Ambr. C 222 inf., f. 350r

F. 350r of manuscript Ambr. C 222 inf. marks the transition from Idyll IX (vv. 18-36) to Idyll X (vv. 1-22). It is a particularly telling page for observing the careful page layout by which the so-called “mercenary scribe” arranged the interplay between poetic text and scholia. The scholia are distributed across the upper, outer, and lower margins so as to guide the reader closely through the text, though with some inevitable displacements. As in the preceding folio (349v), in the outer margin of 350r, for example, the commentary on Idyll IX stops almost exactly where the poetic text itself concludes (the last being scholium θ on v. 36), evidence of the effort to keep text and commentary in orderly alignment. Only a slight shift carries scholium θ forward to align with v. 8 of the following Idyll. The balance in the lower half of the page is more problematic: here the text linked to the hypothesis fills the remaining space of the outer margin, leaving space in the lower margin only for scholia on vv. 1-7. To continue reading the scholia on vv. 8-22 of Idyll X, the reader must therefore turn the page.

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