In this blogpost, I will compare what four of our manuscripts contain in their scholia on one particular line of the Iliad, Iliad 10.435. I have chosen this line because in our book, Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush, Casey Dué and I discuss the scholia on this line at length, having found that the scholia provided the best evidence for the traditional stories about Rhesos, the Thracian king whom Diomedes kills during the night raid. When we were writing the book, we had the photography only for the Venetus A and B, and we used the edition of Maass (1887) for the Townley (British Museum, Burney 86) to look at three versions of commentary on this line. Now we can add the scholia from the two Escorial manuscripts, which we often refer to by Allen’s notation of E3 and E4. I am not going to develop here any full-blown arguments about the scholia, but rather just make some observations and raise some questions. I will note some of the details of the stories about Rhesos, but our book provides a much fuller discussion.
To start, here are the readings of line 10.435 and the corresponding scholia read directly from the photography of the four manuscripts (A, B, E3, and E4), with case endings expanded and capitalization normalized for proper names:
Venetus A (134v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς. παῖς Ἠϊονῆος·
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
Scholia:
Ῥῆσος γένει μὲν ἦν Θρᾷξ, ὑιὸς δὲ Στρυμόνος τοῦ αὐτόθι ποταμοῦ καὶ Εὐτέρπης μιᾶς τῶν Μουσῶν. διάφορος δὲ τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν γενόμενος ἐν πολεμικοῖς ἔργοις ἐπῆλθε τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ὅπως Τρωσὶ συμμαχήσῃ, καὶ συμβαλὼν πολλοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀπέκτεινεν. δείσασα δὲ Ἥρα περὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων Ἀθηνᾶν ἐπὶ τὴν τούτου διαφθορὰν πέμπει. κατελθοῦσα δὲ ἡ θεὸς Ὀδυσσέα τε καὶ Διομήδη ἐπὶ τὴν κατασκοπὴν ἐποίησε προελθεῖν. ἐπιστάντες δὲ ἐκεῖνοι κοιμωμένῳ Ῥήσῳ αὐτὸν τε καὶ τοὺς ἑταίρους αὐτοῦ κτείνουσιν, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Πίνδαρος. ἔνιοι δὲ λέγουσι νυκτὸς παραγεγονέναι τὸν Ῥῆσον εἰς τὴν Τροίαν, καὶ πρὶν γεύσασθαι αὐτὸν τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ οἱ ἵπποι αὐτοῦ τοῦ Σκαμάνδρου πίουσιν καὶ τῆς αὐτόθι νομῆς, ἀκαταμάχητος ἔσται εἰς τὸ παντελές.
[at the bottom of the folio] ὅσοι ἐκ Μουσῶν τίκτονται: Ορφεὺς, ἐκ Καλλιόπης ἢ Κλειοῦς, Λῖνος Τερψιχόρης ἢ ὥς τινες Εὐτέρπης· Ῥῆσος Τερψιχόρης ἢ Εὐτέρπης· Θρὰξ [perhaps corrected to Θρᾲξ], Θαλλίας· Παλαίφατος, Ἐρατοῦς Θάμυρις ὁ Θρᾷξ, Μελπομένης καὶ Ἀχελῴου. Σειρῆνες, Πολυμνίας Τριπτόλεμος.
Rhesos by birth was Thracian, and the son of Strymon the river there and of Euterpe, one of the Muses. Being excellent among his own people in the deeds of war, he went against the Greeks, to act as an ally to the Trojans, and joining battle he killed many of the Greeks. Hera, fearful for the Greeks, sends Athena for the purpose of this man’s destruction. Coming down, the goddess made both Odysseus and Diomedes go forth on a spying mission. Those men, standing over the sleeping Rhesos, kill both him and his comrades, as Pindar gives the story. But some say that Rhesos arrived at Troy during the night, and before he tasted the water and his horses drink from the Skamandros and the pasture there, he will be utterly unconquerable. [Note: This translation reflects what actually appears in the text of the scholia, a text that others have found in need of correction because of the syntax problems in this last sentence.]
The following number are born from Muses: Orpheus from Kalliope or Kleio, Linos from Terpsikhore or, as some say, Euterpe, Rhesos from Terpsikhore or Euterpe, Thrax from Thallia, Palaiphatos from Erato, Thamyris the Thracian, from Melpomene and Akheloos. The Sirens from Polymnia, Triptolemos (also?). [Note: This version differs from that in our book, which was based on “normalized” readings, cf. Dindorf’s editions of the Venetus A scholia, and van Thiel’s edition of the so-called D scholia, a collection of scholia from several sources once (erroneously) attributed to Didymus.]
