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C L A S S I C A L CO MM E N T A R I E S
Classical Commentaries
Explorations in a Scholarly Genre

Edited by
C H RI S TI N A S . K R A U S A N D
CH RI STOPH E R S TRAY

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Oxford University Press 2016
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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Printed in Great Britain by
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contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 Preface

This volume is the product first of all of a dialogue between the editors:
one a classical scholar who has both commented on classical texts and
written on commentaries, the other a historian of scholarship and of books.
It stems in the second place from meetings between many of the contribu-
tors, held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, with the benevolent help of
Stephen Harrison, in November 2012 and at the annual meeting of the
American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies) in
January 2013.
In this collection, we build on the earlier work on commentaries
published in the volumes edited by Glenn Most (Commentaries = Kom-
mentare, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999) and by Roy Gibson and Chris
Kraus (The Classical Commentary: Histories, Practices, Theory, Brill 2002).
Our primary aim is to explore further the interface between the history of
classical scholarship and the history of books. We highlight in particular
(1) specific editions, whether those regarded as classics in their own right,
or those that seem representative of important trends or orientations in
scholarship; (2) traditions of commentary on specific classical authors; and
(3) the processes of publishing and printing as they have related to the
production of editions. Beyond that, we hope in the editorial Chapter 1
and in the Afterword to draw out important aspects of commenting, and
reading commentaries, that will provoke thought, challenge, disagreement,
or assent in our own readers and (re)writers. Throughout the volume,
works indicated by author’s name alone, without date, refer to chapters in
this collection.
We are grateful to all the contributors for their chapters, and in many cases
also for comments on each others’ work. Our thanks go to Sander Goldberg
for agreeing to provide an Afterword, and so to give an added perspective on
what comes before it; to Bob Kaster for friendly castigation and a fresh eye; to
Sean Northrup for swift and knowledgeable provision of unicode Greek; and
to many friends who offered advice and suggestions for possible contributors:
Rhiannon Ash, Carlotta Dionisotti, Joe Farrell, Verity Harte, Roland Mayer,
Irene Peirano Garrison, Chris Pelling, Scott Scullion, Tony Woodman, Jim
Zetzel, and especially to Kristoffer B. Almlund for sending a copy of his MA
dissertation on Penguin paratexts. We are also grateful to Hilary O’Shea of
Oxford University Press, who after building up a remarkable Classics list
retired in February 2014, and to her successor Charlotte Loveridge, who has
seen the volume through to publication.
vi Preface

The cover image, of the old Cincinnati public library, tries to convey one
sense of the organized yet overwhelming web of knowledge represented by the
universal variorum that is Commentary.
Christina S. Kraus
New Haven
Christopher Stray
Swansea
 Table of Contents

Plates and Figures xi

Contributors xiii

1. Form and Content 1

Christina S. Kraus (Yale) and C.A. Stray (Swansea)

PART 1. INDIVIDUALS: COMMENTARIES

AND MODERN COMMENTATORS
2. Jebb’s Sophocles 21
P.J. Finglass (Nottingham)
3. A Teutonic Monster in Oxford: The Making of Fraenkel’s
Agamemnon 39
Christopher Stray (Swansea)
4. My Back Pages 58
Richard F. Thomas (Harvard)
5. Two-author Commentaries on Horace: Three Case Studies 71
Stephen Harrison (Oxford)
6. Dodds’ Bacchae 84
S.P. Oakley (Cambridge)

PART 2. TRADITIONS: COMMENTARIES

ON SPECIFIC AUTHORS AND TEXTS
7. Commentary Writing on the Annals of Tacitus: Different
Approaches for Different Audiences 113
Salvador Bartera (Mississippi State)
8. Commenting on Fragments: The Case of Ennius’ Annales 136
Jackie Elliott (Boulder)
9. Between Scylla and Charybdis: Text and Conjecture in
Greek Lyric Commentary 157
Armand D’Angour (Oxford)
10. Philosophers, Exegetes, Scholars: The Ancient Philosophical
Commentary from Plato to Simplicius 173
Han Baltussen (Adelaide)
viii Table of Contents

11. Italian Commentaries on Lucretius 195

Guido Milanese (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan)
12. Citations of Ovid in Virgil’s Ancient Commentators 216
Justin Haynes (UCLA)
13. The Historical Commentary 233
John Davies (Liverpool)

PART 3. MATERIAL: FORM, SERIES, MARKETS

14. Selling Terence in Renaissance Italy: The Marketing Power
of Commentary 253
Paul F. Gehl (Newberry Library)
15. From Giovanni Pontano to Pierio Valeriano: Five Renaissance
Commentators on Latin Erotic Poetry 275
Julia Haig Gaisser (Bryn Mawr)
16. Translation and Commentary: Pope’s Iliad 299
Stuart Gillespie (Glasgow)
17. Agricolan Paratexts 318
Christina S. Kraus (Yale)
18. Fifty Shades of Orange: Cambridge Classical Texts and
Commentaries 346
Roy Gibson (Manchester)

PART 4. RECEPTION: HISTORY OF COMMENTARY

19. Hipparchus Among the Detractors? 379
Caroline Bishop (Bloomington)
20. Ancient Commentaries on Theocritus’ Idylls and Virgil’s Eclogues 397
Joseph Farrell (Penn)
21. Biblical Exegesis and the Twelfth-century Expansion of Servius 419
A.B. Kraebel (Trinity University)
22. Christian Gottlob Heyne and the Changing Fortunes of the
Commentary in the Age of Altertumswissenschaft 435
Katherine Harloe (Reading)
23. Jean-François Vauvilliers and Pindaric Commentary 457
Penelope Wilson (Cambridge)
 Table of Contents ix

PART 5. FUTURES: COMMENTARIES AND THE WEB

24. Heracles’ Choice: Thoughts on the Virtues of Print and
Digital Commentary 483
Peter J. Anderson (Grand Valley State)
25. The Dream of a Universal Variorum: Digitizing the
Commentary Tradition 494
Peter Heslin (Durham)
26. The Future of Antiquity: An Afterword 512
Sander M. Goldberg (UCLA)

Index 525
 Plates and Figures

Colour Plates
1.1 Osborn fa38. Petrus Comestor, Historia scholastica, with commentary.
James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. xix
1.2 The Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics at the Bookshop, 2013.
Photo: C.A. Stray. xx
17.1 Frontispiece map from Furneaux 1898. Digital version: C.S. Kraus. xxi
18.1 Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries. Photo: C.S. Kraus. xxii

Figures
1.1 Beinecke Marston MS 152. 86v. Pauline Epistles with commentary by
Gilbert de la Porrée and additional notes by Hugh of Saint-Cher or Peter
Lombard. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 4
1.2 Tacitus Agricola, ed. F.K. Wex, Braunsvigae [Brunswick] 1852,
p. 235. Digital version: University of California. 5
1.3 Passow, C., Des Q. Horatius Flaccus Episteln, Leipzig 1833, p. 16.
Digital version: University of California. 6
1.4 Beinecke MS 278. fol. 40r. Didymus Chalcenterus, Interpretatio in
Odysseam. 1453. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University. 6
16.1 Hume’s 1695 Paradise Lost notes (Milton 1695, 291). Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 310
16.2 Pope’s 1715 Iliad notes, quarto text (page size 288229 mm; Pope 1715,
I.356). Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 311
16.3 Pope’s Iliad notes in duodecimo format (Pope 1720–1, I.92).
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 313
16.4 Thomas Newton’s variorum Paradise Lost (Milton 1749, I.73).
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 315
17.1 Front cover of Johnson 1885. Digital version: Yale University Library. 322
17.2 Front cover of Stuart 1909; Macmillan’s Latin Classics. Digital version:
University of California. 328
xii Plates and Figures
17.3 Agricola illustration from Johnson 1885, 7. Digital version:
Yale University Library. 330
17.4 Germania illustration from Johnson 1885, 83. Digital version:
University of California. 331
17.5 D. Appleton and Co.’s ‘Standard Classical Works’: Publisher’s book list
from Harkness 1870, n.p. Digital version: Harvard University Library. 335
 Contributors

Peter J. Anderson is Associate Professor of Classics at Grand Valley State

University in Michigan. Primary research and writing interests include
Seneca’s Dialogi and Martial’s Epigrammata, but he has also had a long-
term interest in language acquisition theory and working memory as they
pertain to the study of Latin. He has recently finished a translation project on
Seneca’s shorter dialogues and consolations (2015) and is working on a print
commentary for Martial’s Epigrammata.
Han Baltussen is the Hughes Professor of Classics at the University of
Adelaide and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has
published on a wide range of topics in intellectual history. He is the author,
editor, and translator of five books: Theophrastus Against the Presocratics and
Plato (2000), Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Latin and Arabic
Commentaries (with P. Adamson and M. Stone, 2004), Philosophy and Exe-
gesis in Simplicius. The Methodology of a Commentator (2008), Simplicius’
Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 1.5–9 (with M. Share, M. Atkinson, and
I. Mueller, 2012), and Greek and Roman Consolations. Eight Studies of a
Tradition and its Afterlife (2013).
Salvador Bartera began to study Classics at the University of Urbino, then
continued his graduate studies at the University of Virginia. He taught Greek
and Latin for several years at the University of Tennessee and is now Assistant
Professor of Classics at Mississippi State University. He works mainly on
Roman historiography, particularly Tacitus, and on the interactions between
historiography and epic poetry. He is also interested in the history of the
classical tradition. His current project is a commentary on Annals 16.
Caroline Bishop is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical and
Modern Languages & Literatures at Texas Tech University. She has written
articles on Cicero and the Aratean commentary tradition, and on Cicero’s own
commentators Asconius and Macrobius, and is currently working on a mono-
graph on Cicero’s use of Hellenistic scholarship.
Armand D’Angour is Associate Professor of Classics at Oxford University and
Fellow and Tutor at Jesus College. He has written on the language, literature,
and culture of ancient Greece, and is author of The Greeks and the New:
Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience (2011). His current
research, supported by a British Academy Fellowship, aims to reconstruct
the sounds and effects of ancient Greek music.
xiv Contributors

