What's in a Name (of a Manuscript)?

Along with the exciting new additions (with more to come) and the reorganization of the Homer Multitext website, you may have noticed that the primary names used for our Iliad manuscripts have been changing as well.

Here are the “shorthand” designations we will use henceforth, and the other possible designations or past names we have used for our five current manuscripts:

HMT designations       [names in brackets are other library catalog designations and modern
                                                                                                 edition sigla]

Venetus A or Marciana 822    [=Marcianus Graecus Z. 454, Allen’s A, West’s A]    

Venetus B or Marciana 821    [=Marcianus Graecus Z. 453, Allen’s B, West’s B]
   
Marciana 841       [=Marciana Graecus Z. 458, Allen’s U4; West does not include]
   
Escorial Υ.1.1      [=Escorialensis 294, Escorialensis 291, Allen’s E3, West’s E]

Escorial Ω.1.12    [=Escorialensis 513, Escorialensis 509, Allen’s E4, West’s F]

Why are there so many names for each manuscript? And how did we settle on the names that we now use?

One reason why there are multiple ways to refer to each of our manuscripts is that names or other designations come from two different sources: the libraries which house the manuscripts, and modern editors’ designations or “sigla.” Within each of those sources, in turn, there are additional reasons that names or designations change over time.

Modern editors’ names
When a modern editor collates multiple manuscripts to create a modern edition, s/he might use sigla to designate the manuscripts so that s/he can use those one or two letters and/or numbers in the cramped spaces of a traditional print apparatus criticus. Even the first modern publication of the Venetian manuscripts created such sigla: Villoison in his 1788 edition of Homer’s Iliad with the Scholia called the two manuscripts “A” and “B” for ease of reference in tight print spaces when he compiled the scholia. (You can see digital photographs of Villoison's edition here.) That is the origin of the names “Venetus A” and “Venetus B” (“Venetus” is the Latinate version of “Venice”).

When we look at how two twentieth-century editors have created sigla, we see that each created his own system, resulting in further designations. Allen calls the two manuscripts from the Escorial “E3” and “E4”: he actually collated four manuscripts from the Escorial and designated them 1–4 in the same order as the Escorial’s catalog numbered them, so although these two are the oldest of the four, they end up as “3” and “4.” West, however, uses far fewer manuscripts in his edition, and chose to call these two “E” (=“E3”) and “F” (=“E4”). Allen gave to the Venetian manuscript Marciana 841 the siglum “U4”: in addition to the Venetus A and Venetus B, Allen consulted 13 other manuscripts in Venice at the Marciana, and gave them the sigla U1–13, using a Latinate consonantal “U” for “Venice” since he uses “V” for the manuscripts in the Vatican library. West does not include this manuscript, and so did not create a siglum for it.

We have written before about the problems with the traditional apparatus criticus, both in terms of the difficulties in deciphering from it what a particular manuscript actually has, and in the way it presents barriers to readers, obscuring what the editor has seen in manuscripts in a secret code, as it were. Since we will not have the constraints of a printed page, and because we want to avoid reinforcing the “outsiders not welcome” feel of using such abbreviations, we will not follow in the footsteps of these print editions by using their sigla or by creating our own for the manuscripts.

Up until now, however, we have used these sigla in our writing about the manuscripts and on the website. We have done so because they are short, and therefore handy, and because we learned to do so as part of our academic discipline. But we will avoid using most of these from now on, for the reasons just stated as well as some further considerations I will explain now.

Because “Venetus A” and “Venetus B” are both easy to say and write and widely known names, we will continue to use them as our shorthand for these manuscripts. They have become such established names (and the manuscripts are so important for our textual history of the Iliad) that both Allen in his sigla and West in his use “A” and “B” to designate these manuscripts. But in addition to the hassle of needing to include multiple equivalences any time we refer to the manuscript using the sigla of a modern editor (such as noting the Allen’s E4 = West’s F), using one modern editor’s sigla as our normal reference could imply some scholarly choices or allegiances that we are not meaning to make. So our decision is to use library names and designations rather than sigla from any one modern edition, with the exception of Venetus A and Venetus B because those are so widely known and consistently used.

Library catalogs and shelving
Deciding to use library names and designations wasn’t the end of our decision making process, however, because in these cases, too, there is more than one possible reference. We have had the habit (once again from our training in the discipline) of using Latinate forms for the library names: Marcianus and Escorialensis. But in our desire to welcome nonspecialists to the Homer Multitext, we have decided to avoid such Latinate forms, and use the actual library names, Marciana and Escorial, in our designations for their manuscripts.

