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The ancient mark for a line the scholar judged not to belong.
Also known as: Athetesis mark, Horizontal line in the margin of a manuscript
A horizontal stroke set in the margin, used by Alexandrian editors of Homer to flag lines they believed had been interpolated. It is the ancestor of the dagger and one of the oldest surviving pieces of critical notation.
A horizontal stroke placed in the margin beside a line of text, used by Alexandrian scholars to mark a line they judged spurious without deleting it.
Contexts: History
Associated above all with Aristarchus of Samothrace and the editing of Homer, and among the earliest attested critical notation of any kind.
The editorial principle it embodies survived the notation: mark the doubt, keep the text. A modern editor bracketing a suspect passage rather than cutting it is doing what the obelus did.
Ancestor of the dagger by descent of both form and sense, which is why the dagger still carries an association with doubtful or dead text.
A short horizontal stroke set in the margin beside a line of text, sometimes with a dot above and below it.
The crux uses the dagger, which descends from the obelus, and both mark text the editor distrusts.