After student years in Oxford and a Lectureship at St Andrews, Professor

John Davies held a tutorial Fellowship at Oriel College Oxford until he
succeeded Frank Walbank in the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and
Classical Archaeology at Liverpool. After Athenian Propertied Families 600–300
BC was published in 1971, followed by Democracy and Classical Greece in 1978,
his research focus turned towards the Hellenistic period and the social, cultic, and
especially economic facets of Greek history. A major chapter on such themes in
CAH VII, 1 in 1984 was followed by a stream of other papers and by his
leadership of a Liverpool-based team that has so far been responsible for three
volumes of conference proceedings on Hellenistic economies. He was also jointly
responsible for the creation of the series ‘Translated Texts for Historians’, while
also holding major administrative posts in the university. Since retirement in
2003, he has been active in Athens, as co-director of a residential PG course at the
BSA on Greek sanctuaries, and elsewhere in Europe in various capacities, while
contributing numerous chapters to collective volumes.
Jackie Elliott is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado
Boulder. Her monograph, Ennius and the Architecture of the Annales, was
published by Cambridge in 2013. She studies the history of Roman literature
from its inception, specializing in the epic and historiographical traditions and
their relationship.
Joseph Farrell is M. Mark and Esther K. Watkins Professor in the Humanities
at the University of Pennsylvania. His recent work includes Augustan Poetry
and the Roman Republic, ed. with Damien P. Nelis (2014) and a commentary
on Virgil, Aeneid 5 (2015).
P.J. Finglass is Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham and a
fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He has published editions of Stesichorus
(2014), Sophocles’ Ajax (2011) and Electra (2007), and Pindar’s Pythian
Eleven (2007) with Cambridge University Press.
Julia Haig Gaisser is Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emerita in the Human-
ities, Bryn Mawr College. She is principally interested in Latin poetry, Renais-
sance humanism, and the reception and transmission of classical texts. Her
books include Catullus and His Renaissance Readers (1993), The Fortunes of
Apuleius and the Golden Ass (2008), and Catullus (2009); she is also the editor
and translator of Pierio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men (1999)
and Giovanni Pontano’s Dialogues: Charon and Antonius (2012).
Paul F. Gehl is the Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History
of Printing at the Newberry Library, Chicago. As such, he is responsible for
one of the largest collections of printing history, calligraphy, and design in
North America. He is also a historian of education. He has published exten-
sively on manuscript and printed textbooks of the Renaissance, on the book
 Contributors xv

trade, and on modern fine printing and artist’s books. His A Moral Art:
Grammar, Society, and Culture in Trecento Florence was published by Cornell
University Press in 1993; the interactive online monograph Humanism for
Sale: Making and Marketing Schoolbooks in Renaissance Italy has been hosted
by the Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies since 2008.
Roy Gibson is Professor of Latin at the University of Manchester. He is the
author of a commentary on Ovid: Ars Amatoria 3 (2003), and co-editor with
C.S. Kraus of The Classical Commentary: History, Practices, Theory (2002). He
is currently working on a commentary on Pliny, Epistles 6.
Stuart Gillespie belongs to the English Literature Department at the Univer-
sity of Glasgow. In the field of classical reception he co-edited The Cambridge
Companion to Lucretius (with Philip Hardie, 2007), and more recently has
contributed to the Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature
and the Blackwell Companion to Persius and Juvenal. Some of his work on
manuscript English translations from the Classics is described in his mono-
graph English Translation and Classical Reception: Towards a New Literary
History (2011). His current research is developing this into a sizeable edition
of never before printed translations of the period 1600–1800 across the full
range of Greek and Latin verse, to be published by Oxford University Press in
print and online. He is editor of the journal Translation and Literature and
joint general editor of the five-volume Oxford History of Literary Translation
in English.
Sander M. Goldberg is Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and
Professor of Practice in the Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of
Oregon. He has been editor of TAPA and the APA Textbook Series, served on
the Advisory Board of the Digital Latin Library Project, and is currently
editor-in-chief of the Oxford Classical Dictionary’s fifth, online edition. Recent
publications include Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic (2005)
and a commentary on Terence’s Hecyra (2013) in the Cambridge Greek and
Latin Classics series. He is currently co-editor of the works of Ennius for the
Loeb Classical Library.
Katherine Harloe is Associate Professor of Classics and Intellectual History
at the University of Reading. She is the author of Winckelmann and the
Invention of Antiquity: History and Aesthetics in the Age of Altertumswis-
senschaft and the co-editor of Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception,
Reinterpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to Today.
Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Oxford
and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College. He has published
many books and articles on Latin literature and its reception, including many
items on Horace.
xvi Contributors

Justin Haynes is a lecturer in the Department of Classics at the University of

California at Los Angeles. He received his BA in Classics and Medieval Latin
from Harvard and his PhD in Medieval Latin from the Centre for Medieval
Studies at the University of Toronto. His primary interest is the influence of
classical Greek and Roman literature on post-classical Latin literature, and his
research embraces many aspects of Latin literature from the post-classical
reception of Virgil to palaeography and textual criticism.
Peter Heslin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient
History at the University of Durham. He is the author of The Transvestite
Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid (2005) and of The Museum of
Augustus: The Temple of Apollo in Pompeii, the Portico of Philippus in Rome,
and Latin Poetry (2015). He is also the developer of Diogenes, a software tool
for accessing legacy databases of Latin and Greek texts.
A.B. Kraebel is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity University. His
research focuses on scholastic interpretation of the Bible and classical litera-
ture in the later Middle Ages, and his essays have appeared in Mediaeval
Studies, Medium Ævum, and Traditio, amongst others. He is currently pre-
paring a monograph on Latin and vernacular biblical commentary in
fourteenth-century England, tentatively entitled The Appeal of the Academic.
Christina S. Kraus is Thomas A. Thacher Professor of Latin at Yale and a
member of the Program in Renaissance Studies; she is co-founder (with
J.G. Manning and Hindy Najman) of the Yale Initiative for the Study of
Antiquity and the Premodern world. Before coming to Yale she taught at
NYU, UCL, and Oxford. She has published a commentary on Livy and contri-
butions to one on Tacitus’ Agricola (ed. A.J. Woodman), both in the Cambridge
Greek and Latin Classics series. She is interested in the writing and reception of
commentaries, ancient historiographical narrative, and Latin prose style.
Guido Milanese is Professor of Classics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro
Cuore, Milan. His main research interests are Latin philosophical culture, the
Epicurean tradition and Lucretius, and Latin language in late antiquity and the
early Middle Ages as witnessed by early medieval manuscripts with musical
notation. He holds a PhD honoris causa in Comparative Literatures from the
Institut Catholique, Paris.
S.P. Oakley is Kennedy Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge
and Fellow of Emmanuel College; he has previously taught at the University
of Reading. His principal publications are The Hill-forts of the Samnites
(1995) and A Commentary on Livy, Books vi–x (1997–2004).
Christopher Stray is Honorary Research Fellow, Department of History and
Classics, Swansea University, and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Classical
 Contributors xvii

Studies, University of London. His interests include the history of scholarship,

examinations, and publishing. His publications include Classics Transformed:
Schools, Universities, and Society in Britain 1830–1960 (1998) and Sophocles’
Jebb: A Life in Letters (2013).
Richard F. Thomas is George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics at
Harvard University, where his teaching and research interests are focused on
Hellenistic Greek and Roman literature, intertextuality, translation and trans-
lation theory, the reception of classical literature, and the works of Bob Dylan.
Publications include Virgil and the Augustan Reception (2001), commentaries
on Virgil, Georgics (1988) and Horace, Odes 4 and Carmen Saeculare (2011),
along with co-edited works, Classics and the Uses of Reception (2006), Bob
Dylan’s Performance Artistry (2007), and the Virgil Encyclopedia (2014).
Penelope Wilson is an Emeritus Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cam-
bridge (founded as New Hall), and was formerly Principal of Ustinov College
and Reader in English Studies in Durham University. She has published
mainly on eighteenth-century literature and the reception of the Classics,
especially classical poetry, with recent contributions to the Oxford History of
Literary Translation in English and The Oxford History of Classical Reception
in English Literature. She is currently working on the study of Classics in
Dissenting Academies, and on English commentaries on classical poetry from
the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. She has a long-
standing interest in the history of Pindaric scholarship and appreciation.
 1

