If Iliad 7 is too often overlooked (see previous review, CR 73 [2023], doi:10.1017/S0009840X22002591), Iliad 21 has always had a prominent place in the understanding and appropriations of Homeric poetry. The Theomachy in particular has had a long and turbulent reception history that begins (at least) with Xenophanes’ criticism of the Homeric gods and their subsequent defence by Theagenes of Rhegium (ὃς πρῶτος ἔγραψε περὶ Ὁμήρου, T4 Biondi) in the sixth century bce. That criticism of the divine and its various (often allegorising) defences was refracted throughout antiquity in – among others – the Derveni Papyrus, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Longinus, Philostratus, Porphyry and on into modernity: ‘The Theomachy … is one of the very few passages in the Iliad that can be pronounced poetically bad’ in Walter Leaf's opinion, or in Derek Walcott's response, ‘“forget the gods,” Omeros growled, “and read the rest”’ (Omeros LVI.III). These contested receptions have all been concerned with the ways in which Iliad 21 explores and problematises the quarrelsome nature of gods for whom nothing is at stake – and who see little point in fighting over ephemeral, leaf-like mortals (21.462–7) – in an epic where for mortals everything is (μή με κτεῖν᾽, 21.95). Iliad 21 is deeply concerned with what is owed to precarious mortals, both to the suppliant in the famous scene between Achilles and Lycaon and to the dead in Scamander's threat to obliterate the memory of Achilles beneath his rushing waters.
This comprehensive and learned commentary, the collaborative product of longstanding Basler Kommentar contributors Coray and Krieter-Spiro, offers an excellent account of Iliad 21, its place within the poem and some of its contested history. The two volumes follow the standard series format, with the addition of a cross-section of various notes within the commentary organised by theme (‘Götterkämpfe’), character (‘Apollon’) and poetic form (‘Gleichnisse’) at the beginning of Faszikel 2 (p. 13). This helpful innovation, adopted in more recent Basler Kommentar volumes (e.g. on Iliad 14, 16, 18 and 4), allows users to read across the commentary format in a different way and will hopefully continue – perhaps even in an expanded form – in the volumes to come. The standard of production is high, with hardbound volumes that are a pleasure to use and that contain astonishingly few corrigenda given their great length and detail (I noted only three, none of which was significant, and all of which will no doubt be fixed in the forthcoming English translation). The commentary has all the many strengths that we have come to expect from the Basler Kommentar series: a wealth of bibliography supports extensive notes on the place of Iliad 21 within the poem, the role of the gods in epic and the fraught reception of the Theomachy, along with detailed accounts of textual problems, linguistic phenomena, metrical form, Homeric ‘realia’, sacrificial praxis and more. Coray and Krieter-Spiro's commentary is the new standard on Iliad 21 and a volume that all readers of Homeric epic – regardless of their level – will want to consult at length.
The focus of the commentary is above all philological. Detailed explanations of word-formation, morphology, ‘meaning’ and etymology constitute the majority of notes (for an illustrative example see the exhaustive treatment of διιπετέος ποταμοῖο, n. 268). This close attention to the individual words of Iliad 21 is particularly rewarding when such notes identify the usage-patterns of a word or phrase in ways that are interpretatively significant. We learn, for example, that the use of ἡμέτερος for ἐμός is characteristic of Achilles’ way of speaking (n. 60–1); that Λαο- prefixes cluster in the names of Priam's family (n. 85, one wonders in new ways about Ἀχί-λαος …); that the epithet φιλοπτόλεμος only appears in Iliad 16–23, a period of intense fighting that will – and must – come to an end (n. 86); that Hephaestus is only κυλλοποδίων in the Iliad (n. 331–2) and not, as we might expect, in the Odyssey and the second song of Demodocus; and that the specific form νηπύτιος clusters in Iliad 20 and 21 (n. 410–11, why?). This new commentary repays slow and careful study with these and similar suggestive insights into the manifold patterns of Homeric language.
