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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
This paper completes a small but long desiderated act of restitution to the Euripidean scholarship of J. J. Scaliger (1540–1609).
In 1694 Joshua Barnes published at Cambridge a complete edition of Euripides; he included either in his text or notes a number of conjectures transcribed from marginalia in a copy of W. Canter's Euripides (Antwerp, 1571) owned successively by Scaliger, his pupil Daniel Heinsius (c. 1580–1655), to whom Scaliger bequeathed the book, and Jan Rutgers (1589–1625). The book passed to the Bodleian Library at Oxford (it has now the Catalogue no. Auct. S. 5. I); in the early nineteenth century P. Elmsley re-examined it for his editions of Medea and Bacchae, and complained that Barnes had not only failed to report all Scaliger's conjectures but frequently disguised the source of those he had noted or even silently appropriated them to himself.
page 242 note 2 Elmsley, P., Euripidis Medea (Oxford, 1813 1), 78Google Scholar n.s s (= Leipzig 18222 inaccessible to me) = Euripidis Heraclidae et Medea (Leipzig, 1828), 247 n. t; cf. Euripidis Bacchae (Oxford, 18211), 10 n. h and 182 (Addendum on vs. 261). Where Barnes acknowledged these conjectures he attributed them variously to Scaliger, to ‘codex ille Heinsio-Scaligerianus’, or to ‘alii’,‘alias’, ‘viri docti’ and the like.
Barnes's report of conjectures by Milton, John written in a copy of the ed. Stephaniana (Paris, 1602)Google Scholar, also now held by the Bodleian Library at Catalogue no. Don. d. 27/8, was similarly negligent and dishonest: see the supplementary reports in Museum Criticum (Cambridge, 1826), i. 283–91, and Kelley, M., Atkins, S. D., j. Eng. Germ. Phil. lx (1961), 680–7; there is still a small residue of unpublished conjectures by Milton, but few are likely to prove important.Google Scholar
page 242 note 3 Oxford, 18131, Leipzig, 18212, cf. n. 2 above. Elmsley prepared his edition of Heraclidae before he went to live permanently in Oxford.
page 242 note 4 Matthiae, A., Euripidis Tragoediae etc. (Leipzig, 1813–36), VI (1821), xiv.Google Scholar
page 242 note 5 Matthiae records 3 Scaligeran conjectures in Cyclops which Barnes did not transcribe (15 
and 394 
… 
) or disguised (512 
Barnes); I cannot trace Matthiae's source for the ascriptions.
page 242 note 6 Kannicht, R., Euripides Helena (Heidelberg, 1969), i. 116 f., 119. Kannicht, 118 f., gives an ironically restrained account of Barnes's pretentious edition.Google Scholar
page 243 note 1 For this book (which omits Electra, still awaiting its first printed publication by Victorius in 1546) and particularly the source of the manuscript marginalia in it ascribed on the title page to Girolamo Maggio (died 1572), see Elmsley, Medea, loc. cit. and Praefatio, Bacchae, to n. h; Matthiae VI, viii and xiv; Kannicht, i. 116 n. 11.
page 243 note 2 Because in Helena they correspond almost exactly with the later set: Helena i. 116 n. II.
page 243 note 3 For their occasional importance see, for example, my collation at Hcld. 172, An. 53, Su. 495, Hl. 1575.
page 243 note 4 Bacchae 182 (Addendum on vs. 261).
page 244 note 1 Some dozen or so conjectures in the ed. Hervagiana correspond with conjectures later published by Canter. Most of them deal with trivial errors, so that the correspondence is likely to be accidental—but perhaps Scaliger communicated some of his early marginalia to Canter?
page 244 note 2 In the early part of the book a hand has written ‘Seal.’ after some of these conjectures. It seems that Gaisford, T. examined them cursorily when he was editing the Oxford 1811 reissue of J. Markland's Supplices, Iphigenia in Aulide et Iphigenia in Tauris: he recorded Scaliger's conjecture at IT 359, for example, and this duly passed into Matthiae's apparatus (but not Wecklein's).Google Scholar
page 244 note 3 A considerable number of Scaliger's conjectures which Barnes disguised under ‘alii’, ‘alias’, etc. (but did at least record) were not repeated by Matthiae—and so not by Wecklein or Murray.
page 244 note 4 Attributions are taken from Matthiae, Wecklein, or Murray.
