Layout and Visible Tags
Each scholion is preceded by an abbreviated play title and a line number corresponding to the standard numeration of the poetic text. Scholia on the same line are distinguished by the two digits that follow the decimal point after the line number. The order of the scholia on the same line is determined as follows: ranges beginning with a number precede the number by itself, and a longer range precedes a shorter range (hence sch. on 1-139 before sch. on 1-5 before sch. on 1-2 before sch. on 1); scholia applying to a whole line precede those on phrases or words within the line; scholia on phrases or words are ordered by the position of the first or only word of the lemma in the poetic text, again with notes on a range of words beginning with word X preceding notes on the single word X; older scholia precede younger scholia, and Moschopulean, Thoman, and Triclinian appear in that order. The scholion number is always based on the first line, but if the note applies to a range of lines, this range is displayed in parentheses.
Following the scholion number and between parentheses are two items indicating classification by type and subtype. The types include vet (old, that is, attested before 1200 or after 1200 in the original hand in V or in C), rec (young, that is, first attested after 1200 and anonymous), mosch (note by Manuel Moschopulus), thom (note by Thomas Magister), tri (note by Demetrius Triclinius), plan (note by Maximus Planudes [none in the initial sample]). Types are also concatenated to form categories like vetThom (same item in an old witness and in the Thoman annotation) or recMosch (same item in younger witnesses and in the Moschopulean annotation). The subtypes include exeg (exegetic, a note explaining some matter of textual interpretation, mythography, genealogy, customs, staging, or the like), gloss (an annotation usually of only one or two words giving a synomym or supplying an understood term), paraphr (a grouping of glosses into a paraphrase of more than a couple of words), gram (a grammatical note without explicit relation to the passage at hand), metr (metrical notes), artGloss (a gloss that consists only of the article agreeing with the glossed word), etaGloss (an eta placed over a Doric alpha in a lyric passage to indicate the normal form). After the text of each scholia a list of sigla for the witnesses is added.
Each scholion may be followed by various elements of editorial or explanatory matter. First is a translation: only a few are present now for testing purposes; later, selected scholia will be translated. The next section gives information about the lemma, about the use of reference symbols (a symbol or alphabetic numeral placed near the relevant part of the text and also near the start of the scholion), and about the position of the scholion (see below for the meaning of the abbreviations). If there is textual variation in the witnesses, then an apparatus criticus is added. A secondary apparatus (labeled Orthographica) contains orthographic variants (except that variant spellings of proper names are currently in the main apparatus) and other minor variants. A section labeled Comment is intended for citation of similar passages and comments of various kinds (there are only a few in the sample edition).
Two further sections are intended for the author or expert collaborators. One records collation notes concerning doubtful readings of poor images or damaged originals and concerning readings that need to be checked by autopsy at some future date. The other will contain keywords, which will serve to classify more precisely the content of various kinds of exegetic scholia and will contain terms that will be indexed. Only a few keyword sections have been created in the current sample.
Position of T in Lists of Witnesses
On those occasions when a Thoman gloss coincides with a Moschopulean gloss, the Moschopulean witnesses are listed first and the Thoman witnesses second. When Triclinius places a cross in front of such a gloss (his way of marking Moschopulean annotation), then the siglum T (for Angelicus 14) is placed immediately after the Moschopulean witnesses (so far these are generally XXaXbXo) and before the Thoman. When Triclinius does not place a cross in front of such a gloss (lack of a cross generally means that a gloss above the line is from Thoman annotation or by Triclinius himself), the siglum T appears instead after the main Thomas witnesses (so far these are ZZaZm).
Disagreements with previous collations
In the process of collation, I have carefully checked my reading of the mss with the reports in Schwartz’s apparatus criticus, in Günther’s sample collations of Moschopulean scholia on Or. 208-347 and of Thoman scholia on Or. 1-70 and 208-315, and in De Faveri’s edition of the metrical scholia of Triclinius. Where I offer a different report, I do so advisedly.
