The Painted Stoa › Textual variants
Textual variantsΓραφαί
Where the copies disagree about the words, and how editors choose between them. The accounts from the author articles, side by side.
33 authors, in time order
- 7th century BCHomerWild papyri. The earliest papyri have extra lines and sometimes different wording. Earlier scholars dismissed them as “eccentric” or “wild”; Graeme Bird (2010) argues instead that they show authentic variation, of the kind oral performance produces. The standard study of the Ptolemaic papyri is Stephanie West's (1967).Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 7th century BCHesiodThe hymn at the start of the Works and Days. The poem as we read it opens with ten lines calling on the Muses to sing of Zeus (Works and Days 1–10). Praxiphanes knew a copy without them, Aristarchus marked them as spurious, and the Boeotians on Helicon left them out. The Scroll's text prints them.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 6th century BCAeschylusA lost opening, saved by a joke. The Libation Bearers has lost its opening in M, the Medicean manuscript in Florence. Its first lines are known because Aristophanes quotes them in the Frogs, where “Euripides” picks at them: «ἥκω γὰρ ἐς γῆν τήνδε καὶ κατέρχομαι» “I have come to this land and I return”, he says, is saying the same thing twice. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 6th century BCPindarA line struck out at Alexandria. In Olympian 2 Pindar lists who loves Semele, the mother of Dionysus. According to the scholia, Aristophanes of Byzantium rejected the words φιλέοντι δὲ Μοῖσαι (“and the Muses love her”, our translation) because they did not fit the metre, but the manuscripts went on copying them. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCSophoclesA reviser's recension. In the fourteenth century the scholar Demetrius Triclinius made his own recension of the plays, preserved in Paris gr. 2711 (T).Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCHerodotusEven the first line wobbles. Our manuscripts call him “Herodotus of Halicarnassus”; Aristotle, quoting the opening in his Rhetoric, has “Herodotus of Thurii”.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCEuripidesPlays with only two witnesses. The nine alphabetical plays survive through two manuscripts alone, L in the Laurentian Library at Florence and P in the Palatine Library, so they have no second route to fall back on.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCThucydidesAn ending that stops. Book 8 breaks off mid-story, and Hornblower's commentary argues about which passages there really show incompleteness, and which only show Thucydides changing his narrative art.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCHippocratesNot even for the stone? The Oath's clause «οὐ τεμέω δὲ οὐδὲ μὴν λιθιῶντας», in Jones's translation “I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone”, has long puzzled editors, because elsewhere the Hippocratic writers operate without hesitation. Littré suggested reading αἰτέοντας, “those who ask” (our translation); …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCAristophanesWho says which line? Deciding which character speaks each line is one of the hardest jobs for an editor of Aristophanes. Papyri and manuscripts are of little or no help, and opinions can differ widely with no way to settle them.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCLysiasA critic rejects a speech. The Lives of the Ten Orators says Lysias wrote speeches for the general Iphicrates, and that Iphicrates defended himself on a charge of treason with a speech by Lysias. Dionysius of Halicarnassus thought otherwise. He found the speech On the Statue of Iphicrates well argued, but «ἄχαρίς ἐστι», “it has no charm” (our translation). …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCIsocratesWhich family to follow? Bekker followed Γ, and Baiter and Sauppe, in their Zurich edition, followed it even more closely. The vulgate manuscripts are contaminated by notes that slipped from the margins into the text. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCXenophonWho wrote the Anabasis? In the Hellenica, Xenophon does not tell the story of Cyrus' march. He says instead that it “has been written by Themistogenes the Syracusan”. Plutarch's explanation is that Xenophon put another man's name on his own work, “his purpose being to win greater credence for his narrative by referring to himself in the third person”. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCPlatoWorks in doubt. Most of the open questions about Plato's text are about whole works, not single words: which dialogues and letters are his, and which belong to his school.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCAristotleAn Arabic witness. The Arabic version of the Poetics descends from a Syriac translation that departed widely in vocabulary from the original, and Wikipedia's account says it started a misreading of Aristotle that lasted through the Middle Ages.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCDemosthenesS against the rest. Editors have long quarrelled over whether to follow S, a ninth-century parchment book in Paris, or the other old manuscripts, A, F and Y. Dilts, in the new Oxford text, refuses to favour either side across the board and decides each case on its merits.Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCMenanderWho is speaking? Editors do not always follow the speakers' names that the papyri give. In the Samia (lines 96 and after), Demeas and Nikeratos come home from the Black Sea complaining of the life there. The Bodmer papyrus gives the whole speech to Demeas. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCEpicurusDoes the wise man laugh at Destiny? In the Letter to Menoeceus Hicks's English says of the wise man: “Destiny, which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn”. The manuscripts do not quite say that. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCCallimachusTwo editors, two spellings. The Scroll has two Greek texts of the hymns and epigrams, Wilamowitz's of 1897 and Mair's Loeb of 1921. They even number the epigrams differently: the “cyclic poem” epigram is 28 in Wilamowitz and 30 in Mair. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCEuclidTheon's own confession. In his commentary on Ptolemy, Theon says that a theorem about sectors of circles has been proved “by me in my edition of the Elements”. Nearly every manuscript has that extra part of Proposition 6.33; …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCTheocritusWhich order? The manuscripts vary enormously in which poems they contain and in what order. The numbering in modern texts follows the Vatican family, and Bulloch notes that it “still has no ancient support”: P.Oxy. 2064, the earliest roll with much evidence for the order, is closest, apart from the place of Idyll 5, to the Laurentian family. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCArchimedesWho was his father? The Scroll's Sand-Reckoner names «Φειδία δὲ τοῦ ἁμοῦ πατρὸς», “Pheidias my father”. That is not what the manuscripts say. Heath reports that the words are a correction by the scholar Blass for the manuscripts' τοῦ Ἀκούπατρος, “of Akoupatros”; …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCOld TestamentA virgin or a young woman? In Isaiah 7:14 the Hebrew word almah means a young woman of childbearing age; the Septuagint renders it «παρθένος», “virgin”, and Matthew's Gospel took it up as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century BCPolybiusA gap at the very start. Manuscript A, the oldest copy of Books 1–5, has two gaps on facing pages, in the preface at 1.2.7–8 and 1.3.3, and the other manuscripts have the same gaps. So the editors must rebuild the sentence about Rome's empire. The Scroll's Greek reads «ἀνυπόστατον μὲν τοῖς ὑπάρχουσι πᾶσιν, ἀνυπέρβλητον δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἐπιγινομένοις». W. R. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADFlavius JosephusThe passage on Jesus. The Testimonium (Antiquities 18.63–64) stands in every Greek manuscript, and Eusebius quoted it in nearly the same words in the early fourth century. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADPlutarchThe order of the Lives. The order in which the Lives are printed is not Plutarch's own: “the order of the Lives in our collection is not the original one”, as Perrin put it. Plutarch numbers some of the books himself. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADNew TestamentHow Mark ends. Mark's story breaks off at 16:8 with the women at the empty tomb: «οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν, ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ», “They said nothing to anyone; for they were afraid.” The two oldest complete manuscripts of Mark, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, end there, and Vaticanus leaves a column blank after it. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADEpictetusUnder the stain. In Discourses 1.18 Epictetus tells his pupils to pity wrongdoers rather than hate them, and just there the Oxford manuscript is illegible. The Scroll's Greek, Schenkl's text, shows the damage: in section 10 several words are missing and some letters are marked as doubtful. Translators fill the holes differently. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADClaudius Ptolemaeus141 or 151? In book 10 of the Almagest, in the Scroll's Greek, Ptolemy dates an observation of Venus «ἡμεῖς δὲ ἐτηρήσαμεν τῷ ιδʹ ἔτει Ἀντωνίνου», “we observed in the fourteenth year of Antoninus” (our translation). Read as it stands, that would make his latest observation one of 151. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century ADMarcus AureliusToo few witnesses. Because the two main witnesses, P (the lost Palatine manuscript, printed in 1558) and A (a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Vatican), descend from one ancestor, they usually fail together: the first editor to use A's readings carefully, J. M. Schultz, complained that in the worst passages the new manuscript gave him no help. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century ADLucian of SamosataWhich works are his? In 1913 Harmon wrote: “Certainly spurious are Halcyon, Nero, Philopatris, and Astrology”, added the Consonants at Law (the Scroll's Trial in the Court of Vowels), and listed several more that were generally thought not to be Lucian's. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century ADGalenGrief, or distress? Even the title of the rediscovered letter is disputed: scholars disagree whether it is Περὶ ἀλυπίας or Περὶ ἀλυπησίας, and Paraskevi Kotzia has argued for the first. In English it goes by On Freedom from Distress, Avoiding Distress or On Consolation from Grief. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century ADPlotinusThe last words. Volkmann's text has φήσας πειρᾶσθαι τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον ἀνάγειν πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ παντὶ θεῖον: “saying that he was trying to bring the divine in us back up to the divine in the All” (our translation). That is how MacKenna takes it, and from the Renaissance until 1953 every edition but one printed this reading. …Where the copies disagree: the whole account, with its sources
These come from the author articles, each checked claim by claim against the sources listed with it. More authors join as their articles are checked.