Are Venetus B and E3 "twins"? (Guest post)

Matthew Davis (University of Houston, class of 2011)

The E3 (= West E, Escorialensis Y.I.1) has traditionally gotten less attention than its closest relative, the Venetus B (Marcianus Graecus Z. 453). As Dr. Dué mentioned in her preliminary notes, both texts were produced in Constantinople before making their way to Venice in the 15th C, where the E3 was eventually purchased for Phillip II in 1572. Allen dates both texts as 11th century, with the VB being no later than 1050, and sees them as derivatives of one branch of the manuscript family, and the more distantly related C (Laurentianus 32.3) of another. Still because of their nearly identical layout, the E3 has sometimes been considered to be a twin of the Venetus B, and in at least one case was even attributed to the same scribal hand. Fortunately, digital publication makes direct comparison of the manuscripts possible for the first time by anyone with internet access and an interest in doing so. Having been given early access to the images of the E3, undergraduates such as myself are doing just that. As it turns out, differences between the texts are numerous, and often too subtle to be fully expressed in an apparatus criticus.

A particularly strange example can be found at the end of folio 97 recto in the E3:

(Folio 97r of E3)

Line 413 above (ἄψορρον δ' Ἰδαῖος ἔβη προτὶ Ἴλιον ἱρήν) ) is the last line of the corresponding folio in the Venetus B, 101r, and the reverse sides of both of these folios (E3-97v and VB-101v) begin with line 414. The last five lines shown here, those marked with an antisigma (used to mark passages where the order has been disturbed) are actually lines 7.430-7.434, which appear again in their proper place near the bottom of E3-97v. Typically, folios in these manuscripts have 24 lines each, and E3-97r is no exception; VB-101r is missing these duplicated lines and stops short at 19 lines, using the extra space instead for a vocabulary note. This note is in the later hand that characterizes a second set of scholia that is not present in E3. Curiously, the ink of this presumably later note resembles more closely the older set of scholia which both manuscripts share (shown below).

(Folio 101r of the Venetus B)

This leaves us with two possible scenarios: they are either both ultimately derived from a text in which these lines were also duplicated (with the scribe of VB choosing to omit them) or the Venetus B was copied from the E3 or one of its derivatives. In either case, they are definitely not ʻtwins,ʼ and the E3 is definitely not a derivative of the VB.

Still, there is more evidence to consider. While in nearly every case the E3 follows the vertical differences of the VB when compared to the Venetus A (charted here), there is a plus verse in the E3, line 8.19 (E3-98r and VB-103r). If the scribe of E3 had been pulling from another family of manuscripts we should expect to find additional verses or scholia such as this, but it is far more likely for a single verse to be lost in transmission instead, especially considering these two manuscripts are overwhelmingly similar in their verse order. What makes this line even more interesting is that these two folios have the same number of lines, 21; it is only on the verso that the plus verse is accounted for in the layout. Line 8.22, the last verse on VB-103r, is the first on E3-98v, bringing the total number of lines on E3-98v to 25. For both of these changes to occur during the same copying, the scribe of the VB would have to have skipped line 8.19 accidentally, then also pulled the first line from the verso for the line count to match. (This presumes that the line was not struck intentionally. The line reads well with the one before it and is referenced as early as Plato, so I see no reason to suspect that its authenticity was in question.) This scenario seems even less likely than the previous one, where a scribe may have pulled the line from another text. The most reasonable explanation then, is that these changes occurred separately: in one branch (E3) the number of lines per page was altered when line 8.22 was moved onto the verso, and in another (VB), which must have still retained the original layout with 24 lines on the verso, a line was accidentally skipped on the recto.

These two observations support Allen then, though I suspect the split between the texts occurred a generation or more before he suggests. My own comparison was limited to books 7 and 8 (based on the chart linked above) but more systematic comparisons are surely on their way, and as more differences in layout and content come to light, further reconstruction of the manuscript family will surely follow.

"Touch" the Venetus A

When the Homer Multitext project created digital images of the Venetus A manuscript, one argument for the project was that far fewer people would ever need to handle the codex again: the freely-licensed images could be used instead for most purposes.

In 2007 I certainly never imagined that you might interact with the images by touching a digital screen, but today you can read the Venetus A on an iPad thanks to the creative geniuses at the University of Kentucky's Center for Visualization & Virtual Environments. (Get the app from the iTunes store here.)

What everyone involved in the project certainly did recognize in 2007 was that we could not foresee what future scholars might do with our work. The images (like all the Homer Multitext project's work) are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license that explicitly allows their free reuse. Would this iPad app have been developed if the images were not freely available? Fortunately, we'll never know (or need to know). Thanks once again to the Biblioteca Marciana and everyone involved in the photography for making it possible to license our work freely.

