Abstract

In Part I of this article the major problems of the transmission of the Bacchae were considered, with a discussion of interpolated lines and lacunae, whether certain or merely postulated by previous editors. In the Introduction it was argued that P is a copy of a manuscript which was very like L before being supplemented with variant readings and with the whole of Tr. and Ba. 756 ff. from a lost source. The symbols λ and were used for P's exemplar and this remoter source respectively. The ancestry of in turn was traced back to Λ, the ancestor of L. This, if right, means that L and P both descend from a single uncial archetype, though with a fair chance that some true variants from a different tradition reached and λ. P, however, steadfastly preferred the original reading of λ whenever possible. When P differs from L, there are three possibilities: that he is making a fresh error ; that λ differed from L ; that λ included a variant which P preferred