Summer Seminar 2016 set to begin next week

Priam supplicates Achilles for the return of the body of Hector.
Athenian red-figure vase, ca. 500-450 BCE. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 3710.
Image courtesy of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology

The annual Homer Multitext Summer Seminar begins next week at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. This year students and faculty from Brandeis University, the College of the Holy Cross, Furman University, Gustavus Adolphus College, the University of Houston, Leiden University in the Netherlands, Trinity University in San Antonio, the University of Washington, and Washington and Lee University will come together to learn about the theoretical underpinnings of the Homer Multitext and to create a complete edition of book 24 of the Iliad. You read that right—we are closing in on a complete edition of the entire Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities that has been over a decade in the making.

In addition to our editorial work, we will seek to gain a better understanding of the poetics of Iliad 24, and how a multitextual approach to Homeric epic enhances our understanding of those poetics. Stay tuned for more about our discussion next week.

Resolving a Century-Old Problem of a Scholion’s Lemma

Athena wearing Zeus's aegis, one of the topics of this scholion

This post comes from the team of editors creating the HMT editions of Iliad 15 and Iliad 18 in the Venetus A manuscript during the Holy Cross Summer Research program in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences: Brian Clark '15, Claude Hanley '18, Stephanie Neville '17, Charlie Schufreider '17, Alex Simrell '16, and Melody Wauke '17. Their perceptive solution to the problem of this particular scholion and its lemma demonstrates their masterful familiarity with the Venetus A manuscript and the practices of its scribe. — Mary Ebbott

Among the many potentially befuddling characteristics of the Venetus A manuscript, one thing that is usually fairly straightforward is the connection made to the Iliad text by a scholion’s lemma, an excerpted word or phrase from the Iliad text at the beginning of a scholion which cues the reader as to what lines the scholion will be commenting on. While some scholia have no explicit lemma, these scholia usually indicate clearly what Iliad lines are being commented on based on their content. When a scholion’s lemma has no clear connection to the Iliad text, however, editors are thrown for a loop.


We find such a case at the beginning of Iliad 15, after a newly awakened Zeus sends Iris to order Poseidon to stop his assault on the Trojans. Chafing against the assumed supremacy of his brother, Poseidon angrily reminds Iris that, being a son of Kronos, he has equal authority over the actions of the battlefield as Zeus. Still, Poseidon yields and Zeus then orders Apollo to rouse Hector to arms.

The lemma in question begins the third main scholion on folio 194 verso of the Venetus A.

Detail of Venetus A 194v: see zoomable version here

Like other lemmata, it is written in the same semi-uncial lettering different from the rest of the scholion. Additionally it is set apart from the rest of the scholion by some sort of punctuation, in this case a colon. It reads:

Κρόνος χρησμὸν λαβὼν:

This string of words does not appear anywhere on the page. Discrepancy between a lemma and text does happen elsewhere in the Venetus A. Often the differing words in the lemmata actually suggest an apparent multiformity. However, for a lemma to differ so greatly that the discrepancy goes beyond spelling differences or word order is certainly unusual. The Holy Cross team examined the content of the scholion to see if any explanation of multiformity existed, but no such discussion followed:

ὅτι ὀ ΐδιος αὐτὸν τῆς βασιλείας μεταστήσει υἱὸς, τὰ γεννώμενα κατέπινεν Ῥέα δὲ τεκοῦσα Δία, Κρόνῳ μὲν αὐτοῦ λίθον σπαργανώσασα ἔδωκε καταπιεῖν· τὸ δὲ παιδίον εἰς Κρήτην διακομίσασα, ἔδωκε τρέφειν Θέμοδι καὶ Ἀμαλθίᾳ ἡ ἢν αἴξ, ταύτην οἱ Τιτᾶνες ὁποτ ἂν ἐθεάσαντο ἐφοβοῦντο· αὕτη δὲ τοὺς αὑτῆς μαζοὺς ὑπέχουσα ἔτρεφε τὸ παιδίον. αὐξηθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ζεὺς μετέστησε τῆς βασιλείας τὸν πατέρα. πολεμούντων δὲ αὐτὸν τῶν Τιτάνων, Θέμις συνεβούλευσε, τῷ τῆς Ἀμαλθίας δέρματι σκεπαστηρίῳ χρήσασθαι εἶναι γὰρ αὐτὴν ἀεί φόβητρον, πεισθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ζεῦς ἐποίησεν καὶ τοὺς Τιτᾶνας ἐνίκησεν· ἐντεῦθεν αὐτὸν φησὶν αἰγήοχον προσαγορευθῆναι

ὅτι [Because] his own son will remove him [Kronos] from his dominion, he [Kronos] gulped down his begotten children. But Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus, wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and then gave it to Kronos to devour. As for the child, she sent him to Crete to be raised by Themis and Amalthia, who was a goat and one whom, whenever the Titans laid eyes on her, was feared. Nursing him at her breast Amalthia raised the child, and once he had grown Zeus stripped his father of his kingdom. But when the Titans were making war with him, Themis advised him to make use of Amalthia’s hide as a shield. For she advised that Amalthia was always terrifying. Persuaded Zeus did so and conquered the Titans. For this reason he says that he was addressed as “aegis-bearing.”