Venetus B (138v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς. παῖς Ἠϊονῆος·
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
α’ (first scholion on 138v) Ῥῆσος Στρυμόνος τοῦ ποταμοῦ Θράκης καὶ Εὐτέρπης τῆς Μούσης υἱός· ἱστορεῖ δὲ Πίνδαρος ὅτι καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν πολεμήσας πρὸς Ἕλληνας, μέγιστα αὐτοῖς ἀνεδείξατο κακά· κατὰ δὲ θείαν πρόνοιαν, νυκτὸς αὐτὸν Διομήδης ἀναιρεῖ :~
Rhesos is the son of Strymon the river in Thrace and Euterpe the Muse. Pindar gives the story that having fought in battle for even one day against the Greeks, he demonstrated the greatest evils for them. And by divine forethought, Diomedes kills him at night.
E3 (133v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς παῖς Ἠϊονῆος·
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
α’ (first scholion on 133v): Ῥῆσος Στρυμόνος τοῦ ποταμοῦ Θράκης· καὶ Εὐτέρπης τῆς Μούσης υἱός· ἱστορεῖ δὲ Πίνδαρος ὅτι καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν πολεμήσας πρὸς Ἕλληνας· μέγιστα αὐτοῖς ἐνεδείξατο κακά· κατὰ δὲ θείαν πρόνοιαν νυκτὸς αὐτὸν Διομήδης ἀναιρεῖ :~
Rhesos is the son of Strymon the river in Thrace and Euterpe the Muse. Pindar gives the story that having fought in battle for even one day against the Greeks, he demonstrated the greatest evils for them. And by divine forethought, Diomedes kills him at night.
E4 (90v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν, Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς παῖς Ἠϊονῆος
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
Scholia:
ἱστορία Ῥῆσος μὲν γένει μὲν ἦν Θρὰξ· υἱὸς δὲ Στρυμόνος τοῦ αὐτόθι ποταμοῦ καὶ Τέρπς [=Τερψιχόρης] μιὰς τῶν Μουσῶν διάφορος δὲ τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν γενόμενος ἐν πολεμικοῖς ἔργοις ἐπῆλθετο Ἕλλησιν ὅπως Τρωσὶ συμμαχήση καὶ συμβαλων πολλοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀπέκτεινε. ἡ δὲ Ἥρα δείσασα πρὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, Ἀθηνᾶν ἐπὶ τὴν τούτου διαφθορὰν πέμπει. κατελθοῦσα δὲ ἡ θεὰ Ὀδυσσέα καὶ Δϊομήδης ἐπὶ τὴν κατασκοπὴν ἐποίησε προσελθεῖν. ἐπιστάντες δὲ ἐκεῖνοι κοιμωμένω Ῥήσω αὐτὸν τὲ καὶ τοὺς ἑταίρους αὐτοῦ κτείνουσϊν ὡς ἱστορεῖ Πίνδαρος ἕνιοι λέγουσι νυκτὸς παραγεγονέναι τὸν Ῥῆσον εἰς τὴν Τροίαν καὶ πρὶν γεύσασθαι αὐτὸν τοῦ ὕδατος τῆς χώρης φονευθῆναι χρησμὸς δέ φησί ἐδέδοτο αὐτῷ ὅ τι εἰ αὐτὸς γεύσεται τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ οἱ ἵπποι αὐτοῦ, τοῦ σκαμάνδρου πίωσϊν καὶ τῆς αὐτόθι νομῆς; ἀκαταμάχητος εἶναι εἰς τὸ παντελές :~
[At the top of the folio] ὅσοι εκ μουσῶν τΐκτονται: ὀρφεὺς· ἐκ καλιόπης · ἢ κλειοῦς: λΐνος· τερψϊχώρης: ῥῆσος· εὐτέρπης: θράξ, θαλείας: παλαίφατος, ἐρατοῦς: θάμυρϊς ὁ θράξ· μελπομης καὶ ἀχελώου: σειρῆνες, πολυμνίας:~ [Note: as will be apparent in my observations, the look of this scholion is important for understanding it, so I have not normalized the capitalization in this case.]
