Scholia: Difference between revisions

{{confuseddistinguish|Skolion|Scoliosis}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=AprilMay 20122021}}

'''Scholia''' (singular '''scholium''' or '''scholion''', from {{lang-grc|σχόλιον}}, "comment, interpretation") are [[grammar| grammatical]], critical, or explanatory comments —– original or copied from prior commentaries —– which are inserted in the margin of the [[manuscript]] of ancient authors, as [[gloss (annotation)|glosses]]. One who writes scholia is a '''scholiast'''. The earliest attested use of the word dates to the 1st century BC.<ref>

The most important are those on the [[Homer]]ic ''[[Iliad]]'', especially those found in the 10th-century manuscripts discovered by [[Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison|Villoison]] in 1781 in the [[Biblioteca Marciana]] in Venice (see further [[Venetus A]], [[Homeric scholarship]]), which are based on [[Aristarchus of Samothrace|Aristarchus]] and his school.<ref>J E Sandys, ''A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities'' (London 1894) p. 65</ref> The scholia on [[Hesiod]], [[Pindar]], [[Sophocles]], [[Aristophanes]] and [[Apollonius Rhodius]] are also extremely important.{{citeneededcitation needed|date=August 2020}}

* In modern mathematics texts, scholia are marginal notes which may amplify a line of reasoning or compare it with proofs given earlier. A famous example is [[Thomas Bayes|Bayes]]' scholium, in which he presents a justification for assuming a [[continuous uniform distribution]] for the [[Prior distribution|prior]] of the parameter of a [[Bernoulli process]].<ref>{{cite journal |author=Murray, F. H. |title=Note on a scholium of Bayes |journal=[[Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society]] |date=February 1930 |url=https://projecteuclid.org:443/euclid.bams/1183493827 |access-date=January 3, January 2018 |number=2 |pages=129–132 |publisher=American Mathematical Society |volume=36 |doi=10.1090/s0002-9904-1930-04907-1|doi-access=free }}</ref> Another famous example of a somewhat different use is to be found in [[Brook Taylor]]'s ''Methodus Incrementorum'', in which the propositions demonstrated are often followed by a scholium which further explains the significance of the proposition.