So get the iPad app and touch all you want. (Now if I could find a budget line to get one of those new iPad 2 tablets...)

New content, new contributors

Eric Raymond popularized the phrase "release early, release often" as a philosophy for software development. It works for digital scholarship, too.

We're happy to announce today an early release of a facsimile browser incorporating new material from our photography in the Escorial last summer. (The adjacent image of folio 18 recto is linked to the new browser, or see the facsimile reader home page at http://pinakes.hpcc.uh.edu/codex.)

The digital facsimile edition requires data about the manuscripts (including what folios appear in what sequence), an index aligning each folio with a canonical citation of lines of the Iliad, and an index identifying which side of which folio each image illustrates. A group of dedicated and talented volunteers (some shown in the photo below) has been meeting regularly on Friday afternoons to put this material together for the E3 manuscript, prior to beginning work on a full diplomatic edition of the text (as others are already doing for the Venetus A and Venetus B codices).

Perhaps even more remarkable than the volunteers' rapid mastery of E3's Byzantine script is the fact that all of the students are in their first year of Greek at Holy Cross. If you're not accustomed to learning about the transmission of Homer from first-year Greek students, a Friday afternoon with this group is enlightening.

You will undoubtedly see postings on this blog in the future announcing further releases of material from "Team E3." In addition to the puzzles they've had to solve to make today's release available, they are compiling careful observations that will lead to a helpful guide to the paleography of E3, and have already noted a number of unpublished or unappreciated discrepancies bewteen E3 and other manuscripts that are forcing all of us working on the Homer Multitext project to reassess the traditional scholarly views on the (b) family of manuscripts of the Iliad.

The E3 group has currently indexed more than half of the manuscript: we're including folios 1 recto - 109 recto (covering Iliad books 1-8) in today's release.

Our profound thanks to all members of the group (alphabetically):

• Matthew Angiolillo (HC '13)
• Neil Curran (HC '14)
• Maria Jaroszewicz (HC '12)
• Alex Krasowski (HC '13)
• Becky Musgrave (HC '14)
• Kathleen O'Connor (HC '13)
• Anne Salloom (HC '14)
• Megan Whitacre (HC '14)

Describing a single folio of E4: 188 recto

Folio 188 recto of the manuscript of the Iliad known as E4.

In this post I will give some basic information about the Iliad manuscript known as E4 (Allen, = West F, Escorialensis Ω.I.12), and then proceed to describe a single folio in detail, folio 188 recto. (Thanks to University of Houston undergraduates Kat Dybala and Matthew Davis for their contributions to my understanding of this folio!)  In this way it will be possible to see how E4 relates to other manuscripts in the Homer Multitext as well as the several features that distinguish it from them.

E4 is an eleventh-century parchment codex, thought by Allen and previous scholars to be later than E3 (also eleventh century).  It consists of 216 folios, containing a complete text of the Iliad, a commentary with lemmata on Iliad 1–2.300, lives of Homer, a summary of the Cypria, an excerpt from the Batrachomyomachia (“Battle of Frogs and Mice”), excerpts from Porphyry, and other scholia with lemmata. The main text of the Iliad begins on folio 7, where a new set of scholia likewise begins. Individual books are preceded by hypotheses and a one verse metrical summary (the same one verse summaries that you find in Venetus A). The layout of E4 is quite different from Venetus A, Venetus B, and E3. On each folio there are two columns. The left column contains the text of the poem and the right columns consist of a paraphrase. According to Allen (1931:148), E4 is not related to any of the other early minuscule manuscripts. The manuscript seems to have been acquired in Venice for the price of 25 ducats, according to a subscription on the last folio (liber mei Benedicti Cornelii quem emi meis pecuniis pretio ducatorum viginti q).

Folio 188r

Folio 188r of the manuscript known as E4 (= West F, Escorialensis Ω.I.12) marks the beginning of Iliad book 22. We may compare it to Venetus A folio 282r, Venetus B folio 292r, and E3 283r. Its facing page on the left side, folio 187v, is taken up by a hypothesis, a large selection from Porphyry, and scholia, including comments on the text of the Iliad that is written on 188r.

Layout and Adornment

The folio contains Iliad 22.1-37 in the left column, and a paraphrase in the right. There are scholia in the top and outer margins and between the lines of the paraphrase. This layout differs considerably from that of the Venetus A, the Venetus B, and E3, where there is a central block of Iliad text with scholia surrounding it in the top, bottom and outer margins, as well as, to a much less extent, in the inner margin.

A large omega in red comprises the first letter of the main text of the poem in the left column. The initial omicron of the paraphrase  text in right column is also in red, and somewhat larger than the rest of the paraphrase text, set in the margin to the left of the text block.  Occasionally the initial letters of the line in both the left and the right columns are highlighted in a similar way.