Then we must locate them, as it were, within the library, since we have more than one manuscript from each. The libraries that house our manuscripts naturally catalog them, and give them catalog numbers when they do. The Marciana and the Escorial libraries have long histories as institutions, so it is not surprising that they have cataloged their manuscript collections more than once. We have at times used or included designations for the three manuscripts from Venice that were assigned in the catalog compiled by Zanetti in 1740 (http://marciana.venezia.sbn.it/fondo-antico-e-appendice). Those designations, “Marcianus Graecus Z.” plus a number (454, 453, and 458 for our three manuscripts) include the name of the library in the Latinate form, the Latinate designation “Graecus” because Zanetti cataloged the Greek manuscripts separately from the Latin and Italian manuscripts, and the “Z.” to indicate Zanetti’s catalog. So there was both a “Greek 454” (our Venetus A) and, likely, a Latin 454, requiring the specification of the language to distinguish the two. Zanetti also grouped the manuscripts within the language into genres, so the Greek poetry manuscripts all have numbers between 438 and 461.

Similarly at the Escorial, different catalogs have given the two manuscripts different catalog numbers over time: 291 or 294 for what Allen called his “E3” and 509 or 513 for what Allen called his “E4.” Because these numbers have changed over time, using one over the other complicates our designations: even if we choose to use the latest one as the most “current,” it is scholarly practice to include the older numbers so that it is clear that it is indeed the same manuscript. So, just as with using any one editor’s sigla, using one of the Escorial catalogs creates the need for citing the other (294 = 291, e.g.).

Our solution is to use the designation the library has for the shelving of the manuscripts, since that is a designation rooted in some reality about the manuscript as a physical object: namely, where they can be found. For the Escorial, those designations are a Greek letter, followed by two numbers, separated by periods: Escorial Υ.1.1 and Ω.1.12. The numbers from the Marciana of 821, 822, and 841 also refer to their physical place in the library, and are attached to the codices, as this picture of the spine of the Venetus A shows (the label toward the bottom reads “822”).

Spine of Venetus A manuscript, photo published by the Homer Multitext project

The long history of our discipline shows itself in these changing and accumulating designations. As we reinvent the critical edition, we want to use names that reflect the manuscript as a historical object and are lasting, easy to use, and easy to understand. We hope the designations we have chosen will fulfill those desires.

Scholia to Iliad 14.506 in Two Manuscripts in Venice (Venetus A and Marciana 841)

Guest Post by Matthew Angiolillo & Christine Roughan

In this guest post by Angiolillo (College of the Holy Cross Class of 2013) and Roughan (College of the Holy Cross Class of 2014), the comparison of two manuscripts and their scholia leads to deeper understanding of how the system of the poetic language operates.

The tradition of the ancient Greek epic the Iliad is a long one—this is a work that has its origins in the 2nd millennium BCE. The Venetus A is a 10th century CE manuscript of the Iliad, and, at a thousand years old, it is our oldest complete source for the ancient epic. It also contains a wealth of scholia, some of which date as far back as the 3rd century BCE. As such, it has long been the object of study and scholarship.

In comparison, the Marciana 841 (= Marcianus Graecus Z. 458, referred to as U4 by Allen)– is a 12th or 13th century CE manuscript of the Iliad. The first half of this source has been lost – of the 24 books of the Iliad, the Marciana 841 contains only books 14-24. Compared to the Venetus A, the Marciana 458 contains far fewer scholia. It is slightly unusual in that it contains a later, Byzantine Greek translation of the Iliad written in prose alongside the poem. The Marciana 841 is one of the less well-known manuscripts of the Iliad, since it has received comparatively less scholarship.

When comparing the readings of these two manuscripts together, however, we find intriguing differences. One of these occurs in Iliad 14.506. As will be shown, the Venetus A and the Marciana 841 offer two different readings for line 506, but also acknowledge each other’s different reading in their scholia.

In the end of Iliad Book 14, the cycle of Greek and Trojan victories and retaliations comes to a halt when the Greek Peneleos strikes down Ilioneus, and in line 506 the tide of battle is turned against the Trojans. Looking first at the main text of the Venetus A, we read for line 506 ὡς φάτο τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπο τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα (“Thus he spoke, and trembling seized them all in respect to their limbs”). Note that we represent exactly what appears in the manuscript, with the punctuation and accentuation unchanged. (Click on the captions of the images to go to the full folio page with this line/scholion cited and highlighted.)