Story: Rhesos by birth was Thracian, and the son of Strymon the river there and Terpsichore one of the Muses. Being excellent among his own people in the deeds of war, he went against Greeks, to act as an ally to the Trojans, and joining battle he killed many of the Greeks. Hera, fearful for the Greeks, sends Athena for the purpose of this man’s destruction. Coming down, the goddess made both Odysseus and Diomedes go against [him] on a spying mission. Those men, standing over the sleeping Rhesos, kill both him and his comrades, as Pindar gives the story. But some say that Rhesos arrived at Troy during the night, and before he tasted the water of the area he was murdered. An oracle had been given to him, they say, that if he himself would taste the water and his horses drink from the Skamandros and the pasture there, he will be utterly unconquerable.
The following number are born from Muses: Orpheus, from Kalliope or Kleio; Linos from Terpsichore; Rhesos from Euterpe; Thrax from Thaleia; Palaiphatos from Erato; Thamyris the Thracian from Melpomene and Akheloos; Sirens from Polymnia.
Observations:
—All of the manuscripts have the same reading for the line of the poetry itself, but in the scholia, we see two different versions of the “back story” of Rhesos. There is an obvious affinity between A and E4, on the one hand, and between B and E3 on the other. The close similarity between B and E3 is not surprising, since the two have long been recognized as closely related (an earlier post by Matthew Davis addressed the argument that B and E3 are even “twins”). But whether there are common sources that A and E4 share (as these scholia suggest) is something that we are starting to investigate. It hasn’t been well-recognized or explored, to my knowledge.
– The Townley manuscript (T) has a scholion similar to that of B and E3, but it has some particular features. According to the edition of Maass, here is how T reports the story:
Ῥῆσος Στρυμόνος τοῦ ποταμοῦ τῆς Θρᾴκης υἱὸς καὶ Εὐτέρπης Μούσης. ἱστορεῖ δὲ Πίνδαρος ὅτι καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν πολεμήσας πρὸς Ἕλληνας μέγιστα αὐτοῖς ἐνεδείξατο κακά, κατὰ δὲ πρόνοιαν Ἥρας καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς ἀναστάντες οἱ περὶ Διομήδεα ἀναιροῦσιν αὐτόν.
Rhesos is the son of Strymon the river of Thrace and Euterpe, a Muse. Pindar gives the story that having fought in battle for even one day against the Greeks he proved to be the greatest evils for them, and having been roused by the forethought of Hera and Athena, those around Diomedes kill him.
We see in T that Hera and Athena are explicitly named, as they are in the A and E4 scholia, instead of the less specific “divine” forethought reported in B and E3. Yet T also has the more general “those around Diomedes” rather than simply Diomedes himself named as the killer of Rhesos. Is that a way of including Odysseus (who is also explicitly named in the A and E4 versions)?
—The A scholion seems to have a copying mistake, which is made more obvious when we look at the E4 version of Rhesos’ story. It looks like the scribe picked up after the second τοῦ ὕδατος when he was only at the first, missing what appears in E4 between the two appearances of “water.” And so the word “oracle” (so crucial for understanding the importance of Rhesos) doesn’t appear in the A version. Thus, E4 is a more complete version of the “oracle” story about Rhesos (that version is also available in earlier manuscripts, according to van Thiel’s edition of the so-called D scholia).
–Although all the manuscripts name Eioneus as Rhesos’ father in the line of the Iliad, all the scholia agree that his father is the river Strymon, but none directly confronts the difference from the poetic line. Perhaps this discrepancy is due to the “two father” phenomenon among Greek heroes, according to which they are the son of both a divine father and a mortal one: for example, Herakles is both the son of Zeus and the son of Amphitryon.
—The identification of Rhesos’ mother, however, is more one of a choice between two Muses, Euterpe or Terpsichore. B and E3 name Euterpe only. A lists Euterpe in the scholion recounting Rhesos’ back story, but in the separate scholion listing offspring of the Muses, it gives the two possibilities of Euterpe or Terpsichore. E4, on the other hand, names Terpsichore in the scholion about Rhesos’ back story, but names only Euterpe in its scholion listing the offspring of the Muses. The variation is not surprising from a mythological point of view (variation is a hallmark of Greek mythology), but those differences in A and E4 raise further questions about the source(s) for these scholia, and at what point those differences occurred in their transmission.
