A New Fragment of Sophocles and Its Schedographic Context

The General Context

A popular medium of elementary Byzantine education in grammar and orthography was the genre known as .¹ The genre is represented by a (larger or smaller) collection of (brief passages of prose [most frequently] or verse). The individual words of the text are accompanied by a fourfold analysis: (1) interlinear glosses;² (2 and 3) grammatical and etymological/derivational analysis of individual words; (4) a list of words beginning with the same two or three letters as the word analyzed-each word may or may not be glossed. While these lists quote some well-known texts, the grammatical analyses preserve only two quotations of classical authors; both, by some chance, are of Sophocles.³

Our earliest, and necessarily very incomplete, knowledge of the genre comes in references and allusions thereto, like those of Anna Comnena (Alexiad 15.7) or Eustathius (e.g., Comm. in Hom. Il. 1.367.4; 2.585.16 van der Valk). Between that period and the appearance of the first texts, there arose a traditional core of (hereafter skhedē).⁴ The earliest representatives of this core were written in the south of Italy at the end of the thirteenth century. These, with the folia containing our text, are B (Barberinianus Graecus 102:1290/1 [subscription]: fol. 60 v); P (Parisinus Graecus 2574⁵: fol. 61 r) written by Nicolaus Hagiopetrite\s in Galatina; N (Par. Gr. 2572:1295/6 [subscription]: fol. 51 v) by one Georgius, son of the protopapas Leo, of Ardeo; and M (Monacensis Graecus 272: fol. 42 v). These represent one⁶ branch of the oldest class of manuscripts (class Ia). The four manuscripts are related, as shown by the fact that they preserve the same order of skhedē throughout. N and M are closely related for they add a final skhedos not found in B and P. A second branch (Ib) is represented by Pal (Palatinus Graecus 92⁷: fol. 26 v), R (Reginenses, PP Pii II 15: fol. 206 v⁸), and C (Conventi Soppressi 2⁹: fol. 40 v).

The Specific Context

The ninth of the traditional skhedē is

The word analyzed is . The text:

1. A.

2. A.

3. B.

4. C.

5. D. om. PalR

Although the text is badly transmitted,¹⁰ it is all but certain that it goes back, ultimately, to Herodian.¹¹ The closest parallel passage¹² is from the Peri dikhronōn (2.15.11-27 Lehrs):

(δ 511).

A. B. (F36 Kassel-Austin).

Some Sophoclean Usage

(1) is found once (Ph. 945). (2) With compare Ai. 543: and Ant. 548: (3) For the polarity of "mind" and , see OT 524-24: F 929.1-2 Radt: . For as a feature of the Sophoclean hero, see Knox 1964, 21.