De novis libris iudicia / P.S. Gerbrandy / 64 (2011) 163-165 163

Trachsel, A. 2007. La Troade: un paysage et son héritage littéraire. Les commentaires antiques sur la Troade, leur genèse et leur infl uence (Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana, 28). Basel, Schwabe Verlag. xx, 501 p. Pr. €40.50 (hb).

If literature is about the lives of human beings, it is not surprising that literary texts abound in descriptions of the environments in which the actions of the pro- tagonists take place. Because few texts have been read, discussed, and imitated as extensively as was the in the course of more than two and a half millennia, it was only to be expected that many readers have refl ected upon the landscape evoked by the poet. Tourism, movies like (2004), and a never-ending fl ow of archaeological and philological publications testify to the continuity of the fasci- nation exerted by the on scholars and the general public. Alexandra Trach- sel’s book, a revised version of her thesis defended in Neuchâtel in 2005, shows how poets, geographers, and historians in Classical Antiquity laid the foundations for later discussions on the supposed locations of ’s tales. In the Introduction Trachsel indicates the problems involved in studying the spatial backdrop of the Iliad ’s story, the most pressing of these being the need to distinguish between the literary landscape as painted by the poet (“l’espace litté- raire”) and the historical territory called Troad in Minor (“Troade historique/ réelle”), which already in archaic times was assumed to be the location of the Tro- jan War (xvi). It is equally important not to confuse ancient perceptions of this region with modern archaeological fi ndings. Trachsel does not examine the com- plicated questions concerning the poem’s author and takes the transmitted text more or less for granted, occasionally discussing textual variants off ered by scholi- asts or scraps of papyrus. Given the Iliad and its tremendous reputation in the classical world, it is only a matter of course that writers in all kinds of literary genres have tried to reconstruct the Homeric landscape: “Chaque auteur en quelque sorte sa propre Troade, comme il aura sa propre lecture du texte homéri- que” (xviii). Th e fi rst commentator to be studied is Hellanicus (probably circa 400 BC), while the fi nal chapter deals with the Second Sophistic movement. Wit- nesses like the Emperor Julian and Quintus Smyrnaeus are not included in this project, because of fundamental changes in the outlook on the Homeric heritage occurring in Late Antiquity, as Trachsel presumes. However, she admits the con- tinuous tradition of literary response to the Troad, even in the Byzantine period. Th e fi rst chapter is devoted to the Iliad itself. Although Trachsel is aware of the epic’s fi ctional character, she thoroughly tries to reconstruct the landscape it seems to presuppose, as many scholars did before. Rather predictably, she sketches a spatial structure in which the battlefi eld, or the plain, lies between the citadel of Troy and the encampment of the Greeks on the seashore, while the rivers Simoeis and (or Xanthus) form the lateral limits. Inevitably, Trachsel

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852510X456516 164 De novis libris iudicia / P.S. Gerbrandy / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 163-165 is confronted by some notorious inconsistencies in the text as we have it, for instance the presence of the Greek wall, built in Book 7 but apparently absent in Book 16, and the position of the rivers, usually given as fl owing parallel with the plain in between (e.g. 6.1-4) but sometimes represented as merging (e.g. 5.773-7). However ingeniously Trachsel tries to solve these problems, in the end she has to concede “que l’espace troyen ne peut pas être représenté de manière absolument cohérente’ (78). A complicated question she does not embark upon is whether the Iliad ’s narrator presupposes a spatial image of the Troad at all. Th e epic is extremely vague as regards scale and distance: it remains hard to envision chasing Hector three times round a ‘broad-alleyed’ (εὐρυάγυια) city housing thousands of soldiers with their families and servants. But even if the narrator seems not to be very interested in describing a coherent spatial background, this does not preclude his audience from forming an inner picture of it, of course. In the second chapter Trachsel discusses the works of several writers from the Hellenistic period, starting off with Hellanicus, who lived well before that era but might be considered as a predecessor. Th e consequences of this decision, moti- vated by the fact that the Greek world view broadened spectacularly in the wake of Alexander’s conquests, are considerable: the tragic poets, Herodotus, Th ucy- dides, Plato and Aristotle are merely touched on, notwithstanding their enormous infl uence on the reception of Homer. And if Euripides is omitted because he does not seem to incorporate geographical facts obtained from other sources than the mythological tradition, why not leave out other authors who appear to do the same, like Apollonius, Callimachus, Virgil and—much later—Dionysius Periegetes? For all that, this chapter is important because of Trachsel’s meticulous analysis of some tiny fragments, found in , Athenaeus and the scholiasts (to name only a few sources), ascribed to authors as obscure as Palaiphatos, Dionysius Scytobrachion, Hegesianax, Demetrius of Scepsis and Polemon of Ilion. Atten- tion is also paid to the Alexandrian poets Apollonius, Callimachus, Th eocritus, and Lycophron, as well as to a badly preserved fragment by Nicander, who sup- posedly lived in Pergamum. Many authors felt the necessity to bring Homer’s text in conformity with the historical landscape as they knew it by consulting literary sources or by autopsy. Th e third chapter leads us to Rome during the reign of the Julian-Claudian dynasty; Trachsel even dubs the period “l’époque d’Auguste” (382), in spite of the fact that a section is devoted to Diodorus, whose work was published before Octa- vian came to power, while the last author mentioned is Lucan, who wrote under the rule of Nero. Oddly enough, she seems to believe Lucan was an Augustan poet like Virgil and Ovid. Discussed are passages in Latin from Livy, Virgil (A.), Lucan, Ovid (Ep., Ars, Met., Fast.), and Pomponius Mela, and from Diodorus, Dionysius