There is a metrical summary of the book in red ink that spans the width of the two text blocks. It is placed just under a decorative border across the top, also in red ink. The summary reads: ἱλιάδος χ ὁμήρου ῥαψωδίας : χι δ‘αρα τρὶς περὶ τεῖχος ἄγων κτάν‘ Ἕκτορ‘ Ἀχιλλεύς (Rhapsody 22 of the Iliad of Homer: Chi. And leading him around the walls three times, Achilleus kills Hektor). This is the same summary as in Venetus A. There is no other subscription on the page. Note that the Venetus B has a different summary: χῖ Θέτιδος γόνος ὡκὺς ἀπώλεσεν Ἕκτορα δῖον :- ἀρχὴ τῆς χῖ ὁμήρου ῥαψωδίας  :- (Chi. The swift offspring of Thetis kills brilliant Hektor.  [This marks] the beginning of rhapsody 22 of Homer). E3 has the same summary as B; for this book in E3 there does not seem to be anywhere the summary of A in any hand.

We can already see that E4 has many features that distinguish it from the other manuscripts with scholia, including those of comparable date. Its layout is different, it contains a running paraphrase of the poem, and its metrical summary at the start of each book matches the tradition that we find in A, not B. The hypotheses at the start of each book of E4 are not found in A, B, or E3.

Main text

There are 37 lines of the poem on folio 188r, considerably more than would be found on a typical folio of A, B, or E3. For this reason E4 consists of only 216 folios, whereas A has 327 and B has 338.

12    E4 reads δεῦρ’ ἐλιάσθης (with A, T, and several other mss.) whereas several papyri and B read δεῦρο λιάσθης.

18    E4 and the codex Ambrosianus read ἀφείλαο where most manuscripts read ἀφείλεο.

27    E4 reads ὀπώρηις along with A (the text of A appears to have been corrected here) where most mss. read ὀπώρης.

30    E4, A, and one other manuscript read ὁ δ’ where others and the papyri read ὁ γ’.

33    E4 reads γ’ ἐκόψατο where most other manuscripts and the papyri read γε κόψατο.

36    E4 and A read ἑστήκει where most manuscripts read εἱστήκει.

Although one folio cannot be considered a representative sample, E4’s text of the Iliad on this folio seems to resemble A more closely than B.

Scholia

The scholia of E4 seem to have been collected from several different sources. There is a set of numbered scholia which corresponds to the numbered scholia in B, E3, and Laurentianus 32.3 (= Allen C and West C). There is another set of scholia in the same hand that is connected to the text with symbols, and these contain material from the so-called “D scholia” (also known as the scholia minora). This set of scholia is also found in B, but it is in the second, later hand of B. The scholia in this group are linked to the text through signs.

On folio 188r, we do find both numbered scholia and scholia linked to the text through symbols. Some scholia are written between lines of the paraphrase. The scholia that we find on E4 can all for the most part be found in B (not A), but they do not have the same layout as in B and their associated numbers and symbols do not correspond with those in B. In a future post I plan to provide a transcription of the scholia on folio 188r together with a comparison with the corresponding set on B and E3. There are definitely differences. For example, we find this comment at the top of folio 188r of E4:

ἀκέοντο: ἐθεραπεύοντο· κυρίως ἀκεῖσθαι τὸ ἄχος ἰᾶσθαι· καὶ τὸ ὃ δή ποτε θεραπεύειν· ὅθεν Φρύγες ἀκεστὴν τὸν ἰατρόν· καὶ Ἀθηναῖοι ἀκέστριαν.

Most of this comment, but not the whole, is in the numbered scholia of B and in E3 (with no lemma however in B or E3), while the whole, with the exception of ἐθεραπεύοντο, is also in T. So for this scholion, E4 resembles T more closely than B.

Preliminary observations

A preliminary study of a single folio reveals that E4 is a very unusual manuscript, both in its layout and content. Its main text seems very possibly in some way related to the tradition of A, while its scholia are related to those of B (and E3 and C). The scholia are related to those of B, but there are many differences between the two sets, most notably that the group of scholia connected by symbols are in a later hand of B (and not present in E3) while in E4 they are in the same hand and of the same date as the numbered scholia. As Allen observed, this manuscript cannot be precisely connected with any single other manuscript or manuscript family, and it would well deserve further study.

A quick update of ongoing undergraduate research

It was a busy fall semester, although the lack updates here may make it seem as though nothing was going on with the project. On the contrary, progress continues with both the manuscripts and the papyri. At Furman University, undergraduate researchers continue making XML editions of the papyri. One of the 2010 summer interns at the College of the Holy Cross continues his work mapping, inventorying, and transcribing the text and scholia from the Venetus A. Other students are working on editing the Iliad text of A so that we have an electronic version of exactly what text that manuscript has (no more rooting around in apparatuses of modern editions!).

