Bryn Mawr Classical Review

I am sincerely grateful to Prof. Hummel for the attention she paid to my book (BMCR 2009.12.32). However, I would like to point out a perplexing feature of her review that, in my opinion, affects the whole evaluation of my work. While offering a thorough analysis of the first two chapters, dealing with the cultural roots of Wilamowitz's method, Prof. Hummel neither presents to the reader nor discusses at all the content of the third part, of which only the bare titles of the paragraphs are listed in four lines. Now, it is in this section that I try to illustrate the relationship between Wilamowitz's textual criticism and the hermeneutical and cultural background presented in the two previous chapters (admittedly wide, but functional to my aim and not simply a "paraphrase empathique"), by examining the approach of Wilamowitz to a selection of difficult textual problems of the Choephoroe. Since no information is given to readers about such a relevant part of the book, it is not easy to see how they could appreciate the core of my research, which is primarily aimed at the evaluation of the scholar's treatment of the Greek text.

I would also like to add that in the fourth and last part of my study I do not briefly state that "les présupposés culturels et historiques de l'éditeur du texte eschyléen impliquent ainsi les activités complémentaires de verstehen, erklären, sich versenken". On the contrary, I point out that in the last part of his career Wilamowitz progressively abandoned his previous global and omnicomprehensive hermeneutic of the ancient text to move towards the field of the Textgeschichte. In other words, this last chapter is far from being a mere summary of the first two.