The critical edition with translation and commentary of the Hellenica of Oxyrhynchus by Egidia Occhipinti, who in 2016 published a book devoted to the historian of Oxyrhynchus (The Hellenica Oxyrhynchia and Historiography: New Research Perspectives (Leiden)), is the first in Italy: the annotated translation by Giorgio Bonamente (Studio sulle Elleniche di Ossirinco: saggio sulla storiografia della prima metà del IV sec. a. C. (Perugia 1973)) did not, in fact, present a critical text. I do not have sufficient philological and papyrological expertise to comment on the quality of the proposed critical text, which is not devoid of personal proposals. However, Occhipinti insistently repeats that a safe reconstruction of the text is a central step in her volume, and this seems to me a commendable and courageous approach.
The introduction is documented, concise but comprehensive. Perhaps it would have been useful to address the much-discussed problem of the work’s authorship a little more thoroughly: working on the Hellenica without considering this issue does not seem appropriate. In the introduction there are concise briefings on the current status quaestionis; but perhaps in the commentary, when encountering significant clues, on several occasions it would have been appropriate to deal with the issue. For instance, the remarks on p. 35 about the cultural milieu of the Anonymous point towards Cratippus. In general, the attribution to Cratippus does not receive particular attention from Occhipinti (Plutarch’s summary of his work, On the Fame of the Athenians 345c–e, is mentioned only once, on p. 65, without discussion). However, Occhipinti points out (and I agree with her) that the attribution to Theopompus is not convincing: on the one hand, she notes the total absence of the moralism which was typical of the historian of Chios; on the other, the style does not seem compatible with that of Theopompus, to which Occhipinti reserves special attention (29ff.). The part of the introduction where Occhipinti compares the Anonymous with his predecessors, especially Thucydides, is particularly interesting; she focuses also on the innovations of the historian, such as his interest in constitutional structures and federalism.
The commentary is comprehensive, despite being to some extent selective both in the choice of topics that deserve examination and in the bibliographical references.
Much attention is paid, I would say appropriately, to stylistic aspects, though their usefulness on the issue of authorship, in my opinion very important, is perhaps not adequately emphasized in the commentary. Occhipinti proposes that the papyrus of Theramenes (P.Mich. 5982) and P.Oxy. II 302 and XI 1365 belong to the Hellenica, without, however, arguing it in depth. As for the former, I fully agree: after all, the hypothesis had already been put forward, though without particular insistence, by the papyrus’ editors, H.C. Youtie and R. Merkelbach (‘Ein Michigan-Papyrus über Theramenes’, ZPE 2 (1968), 61–69). Style, bias, tendency and topics covered (not only Theramenes’ speech in the assembly during the negotiations with Sparta after the capitulation of Athens, of which P.Mich. 5982 is the only witness, but also military matters emerging from fragments of the same papyrus) seem to correspond to the characteristics of the text of the Anonymous.
The translation is not always flawless and sometimes suffers from a lack of adherence to the text. I limit myself to two particularly significant examples. At XIX, 3, κ[αὶ τὰ μὲν] ἴδια διϵτέλουν [ο]ὕτω διοικούμϵνοι, τὸ δὲ τῶ[ν Βοι-] ωτῶν τοῦ[τ]ον ἦν τὸν τρόπον συντϵταγμένον is translated ‘amministravano in questo modo anche gli affari interni [di ciascuna città], mentre la modalità stabilita per la conduzione della politica beotica era la seguente’, that is, ‘they also administered the internal affairs [of each city] in this way, while the established mode of conducting Boeotian politics was as follows’. But the passage clearly contrasts, in a federal structure that the Anonymous is accurately describing, the level of the individual communities affiliated with the federation with the federal level of the ethnos of the Boeotians; thus, a translation of τὰ μὲν] ἴδια as ‘the local affairs’ and of τὸ δὲ τῶ[ν Βοι-] ωτῶν as ‘the federation, league of the Boeotians’ would perhaps have better rendered what the Anonymous means. At XXI, 1, οἱ δὲ πϵρὶ τὸν Ἀνδροκλϵίδαν κα[ὶ τὸν Ἰσμηνίαν ἐ]σπούδαζον ἐκπολϵμῶσαι τὸ ἔθνος [πρὸς τοὺς Λακϵδα]ιμονίους is translated ‘Gli uomini di Androclide e Ismenia si adoperavano per spingere in guerra la popolazione [beotica] contro gli Spartani’, that is, ‘Androclides’ and Ismenias’ men worked to push the [Boeotian] people into war against the Spartans’. But ethnos here is not generically ‘people’; it means the Boeotian federal state, namely, ‘the ethnos of the Boeotians’; thus a better translation is again ‘the federation, the league’. In an author particularly sensitive to the topic of federalism, attention to traces of federal terminology is especially important. Again, at IX, 1, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ δημοτικοὶ is translated ‘the majority of the population and the democrats’, but in fact this rather seems to me an hendiadys and thus to be translated as ‘the democratic majority’: in any case, the presentation of Athenian factions in the early fourth century poses particularly complex problems, even from a definitional point of view.
A small final observation of a linguistic and methodological nature: Occhipinti misuses the concepts of ‘verosimiglianza’ and ‘plausibilità’, which have no historical value, since the historian does not go in search of possible reconstructions, but of provable reconstructions. This is a purely semantic issue, but the argumentation is in my opinion weakened by it. In conclusion, one can disagree with some choices, but the volume is a valuable working tool, especially in the area of Italian studies as it fills the gaps mentioned in the opening.