Iliad 14.506 from Venetus A

In the Marciana 841 manuscript, line 506 starts similarly but offers a different reading for the end of the line. Here we have ὣς φατο· τούς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εἷλε (“Thus he spoke; and green fear seized them all”). Here, χλωρὸν δέος, green fear, is Homeric idiom for a particular type of fear. By investigating how it is used wherever it turns up, we can try to determine its meaning. The Marciana 458 substitutes this idiomatic ending: ‘green fear seized them all’ replaces ‘trembling seized them all in respect to their limbs.’

Iliad 14.506 from Marciana 841

Venetus A intermarginal scholion to Iliad 14.506

Even more interestingly, both manuscripts include scholia on line 506 acknowledging the alternate readings. In an intermarginal scholion, the Venetus A scribe notes that γράφεται τοὺς ἄρα πάντας ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εῖλεν⁑ (“‘Green fear seized them all’ is written”).






In the Marciana 841, a scholion appears between the main text and the prose transcription, saying, γράφεται ὑ¨πο τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα⁑ (“‘Trembling seized the limbs’ is written”).

Marciana 841 scholion to Iliad 14.506

Besides minor accenting and punctuating differences in ὡς φάτο τοὺς, line 506 is the same in the Venetus A and the Marciana 841 except for its ending: ὑπο τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα versus ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εἷλε. There are two possibilities for why the manuscripts record the lines differently: either a scribe at some point in the transmission of the Iliad erred and wrote the line incorrectly, or the two represent separate—but equally valid—readings and are multiforms of each other.

It is exceedingly unlikely that the variation we are investigating in line 506 was caused by scribal error. This hypothetical error would have had to have occurred much earlier than the 10th century Venetus A, since the variant was already known and recorded in the scholia by this point. Unfortunately, nothing about these scholia gives any hint as to their age. The difference also would have had to persist for two or three hundred years more, even with the knowledge that other manuscripts had a different reading, since the scribe of the 12th/13th century Marciana 841 is also aware of the variants.

Furthermore, the different reading is not a single changed word or a different form; rather, the last three words are changed. It is hard to envision why a scribe, tasked with copying the line, would end up with a completely different ending. This was not the scribe accidentally skipping or repeating a few lines, nor was it him having difficulty with confusing Greek and trying to correct it to something that makes better sense.

The only way the scribe might have accidentally followed ὡς φάτο τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπο with χλωρὸν δέος εἷλε instead of τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα (or vice versa) would be if he were accidentally recalling an identical line used elsewhere in Homer, such as Odyssey 22.42: ὣς φάτο, τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εἷλεν. This Odyssey line, however, seems to be the only duplicate, drastically diminishing the chance that a scribe would have erroneously thought of it and started the variant in Iliad 14.506 by writing its ending instead of τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα.

This different line ending is not the result of scribal error: it is a multiform. Both readings are metrically valid. Both make grammatical sense. Both fit in the context of the line and surrounding passage. Since we can consider this use of χλωρὸν δέος in line 506 to be intentional rather than an error by the scribe, we can also now investigate how its use in this context (and other contexts throughout Homer) help us understand the meaning of this particular idiom.

In Homeric poetry, the term “green (or pale) fear” (χλωρὸν δέος) has often presented difficulties for translators, as the formula implies much more than a literal translation such as “sallow fear” or “blanching terror” could hope to capture. After analyzing the occurrence of the phrase or “nugget of diction” as it is described in the words of John M. Foley, he concludes that “pale fear” is often associated with the supernatural, many times relating to the actions of the gods, which inspire terror (Foley 2002: 121,128). An example of such a usage occurs at Iliad 7.475–482, when the Greeks and the Trojans are feasting after a hard day of fighting and the single combat between Hector and Ajax has ended. At this time, Zeus, the counselor, is said to have “devised them evil, thundering in a terrible way. Then pale fear got hold of them.” In this instance, Zeus’ future plans are seen to directly affect both sides of combatants, inspiring terror in the Trojans and Greeks alike and consequently both sides immediately offer up sacrifices to Zeus.

