SCHOLIA, COMMENTARIES, and LEXICA on SPECIFIC LITERARY WORKS 2 Scholia, Commentaries, and Lexica on Specific Literary Works

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SCHOLIA, COMMENTARIES, and LEXICA on SPECIFIC LITERARY WORKS 2 Scholia, Commentaries, and Lexica on Specific Literary Works 18 SCHOLIA, COMMENTARIES, AND LEXICA ON SPECIFIC LITERARY WORKS 2 Scholia, Commentaries, and Lexica on Specific Literary Works 2.1 ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL POETRY This category includes the most famous and most often cited scholia. By far the most important are the Homer scholia, but those on Pindar and the Attic drama- tists are also significant. 2.1.1 Homer Ancient scholarship on Homer was extensive and of high quality, for the best scholars of antiquity devoted much of their time and energy to the Homeric poems. Work on Homer that could be described as scholarship goes back at least to the classical period and probably to the sixth century bc, and editing the text of Homer was one of the main tasks of the first Alexandrian scholars. Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus probably all produced editions of the Iliad and Odyssey, and Aristarchus wrote extensive commentaries, while Zenodotus and Aristophanes compiled glossaries of primarily Homeric words. In addition, the early and persistent use of Homer as a school text meant that there was a tradi- tion of school exegesis that reached back as far as the classical period. Though none of the very early work on Homer survives in its original form, a surprising amount is preserved in various later compilations, so we often know, for example, the read- ings of several different Alexandrian scholars for a particular passage, and even some of the arguments behind these readings (although the arguments preserved in later sources cannot always be assumed to be those of the editor himself). Two principal sources for the ancient scholarship on Homer survive: the scholia and Eustathius’ commentaries, both of which are gigantic works filling many vol- umes in modern editions. There are also some smaller works, some of which are more valuable than others. 2.1.1.1 Scholia Most of the old scholia to the Iliad fall into three groups: A, bT, and D. The A scholia come from the margins of the most famous Iliad manuscript, Venetus A (tenth century), where they were entered systematically by a single scribe. (A scholia are also found in other manuscripts, including those whose scholia fall pri- marily into one of the other categories, for they contain material that was widespread 2.1.1.1 SCHOLIA 19 long before the writing of Venetus A. They are, however, defined by their occur- rence in that manuscript: a scholion found elsewhere is considered to be an A scholion if it duplicates material from Venetus A.1) The origins of the A scholia are clearer than is the case with most scholia, for at the end of almost every book the scribe added a subscription indicating their source: paravkeitai ta; !Aristonivkou Shmei÷a kai; ta; Diduvmou Peri; th÷" !Aristarceivou diorqwvsew", tina; de; kai; ejk th÷" !Iliakh÷" prosw/diva" @Hrwdianou÷ kai; ejk tou÷ Nikavnoro" Peri; stigmh÷" “Written beside [the text] are Aristonicus’ ‘Signs’ and Didymus’ ‘On the Aristarchean edition’, and also some extracts from Herodian’s ‘Iliadic prosody’ and from Nicanor’s ‘On punc- tuation’.” The principal basis of the A scholia is therefore the four works cited in this subscription (all of which are now lost except insofar as they are preserved in the scholia), but it is unlikely that the scribe who wrote it was actually copying from the works themselves. Rather his source, or more likely his source’s source, was a compilation of these four works (and some other material) probably made around the fourth century ad and known today as the “Viermännerkommentar” or VMK. All four elements of the VMK represent Alexandrian scholarship to a signifi- cant extent. Aristonicus’ treatise on signs, composed in the Augustan period, was a compilation of excerpts from one of Aristarchus’ commentaries and from other works, focusing on critical signs. Didymus’ work, probably also from the Augustan period but later than that of Aristonicus (which Didymus probably used), was a compilation based primarily on Aristarchus’ commentaries, though his focus was on textual variants. Herodian’s treatise on Homeric accentuation, from the late second century ad, also drew heavily on Aristarchus’ commentaries, and Nicanor’s work on punctuation, from the first half of the second century ad, was based on earlier works including those of the Alexandrians. The A scholia are thus a major source of information about the opinions of Aristarchus and, to a lesser extent, other Alexandrian scholars; they contain more than a thousand explicit references to Aristarchus. They are of crucial importance for our knowledge of the text of Homer, the goals and methods of Alexandrian scholarship, and ancient systems of accentuation, punctuation, etc. The A scholia also contain material that probably does not derive from VMK. This information is