Form and Content

Christina S. Kraus and C.A. Stray

FORM

We begin with definitions. It is not our purpose here to trace the history of the
commentary in Greco-Roman thought. But any collection such as this one,
which attempts to sketch out a variety of responses to what may well be the
oldest scholarly profession, should at the outset attempt a definition of terms.
By ‘commentary’, we mean a very particular—though manifold—form of
scholarly discourse, ‘a systematic series of comments or annotations on the
text of a [literary] work; an expository treatise following the order of the work
explained’ (OED s.v. 3a, attested from the mid-sixteenth century). Part of what
this collection attempts is a flexible definition not of what a commentary is,
but of what it does: though the contributors are interested in different time
periods and national traditions, and though their approaches vary consider-
ably, all would, we think, agree that a commentary is less a thing—even a
sequence of things—than a continually evolving organism, characterized by a
remarkable self-consciousness about its tradition and form(s), and imbued
with equal parts of a sense of duty, anxiety, and pleasure.
Latin commentarius simply meant a notebook, treatise, or summary; only
with Suetonius and Gellius does it come regularly to mean a commentary on
another text.1 As time goes on, the scholarly form gains different names—
notae, castigationes, observationes, etc. Its ancestor is someone responding to
what someone else says, a form of interaction that might be called a moment
of a dialectic which later becomes reified/isolated as a distinct form. The oral
and the written, the comment and the commentary, are all represented in
a commentary on a text which portrays an oral dialogue: for example, a
modern commentary on Plato’s Apology, which itself may be seen as belonging

1
That meaning is attested earlier, e.g. at Cic. De orat. 1.240; see TLL s.v. and Kaster on Suet.
Gramm. 4.4. For Greek, see below, n.11.
2 Classical Commentaries

to an early stage of commentary wherein an authoritative voice comments on

and responds to others’ utterances, encapsulates both early and later stages of
the long tradition.
Even as a form of reading, commentary is as old as the Western tradition of
literature.2 When Homer describes the writing in Proteus’ letter as semata
lugra, the adjective characterizes the signs from a non-authorial perspective in
a way that interprets the intention of the writer.3 The poet sings of ‘baleful
signs’, but the meaning of the adjective is realized only in the Lycian king’s
reception—presumably his reading—of this sema kakon (6.177). And the Iliad
itself, according to some readings, is a commentary of sorts on an earlier
version of the story of the death of Achilles.4 Even within an oral tradition,
then, texts are already responding to other/earlier texts5 through revision,
contestation, addition, and continuation (we think here particularly of the
continuations of the Iliad in the epic cycle). The Homeric epics themselves, of
course, are the subject of some of the earliest attested interpretative readings in
Greek, responses by Xenophanes and by Theagenes of Rhegium to the diffi-
culties posed by the poems.6 Acts of literature, then, seem immediately to invite
commentary, whether that commentary is descriptive/interpretative or ameli-
orative/allegorical/interpretative.7
While the term ‘commentary’ is multivalent, it is to some extent true that one
knows a commentary on a text when one sees it. Most classical scholars would
probably agree that the ‘proper’ place for commentary is both logically and
visually separate from its source-text, and that its narrative (insofar as it has
one) is keyed to the agenda set by that text.8 So, for example, while Xenophanes’
poem on the gods recognizably deploys some of the reading strategies associ-
ated with commentary—allegory, contextualization, parallels—it is not itself

2
Non-western forms of commentary are beyond our scope here: but see Benjamin Elman’s
work on Confucianism and the Confucian tradition (e.g. Elman 1984), Klein 2002 on medieval
Japan, and the Zukunftsphilologie project in Berlin (<http://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/
en/revisiting-the-canons-of-textual-scholarship/profile.html>, accessed 15 August 2014).
3
Iliad 6.168–70, 176–8: cf. Ford 1994, 132, with references, Rosenmeyer 2013, 67–8.
4
Slatkin 1991.
5
On the problems of defining ‘text’—which emphatically need not refer to anything
written—see Mowitt 1992; McGann 1991 looks at texts and textuality from the point of view
of production and editing, very much germane to the current project. The word has evolved, of
course: some of the earliest citations of ‘text’ in OED (e.g. text n.1, 2a–b: fourteenth century)
relate to texts as opposed to commentary or glosses.
6
Feeney 1991, 8–11, on Theagenes ‘expounding a text’ (10); see also Schironi 2012 on
allegorical reading in Greece.
7
Commentary as a modern scholarly discourse/genre is certainly not restricted to ‘literature’,
though whether a text receives a commentary is often determined by its perceived status
within or outside a literary (etc.) canon—and in turn the presence of commentary often gives
the text a higher status. See Gibson, 370. On commentary as (negative) criticism, see especially
Bishop.
8
Nuenlist 2009 has a fascinating discussion of the plots inherent in scholia. For the import-
ance of the source-text, see especially Davies, Baltussen, Bishop, Kraebel.
 Form and Content 3

technically ‘commentary’, not least because it shares a literary form with the
text on which it comments (both are poetry).9 Furthermore, while it presumes
knowledge of the Homeric poems, it does not presume—or provide—a text
thereof. Plato’s reading of Simonides in the Protagoras, on the other hand (Prot.
338e–348c; Sim. 542 PMG), whether a parody of contemporary literary-critical
approaches or not, is recognizably what we would now call a ‘running com-
mentary’, though its primary aim is other than elucidating the poet’s meaning,
and its method decidedly designed to argue a position rather than to focus
attention on a ‘source-text’.10 Similarly, Theagenes’ and other like readers’
concern was to impose a new agenda on a text, or at the very least to defer its
original agenda, through ‘another speaking’, or allegory. While texts provoke
responses, then, what we think of as ‘commentary’ tends to focus on particular
kinds of responses: on a continuum from ‘This is rubbish, I disagree’ through
‘this should have been written differently’ to ‘this is what X means’, it leans to
the latter end.
Most commentaries before late antiquity were separate from ‘their’ texts,
though most of them now exist for us as marginalia incorporated into later
manuscripts. The characteristic shape of text + commentary is adumbrated
in Hellenistic papyri in the form of marginal symbols whose meaning was
agreed upon by a scholarly consensus (so, e.g., the diple or the paragraphos), or
as prose analyses (hypomnemata) with lemmata, written separately from the
commented text.11 Any of these is a configuration found throughout the long
history of the genre, regardless of the language of the commentator. The codex
permitted an expansion of commentary and eventually—perhaps first in the
Carolingian period—the format of text and commentary on facing pages, with
its implication of parity between the two.12 So: these are commentaries
(Figures 1.1, 1.2, Plate 1.1), while these are not (Figures 1.3, 1.4).
Again, however, we find a spectrum, from ‘monumental’ to ‘sparse’ com-
mentary, the least obtrusive of which shade over into what one might call a
lesser, or merely adumbrated, form. Are the footnotes in a Loeb edition

9
On Xenophanes as the ‘starting-point of Homeric criticism’, see Pfeiffer 1968, 9; his
emphasis on Xenophanes’ love for Homer and deep familiarity with its ‘style and thought’
resonate well with the recurrent theme of commentators’ affinity for and devotion to their
source-texts (see e.g. Gaisser, Wilson, Oakley, Thomas). Cf. also Gillespie’s argument that Pope’s
translation is functionally (vs formally) a commentary.
10
In fact, this source-text is in some places impossible to disentangle from the philosophical
text that comments on it; see e.g. Bishop in this volume, 387–9. For it as a parody, see Carson
1992, as philosophical commentary, see Baltussen 2004; and on philosophical commentary in
general, see Baltussen.
11
For Greek commentaries, see Bishop on Hipparchus, the earliest preserved (though not
quite ‘representative’: Schironi 2012, 402); for papyrus annotations, see the plates in Turner 1971
as cited in Holtz 2000, n.4; for the form Reynolds and Wilson 1991, 9–15 with Plate I (the
Hawara Homer) and Dickey 2007, 3–17, 107–33.
12
See Holtz 2000 with further references; his discussion of the pressures of layout and length
on the commentary format is illuminating.
4 Classical Commentaries

Figure 1.1 Beinecke Marston MS 152. 86v. Pauline Epistles with commentary by
Gilbert de la Porrée and additional notes by Hugh of Saint-Cher or Peter Lombard.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

commentary? Footnotes certainly can be a comment (and the body of a

footnote a commentary) on an author’s text. Their very name denotes not
their intellectual but their physical relationship to the text: it is cited by OED
first from 1841, and it replaced (with Victorian propriety) the previously
common term ‘bottom note’.13 The term had, however, been used in 1711,14
not long after the publication of Pierre Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary
(Bayle 1697), identified by Grafton as the source of the practice of systematic
footnoting (Grafton 1997, 191–200). The overlap of footnotes with commentary
is especially clear when they supply editorial explanations of now obscure
references or archaic language.15

13
Savage 1841, 88: ‘Bottom notes . . . are also termed Foot Notes’. Commentary at the bottom
of the page is termed ‘foot-notes’ by H.J.B. 1885, 97.
14
Sage and Ruddiman 1711, xxxiv.
15
On the history of the footnote, see Grafton 1997.
 Form and Content 5

Figure 1.2 Tacitus Agricola, ed. F.K. Wex, Braunsvigae [Brunswick] 1852, p. 235.
Digital version: University of California.

Finally, the relationship between and among commentaries is anarchic, to

say the least, ‘multiple forms constantly present and transmitted in overlap-
ping patterns’.16 This obtains as well for the slipping relationship among text
(without commentary), edition (text + commentary), and commentary (with-
out text), three forms each of great antiquity and continuing life, which in the
modern publishing world—and presumably in the ancient—involve questions
of price (e.g. can one reuse the text pages of text + commentary for a stand-
alone text?) as well as logistics (what is the most convenient combination of
text + commentary for readers’ hands or desk space?) and matters of pedagogy
(how much should a student see, and how much left to the teacher?).
While it may be possible, generally, to recognize the form of commentary
despite its possible variations, the relationship between commentary and text,

16
Zetzel 2005, 157, speaking particularly of the transmission of ancient commentaries.
6 Classical Commentaries

Figure 1.3 Passow, C., Des Q. Horatius Flaccus Episteln, Leipzig 1833, p. 16. Digital
version: University of California.

