But it may be said, “The scholia on Aristophanes are confessedly[80] poor in literary annotation. Why do you take them [Sidenote: _On Sophocles._] as an example? Why not take in preference, or give in addition, one at least of those collections of scholia which the same authorities[81] accept as richer in the matter?” Very well: let us take those on Sophocles,[82] the admittedly richest of all. It will—or certainly may—seem at the opening as if a more promising “pocket” had been struck, for the first annotation on the _Ajax_ is busy with the arrangement and contents of the prologue, and its relation to what follows; and there is a good deal of similar matter throughout the commentary on this play at least. But when we come to read it in detail we find that its criticism is, at its widest departure from the mere explanatory _supellex_ of the ordinary scholiast, almost purely _theatrical_. For instance, here is the note on 66: “The introduction of Ajax is persuasive; for thus the pathos of the tragedy becomes greater, the spectators perceiving him now out of his mind, and a little later in his senses.” Footnote 80: See the useful and interesting, if rather widely titled, paper of Ad. Trendelenburg, _Grammaticorum Græcorum De Arte Tragicâ Judiciorum Reliquiæ_. Bonn: 1867. Footnote 81: Ibid., p. 1. Footnote 82: Ed. P. N. Papageorgius. Leipsic: 1888. And again on 112: “He speaks as in other respects yielding to the goddess but in this opposing her, and the poet hence shows his disposition to be haughty (since the spectators are much disposed in favour of Ajax by his misfortunes, and all but wroth with the poet), that Ajax may seem to suffer justly from his want of submission to the divinity.” We might quote the long and curious note on 134 as to the composition of the chorus from Salaminians; the criticism of the expostulation of the said chorus with the conduct of the Greeks to Ajax, 158; the still odder note on 201, as of one expounding to a very little school-child how Tecmessa and the Chorus exchange information; the formal explanation, on 342, why Teucer is introduced later than Tecmessa, and of the hero’s language to his captive mistress; the rationale, 770, of the arrival of the messenger; the description of the scene at 815. But the mere enumeration of such things as these should, without the expenditure of more space, be sufficient to show what the character of this annotation is. It is not so very different in places from the elaborate stage directions with which, for the last century, some playwrights, especially German and Scandinavian, have been wont to assist the imagination of their readers or hearers, or their own dramatic incapacity; and even when it goes beyond this, it hardly ever goes further than the explanation and justification of the _action_.