—The E4 version of the list of the offspring of the Muses led me to rethink the way I had previously read the A version. My reading of the A version was influenced by modern editions of the scholia, such as Dindorf’s. But seeing the list in E4, with the purplish-red ink used for the names of the offspring, alerted me to a different way to read the list. In my earlier reading of the list of A, the order of mother and child switches in the middle of the list: at the beginning (e.g., Orpheus, Linos) the child is listed first, with the mother named in the genitive following; then, after Rhesos is named, it seems to switch to naming the mother first (still in the genitive) and then the offspring. The case of Rhesos then becomes even stranger, since in that reading the adjective “Thracian” (Θρᾴξ) follows the names of the two possible Muses who were his mother, Terpsichore or Euterpe. But there are two details here that raise questions about the reading: one is that Thamyris later in the list is called “Thracian” and the adjective is put in the more usual attributive position after the article ὁ. The other, as the list in E4 shows more clearly, is that there is a mythological figure named simply Θρᾴξ, who is a son of Ares and (presumably, according to this list), the Muse Thaleia (or Thallia, as A spells it).
Further complicating this question of how to read this list, though, is that in other sources, the Sirens are identified as offspring of Akheloos and Melpomene (e.g. Apollodorus 1.3.4), which would support reading them together in the A scholion, as others have done. And the list in A concludes with the name of Triptolemos: how should he be included in the list if the order of mother and offspring has not been reversed? Also as a child of Polymnia? Or was his mother’s name (mistakenly) omitted? Comparing the A scholion to the E4 version, and E4’s use of color to make the structure of the list more obvious, raises several questions about how to read the A version, questions not obvious when reading the scholion in modern editions.
–Now that we are beginning to see more affinities between the scholia in A and E4 (although there are also very different documents from one another in other ways), do E3 and E4 have a complementary nature similar to A and B as a pair? If so, that raises intriguing questions about how these Byzantine manuscripts were later collected in European libraries. Did book collectors like Cardinal Bessarion (who owned A and B and willed his personal library to the Republic of Venice) and King Philip II of Spain (who acquired E3 and E4 for his library) want to have a “complete” set of scholia to the Iliad (or some such notion) in their libraries? Was there scholarly interest at that time in having multiple manuscripts with different versions of scholia, or was prestige in owning such possessions the prime motivation?
Comparing these scholia thus raises different kinds of questions about the manuscripts themselves, including their sources and the history of their acquisition and ownership, in addition to the many intriguing subjects raised by the content of these "mythological" scholia.
To start, here are the readings of line 10.435 and the corresponding scholia read directly from the photography of the four manuscripts (A, B, E3, and E4), with case endings expanded and capitalization normalized for proper names:
Venetus A (134v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς. παῖς Ἠϊονῆος·
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
Scholia:
Ῥῆσος γένει μὲν ἦν Θρᾷξ, ὑιὸς δὲ Στρυμόνος τοῦ αὐτόθι ποταμοῦ καὶ Εὐτέρπης μιᾶς τῶν Μουσῶν. διάφορος δὲ τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν γενόμενος ἐν πολεμικοῖς ἔργοις ἐπῆλθε τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ὅπως Τρωσὶ συμμαχήσῃ, καὶ συμβαλὼν πολλοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀπέκτεινεν. δείσασα δὲ Ἥρα περὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων Ἀθηνᾶν ἐπὶ τὴν τούτου διαφθορὰν πέμπει. κατελθοῦσα δὲ ἡ θεὸς Ὀδυσσέα τε καὶ Διομήδη ἐπὶ τὴν κατασκοπὴν ἐποίησε προελθεῖν. ἐπιστάντες δὲ ἐκεῖνοι κοιμωμένῳ Ῥήσῳ αὐτὸν τε καὶ τοὺς ἑταίρους αὐτοῦ κτείνουσιν, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Πίνδαρος. ἔνιοι δὲ λέγουσι νυκτὸς παραγεγονέναι τὸν Ῥῆσον εἰς τὴν Τροίαν, καὶ πρὶν γεύσασθαι αὐτὸν τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ οἱ ἵπποι αὐτοῦ τοῦ Σκαμάνδρου πίουσιν καὶ τῆς αὐτόθι νομῆς, ἀκαταμάχητος ἔσται εἰς τὸ παντελές.
