Ricerc@Sapienza

We possess very little documentation about the work of the Hellenistic philologists on the plays of Aeschylus, even if it is generally agreed that the most important Alexandrian grammarians must have devoted their time to editing and commenting on Aeschylus’ works. Recently, scholars such as C. Meliadò, M. Ercoles and R. Janko have retrieved from the scanty material that has come down to us scraps of information on the philological activity dedicated to the poet in ancient times. Along these lines, this paper analyzes a scholium on Persians, which preserves the remains of a Hellenistic discussion on the text of line 416 of the play: according to some ancient interpreters, the line contained a verb in the dual form, παίοντε. The arguments against this reading can be traced back to the school of Aristarchus in Alexandria.