So not only does the scholion concerning Zeus’s upbringing shed no light on the multiformity of the text, but the scholion’s first word, ὅτι, only confuses matters further. ὅτι is typically used at the beginning of scholia to correlate with Aristarchean critical marks, such that they mean, “[the critical mark was placed there] because.” So not only does the lemma not exist, but the scholion supposedly corresponds with some Aristarchean critical mark that also does not exist, and the content is not typical of the kind of editorial comments Aristarchus makes, either.

Our team at Holy Cross was not the first editorial team to struggle with this scholion. Both Erbse and Dindorf recognized the peculiarity of the scholion, and having analyzed the content, concluded that the scribe had made a mistake in placing this scholion here and decided that he meant to comment on line 229 of book 15:

ἀλλὰ σύ γ᾽ ἐν χείρεσσι λάβ᾽ αἰγίδα θυσσανόεσσαν, (15.229)

On the one hand this conclusion makes some sense. That line contains mention of the aegis, it contains some form of the word λαμβάνω, a word from the lemma, and the name Kronos, another word in the lemma, appears just four lines above. While it would still be a stretch, it is perhaps understandable how there might exist some multiform which included our given lemma in the around this part of the text. The problem with this interpretation is that line 15.229 appears on folio 195v, two folios later from where the scholion actually appears. Such a “mistake” seems extremely unlikely for the scribe of the Venetus A who, on every other account, scrupulously connects scholia with their textual counterparts on the same physical page.

Assuming that the scribe did not make that egregious error, some other explanation is required. Our Holy Cross team decided to look at the surrounding scholia to look for positioning clues. The main scholia are ordered sequentially with the line they comment on. So a scholion on line 2 will succeed a scholion on line 1 while immediately preceding a scholion on line 3. In this case, our scholion of interest is sandwiched by two grammatical scholia on line 15.187. Since a single line can have multiple scholia, it is only logical that our scholion in question must also comment on the line. An examination of the line 15.187 reveals that such a conclusion is not too far-fetched:

τρεῖς γάρ τ᾽ ἐκ Κρόνου εἰμὲν ἀδελφεοὶ οὓς τέκετο Ῥέα (15.187)

While the text and lemma do not match, the poetic line is connected to the scholion’s content: namely, it is about one child of Kronos and Rhea. It seems safe to say that the scholion is simply providing an expanded mythological background to the story of Kronos’s children.

How then must we take this ghost lemma? It has every indication of being a lemma in that it is written in the same lettering that is used for lemmata and is set apart from the rest of the scholion by a colon. The solution then is to concede that the scribe did make a mistake or, at least, that some scribe at some point in the manuscript tradition made a mistake. One must concede that Κρόνος χρησμὸν λαβὼν is not a lemma after all, but merely the beginning of the scholion mistakenly written as a lemma. If one removes the colon after λαβὼν, first sentence of the scholion reads:

Κρόνος χρησμὸν λαβὼν ὅτι ὀ ΐδιος αὐτὸν τῆς βασιλείας μεταστήσει υἱὸς, τὰ γεννώμενα κατέπινεν

Kronos, having received an oracle that his own son will remove him from his dominion, gulped down his begotten children.

No longer does one have to infer from context who the father is whose dominion is being stripped away, nor does one have to supply a subject for κατέπινεν. Both cases are elucidated by the clearly nominative form Κρόνος. Most importantly the ὅτι which likely threw off Erbse and Dindorf given its usual formulaic structure in the scholia serves instead here as just a marker of indirect speech, “that,” rather than an indicator of critical marks. And with that conclusion our diplomatic edition was able to not only keep true to the manuscript’s layout, unlike Erbse and Dindorf, but also make sense of something that had baffled some of the brightest Homeric scholars.

Dingbats and Doohickeys in the Venetus A

This post was written by Brian Clark (Holy Cross '15) and Alex Simrell (Holy Cross '16). In it they observe the practices of the Venetus A scribe when he has too much material for his usual layout of certain types of scholia on the same page, and they draw some preliminary conclusions from those observations. Their work was accomplished during the Holy Cross Summer Research program in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and was supported by the Center for Hellenic Studies. — Mary Ebbott

During our work on Iliad 18 this summer, our team found evidence that supports the theory that the scribe of the Venetus A intentionally wrote certain types of comments into specific predetermined regions on the folio. Certain folios still bear the marks that divide up the page into these different areas. Generally, a folio has the text of the poem, surrounded by five categories of scholia: main, intermarginal, interior, interlinear, and exterior. We do not yet fully understand the function of each different group, but we now know that the placement of these groups matter. Perhaps the position on the folio indicates something about the source material for the comment.

