Ricerc@Sapienza

The critical text of the tragedies of Aeschylus is essentially stable, founding its constitutio on the authority of a few witnesses long identified by critics: the famous Mediceus, MS. Laur. Plut. 32.9, of the 10th century, and the 'editions' of the palaeologan scholar Demetrius Triclinius, namely MSS. Laur. Plut. 31.8, Marc. gr. Z. 616 and the so-called Aeschylus Farnese Neap. II F 31, the 'final edition' by Triclinius through which the text of Aeschylus, provided with a restored cholometry, an erudite commentary, and a characteristic lay-out, passed into Humanism and, hence, into printed editions. The importance of this handful of witnesses has ended up obscuring the numerous other Aeschylus' manuscripts that have come down to us: there are about 140 manuscripts, dating back by the 16th century and currently kept in the main libraries of Italy, the Vatican and Europe. The project that we intend to present aims at the scientific cataloguing, according to coherent models shared by the scientific community, of all the codicological units containing portions of the Aeschylus' plays, in order to provide for each of them a correct palaeographic, material and historical-cultural collocation. The analytical study of the manuscripts, in which particular attention will be devoted to the identification of the hands of the copyists, the readers and the owners, aims at reconstructing the itineraries of the fortune of Aeschylus from Byzantium to Renaissance Europe, among schools, scholarly milieux, professional copy ateliers, in which Aeschylus, and more generally the classical tradition, was collected and renewed. The catalog of Aeschylus' manuscripts, which is part of the activities promoted by the Comitato Classici (Classics Committee) of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, will be supported by more punctual philological and literary studies, aimed at illustrating with particular attention specific moments of this long history.