Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are

grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...

, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced i ...

of ancient authors, as glosses. One who writes scholia is a scholiast. The earliest attested use of the word dates to the 1st century BC.

History

Maass, Ernst – Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem Townleyana, 1887 – BEIC 3064427

Ancient scholia are important sources of information about many aspects of the ancient world, especially ancient literary history. The earliest scholia, usually anonymous, date to the 5th or 4th century BC (such as the ''scholia minora'' to the ''Iliad''). The practice of compiling scholia continued to late Byzantine times, outstanding examples being Archbishop Eustathius' massive commentaries to Homer in the 12th century and the ''scholia recentiora'' of Thomas Magister,

Demetrius Triclinius Demetrius Triclinius ( el, Δημήτριος Τρικλίνιος; b. ca. 1300), a native of Thessalonica, was a Byzantine scholar who edited and analyzed the metrical structure of many texts from ancient Greece, particularly those of Aeschylus, S ...

and

Manuel Moschopoulos Manuel Moschopoulos ( Latinized as Manuel Moschopulus; el, ), was a Byzantine commentator and grammarian, who lived during the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century and was an important figure in the Palaiologan Renaissance. ''Mos ...

in the 14th. Scholia were altered by successive copyists and owners of the manuscript, and in some cases, increased to such an extent that there was no longer room for them in the margin, and it became necessary to make them into a separate work. At first, they were taken from one commentary only, and subsequently from several. This is indicated by the repetition of the

lemma Lemma may refer to: Language and linguistics * Lemma (morphology), the canonical, dictionary or citation form of a word * Lemma (psycholinguistics), a mental abstraction of a word about to be uttered Science and mathematics * Lemma (botany), ...

("headword"), or by the use of such phrases as "or thus", "alternatively", "according to some", to introduce different explanations, or by the explicit quotation of different sources.

Important sets of scholia

Greek

The most important are those on the

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

ic ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Ody ...

'', especially those found in the 10th-century manuscripts discovered by Villoison in 1781 in the

Biblioteca Marciana The Marciana Library or Library of Saint Mark ( it, italic=no, Biblioteca Marciana, but in historical documents commonly referred to as ) is a public library in Venice, Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and repositori ...

in Venice (see further

Venetus A Venetus A is the more common name for the tenth century AD manuscript codex catalogued in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice as ''Codex Marcianus Graecus'' 454, now 822. Its name is Latin for "Venetian A." Venetus A is the most famous manuscrip ...

, Homeric scholarship), which are based on Aristarchus and his school. The scholia on

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...

Pindar Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar ...

Sophocles Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his ...

and

Apollonius Rhodius Apollonius of Rhodes ( grc, Ἀπολλώνιος Ῥόδιος ''Apollṓnios Rhódios''; la, Apollonius Rhodius; fl. first half of 3rd century BC) was an ancient Greek author, best known for the ''Argonautica'', an epic poem about Jason and ...

are also extremely important.

Latin

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

, the most important are those of Servius on

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

; of Acro and

Porphyrio ''Porphyrio'' is the swamphen or swamp hen bird genus in the rail family. It includes some smaller species which are usually called "purple gallinules", and which are sometimes separated as genus ''Porphyrula'' or united with the gallinules pro ...

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

; and of Donatus on

Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...

. Also of interest are the scholia on

Juvenal Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...

attached to the good manuscript P; while there are also scholia on

Statius Publius Papinius Statius ( Greek: Πόπλιος Παπίνιος Στάτιος; ; ) was a Greco-Roman poet of the 1st century CE. His surviving Latin poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the ''Thebaid''; a collection of occasional poetry, ...

, especially associated with the name Lactantius Placidus.

List of ancient commentaries

Some ancient scholia are of sufficient quality and importance to be labelled "commentaries" instead. The existence of a commercial translation is often used to distinguish between "scholia" and "commentaries". The following is a chronological list of ancient commentaries written defined as those for which commercial translations have been made: *

Asconius Quintus Asconius Pedianus (BC 9 - AD 76) was a Roman historian. There is no evidence that Asconius engaged in a public career, but he was familiar both with Roman government of his time and with the geography of the city. He may, therefore, have w ...

(c. 55 AD) on

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...

's ''Pro Scauro'', ''In Pisonem'', '' Pro Milone'', ''Pro Cornelio'' and '' In Toga Candida'' * Servius (c. 400 AD) on

's ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of ...

'' *

Macrobius Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...

(c. 400 AD) on

's '' Dream of Scipio'' *

Proclus Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophe ...

(c. 440 AD) on

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

's ''

Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (; grc-gre, Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia. Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea, from a wealthy and illustrious family. His date ...

'' and '' Timaeus'' and Euclid's ''Elements'' *

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the t ...

(c. 520 AD) on

's ''Topics''

Other uses

Benedict Spinoza Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...

provided his own scholia to many of the propositions in his ''

Ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...

'', commentaries upon and expansions of the individual propositions, or sometimes short conclusions to sections of argumentation running over a number of propositions. * In modern mathematics texts, scholia are marginal notes which may amplify a line of reasoning or compare it with proofs given earlier. A famous example is Bayes' scholium, in which he presents a justification for assuming a

continuous uniform distribution In probability theory and statistics, the continuous uniform distribution or rectangular distribution is a family of symmetric probability distributions. The distribution describes an experiment where there is an arbitrary outcome that lies bet ...

for the

prior Prior (or prioress) is an ecclesiastical title for a superior in some religious orders. The word is derived from the Latin for "earlier" or "first". Its earlier generic usage referred to any monastic superior. In abbeys, a prior would be low ...

of the parameter of a

Bernoulli process In probability and statistics, a Bernoulli process (named after Jacob Bernoulli) is a finite or infinite sequence of binary random variables, so it is a discrete-time stochastic process that takes only two values, canonically 0 and 1. T ...

. Another famous example of a somewhat different use is to be found in

Brook Taylor Brook Taylor (18 August 1685 – 29 December 1731) was an English mathematician best known for creating Taylor's theorem and the Taylor series, which are important for their use in mathematical analysis. Life and work Brook Taylor ...

's ''Methodus Incrementorum'', in which the propositions demonstrated are often followed by a scholium which further explains the significance of the proposition. * ''Scholia'' is an academic journal in the field of

classical studies Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

.''Scholia''''Scholia'' reviews
* Search engine relying on

wikidata Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain license ...

, mainly for scientific publications
Scholia
* Nicolás Gómez Dávila was one of the most radical critics of modernity whose work consists almost entirely of aphorisms which he called "escolios" ("glosses") of an implicit text.

References

Citations

Sources

* Dickey, Eleanor. ''Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises''. Oxford:

OUP Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

for the APA, 2007. . * Reynolds, L.D. and N.G. Wilson. ''Scribes & Scholars: a Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature'', 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. . *

External links

Online scholia on Euripides
{{Book structure Documents Classical philology Christian genres