[at the bottom of the folio] ὅσοι ἐκ Μουσῶν τίκτονται: Ορφεὺς, ἐκ Καλλιόπης ἢ Κλειοῦς, Λῖνος Τερψιχόρης ἢ ὥς τινες Εὐτέρπης· Ῥῆσος Τερψιχόρης ἢ Εὐτέρπης· Θρὰξ [perhaps corrected to Θρᾲξ], Θαλλίας· Παλαίφατος, Ἐρατοῦς Θάμυρις ὁ Θρᾷξ, Μελπομένης καὶ Ἀχελῴου. Σειρῆνες, Πολυμνίας Τριπτόλεμος.
Rhesos by birth was Thracian, and the son of Strymon the river there and of Euterpe, one of the Muses. Being excellent among his own people in the deeds of war, he went against the Greeks, to act as an ally to the Trojans, and joining battle he killed many of the Greeks. Hera, fearful for the Greeks, sends Athena for the purpose of this man’s destruction. Coming down, the goddess made both Odysseus and Diomedes go forth on a spying mission. Those men, standing over the sleeping Rhesos, kill both him and his comrades, as Pindar gives the story. But some say that Rhesos arrived at Troy during the night, and before he tasted the water and his horses drink from the Skamandros and the pasture there, he will be utterly unconquerable. [Note: This translation reflects what actually appears in the text of the scholia, a text that others have found in need of correction because of the syntax problems in this last sentence.]
The following number are born from Muses: Orpheus from Kalliope or Kleio, Linos from Terpsikhore or, as some say, Euterpe, Rhesos from Terpsikhore or Euterpe, Thrax from Thallia, Palaiphatos from Erato, Thamyris the Thracian, from Melpomene and Akheloos. The Sirens from Polymnia, Triptolemos (also?). [Note: This version differs from that in our book, which was based on “normalized” readings, cf. Dindorf’s editions of the Venetus A scholia, and van Thiel’s edition of the so-called D scholia, a collection of scholia from several sources once (erroneously) attributed to Didymus.]
Venetus B (138v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς. παῖς Ἠϊονῆος·
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
α’ (first scholion on 138v) Ῥῆσος Στρυμόνος τοῦ ποταμοῦ Θράκης καὶ Εὐτέρπης τῆς Μούσης υἱός· ἱστορεῖ δὲ Πίνδαρος ὅτι καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν πολεμήσας πρὸς Ἕλληνας, μέγιστα αὐτοῖς ἀνεδείξατο κακά· κατὰ δὲ θείαν πρόνοιαν, νυκτὸς αὐτὸν Διομήδης ἀναιρεῖ :~
Rhesos is the son of Strymon the river in Thrace and Euterpe the Muse. Pindar gives the story that having fought in battle for even one day against the Greeks, he demonstrated the greatest evils for them. And by divine forethought, Diomedes kills him at night.
E3 (133v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς παῖς Ἠϊονῆος·
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
α’ (first scholion on 133v): Ῥῆσος Στρυμόνος τοῦ ποταμοῦ Θράκης· καὶ Εὐτέρπης τῆς Μούσης υἱός· ἱστορεῖ δὲ Πίνδαρος ὅτι καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν πολεμήσας πρὸς Ἕλληνας· μέγιστα αὐτοῖς ἐνεδείξατο κακά· κατὰ δὲ θείαν πρόνοιαν νυκτὸς αὐτὸν Διομήδης ἀναιρεῖ :~
Rhesos is the son of Strymon the river in Thrace and Euterpe the Muse. Pindar gives the story that having fought in battle for even one day against the Greeks, he demonstrated the greatest evils for them. And by divine forethought, Diomedes kills him at night.
E4 (90v):
10.435: ἐν δέ σφιν, Ῥῆσος βασιλεὺς παῖς Ἠϊονῆος
and among them is the king, Rhesos the son of Eioneus.
