PREFACE.
 

It Will be expected, perhaps, that in the third volume of
Euripides something should be said of the existing MS>S. of
Euripides.^ To enumerate the whole of these,—the great ma¬
jority of them being late transcripts of only three pla3^3, the
Heciiha, Orestes^ and Plioenissae,—would be of little use or
interest to the general reader, who may find them duly cata¬
logued in Matthiae's edition, or as an introduction to W. Din-
dorfs critical notes on this author. The main fact to be re¬
membered is this; that as of Aeschylus and Sophocles only
seven, so of Euripides only nine plays were in common use in
the schools of the grammarians of the middle ages.^ To the
Hecuhcij the Phoenissae, the Orestes, the Medea, the Hippolj/tuSj
the Alcestis, and the Andromache^ we have scholia remaining
more or less complete. To the Rhesus and the Troades some
rather brief and imperfect, though valuable, scholia have been
recovered, and published by "\V. Dindorf and others from the
Vatican MS. 909. Of most of these plays (the two last only
forming to some degree an exception), a pretty large number of
good MSS. have been collated, none of them however reaching
a greater antiquity than the twelfth century.    The remaining

' This brief account, compiled chieflj from Kirchhoff's Praefatio (1855), is
reprinted without change from the former edition of this work. I have no longer
the time or opportunities that I formerly had for examining the MSS. themselves,
or making facsimiles of the writing.

2 The later grammarians, as has been already stated in the case of Euripides,
reduced this number to three of eachy which, from this circumstance, rather than
from any superior merit, are still most frequently placed in the hands of young
students.    See the note on p. Iv of Vol. i.