Planudes and Triclinius Wilson, N G Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Jan 1, 1978; 19, 4; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 389

Planudes and Triclinius 
N. G. Wilson 

T HE RELATION, if any, between two Byzantine scholars who were 
contemporaries or whose careers overlapped is often obscure. 
A famous case is the suggestion that Arethas was a pupil of 

Photius; despite the intrinsic likelihood that a promising young 
churchman should have belonged to the circle of Photius, there is no 
tangible evidence to support the idea. 

Triclinius is generally thought to have derived benefit from contact 
with Thomas Magister, of whom he speaks with respect.1 The pur­
pose of the present note is to suggest that there is now a certain 
amount of evidence to show that he was at least aware of the work of 
Planudes. 

First of all a discovery of Professor Turyn should be mentioned.2 

He has identified the hand of Triclinius in MS. Paris.gr. 2744, which is 
the earliest surviving copy of the Planudean edition of the Greek 
Anthology in its unified form, in other words incorporating Planudes' 
addenda in their proper place.3 Triclinius' part in the production of 
the book is confined to a few marginal notes and corrections, but this 
does not exclude the possibility that he was responsible for ordering 
the copy; in fact it is more than likely. What must remain hypotheti­
cal for the time being is the further possibility that Triclinius himself 
was the moving force in preparing the unified version of Planudes' 
Anthology. 

A second link is that Triclinius owned and made notes in the margin 
of a book containing Planudes' version of Ovid's Heroides (MS. Escorial 
Y-III-13). When I reported to Professor Turyn my impression that this 
was so, he was kind enough to confirm it and to add an interesting 
further fact: the Escorial manuscript is part of a larger original book, 
the other section being MS. Laur. Conventi Soppressi 105, which contains 
Planudes' version of the Metamorphoses. This too has marginalia by 

1 Cf w. J. W. Koster, Auteur d'un manuscrit d'Aristephane (Groningen/Djakarta 1957) 16 
with n.2 and frontispiece. 

s Epet 39-40 (1972-73) 403-50. 
8 Pace E. Mioni in Scritti in onere di Carlo Diana (Padua 1975) 266-67, who declares that MSS. 

Marc.gr. XI.l and XI.15 are to be dated to the last twenty years of the thirteenth century. 

389 



390 PLANUDES AND TRICLINIUS 

Triclinius. It does not seem to be the case that this transcript in the 
possession of Triclinius was made direct from the Planudean master 
copy of the translations, MSS. Reginenses gr. 132 and 133 (Metamorphoses 
and Heroides respectively, the former being largely in Planudes' own 
hand). Professor Turyn expressed some doubts on this point,4 and a 
similarly negative conclusion has been reached by M. Papathomopou­
los in his edition of the Heroides paraphrase.1S In this instance therefore 
we must content ourselves with assuming an interest on the part of 
Triclinius in Planudes' work rather than a direct contact between the 
two. 

There are also two laudatory references to Planudes by Triclinius. 
In the text of Aratus' Phaenomena Planudes had revised some passages 
in the light of improved astronomical knowledge, composing verses 
of his own to substitute for the original text. His autograph copy with 
Aratus' lines deleted and his own added has recently been found,6 
but before it came to light his activity was known from a scholium 
explidtly attributed to Triclinius, in which Planudes is mentioned with 
respect.7 A similar mention is found in the scholia to Sophocles, Ajax 
1085-86, where Planudes is given credit for understanding the crasis 
of the relative and the particle av.s 

Yet another connection between the two men is found in an un­
expected place. In Paris there is a fragmentary copy of Theocritus, 
MS. Paris.gr. 2722, written by the scribe otherwise known as the main 
copyist of MS. Laurentianus 32.2, the uniquely important L of Euripides. 
It should be made clear that we are dealing only with folios 6-15 of 
the Paris volume, which contain the Theocritean text; the remaining 
leaves are fragments of other manuscripts and with one dubious 
exception are irrelevant to the present discussion. That exception is 
folio 33, a stray leaf from MS. Pans.gr. 2744, the Anthology mentioned 
above. It seems rash, however, to regard this fact as more than dr­
cumstantial evidence in support of what follows. What is important 

