In Western culture, the practice of commenting on texts has its roots in the very origins of literary creation. The Homeric poems, which over time came to shape the pan-Hellenic identity, were recited in various ways on ceremonial occasions and in diverse socio-cultural contexts of Archaic and Classical Greece (8th–4th centuries BCE). It is plausible that, alongside the professional activity of the rhapsodes, the first forms of exegesis emerged, carried out by the rhapsodes themselves, which led to the association of performative and hermeneutic practices: interpretation was thus born within the very sphere of poetry.

The growing distance between the linguistic and cultural world of epic poetry and that of its audience proportionally increased the need for exegesis. To simplify a much more complex process, one may say that the early Hellenistic age (3rd–2nd centuries BCE) — the great period of reconsideration of the Greek literary heritage — marked the flourishing of systematic technical reflection upon the vast body of material inherited from previous centuries. The new class of intellectuals, active within expanded boundaries and in a profoundly transformed political and socio-cultural environment, undertook an intense activity of collecting and selecting this heritage. Making use of the tools of newly established technical disciplines —philology, grammar, lexicography, and others — they devoted themselves, with remarkable analytical depth and intellectual refinement, to a vast and systematic production of hermeneutic texts. At the same time, literary production did not cease; it became imbued with philology and scholarship, within an ‘erudite’ circle in which creative and technical activities interacted and mutually influenced each other. Often, the two modes of intellectual engagement coexisted within the same individual: one need only think of the most renowned poet-philologists, Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes — known even to those unfamiliar with Greek literature — or recall Strabo’s frequently cited expression regarding the poet Philitas of Cos, ποιητὴς ἅμα καὶ κριτικός (Strab. 14.2.19).

The geographical epicenter of this new phase in Greek culture was the newly founded capital of the Egyptian kingdom, Alexandria. Scholarly, literary, and scientific activities revolved around the institution of the Museum and its monumental Library, both annexed to the Royal Palace. The erudite intellectual — the poet-philologist —was now detached from the polis and immersed in a cosmopolitan yet deeply elitist and self-referential environment, serving the new absolute power of the Hellenistic monarchs. Through their cultural policies and patronage, these rulers sought—among other aims — to establish themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Greek tradition, a legacy that, methodologically speaking, owed much to Aristotle: both in the very conception of an organized library and in the encyclopedic, epistemological approach underlying it.

With regard to exegetical activity in the strict sense, the most characteristic product of this period is the hypomnema, a systematic and continuous commentary transcribed on separate volumina – that is, papyrus rolls – distinct from the main text. From at least the first century BCE onwards, the Hellenistic poets themselves, including Callimachus and Theocritus, became in turn the objects of exegesis (see 2.2; 2.3). Through successive generations of scholars, disciples, and continuators of the early Alexandrian masters, the creative age of philology and hermeneutics continued unbroken up to the Augustan period and, for many more centuries, into the Imperial age, when the cultural epicenter had shifted to Rome. From the second century CE onwards, scholarly activity increasingly took the form of conservation, epitomization, and reworking of earlier material, which gradually assumed the shape in which it has come down to us — within the Byzantine miscellaneous corpora, effectively our primary source of knowledge concerning the exegetical literature of the Hellenistic-Roman era.

In Late Antiquity, our knowledge of the physical and textual forms of hermeneutic works on literary texts stricto sensu becomes fragmentary, as the surviving evidence does not permit firm conclusions. The transition in book format — from roll to codex— undoubtedly represents a crucial turning point, not only for the fate of Greek and Latin texts in general, but also, in the specific context of this discussion, for the arrangement of exegetical material: the margins of a codex more readily lent themselves to the inclusion of various kinds of annotations. Yet no Late Antique manuscripts have survived that display a systematic apparatus of marginal or end-of-text notes, and the fragmentary papyrological evidence does not allow for certain inferences (1.2). It is worth quoting here one of the most frequently cited literary testimonies regarding this important technical and cultural phenomenon: the rhetorical encomium that Themistius, with an emphasis consistent with both genre and epoch, dedicated to the foundation of the Imperial Library of Constantinople in the mid-fourth century CE, established by Emperor Constantius II, son of Constantine:

I believe, therefore, that the soul of a wise man is his wisdom, his intellect, and his speech, and that the tombs of these souls are the books and writings in which their remains are laid, as in sarcophagi. Now he [the emperor] commands that these coffers, decayed through long neglect like buildings within the chest of memory, be rekindled – lest they vanish and perish entirely, taking with them the souls that lie therein. He appoints an overseer for the task and provides the necessary means. And those who labor for you are not smiths, carpenters, or masons, but the artisans of the art of Cadmus and Palamedes, who are able to transfer the intellect from a decaying body into one that is solid and new. Soon, for you, the most wise Plato will live again, Aristotle will live again, and the orator Peanios [i.e., Demosthenes], and the son of Theodorus [i.e., Isocrates], and the son of Olorus [i.e., Thucydides]. As for these men, even if their public statues were in danger, at least their private ones – kept by individuals – find protection and salvation even without the guardianship of law; their virtue alone suffices to preserve them. But as for their followers, whose works are not sufficient to sustain themselves, the emperor’s foresight compels them, though mortal, to become immortal: many interpreters and guardians of the temple of Homer, many devotees of Hesiod, and even Chrysippus himself, Zeno, Cleanthes, and the whole choirs of the Lyceum and the Academy—briefly, an innumerable host of ancient wisdom, not common nor circulating among the crowd, but rare and recondite, now fading and effaced by time, buried in shadow—he arouses and revives as from Hades, erecting for you other, and even better, statues of the Muses. (Them., or. 4, 59c–d)

This testimony, besides vividly describing the process of transition in material support (from papyrus roll to codex, predominantly of parchment), and introducing us to the newly founded capital of the Eastern Roman Empire — destined to become the central hub of Greek culture, preservation, and scholarship for more than a millennium — also provides valuable insight into the fate of scholarly literature. The great classics (Demosthenes, Isocrates, etc.) — we might say the ‘bestsellers’ — were widely read and copied in private libraries, while technical treatises, works of minor philosophers, and exegetical erudition (the «guardians of the temple of Homer») were at risk of disappearing (see 2.1; 2.2).