The purpose of the thesis is to examine a selection of papyri from the
large corpus of Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes. The study of the texts
has been divided into three major chapters where each one of the selected
papyri is first reproduced and then discussed. The transcription follows the
original publication whereas any possible textual improvement is included in
the commentary. The commentary also contains a general description of the
papyrus (date, layout and content) as well reference to special characteristics.
The structure of the commentary is not identical for marginalia and
hypomnemata: the former are examined in relation to their position round
the main text and are treated both as individual notes and as a group
conveying the annotator's aims. The latter are examined lemma by lemma
with more emphasis upon their origins and later appearances in scholia and
lexica.
After the study of the papyri follows an essay which summarizes the
results and tries to incorporate them into the wider context of the history of
the text of each author and the scholarly attention that this received by the
Alexandrian scholars or later grammarians. The main effort is to place each
papyrus into one of the various stages that scholarly exegesis passed
especially in late antiquity. Special treatment has been given to P.Wurzburg
1, the importance of which made it necessary that it occupies a chapter by
itself. The last chapter of the thesis deals with the issue of glosses, namely
their origin and use in the margins of papyri. The focus is again on the
history of early collections of tragic and comic vocabulary and their
appearance in the margins or hypomnemata. The parallel circulation of
hypomnemata and glossaries often compiled by the same people and some
special features of the glosses in our material led to the conclusion that most
glosses at least in the earlier periods were copied from hypomnemata. The
thesis ends with a presentation of all conclusions from the previous chapters
in relation to the history of scholarship and book production in late antiquit