, Private communication. 
s Ma€lp.ov flAavov8T/ p.£Taq,paCl.C TWV 'OP,8lov 'E1TKTOAWv, ed. M. Papathomopoulos 

(Peleia I, Ioannina 1976) viii-ix. 
e I. C. Cunningham, Scriptorium 24 (1970) 367-08 with p1.24, which establishes the identifi· 

cation of the hand. 
1 L. D. Reynolds/N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholarsl (Oxford 1974) 272 with p1.6. 
8 W. Dindorf, Scholia in Sophoc/em II (Oxford 1852) 352.20. No indication of source is given, 

but my colleague Michad Reeve has kindly confirmed that the note is found in MS. Marc.gr. 
470 ( = 824), one of the best sources of the Triclinian recension. 



N. G. WILSON 391 

for my purpose is that on examining the book in Paris in January of 
1976 I discovered to my amazement that five pages, folio 13 verso to 
folio 15 verso, appear to be written by Planudes himself. 

Planudes' hand changed slightly over the years. The script on the 
five pages with which we are concerned is not of the type seen in, e.g., 
his Plutarch, Moralia (MS. Ambr. C 126 inf.). It is in a less calligraphic 
style, and as Professor Turyn has kindly suggested to me, it is probably 
closest to the Nonnos-paraphrase in MS. Marc.gr. 481 or the fragment 
of an Anthology in MS. Laurentianus 32.16 folios 3-6. The interested 
reader may compare PLATE 3 with the published specimen of the first 
of these hands.9 

Various questions arise out of the proposed identification. It may be 
best to begin by considering the variant readings in the part of the 
Theocritus text which I believe to be written in Planudes' hand, 
Idylls 15 (line 5 to the end), 14, and 2 (lines 1-112). It should be noted 
that whereas the text of the other Idylls was declared by Gallavotti to 
be a direct copy of MS. Laurentianus 32.37 (P),lO the text of Idylls 2, 14 
and 15 seemed to him to be a product of contamination,u My colla­
tions confirm this view, and as they bring to light a few other facts a 
list of the main variants may be of some use. 

4 Tct,xav (=Pap.3 WANS) 
21 oCTEa (=ANS) 
31 K€tVOC (=WANS) 
46 ,xa8Ef-l-€V 

51 iK€AOV (= WANS) 
55 &'VtTJpE (= K W) 
61 SES€f-l-at (= NS) 
64 f-l-o!5VTJ (=K2ANS) 
65 ap~wf-l-at (= Pap.3 S) 
72 8€ctcac8at (= KW A) 

100 p.ctf}OtC (= WNS) 
107 KOX!5€CK€V (= W ANS) 

Idyll 2 

9 A. Turyn, Dated Greek Manuscripts of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries in the Libraries 

of Italy (Urbana/Chicago/London 1972) pl.72. 
10 Theocritus, ed. C. Gallavotti (Rome 1946) 253; doubts were expressed by A. Turyn, 

The Byzantine Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Euripides (Urbana 1957) 235 n.213a. 
11 Gallavotti, op.cit. (supra n.lO) xxxii. 



392 PLANUDES AND TRICLIN1US 

Idyll 14 

1 aAAa TV am-be (perhaps a conjecture) 
10 acvxoe (=ANU) 
12 K7jyw (= Pap.3 W) 
34 ~p.oe (= Pap.3 KL W) 
39 cX7J8wv (an unfortunate piece of ornithology) 
46 0.0 (=KW) 
51 1TOO' c1Jc cfoavTl with p.vc supra lineam (cf Tr ANU) 
66 AW7rOV (=Tr ANU) 
71 ole (=ANU) 

Idyll 15 

18 Taw' (= K) 
20 pVrroc (=ANU) 
23 Oac6p.EOa (= L WTr) 
25 ElSEC (=KTr) El1TEc (=KLWTr) 
33 1rij (=K) 
36 ropyoi (=PG) 
60 1TapevOE'iv (= P) 
68 8p.wlc (= G P) 

