The Manuscript Sources of Robortello's Edition of Aeschylys

On pp. 117-8 of his book Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Aeschylus, Prof. Turyn discusses a problem which lies on the fringe of his main enquiry. It is concerned with the relationship between the MSS. O (Leiden Voss. gr. Q4A), Oa (Oxford, Bodleian Auct. T. 6.5), and the Robortello edition. The problem is in itself of no great moment, but its interest lies in the fact that if Turyn is right, it means that a supposedly uninvestigated MS. which occupies a very high place on the Turyn stemma, has been indirectly in use for establishing the text of Aeschylus for the past four centuries. This stemmatically admirable MS. is O. Turyn believes that Robortello took O as his bible, and that in turn Oa is a direct transcript of Robortello. He admits the possibility that O and Oa are really gemelli, with Robortello's edition being based on Oa, but gives some reasons for rejecting this hypothesis, notably two typographic errors of Rob. which re-appear in Oa: namely Prom. 73 ?e?e?s? Rob. Oa, and Prom. 87 p??p? Rob. Oa. Turyn suggests that disagreements in which Rob. is wrong and Oa right are to be explained by supposing that Oa was comparing another copy of Aeschylus?in itself a perfectly plausible assumption. Among these significant disagreements he quotes Prom. 15 p??? t?? d?s?e?????p Rob., t? ? om. Oa; Prom. 63 p??? t??t' Rob., p??? t??d' Oa; Prom. 71 ????e Rob., ???e Oa, and Prom. 76 p?da? Rob., p?da? Oa, and recommends further investigation. I accordingly collated the first 300 lines of the Septem in Oa and Robortello, having already made a complete collation of O for use in the study of other problems in the Aeschylean text tradition. Our problem then is to decide which, if either, of these two stemmas is correct

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