more interpretive in nature and is related to material found in the bT scholia; A scholia of this type are also called exegetical scholia and as such are grouped with the bT scholia. The bT scholia are so called because they are found in manuscript T (eleventh century) and in the descendants of the lost manuscript b (6th century). They con- tain some Alexandrian material (much of it attributable to Didymus) but seem to 1. Except that identification as a D scholion takes precedence over identification as an A scholion, so material found in the main D-scholia manuscripts is considered to be D-scholia material even if it also occurs in A. Thus the different groups of scholia are grouped hierarchically in the order D, A, bT, other, and material is assigned to the first of these groups in which it is found. It is not accidental that this hierarchy matches the chronological order of creation of the earliest elements of each group. 20 SCHOLIA, COMMENTARIES, AND LEXICA ON SPECIFIC LITERARY WORKS come more immediately from a commentary of the late antique period (known as “c”), of which b produced a popular and T a more scholarly version. These scholia are also known as the exegetical scholia, because they are concerned primarily with exegesis rather than textual criticism. They include extensive extracts from the@Omhrika; zhthvmata of Porphyry and the ë@Omhrika; problhvmata of Heraclitus (see 2.1.1.3). Until recently the bT scholia were thought to be much less valuable than the A scholia (whose worth has been recognized since the eighteenth century), because of the limited extent to which they can aid in establishing the text of the Homeric poems. In the past few decades, however, an increasing interest in an- cient literary criticism has brought these scholia into new prominence, and they are currently at the center of modern work on ancient Homeric scholarship. The D scholia are unfortunately named after Didymus, with whom they are now known to have no connection; they are also known as “scholia minora” or “scholia vulgata.” They are the largest group of Homeric scholia, and our earliest manuscript evidence for them is older than that for the other types of scholia, for the chief witnesses to the D scholia are manuscripts Z and Q, which date to the ninth and eleventh centuries respectively. D scholia are also found in a wide range of other manuscripts, including A and T, where they can be identified by their resemblance to notes found in Z, Q, or other manuscripts not part of the A or bT traditions. Many D scholia are very short and appear as interlinear glosses in A (and other manuscripts), but others are more substantial and take their place in the margins of A. The D scholia have diverse origins and form a heterogeneous group, but there is no doubt that much of the material in them is very old, for there are remarkable similarities between the D scholia and Homeric scholarship found on papyri; in fact such similarities are much more frequent with the D scholia than with A or bT scholia. One major component of the D scholia is lexicographical, consisting of short definitions or explanations of difficult words. Many of these definitions can also be found in papyrus glossaries and/or as marginalia or interlinear glosses in papyrus texts of Homer, for they come from an ancient vulgate tradition of interpretation. The basis of this tradition goes back to the schoolrooms of the clas- sical period, so that it predates the Alexandrians and represents the oldest surviv- ing stratum of Homeric scholarship. Other components of the D scholia include mythological explanations, plot summaries, and prose paraphrases; these too are paralleled in the papyri and must be ancient, though they probably do not go back as far as the lexicographical element. The D scholia have the distinction of existing in a number of medieval manu- scripts as a self-standing commentary, without the text of Homer; they have thus reversed the path usually taken by scholia, since a self-standing work has been created out of notes from different sources, rather than a self-standing commen- tary being broken down into separate notes. Partly as a result of their unusual manuscript position, and partly because of their inherent usefulness for those who need help to read Homer, they were the first Homeric scholia to be published in printed form (in 1517) and remained pre-eminent until superseded by the A 2.1.1.1 SCHOLIA 21 scholia. Subsequently they have been much neglected—until a few years ago the 1517 edition was the standard text—and it is only very recently that modern schol- ars have begun to pay them serious attention. Now, however, it is recognized that D-scholia lemmata sometimes preserve variant readings of the text that are not otherwise attested, that their definitions can provide important evidence for the meaning of Homeric words, and that they contain crucial information about the history and evolution of ancient scholarship, the ancient education system, and the way Homer was read and understood in antiquity.
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