A parallel for some of Lucian’s marginalia
It’s amazing how frequently one text casts unexpected light on another text. Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, for example, shows Lucian’s marginalia is not as eccentric as we might think.
For example, when Criseyde reflects ‘Ful sharp bygynnyng breketh ofte at end’ (II. 791), the marginalia in one manuscript cites the Latin form of this proverb: ‘aciores in principio franguntur in fine’ (those who are very sharp at the beginning are broken in the end). Equally, when Pandarus remarks ‘men seith, “Impressiounes lighte / Ful lightly ben ay redy to the flighte”‘ (II. 1238-9), another manuscript glosses ‘levis impressio, levis recessio’ (light impression, light recession; equivalent, as the Riverside Chaucer comments, to the modern ‘Soon learned, soon forgotten’).
These glosses seem to me similar to some of the more proverbial marginal comments that Lucian equipped his text with. For example, when Lucian reflects ’a stranger ponders what a citizen does not consider’, the marginalia comments ’quod uni notum, alteri nouum’ (What is know to one is new to another). Both sets of marginalia recast a specific textual moment as a general lesson.
The marginalia in manuscript copies of Chaucer’s works has usually been held to have nothing to do with Chaucer himself. However, recent work has suggested he was at least partly responsible for supplying the textual apparatus of his poetry. This is just the situation I envision for Lucian and his marginalia.