Scholia:
ἱστορία Ῥῆσος μὲν γένει μὲν ἦν Θρὰξ· υἱὸς δὲ Στρυμόνος τοῦ αὐτόθι ποταμοῦ καὶ Τέρπς [=Τερψιχόρης] μιὰς τῶν Μουσῶν διάφορος δὲ τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν γενόμενος ἐν πολεμικοῖς ἔργοις ἐπῆλθετο Ἕλλησιν ὅπως Τρωσὶ συμμαχήση καὶ συμβαλων πολλοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀπέκτεινε. ἡ δὲ Ἥρα δείσασα πρὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, Ἀθηνᾶν ἐπὶ τὴν τούτου διαφθορὰν πέμπει. κατελθοῦσα δὲ ἡ θεὰ Ὀδυσσέα καὶ Δϊομήδης ἐπὶ τὴν κατασκοπὴν ἐποίησε προσελθεῖν. ἐπιστάντες δὲ ἐκεῖνοι κοιμωμένω Ῥήσω αὐτὸν τὲ καὶ τοὺς ἑταίρους αὐτοῦ κτείνουσϊν ὡς ἱστορεῖ Πίνδαρος ἕνιοι λέγουσι νυκτὸς παραγεγονέναι τὸν Ῥῆσον εἰς τὴν Τροίαν καὶ πρὶν γεύσασθαι αὐτὸν τοῦ ὕδατος τῆς χώρης φονευθῆναι χρησμὸς δέ φησί ἐδέδοτο αὐτῷ ὅ τι εἰ αὐτὸς γεύσεται τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ οἱ ἵπποι αὐτοῦ, τοῦ σκαμάνδρου πίωσϊν καὶ τῆς αὐτόθι νομῆς; ἀκαταμάχητος εἶναι εἰς τὸ παντελές :~
[At the top of the folio] ὅσοι εκ μουσῶν τΐκτονται: ὀρφεὺς· ἐκ καλιόπης · ἢ κλειοῦς: λΐνος· τερψϊχώρης: ῥῆσος· εὐτέρπης: θράξ, θαλείας: παλαίφατος, ἐρατοῦς: θάμυρϊς ὁ θράξ· μελπομης καὶ ἀχελώου: σειρῆνες, πολυμνίας:~ [Note: as will be apparent in my observations, the look of this scholion is important for understanding it, so I have not normalized the capitalization in this case.]
Story: Rhesos by birth was Thracian, and the son of Strymon the river there and Terpsichore one of the Muses. Being excellent among his own people in the deeds of war, he went against Greeks, to act as an ally to the Trojans, and joining battle he killed many of the Greeks. Hera, fearful for the Greeks, sends Athena for the purpose of this man’s destruction. Coming down, the goddess made both Odysseus and Diomedes go against [him] on a spying mission. Those men, standing over the sleeping Rhesos, kill both him and his comrades, as Pindar gives the story. But some say that Rhesos arrived at Troy during the night, and before he tasted the water of the area he was murdered. An oracle had been given to him, they say, that if he himself would taste the water and his horses drink from the Skamandros and the pasture there, he will be utterly unconquerable.
The following number are born from Muses: Orpheus, from Kalliope or Kleio; Linos from Terpsichore; Rhesos from Euterpe; Thrax from Thaleia; Palaiphatos from Erato; Thamyris the Thracian from Melpomene and Akheloos; Sirens from Polymnia.
Observations:
—All of the manuscripts have the same reading for the line of the poetry itself, but in the scholia, we see two different versions of the “back story” of Rhesos. There is an obvious affinity between A and E4, on the one hand, and between B and E3 on the other. The close similarity between B and E3 is not surprising, since the two have long been recognized as closely related (an earlier post by Matthew Davis addressed the argument that B and E3 are even “twins”). But whether there are common sources that A and E4 share (as these scholia suggest) is something that we are starting to investigate. It hasn’t been well-recognized or explored, to my knowledge.
– The Townley manuscript (T) has a scholion similar to that of B and E3, but it has some particular features. According to the edition of Maass, here is how T reports the story:
Ῥῆσος Στρυμόνος τοῦ ποταμοῦ τῆς Θρᾴκης υἱὸς καὶ Εὐτέρπης Μούσης. ἱστορεῖ δὲ Πίνδαρος ὅτι καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν πολεμήσας πρὸς Ἕλληνας μέγιστα αὐτοῖς ἐνεδείξατο κακά, κατὰ δὲ πρόνοιαν Ἥρας καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς ἀναστάντες οἱ περὶ Διομήδεα ἀναιροῦσιν αὐτόν.
Rhesos is the son of Strymon the river of Thrace and Euterpe, a Muse. Pindar gives the story that having fought in battle for even one day against the Greeks he proved to be the greatest evils for them, and having been roused by the forethought of Hera and Athena, those around Diomedes kill him.