Sometimes, when dealing with a very dense page, the scribe was forced to break his rules about the placement of scholia. For example, folio 248v, which covers Iliad 18.480–18.504, is highly packed with comments about the astrological bodies found on the shield of Achilles.

Folio 248v of the Venetus A manuscript: view it in detail in the Homer Mulitext manuscript browser

In the exterior margin, there are three scholia which are not written in the usual hand of the exterior scholia (you can see a typical exterior scholion above these three). Additionally, these scholia have distinctive connecting signs that connect the scholia to the interior margin.

Exterior margin detail of 248v: see zoomable version here

The presence of these connecting signs—dingbats or doohickeys, if you will—are common in other manuscripts, such as the Venetus B, and are similar to the numbered footnotes in the Upsilon 1.1 [see this earlier post for more on how the Venertus B and Upsilon 1.1. link their scholia to the poetry]. 248v is not the first instance of these connecting signs in the Venetus A, but it is just now that we are able to draw conclusions based on our observations over the years.

Detail of interior margin of 248v: see zoomable version here

The use of these signs supports the claim that the scribe intentionally laid out this manuscript with a desire to place certain scholia in specific regions of the folio. By adding these signs, the scribe is guiding the reader not to take these three scholia as exteriors, but rather to read them as part of the interior scholia. On this crowded folio, there is not enough room in the interior margin for the scribe to write all of the interior scholia where they belong. As a result, he was forced to write these three scholia outside of their intended location.

Detail of 248v showing both exterior and interior margins of 248v: see zoomable version here

The first two connecting signs are clearly in the interior margin, and you can see how filling that space with those two comments would have made the margin far too crowded. The last one, however, is written in the interlinear position, above the word ἀρωγοί. Still, we feel that this last scholion is meant to be an interior scholion. The space where the scribe would have placed this connecting sign is taken up by another scholion, thereby forcing him to move the sign to the interlinear position. One could theorize that he trusts his reader to recognize this scholion as an interior, rather than as an interlinear, due to the length and content of the comment.

Another argument for these seemingly exterior scholia to be taken as interior scholia is the nature of their comments. In addition to the different scribal hand used for the exterior scholia, these comments generally lack any introductory or explanatory material. Typical exteriors are comprised of just a few words, while these three scholia offer a more complete explanation of the comment.

Further, the signs do not link the scholia to a specific word in the Iliad line. For example the second scholion, which comments on Iliad 18.499 (ἀνδρὸς ἀποφθιμένου· ὃ μὲν εὔχετο πάντ᾽ ἀποδοῦναι), reads

παρα Ζηνοδότῳ "αποκταμενου" καὶ ἐν ταῖς πλείσταις καὶ ἔστιν οὐκ απιθανος ἡ γραφή ⁑

Zenodotus writes the word "αποκταμενου" [instead of the word "ἀποφθιμένου"] and this is the reading in most editions. This is not an untrustworthy reading

As you can see, this comment is not about the word directly next to the connecting sign (that is, ἀποδοῦναι), but instead it provides a multiform for the second word of the line, ἀποφθιμένου.

Not only does a folio like this help us better understand the practices of a medieval scribe, but it also is another example of the benefits of a diplomatic digital edition that is linked to citable evidence. A printed edition can say that these scholia are “out of place,” but cannot accurately show the function of these connecting signs. Our editions preserve the original placement of these scholia while assigning them intelligent labels based on the evidence of the scribe’s normal practices.

Good men are always exceedingly prone to tears

In this morning's Homer Multitext seminar we began exploring the scholia that accompany Iliad 19 in the Venetus A manuscript. In my previous post, I wrote about the poetics of the captive woman's lament in Homer, and the ways in which a traditional audience might understand Achilles' mourning for Patroklos as it is described in 19.4-6. In that post I was concerned to show how Achilles may have conjured for a traditional audience the image of the lamenting and soon to be captive woman who has fallen over the body of her husband slain in battle, as in the simile of Odyssey 8.521-531, in which Odysseus, weeping in response to the third song of Demodokos, is compared to just such a woman (see also here and here). As I have written about in my 2006 book, The Captive Woman's Lament in Greek Tragedy, the sorrow of both Achilles and Odysseus is compared to that of captive women, their own victims in war, in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. I was very intrigued therefore to find that the scholia of the Venetus A discuss Achilles' crying in this passage. Here is what the A scholia have to say at Iliad 19.4:

κλαίοντα λιγέως  πάντας τοὺς ἥρωας ἁπλότητος χάριν εὐχερῶς ἐπὶ δάκρυα ἄγει. Ἀγαμέμνονα· Πάτροκλον Ὀδυσσέα ἐφ' οὗ καὶ τὴν παραβολὴν τῆς χήρας ἔλαβεν. ἀεὶ δὲ ἀριδάκρυες ἀνέρες ἐσθλοί· 

"lamenting with piercing cries"  [Homer] leads all the heroes, because of their sincerity, to tears easily: Agamemnon, Patroklos, Odysseus, to whom he makes the comparison of the widow. And good men are always exceedingly prone to tears.