Figure 1.4 Beinecke MS 278. fol. 40r. Didymus Chalcenterus, Interpretatio in Odys-
seam. 1453. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
 Form and Content 7

or between commentator and author, remains both contested and of

apparently endless interest. As a key component of the history of scholarship,
commentary writing suggests, on the one hand, a continuity between contem-
porary scholars and their ancient forebears: to comment on a text means to
engage, in some sense, in the same enterprise as, say, Servius or Donatus or
Hippocrates or Aristarchus before one. On the other hand, as reading prac-
tices, needs, and assumptions change from culture to culture, so the aims and
assumptions of commentary, its producers, and its consumers change. It is the
purpose of this collection to explore these practices and assumptions, as well
as to engage with the long historiographical tradition, including informal and
anecdotal accounts of scholars and pedagogy, that accompanies any history of
scholarship, in the hope of coming to a better understanding of the work
commentaries, and commentating, perform.

CONTENT

In what follows, we trace some themes that recur in the essays collected here.
A primary focus of many of the papers is the relationship between the com-
mentator and the author of the ‘source-text’. In an illuminating study of genre as
revealed in ancient commentaries, Ineke Sluiter examines four sets of opposi-
tions: (1) the antithetical assumptions that the source-text ‘(a) . . . is a great text
but (b) . . . needs the commentator’s efforts to be optimally effective’; (2) the
balance between ‘making the most of [the] source-text . . . and . . . maintaining
the intellectual attitude of an independent critical thinker’; (3) the commenta-
tor’s two roles, viz., as colleague of his source-author and as part of the
commentary tradition with ‘specific competence in grammar and exegesis’;
and (4), the contrast between the written, stable source-text and the ‘improvised,
oral aspects, and fluid nature, of the commentary’ (Sluiter 2000, 187). All of
these receive attention in the papers herein. But whether the relationship
between commentator and author takes the form of pleasure, anxiety, rivalry,
charity, or criticism, the ‘call and response’ nature of commenting (Bishop) sets
up a dynamic that might be described as ‘supplemental’: that is, the commentary
both completes (or adds to) the source-text and takes its place.17 We mean this

17
For the ‘supplément’, see Johnson 1981, xiii: ‘the inseparability of the two senses of the
word ‘supplément’ [‘an addition’ and ‘a substitute’]’ means that ‘the shadow presence of the
other meaning is always there to undermine the distinction. On the level both of the signified and
the signifier, therefore, it is not possible to pin down the dividing lines between excess and lack,
compensation and corruption’. The supplement, then, is both ‘a plenitude enriching another
plenitude, the fullest measure of presence’, or something that ‘adds only to replace . . . If it
represents and makes an image, it is by the anterior default of a presence . . . As substitute, it is
not simply added to the positivity of a presence . . . its place is assigned in the structure by the
8 Classical Commentaries

not in the simple sense in which a commentary may be used without its
accompanying text, for example, in the ‘hit and run’ manner of someone looking
for parallels;18 but in a more fundamental sense, that any commentary—but
especially one on a large, scholarly scale—will inevitably both invite a kind of
fetishizing of the source-text and direct attention away from it. The first action is
perhaps most easily seen in the variorum format (discussed e.g. by Heslin,
Harlin, Bartera), where many different voices offer a polyphony of interpret-
ations that enrich the source-text; but any commentary, a form which by its
nature incorporates earlier scholarship, fills up a plenitude, clarifying the source-
text’s original meaning(s), enhancing its popularity (Bartera), even restoring its
gaps (D’Angour, Elliott). In this conception of the supplementary relationship
between author and commentator, the latter works to make the source-text
accessible, meaningful, often trying to emphasize (or even create) its unity; to
offer a holistic interpretation of the author’s work (Finglass, Wilson); to bring it
into the comprehension of a variety of different audiences through pedagogical
modelling (e.g. Thomas, Gehl, Kraus); to defend it and bring it into, or keep it in,
the canon. The scholarly community that the variorum explicitly invokes and
helps to create is implicitly continued by the parallels incorporated into any
commentary.
At the same time, however, commentaries direct attention away from the
controlling source-text.19 Again, the variorum format offers an illustration, as
many different commentators offer a polyphony of interpretations that pull
the source-text in many directions at once, any one of which may reflect a
particular national or philosophical reading that ultimately threatens to take
the place of the source-text. The ultimate example of this is perhaps the
translation as commentary (Gillespie, Wilson), but Elliott’s discussion of
the violence done to Ennius’ Annales by successive commentators in their
reconstructions—a violence she counters with one of her own, shredding the
poem that earlier editors would try to rebuild, in order to read it through topoi
rather than through narrative—is illuminating on the power of the commen-
tary to distract (from) the text. There is a robust stream of the commentary
genre that exists separately from its text especially in cases when a standard

mark of an emptiness’ (Derrida 1976, 144–5). See also Fowler 1999, 429: ‘This leads to the
paradox that the form of criticism that might be thought most highly self-contained, the
commentary which seeks to bring closure to the aporiai of the text by a lysis of problemata, in
fact comes to resemble nothing so much as a map of Derridan différance.’
18
Ash 2002, 274; see also Heslin in this volume, 494.
19
E.g. Fowler 1999: 441, on ‘the moment when the boundaries between commentary and text
dissolve and the commentary itself becomes the focus of our attention’. So the commentary takes
control, seizes the reader’s attention, and becomes a barrier between reader and original text.
Richard Hunter has remarked that ‘There is . . . a lot of modern writing about (ostensibly)
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon about which we might justly wonder whether the subject is in fact the
Agamemnon or rather Fraenkel or indeed Fraenkel’s Agamemnon’ (Hunter 2011, 37).
 Form and Content 9

text exists, or when publishing economics dictate compression. A median

position can be seen in the ‘Oxford reds’, which used OCT plates to save
money.20 The change in the focus of many literary studies in recent decades
from author to critic, whereby critical discourse and literary history have
become interesting in their own right (rather than as handmaidens to or
parasites on an authoritative text), is reflected in increasing attention paid
not only to the history of classical scholarship in general, but to the voice and
place of the commentator in particular.21
No commentator operates in a vacuum. Even at the beginning of this
ancient scholarly genre, there were always already previous comments, inter-
pretations, versions, and theories to negotiate. Commentary is particularly
famous for being derivative: containing large amounts of material that can be
found, sometimes verbatim, in earlier commentaries on the same work (the
technical word for this is ‘tralatician’ or ‘tralaticious’). This is a curious
phenomenon in an academic genre that prides itself at the same time on
producing definitive guides to a text and on mapping out future directions in
research (see Oakley, Bartera, Gibson, Harloe, Wilson). Though commentary
is perhaps no more likely to be tralaticious than grammars and dictionaries, its
derivative nature is more noted and more maligned; that presumably has to do
with the level of authority inhering in the commentator, whose voice—
originally that of the teacher—is both impersonal (no ‘I’ in commentaries!)
and intensely personal (see Kraus 2002, 4–5).22 The ghosts that float through
the pages of Fraenkel, Jebb, and others (discussed e.g. by Thomas and Milanese)
are at once the voice of the teacher and of the past. The originary tension
between the teacher/grammarian and the professional scholar is felt continu-
ally in commentaries, from the largest to the smallest, from the least to the
most pedagogically focused. It is seen perhaps most particularly in the per-
mission granted to the commentator to abandon selectivity in the collection
of illustrative material; the ‘Wunderkammer’ effect characteristic of this
‘discourse which, almost by definition, never reaches its end’ (Gumbrecht

20
This caused problems especially with Euripides: see below and Oakley in this volume. The
converse was also true—and also problematic: the Press pressured Haverfield and then Anderson
to put their commentary following the text of Agricola so that the text could later be used for an
OCT of Tacitus’ minora ((OUP Secretary’s letter book, 8 June 1920), see further Kraus in this
volume, 320, n.9).
21
One can usefully start with Patterson 1990. Recent attention to commentaries include Most
1999, Goulet-Cazé 2000, and Gibson and Kraus 2002, all with extensive bibliography; see also
Reeve 2004. Interest continues, most recently (2013) in a Paris conference, ‘Pragmatique du
commentaire’ (<http://www.univ-paris3.fr/pragmatique-du-commentaire-mondes-anciens-
mondes-lointains-163496.kjsp>, accessed 15 August 2014).
22
The pedagogical function of commentaries, a strong thread in the chapters contained
herein, is closely related to the fact that commentaries have for centuries often been—or claimed
to be—derived from lecture courses or seminaries (see e.g. Gaisser, Stray). Similarly, lecture
courses and seminars may be designed as functional alternatives to missing or insufficient
commentaries.
10 Classical Commentaries