Punctuation and diacritics
Punctuation has often been tacitly adjusted to modern conventions. No inferences should be made about the punctuation used by the scribes. Minor variations in diacritics are often not recorded (e.g. presence and absence of iota subscript in different witnesses; acute vs. grave on the final word of a note).
At this time, I have not normalized the grave accents that the scribes almost always use on single-word glosses that are oxytone words. Sometimes this scribal practice may have been based on the notion that the gloss was really to be understood as substituting for the glossed word within the context of the other words of the text, but it is evident that this notion does not always apply and that the Byzantine scribes simply did not have the convention that oxytone words in isolation (and even such words before some punctuation) should have an acute instead of a grave.
Abbreviations
| abbrev. | abbreviation, abbreviated |
| a.c. | before correction (Latin ante correctionem) |
| acc. | according |
| add. | added (by), add(s) [unless a different hand or an adverb like ‘later’ is included, this means ‘has in addition’ by comparison to other versions; if a specific location is not mentioned, this implies an addition at the end of a scholion or phrase in comparison with other versions] |
| app. | apparently (Latin ut videtur, attached to readings somehow obscure or ambiguous) |
| arg. | argument (any item of prefatory material accompanying the play) |
| conj. | conjecture made by |
| corr. | corrected by, correct(s) |
| Dind. | Gulielmus [Wilhelm] Dindorf (in his edition of the scholia, Scholia graeca in Euripides tragoedias, 4 vols. Oxford 1863) |
| dram. pers. | dramatis personae |
| edd. | editors |
| fol. | folio |
| intermarg. | intermarginal (scholion position is described as intermarg. when the note is written in a space between the block of text and the main block of scholia) |
| marg. | margin (scholion position is described as marg. when the note is adjacent to the beginning or end of the line to which it applies and is not part of a block or orderly sequence of marginal scholia) |
| Mast. | D. J. Mastronarde |
| Matt. | August Matthiae (in his edition of the scholia as vols. 4-5, 1817-1818, of his 10-vol. edition of Euripides, Euripidis Tragoediae et Fragmenta, Leipzig 1813-1829) |
| mss | manuscripts |
| om. | omitted (by), omit(s) [may simply mean “does not attest, does not include, does not have” and need not imply longer form is original] |
| p.c. | after correction (Latin post correctionem) |
| prep. | preposed (by), prepose(s) [unless some other indication is given, this term applies to additional matter at the beginning of a scholion in comparison with other versions] |
| punct. | punctuation, punctuated |
| sch. | scholion |
| Schw. | Eduard Schwartz (in his edition of the scholia vetera, Scholia in Euripidem, 2 vols., Berlin 1887-1891) |
| s.l. | above the line (Latin supra lineam) |
| transp. | transposed, transpose(s) [indicates only that in comparison to another attested word order the words are in a different order; need not imply that the other order is original] |
| * | erased or illegible letter |
| ? | singly, before or after a word (or in both places), indicates an uncertain decipherment of unclear writing or unclear image |
| ??? | in series, indicates approximate number of undeciphered letters in a section that is unclear |
Parentheses and brackets
| ( ) | when surrounding Greek characters, enclose the expansion of an abbreviation (for example, γρ(άφεται)) or enclose parts of a word left implicit (for example, (μ)ῆ(τερ) represents an η over the α of μᾶτερ in the text) |
| () | at the end of a Greek word indicate that the word is not written in full (often there is an abbreviation stroke) and that the inflectional ending was left to be inferred (therefore, when there are variants as to the ending, a reading so abbreviated fails to tell us what ending the scribe thought he was conveying) |
| [ ] | enclose any part of the text that is unknown because of damage to the writing (abrasion, stain, overwriting, fading of ink) or loss of the writing surface (recut margins, damage to papyri) |
| ⟨ ⟩ | enclose words or letters that have been omitted by the scribe(s) but are restored by editor(s) |
| { } | enclose words transmitted by the witnesses but judged to be incorrect intrusions in the text |