The comment refers explicitly to the simile of Odyssey 8, giving further support to the idea that the kind of weeping being attributed to Achilles at the beginning of book 19 is like that of generic captive woman of Odyssey 8, or of Briseis, whose lamentation for Patroklos later in Iliad 19 is described with similar formulaic language that explicitly invokes the death of her husband.

Just as intriguing to me is the comment that comes next: "And good men are always exceedingly prone to tears." Though it is not marked off in any special way in the Venetus A, the sentence clearly comes from a tradition of proverbs, as we find for example in the work of the Roman sophist Zenobius (1.14) and quite a few other authors:

Ἀγαθοὶ δ' ἀριδάκρυες ἄνδρες: ἐπὶ τῶν σφόδρα πρὸς ἔλεον ῥεπόντων. 

Good men are exceedingly prone to tears: [used] in reference to those exceedingly inclined towards pity.

The A scholion is slightly different from what we find in the authors of the proverb tradition; there we find the more Homeric sounding ἀνέρες ἐσθλοί in place of Ἀγαθοὶ... ἄνδρες.

This same proverb is also adduced in the B scholia at Iliad 1.349, which similarly discusses the propensity of heroes to cry. (The note in B is considerably longer than the one in A, but they overlap in many respects.) In Iliad 1.349 Achilles weeps after the two heralds of Agamemnon take away Briseis:

ἣ δ᾽ ἀέκουσ᾽ ἅμα τοῖσι γυνὴ κίεν: αὐτὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς
δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθεί 

The woman [= Briseis] went together with them, unwilling. Meanwhile Achilles
wept and straightaway sat apart from his companions, withdrawn

In the Venetus B scholion on this passage, the passage from Odyssey 8 is actually quoted, and the phrase ἀεὶ δ' ἀριδάκρυες ἀνέρες ἐσθλοί (with the same wording as in A) is explicitly called a παροιμία, a proverb:

ἕτοιμον τὸ ἡρωϊκὸν πρὸς δάκρυα· καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς· ὡς δὲ γυνὴ κλαίῃσι [= Odyssey 8.523]· καὶ ἡ παροιμία· ἀεὶ δ’ ἀριδάκρυες ἀνέρες ἐσθλοί· ἄλλως τε καὶ φιλότιμος ὢν ἀνιᾶται τῇ ὕβρει· παλαιᾶς τε γὰρ συνηθείας στέρεται· καὶ τοῦ γυναίου ἀκουσίως ἀπαλλάττεται· ἄκρως δὲ ἐρῶντα χαρακτηρίζει· οὗτοι γὰρ ταῖς ἐρημίαις ἥδονται, ἵνα τῷ πάθει σχολάζωσι· τὸ δὲ νόσφι, ὅπως μὴ γνώριμον τοῖς ἑτέροις ᾖ τὸ πρὸς τὴν μητέρα ἐντύχημα. τὸ δὲ ἄφαρ δηλοῖ καὶ τὸ ἔπειτα :~ 

The heroic nature is prone to tears. [For example,] Odysseus: “As when a woman weeps” [= Odyssey 8.523]. And [there is] the proverb: “Good men are always exceedingly prone to tears.” And otherwise being a lover of honor he is grieved by the hubris [i.e. of Agamemnon] and also he is deprived of his former intimacy [i.e., with Briseis]. And he is removed from the woman unwillingly. And [Homer] characterizes him as desiring her passionately. For these take pleasure in solitary places, in order that they have a respite from suffering. And the “νόσφι” [= “apart’], in order that the meeting with his mother not be known to his companions. And the “ἄφαρ” means “ἔπειτα.”

