The Venetian Scholiast is full of familiar references to the different editions of the text of the Iliad, as being standards perfectly well known; and he thus exhibits to us, in a considerable degree, the materials which the Alexandrian critics found existing, and with which they went to work upon that poem. The multitude of editions (ἐκδόσεις) which they had before them, were partly state editions (αἱ πολιτικαὶ, αἱ κατὰ πόλεις, αἱ διὰ τῶν πόλεων, αἱ ἀπὸ τῶν πόλεων), and partly those due to private care (οἱ κατ’ ἄνδρα). These latter seem to have obtained the name in two ways. The first was, when it was taken from particular editors who had revised the text, such as Antimachus (contemporary with Plato), Callimachus, and, above all, Aristotle, who prepared for Alexander the Great the copy ἐκ νάρθηκος, and, again, the edition of Zenodotus, that of Aristophanes, and the two separate editions of Aristarchus, all of the Alexandrian school; or else they were named from the persons who possessed them, and for whom they had been prepared by the care of learned men. Among such possessors was Cassander, king of Macedonia. The existence of these State editions is a fact full of meaning. It appears to show nothing less than this, that the text was under the charge of the public authorities in the several States. We have particular names for six of these editions through the Venetian Scholiast--those of Marseilles, Chios, Cyprus, Crete, Sinope, Argos. On beholding this list, we are immediately struck by the fact that while it contains names from the far East, like Sinope, and far West, like Marseilles, it does not contain one name of a city in Greece Proper, except Argos, and that a city having perhaps less communion than almost any other considerable place with Greek literature in general. We ask why do not Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, why do not Syracuse and the great Greek towns of Sicily and Italy, appear with their several Homeric texts? The most likely answer appears to be, not that these six enumerated cities were more distinguished than others by the carefulness of their provisions for the safety of the Homeric text, but that for some reason, possibly from their lying less within the circle of Greek letters at large, they still retained each their particular text, whereas an approximation had been made to a common text,--of which the cities most properly Greek in general availed themselves. For sometimes there are certain signs supplied in the Scholia of a common text prevailing in the State or national, and another in the private editions, and this without reference to the six cities above mentioned. In the supposition of such a tendency to divaricate, there is nothing beyond likelihood; for private editors would be more free to follow their own judgments or conjectures, whereas the public curators would almost, as a matter of course, be more rigidly conservative. At any rate, there are traceable indications before us to this effect; for the