The Family h in the Tradition of the Iliad Text and Its Scholia

With regard to the Homeric text, the manuscript represents the family designated by Thomas W. Allen as h, characterized by a series of textual peculiarities that render it more akin to a recension than a mere variation of the vulgate. In particular, the principal distinctive feature of this family is the exceptionally rich presence within the text of ancient readings. To date, sixteen manuscripts are known, spanning a chronological range from the early 13th century to the 15th century. Scholarly debate regarding the origins of this family, which has seen various hypotheses proposed (notably by Allen and Leaf), can, based on the current state of research, find a plausible resolution in the conclusions of Martin L. West. The English scholar posits that the manuscripts of family h undoubtedly constitute a “scholarly recension” (West 2001, 145): a text prepared by a learned Byzantine who drew from the scholia numerous ancient readings—both Aristarchean and otherwise—and either incorporated them directly into the text or noted them as marginal variants. Only copies of this erudite recension survive, whose scribes alternately adopted one reading or another presented to them. Although this reconstruction is far from definitive (West himself laments the ongoing inability to identify the recension’s originator), it has the advantage of simultaneously explaining the conjunctive and disjunctive traits within h. On the one hand, West confirms Allen’s reconstruction by attributing the diversity of ancient readings found in the various h manuscripts to the scribes’ choices between marginal and textual readings. On the other hand, he identifies certain peculiarities broadly shared by all witnesses of h, which must therefore be attributed to a single originator—the creator of the “scholarly recension,” i.e., the archetype of h.

An analogous, if not more intricate, situation pertains to the scholastic apparatus: the abundant exegetical apparatus arranged in a frame within the manuscript belongs to the so-called family h. First identified by Allen in manuscripts transmitting the Homeric h text (from which it takes its name), but not exclusive to them, this family of scholia is currently attested by a numerous and complex constellation of manuscripts dating from the Palaiologan period, specifically the 13th to 14th centuries, produced both in the East and in Terra d’Otranto (among them, Ambr. L 116 sup.). It possesses peculiar features: on a framework constituted by the so-called scholia minora or D, are grafted scholia exegetica and the so-called VMK scholia (“Commentary of the Four”), directly derived from the model of the famous Venetus A and thus presumably from the “mysterious” commentary of Apion-Herodorus (6th century?; see Mazzucchi 2012, 441–447). The original recension of h scholia, as far as the available data permit, including recent studies that have identified h scholia on the paper supports of the Ambr. F 205 inf. Ilias Picta, is probably to be situated in 11th-century Constantinople, during the period of the ἐρανίζειν promoted by Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (10th century).