Variations on this same scholion can also be found here in the Townley manuscript (Burney 86), the Υ.1.1, and the Ω.1.12. The Townley scholion reads as follows:

δακρύσας ἑτάρων· ἕτοιμον τὸ ἡρωϊκὸν πρὸς δάκρυα· καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς· ὡς δὲ γυνὴ κλαίῃσι [= Odyssey 8.523]· καὶ ἡ παροιμία·· ἀεὶ δ’ ἀριδάκρυες ἀνέρες ἐσθλοί· Ἀγαμέμνων· ἥτε κατ' αἰγίλιπος πέτρης [= Iliad 9.15]· ἄλλως τε καὶ φιλότιμος ὢν· ἀνιᾶται τῇ ὕβρει· παλαιᾶς τε συνηθείας στέρεται· ἴσως δὲ καὶ τὸ γύναιον ἀκουσίως ἀπαλλαττόμενον ἐλεεῖ· ἄκρως δὲ ἐρῶντα χαρακτηρίζει· οὗτοι γὰρ ταῖς ἐρημίαις ἥδονται, ἵν' οὕτω τῷ πάθει σχολάζωσιν· ὑπὸ μηδενὸς ὀχλούμενοι :~

δακρύσας ἑτάρων The heroic nature is prone to tears. [For example,] Odysseus: “As when a woman weeps” [= Odyssey 8.523]. And [there is] the proverb: “Good men are always exceedingly prone to tears.” Agamemnon: “which down from a steep rock” [= Iliad 9.15]. And otherwise being a lover of honor he is grieved by the hubris [i.e. of Agamemnon] and also he is deprived of his former intimacy [i.e., with Briseis]. And perhaps he feels pity for the woman being removed unwillingly. And [Homer] characterizes him as desiring her passionately. For these take pleasure in solitary places, in order that they have a respite from suffering in this way, being disturbed by no one.

This version of the note contains an additional example (Agamemnon, who is also listed in the Venetus A scholion) and an additional citation of the text to go with it (Iliad 9.15) as well as other variations of syntax and an additional clause at the end not found in B. It also lacks the comment on νόσφι found at the end of the B scholion.

Finally, we also find the proverb in the Genavensis 44 scholia at 1.349, according to the edition of Nicole, in two forms, both of which are closer to the version of Zenobius than they are to what we find in other manuscripts of the Iliad:

ἔστι γὰρ παροιμία ἣ λέγει· «ἀγαθοὶ δ' ἀριδάκρυες ἄνδρες,» ἤτοι· «οἱ ἀγαθοὶ ἄνδρες οὐκ ἀδάκρυες. 

For there is a proverb which says "Good men are exceedingly prone to tears" or "The good men are not without tears."

It is fascinating to find the proverb and the larger comment in which it is embedded in all six of the oldest manuscripts of the Iliad with scholia, and to note that the comment varies considerably in wording and length from manuscript to manuscript. Even the proverb - the type of saying that might be expected to resist change - is seemingly multiform. As Neel Smith observed in our seminar session today, it is clear that our scholia in the various manuscripts do not go back to a single source that was faithfully excerpted, but have been drawn from a variety of scholarly reference works from which the scribes made selections, expanding and compressing as they had space and inclination. In other posts on this blog Mary Ebbott and I have argued that we should be thinking of these scribes as editors, not copyists, and this one note provides a perfect example of why we should see them this way.

The content of the scholion is fascinating as well. Greek heroes lament like captive women and they are ἐσθλοί. They cause suffering and they experience suffering, and it is their suffering that unites them with their female victims. For more on the weeping of Achilles, I highly recommend the work of H. Monsacré, Les larmes d'Achille. Le héros, la femme et la souffrance dans la poésie d'Homère (1984).

First Week of Summer Research and First Presentation of Summer Research

It is an exciting week here at the College of the Holy Cross, where students are beginning their first week of summer research working on Book 18 of Venetus A. Joining us this summer is a team of seven composed of Holy Cross alums, Brian Clark '15 and Stephanie Lindeborg '13, and current students, Claude Hanley '18, Stephanie Neville '17, Charlie Schufreider '17, Alex Simrell '16, and Melody Wauke '17.

Already the students have formally presented on their current and past work, when this morning, they were visited by representatives from Loyola Chicago's John Felice Rome Center, where Holy Cross sends their Classics study abroad students. Claude and Stephanie led off the presentation discussing some of their past work on the Chronicle of Jerome. Charlie and Melody shared their work on the HMT, talking first about their work on Iliad 14 and then looking forward to their upcoming work on Iliad 18. Brian wrapped up the presentation by presenting on aspects of his senior thesis with the HMT and reflecting on how his study abroad experience related to his ability to conduct this research.

Left to right: Stephanie Neville, Melody Wauke, Brian Clark,
Claude Hanley, and Charlie Schufreider

We're looking forward to seeing what else this summer has in store for the HMT. Keep an eye out for future work from these great researchers and stay tuned for our upcoming summer seminar at the Center for Hellenic Studies!

Spring Academic Conference at Holy Cross

Every spring, the College of the Holy Cross hosts an Academic Conference during which students showcase research and share their conclusions on long term projects or senior theses. Once again, the HMT was well represented by several teams who shared their ongoing research from the 2014-2015 academic year. 