“Pale fear” is also used when relating to the inhabitants of the underworld such as in Odyssey 11.42–43, where Odysseus recalls for the Phaeacians his journey to the underworld in order to hear the prophesy of Tiresias that will give him instructions as to how eventually he might reach his home in Ithaca. Odysseus describing the ghosts in the underworld reveals his fright: “These [phantoms] came thronging in crowds about the pit from every side, with a wondrous cry; and pale fear seized me.” These examples notwithstanding, there are also instances in the Iliad where pale fear is used without specific reference to supernatural activity. In Iliad 17, for example, Menelaus is compared to a mountain lion, easily devouring a heifer in its ferocity, but whom none of the surrounding herders will face “for pale fear had taken hold of them,” just as no Trojan is willing to fight Menelaus (Iliad 17.59–67). In addition, in Iliad 15, as the Trojans run from the advancing Greeks, they are stopped “pale with fear” next to their chariots (Iliad 15.1–4), a scene which continues the narrative from the end of Iliad 14, where the scholia of both manuscripts on 506 are located.  In each of these passages, there is no obvious direct influence of the gods on the action at play, however the phrase “pale fear” is still employed. The second example also uses the expression in a somewhat unorthodox way, as an adjectival phrase describing the Trojans in flight, as “green fear” in numerous other passages is the agent of terror, usually coming over an individual or group. The phrase is also used adjectivally in Iliad 10, describing Dolon, in another passage in which there does not seem to be any direct influence being initiated by the gods (Iliad 10.374–376).

However, the influences of the gods are often difficult to trace precisely and often times their forces are at work in certain passages without their presence being explicitly clear to the reader, unless she has a solid grasp of the surrounding context. The way “green or pale fear” is used at 14.506 in the Marciana 841 manuscript and seen in the Venetus A scholion, adds a new perspective on the formula, as an argument could be made that in the context of the end of Book 14, the influences of the gods are at work in a different way compared to examples mentioned above, augmenting our understanding of how the formula of “pale fear” is used, in that in this instance, the power of the gods is referred to in an indirect and more subtle way. Assuming that the multiform is employed, immediately after the Trojans are seized by “green fear” on hearing Peneleos’ threatening words after he strikes down Ilioneus, Homer invokes the Muses and embarks on a mini-catalogue announcing the Greek warriors who took advantage of the “Earth-shaker” Poseidon turning the tide of battle in favor of the Greeks. The gods, especially Poseidon, have also been very active in the Greek war effort throughout Book 14 in which, disguised as an old man, Poseidon tells the Greeks that the Trojans will not continue winning the war. Subsequently, the god screams a resounding yell to encourage the Greek battle effort, and then goes onto the battlefield himself to lead the Achaeans from the front.

Although the Trojans are only directly responding in terror to the words of Peneleos, they may also be responding to the prospective knowledge that the tide of the war has turned against them and that Poseidon is aiding the Greeks in their destruction. This possible conclusion can also be supported by Iliad 14.507, the next line, which states that all the Trojan men look for a way to “escape sheer destruction.” Since, according to the narrative, it is the tenth year of the war and the Trojan men have seen others of their comrades die in combat, it is doubtful that they believe that in reality Peneleos personally is going to slay every one of them. It seems that a greater knowledge of their imminent demise comes across the Trojan men, leaving battle-hardened warriors searching for a way out. The way that “green fear” is used in this instance adds a new perspective in the understanding of the formula that is not captured in the majority of other Homeric passages that employ the term. One exception that builds on how “pale fear” is used in Book 14 is in another Homeric passage, which is virtually identical to the reading of 14.506 found in the Marciana 841. In Odyssey 22.42, Odysseus, after returning to Ithaca, addresses the suitors whom he, by necessity, will eventually kill and whom are, reasonably, struck by pale fear at seeing the hero. Although there is no direct mentioning of the gods in the passage, Odysseus is aided by the goddess Athena, who makes him stronger and appear more attractive, which would indicate that pale fear can be employed in instances where the impact of the gods is only implicitly felt but imminent demise is inevitable.

The scholion employing the multiform “pale fear” in the Marciana 841 adds to the understanding of the term and also may allow an interesting comparison to the reading in the Iliad text given in Venetus A, which states that “trembling seized them all in respect to their limbs.” The trembling that the Trojans endure, can be interpreted not only as the result of a fear of destruction, the words of Peneleos, or that the war has turned against them, but also due to the fact that the Earth-Shaker Poseidon, who has been a key player in spurring on the Greeks, is, through his actions, shaking the Trojans’ limbs into trembling. This reading works nicely and gains strength when compared to the line in Marciana 841, given that the added understanding of the “pale fear” multiform indicates that the actions of a god, in this case Poseidon, that are not plainly affecting those feeling fear, can still be highly ominous. Supporting this reading, that in the mentioning of trembling limbs the power of divine forces might be at play, is that immediately after 14.506 in 14.509–515, Homer invokes the Muse, asking her who was “the first of the Achaeans to carry away the blood-stained spoils of warriors when once the famed shaker of the Earth had turned the battle.” The singer then goes on to list the series of Greek warriors and the Trojans whom they defeated and stripped, due in large part to Poseidon turning the tide of battle. This list, which appropriately ends Book 14, seems to bode ill for the hopes of the Trojans in the following books of the poem to achieve victory and lends credence to the Trojans’ trembling being indirectly induced by Poseidon. This view, which works nicely in conjuncture with the multiform presented by the Marciana 841 reading and the scholion to the Venetus A text, gives a new angle with which to understand the meaning and use of the green/pale fear formula.

