Scholiasts



Scholia (singular, scholion; from Greek Greek: σχόλιον "comment", "lecture"), are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments, either original or extracted from pre-existing commentaries, which are inserted on the margin of the manuscript of an ancient author, as glosses. The earliest attested use of the word dates to the 1st century BCE.¹ One who writes scholia is a scholiast.

Contents

Ancient scholia are important sources of information about many aspects of the ancient world, especially ancient literary history. They are rarely read, however, for two main reasons:

• no translations of scholia exist (it is not commercially feasible); someone wishing to read scholia must learn Latin and/or ancient Greek;
• scholia are often unsuited to modern literary tastes, e.g. offering allegorical interpretations of a piece of literature which modern readers may find irrelevant.

Some ancient scholia, such as Servius' commentary on Virgil's Aeneid, are of sufficient quality and importance to be described as commentaries instead. Commercial translations of such works do exist².

History

The earliest scholia date to the 5th or 4th century BCE (such as the "D" scholia on the Iliad). The practice of compiling scholia continued through to as late as the 8th century in the Byzantine Empire.

Scholia were altered by successive copyists and owners of the manuscript, and in some cases, increased to such an extent that there was no longer room for them in the margin, and it became necessary to make them into a separate work. At first, they were taken from one commentary only, subsequently from several. This is indicated by the repetition of the lemma ("headword"), or by the use of such phrases as "or thus", "alternatively", "according to some", to introduce different explanations, or by the explicit quotation of different sources.

For the most part, the Greek scholia on record are anonymous; the commentaries of Eustathius of Thessalonica on Homer and John Tzetzes on Lycophron are prominent exceptions.^{citation needed}

Important sets of scholia

The most important in Greek are those on the Homeric Iliad, especially those found in the 10th century manuscripts discovered by Villoison in 1781 in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (see further Venetus A, Homeric scholarship). The scholia on Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles, Aristophanes and Apollonius Rhodius are also important. In Latin, Servius' commentary on Virgil is of the utmost importance in not only elucidating Virgil's work but also providing much information on antiquarian lore, while Porphyrio's commentary on Horace, Donatus' on Terence, and Asconius' on Cicero's speeches are also valuable.

Other uses

• In modern mathematics texts, scholia are marginal notes which may amplify a line of reasoning or compare it with proofs given earlier.
• Scholia is an academic journal in the field of classical studies. Websites: Scholia; Scholia reviews.

Notes

Bibliography

• Scholia in Homeri Iliadem, ed. W. Dindorf, Oxford, vols. I-II (Oxford, 1874) ; vols. III-IV (Oxford, 1877) ; ed. E. Maass, vols. V-VI (Oxford 1887-1888)
• Scholia in Homeri Odysseam, ed. W. Dindorf, Oxford, 1855
• Scholia Platonica, ed. W. C. Greene, Haveford: American Philological Association, 1938
• SCholia in Aristotelem, coll. C. A. Brandis (Berlin, 1836)
• Scholia in Sophoclis tragoedis vetera, ed. P. N. Papageorgius (Leipzig, 1888)

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, 1974, Scribes & scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek & Latin literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford). ISBN 0-19-872146-3.

External links

• Dindorf's edition of Scholia to the Odyssey, 1855