Scrinium Classical Antiquity

VELLACOTT, Ph., Sophocles and Oedipus. A Study of 'Oedipus Tyrannus' with a New Translation. Macmillan, London / Basingstoke, 1971. XIV,256p. Bound wrps. Pages yellowed due to paper quality. 'This is a readable and stimulating book with good things in it (such as the treatment of the stasima); one is, inevitably, often reminded of Verrall, but not always unfavourably.' (E.W. WHITTLE in The Classical Review (New Series), 1974, p.198). € 21.50 (Antiquarian)

OPSTELTEN, J.C., Sophocles en het Grieksche pessimisme. Sijthoff, Leiden, 1946. XVI,226p. Theses. Sewn. Cover and edges partly yellowed. Lower corner front cover creased. Pages a bit yellowed. € 14.50 (Antiquarian)

WALDOCK, A.J.A., Sophocles the Dramatist. Cambridge at the University Press, London (...), 1966. 1st paperback ed. (first published 1951). VIII,234p. Paperback.'Sophocles to Professor Waldock is essentially a dramatic artist, and should not be scrutinized too closely for deeper meaning. A dramatist is obliged to write for immediate impression. (...) Our attention is drawn to what Waldock neatly calls the documentary fallacy - the assumption that in drama as in life the least phenomena depend on a chain of causation which it may be necessary to investigate. In fact, a play is designed to convey one major impression in the simplest way. We are warned against pattern-making and advised that every play has its won particular function. A discussion of catharsis is appended. Waldock then examines the individual plays. He devotes much space to dramatic necessity of certain features, and describes the general impression of the plays. Waldock's style is vigorous and attractive. He makes a number of trenchant observations, which are reasonable in themselves and of value to anyone to whom they have not already occurred.' (A.D. FITTON BROWN in The Classical Review (New Series), 1953, p.152). € 14.50 (Antiquarian)

WALDOCK, A.J.A., Sophocles the Dramatist. Cambridge at the University Press, London (...), 1966. 1st paperback ed. (first published 1951). VIII,234p. Sewn. Spine with light reading trace. With initials from WGA on free endpaper.'Sophocles to Professor Waldock is essentially a dramatic artist, and should not be scrutinized too closely for deeper meaning. A dramatist is obliged to write for immediate impression. (...) Our attention is drawn to what Waldock neatly calls the documentary fallacy - the assumption that in drama as in life the least phenomena depend on a chain of causation which it may be necessary to investigate. In fact, a play is designed to convey one major impression in the simplest way. We are warned against pattern-making and advised that every play has its won particular function. A discussion of catharsis is appended. Waldock then examines the individual plays. He devotes much space to dramatic necessity of certain features, and describes the general impression of the plays. Waldock's style is vigorous and attractive. He makes a number of trenchant observations, which are reasonable in themselves and of value to anyone to whom they have not already occurred.' (A.D. FITTON BROWN in The Classical Review (New Series), 1953, p.152). From the library of the late Prof. W. Geoffrey Arnott. € 16.00 (Antiquarian)

ADAMS, S.M., Sophocles, the Playwright. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1962. Reprint 1st ed.1957. IX,182p. Cloth wrps. Wrps a bit grimy and a bit water stained. With signature from Prof. W.G. Arnott on free endpaper. Series: The Phoenix, Supplementary Vol.III. From the library of the late Prof. W. Geoffrey Arnott. € 35.00 (Antiquarian)

BUXTON, R..G.A., Sophocles. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984. 38p. Wire stitched. Series: Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics, no.16. (Rare). From the library of the late Prof. W. Geoffrey Arnott. € 17.50 (Antiquarian)

