History of Transmission and Criticism of Aeschylus' Texts

Abstract

The subject of the article is ”a short history of transmission and criticism of Aeschylus' texts” including the work on the text conducted by the ancient − Alexandrian − grammarians and philologists in the Augustan Age and in the period of the Roman empire, as well as that done in the Middle Ages and later − till modern times, with special attention paid to the recent editions of the text of Aeschylus' plays − critical ones supplied with commentaries. The author presents a review of editions of Aeschylus' works. To do this he avails himself of the abundant literature on the subject, he quotes information on ancient authors (among others Quintilian and Plutarch); he also mentions the fact that there are short quotations from Aeschylus in the works by Clement of Alexandria − a Christian writer living in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A. D.

The article points to the reverence which has surrounded Aeschylus during the ages of studies of the text of his plays up to modern times and it fills the gap in the Polish language caused by lack of this kind of work. Since the edition of Tragedia grecka (”The Greek Tragedy”) by S. Witkowski in Lvov in 1930 with only a short history of Aeschylus' text and its most important editions there has not been such a work.

The aim of the article is to honour the 500th anniversary of the criticism of Aeschylus' texts started by M. Suliardus, which anniversary falls on 1995.