The whole Classics panel at the Academic Conference,
including teams working on other manuscript projects

Michael and Corey highlighting examples in the Lexicon

Michael Kelley '18 and Corey Scannell '18 shared their work on Apollonius Sophistes' Homeric Lexicon, remarkable for the fact that they are working on the only extant copy of the work. Both Michael and Corey will be joining this year's summer seminar at the Center for Hellenic Studies.

Melody discussing scholia in depth

Alex Simrell '16, Charlie Schufreider '17, and Melody Wauke '17 shared examples from their work on editions of Iliad 14 and 15, which highlight the multitextual tradition of the Iliad. All three presenters are veterans of the summer seminar.

The conference session concluded with two seniors Brian Clark '15 and Nikolas Churik '15, both veterans of the summer seminar and both working on senior theses based on the culmination of their work with the HMT. 

Brian outlines the Epic Cycle

Brian Clark shared some of his research on additional sources for the epic cycle, retellings of the Iliad, and what the differences between these texts reveal about how the ancient world treated the epic cycle. 

Nik discusses the prose paraphrase from the Omega 1.12

Nikolas Churik discussed his research on Iliadic paraphrases, working with prose paraphrases, glosses of the Iliadic text, and what these texts reveal about the readers and the ancient art of translation.

Summer Researchers Present Their Work At Holy Cross

Back to school season is here and while most students are concerned with the first week of classes, several Homer Multitext researchers joined their peers at Holy Cross's Annual Summer Research Symposium this Friday, September 5th. Our researchers stood alongside projects from the sciences and humanities, all of which were conducted at the College of the Holy Cross this summer. Hogan Ballroom was packed from 1-4pm.

Brian Clark '15, Andrew Boudon '15, and Nik Churik '15
(not pictured Alex Simrell '16 and Chris Ryan '16)

After a solid summer of creating editions of Iliad 11 in two manuscripts, they had a lot of say on scribal methods and repetition of content in the scholia. We look forward to hearing more details about their discoveries as the Fall progresses!

Brian Clark '15 shares his research with Holy Cross Classics professor

New publication of Homer Multitext research

If you would like to know what kind of research is being enabled by the Homer Multitext project, check out the recent publication in the Sunoikisis Undergraduate Research Journal of work by Matthew Angiollilo, Thomas Arralde, Melissa Browne, Nik Churik, Brian Clark, Stephanie Lindeborg, Rebecca Musgrave, and Neel Smith, in which the construction, organization, and layout of three Byzantine manuscripts of the Iliad are discussed. 

CHS Seminar 2014

For the fourth summer in a row, the Homer Multitext project is running a two week seminar on digitally editing the Venetus A manuscript. Twenty-two undergraduates, graduates, and professors have been hard at work, creating a digital edition of Iliad 12 in the Venetus A. Many have likened work on this project to building a ship while sailing it and these researchers have shown great flexibility learning both the 10th century Byzantine hand and at the same time learning how to conduct their editing using virtual machines, a new technology added to the project this summer.

Front row (left to right): Olga Levaniouk, Mary Ebbott, Melody Wauke, Malia Piper, Sam Hill, Stephanie Lindeborg
Middle row (left to right): Corinne Pache, Ineke Sluiter, Shannon Young, Suzanne Verkade, Solomon Umana, Amie Goblirsch
Back row (left to right): Ian James, Casey Dué, Neel Smith, Kirsten Haijes, Charlie Schufreider, Eric Dugdale, Michiel Cock, Jacob Luber, James Skoog, Ian Tewksbury

We look forward to great things from this team of researchers as they tackle questions that have puzzled scholars on Iliad 12 and have plagued readers of the scholia, and look to update Allen’s landmark article, "On the Composition of Some Greek Manuscripts," with live references to the digital material now available through HMT.

Left to right: Suzanne Verkade, Corinne Pache, Malia Piper, Shannon Young, Sam Hill, Jacob Luber, and Michiel Cock

Left to right: Shannon Young, Melody Wauke, and Michiel Cock

Look forward to more updates soon as they tackle the scholia of Iliad 12!

The scribal process of handling “forgotten” lines in two manuscripts of the Iliad: Escorial Upsilon 1.1 and Venetus A

A guest post by Holy Cross undergraduate research teams: Debbie Sokolowski ’14 and Drew Virtue ’17; Becky Musgrave ’14 and Chris Ryan ’16

Often when the Homer Multitext team edits manuscripts throughout the year we encounter irregularities in the way the folios are laid out. One case of this is the way scribes deal with lines of the Iliad that they either forgot or decided not to include within the main text. Debbie Sokolowski and Drew Virtue discovered one example of this in their editing of book 22 in Venetus A this year, on folio 286 verso. The lines are Iliad 22.210–22.213:

ἐν δ’ ἐτίθει δύο κῆρε τανηλεγέος θανάτοιο.

