LlbRARY OF UN.VERSITY CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO presented to the UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by Mrs. Charles Kelly SOPHOCLES CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, C. F. CLAY, MANAGER. ILontron: FETTER LANE, E.G. 50, WELLINGTON STREET. Uip>tfl: F. A. BROCKHAUS. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. JSombag atrtJ Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. [All Rights reserved.} SOPHOCLES THE TEXT OF THE SEVEN PLAYS EDITED BY SIR RICHARD I JEBB, Lirr.D. CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1906 First Edition, 1897. Reprinted 1906. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION vii OEDIPUS TYRANNUS i OEDIPUS COLONEUS 53 ANTIGONE . -117 . AJAX t .165 ELECTKA 215 TRACHINIAE 267 PHILOCTETES 313 INTRODUCTION. I. The Laurentian Manuscript of Sophocles. i. The oldest and also the best source for the text of ' Sophocles is the famous codex Laurentianus (L), numbered xxxn. 9 in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana at Florence. This MS., written on vellum, is a volume measuring \2\ by 8 inches, of 264 leaves (=528 pages). It contains: (i) The seven plays of Sophocles, which occupy leaves i 118, or 2 pp. i 236. (2) The seven plays of Aeschylus on leaves 119 189. (3) The Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, leaves 190 264. The MS. was probably written in the first half of the 1 At one time it was more generally called, as by Dindorf, the codex ' Mediceus (M). The name of the Library, Mediceo-Laurenziana,' denotes that it (i) was founded by the Medici, and (2) is adjacent to the Church of San Lorenzo, which itself was restored by members of that house. So the Marciana at Venice is named from St Mark, the Ambrosiana at Milan ' ' is the distinctive of the from St Ambrose. Laurenziana more part name ; for Cosimo de' Medici the Elder founded also the Library of San Marco at ' Florence (see below, p. xxxiii). Hence the Mediceo-Laurenziana' is often ' called simply 'Laurenziana,' but not simply Medicea'; and for the same reason the codex should be called 'Laurentianus' rather than 'Mediceus.' a Of the Agamemnon it has only vv. i 310 and 1067 1159, having lost the quire which contained vv. 31 1 1066, and also six leaves of another quire, which contained vv. 1160 1673, and Clio, i 9. viii Introduction, eleventh century. This approximate date is inferred from the general character of the writing : there is no other evidence. Minuscule writing, as seen in medieval MSS., passes through phases of development which shade into each other, but in 1 which three periods can be broadly distinguished . (1) In the earliest of these, from the ninth century to about the middle of the tenth, the minuscule hand is regular, formal, calligraphic, being an effort to adapt the ordinary cursive writing of the day to literary (especially liturgical) uses in a shape which should be comparable for beauty with the uncial character of an earlier time. (2) The second period extends from about the middle of the tenth to the middle of the thirteenth century. A more fluent style now appears alongside of the other. This new hand is more set and formal than the common cursive, but less calligraphic than the standard models of literary penman- It in books but ship. was employed, indeed, transcribing ; chiefly when the book was intended to be a working copy for every-day use by students, rather than the ornament of a library, or a volume for the service of the Church. The Laurentian MS. is an example of this style. It approximates in general character to a MS. of St Ephraem which bears the 2 date 1049 A.D. And one peculiarity which it exhibits con- firms the inference from the type of the hand. Medieval MSS. to in were usually ruled with lines guide the scribe ; and the minuscule MSS. of the ninth century the custom was to write above the line. But in the tenth century a fashion of writing under the line came in, and in the course of the eleventh century this system superseded the other. In the Laurentian MS. is line the writing sometimes above, sometimes below, the ; a circumstance which points to a time of transition, when a 1 On this subject generally, see Sir E. M. Thompson, Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography, chap. xn. a Omont, Fac-simile des plus anciens MSS. grecs de la BM, Nat. (1892), pi. 21. The Lanrentian Manuscript. ix scribe felt free to follow whichever method he found the more 1 convenient in a particular place . (3) The third period of minuscule, from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, is one of gradual change from the more exact and beautiful forms of writing to others of a more hurried and irregular kind, with a in the sixteenth growing use of contractions ; until, century, loose and straggling hands, of an almost modern type, begin to appear. It will be seen, then, that the date assigned to the Laurentian MS. rests on grounds which, if purely palaeo- graphical, are definite. 