Venetus A
Encyclopedia
Venetus A is the more common [or original] name for the tenth century (AD) manuscript catalogued in the Biblioteca Marciana
in Venice
as Codex
Marcianus Graecus 454, now 822.
Venetus A is the most famous manuscript of the Homer
ic Iliad
; it is regarded by some as the best text of the epic
. As well as the text of the Iliad, Venetus A preserves several layers of annotations, glosses, and commentaries known as the "A scholia", and a summary of the early Greek
Epic Cycle which is by far our most important source of information on those lost poems.
.
The A scholia, for which Venetus A is by far the most important source, derive from the so-called "VMK" (Viermännerkommentar, "four-man commentary"), named for the four ancient scholars Aristonicus
, Didymus
, Herodian
, and Nicanor
. The main source for the A scholia was probably a compilation of their work, rather than each of the four men's work individually. Because all four of these scholars worked in the tradition of the Alexandria
n scholar Aristarchus
, much of the A scholia can be traced back to Aristarchos himself.
The relationship between the A scholia and other branches of the Iliadic scholia, however, is much more debatable and confused. A text which does not survive, known as "ApH" for its authors "Apion and Herodorus", is key to all reconstructions of this relationship. Eustathius
in his own commentary on the Iliad frequently refers to "Apion and Herodorus" as a source, and a comparison between them shows that the relationship between "ApH" and the A scholia is a close one.
Two stemmata or "family trees" for Venetus A may be summarised from the work of van der Valk and Erbse
respectively:
Of the two, Erbse's viewpoint tends to be the more highly regarded.
Another important source that feeds into A is a group of scholia on mythographical and allegorical topics, derived from Porphyry
's Homeric Questions. The current standard edition of the Iliads scholia, that of Erbse, omits these scholia.
On the origins of the Proclean Chrestomathy which is partially preserved in Venetus A, see also Epic Cycle, Eutychius Proclus.
scholar and archbishop Eustathius
, even if he never saw the manuscript itself, certainly knew texts which were closely related to it; see Origins above (Eustathius cites "Apion and Herodorus" as a source in his own commentary about seventy times).
At some point Venetus A was transported to Italy, but how and when this happened is uncertain. At one point it was thought that Giovanni Aurispa
brought it there. In 1424, in a letter to Traversari
in Venice, he mentioned four volumes which he had brought back from Greece:
Aurispa already owned the "two volumes" in 1421; this suggests that he may have brought them back from a trip to Greece in 1413. For a long time it was thought that these two volumes were Venetus A and Venetus B. More recently, however, it has been pointed out that the Venetus A and B manuscripts list multiple authors as their sources, not just Aristarchus, and Aurispa would be unlikely to have ignored this distinction. One scholar has suggested that Aurispa's two volumes were in fact Laurentianus LIX 2 and 3, a two-volume copy of Eustathius' Iliad commentary corrected in Eustathius' own hand, and in which the title is erased.
Venetus A came into the possession of Cardinal Bessarion, the Greek immigrant and scholar, and the man most directly responsible for the Western rediscovery of Greek literature in the Renaissance
. Bessarion collected over a thousand books in the fifteenth century, including the only complete text of Athenaios' Deipnosophistai; the autograph of Planudes' Greek Anthology; and Venetus A.
In 1468, Bessarion donated his library to the Republic of Venice, and the library was increased by further acquisitions from Bessarion until his death in 1473. This collection became the core of the Biblioteca Marciana
. Bessarion made a condition that scholars wishing to consult the library should deposit books, but no attempt to enforce this was made until 1530.
The earliest known scholar to have used Venetus A as a source is Martinus Phileticus in the 1480s; in this he was followed by Vettore Fausto in 1546 or 1547.
In 1554, Bessarion's library was transferred to the building designed for it by Sansovino
, the Biblioteca Sansoviniana. It remains there today.
After that, Venetus A was largely forgotten until Villoison rediscovered and published it, along with the "B scholia" from Venetus B (= Codex Marcianus Graecus 453, now 821), in 1788. This was the first publication of any Iliadic scholia other than the "D" scholia (the scholia minora). The A and B scholia were a catalyst for several new ideas from the scholar Friedrich August Wolf
. In reviewing Villoison's edition, Wolf realised that these scholia proved conclusively that the Homeric epics had been transmitted orally for an unknown length of time before appearing in writing. This led to the publication of his own seminal Prolegomena ad Homerum, which has set the agenda for much of Homeric scholarship
since then.