Through this one elegant example of 14.506 in the Marciana 841 and Venetus A, we are able to grasp much concerning how the tradition of oral poetry shaped the Iliad over its history, and the possibilities for a greater understanding of the variations and transmission of the text that can be obtained through the study of these manuscripts, and especially their scholia. Many of the passages that are compared above would not be able to be referenced to line 506 if one were reading a standard edition, and if it were not for the scholion from a very different manuscript that pointed out an alternate reading, these parallels would not be able to be drawn.

Works Cited
Foley J.M. 2002. How to Read an Oral Poem. University of Illinois Press.

Linking poetry and scholia in medieval Homeric manuscripts

In our rationale for a digital edition of the Homeric epics, we have observed (e.g., in “Digital Criticism”) that the layout of a print edition of the Iliad or Odyssey affects the reader’s perception of the text. As Casey Dué and I say in that article: “A standard print edition will present a main text, and then record alternative readings in an apparatus (generally printed at the bottom of the page in smaller-sized font), giving the impression that there is the text — and then there is everything else. Compounding this problem and further obscuring the situation for nonspecialists, the apparatus as developed and practiced in classical textual criticism uses conventions and abbreviations that can only be deciphered by those who have received special training in these practices.” In other words, the layout of the page both assumes and projects a particular view of the text and its transmission, one that is at odds with the historical reality of the composition and transmission of the Homeric epics. Not only the conventional layout of print critical editions, but also the very limitations of print as a medium, are fundamental reasons why a digital edition is necessary to fully realize a critical edition of the Homeric epics.

With that pivotal significance of page layout in mind, we can then consider further questions about how the medieval manuscripts that we have digitally photographed for the HMT present a page layout and connect multiple texts on the same page. For just how the layout of the page in our medieval manuscripts presents, organizes, and links the multiple texts on each page is crucial for understanding the relationship between these texts. And, of course, a digital edition that incorporates and references the digital images of these pages does not lose that embedded information the way print editions (and electronic editions made directly from print editions) have. The aspect of layout that I will consider here in further detail is how the multiple texts on one page of these manuscripts are linked together for the reader.

In a conference presentation I gave along with HMT Associate Editor Leonard Muellner at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland last August, and now in a forthcoming article, I began examining this topic with what seems like it should be a simple question: how does a reader read a page of the Venetus A manuscript?

It is clear that each page is carefully set up to accommodate these multiple sets of texts (see also Maniaci 2006). How, then, should a page of the Venetus A be read? Where does my eye begin reading, and how does it move through all the texts on a page? Just where to start is not obvious. The expected approach of reading top to bottom, left to right, quickly proves not correct, since I then start with commentary, and lines of poetry would be interspersed with comments. In fact, such a method of reading the page would be impossible, because the comments along the right side of the page require reading down through a comment before returning to the left side of the page, where the next line of the poetry starts. If I start by reading the lines of the Iliad do I stop each time I expect a comment, and go to look for it? Do I read all 25 lines, and then start at the top of the page and read the scholia in order from top to bottom, and left to right? Or do I read all the main scholia, then go back and read each of the other sets, the intermarginal, the interior, the exterior, and then the interlinear—and in turn, or in a single pass? Should multiple comments on the same line but belonging to different sets of scholia be read together?

The seemingly simple questions of how to read the page reveal the complexities of the relationships between the texts on the page. A codex of this size and grandeur was obviously not meant to be picked up and read like a paperback novel, but the basic questions of what the scribe’s expectations of his readers were and how readers might use this codex still require further investigation: we have not yet figured out all of the reading strategies the manuscript makes possible. Now that the manuscript is available for repeated reading by means of the digital images, we (and other scholars) can begin to conduct that kind of investigation. Yet as readers of all kinds of texts and page layouts, we know that we are not bound by the author’s (or scribe’s or typesetter’s) expectations. Thus, the Venetus A’s format for multitextual reading is an elaborate case of the possibilities for multitextual reading—different orders, different combinations—that are inherent in a page:

“The page is thus that physical aspect of the book that most persistently invites our eyes to move in directions other than the forward one, that potentially asserts, visually, the synchronic (and recursive) aspects of a narrative, over and against the diachronic ones. Roll or codex, the page is a block of text that realizes, in miniature, what is true of the entire book: all of these words are here together, at the same time” (Butler 2011: 9).

