Aeschylus Scholia: Commentaries from Persians to Agamemnon

The Aeschylus Scholia are a body of ancient and medieval scholarly notes, not the work of a single author. They are a compilation of commentary written in the margins and between the lines of manuscripts containing the plays of the tragedian Aeschylus. The tradition of annotation began with scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE and was continued, copied, and expanded by generations of grammarians and scribes through the Roman and Byzantine periods. The surviving manuscripts that preserve these notes primarily date from the 10th to the 14th centuries CE.

The scholia are attached to the seven surviving plays of Aeschylus. They address a wide variety of subjects to aid readers, including explanations of difficult words and grammar, notes on mythology and history, analysis of poetic metre, and discussions of variant textual readings. These notes are important for several reasons. They preserve fragments of lost ancient scholarship and provide direct insight into how Aeschylus's complex works were studied and interpreted for over a millennium. For contemporary editors, the scholia are an essential tool for establishing the text of the plays, and they trace the history of classical philology and literary criticism from antiquity through the Middle Ages.