Western Medieval Manuscripts : Theocritus of Syracuse

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>The manuscript contains a late-15th-century copy of the first 18 <i>Idylls</i> of the bucolic poet <i>Theocritus of Syracuse</i> (ca. 300-260 BCE). The idylls are preceded by the hypothesis, and the first five are accompanied by surrounding scholia from ancient and Byzantine sources, and interlinear glosses.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>After the introductory material on Theocritus, there follows the <i>Syrinx</i>, (<i>Panpipe</i>) part of the <i>Carmina figurata Graeca</i> or <i>Technopaegnia</i>, a group of poems whose lines form shapes on the page. The poem is accompanied by scholia and an epigram falsely attributed in the <i>Anthologia Graeca</i> to the philosopher Plato.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The manuscript seems to have been designed with care and aesthetic intent, but does not appear to have been completed because only idylls 2-5 are accompanied by rubrics and decorated initials; in the others, space has been left for decorated initials that were never added. On all the folios, moreover, the ruling for the missing scholia has been traced.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>From a textual point of view, the manuscript was traced by Gallavotti (1993³) to the <i>genus Vallianum</i>, on which the <i>editio princeps</i> depends.</p>