τὴν μὲν Ἀχιλλῆος. τὴν δ᾽ Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο·

ἕλκε δὲ μέσσα λαβών. ῥέπε δ᾽ Ἕκτορος αἴσιμον ἦμαρ·

ᾤχετο δ᾽ εἰς Ἀΐδαο· λίπεν δέ ἑ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων·  

On 286 verso, we encountered an instance in which the scribe seems to have accidentally omitted a line of the text and later inserted it. At the top of the folio, above two scholia, is the omitted line (212): ἕλκε δὲ μέσσα λαβών. ῥέπε δ᾽ Ἕκτορος αἴσιμον ἦμαρ·

This omitted line is identified with a β in the margin. In the main text lines 211 and 213 are marked with an α and γ, respectively, signaling to the reader that the lines should read in the order of α, β, γ. This omission can reveal many important insights about the scribe’s process in composing the Venetus A. We know that the scribe normally writes 25 lines of the poem on each folio. Including the omitted line, folio 286 verso still follows this rule. Therefore, we can conclude that the scribe did not mean to include this line as an alternate or optional line, but that it was intended to be read as a part of the main text. This also raises several questions about the scribe’s transcription and editing process. When did the scribe catch his mistake? Is he copying from a manuscript which is consistent with his 25-line per folio rule? Or is he transcribing from a long, continuous manuscript and counting his lines?

Chris Ryan and Becky Musgrave encountered a similar problem in the Escorial Upsilon 1.1 in editing book 10 throughout this year, yet the scribe handled it in a different manner. Whereas the scribe of Venetus A decided to deal with this problem by marking lines α, β, γ, the scribe of Upsilon 1.1 put an asterisk at the end of the line that the missing line comes after, and then writes the line elsewhere on the folio with the word “stichoi” (“lines”) in front of it to let the reader know that it is part of the main text of the Iliad and not a scholion. 

The first time we encountered this in Book 10 was on folio 126r, line 85: φθέγγεο· μὴδ᾽ ἀκεων ἐπ᾽ ἐ[page cuts off] ρχεο· τίπτε δέ σε χρεώ. 

The line reads in the Venetus B: φθέγγεο· μὴδ᾽ ἀκεων ἐπ᾽ ἐμ᾽ ἔρχεο· τίπτε δέ σε χρεώ.  We can tell that this line is not part of the scholia because the scribe actually puts a scholion marker within the line, and its corresponding scholion beneath it. The ink that the line is written in is also the same shade as the lines of the Iliad and darker than that of the main text of the scholia, so the scribe must have either purposely put the line out in the margin, or realized his mistake while he was writing the main text. The scribe typically puts 24 lines of Iliadic text on each folio, and each folio that contains a “stichoi” line only contains 23 lines in the main text (that is, 24 with the extra line counted). 

The Venetus B has often been considered a “twin” manuscript of the Upsilon 1.1, since they almost always contain the same lines on each page and have very similar scholia, so whenever we encounter something unexepected in our editing of the Upsilon 1.1, we turn to the Venetus B for comparison. One reason that we are led to believe that these are cases of the scribe correcting his mistake and not an intentional editorial omission is by comparing the folio, to the corresponding folio 131r of the Venetus B. In the Venetus B, the line is written within the main text with no special treatment, which leads us to believe that the scribe of the Upsilon 1.1 placed this line in the margin simply because he made an error in the scribal process.

Editorial note: the undergraduate researchers at the Homer Multitext seminar happening right now at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC will also be further investigating the question of “forgotten” lines, with a focus on Iliad 12 in the Venetus A. So stay tuned for more!

Year In Review: The Latest Goings On of HMT

During the Fall 2013-Spring 2014 Academic year progress on the creation of digital editions of the Iliad manuscripts continued. Teams of undergraduates have been hard at work not only across the country but internationally. Several of our teams took a moment at the end of their academic years to report on what they have accomplished.

At College of the Holy Cross, teams were hard at work on Book 10 in the Venetus A, which was begun at the CHS Summer Seminar in 2013. When they weren't spending their Friday afternoons in the Isidore of Seville Lab, they were on the road giving presentations at Tufts and BU this spring, culminating in a final presentation at the Holy Cross Spring Academic Conference this April.

Holy Cross HMT at Tufts University
Pictured left to right: Neel Smith, Rebecca Musgrave, Alexander Simrell, and Neil Curran

At Brandeis University, work has continued on the Venetus B. The Fall was spent working steadily on Book 3. In the Spring, three new members joined their editing team and began to get familiar with the basics of the project, reading and editing the Venetus B hand. They are looking forward to acquiring a dedicated office space next year, where they can work with two other Classical Studies research projects at Brandeis.

At University of Washington in Seattle, their HMT team worked on Book 23 of the Venetus A, focusing their work primarily on the scholia, which included reading a number of them. Highlights include a fascinating (if convoluted) theory on how the third declension might derive from the first declension.

