Abstract

The Phoenissae of Euripides was throughout antiquity an exceptionally popular play, and is generally thought to be exceptionally heavily interpolated. In the Phoenissae, as in other annotated plays, a significant feature of variance between the medieval text and the text in antiquity is revealed by the scholia: verses present in the medieval manuscripts were occasionally absent from ancient manuscripts. ‘Some manuscripts are without this verse ’. Such scholia are well known: the ancient tradition, if one may speak of such a thing, was evidently in a more fluid state than the medieval.