2. The MS. was produced in a regular workshop or scrip- torium at Byzantium, whence it came to Florence. The Sophocles is contained in 14 quires of 4 sheets (or 8 leaves) each, followed by one quire of 6 leaves, that number sufficing to complete the text. With regard to ruling, the first quire differs from the rest. On the outer sheet (fol. i and fol. 8) each page has 39 close-set lines : the other three 2 lines. other sheets (ff. 7) have 40 In the quires, each page is ruled with 38 lines for the text. Two lines at the top of each page, and three lines at the bottom, are ruled at intervals twice as wide as the spaces between the text-lines. These five extra lines were intended to receive scholia ; for which ample room is also marked off in the margins by two pairs of vertical lines, one pair on each side of the text-space. A peculiar feature of the MS. is the laxity with which the scribe treats the ruling. He almost always exceeds the number of 38 verses on a page, often writing as many as 48. He evidently knew how far he might encroach, in any given for scholia a fact place, on the room available ; which makes it probable that there were scholia in the MS. which he copied. 1 Sir E. M. Thompson, Introduction to the autotype Facsimile of the Laurentian MS., published in 1885 by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, p. 7. x Introduction. 3. The Sophocles and the Apollonius are by the same hand, which wrote also the first quire of Aeschylus (to Persae This 705), i.e., leaves i 126 and 190 264 of the MS. ' writer is known as the first scribe '. The rest of Aeschylus (leaves 127 189) is by 'the second scribe', with whom we are not here concerned. The first scribe writes an easy and flexible hand, with only occasional stiffness (as at the beginning of the Aj'ax). The letters have a slight leaning to the right (the cursive tendency); and the general style of the writing is that which marks the second period of minuscule, as described 1 above. He uses very few contractions . But the professional scribe acted under the supervision of a more scholarly person, who controlled the work. The scribe wrote the text of Sophocles, with the title and colophon ' the of each play, the Dramatis Personae ', and Arguments. His supervisor then compared the MS. with the archetype, in corrected it, and wrote the scholia the spaces prepared for them. Hence he is usually designated by the letter S as the 'diorthotes' the first (scholiast), or (i.e., and chief corrector). S wrote the scholia in a character which combines the ' uncial with the minuscule, and is known as semi-uncial'. In MSS. of that period the semi-uncial was often used for ' Dramatis Personae while the of scholia, titles, ', etc., body the text was written in minuscule. But S made occasional use of minuscule also, viz., in supplying verses which the scribe had omitted, and (as a rule) in noting variants. Hence the hand of S can be compared with the hand of the scribe in two different in the semi-uncial used phases ; habitually by 1 The examples which occur are mostly in words to which contraction was commonly applied in biblical or liturgical MSS., such as varfip, fJ-^rrip, TroX/1 for ir6\iv in T. vios, 0e6s, avdpwiros, ovpav6s, Trvev/jLa. O. 104 (f. 34^), and eXavdav*- (t\dv6a.i>fv) in El. 914 (f. 16 b) are exceptional. So, too, are ib. ir&pvov (irapOtvov) in Tr. 148 (f. 66), and irapvov 1219 (f. 78^). In the scholia (written by S) contractions are far more frequent. The two principal hands in L. xi S, and occasionally (as in titles, 'Dramatis Personae', etc.) the scribe or in the minuscule used the by ; habitually by scribe, and occasionally by S. The general difference is well marked. The hand of the scribe is freer and more flexible : that of S is delicate and clear, but stiffer and more and his when descend below the formal ; letters, they line, are longer than those of the scribe. 4. Errors in the text are sometimes corrected by the hand of the scribe 1 sometimes that of S*. The task of , by supplying verses which had been accidentally omitted is also shared 8 between them . The various readings in the margin are nearly all due to S. These variants appear to be set down, not as corrections of readings in the text, but rather as alternatives which the writer thought worthy of record : the prefixed yp.