The design of the complex pages of the Venetus A is self-contained, yet nevertheless offers multiple ways of reading what they contain: our eyes can (and sometimes must) move in directions other than forward. A digital edition allows us to retain these possibilities in ways that a print edition cannot. Our digital edition of the manuscript encodes the location on the page of each scholion, for example, and the digital texts are linked to the images, so that a reader can easily go back and forth between them. Thus the structured markup of the scholia, including its location on the page, helps to restore the spatial information that the manuscript assumes the reader has by virtue of looking at the page.

The page layout creates possibilities of and even the need for reading strategies. So what are the ways in which the layout and other features of the page indicate the connections between the multiple sets of texts? As we study the first five manuscripts for which we have digital photography, we are starting to see a number of different strategies that the scribes used for linking texts on the page.

Venetus A

The 10th-century Venetus A (Marcianus Graecus Z. 454 [=822]) uses a combination of spatial arrangement and lemmata, excerpted words from the poetic line(s) being commented on. In the Venetus A, the main block of the poetic text is apparent in the middle of the page—the blacker ink and larger script make it visually prominent. The commentary brackets the text in an open frame, and does so in multiple groupings, appearing also in the interior margin and even in the spaces between the lines of poetry. Even on less full, more typical pages, such as 43v or 46r, these multiple sets of writing on a single page are evident. The sets of scholia, which are distinguished by their location on the page, include: (1) the main scholia, which are written above, outside, and below the lines of the epic, in a bracketing shape (yellow in the image of 46r below); (2) the intermarginal scholia, located between the poetry and the main scholia and written in a different kind of script (green); (3) the interior scholia, written in the gutters (that is, toward the bound edge of the page) (purple); (4) the exterior scholia, written in the outer margin, toward the edge of the page beyond the main scholia (orange); and (5) interlinear scholia, written between the lines of the poetry (pink).

Scholia inventory and mapping by Melissa Browne of Venetus A, 46r

The placement of the comment in one of the five sets is already conveying some information about them, presumably about the source(s) of the comment, although there is still much to be investigated about that question. The placement of the text on the page also has a spatial relationship to the line it comments on: the scholia generally follow the order of the poetic lines. In addition, as we can see on these pages 43v and 46r, if the main scholia did not fill the page, the scribe left blank space in the main scholia area to move the later comments down the page to be closer to the line(s) they comment on.

Aiding the reader in the visual coordination of text and comment in the main scholia are the lemmata, a word or words taken from the poetic line to indicate which line is commented on. It provides the eye a means of moving more easily between text and comment. We readers can look at a line of poetry and then find the same (or similar: that will have to be the subject of another post) words introducing a comment on the line. The correspondence (or near correspondence) of words from the poetry are what the reader looks for in connecting the two texts.

The intermarginal, interior, exterior, and interlinear scholia in the Venetus A, however, rely almost entirely on location on the page to indicate their relationship with other texts. (The exceptions are the longer exterior scholia, such as those seen on 12r and 12v, which rely on content alone to link to particular lines.) But the briefer scholia (sometimes only one word) in these sets are written adjacent to, parallel to (in the case of exterior scholia), or above the line they comment on, and that spatial arrangement allows the reader to see what is being commented on. For example, the interior scholion on 43v reads simply, διὰ τοῦ α τὸ πεπασθε Ἀρίσταρχος, which means “with an ‘a’ [alpha], “πέπασθε”, according to Aristarchus.” When it is seen on the page written right next to πέποσθε at the end of the line (Iliad 3.99), its meaning, that Aristarchus read πέπασθε in place of πέποσθε on that line, is easily grasped.

Detail shot of 43v of the Venetus A

The scribe of course assumed that anyone reading any particular text on the page had ready access to all the other texts on the page and also had the spatial information conveyed by their layout (such as what word πέπασθε is meant to substitute for). Because modern print editions of the scholia have seen fit to separate these texts, that easy and intuitive understanding of their relationship has been lost: when removed from the page, it is not clear why the difference of the spelling with an alpha is being noted, and the reader has to hunting through another printed text to figure it out.

