) and [End Page 140] in ancient and medieval lexica (e.g., Hesychius, the Suda). The introduction and meticulously detailed commentary supply extensive information about the comedy, the circumstances of its original production in 411 b.c.e., its relationship to other Aristophanic dramas, the history of its transmission, and a host of related topics. A bibliography, two indices (one for Greek words and one for general references), and two color plates of the Würzburg krater, representing the comedy's parody of Euripides' Telephus, complete the volume. Students and scholars with a variety of interests and needs will find this edition of Thesmophoriazusae most useful. Thanks to its editors' erudition and the thoughtfulness of their presentation, it is also a pleasure to read.In the introduction's summary of Thesmophoriazusae's manuscript tradition (lxxxix-xcviii), the survey of the most frequent errors in Ravennas 429 ("R," the tenth-century manuscript that is the only independent witness for its complete text) permits readers to get a sense of the kinds of emendations that have become common property in most of the editions published since the Renaissance. These conventional emendations aside, Thesmophoriazusae's text still leaves much room for editorial discretion, which Austin and Olson always exercise judiciously (even if one disagrees on occasion with their choices). Most importantly, a keen appreciation of Aristophanes' humor consistently informs their decisions concerning emendation, as is revealed by the interpretations of the jokes in 12 (defending the verse against deletion), 232 (retaining R's α), 242 (retaining R's and accepting Medaglia's restoration of ), 912 (retaining R's ), and 1094 (accepting Brunck's supplement ). They are also guided by the concern for making the text square with fifth-century Attic usage: see, e.g., the restoration of (for ) to 758-59 and the preferences for (over the transmitted v) in 173 and 478 and for (over the transmitted ) in 554.An unusual textual feature in this comedy—and an editorial challenge—is the pidgin-Greek spoken by the Scythian archer who guards the captured Inlaw in 1001-1225. Austin and Olson print his part without accents because, as they explain in the commentary's note on these verses (which also supplies a helpful list of the idiosyncrasies in his speech), "he must consistently have got [the accents] wrong" (308). Other editorial decisions (e.g., Austin's for R's unmetrical in 1088) bear out the editors' perception of the Scythian as a consistently bad speaker of Greek (325, n. on 1087-89).The comedy's lyric passages arguably present its thorniest set of editorial challenges. Most of the songs are marked by complexities in their rhythmic patterns; there is relatively little strophic responsion, and the two showcased parodies of tragic lyric (Agathon's song in 101-29 and the Inlaw's reworking of Andromeda's lament in 1015-55) feature elaborate polymetry that additionally complicates the tasks of interpreting and editing. Austin and Olson generally concur with the colometry and analysis of Thesmophoriazusae's songs that L. P... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousai and the Challenges of Comic Translation:The Case of William Arrowsmith's Euripides AgonistesElizabeth ScharffenbergerThesmophoriazousai is conspicuously absent from the well-known and widely used series of Aristophanes translations that, under the editorial supervision of William Arrowsmith, was published originally by the University of Michigan Press and then taken up by New American Library. This is not to say, however, that a translation of the comedy was never composed for (...) this series. Arrowsmith took the task upon himself and began his translation of Thesmophoriazousai some time before 1960 when the Aristophanes series was at the height of its production; in later years, he revised his text at least once, and the evidence points to 1968-1973 as the principal period during which the translation was reworked. The cover page on the manuscript that he sent me in 1991 indicates that an introduction and notes (standard in this series) were to accompany the translation, but the package I received contained only the translated text, and I have no idea whether the notes and commentary were ever composed or finished. The text of the translation has a handful of typographical errors and minor inconsistencies in the directions on costuming and staging, which seem to mark the project as an arrested work in progress.The unpublished creation of a renowned classicist who was also a prolific and respected translator, Arrowsmith's Thesmophoriazousai — titled on the manuscript's cover page, Euripides Agonistes (Thesmophoriazousae)— provides an exciting venue for exploring the challenges involved in translating Aristophanes for contemporary English-speaking audiences. My purposes in this paper are thus twofold. I want to examine selected aspects of Arrowsmith's version of this comedy and also advance some general ideas about the challenges involved in translating the plays of Aristophanes and, for that matter, any comic work. My endeavor on both scores will be both preliminary and cursory; there is no way to do justice to every feature of this translation in a few pages or to [End Page 429] produce a complete theory of comic translation. But I hope that I can suggest a reasonably systematized foundation for analyzing the choices Arrowsmith made in his rendering of Thesmophoriazousai and, at the same time, present a set of criteria that might have broader use to people who rely on all kinds of comic translations.The "Frames" of Comic TranslationThere are very few works that treat, from either practical or theoretical perspectives, the translation of comic works and comic devices such as parodies and puns. These works include an essay on translating Ari-stophanes published in 1960 by Arrowsmith, titled "The Lively Conventions of Translation," as well as Douglass Parker's 1992-93 Arion essay in Arrowsmith's memory and André Lefevere's Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context. Their consensus is that translating comedy, especially Aristophanic comedy, poses formidable and unique challenges.1The most obvious challenge is the topicality of jokes and comic scenarios. According to Arrowsmith, "It is initially the hard facts of culture that most torment the translator of Greek comedy.... Tragedy... keeps a decent distance from common life, but comedy dumps into the translator's lap an intolerable profusion of things—odd bits of clothing, alien cuisine... unfamiliar currency, etc." (1960, 123). Thesmophoriazousai bears out this observation; it overflows with difficult "things" and "hard facts" to translate, beginning with the many props and elements of costume that come into play in the prologue with the appearance of Agathon and the dressing of the Kinsman, and including such crucial items as Mica's wineskin "baby." The problem of "translating" these objects is compounded by the challenges involved in making intelligible the comedy's preoccupation with Euripides and its many-layered engagement with Euripidean tragedy, which give rise to the parodies of Telephus, Palamedes, Helen, and Andromeda. These parodies go hand in hand with countless theatrical in-jokes and self-conscious references to local Athenian theatrical practices. Then there are the play's festal performance context (the Dionysia) and festal setting (the Thesmophoria), its allusions to local forensic and judicial procedures, and its caricatures of figures such as Agathon and Cleisthenes who, like Euripides, would have... (shrink)