We acquired high-resolution and (in the case of E3) multispectral photographs of two more manuscripts of the Iliad in July 2010 (for more detail, see these two posts from last summer), and students at Holy Cross are indexing the photographs of the manuscript we affectionately call E3 (after Allen) according to what lines of the Iliad appear on each one, while students Furman are doing the same for E4. My colleague, Neel Smith, has been able to get students in their first-year of Greek involved in this project, and allowing students at the introductory level of the language to do research with primary sources has been phenomenal. We are just beginning to get a good idea of what these two manuscripts contain, and we will start posting small, initial findings as we get to know them better.

Editing manuscripts with text and image services

An earlier post briefly illustrated one way that the Homer Multitext project is using a dynamic image service to help editors inventorying the scholia in the Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad. A post last week illustrated one way that the project's Canonical Text Service is helping automate comparison of different texts of the Iliad. Taken together, image services and automated collation of editions are a potent combination for editors.

The initial note on comparing two manuscripts used the chart linked from this thumbnail: I updated the note to use the chart linked from this thumb: Why the dramatic difference in the report on Iliad 17?

The project's initial edition of the Venetus A was created by a dedicated team of undergraduate Fellows, who worked from the apparatus of T.W. Allen's critical edition to "reverse engineer" a text of the Venetus A, before the project was able to digitize the manuscript in 2007. In 2010, as the scholia are being inventoried, this edition is gradually being checked against the direct evidence of the digital images, but book 17 is still based on Allen's printed information. In his apparatus to 17.729 (vol. 3, p. 166), Allen notes tersely "729-761 om. A". The HMT Fellows correctly interpreted this to mean that Venetus A does not include the last 32 lines of book 17, and consequently struck them from our edition. This is the basis for the first chart above.

Now, with the digital images in hand, we see somthing more interesting. Folio 237 verso is written in the familiar tenth-century hand of most of the manuscript, and includes scholia. (See the zoomable image, including scholia, linked from this thumbnail: . Folios 238 recto and verso, however, are a replacement for a lost original, perhaps in the hand of Cardinal Bessarion himself. Compare the zoomable image linked here

Evidently, in this instance at least, Allen decided that "A" was to mean "the tenth-century A only". The HMT edition prefers instead to take "A" as the entire, continuous Iliadic text, since our electronic edition and indices can distinguish the folios added later from the tenth-century originals, and leave open for any particular application the question of whether to work with tenth-century text only, later text only, or the entire text.

Allen's apparatus has no way to communicate this. The ambiguously compressed note "omisit" would most naturally suggest that the last 32 lines of book 17 were never part of A (as the HMT Fellows took it to mean). There is no hint that the manuscript, as we have it, completes A through 17.761.

The most important point is not whether or not we take issue with Allen's phrasing, however. What is significant is rather that tools like automatic collation can call our attention to passages that stand out or appear unusual; automated associations with our image service then allow us to unravel a trail of evidence that has vanished from the app.crit. of Allen's "definitive" edition. Editors are now manually collating the text of the last 32 lines of Venetus A's book 17. Among the interesting questions we will be able to consider: what source did Bessarion use for filling out the missing folio? An automated comparison with the Venetus B might be revealing — perhaps a subject for a future blog post.

A final methodological observation — all the images in this post are created dynamically. References either to Google's Chart service, or the Homer Multitext project's image service return image data that can be used as you like, including embedding in a web page.

Comparing two manuscripts with CTS

A digital multitext can make it easier for readers to compare different versions of the Iliad; it can also enable new kinds of systematic, machine-assisted comparisons. For example: since we now have complete texts of the Venetus A and Venetus B manuscripts of the Iliad in the Homer Multitext project's Canonical Text Service, we can use the service's knowledge about the citation of each version to find the vertical variation between Venetus A and Venetus B (that is, what lines are present or absent in the two manuscripts).

The chart linked to this thumbnail image summarizes the variation book by book. The number of "plus" and "minus" verses are counted for each of the 24 books of the Iliad (the x axis); the dark blue section of a bar represents the number of lines that appear in A but not B; the light blue section represents the number of lines that appear in B but not A. (Phrased differently, if we are taking A as a reference text, and comparing B to it, we could say that the dark blue section represents "plus verses," and the light blue section represents "minus verses.")

Even a simple example like this creates a view of two manuscripts that would be prohibitively tedious to construct from print editions — and since there is no complete print edition of either Venetus A or Venetus B, would be impossible in any case. As we think about how to read and compare material in a digital multitext, we will have to go beyond our experience with print editions to rethink what it means to read and compare texts.

I'll reserve the subject of horizontal variation for another blog post.

Update: I've posted a slightly geekier but related discussion here.