1999, 444). Here, the origin of commentary in the ancient and medieval
schoolroom, where parallels are a primary component of both the content
and the form of literary analysis, is keenly felt; but the pressures from the
professional academy, where power is measured as much by how much one
knows as by how well one deploys knowledge, also press toward
monumentality.23
These relationships and tensions between commentators, which range from
rivalry to official collaboration, reflect and are taken up by the negotiated space
that commentaries occupy in the larger academic world. They may be viewed
as opening or closing, starting or stalling, debate; as guarding secrets or
illuminating a text; as vehicles of professionalization or as barriers to learning;
as ‘merely’ utilitarian or as carrying ultimate authority about interpretation.
And always, commentaries reflect national styles and traditions. These may
bear on the choice of authors to comment on—thus indicating national
variants of a general canon, or forms of commentary—reflecting institutional
histories of pedagogy which vary between nations, but which also cross national
borders through impulses toward imitation or correction. A powerful German
tradition inspired by such exemplars as Heyne’s Virgil (Heyne 1767–75) and
Wilamowitz’s Euripides’ Herakles (Wilamowitz 1889) prompted imitation in
Britain in Munro’s Lucretius (Munro 1864) and Jebb’s Sophocles (Jebb
1883–96), and in the USA in Gildersleeve’s Pindar (Gildersleeve 1885).24
Neither of these central categories—the relationship between commentary
and source-text, or among commentators—is separable from the question of
the audience of commentary, our third main theme. Perhaps no other schol-
arly genre has as wide a range of content: though the form is relatively stable,
what one puts into that form differs greatly depending on the imagined or
desired audience, which in turn is tied up with the aims and design of a given
work. On the one hand, commentary is first and foremost a resource. Import-
ant commentaries have continuing influence beyond their original publica-
tion, and determine for decades, sometimes more, not only what is considered
worth bringing into comparison with a source-text and what is not, but what a
source-text may or may not mean.25 Commentaries can reflect and determine

23
For parallels as both content and form: cf. e.g. Mayor’s Juvenal or Pease’s Aeneid 4, where
transitions within notes are made via juxtaposition or parallels of thought/image (not unlike
Ovid’s technique in the pseudo-chaotic Metamorphoses); see also Kraebel, Anderson, and
Haynes. For professional pressure, see Anderson, Davies, and Oakley. Finally, on monumentality
vs instrumentality, see Horsfall 2013, 651, on Norden and Aeneid 6.
24
On French traditions, see Wilson; more on Germans in Stray, Harloe, and Harrison.
25
See e.g. Kraus 2002, 14 on the resulting invisibility of parts of texts. We bear in mind that an
‘important’ commentary may not seem to be one at all times and for all people; de la Cerda’s
seventeenth-century work on Virgil (de la Cerda 1612, 1617) has only recently been rehabilitated
for a wide audience, at least partly thanks to the internet and Joseph Farrell’s work at the
University of Pennsylvania (<http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?
textID=virgil1647_1&PagePosition=1>, accessed 15 August 2014). On a much smaller scale,
 Form and Content 11

scholarly directions, and the commentator’s (third-person) voice is as authori-

tative and as deceptive as Caesar’s. In some cases, commentaries even become
a guide for the good life (Wilson, Baltussen). On the other hand, commentar-
ies are embedded in the schoolroom, both as a trace of their origin (see above,
n.22) and as a result of their production for use. Volumes intended explicitly
for students—often at relatively elementary or intermediate levels, and ‘purely
practical’—are deemed by some to be uninteresting (Bartera, Milanese), by
others as revelatory of publishing practices and the growth or modification of
the canon (Gehl, Kraus). And though they may contain little of original
scholarly value, some school commentaries are remarkably tenacious, their
longevity usually in proportion to their usefulness, as determined by pub-
lishers’ willingness to keep them in print or to reprint them with or without
revisions.26 How many classicists have taught in twenty-first-century class-
rooms with twentieth- or even nineteenth-century commentaries, because they
are the only thing in print or—increasingly—available for free on the web (see
especially Heslin)? The stable form of the commentary lends itself also to ‘do it
yourself ’ approaches, in which teachers or students create their own (Ander-
son; and compare the burgeoning phenomenon of online commentaries, some
collaborative, e.g. <http://www.cyropaedia.org>).
The relationship between commentator and reader has several different
aspects. Commentators may look both ways, aiming to create a relationship
both with source-text and with reader: to explain a passage, and to do so in a
way that will be useful, intelligible, and helpful to a user. In this hoped-for
relationship, the ‘reader’ is conceptualized as having specific interests, skills,
and levels of knowledge, hence the spectrum of commentaries, which runs
from elementary-level books designed to help in basic reading of a text,
through to a highly advanced level, aimed at providing material for scholars
engaged in research. Hence too, in some cases, the techniques of navigational
cueing within commentaries to signal more and less advanced comment, as in
the square brackets of Dodds’ Bacchae (Oakley).27 And commentators may
not think as intently about the question of audience as their publishers do:
Mayor’s Juvenal is an edition whose author ‘heaped up’ comments without
‘clearing up’.28 Some early nineteenth-century popular editions were aimed at
a variety of readerships (beginners, school pupils, autodidacts), mainly to

E.J. Kenney’s exemplary commentary on the Moretum (Bristol 1984, now out of print) has
suffered from accessibility issues.
26
A relevant example is the phenomenon of the ‘editio minor’, which appeared in Germany
c.1800, presumably in response to the growth of a state-organized market in gymnasia; on
reprints, see also Kraus, Gehl, and Bartera.
27
Dodds taught in provincial universities from 1919 to 1936 before moving to Oxford
(1936–60), so was well aware of the differential abilities and knowledge of students. See Stray,
Pelling, and Harrison 2016.
28
Heitland 1929, 270.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
than there is food for, thus ensuring that every portion of the food will
be rapidly consumed, after which the partially-grown larvae complete
their development by the aid of cannibalism. It is thus ensured that
the food will raise up as many individuals as possible.

Fam. 38. Muscidae.—Bristle of antennae feathered. This family

contains many of the most abundant flies, including the House-fly,
Blue-bottles or Blow-flies, Green-bottles, and other forms which,
though very common, are perhaps not discriminated from one
another by those who are not entomologists. The larvae live on
carrion and decaying or excrementitious matters. The common
House-fly, Musca domestica, runs through its life-history in a very
short time. It lays about 150 very small eggs on dung or any kind of
soft damp filth; the larvae hatch in a day or two and feed on the
refuse; they may be full-grown in five or six days, and, then pupating,
may in another week emerge as perfect flies. Hence it is no wonder
that they increase to enormous numbers in favourable climates.
They are thought to pass the winter chiefly in the pupal state. The
House-fly is now very widely distributed over the world; it sometimes
occurs in large numbers away from the dwellings of man. Of Blow-
flies there are two common species in this country, Calliphora
erythrocephala and C. vomitoria. The Green-bottle flies, of which
there are several species, belonging to the genus Lucilia, have the
same habits as Blow-flies, though they do not commonly enter
houses. The larvae are said to be indistinguishable from those of
Calliphora.

The larvae of Eumyiid Muscidae are, when first hatched,

metapneustic, but subsequently an anterior pair of stigmata appears,
so that the larva becomes amphipneustic. They usually go through
three stages, distinguished by the condition of the posterior stigmata.
In the early instar these have a single heart-shaped fissure, in the
second stage two fissures exist, while in the third instar there is a
greater diversity in the condition of the breathing apertures.
The various forms of Muscidae show considerable distinctions in the
details of their natural history, and these in certain species vary
according to the locality. This subject has been chiefly studied by
Portschinsky, a Russian naturalist, and a very interesting summary
of his results has been given by Osten Sacken,[435] to which the
student interested in the subject will do well to refer.

A few years ago a great deal of damage was caused in the

Netherlands by Lucilia sericata, a Green-bottle-fly, extremely similar
to our common L. caesar, which deposited its eggs in great
quantities on sheep amongst their wool. This epidemic was
attributed to the importation of sheep from England; but, according to
Karsch, there is reason to suppose that the fly was really introduced
from Southern Europe or Asia Minor.[436]

The larvae of species of the genus Lucilia sometimes attack man

and animals in South America, but fortunately not in this country. The
larva of Lucilia (Compsomyia) macellaria is called the screw-worm,
and is the best known of the forms that infest man, the larvae living
in the nasal fossae and frontal sinuses, and causing great suffering.
The fly is common in North America, but is said never to attack man
farther north than in Kansas. A little fly (Stomoxys calcitrans), very
like the common house-fly though rather more distinctly spotted with
grey and black, and with a fine, hard, exserted proboscis, frequently
enters our houses and inflicts a bite or prick on us. It is commonly
mistaken for an ill-natured house-fly that has taken to biting. It is
frequently a source of irritation to cattle. A closely allied fly,
Haematobia serrata, is very injurious to cattle in North America, but
the same species causes no serious annoyance in England. We may
mention that the various attacks of Dipterous larvae on man have
received the general name "myiasis."

The Tse-tse fly (Glossina morsitans), another ally of Stomoxys, is not

very dissimilar in size and shape to the blow-fly.[437] It bites man and
animals in South Africa, and if it have previously bitten an animal
whose blood was charged with the Haematozoa that really constitute
the disease called Nagana (fly-disease), it inoculates the healthy
animal with the disease; fortunately only some species are
susceptible, and man is not amongst them. It has recently been
shown by Surgeon Bruce[438] that this fly multiplies by producing,
one at a time, a full-grown larva, which immediately changes to a
pupa, as do the members of the series Pupipara. There are already
known other Muscid flies with peculiarities in their modes of
reproduction, so that it is far from impossible that the various
conditions between ordinary egg-laying and full-grown larva- or
pupa-production may be found to exist. Although it has been
supposed that the Tse-tse fly is a formidable obstacle to the
occupation of Africa by civilised men, there is reason to suppose that
this will not ultimately prove to be the case. It only produces disease
when this pre-exists in animals in the neighbourhood; only certain
species are liable to it; and there is some evidence to the effect that
even these may in the course of a succession of generations
become capable of resisting the disease inoculated by the fly. As
long ago as 1878 Dr. Drysdale suggested[439] that this fly only
produces disease by inoculating a blood-parasite, and all the
evidence that has since been received tends to show that his idea is
correct.

Fig. 244—The Tse-tse fly (Glossina morsitans). A, The fly with three
divisions of the proboscis projecting; B, adult larva; C, pupa.