Most recently, Amy Hackney Blackwell has a brief article in Wired on the just-concluded month-long effort to digitize Venetus A at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (May 2007). This work has resulted in the publication of high-resolution images of each folio of the manuscript, including details of significant areas and ultraviolet images of badly faded text; the images are published under a Creative Commons
License and are available for viewing and downloading from the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University.
Biblioteca Marciana
The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana is a library and Renaissance building in Venice, northern Italy; it is one of the earliest surviving public manuscript depositories in the country, holding one of the greatest classical texts collections in the world. The library is named after St. Mark, the...
in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
as Codex
Codex
A codex is a book in the format used for modern books, with multiple quires or gatherings typically bound together and given a cover.Developed by the Romans from wooden writing tablets, its gradual replacement...
Marcianus Graecus 454, now 822.
Venetus A is the most famous manuscript of the Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
ic Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
; it is regarded by some as the best text of the epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
. As well as the text of the Iliad, Venetus A preserves several layers of annotations, glosses, and commentaries known as the "A scholia", and a summary of the early Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
Epic Cycle which is by far our most important source of information on those lost poems.
Contents
Venetus A contains the following in one volume:- a full text of the Iliad in ancient GreekAncient GreekAncient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
- marginal critical marks, shown by finds of ancient papyri to reflect fairly accurately those that would have been in AristarchusAristarchus of SamothraceAristarchus of Samothrace was a grammarian noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the librarian of the library of Alexandria and seems to have succeeded his teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium in that role.He established the most historically important critical...
' edition of the Iliad - damaged excerpts from Proclus' Chrestomathy, namely the Life of Homer, and summaries of all of the Epic Cycle except the Cypria
- two sets of marginal scholia on the Iliad:
- the "A scholia", derived largely from the work of Aristarchus
- some "D scholia", discussing difficulties in the meanings of words
- among the above, a very few exegetical scholia (exegetical scholia are far more characteristic of the "B" and "T" scholia)
Origins
None of the works on which the scholia in Venetus A are based survives. As a result, the task of tracing their contents to their sources is extraordinarily difficult and obscure. The study of the Iliadic scholia is a significant ongoing research topic in Homeric scholarshipHomeric scholarship
Homeric scholarship is the study of Homeric epic, especially the two large surviving epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies, but the subject is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity...
.
The A scholia, for which Venetus A is by far the most important source, derive from the so-called "VMK" (Viermännerkommentar, "four-man commentary"), named for the four ancient scholars Aristonicus
Aristonicus of Alexandria
Aristonicus of Alexandria was a distinguished Greek grammarian who lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, contemporary with Strabo...
, Didymus
Didymus Chalcenterus
Didymus Chalcenterus , ca. 63 BCE to 10 CE, was a Hellenistic Greek scholar and grammarian who flourished in the time of Cicero and Augustus.- Life :...
, Herodian
Aelius Herodianus
Aelius Herodianus or Herodian was one of the most celebrated grammarians of Greco-Roman antiquity. He is usually known as Herodian except when there is a danger of confusion with the historian also named Herodian....
, and Nicanor
Nicanor Stigmatias
Nicanor Stigmatias was a celebrated grammarian who lived during the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century....
. The main source for the A scholia was probably a compilation of their work, rather than each of the four men's work individually. Because all four of these scholars worked in the tradition of the Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
n scholar Aristarchus
Aristarchus of Samothrace
Aristarchus of Samothrace was a grammarian noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the librarian of the library of Alexandria and seems to have succeeded his teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium in that role.He established the most historically important critical...
, much of the A scholia can be traced back to Aristarchos himself.
The relationship between the A scholia and other branches of the Iliadic scholia, however, is much more debatable and confused. A text which does not survive, known as "ApH" for its authors "Apion and Herodorus", is key to all reconstructions of this relationship. Eustathius
Eustathius of Thessalonica
Archbishop Eustathius of Thessalonica was a Greek bishop and scholar. He is most noted for his contemporary account of the sack of Thessalonike by the Normans in 1185, for his orations and for his commentaries on Homer, which incorporate many remarks by much earlier researchers.- Life :After being...
in his own commentary on the Iliad frequently refers to "Apion and Herodorus" as a source, and a comparison between them shows that the relationship between "ApH" and the A scholia is a close one.