72 aOp6wc (=LANU) 
76 OAljJETa, (= L WTr N) 
81 'woypacfoo, (= S2 V2) 

105 cfo'po,ca, (= Pap.3) 
106 OvaTac (=Pap.3 KWTr) 
107 civ0pW7rWV (= Pap.3 L WTr) 
118 1TETE7Jva (=Pap.3 KANU) 
121 olov cX7J80Vl8EC cvvaEgop.lvwv ~1Tt 8lv8pwv 
128 p08~xvc (=Pap.3 ANU) 
141 1TPbTEPOV (=LWTr) 

The most important readings in this list are at 15.105, where the 
Parisinus, perhaps by conscious emendation, restores the proper 
dialect form that is otherwise known only from the papyrus, and the 
agreements at 2.61 and 65, and 15.81, with S, MS. Laurentianus 32.16, 
the edition of the poets prepared under the direction of Planudes in 
1280. 

Although this may be held to be corroborative evidence for the idea 
that Planudes' hand is to be recognised in the Paris fragment, there is 
a difficulty. Professor Turyn showed that the Theocritean text in the 
Paris book is identical in format and written on paper with the same 



N. G. WILSON 393 

watermarks as L of Euripides. He inferred that it is a detached portion 
of that manuscript, which originally contained a larger poetic corpus. 
That is the result of calculations based on the quire signatures in what 
is now L and on one quire signature in the Paris leaves.12 He was also 
the first to point out that the corrector of L is none other than De­
metrius Triclinius, who wrote inter alia the quire signatures, which 
would suggest that he was "supervising the completion of the volume 
or at least arranging the sequence of the gatherings for the binding."13 
But if that is so, and the inference would normally be accepted with­
out question, what was Planudes doing writing five pages of this large 
manuscript, especially as one must presume him to have been much 
the senior of the two men in age and standing? 

The simple hypothesis is that Triclinius studied for a while with 
Planudes, who for some reason wrote a few pages of a collection of 
poets that was being compiled at the time. If the collection were fully 
extant it might be discovered that he had taken a bigger part in the 
transcription, but it may be noted that he wrote no more than a small 
amount of his Plutarch Moralia (MS. Ambrosianus C 126 inf) and his 
Plato (MS. Vindob.phil.gr. 21).14 Triclinius became the owner of the 
book, perhaps on Planudes' death, and worked over the Euripidean 
text carefully. In the Theocritean part there is no sign of his hand­
writing except for a gloss on 5.2 which is perhaps to be assigned to 
him. An incidental result of this reconstruction is to cast doubt on 
the idea, which might otherwise be regarded as plaUSible, that the 
survival of the so-called alphabetic plays of Euripides is due to a find 
made by Triclinius in a neglected library in Thessalonica. 

But notwithstanding Occam's razor, the simple solution is not 
necessarily better than others. One could imagine for instance that 
the main scribe of L began work on a copy of Theocritus under 
Planudes' direction, and then when his master died he moved to 
Thessalonica to study with Triclinius. We do not know much about 
the movements of scribes or students, but one can cite the example 
of John Zarides, who was in the Planudean circle in 1294/5 when the 
copy of Plutarch's Moralia was prepared and later seems to have been 
in Thessalonica.16 

12 Turyn, op.cit. (supra n.10) 234. 
18 Turyn. op.cit. (supra n.lO) 238. 
14 Turyn, op.cit. (supra n.9) 83 and 214. 
16 Turyn, op.cit. (supra n.9) 140. 



394 PLANUDES AND TRICLINIUS 

However, it is best not to speculate further when the evidence is so 
incomplete, and to content ourselves with noting that the evidence 
of Planudean influence on Triclinius is substantial. 

LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD 

April,1978 



WILSON 

MS. PARISINUS GRAECUS 2722,fol. 14r, ca A.D. 1300 
Reduced by three-eighths, margins trimmed #' 

(Photograph by courtesy of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) 

PLATE 3