Although the facts we have mentioned above would lead to the

supposition that Muscidae are unmitigated nuisances, yet it is
probable that such an idea is the reverse of the truth, and that on the
whole their operations are beneficial. It would be difficult to
overestimate their value as scavengers. And in addition to this they
destroy injurious creatures. Thus in Algeria Idia fasciata, a fly like the
House-fly, destroys the dreaded migratory Locust Schistocerca
peregrina in great quantities, by the larvae eating the eggs of the
Locust. The female of this fly, in order to reach the desired food,
penetrates from one to three inches below the surface of the ground.

Fam. 39. Oestridae (Bot-flies).—Rather large or very large flies, with

extremely short antennae, bearing a segmented arista, the front of
the head prominent, the posterior part of the wings frequently rough,
and with but few veins: the mouth usually atrophied, the trophi being
represented only by tubercles; larvae living in Vertebrates, usually
Mammals, though it is possible that a few occur in Birds and even in
Reptiles. This is a family of small extent, less than 100 species being
known from all the world, yet it is of much interest on account of the
habits of its members, which, though of large size, live entirely at the
expense of living Vertebrates, to the viscera or other structures of
which they have definite relations, varying according to the species.
Some (Gastrophilus, etc.) live in the alimentary canal; others
(Hypoderma, etc.) are encysted in or under the skin; while others
(Oestrus, etc.) occupy the respiratory passages. As many of them
attack the animals used by man, and some of them do not spare
man himself, they have attracted much attention, and there is an
extensive literature connected with them; nevertheless the life-
histories are still very incompletely known. Indeed, the group is from
all points of view a most difficult one, it being almost impossible to
define the family owing to the great differences that exist in important
points. Some think the family will ultimately be dismembered; and
Girschner has recently proposed to treat it as a division of
Tachinidae. The chief authority is Brauer, in whose writings the
student will find nearly all that is known about Oestridae.[440] Some
of them exist in considerable numbers (it is believed that they are
now not so common as formerly), and yet the flies are but rarely met
with, their habits being in many respects peculiar. Some of them, for
purposes of repose, frequent the summits of mountains, or towers,
or lofty trees. Some have great powers of humming; none of them
are known to bite their victims, indeed the atrophied mouth of most
of the Oestridae forbids such a proceeding.
 Fig. 245—Cephalomyia maculata, a Bot-fly of the camel. Arabia. A,
The fly with extended wings; B, under aspect of the head: a,
antenna; b, the obsolete mouth-parts.

Some deposit their eggs on the hairs of the beasts from which the
larvae are to draw their nutriment, but others place their larvae,
already hatched, in the entrances of the nasal passages. They do
not feed on the blood or tissues of their victims, but on the
secretions, and these are generally altered or increased by the
irritation induced by the presence of the unwelcome guests. It would
appear, on the whole, that their presence is less injurious than would
be expected, and as they always quit the bodies of their hosts for the
purposes of pupation, a natural end is put to their attacks. We have
ten species in Britain, the animals attacked being the ox, the horse,
the ass, the sheep, and the red deer; others occasionally occur in
connexion with animals in menageries. The eggs of Gastrophilus
equi are placed by the fly, when on the wing, on the hair of horses
near the front parts of the body, frequently near the knee, and, after
hatching, the young larvae pass into the stomach of the horse either
by being licked off, or by their own locomotion; in the stomach they
become hooked to the walls, and after being full grown pass out with
the excreta: the Bots—as these larvae are called—are sometimes
very numerous in the stomach, for a fly will lay as many as four or
five hundred eggs on a single horse: in the case of weakly animals,
perforation of the stomach has been known to occur in consequence
of the habit of the Bot of burying itself to a greater or less extent in
the walls of the stomach. Hypoderma bovis and H. lineata attack the
ox, and the larvae cause tumours in the skin along the middle part of
the back. It was formerly inferred from this that the fly places its eggs
in this situation, and as the cattle are known to dread and flee from
the fly, it was supposed to be on account of the pain inflicted when
the egg was thrust through the skin. Recent observations have
shown that these views are erroneous, but much still remains to be
ascertained. The details of oviposition are not yet fully known, but it
appears that the eggs are laid on the lower parts of the body,
especially near the heels, and that they hatch very speedily.[441] As
the imago of Hypoderma appears for only a very short period in the
summer, the time of the oviposition is certain. The newly-disclosed
larva is considerably different from the more advanced instar found
in the skin of the back; moreover, a long period of many months
intervenes between the hatching of the larva and its appearance in
the part mentioned. Brauer has shown that when the grub is first
found in that situation it is entirely subcutaneous. Hence it would be
inferred that the newly-hatched larva penetrated the skin probably
near the spot it was deposited on, and passed a period in
subcutaneous wandering, on the whole going upwards till it arrived
at the uppermost part: that after moulting, and in consequence of
greater need for air, it then pierced the skin, and brought its
breathing organs into contact with the external air; that the irritation
caused by the admission of air induced a purulent secretion, and
caused the larva to be enclosed in a capsule. Dr. Cooper Curtice has
however found, in the oesophagus of cattle, larvae that he considers
to be quite the same as those known to be the young of Hypoderma;
and if this prove to be correct, his inference that the young larvae are
licked up by the cattle and taken into the mouth becomes probable.
The larva, according to this view, subsequently pierces the
oesophagus and becomes subcutaneous by passing through the
intervening tissues. The later history of the grub is briefly, that when
full grown it somewhat enlarges the external orifice of its cyst, and by
contractions and expansions of the body, passes to the surface, falls
to the ground, buries itself and becomes a pupa. If Dr. Curtice be
correct, there should, of course, be as many, if not more, larvae
found in the oesophagus as in the back of the animal; but, so far as
is known, this is not the case, and we shall not be surprised if the
normal course of development be found different from what Dr.
Curtice supposes it to be. His observations relate to Hypoderma
lineata. Our common British species is usually supposed to be H.
bovis; but from recent observations it seems probable that most of
the "Ox-warbles" of this country are really due to the larvae of H.
lineata.

The history of Oestrus ovis, which attacks the sheep, is also

incompletely known, but appears to be much simpler. This fly is
viviparous, and deposits its young larvae at the entrance of the nasal
passages of the sheep, thereby causing extreme annoyance to the
animal. The larvae penetrate to the frontal sinuses to complete their
growth. The duration of their lives is unknown, for it is commonly the
case that larvae of various sizes are found together. Cephenomyia
rufibarbis has recently been found in Scotland. It attacks the Red
deer, and its life-history is similar to that of Oestrus ovis, though the
larvae apparently prefer to attain their full growth in the pharynx of
the deer.

In reference to the Oestridae that attack man, we may merely

mention that the larva of the Hypoderma of the ox is occasionally
found in Europe infesting human beings, but only as an extremely
rare and exceptional event; and that only those engaged in attending
on cattle are attacked; from which it is inferred that the flies are
deceived by an odour emanating from the garments. In America
numerous cases are known of Oestrid larvae being taken from the
body of man, but information about them is very scanty. It appears,
however, that there are at least four species, one of which,
Dermatobia noxialis, is known as a fly as well as a larva. Whether
any of these are peculiar to man is uncertain.[442] There are several
larvae of Muscidae that have similar habits to the Oestridae; hence
the statements that exist as to larvae being found in birds and
reptiles cannot be considered to apply to members of the latter
family until the larvae have been studied by an expert.

The family Ctenostylidae has been established by Bigot for a South

American Insect, of which only a single individual exists in
collections. It is doubtful whether it can be referred to Oestridae.[443]
 Series V. Pupipara

The four families included in this Series are, with the exception of the
Hippoboscidae, very little known. Most of them live by sucking blood
from Mammals and Birds, and sometimes they are wingless
parasites. The single member of the family Braulidae lives on bees.
The term Pupipara is erroneous, and it would be better to revert to
Réaumur's prior appellation Nymphipara. Müggenburg has
suggested that the division is not a natural one, the points of
resemblance that exist between its members being probably the
results of convergence. Recent discoveries as to the modes of
bringing forth of Muscidae give additional force to this suggestion. A
satisfactory definition of the group in its present extent seems
impossible.

Fam. 40. Hippoboscidae.—Wings very variable, sometimes present

and large, then with waved surface and thick nervures confined to
the anterior and basal part; sometimes mere strips, sometimes
entirely absent. Certain members of this family are well known, the
Forest-fly, or Horse-fly, and the Sheep-tick belonging to it. The
proboscis is of peculiar formation, and not like that of other flies.
Seen externally it consists of two elongate, closely adapted, hard
flaps; these are capable of diverging laterally to allow an inner tube
to be exserted from the head. The details and morphology of the
structure have recently been discussed by Müggenburg.[444]
Melophagus ovinus, commonly called the Sheep-tick, is formed for
creeping about on the skin of the sheep beneath the wool, and may
consequently be procured with ease at the period of sheep-shearing:
it has no resemblance to a fly, and it is difficult to persuade the
uninitiated that it is such. Hippobosca equina (called in this country
the Forest-fly, perhaps because it is better known in the New Forest
than elsewhere), looks like a fly, but will be readily recognised by the
two little cavities on the head, one close to each eye, in which the
antennae are concealed, only the fine bristle projecting. Very little
seems to be known as to the Natural History of this fly. Lipoptena
cervi lives on the Red deer; the perfect Insect has apparently a long
life, and both sexes may be found in a wingless state on the deer all
through the winter. When first disclosed in the summer they are
however provided with wings, but when they have found a suitable
host they bite off, or cast, the wings. The female, it appears, does
this more promptly than the male, so that it is difficult to get winged
individuals of the former sex.[445]

Fig. 246.—Diagrammatic section of the larva of Melophagus ovinus.

