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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
I begin this note by announcing a palaeographical discovery of some interest concerning the famous Venetian manuscript of Athenaeus (MS. Marcianus gr. 447), which is our only source for most of the text of that author. Examination of the handwriting has convinced me that folios 3–348, nearly the whole manuscript, were written by John the Calligraphier, the scribe who was commissioned by Arethas of Caesarea to produce well-known and important copies of Plato (MS. E. D. Clarke 39) and Aristides (MS. Laurentianus Plut. 60.3 and Parisinus gr. 2951). The accompanying illustration should make the identity clear (see plates xi). It is worth noting that owing to a special circumstance the two previously published facsimiles did not permit the identification of the hand. They were both selected from a part of the book where John wrote in a rather larger hand than usual; for in this manuscript, unlike the others that he copied, his writing gradually became larger as he progressed. This, however, was a habit common to many scribes and does not cast any doubt on the validity of identifying his hand here.
The first consequence of identifying the hand is that it becomes possible to date the manuscript fairly precisely. The other books written by John are dated to A.D. 895 and c. A.D. 917–28, and as the span of thirty-five years is at least as long as a calligrapher can be assumed to have exercised his profession, it seems reasonable to place the Athenaeus between the two other books.
page 147 note 2 Maas, P., in BZ xxxviii (1938) 201–2.Google Scholar
page 147 note 3 BZ xlv (1952) pl. 1, and Wattenbach, and von Velsen, , Exempla Codicum Graecorum Litteris Minusculis Scriptorum (Heidelberg, 1878) pl. 29.Google Scholar
page 147 note 1 In the Bibliotheca Athenaeus is mentioned only once and then as a source used by Sopatros (103 a 32).
page 147 note 2 The discovery of a complete text of the Lexicon, announced in Gnomon xxxii (1960) 95, may of course disprove this.
page 147 note 3 Reitzenstein, , Geschichte der griechischen Etymologika 59–60.Google Scholar The entry ἡγητορία in the Et. Gen. is attributed to Photius in the MS. tradition and depends in part on a knowledge of Athenaeus 3.74d. This might imply a knowledge of Athenaeus, but the facts are uncertain, for the word appears in Photius' Lexicon (p. 253 Naber) as ἡγητρία, with only the first half of the entry found in the Et. Gen. and therefore without the facts that depend on Athenaeus.
page 148 note 1 See Zardini, E., Akten des XI Internationalen Byzantinisten-Kongresses: München, 1958 (Munich, 1960) 677.Google Scholar Unfortunately Zardini's references in a footnote to Kaibel and Wilamowitz do not seem to confirm his point and probably are misprints.