Two stemmata or "family trees" for Venetus A may be summarised from the work of van der Valk and Erbse
Hartmut Erbse
Hartmut Erbse was a German classical philologist.-Life:The son of a dentist from Thüringen, Erbse studied classical philology in Hamburg, where he was well known for his lively hat-wear and received his doctorate in 1940...
respectively:
 |
 |
| Van der Valk's reconstruction of the sources for Venetus A; bold text indicates texts that survive | Erbse Hartmut Erbse Hartmut Erbse was a German classical philologist.-Life:The son of a dentist from Thüringen, Erbse studied classical philology in Hamburg, where he was well known for his lively hat-wear and received his doctorate in 1940... 's reconstruction of the sources for Venetus A; bold text indicates texts that survive |
Of the two, Erbse's viewpoint tends to be the more highly regarded.
Another important source that feeds into A is a group of scholia on mythographical and allegorical topics, derived from Porphyry
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
's Homeric Questions. The current standard edition of the Iliads scholia, that of Erbse, omits these scholia.
On the origins of the Proclean Chrestomathy which is partially preserved in Venetus A, see also Epic Cycle, Eutychius Proclus.
History
Venetus A was created in the tenth century AD. All text on the manuscript dates to the same period, including the Iliad text, critical marks, and two sets of scholia in different writing styles. The twelfth century ByzantineByzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
scholar and archbishop Eustathius
Eustathius of Thessalonica
Archbishop Eustathius of Thessalonica was a Greek bishop and scholar. He is most noted for his contemporary account of the sack of Thessalonike by the Normans in 1185, for his orations and for his commentaries on Homer, which incorporate many remarks by much earlier researchers.- Life :After being...
, even if he never saw the manuscript itself, certainly knew texts which were closely related to it; see Origins above (Eustathius cites "Apion and Herodorus" as a source in his own commentary about seventy times).
At some point Venetus A was transported to Italy, but how and when this happened is uncertain. At one point it was thought that Giovanni Aurispa
Giovanni Aurispa
Giovanni Aurispa was an Italian historian and savant of the 15th century. He is remembered in particular as a promoter of the revival of the study of Greek in Italy. It is to Aurispa that the world is indebted for preserving the greater part of our knowledge of the Greek classics.-Life:He was...
brought it there. In 1424, in a letter to Traversari
Traversari
The Traversari are an ancient noble family of Italy. Their origins may lie in the late fifth century, being descendants of Theodore, General of the Heruli. There are other sources that cite the Traversari Decia as descendants from the Gens Decia of Ancient Rome. Theodoric I was named Count of...
in Venice, he mentioned four volumes which he had brought back from Greece:
Aristarchum super Iliade in duobus voluminibus, opus quoddam spatiosum et pretiosissimum; aliud commentum super Iliade, cuius eundem auctorem esse puto et illius quod ex me Nicolaus noster habuit super Ulixiade.
Aristarchus on the Iliad in two volumes, a large and very precious work; another commentary on the Iliad; I think Aristarchus was the author of that, as well as of the one on the OdysseyOdysseyThe Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
that our friend Niccolò Niccoli got from me.
Aurispa already owned the "two volumes" in 1421; this suggests that he may have brought them back from a trip to Greece in 1413. For a long time it was thought that these two volumes were Venetus A and Venetus B. More recently, however, it has been pointed out that the Venetus A and B manuscripts list multiple authors as their sources, not just Aristarchus, and Aurispa would be unlikely to have ignored this distinction. One scholar has suggested that Aurispa's two volumes were in fact Laurentianus LIX 2 and 3, a two-volume copy of Eustathius' Iliad commentary corrected in Eustathius' own hand, and in which the title is erased.
Venetus A came into the possession of Cardinal Bessarion, the Greek immigrant and scholar, and the man most directly responsible for the Western rediscovery of Greek literature in the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
. Bessarion collected over a thousand books in the fifteenth century, including the only complete text of Athenaios' Deipnosophistai; the autograph of Planudes' Greek Anthology; and Venetus A.