WINNINGTON-INGRAM, R.P., Sophocles. An Interpretation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (...), 1980. 1st ed. XII,346p. Paperback. Name stamp and date on free endpaper. 'This is perhaps the most important and challenging interpretation of Sophocles to appear since Karl Reinhardt's brilliant Sophokles, published in 1933. The author's purpose is 'to interpret the seven extant tragedies ... each in its own unique form, quality and theme'. (…) In a final chapter, 'Heroes and Gods', Winnington-Ingram attempts to deal with the three questions he raised before embarking on the detailed survey of the seven extant tragedies: the nature of heroism and its place in the world; the justice of divine rule; 'the status of pity in the tragic world'. The Sophoclean heroes, as he says, 'have characteristics which they share in common' – he explores in detail their 'loneliness' – but he warns against 'supposing that we can catalogue them in some simple scheme, or for that matter, easily identify a typical Sophoclean attitude toward the world of which they are members'. (…) The gods, unlike the heroes, are 'immune from disaster' but 'divine justice turns out to bear a sinister resemblance to that kind of retaliatory justice in pursuing which men themselves bring about tragic events'. In such a world pity is not to be expected from heaven (…). Pity is not a quality of the hero either, absorbed as they are in their own excessive claims on the world of men and gods. 'If the theatre of Sophocles is full of suffering, it is full of pity but it is not the pity of the gods. There is the pity of those characters who are capable of it (…), and there is the poet's own pity which is dominant and all-embracing. The books ends with a reminder that Sophocles is the 'supreme ironist', a master not just of verbal and of 'dramatic irony', but also of deeply founded irony of situation, he is the creator of a world in which (…) the man who answered the riddle of the Sphinx did not know his own parentage (…).This irony is bitter and terrible and pitiable; it is a mode of the expression of pity. (…) This is a Sophocles closer to Dodd’s 'last great exponent of the archaic world-view' than to Whitman's humanist or Knox's hero-worshipper. Not everyone will accept this picture fully, but no one can ignore the power and persuasiveness of Winnington-Ingram's case, not the least of its virtues being the importance it attaches to the choral odes, which most of us have underestimated as indicators of the poet's deepest thought. (…) Not the least of the merits of this magisterial work, the end-product of a lifetime’s study of thought, are the grace, wit and clarity with which its original viewpoints and great learning are conveyed.' (B.M.W. KNOX in The Classical Review (New Series), 1982, pp.8-12). € 29.50 (Antiquarian)

REINHARDT, K., Sophocles. Translated by H. Harvey and D. Harvey. With an introduction by H. Lloyd-Jones. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1979. XXVIII,279p. Cloth wrps. Copy offered for review by Basil Blackwell. (Rare thus).'Karl Reinhardt's magistral 'Sophocles', now published in an excellent English translation, is a must for all libraries. (...) Reinhardt analyses the plays of Sophocles one by one with a gaze directed not so much on questions of plot, character, and dramatic technique as on the relationships here displayed of man to man and man to the gods. He emphasizes the gulf in the plays between man and god - a gulf which ordinary men can bridge but not the Sophoclean hero, which is emprisoned in the isolation of his tragic fate. Sophocles' approach, however, according to Reinhardt is not static but develops from play to play; at first the characters tend simply to present their own points of view in language often bejewelled with imagery, without being able to communicate effectively with each other; but in the later masterpieces a person's ideas may be affected by what others tell him, and the language is more taut and spare. The argument about development rests on the foundations of Reinhardt's idiosyncratic chronology (...). One of the most important books on Greek tragedy ever written. Hugh Lloyd-Jones provides a useful introduction on Reinhardt's place in modern scholarship.' (W. GEOFFREY ARNOTT in Greece & Rome, 1980, pp.85-86). From the library of the late Professor W. Geoffrey Arnott. € 69.50 (Antiquarian)

SOPHOCLES, Sophoclis Cantica. Digessit O. Schroeder. Teubner, Leipzig, 1907. VI,86p. Rebound. Title vignette (handwritten) on spine. € 10.00 (Antiquarian)

VEENMAN, S., and H., VERHEIJ, (eds.), Sophokles Elektra. Tekstboek met bijlagen: Griekse tekst + vertalingen. Docentenhandleiding. Eisma, Leeuwarden, 1993. 4 parts. 292,47,32,47p. ills. Sewn / wire stitched. Corners slightly dog's eared. Uitwerking syllabus Grieks CE 1994. € 20.00 (Antiquarian)