4' ft m iaBiBg»aMw<tsgafflHS««gy/^i(;affi:>-;:^;«^ ] A CHAPTEK IX THE HISTOEY OF ANXOTATION A CHAPTEE IN THE HISTOEY OF ANNOTATION BEIXG SCHOLIA AEISTOPHANICA VOL. III BY WILLIAM RUTHERFOED G. FOBMERLT HEAD-MASTER OF WESTMCsSTER OTap Tis Twv 6^01'crtav e^^ovTOJi/ -apiU Ttt /jieytcTTa ^avAoTi/Ta Xajx(idvTQ ILonlJon MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPA, SB-^^< 1905 rV- T\0^^ FRr:* :^'— >aiw nM 0.3 PEEFACE When he who may do as he likes puts the best aside and takes an inferior quality ! Should that take place whicli some who watch the drift of opinion are prepared for, so that contact with the alert and adventurous Greek mind cease, at least for a time, to play any considerable part in English education, many good reasons are siire to be found why that which has happened could not but happen. Will one of them — be a smother of annotation obscuring the word, clear in itself and finely attuned, uttered by Greeks to Greeks long ago ? Nobody can persuade or delight, or even make himself understood, if somebody else louder and more voluble keep up a running comment upon what he says, praise him, blame him, bid him hold his tongue altogether at times, until something which he does not know, or of set purpose discards, has been tiresomely expounded. The bystanders, when this happens, are not distracted merely they turn indolently towards the clamorous ; interpreter who engages to save them the trouble of thinking for themselves. This, or something not unlike this, happens in the teaching ofGreek now. There is so much commentary that ; THE HISTOEY OF ANNOTATION vi the learner never lays liis own mind close to tlie Greek thouglit. The monstrous unreason seems actually to grow. For sometimes tradition takes a dropsical habit in age and this tradition is very old. It began life in the dreary period in which Greece, no longer her own mistress, made shift to give her masters what they wished, such a know- ledge of Greek literature as could be acquired without mental exertion by men who were out of sympathy with Greek thought, and did not care to understand it, yet desired to turn it to some use. In the attempt to describe how master and servant were both punished for their greedy insincerity lies the main interest of the following pages. But how comes a motive of this sort to be present at all in a work which at first contained no hint of it ? To answer the question entails apeccavi. It was a mistake, I can now see, to break the Scholia up as they are broken up in the two earlier volumes. But time has gone by since then, in which the Scholia have had to shift for themselves, yet have always run up and down in my head. So by rumination a vice in method has been turned into a piece of good luck. For the Scholia analysed and dissected have revealed gradually their veritable nature. The purely mechanical process which produced them has pushed itself into notice. Meanwhile as comments they have lost little, nay, have rather gained on the whole by the trenchant surgery. Not that this is of much consequence. It is very rare for these tedious annotators to throw any light at least directly upon textual disorders ; their literary criticism is recremental ; and of the information they furnish there is very little that is at once useful and unsuspect.