H. Rodríguez Somolinos Madrid, CSIC, 1998, 381 pp. (Diccionario Griego-Español. Anejo IV) El léxico de los poetas lesbios English Summary: The main objective of this book is to provide a wide panorama of the vocabulary used by Sappho and Alcaeus, the only two Lesbian poets whose work is relatively well-known to us today, in an attempt to cover, or at least complement, certain areas of study which have received little attention in the modern literature. It attempts also to bring to linguistic and literary studies certain data and ideas which, coming from the vocabulary, help to characterise both the language and the poetic genre of the two authors, delving into their origins and placing them within the wider context of archaic poetry in general. The material I have taken into consideration is basically the non-Homeric vocabulary used by Sappho and Alcaeus. This is due to the fact that the vocabulary used by Homer before the two poets in question here has been widely studied throughout the debate on the character of the language of the Lesbian poets that began during the last century. The traditional idea, now a thing of the past, saw in this language the vernacular dialect spoken on Lesbos during the period of Sappho and Alcaeus. Today, there is general agreement as to their language being a poetic dialect of a mixed and artificial nature, with an obvious influence from epic poetry in both its phonetics and morphology and its phraseology, style and, naturally, vocabulary. In recent decades, the discussion has turned towards the possibility of identifying in his poems traces of an Aeolic poetic tradition previous to our two authors. Since the 1960's, a series of scholars have attempted to contribute specific data to this idea, born of studies performed somewhat earlier on the oral nature, the language and the sources of non-Homeric epic poetry, especially Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. The existence of an Aeolic poetic tradition might in theory explain not only certain coincidences between Sappho and Alcaeus, on the one hand, and Hesiod and the Hymns on the other, but also coincidences with Homer that to date had been considered imitations. It might also clarify at least part of the Homeric aeolisms and lesbisms of choral lyric. In view of the above, it has seemed to me that it would be interesting to centre attention on the non-Homeric vocabulary of Sappho and Alcaeus. This material is divided into two major blocks: the traditional vocabulary and the new. The traditional vocabulary is in turn distributed between the two initial chapters. Chapter 1 studies words not used by Homer but documented in hexametric poetry from Hesiod to the period in which Sappho and Alcaeus were active. The interest of this part of the vocabulary is obvious, specially as regards knowledge of the sources used by Sappho and Alcaeus, the non-Homeric poetic traditions by which they were inspired and their preferences within such traditions. The objective is, therefore, to see how much there is common in post-Homeric poetry - or part of it - if indeed there is anything, and exactly what this is. Chapter 2 deals with the vocabulary found in lyric prior to Sappho and Alcaeus, or strictly contemporaneous with them. This chapter attempts to trace the possible connections between, or innovations common to, the mixed-choral, iambic and elegiac genres, on the one hand, and the Lesbian monody - isolated in space and time and as a poetic genre - on the other. The second part of the work is oriented in completely the opposite direction and is dedicated to vocabulary documented for the first time in the Lesbian fragments, which for the sake of convenience I refer to as «new». Two basic groups may be distinguished within this large corpus of vocabulary: the hapax legomena and the words documented in later literature. The hapax, some 90 in total, are studied individually and in detail in chapter 3. The objective is to determine their most interesting linguistic features, their possible dialectal origin, their parallels and, in the case of the derivatives and compounds, their models and mechanisms of formation. In addition, in not a few cases they pose problems of form or meaning, which I have attempted to contribute to solving. Chapter 4 includes material documented for the first time in the Lesbians. This particularly large body of material is interesting, since it is not at all frequent for such a large amount of new vocabulary to be incorporated by authors of the period, and for it to be conserved in such a fragmentary manner. Basically, I have attempted to trace the progressive incorporation into Greek literature and language of certain elements, both lexical and linguistic and of other types. I also deal with the presence of poetic elements that might be interpreted as traditional. This group of words, some three hundred and fifty of them, has been classified on the basis of two main criteria: linguistic and semantic. A third criterion of great importance: language and literary levels, has been applied to the extent possible simultaneously to both. I include also a section on dialectal and archaic terms; these are studied together since it is not always easy to distinguish one group from the other, nor are they at all mutually exclusive concepts. They have some interest as regards the search for traces of the poetry prior to Sappho and Alcaeus. This is a lexicological study which, when necessary, makes use also of critical, linguistic, etymological, metric and literary information. In certain cases of particular interest I provide a brief history of the word in Greek literature, adding numerous literary and epigraphic quotes not included in the dictionaries. All the above has shown that the Lesbian monody makes use of lexical material of widely varying types, containing elements of widely different origin and used in very different ways. Alongside the strictly dialectal we find elements belonging to common Greek; alongside the traditional, the innovative; along with the literary, the colloquial; and with the poetic the most vulgar. This heterogeneity is in keeping with that shown by the phonetics and morphology, and even surpasses it. It has been seen that the Lesbians were inspired by traditions and other sources independent from Homer, and that they conserve interesting poetic archaisms that had undoubtedly been lost some time before in speech. In this respect, I believe that certain of the data provided may support those studies which defend the idea of an ancient Aeolic poetic tradition. Comparison with the other lyrical genres suggests that in general the monody is, at least as regards vocabulary, quite independent. The volume of new vocabulary is significant and shows numerous innovations in both morphology and semantics. To a large extent it approximates to intellectual prose, but also shows a popular, every-day and colloquial level which lives together with a type of poetry of predominantly epic influence.