Abstract

The vast majority of the extant mss of Euripides consists of ‘Byzantine’ mss of the ‘school triad’, Hec, Or., Phoen. The value of this mass of material for textual criticism is problematical: it has been declared to be nil by numerous modern scholars, and this is no doubt a natural reaction against the excessive importance attached to certain of the ‘Byzantine’ mss by the scholars of the earlier part of last century, men like Porson and Dindorf, who, however, did not collate their mss with a view to such things as Leitfekler. In fact, until our knowledge of this class of mss is far more thorough than it is at present, it would be premature to pass judgement on it as a whole