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!

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.

Aural Confusion in the Venetus A Scholia?

A guest post by Michiel Cock (Leiden University), Dillon Gisch (University of Washington 2012), and Christopher Rivera (University of Houston 2013). 

In this post, participants from the 2013 Homer Multitext Summer Seminar discuss a scholion in the Venetus A that provides evidence for an oral component to the writing of the scholia in this manuscript. In the ancient world and well into the middle ages, it was customary to read out loud and silent reading was almost nonexistent. (See, e.g., Svenbro's Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece and Manguel's A History of Reading. Manguel adduces among others a passage in Augustine, Confessions VI.3, in which Augustine expresses amazement at Bishop Ambrose's ability to read silently.) Many scholars argue that early scriptoriums employed dictation, which allowed multiple copies to be made at once. Even after scribes began to work alone in monasteries, it seems to have been typical practice for scribes to actually read out loud to themselves as they were copying. (Manguel [p. 50] quotes an anonymous eight-century scribe, who concludes his copying this way: "No one can know what efforts are demanded. Three fingers write, two eyes see. One tongue speaks, the entire body labours.") At some point in the middle ages, silence was enforced in scriptoriums and scribes were not allowed to read aloud. Nevertheless, and oral component to the copying likely remained, in that the scribes may have read silently, but still pronounced the words in theirs heads as they copied in a kind of "interior dictation" (on which see van Groningen, Traité d’Histoire et de critique des textes Grecs [Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde N.S. LXX-2, Amsterdam, 1963] p. 86).

What the seminar participants found in the course of editing the scholia of book 10 of the Iliad reveals that the creation of the Venetus A in the tenth century CE, whether or not it predates the transition to silence in the scriptorium, involved a kind of orality on the part of the scribe. For another kind of orality preserved in the Venetus A, see Mitchell's 2006 Stanford dissertation, The Aural Iliad: Alexandrian Performances of an Archaic Text, which, among other topics related to reading aloud in antiquity, explores the performative aspect of many ancient scholia and their lemmata. (- Casey Dué)



On folio 128v of the Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad we find the following scholion:

urn:cite:hmt:vaimg.VA128VN-0631@0.2112,0.5477,0.2573,0.0744

It comments on Iliad 10.141-142:

urn:cite:hmt:vaimg.VA128VN-0631@0.4865,0.5041,0.4324,0.0443

In this scholion there are three features that point to aural confusion, which presupposes the practice of dictation or reading aloud in the scriptorium.

First, the lemma of the scholion is not identical to the main text. Where the main text reads “ὅ τι δὴ χρειὼ τόσον ἵ̈̄κει”, the lemma of the scholion reads “έτι δὴ χρειῶ τόσον ἵκοι”. This interchange of -οι for -ει in the final word of the lemma can be accounted for by iotacism; both endings would have sounded the same. The text of the lemma can’t be a multiform because as an optative (expressing a wish), the context of this passage would not make sense. The end of the lemma “χρειῶ τόσον ἵκοι” is attested elsewhere in Homer, in Odyssey 5.189, and this may have contributed to the confusion. In the body text of the scholion, however, it reads “δὴ χρειῶ τόσον ἵ̈κει”.

The scholion addresses the use of ὅ τι as an interrogative instead of τί, and therefore we we expect to find  a “τί” in the explanation. Dindorf therefore rightly adds “τί” before “δή” in his edition of the scholia. The omission of τί can be attributed to haplography, as the vowels in τί and δή would also have sounded the same.

In the second half of the first sentence of the scholion we read “ὁπποίης δὲ Πηνειὸς”. In the word Πηνειὸς the first four letters “Πηνε” seem to have been written in a different ink, indicating that the scribe has made a correction. The phrase as corrected is problematic, however, because according to the scholion it is a quotation from Homer and no such phrase is attested. We do find “ὁπποίης τ’ ἐπὶ νηὸς” in Odyssey 1.171 and 14.188. As in the previous two cases, the confusion manifested here can also be accounted for with iotacism.

[Note: This post has been edited since it was first posted, in order to take in to account some very helpful commends made by Ineke Sluiter. Stay tuned for future posts by the students that will explore the implications of the preliminary observations made here in more detail. - CD]

Wake up! A return to Iliad 10 and the poetics of the night

At the end of this month our third annual Homer Multitext undergraduate summer seminar will take place at the Center for Hellenic Studies. This year it just so happens that we will be working on book 10 of the Iliad, otherwise known as the Doloneia. This coincidence of timing in our workflow will allow Mary Ebbott and me to revisit a book to which we have a devoted a great deal of thought, resulting in our 2010 book, Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush (available for purchase here and published on-line here). As I reacquaint myself with what we have published about this particularly controversial book of the Iliad, it occurs to me that is worth stating that even though the inclusion of this book in our Iliad has been contested since ancient times, the book received no less attention from ancient commentators than any other book of the Iliad, and likewise numerous very ancient texts of the book survive (in fragmentary form) on papyrus. As a result, book 10 is just a fertile a book for exploring the multiformity of the Homeric tradition as any other. Indeed, Mary and I chose to use Iliad 10 as a starting point for exploring the poetics of oral poetry precisely because its multiformity illustrates so well how oral poetry works. We felt that the book's contested status (in fact the entire book is bracketed as an interpolation in Martin West's 1998 edition of the Iliad) gave us a wonderful opportunity to question why scholars have perceived the book to be unusual since ancient times, and to demonstrate what unites the language and poetry of Iliad 10 with other surviving archaic epic poetry, including the rest of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Epic Cycle.

