Scholium

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Scholium

Scholia (singular, scholion; from Greek "comment", "lecture"), are grammatical

Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
, critical, or explanatory comments, either original or extracted from pre-existing commentaries, which are inserted on the margin of the manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript is any document that is written by hand, as opposed to being printed or reproduced in some other way. The term may also be used for information that is hand-recorded in other ways than writing, for example inscriptions that are chiselled upon a hard material or scratched as with a knife point in plaster or with a stylus on a wa...
of an ancient author, as glosses

Gloss

A gloss is a brief summary of a word's meaning, equivalent to the dictionary entry of that word, but only a word or two in length. It is typically used for the meaning of a word in another language, and hence a simple translation....
. One who writes scholia is a scholiast.

ent scholia are important sources of information about many aspects of the ancient world, especially ancient literary history.

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Encyclopedia

Scholia (singular, scholion; from Greek "comment", "lecture"), are grammatical

Grammar

Manuscript

Gloss

History

Ancient scholia are important sources of information about many aspects of the ancient world, especially ancient literary history. The earliest scholia date to the 5th or 4th century BCE (such as the "D" scholia on the Iliad). The practice of compiling scholia continued through to as late as the 8th century in the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
.

Scholia were altered by successive copyists and owners of the manuscript, and in some cases, increased to such an extent that there was no longer room for them in the margin, and it became necessary to make them into a separate work. At first, they were taken from one commentary only, subsequently from several. This is indicated by the repetition of the lemma

Lemma (linguistics)

In linguistics a lemma has two distinct interpretations:# morphology / lexicography: the canonical form or citation form of a set of forms ; e.g....
("headword"), or by the use of such phrases as "or thus", "alternatively", "according to some", to introduce different explanations, or by the explicit quotation of different sources.

For the most part, the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
scholia on record are anonymous.

List of ancient commentaries

Some ancient "scholia" are of sufficient quality and importance to be labelled "commentaries" instead. The existence of a commercial translation is often used to distinguish between "scholia" and "commentaries". The following is a chronological list of ancient commentaries written defined as those for which commercial translations have been made:

Asconius (c. 55 AD) on Cicero
Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
's Pro Scauro, In Pisonem, Pro Milone
Pro Milone

The Pro Tito Annio Milone ad iudicem oratio is a speech made by Marcus Tullius Cicero on behalf of his friend Titus Annius Milo. Milo was accused of murdering his political enemy Publius Clodius on the Via Appia....
, Pro Cornelio and In toga candida
Servius (c. 400 AD) on Virgil
Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
's Aeneid
Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
Macrobius (c. 400 AD) on Cicero
Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
's Dream of Scipio
Dream of Scipio

The Dream of Scipio , written by Cicero, describes a fictional dream vision of the Roman republic general Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he commanded at the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC....
Proclus
Proclus

Proclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek philosophy Neoplatonist philosophy, one of the last major Classical philosophers ....
(c. 440 AD) on Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
's Parmenides and Timaeus
Timaeus (dialogue)

Timaeus is a theoretical treatise of Plato in the form of a Socratic dialogue, written circa 360 Before Christ. The work puts forward speculation on the nature of the physical world....
and Euclid
Euclid

Euclid , floruit 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematics and is often referred to as the Father of Geometry. He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I ....
's Elements
Boethius (c. 520 AD) on Cicero
Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
's Topics

Other uses

In modern mathematics texts, scholia are marginal notes which may amplify a line of reasoning or compare it with proofs given earlier.
Scholia is an academic journal in the field of classical studies. Websites: ; .