(After Pratt.) a, mouth; b, suctorial pouch; c, imaginal disc for adult
head; d, meso- and meta-notal discs; e, anterior tracheal
anastomosis; f, first muscular belt; g, transverse tracheal branch;
h, the dorsal tracheal tube; i, sex-organ; k, Malpighian tube; l,
terminal part of intestine; m, terminal chamber of tracheal tube; n,
stigmatic fossa; o, terminal part of intestine; p, anus; q, anal disc;
r, ventral tracheal tube; s, stomach; t, nervous system; u, discs for
the three pairs of legs of the imago; v, ventral pouch; w, pharynx;
x, suctorial lip.

Most of the known Hippoboscidae live on birds, and are apparently

specially fond of the Swallow tribe. They are all winged, though in
some species the wings are very small. The bird-infesting
Hippoboscidae have been very little studied, and will probably form a
distinct family; the antennae of Stenopteryx hirundinis are quite
different from those of Hippobosca. The development is remarkable,
and has been studied by Leuckart[446] and by Pratt[447] in the case
of Melophagus ovinus. The ovaries are peculiarly formed, and
produce one large egg at a time; this passes into the dilated oviduct,
and there goes through its full growth and a certain amount of
development; it is then extruded, and undergoing little or no change
of form becomes externally hardened by the excretion of chitin,
passing thus into the condition of the Eumyiid pupa. Dufour thought
that there is no larval stage in this Insect, but it is quite clear from
later researches that he was wrong, and that a larval stage of a
peculiar kind, but in some respects resembling that of the Eumyiid
Muscidae, occurs. The larva has no true head, but the anterior part
of the body is invaginated, and the most anterior part again
protrudes in the invagination, so that two little passages appear on
section (Fig. 246); the upper one leads to the stomach, which is of
very large size. The tracheal system is peculiar; it is metapneustic,
there being neither anterior nor lateral spiracles. Pratt says that there
is at first a single pair of terminal spiracles, and subsequently three
pairs, hence he considers that the terminal part of the body
corresponds to three segments. This is however probably a mistaken
view; it appears more probable that the so-called three pairs of
stigmata really correspond with the complex condition of the
stigmata in the later instars of certain other Dipterous larvae. The
Melophagus-larva is nourished by secretion from certain glands of
the mother-fly; this is swallowed and the stomach is greatly
distended by this milky fluid. Probably it was this condition that
induced Dufour to suppose the larva to be only an embryo.

Some of the Hippoboscidae that live on birds take to the wing with
great readiness, and it is probable that these bird-parasites will prove
more numerous than is at present suspected.

We may here notice an animal recently described by Dr. Adensamer

and called Ascodipteron.[448] He treats it as the female imago of a
Pupiparous Dipteron. It was found buried in the skin of the wing of a
bat of the genus Phyllorhina, in the Dutch East Indies, only one
individual being known. It is entirely unsegmented, and externally
without head. If Dr. Adensamer should prove to be correct in his
surmise the creature can scarcely be inferior in interest to the
Strepsiptera.
 Fig. 247.—Braula coeca. × 18⁄1. (After Meinert.)

Fam. 41. Braulidae.—This consists only of a minute Insect that lives

on bees. The antennae are somewhat like those of the sheep-tick,
though they are not so completely concealed in the cavities in which
they are inserted. According to Müggenburg[449] a ptilinum exists,
and he is also of opinion that although the parts of the mouth differ
very much from those of Hippoboscidae they are essentially similar.
Lucas says that Braula specially affects the thorax of the bee:
Müggenburg, that it is fond of the queen-bee because of the
exposed membranes between the body-segments that exist in that
sex. Whether this Insect is truly Pupiparous is unknown, though
Boise states that a pupa is deposited in the cell of the bee by the
side of the young larva of the bee, and appears as the perfect Insect
in about twenty-one days. Müggenburg suggests that Braula may be
oviparous, as he has never found a larva in the abdomen. Packard
says that on the day the larva hatches from the egg it sheds its skin
and turns to an oval puparium of a dark brown colour. The Insect is
frequently though inappropriately called bee-louse; notwithstanding
its name it is not quite blind, though the eyes are very imperfect.

Fam. 42. Streblidae.— Winged; possessing halteres; the head

small, narrow and free. These very rare Diptera are altogether
problematic. According to Kolenati the larvae live in bats' excrement
and the perfect Insects on the bats.[450] If the former statement be
correct the Insects can scarcely prove to be Pupipara. The wing-
nervuration is, in the figures of the Russian author, quite different
from that of Hippoboscidae. The Streblidae have been associated by
some entomologists with Nycteribiidae, and by Williston with
Hippoboscidae.
 Fig. 248.—Nycteribia sp., from Xantharpyia straminea. Aden. A, Upper
surface of female, with head in the position of repose; B, under
surface of male. x 12⁄1.

Family 43. Nycteribiidae.—The species of this family are found on

bats; they are apparently rare, and we have been able to examine
only one species. The form is very peculiar, the Insects looking as if
the upper were the under surface. They are wingless, with a narrow
head, which reposes on the back of the thorax. The prothorax
appears to be seated on the dorsum of the mesothorax. According to
Müggenburg there is no trace of a ptilinum. A brief note on the
metamorphosis[451] by Baron Osten Sacken indicates that the
mature larva differs from that of Melophagus in the arrangement of
the stigmata; they appear to be dorsal instead of terminal. There are
apparently no characters of sufficient importance to justify the
association of these Insects with the other divisions of Pupipara; the
sole ground for this connection being the supposed nature of the life-
history of the larva.

Fig. 249—Anterior part of the body of Nycteribia sp., found on

Xantharpyia straminea by Colonel Yerbury at Aden. A, Upper
 surface of female, with head extended; B, under surface of male,
with head extended; C, claws of a foot.

Sub-Order Aphaniptera or Siphonaptera (Fleas)

Fam. Pulicidae.—Wingless, with the body laterally compressed, so

that the transverse diameter is small, the vertical one great. The
head indistinctly separated from the body, small, with short thick
antennae placed in depressions somewhat behind and above the
unfaceted eyes. These are always minute, and sometimes wanting.

Fig. 250—Hystrichopsylla talpae. Britain. (After Ritsema.)

Fig. 251.—Mouth-parts of a flea, Vermipsylla alakurt ♂ . H. Unpaired

pricking organ; Lp. labial palp; Md. mandible; Mx. maxilla; Mxp.
maxillary palp. (After Wagner.)

We all know that the Flea is so flat, or compressed sideways, that it

does not mind the most severe squeeze. This condition is almost
peculiar to it; a great flattening of the body is common in Insects—as
is seen in another annoying Insect, the bed-bug—but the
compression, in the flea, is in the reverse direction. In other respects
the external anatomy of the flea shows several peculiarities, the
morphological import of which has not yet been elucidated. The head
is of very peculiar shape, small, with the antennae placed in an
unusual position; the clypeus is said to be entirely absent, the front
legs are articulated in such a manner that they have a large
additional basal piece—called by some anatomists the ischium—and
in consequence appear to be placed far forwards, looking as if they
were attached to the head; the meso- and meta-thorax have certain
flaps that have been considered to be homologues of wings; and the
maxillary palpi are attached to the head in such a way that they
appear to play the part of the antennae of other Insects (Fig. 250),
and were actually considered to be the antennae by Linnaeus, as
well as others; the mouth-parts themselves are differently
constructed from those of any other Insects.[452] The maxillae and
labium are considered to be not only present, but well developed, the
former possessing palpi moderately well developed, while the labial
palps are very large and of highly peculiar form, being imperfectly
transversely jointed and acting as sheaths; the mandibles are
present in the form of a pair of elongate, slender organs, with
serrated edges; and there is an unpaired, elongate pricking-organ,
thought by some to be a hypopharynx, and by others a labrum.

Fig. 252—Larva of Pulex serraticeps, the dog- and cat-flea. (After

Künckel.)

The antennae are of unusual form, consisting of two basal joints,

and, loosely connected therewith, a terminal mass of diverse form
and more or less distinctly, though irregularly, segmented. The full
number of ten stigmata exists, Wagner giving three thoracic, with
seven abdominal, placed on segments 2-8 of the abdomen; but
Packard thinks the supposed metathoracic stigma is really the first
abdominal. Fleas undergo a very complete metamorphosis; the
larvae are wormlike, resembling those of Mycetophilid Diptera (Fig.
252). The egg of the cat's flea is deposited among the fur of the
animal, but (unlike the eggs of other parasites) apparently is not
fastened to the hair, for the eggs fall freely to the ground from
infested animals; the young larva when hatched bears on the head a
curious structure for breaking the egg-shell. It has the mouth-parts of
a mandibulate Insect and is peripneustic, having ten pairs of
stigmata. It subsequently becomes of less elongate form. Flea-larvae
are able to nourish themselves on almost any kind of refuse animal
matter, Laboulbène having reared them on the sweepings of
apartments; they may perhaps sometimes feed on blood; at any rate
the contents of the alimentary canal appear red through the
transparent integuments. When full grown the larva makes a cocoon,
and frequently covers it with pieces of dust. The perfect flea appears
in a week or two thereafter; the pupa has the members free. The
food of the larvae of fleas has been much discussed and a variety of
statements made on the subject. It has been stated that the mother-
flea after being gorged with blood carries some of it to the young, but
Künckel has shown that there is very little foundation for this tale.
Enormous numbers of fleas are sometimes found in uninhabited
apartments to which animals have previously had access, and these
fleas will attack in numbers and with great eagerness any
unfortunate person who may enter the apartment. The cat-flea can
pass through its growth and metamorphosis with excessive rapidity,
the entire development of a generation in favourable conditions
extending but little beyond a fortnight.[453]