In 1468, Bessarion donated his library to the Republic of Venice, and the library was increased by further acquisitions from Bessarion until his death in 1473. This collection became the core of the Biblioteca Marciana
Biblioteca Marciana
The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana is a library and Renaissance building in Venice, northern Italy; it is one of the earliest surviving public manuscript depositories in the country, holding one of the greatest classical texts collections in the world. The library is named after St. Mark, the...
. Bessarion made a condition that scholars wishing to consult the library should deposit books, but no attempt to enforce this was made until 1530.
The earliest known scholar to have used Venetus A as a source is Martinus Phileticus in the 1480s; in this he was followed by Vettore Fausto in 1546 or 1547.
In 1554, Bessarion's library was transferred to the building designed for it by Sansovino
Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was an Italian sculptor and architect, known best for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity...
, the Biblioteca Sansoviniana. It remains there today.
After that, Venetus A was largely forgotten until Villoison rediscovered and published it, along with the "B scholia" from Venetus B (= Codex Marcianus Graecus 453, now 821), in 1788. This was the first publication of any Iliadic scholia other than the "D" scholia (the scholia minora). The A and B scholia were a catalyst for several new ideas from the scholar Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf was a German philologist and critic.He was born at Hainrode, a village not far from Nordhausen, Germany. His father was the village schoolmaster and organist...
. In reviewing Villoison's edition, Wolf realised that these scholia proved conclusively that the Homeric epics had been transmitted orally for an unknown length of time before appearing in writing. This led to the publication of his own seminal Prolegomena ad Homerum, which has set the agenda for much of Homeric scholarship
Homeric scholarship
Homeric scholarship is the study of Homeric epic, especially the two large surviving epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies, but the subject is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity...
since then.
Most recently, Amy Hackney Blackwell has a brief article in Wired on the just-concluded month-long effort to digitize Venetus A at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (May 2007). This work has resulted in the publication of high-resolution images of each folio of the manuscript, including details of significant areas and ultraviolet images of badly faded text; the images are published under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
License and are available for viewing and downloading from the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University.
Publication of A scholia
- Villoison, 1788—A and B scholia
- Bekker, 1825-26—A and B scholia
- Heyne, 1821-27 -- D scholia or "scholia minora"
- Lehrs, 1848—Herodian (reconstructed from VMK)
- Friedländer, 1850—Nicanor (reconstructed from VMK)
- Friedländer, 1853—Aristonicus (reconstructed from VMK)
- Schmidt, 1854—Didymus (reconstructed from VMK)
- Karl Wilhelm DindorfKarl Wilhelm DindorfKarl Wilhelm Dindorf , German classical scholar, was born at Leipzig....
and Maass, 1875-1888—A, B, and T scholia - Nicole, 1891 -- Ge scholia
- ComparettiDomenico ComparettiDomenico Comparetti , Italian scholar, was born at Rome.-Life:He studied at the University of Rome La Sapienza, took his degree in 1855 in natural science and mathematics, and entered his uncle's pharmacy as assistant. His scanty leisure was, however, given to study...
, 1901—facsimile edition of Venetus A - Erbse, 1969-1988—all Iliad scholia, except D scholia and mythographical/allegorical scholia derived from PorphyryPorphyry (philosopher)Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
- Van Thiel, 2000 -- D scholia or "scholia minora"
Further reading
- Allen, T.W. 1931, The Homeric Scholia, Proceedings of the British Academy 17 (London)
- Erbse, H., various articles: see list in Classical Review 11 (1961) 109 n. 1
- Erbse, H. 1960, Beiträge zur Überlieferung der Iliasscholien, Zetemata 24 (Munich)
- Erbse, H. 1969-88, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Berlin) ISBN 3-11-002558-2, ISBN 3-11-003882-X, ISBN 3-11-004641-5, ISBN 3-11-005770-0, ISBN 3-11-006911-3, ISBN 3-11-009530-0, ISBN 3-11-011314-7
- Labowsky, L. 1979, Bessarion's Library and the Biblioteca Marciana (Rome)
- Van der Valk 1963-64, Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad, 2 vols. (Leiden)
External links
- Online edition of Comparetti -- facsimile of Comparetti's 1901 facsimile edition of Venetus A
- Online edition of Villoison -- facsimile of Villoison's 1788 edition of the Iliad and its scholia
- NewScholiasts -- project for translating the Iliad scholia into English
- Online manuscript images -- recent, high-resolution images of Venetus A at the Center for Hellenic Studies