The other ten plays have come to us only through the preservation of two MSS., both of the 14th century, and both ultimately derived, as Kirchhoff thinks, from the archetype of the 9th or 10th century. These are (1) Palatinus 287, Kirchhoff's B, usually called Rom. C., thirteen plays, viz. six of the select plays (_Androm., Med., Rhes., Hipp., Alc., Troad._), and seven others--_Bacchae, Cyclops, Heracleidae, Supplices, Ion, Iphigenia in Aulide, Iphigenia in Tauris_; and (2) Flor. 2, Elmsley's C., eighteen plays, viz. all but the _Troades_. This MS. is thus the only one for the _Helena_, the _Electra_, and the _Hercules Furens_. By far the greatest number of Euripidean MSS. contain only three plays,--the _Hecuba, Orestes_ and _Phoenissae_,--these having been chosen out of the select nine for school use--probably in the 14th century.
It is to be remembered that, as a selection, the nine chosen plays of Euripides correspond to those seven of Aeschylus and those seven of Sophocles which alone remain to us. If, then, these nine did not include the _Iphigenia in Tauris_, the _Ion_ or the _Bacchae_, may we not fairly infer that the lost plays of the other two dramatists comprised works at least equal to any that have been preserved? May we not even reasonably doubt whether we have received those masterpieces by which their highest excellence should have been judged?
The extant scholia on Euripides are for the nine select plays only. The first edition of the scholia on seven of these plays (all but the _Troades_ and _Rhesus_) was published by Arsenius--a Cretan whom the Venetians had named as bishop of Monemvasia, but whom the Greeks had refused to recognize--at Venice in 1534. The scholia on the _Troades_ and _Rhesus_ were first published by L. Dindorf, from Vat. 909, in 1821. The best complete edition is that of W. Dindorf (1863).[6] The collection, though loaded with rubbish--including worthless analyses of the lyric metres by Demetrius Triclinius--includes some invaluable comments derived from the Alexandrian critics and their followers.
EDITIONES PRINCIPES.--1496. J. Lascaris (Florence), _Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, Andromache_. 1503. M. Musurus (Aldus, Venice), _Eur. Tragg._ XVII., to which in vol. ii. the _Hercules Furens_ was added as an 18th; i.e. this edition contained all the extant plays except the _Electra_, which was first given to the world by P. Victorius from Florentinus C. in 1545. The Aldine edition was reprinted at Basel in 1537.