Scholia

A Scholion (Greek σχόλιον " Schulstückchen ", plural scholia ), Latinized Scholium (plural scholia ) is an explanatory short or longer note in an ancient or medieval manuscript.

Description

A Scholion brings an explanation about a language or content difficult passage. Scholia are registered at the edge of a text (as marginal scholia ) or between the lines (as interlinear scholia ). Your unknown authors are mentioned scholiasts. If such a note only serves (often a foreign word ) to define a little-known concept from the text slightly - for example, by mere reference to a synonym - it is called glosses. The transition between glosses and scholia ( detailed explanations ) is fluid.

Scholia -type declarations, there were already in the 5th century BC; they were needed for compulsory education in the Athenian Homer - reading. Remains of which are preserved in the traditional Homeric scholia. In the epoch of Hellenism philologists Texts and Comments wont to publish separately. Since the early imperial period it was customary to bring explanations above, below or next to the text; specifically for this type of statements used the designation scholia.

The term is first attested in Scholion Cicero, who used it in a letter to his friend Atticus (Ad Atticum 16,7,3 ). There, however, has not yet Scholion the later usual meaning, but refers to an imaginary as a reminder document. In the meaning " short explanatory remark " the word comes first in the 2nd century Galen, Lucian and in Arrian's collection of doctrinal discussions Epictetus.

The content of their comments withdrawals scholiasts the ancient commentaries on the works, which furnished them with scholia. Since these comments are usually not obtained, make scholia valuable sources; they do give an impression of how the annotated text - most were the eagerly studied works of school authors - in the period in which the lost comment was pointing, which background information you had to or have to believe and how to then dealt with the problems of textual criticism. Importantly, the scholia are also because they influenced the comprehension of contemporaries and posterity. In addition, the scholia can sometimes refer to textual variants that are otherwise not been preserved; then they can be used for textual criticism.

Because of their high value for the history of literature are scholia subject of separate critical editions. The determination of the sources from which the scholia texts are taken, and the dating often proves to be difficult.

Particularly well studied are the scholia to Homer's Iliad. Reported are also scholia to other major Greek writers such as Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Plato, Isocrates, Demosthenes and Aratus of Soli. Among the Latin authors, whose works have been provided in manuscripts containing scholia belong Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Persius and Juvenal. Famous are the Scholia Bembina comedies of Terence; they were entered in the 6th century in the Codex Bembinus, a late antique Terence manuscript.