Late Antiquity

Colluthus (Κόλλουθος) of Lycopolis (modern Asyut, Egypt) is the author of the Abduction of Helen (Ἁρπαγὴ Ἑλένης), an epyllion of 392 lines narrating the events leading to the beginning of the Trojan War, from the wedding of Thetis and Peleus to the arrival of Paris and Helen at Troy. According to the Suda (K 1951), Colluthus was a contemporary of emperor Anastasius (reigned 491–518) and composed a Calydoniaca in six books (probably on the hunt of the Calydonian boar; perhaps celebrating the love of Meleager and Atalanta), verse encomia, and a Persica (most likely a verse encomium on Anastasius, celebrating the end of the war against the Persians in 505). The Suda does not mention the Abduction of Helen, Colluthus’s only extant work, which has been transmitted in a very poor state.¹

The Abduction can be divided into three sections. After the initial invocation to the nymphs of the Troad (ll. 1–16), Eris retaliates for not being invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis by throwing a golden apple amongst the banqueters, which leads to the contest of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, resolved by Paris in favour of the latter (ll. 17–191). Paris then voyages to Sparta and encounters Helen (ll. 192–325). Finally, a desolated Hermione tries to make sense of her mother’s absence (ll. 326–392).

Glaucus (6) (origin unknown), author of a work on the antiquities of *Arabia (Ἀραβικὴ Ἀρχαιολογία), used by *Stephanus of Byzantium.

Palaeography is the study of the history of writing upon papyrus (see papyrology), wax, parchment, and paper, while *epigraphy deals with inscriptions carved in hard materials; from it we learn how to read old scripts and to observe their development, which may provide us with criteria for establishing the date and place of origin of a piece of writing. It is also concerned with the layout of the written page and the form of the book. The separate study of the book as an archaeological object, much developed recently, is usually called codicology. We here confine ourselves to Greek and Latin writing. In both languages the written letters change under the influence of three forces: the first, the desire to form the letters with less effort, and the second, the need to be legible, oppose each other; the third, a concern for beauty, in the individual letter, the line as a whole or the page, makes the scribe careful, but sometimes, in his search for regularity and uniformity, he makes the letters hard to distinguish from each other.

Demetrius Triclinius (early 14th cent.), one of the most important scholars of his day, lived probably Thessalonica. He prepared editions of numerous classical poets, using his knowledge of metre to improve the text, and in some cases he also revised the accompanying corpus of *scholia. A number of his emendations are generally accepted; but though he was a better metrician than his contemporaries many of his alterations to the text are violent and unnecessary (see textual criticism). He is known to have worked on *Aeschylus, *Sophocles (1), *Euripides, *Aristophanes (1), *Pindar, *Hesiod, *Theocritus, and *Babrius. Several autograph manuscripts survive. His scientific interests are demonstrated by a recently published treatise on lunar theory.

His date is not quite certain, but 4th century ce (rather than three centuries earlier) seems likeliest. He is a source for much of the Arabian information in Stephanus of Byzantium, in whose treatise on ethnics he is praised highly.