A small example serves as a good reminder of why a multitextual approach to editing and publishing the Iliad is superior to more traditional forms of textual criticism. At Iliad 10.159, the tenth-century Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad reads:

ὄρσεο Τυδέος υἱέ· τί πάννυχον ὕπνον ἀωτεῖς;

"Wake up, son of Tydeus. Why do you slumber the whole night through?"

The other surviving manuscripts are in fact divided, however, between this reading (ὄρσεο) and ἔγρεο (which also means something like 'wake up' or 'rouse yourself'). Some of our oldest manuscripts, including the Venetus B (and those in that family), the Townley, and Escorial Ω.1.12, as well as a fourth-century CE papyrus (481) read ἔγρεο, while the vast majority of other manuscripts read ὄρσεο. The scholia, moreover, indicate that Aristarchus, the premier editor of Homer in Ptolemaic Alexandria, knew both readings. In the intermarginal scholia of the Venetus A (which seem to derive from a very ancient source) we find this note:

διχῶς ὁ Ἀρίσταρχος, ἔγρεο καὶ ὄρσεο

The eleventh-century manuscript known as T likewise records that Aristarchus know both:

γράφεται καὶ ὄρσεο. διχῶς αἱ Ἀριστάρχου

As we note here in our published commentary, this is possible because two separate editions or ekdoseis of the text of Homer were attributed in antiquity to Aristarchus (= αἱ Ἀριστάρχου in the scholia), both of which were known to his student Didymus. From Didymus’ scholarly work many of the scholia derive. Rather than choose between these equally attested readings, the Venetus A itself takes a multitext approach by noting, right next to the line in question, that multiple ancient readings are known for this verse.

Moreover, if we look at these two readings from the perspective of the system of composition-in-performance that generated them, we find that both verbs are well attested in the formulaic diction. ἔγρεο occurs here and in two places in the Odyssey; ὄρσεο is attested four times in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey. Clearly, both verbs could be generated by a poet composing in performance. Here is a perfect illustration of the difficulty a modern editor of Homer faces when trying to choose between two or more equally Homeric (= formulaic) variations. When we convene in Washington, DC on the 24th, we hope to wake the students up to the advantages of exploring the history of the Iliad from a multitextual perspective, in which both readings can be understood and appreciated as witnesses to the workings of formulaic diction and in which one need not be chose at the expense of the other.

Undergraduates at College of the Holy Cross and University of Houston win Summer Research Fellowships

We are delighted to announce that five students have won research fellowships to work on the Homer Multitext this summer. Christopher Rivera and Megan Truax have won Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships from the University of Houston. At the College of the Holy Cross, Nikolas Churik, Brian Clark, and Deborah Sokolowski will participate in the Mellon Summer Research Program in the Social Science, Humanities, and Arts. The students at both institutions will spend the summer working as a team to transcribe, edit, and mark up folios from the tenth-century manuscript of the Homeric Iliad known as the Venetus A, which is the oldest extant manuscript containing a complete text of the poem. Much of their work will focus on books nine and ten of the Iliad, which feature a night time embassy to Achilles and a night raid by the Greek soldiers Odysseus and Diomedes on the Trojan camp.

In addition to the work of these students, the Homer Multitext will benefit this summer from the research of eight different faculty/undergraduate student teams. The teams come from Brandeis University, Furman University, Gustavus Adolphus College, College of the Holy Cross, University of Houston, Leiden University, Trinity University in San Antonio, and University of Washington. The teams will participate in the Homer Multitext summer seminar at the Center for Hellenic Studies in June, and will continue their work over the summer and into the next academic year. As we did last year, we will report on the discoveries of the students as they are happening over the summer, and publish posts from the students themselves about their work.

Comparing Scholia: one example

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.

Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush now on-line

An on-line version of Parts I and III of Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: A Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary is now available from the Center for Hellenic Studies. Hard copies may be purchased from Harvard University Press. Part II (texts and text commentaries) will be added soon.

UPDATE 2/4/12: Part II is now available as well.

Review of Poetics of Ambush

An incredibly kind review of Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush appeared in Bryn Mawr Classical Review today. I was particularly pleased that the reviewer commented on the multitextual aspect of the book and linked to the HMT.