About a hundred kinds of fleas are known, all of which live on

mammals or birds. Hystrichopsylla talpae (Fig. 250) is one of the
largest, it occurs on the Mole. It was found by Ritsema in the nests of
Bombus subterraneus (and was described under the name of Pulex
obtusiceps). As these nests are known to be harried by Voles, and
as this flea has also been found on Field-mice, it is probable that the
parasites are carried to the nests by the Voles. The species that
chiefly infests man is Pulex irritans, an Insect that is nearly
cosmopolitan, though arid desert regions are apparently unsuitable
to it. Pulex avium occurs on a great variety of birds. P. serraticeps
infests the dog and the cat, as well as a variety of other Mammals. It
is a common opinion that each species of Mammal has its own
peculiar flea, but this is far from correct. Fleas pass readily from one
species of animal to another; the writer formerly possessed a cat that
was a most determined and successful hunter of rabbits, and she
frequently returned from her excursions swarming with fleas that she
had become infested with when in the rabbits' burrows; her ears
were on some occasions very sore from the flea-bites. Some of the
fleas of other animals undoubtedly bite man. There appears,
however, to be much difference in the liability of different individuals
of our own species to the bites of fleas. Sarcopsylla penetrans differs
in habits from other fleas, as the female buries the anterior parts of
her body in the flesh of man or other Vertebrates, and the abdomen
then becomes enormously enlarged and distended and undergoes a
series of changes that are of much interest.[454] While in this position
the Insect discharges a number of eggs. This species multiplies
sufficiently to become a serious pest in certain regions, the body of
one man having been known to be affording hospitality to 300 of
these fleas. Sarcopsylla penetrans is known as the Sand-flea, or
chigger, and by numerous other names. Originally a native of tropical
America it has been carried to other parts of the world. Another
Sarcopsylla, S. gallinacea, attaches itself to the eyelids of the
domestic fowl in Ceylon, and an allied form, Rhynchopsylla pulex,
fastens itself to the eyelids and other parts of the body of birds and
bats in South America. In Turkestan Vermipsylla alakurt attacks
cattle—ox, horse, camel, sheep—fastening itself to the body of the
animal after the fashion of a tick. Retaining this position all through
the winter, it becomes distended somewhat after the manner of the
Sand-flea, though it never forms a spherical body. The parts of the
mouth in this Insect (Fig. 251) are unusually long, correlative with the
thickness of the skins of the animals on which it lives. Grassi
considers that the dog's flea, Pulex serraticeps, acts as the
intermediate host of Taenia.

Great difference of opinion has for long prevailed as to whether fleas

should be treated as a Sub-Order of Diptera or as a separate Order
of Insects. Wagner and Künckel, who have recently discussed the
question, think they may pass as aberrant Diptera, while Packard,
[455] the last writer on the subject, prefers to consider them a
separate Order more closely allied to Diptera than to any other
Insects. Although widely known as Aphaniptera, several writers call
them Siphonaptera, because Latreille proposed that name for them
some years before Kirby called them Aphaniptera. Meinert considers
them a separate Order and calls it Suctoria, a most unfortunate
name.

Order VIII. Thysanoptera.

Small Insects, with a palpigerous mouth placed on the under

side of the head and apposed to the sternum so as to be
concealed. With four slender wings, fringed with long hairs on
one or both margins, or with rudiments of wings, or entirely
apterous. Tarsi of one or two joints, terminated by a vesicular
structure. The young resemble the adult in general form, but
there is a pupal stadium in which the Insect is quiescent and
takes no food.

The tiny Insects called Thrips are extremely abundant and may often
be found in profusion in flowers. Their size is only from 1⁄50 to ⅓ of
an inch in length; those of the latter magnitude are in fact giant
species, and so far as we know at present are found only in Australia
(Fig. 253). As regards the extent of the Order it would appear that
Thysanoptera are insignificant, as less than 150 species are known.
Thrips have been, however, very much neglected by entomologists,
so it will not be a matter for surprise if there should prove to be
several thousand species. These Insects present several points of
interest; their mouth-organs are unique in structure; besides this,
they exhibit so many points of dissimilarity from other Insects that it
is impossible to treat them as subdivisions of any other Order. They
have, however, been considered by some to be aberrant
Pseudoneuroptera (cf. Vol. V.), while others have associated them
with Hemiptera. Both Brauer and Packard have treated
Thysanoptera as a separate Order, and there can be no doubt that
this is correct. Thysanoptera have recently been monographed by
Uzel in a work that is, unfortunately for most of us, in the Bohemian
language.[456]
 Fig. 253—Idolothrips spectrum. Australia.

The antennae are never very long, and are 6 to 9-jointed. The head
varies much, being sometimes elongate and tubular, but sometimes
short; it has, however, always the peculiarity that the antennae are
placed quite on its front part, and that the mouth appears to be
absent, owing to its parts being thrust against the under side of the
thorax and concealed. Their most remarkable peculiarity is that
some of them are asymmetrical: Uzel looks on the peculiar structure,
the "Mundstachel," m, m (Fig. 254) found on the left side of the body,
as probably an enormous development of the epipharynx. Previous
to the appearance of Uzel's work, Garman had, however, correctly
described the structure of the mouth;[457] he puts a different
interpretation on the parts; he points out that the mandibles (j), so-
called by Uzel, are attached to the maxillae, and he considers that
they are really jointed, and that they are lobes thereof; while the
Mundstachel or piercer is, he considers, the left mandible; the
corresponding structure of the other side being nearly entirely
absent. He points out that the labrum and endocranium are also
asymmetrical. We think Garman's view a reasonable one, and may
remark that dissimilarity of the mandibles of the two sides is usual in
Insects, and that the mandibles may be hollow for sucking, as is
shown by the larvae of Hemerobiides. There are usually three ocelli,
but they are absent in the entirely apterous forms.
 Fig. 254—Face (with base of the antennae) of Aeolothrips fasciata.
(After Uzel.) a, Labrum; b, maxilla with its palp (c); bl, terminal part
of vertex near attachment of month-parts; d, membrane between
maxilla and mentum; e, mentum ending in a point near f; g,
membrane of attachment of the labial palp h; i, ligula; j, j the
bristle-like mandibles; k, the thicker base of mandible; l, chitinous
lever; m, mouth-spine, with its thick basal part n, and o, its
connection with the forehead, r, r; p, foramen of muscle; s and t,
points of infolding of vertex; u, a prolongation of the gena.

The wings appear to spring from the dorsal surface of the body, not
from the sides; the anterior pair is always quite separated from the
posterior; the wings are always slender, sometimes very slender; in
other respects they exhibit considerable variety; sometimes the front
pair are different in colour and consistence from the other pair. The
abdomen has ten segments, the last of which is often tubular in form.
The peculiar vesicular structures by which the feet are terminated
are, during movement, alternately distended and emptied, and have
two hooks or claws on the sides. The stigmata are extremely
peculiar, there being four pairs, the first being the mesothoracic, 2nd
metathoracic, 3rd on the second abdominal segment, 4th on the
eighth abdominal segment.[458] There are four Malpighian tubes,
and two or three pairs of salivary glands. The dorsal vessel is said to
be a short sack placed in the 7th and 8th abdominal segments. The
abdominal ganglia of the ventral chain are concentrated in a single
mass, placed in, or close to, the thorax; the thorax has two other
approximated ganglia, as well as an anterior one that appears to be
the infra-oesophageal.
The metamorphosis is also peculiar; the larva does not differ greatly
in appearance from the adult, and has similar mouth-organs and
food-habits. The wings are developed outside the body at the sides,
and appear first, according to Heeger, after the third moult. The
nymph-condition is like that of a pupa inasmuch as no nourishment
is taken, and the parts of the body are enclosed in a skin: in some
species there is power of movement to a slight degree, but other
species are quite motionless. In some cases the body is entirely
bright red, though subsequently there is no trace of this colour.
Jordan distinguishes two nymphal periods, the first of which he calls
the pronymphal; in it the Insect appears to be in a condition
intermediate between that of the larva and that of the true nymph;
the old cuticle being retained, though the hypodermis is detached
from it and forms a fresh cuticle beneath it. This condition, as Jordan
remarks, seems parallel to that of the male Coccid, and approaches
closely to complete metamorphosis; indeed the only characters by
which the two can be distinguished appear to be (1) that the young
has not a special form; (2) that the wings are developed outside the
body.

Thrips take their food, it is believed, in the same manner as Aphidae,

by suction; but the details of the process are not by any means
certain, and examination of the stomach is said to have resulted in
finding pollen therein. Walsh thought that Thysanoptera pierce and
suck Aphidae. An elaborate inquiry by Osborn[459] failed to elicit
satisfactory confirmation of Walsh's idea, though Riley and Pergande
support it to some extent; Osborn concludes that the ordinary food is
not drawn directly from sap, but consists of exudation or pollen, the
tissues of the plant being pierced only when a supply of food from
the usual sources falls short. Members of this family have been
reputed as being very injurious to cultivated plants, especially to
cereals, and it is said that as a result the harvests in Europe have
been seriously diminished. Several species may take part in the
attacks. These appear to be directed chiefly against the
inflorescence. Lindeman thought that Limothrips denticornis (=
Thrips secalina), and Anthothrips aculeata (= Phloeothrips
frumentarius), were the most destructive species in an attack of