Venetus B and E3

I am grouping these two 11th-century manuscripts (Venetus B is Marcianus Graecus Z. 453 [=821] and E3 is Allen’s designation for Escorialensis 291 [Υ i.1]) together because they share their main method of linking scholia to text: a numbering system. Greek numbers (that is, letters with a keraia written after to distinguish them from letters as letters) are used to link comments to lines, and even particular parts of the lines by being written both above the line being commented on and then before the corresponding comment. These two manuscripts have long been considered closely related to one another, and their similar layout and use of this numbering system contributes to that impression. The numbering system as employed in these manuscripts is also native to the codex format. (The codex is basically our normal “book” format: rectangular pages bound between covers. It differs from the earlier “roll” format: for more on this change in format, see Ebbott 2009 in Recapturing a Homeric Legacy, available in PDF for free). The lemmata system used in the main scholia of the Venetus A was useful for the earlier “roll” format. From what we know of Aristarchus’ editorial practices, he had the text in one roll, and his commentary (hupomnēmata) in another. The critical signs we see in the Venetus A (which no longer have a direct linking function in that codex, since most of the corresponding scholia do not contain the sign as well) and the lemmata helped the reader move back and forth between rolls, which could be opened simultaneously to the matching portions of text and commentary. (For more on the critical signs in the Venetus A, see Bird 2009.) But the numbering in both the Venetus B and E3 start at 1 (α’) at the top of the verso (left-hand) page, and continue sequentially down the page and then across to the recto (right-hand) page. When you turn the page, the numbering starts again at 1. Thus the layout and system of text coordination assumes a codex format, with a two-page spread visible when the book is open. One thing to note about modern print editions of the scholia from these manuscripts: when a “lemma” is cited for a scholion, it is likely the word in the text that the number is written over. Lemmata as we see them in manuscripts like the Venetus A are not used in these two manuscripts for the purposes of linking line and comment.

In addition to this numbered scholia, both the B and E3 manuscripts have additional notes written in different, later handwriting. In E3 these notes are placed in interlinear, intermarginal, interior, or exterior positions, in a much smaller quantity than those we see in the Venetus A, and, it appears, in a less systematic way (we have only just begun to investigate these scholia, which have not previously been published). These scholia seem also to depend on spatial proximity to provide connection between the poetry and the comment. In B the second set of scholia instead is connected in a way similar to the numbered scholia, but it uses symbols to make the connection: again, written both over the line and before the comment. A team of undergraduate researchers at Brandeis University, under the direction of Lenny Muellner, will be collecting and cataloguing the symbols used, and then we will be able to investigate whether the individual symbols have a particular meaning or are used in some systematic way.

E4

The manuscript that Allen called E4 (Escorialensis 509 [Ω i.12]) is also from the 11th century. As we begin to study this manuscript in earnest, we are finding that it has many unusual features, so my remarks here are only preliminary. (See also the previous posts by Casey Dué about this manuscript.) E4 uses a combination of several linking methods: numbers, symbols, lemmata, and color.

Looking at the bifolio spread of 187v–188r that Casey discussed in her “Dog of Orion” post, I see that some of the marginal scholia are linked by Greek numbers, in a manner similar to B and E3: the number is written both over the line of poetry and before the corresponding note. The numbering starts at 1 on the verso (left-hand) page and continues sequentially on the recto (right-hand) page, again like B and E3. When I turn the page to 188v, I see that the numbering starts at 1 again. The major difference on these pages, which start Book 22 and (as Casey noted) must be read together, is that the first three numbered scholia appear on 187v, and coordinate to text on the facing page, 188r, where the corresponding numbers are written about the lines of poetry. In B and E3, the corresponding text and comment are, with only a few exceptions seen so far, on the same page, even as the numbering system itself continues across the bifolio spread of the open codex.

E4 also uses symbols in manner parallel to its use of numbers, with a symbol written above the line commented on and in front of the corresponding note. Some important differences from the use of symbols to link scholia seen in B should be noted, however. In B, the scholia using symbol are in a different hand and seem to have been added to the manuscript later. They appear as though they are placed according to what space was available around the numbered scholia. In E4, the symbol scholia are written in the same handwriting as the numbered scholia, and are written within the same block of scholia as those that are numbered. The numbered scholia and those linked with symbols are not separated spatially: the scribe intermingled them according to some principle we have yet to discern. Another question that we have begun to explore is whether the numbers and symbols indicate what source the scribe was taking the comment from (if he was, as seems likely, constructing this set of scholia himself), and whether his sources already had numbers and symbols associated with the scholia.

