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Fogelmark (S.) The Kallierges Pindar. A Study in Renaissance Greek Scholarship and Printing . In two volumes. Pp. xviii + 787, pls. Cologne : Jürgen Dinter , 2015. Cased, [euro]180. ISBN: 978-3-924794-60-6 .
Reviews
F.'s magnificent volumes address two different publics: Pindar specialists, who will find here a careful investigation of a crucial moment in Pindar's textual history, the 1515 editio Romana; and book historians, who will discover a remarkable case study in Renaissance book production: in fact, the quarto edition discussed is the first Greek book printed in Rome - the 'Medicean Rome' of Pope Leo X, hosting the Greek College directed by Janus Lascaris. (Curiously enough, though, F. states on p. xiii that knowledge of Greek is not necessary to read his work.)
Classical scholars know well the importance of the Renaissance in the history of text transmission, for it was at that time that the passage from handwritten medieval copies to the early printed editions took place; this often happened thanks to the passion of several educated men in Western Europe's courts, specifically in Italy; and, as far as Greek literature is concerned, thanks to a network of Greek scribes, scholars and printers, such as Zacharias Kallierges (c. 1470-1524). F.'s study sheds light on how these circles - which involved some major Greek scholars of the day, such as Marcus Musurus, and some Italian patrons like the powerful Sienese banker Agostino Chigi - had a direct influence on the shaping of first editions. Kallierges' edition is not the first edition of Pindar (the princeps was published by Aldus in Venice in 1513); however, it made available for the first time the ancient and medieval scholia on his poems.
Kallierges' 'Roman edition', on which F. has been working since 1974, has always been of particular interest: it contains a peculiar textual version of Pindar's Odes, representing to some extent the equivalent of a good manuscript. Aside from the text of the scholia, the relevance of the editio Romana to Pindar's constitutio textus has been acknowledged since the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, modern Pindar editors, like W. Christ, O. Schroeder, B. Snell, A. Turyn and recently G. Liberman (2004),...