We see in T that Hera and Athena are explicitly named, as they are in the A and E4 scholia, instead of the less specific “divine” forethought reported in B and E3. Yet T also has the more general “those around Diomedes” rather than simply Diomedes himself named as the killer of Rhesos. Is that a way of including Odysseus (who is also explicitly named in the A and E4 versions)?
—The A scholion seems to have a copying mistake, which is made more obvious when we look at the E4 version of Rhesos’ story. It looks like the scribe picked up after the second τοῦ ὕδατος when he was only at the first, missing what appears in E4 between the two appearances of “water.” And so the word “oracle” (so crucial for understanding the importance of Rhesos) doesn’t appear in the A version. Thus, E4 is a more complete version of the “oracle” story about Rhesos (that version is also available in earlier manuscripts, according to van Thiel’s edition of the so-called D scholia).
–Although all the manuscripts name Eioneus as Rhesos’ father in the line of the Iliad, all the scholia agree that his father is the river Strymon, but none directly confronts the difference from the poetic line. Perhaps this discrepancy is due to the “two father” phenomenon among Greek heroes, according to which they are the son of both a divine father and a mortal one: for example, Herakles is both the son of Zeus and the son of Amphitryon.
—The identification of Rhesos’ mother, however, is more one of a choice between two Muses, Euterpe or Terpsichore. B and E3 name Euterpe only. A lists Euterpe in the scholion recounting Rhesos’ back story, but in the separate scholion listing offspring of the Muses, it gives the two possibilities of Euterpe or Terpsichore. E4, on the other hand, names Terpsichore in the scholion about Rhesos’ back story, but names only Euterpe in its scholion listing the offspring of the Muses. The variation is not surprising from a mythological point of view (variation is a hallmark of Greek mythology), but those differences in A and E4 raise further questions about the source(s) for these scholia, and at what point those differences occurred in their transmission.
—The E4 version of the list of the offspring of the Muses led me to rethink the way I had previously read the A version. My reading of the A version was influenced by modern editions of the scholia, such as Dindorf’s. But seeing the list in E4, with the purplish-red ink used for the names of the offspring, alerted me to a different way to read the list. In my earlier reading of the list of A, the order of mother and child switches in the middle of the list: at the beginning (e.g., Orpheus, Linos) the child is listed first, with the mother named in the genitive following; then, after Rhesos is named, it seems to switch to naming the mother first (still in the genitive) and then the offspring. The case of Rhesos then becomes even stranger, since in that reading the adjective “Thracian” (Θρᾴξ) follows the names of the two possible Muses who were his mother, Terpsichore or Euterpe. But there are two details here that raise questions about the reading: one is that Thamyris later in the list is called “Thracian” and the adjective is put in the more usual attributive position after the article ὁ. The other, as the list in E4 shows more clearly, is that there is a mythological figure named simply Θρᾴξ, who is a son of Ares and (presumably, according to this list), the Muse Thaleia (or Thallia, as A spells it).
Further complicating this question of how to read this list, though, is that in other sources, the Sirens are identified as offspring of Akheloos and Melpomene (e.g. Apollodorus 1.3.4), which would support reading them together in the A scholion, as others have done. And the list in A concludes with the name of Triptolemos: how should he be included in the list if the order of mother and offspring has not been reversed? Also as a child of Polymnia? Or was his mother’s name (mistakenly) omitted? Comparing the A scholion to the E4 version, and E4’s use of color to make the structure of the list more obvious, raises several questions about how to read the A version, questions not obvious when reading the scholion in modern editions.
–Now that we are beginning to see more affinities between the scholia in A and E4 (although there are also very different documents from one another in other ways), do E3 and E4 have a complementary nature similar to A and B as a pair? If so, that raises intriguing questions about how these Byzantine manuscripts were later collected in European libraries. Did book collectors like Cardinal Bessarion (who owned A and B and willed his personal library to the Republic of Venice) and King Philip II of Spain (who acquired E3 and E4 for his library) want to have a “complete” set of scholia to the Iliad (or some such notion) in their libraries? Was there scholarly interest at that time in having multiple manuscripts with different versions of scholia, or was prestige in owning such possessions the prime motivation?
Comparing these scholia thus raises different kinds of questions about the manuscripts themselves, including their sources and the history of their acquisition and ownership, in addition to the many intriguing subjects raised by the content of these "mythological" scholia.
No comments:
Post a Comment