E4 also shows the use of lemmata, similar to the linking system we saw in A. As Casey noted in her “Dog of Orion” post, a lemma is used to link a comment on 187v to a text on 188r (and, as she noted, the lemma is itself a different reading of this line from what we see in the text on 188r). On 90v, which I looked at earlier for its scholion about Rhesos, the marginal comment on 10.437, which appears on the same page as the line it comments on, uses both a symbol and a lemma to link the comment to the text. There the lemma is, in fact, the entire line. In each of these cases, the lemma, or the first part of it, is written in a red ink. Indeed, with both the lemmata and the symbols, the scribe has made use of colored ink as part of his methods of linking texts on the page. Both a purplish-red and an orangish-red are used for some symbols and some lemmata. The color certainly helps my eye to pick up the linked texts more quickly. Whether the different shades of red mean anything in terms of the source or the content of the scholia so linked is yet another question we will have to investigate further.

E4 also contains some interlinear scholia, at least some of which use symbols to connect to the lines of poetry, but not all. These interlinear scholia appear between the lines of the prose paraphrase. That placement raises questions of whether the placement was simply one of available space, or whether in some cases the prose paraphrase itself needed explaining, or whether the annotator expected at least some of his readers to be reading the prose paraphrase first (or only).

U4

For the Venetian manuscript that Allen called U4 (Marcianus Graecus Z. 458 [=841]), I will quote the description sent to me by Melissa Browne, Holy Cross Class of 2012. Browne is making a digital editio princeps (first critical edition) of this manuscript as her senior honors thesis. She has already inventoried every scholion in the manuscript, and, I would wager, knows it better than anyone else in the world.

According to Melissa: “The roughly 700 scholia of the U4 codex, as a general rule, do not follow one specific method of linking scholia to Iliad text. The scholia themselves we may divide into two distinct types: ‘graphetai’ scholia, and all other scholia.

Graphetai scholia, which consistently begin with the letters gamma and rho combined into a symbol (seen at left), usually appear directly to the left or right of the line upon which they comment, as they provide alternate readings of a line or half line which the scribe has, for some reason or another, decided not to [choose for the line itself]. Some scholia beginning with the graphetai symbol do appear to the right of the prose paraphrase passage; whether these graphetai scholia comment on the prose paraphrase or on the Iliad text will be an interesting question to consider. All other scholia in U4 we consider as one category, since there are no particular spatial patterns of placement or changes of ink/writing style/size which would distinguish certain scholia as particular ‘types’ (‘interior’ or ‘interlinear’, for example). The scribe does not use lemmata, as in Venetus A, but he does make (inconsistent) use of a system of symbols linking text and scholia, as in the Venetus B and E4. Most often, the scribe of U4 places his commentary near the horizontal scoring line of the line upon which he wishes to add notation. If there happens to be a larger number of scholia on a given recto or verso page, the scribe puts the symbol system to use. As U4 contains far fewer scholia than A, B, E3 or E4, his loose spatial system and employment of symbols, while not the most consistent, generally allows for the reader to link text and scholia without too much trouble.”

A central point I want to return to is that the scribe of each of these manuscripts constructed the page under the assumption that the reader would have the same page before his or her eyes, and therefore would have access to all of the texts on that page (or bifolio spread) simultaneously. These various systems of linking scholia were an aid to the reader’s eye, and perhaps also an aid for the scribe himself for the organization of multiple texts (perhaps from multiple sources) on the same page. As we become more familiar with the manuscripts we have had the chance to study through digital photographs, the importance of that relationship on the page becomes more and more apparent. That importance is the reason why the Homer Multitext has incorporated the photographs themselves into our digital editions though the visual inventory and scholia mapping that our undergraduate researchers have been doing, and why we insist on a complete, comprehensive accounting of the entire contents of our manuscripts. Users of the edition will be able to move from the digital text to the precise location of that text on the photograph of the page: they will thereby have easy access to the page itself, and all the important information contained its in arrangement.

Works cited

Bird, G. 2009. “Critical Signs―Drawing Attention to ‘Special’ Lines of Homer’s Iliad in the Manuscript Venetus A.” In Dué 2009:89–115.

Butler, Shane. 2011. The Matter of the Page: Essays in Search of Ancient and Medieval Authors. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press.

Dué, Casey, ed.. 2009. Recapturing a Homeric Legacy: Images and Insights from the Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad. Cambridge, MA. [Available on-line at http://www.homermultitext.org/Pubs/Due_Recapturing_a_Homeric_Legacy.pdf]

Dué, Casey and Mary Ebbott. 2009. “Digital Criticism: Editorial Standards for the Homer Multitext.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.1, http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000029/000029.html.

Ebbott, Mary. 2009. “Text and Technologies: the Iliad and the Venetus A.” In Dué 2009:31–55.

Maniaci, M. 2006. “Words within Words: Layout Strategies in Some Glossed Manuscripts of the Iliad.” Manuscripta 50:241–268.