This summer promises to continue the productive streak. For the fifth summer in a row, undergraduates are hard at work at Holy Cross. This summer their work focuses on Book 11 in the Venetus A and Upsilon 1.1, allowing the teams to draw comparisons as they work on the manuscripts in parallel. The teams are also finishing Book 10 in the Venetus A and bringing previously edited books of the Venetus A up to the current editorial standards via automated testing.

Another two week seminar at the Center for Hellenic Studies is starting today, where students from five different colleges and universities will edit Book 12 of the Venetus A. More on the results of their work will be forthcoming.

Multiforms of Iliad 10.306

A guest post by Laurel Boman (Gustavus Adolphus) and Leonie Henkes (Leiden).

During the summer seminar of the Homer Multitext Project, we did research on folio 132r of the Venetus A. We found many interesting things on this folio, including some doodles, many abbreviations, and a scholion to 10.306 that illuminates the multiformity of the text.

Hector, having asked for a volunteer to spy on the Greeks, promises that this volunteer will receive the horses of Achilles in return. At 10.306, these horses are described. The main text of the Venetus A reads:

urn:cite:hmt:vaimg.VA132RN-0304@0.1722,0.2772,0.3934,0.0639
View this in context.

305 δώσω γὰρ δίφρόν τε δύω τ᾽ ἐριαύχενας ἵππους
306 οἵ κεν ἄριστεύωσι θοῇς ἐπὶ νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν

307 ὅς τίς κε τλαίη, οἷ τ᾽ αὐτῷ κῦδος ἄροιτο,

305 For I will give a chariot and two horses with strong necks,

306 whichever are best at the swift ships of the Achaeans.

307 to him, whoever should dare —and he would win radiant glory [kudos] for himself—  

(Translation of Dué and Ebbott)

At the top of the folio is a scholion on line 306:

urn:cite:hmt:vaimg.VA132RN-0304@0.1802,0.1375,0.6376,0.0293
View this in context.

Scholion ad 306: οὕτως αρίσταρχος οἵ κε ἄριστοι ἔωσι. ὁ δε ζηνόδοτος αὐτὸυς ὃι φορέουσιν  ἀμύμονα  πηλειωνα ἀριστοφάνης. καλοὺς οἳ φορέουσι

“Here Aristarchus has ‘οἵ κε ἄριστοι ἔωσι.’ Zenodotus gives ‘αὐτὸυς ὃι φορέουσιν  ἀμύμονα  πηλειωνα,’ and Aristophanes ‘καλοὺς οἳ φορέουσι.’”

At this point, we have four different readings of this line. First, we have the main text’s reading ἄριστεύωσι. Second, the reading of Aristarchos: οἵ κε ἄριστοι ἔωσι. Third, the reading of Zenodotos: αὐτὸυς ὃι φορέουσιν ἀμύμονα πηλειωνα. The fourth reading is the one of Aristophanes: καλοὺς οἳ φορέουσι.

Besides the main scholion on top of the folio, there is an internal scholion next to line 306.

urn:cite:hmt:vaimg.VA132RN-0304@0.1131,0.293,0.0551,0.0233
View this in context.

ἐν αλλω οἱ κὲν ἀριστοι ἔωσιν

"In others, ‘οἱ κὲν ἀριστοι ἔωσιν’

In this scholion, the reading is κὲν instead of κε, which brings the number of forms of this line to five.

A scholion to line 323 offers more readings of this text. Line 323 is a near replica of Aristophanes’ and Zenodotus’ readings of line 306. At this point in the narrative, Dolon has volunteered to spy on the Greeks and now demands Hector to swear that he will give him Achilles’ horses.

urn:cite:hmt:vaimg.VA132RN-0304@0.1572,0.6198,0.4084,0.0293
View this in context.

323 δωσέμεν, οἳ φορέουσιν ἀμύμονα Πηλεΐωνα

323 [swear to me the horses that] you will give me, those which carry the faultless son of Peleus 

(trans. Dué and Ebbott)

This is the scholion to line 323:

urn:cite:hmt:vaimg.VA132RN-0304@0.1021,0.6213,0.0641,0.024
View this in context. 

γράφεται καὶ ποδώκεα καὶ ἀμύμονα

“It is written both ‘ποδώκεα’ and ‘ἀμύμονα.’”

Here, we have yet another reading of ὃι φορέουσιν ἀμύμονα πηλειωνα:

ὃι φορέουσιν ποδώκεα πηλειωνα.

Overall, when we consider the readings of the scholia to lines 306 and 323, there are 7 multiforms for line 10.306. In a traditional edition of this text, one version would be selected for the main text and the others, if included at all, resigned to the apparatus criticus. All 7 forms, however, are metrically sound and represent a line that a bard may well have used in performance. The Homer Multitext allows students to see all forms and thereby better understand the tradition from which this text arose.