Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
In my review of R. D. Dawe's Studies in the text of Sophocles (JHS xcvi [1976] 171 ff.), I reached the conclusion that scholars now possess all the information about manuscripts that is needed in order to constitute the text of the Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus, subject to two provisos.
The first of these concerns the Jena manuscript (Bos. q. 7), a copy written late in the fifteenth century and containing only the first two plays. Reports of interesting readings found in it were given by Purgold in 1802, and since collations were not always undertaken very carefully at that date it seemed worth while to examine the book again to see whether the reports were correct. Thanks to the good offices of the University Library in Jena I was able to collate a microfilm, and am now in a position to state that Purgold did his work well. The interesting readings cited by subsequent editors are correctly reported, and so far as I can see there are no others of striking merit.
The other manuscript which seemed to deserve further investigation is in Milan (Ambrosianus E 103 sup.). It is usually assigned to the fourteenth century, and if this date were certain it would not deserve any special attention. In my opinion the script is of a type that must almost certainly be placed before the year 1300, probably c 1275, and in that case the book might be of some interest, since it could be early enough to escape the reproach of offering a text affected by Palaeologan scholars. I have now collated the text from a microfilm kindly supplied by the Ambrosian Library. A very small number of valuable readings came to light.