The paragraph that follows is meant to illustrate, for those who are reading the Iliad for the first time, the kinds of textual variations that we find in the manuscript tradition.
Iliad 1.97 οὐδ’ ὅ γε πρὶν λοιμοῖο βαρείας χεῖρας ἀφέξει Iliad 1.97 variant οὐδ’ ὅ γε πρὶν Δαναοῖσιν ἀεικέα λοιγὸν ἀπώσει The verse as we see it in our base text shows a reading that matches what we read in the majority of medieval manuscripts. Such a majority of medieval manuscript readings is conventionally known as Ω. The manuscript known as Venetus A is among the Ω manuscripts that shows this reading in its base text. But there is also a variant of this verse, which I call “Iliad 1.97 variant,” and this variant verse shows the variant wording Δαναοῖσιν ἀεικέα λοιγὸν ἀπώσει instead of λοιμοῖο βαρείας χεῖρας ἀφέξει. In the Venetus A, this variant wording is actually written out in the space between the Iliadic text and the text of the marginal scholia. The scholia found in that space are known as the text scholia. And the text scholia in this case add a comment after quoting the variant wording: οὕτως αἱ ᾿Αριστάρχου ‘this is the way the (two) manuscripts of Aristarchus (have it)’. Also, in the marginal scholia of the Venetus A, we read a summary of the reportage of Didymus, who says that Aristarchus, in a treatise that he produced in response to one Komanos, preferred the reading of the Iliad 1.97 variant. And Aristarchus found the same variant in the manuscript of Rhianos and in the Massaliotike. As for Didymus himself, he found the reading of the Iliad 1.97 variant in ‘the (two) manuscripts of Aristarchus’, to which he frequently refers. It can be shown that these two manuscripts used by Didymus had base texts that no longer matched the original base text of Aristarchus, who flourished about 150 years before Didymus (and Aristonicus). Didymus remarks that the other reading that he knows, which is what we read as Iliad 1.97, must have been the reading in the text of Zenodotus. The way that Didymus says this makes me think that he did not have access to the original base text of Aristarchus. The reading that we read in our base text is also given by van Thiel in the base text of his edition of the Iliad. By contrast with van Thiel, Allen and other modern editors give the reading “Iliad 1.97 variant” in their base texts. They do so even though Aristarchus in his base text must have given the same reading that we give in our base text. GN 2010.02.20, updated 2016.02.05.