In terms of its sheer detail and the inclusion of a wide range of up-to-date scholarship, Coray and Krieter-Spiro's commentary represents a significant improvement on N. Richardson's Cambridge commentary, the previous go-to for Iliad 21. Readers will, however, want to keep Richardson handy when it comes to questions of interpretation and the articulation of the various possibilities of reading epic (see CR 73 [2023], doi:10.1017/S0009840X22002591 for a fuller account of the limits of interpretation in the Basler Kommentar). To give one broad example, the Basler Kommentar tends to minimise the encounters between Achilles and the two Trojans, Lycaon and Asteropaeus, in Iliad 21 by framing them as minor, introductory moments (‘in der ersten Phase’, n. 1–327) of a wider narrative movement towards ‘Flußkampf’ (e.g. p. 8 and nn. 1–327, 211–327, 305–6). That decision allows the commentary to trace productively the ways in which each encounter anticipates and increases the anger of Skamander, but such framing also risks subsuming Lycaon and Asteropaeus beneath the waters of the Scamander in ways analogous to the river's attempt to blot out Achilles (21.305–23). The meetings of Achilles and Lycaon and Asteropaeus raise their own deep questions about the ethics of an epic in which care for another can be at once expressed (ἀλλά, φίλος, θάνε καὶ σύ, 106) and denied (ἐνταυθοῖ νῦν κεῖσο μετ᾽ ἰχθύσιν, οἵ σ᾽ ὠτειλὴν | αἷμ᾽ ἀπολιχμήσονται ἀκηδέες, 122–3), and where an appeal to ‘pity’ (74) can be rejected by Achilles shortly before he relies on the same appeal himself (273). Reading such moments with, and between, the new Basler Kommentar and Richardson's Cambridge volume will allow readers to develop more complex responses, and we are fortunate to have two commentaries that complement each other well.
Will those readers be able to get the most out of this excellent account of Iliad 21? One of the difficulties of the Basler Kommentar series is its palimpsestic form; notes are written over the traces of other, earlier notes in previous volumes, to which readers are directed for fuller explication and bibliography. To follow the Basler Kommentar's ever-expanding and deeply imbricated web of commentary, readers will need all of the – expensive – volumes in the series, along with at least A. Kelly's Referential Commentary and Lexicon to Homer, Iliad VIII (2007) and M. Stoevesandt's Feinde – Gegner – Opfer (2004), both of which are cited frequently throughout (and are similarly expensive). Those without access to a well-resourced and well-stocked research library will therefore struggle to take full advantage of each individual volume because none can be used entirely in isolation. This organisational principle undoubtedly avoids duplicating previous labour and frees up space in each commentary for new information. But it also comes at a certain cost for those without access to the entire Basler Kommentar series as it prevents each individual volume from becoming a comprehensive point of reference in its own right.
Beyond a simple question of usage and cost, the palimpsestic layering of notes across the Gesamtkommentar also risks missing up-to-date scholarship. Take, for example, the note on ἀμύμων in this volume (n. 546). The interpretation of this epithet has of course long been a crux of Homeric scholarship, and I expect that most of us would want students encountering it for the first time to be directed to A.A. Parry's Blameless Aegisthus of 1973 (perhaps alongside the powerful critique of Parry by F.M. Combellack in AJPh 103 [1982], 361–72). In Coray and Krieter-Spiro's note on 21.546, however, the epithet ἀμύμων is identified as ‘eines der häufigsten generischen Epitheta der ep. Sprache’ (itself a repetition of the Basler Kommentar on Il. 1.92) and glossed, before readers are directed to a note on Il. 6.22–3 in the corresponding Basler Kommentar volume for the debate around the meaning of this word and its etymology. No bibliography is provided. Should students follow up the reference to Iliad 6, they will find another note pointing out how frequent this term is, which then directs them to R. Janko's note on 13.641–2 in his superlative Cambridge commentary. Only once a student reaches that point will they find mention of both A.A. Parry and Combellack. In a striking deferral of explanation, it is only by following the web of commentary from this Iliad 21 volume, through the Basler Kommentar to Iliad 6, to Janko's commentary on Iliad 13–16 that we find the basic bibliography that a student would need. This practice of deferral also risks missing newer publications. In a recent article (Ramus 44 [2015], 155–83) D. Elmer has offered a sophisticated account of the ethics of language use in Homeric epic – and of the different ways in which the Iliad and Odyssey conceptualise the relationship between language and meaning –, where the epithet ἀμύμων is used as a central case study. That article does not appear in either the note on 21.546 or the bibliography, and since it was not available to either Janko's commentary (1992) or the Basler Kommentar volume to Iliad 6 (2008), it does not feature there either. The chains of citation within the Basler Kommentar save labour, but they can also elide anything published after the foundational note to which all later notes refer.
I should say that these minor points about price and usage pale in comparison to the staggering breadth and wealth of scholarship on offer throughout this new commentary on Iliad 21. Thanks to it, and other volumes in the series, it is now possible to obtain quickly an overview of almost any question, problem or dead-end in Homeric scholarship over the last two centuries. I very much look forward to further volumes, to the completed Gesamtkommentar, and hopefully in time to a full and detailed set of indexes that will allow readers of Homer to use this monumental work to its fullest extent. For now, we have an excellent commentary on Iliad 21 that in its careful and methodical readings will encourage further work on this book and the Homeric gods, and new responses to an epic whose tale of care and mutual obligation in the face of death and disinterest is urgently needed.
