The beginning of the entry in the epitome of Herennius Philo ascribed to Ammonius on the difference between ‘Thebans’ and ‘Thebes-born’, along with its twin in the epitome of Herennius Philo which circulated as Herennius Philo (91 Palmieri), contains the only explicit quotation of Didymus’ commentary on Pindar's Paeans (fr. 68 Braswell = °172 Coward–Prodi):Footnote 1
Θηβαῖοι καὶ Θηβαγενεῖς διαφέρουσιν, καθὼς Δίδυμος ἐν ὑπομνήματι τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν παιάνων Πινδάρου φησίν⋅ “καὶ τὸν τρίποδα ἀπὸ τούτου Θηβαγενεῖς πέμπουσι τὸν χρύσεον εἰς Ἰσμήνιον πρῶτον”. (Ammon. Diff. 231 Nickau)
‘Thebans’ and ‘Theban-born’ are different, as Didymus says in the first commentary on Pindar's Paeans: ‘and from there the Theban-born escort the golden tripod to the Ismenion first’.
Readers have been perplexed by the expression ἐν ὑπομνήματι τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν παιάνων Πινδάρου.Footnote 2 What is ‘the first commentary on Pindar's Paeans’? Did Didymus write multiple, different commentaries on the Paeans? Unlikely.Footnote 3 Wilamowitz amended τῷ πρώτῳ to τοῦ πρώτου, ‘the commentary on the first of Pindar's Paeans’.Footnote 4 But the normal meaning of the expression—‘the first book of Pindar's Paeans’—is precluded by the fact that the Paeans consisted of a single book,Footnote 5 and the phrase cannot be made to mean ‘the first poem of Pindar's Paeans’ instead.Footnote 6 Eschewing Wilamowitz's conjecture, several scholars have inferred a multi-volume commentary, of which Ammonius quotes the first book.Footnote 7 To square the Greek with this interpretation, Filoni deleted ὑπομνήματι as an intrusive gloss explaining the referent of an original ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν παιάνων Πινδάρου, viz. the commentary rather than the Paeans themselves.Footnote 8 Braswell argued instead for ‘ὑπομνήματα (treatises) on individual Paeans’, with the first dealing with the first Paean.Footnote 9
I shall make a different suggestion, starting from Didymus’ attested bibliographical praxis. The colophon of the Berlin roll of the Περὶ Δημοσθένους (P.Berol. inv. 9780 recto, fr. °281 Coward–Prodi) reads:
ΔΙΔΥΜΟΥ
ΠΕΡΙ ΔΗΜΟΣΘΕΝΟΥΣ
ΚΗ
ΦΙΛΙΠΠΙΚΩΝ Γ
Didymus’ work on Demosthenes, then, had both a continuous numeration of volumes across the entire work (of which this was Book 28) and separate titles for commentaries on individual speeches or groups of speeches (here the Philippics, of which this was Book 3).Footnote 10 I submit that the same may have been true in our case: Didymus’ commentary on Pindar had a continuous numeration running alongside the titles of the individual volumes, and the commentary on the Paeans was the first. Indeed, the only explicit citation of Didymus’ commentary in the Pindaric scholia uses the plural, ἐν δὲ τοῖς Διδύμου ὑπομνήμασιν (schol. inscr. Ol. 5 Drachmann, fr. 7 Braswell = °110 Coward–Prodi): the scholiast's point of reference is the multi-volume commentary collectively, not the individual volume which included Olympian 5. We may imagine the colophon as:
ΔΙΔΥΜΟΥ
ΠΙΝΔΑΡΟΥ ΥΠΟΜΝΗΜΑ(ΤΑ)
Α
ΠΑΙΑΝΩΝ
A piece of circumstantial evidence can be called upon from the Pindaric scholia. Four times in the Olympians and in the Pythians a scholium cross-references a commentary on the Paeans with ἐν παιᾶσιν εἴρηται or the like (schol. Ol. 1.26g, 2.70d, Pyth. 6.5c, 12.44a Drachmann, frr. 69–72 Braswell).Footnote 11 In secondary literature, when εἴρηται and similar expressions do not refer to the commented author's words, they are often used for self-citation by the commentator, including by Didymus.Footnote 12 If in these cases, too, εἴρηται denotes self-citation, it follows that the anonymous writer had commented on the Paeans before he commented on the Olympians and the Pythians. It cannot be proved that he was Didymus, but the suggestion has some interest.Footnote 13 Didymus is the most quoted source in the Pindaric scholia; indeed, the very note we started from is summarized, without Didymus’ name, in a scholium to Pythian 11 (schol. Pyth. 11.5 Drachmann). The references in the four εἴρηται-scholia concern the kind of erudite matters that were the bread and butter of Didymus’ commentaries, though they need not have been unique to him.
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