On Signs in the Iliad

Περὶ τῶν σημείων τῆς Ἰλιάδος

On Signs in the Iliad is a lost prose commentary by the Alexandrian grammarian Aristonicus. It systematically explained the critical marks used by the earlier editor Aristarchus of Samothrace in his text of the Iliad. Though the original treatise is lost, its content survives fragmentarily through quotations in the medieval marginal scholia of Homeric manuscripts, most importantly the 10th-century Venetus A codex. The work catalogued and interpreted Aristarchus’s marginal symbols, which indicated textual problems or preferred variant readings, lines marked as suspect or spurious, and noteworthy grammatical, linguistic, and literary points. Aristonicus’s work is preserved exclusively within the Homeric scholia tradition. Scholars reconstruct it by extracting fragments cited under his name, which demonstrate commentary on a vast number of Iliadic passages. On Signs was a key resource for transmitting Alexandrian scholarship. It fundamentally shaped later ancient, Byzantine, and Renaissance understanding of Homeric textual criticism. Modern scholarship relies on these fragments to reconstruct the editorial methods of Aristarchus and the history of classical philology.