Now you shouldn’t get too discouraged. Wikipedia almost never will tell you that the American Revolution was fought between Germany and India in the 11th century, and for rough approximations, it’s fine, although I wouldn’t write a term paper citing it. But for details, or when a balanced viewpoint is needed, or at least something whose bias is stated, head for a printed book. The main problem with Wikipedia is essentially that it can’t be trusted on any one point; but add to that also, that bad writing, often the effect of writing by what is essentially a committee, can make the articles very confusing and very open to misinterpretation. Dio Chrysostom, in an amusing passage, describes what a horse would look like if designed by Wikipedia: 77/78.22

As a rule of thumb, the more recent the history, the less good the online resources. Two reasons for this: (1) recent history means recent writing, and books recently written remain under copyright, so cannot be put online, barring special circumstances; (2) the more recent the history, the more we bump into editorial agendas, often sponsored by governments, religious denominations, political parties, etc.

So classical Antiquity remains the best-covered history online; and I don’t say it because I deal in it (although I’ve helped, of course), but because very early on, university professors got involved in putting it online. Why? I’ve never figured it out.

Alternatively it may be a scholion, which is attributed to Didymus in whatever source is quoted, but the scholars don’t think it is him.

I wish we could get to this.

It looks like Didymus had a lot of twins. . . .

My guess would be that the reference is to vol. 3 of “Erbse, H. 1969-88, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, 7 vols. (Berlin)”.

The guide to ancient scholia is Dickey’s “Ancient Greek scholarship” (2007), for producing which solid piece of work — instead of some “research” — she was sacked by her university. This tells me (p.7):

“The greatest producer of composite commentaries, and probably the most prolific of all ancient scholars, was the Alexandrian Didymus Chalcenterus (“brazenguts”), who lived in the second half of the first century bc and the beginning of the first century ad.18 Didymus is said to have written 3,500 or 4,000 books and was nicknamed bibliolathas” because he allegedly could not remember what he had written. He put together the writings of Aristarchus and other scholars in order to compile hundreds of composite commentaries on Homer, Demosthenes, and other literary works, as well as producing lexica and monographs; the remains of his commentaries are our primary source of knowledge of the Alexandrians’ critical work. Most of the commentaries survive only in extracts preserved in later works, …”

and:

“This Didymus is (probably) to be distinguished from a number of other scholars named Didymus, including Didymus minor / Didumos” ho neuteros”, a Greek grammarian in Alexandria in the 1st cent. AD; Didymus Claudius, a Greek grammarian in Rome in the early 1st cent. AD; Didymus son of Heraclides, a Greek grammarian in Rome in the mid-1st cent. AD; and Didymus the Blind, a theologian in Alexandria in the 4th cent. ad. See NP iii: 553–4, RE v.i: 472–4, and Fraser (1972: ii. 686).”

and (p.20):

“The D scholia are unfortunately named after Didymus, with whom they are now known to have no connection; they are also known as “scholia minora” or “scholia vulgata.” They are the largest group of Homeric scholia, and our earliest manuscript evidence for them is older than that for the other types of scholia, for the chief witnesses to the D scholia are manuscripts Z and Q, which date to the ninth and eleventh centuries respectively.”

There is a pirate PDF of the book doing the rounds, but I ended up buying the (reasonably) book as well – how else can one absorb so much hard info on so obscure a subject?

And I was really aggrieved to read about your harrowing experience involving threats. Very sorry about that.

My experience so far has been different: somehow in a year and a half of editing articles, mostly about history, 95% of the people I came across were open-minded, reasonable and cooperative. The other 5% were various combinations of bigoted, stupid and narrowminded but even they were relatively polite.

(I’ll try to respond to Roger’s points later, I too have work to do…)

And it’s good to see that someone at Roger’s Wikipediocracy board has caught me out in a false statement: there’s an even more obscure reference to this woman in an author known as “pseudo-Didymus”, previously unknown to me. They’ve actually, against their better judgment, gone in and fixed the WP article, and so far haven’t been reverted. That’s the way WP is supposed to work. . . .

Yes, in practice there’s often a “winning side” for each Wikipedia page: a person or small group that controls the page, and imposes its bias on it. And bias there is, in spades.

And Roger does address something I’d stayed away from: civility is not WP’s strong suit. I finally left when someone threatened to bash my head in, or some similar very violent language that on the street would have constituted actionable assault.