PETRONIUS; E. Courtney: A Companion to Petronius. Pp. xii + 238. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Cased, £37.50. ISBN: 0-19-924552-5 (0-19-924594-0 pbk)

• Published in: The Classical review 2003, Vol.53 (2), p.372
• Main Author: Panayotakis, Costas
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0009-840X; 1464-3561

Before embarking on the main part of his book, C. reviews the function of verse in Encolpius narrative (there is not a lot of sympathy in his discussion here and elsewhere with Connors recent analysis of the employment of verse in Petronius), and considers the implications of Petronius choice of a rst-person narrator: although Conte and Winkler occasionally appear in footnotes in both the preliminaries and the main body of this work, C. essentially follows Becks views on Encolpius the overemotional actor, whose adventures are recounted by his sophisticated, older self in an ironical fashion that resembles Petronius attitude toward his (anti)hero. Especially useful I found C.s two brief sections on the social identity, mysterious past, and initial characterization of the main gures, although I had reservations about the unqualied manner in which he uses the anachronistic The Classical Association, 2003 373 terms heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual throughout his analysis of the text and in his conclusions. In the Introduction we are told that the purpose of the volume, which seeks to provide raw material to facilitate understanding why [C.] think[s] Petronius wrote as he did, is fundamentally historical, not aesthetic (p. 2), that its title is intended to imply a recommendation that after reading a stretch of Petronius novice users of this book should then consider that stretch in the light of[C.s] comments (p. 3), and that this book is primarily addressed to graduate students and young professors (in the American sense) (p. 4). Donald Russells new Loeb edition of Quintilian provides everything which a reader might want from a dual language edition and much that one could barely expect to nd: a new Latin text which surpasses any previously available, a lucid and accurate translation which is a pleasure to read, magnicent notes, the best brief account of Quintilians life, a masterly introduction to the work as a whole, accurate and helpful surveys of the content and sources of each of the twelve books, and almost ninety pages of indexes.R.s edition replaces the four-volume Quintilian (Loeb Classical Library Latin volumes 1247) which H. E. Butler published between 1920 and 1922.