Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World 9780691035413, 0691035415

Table of contents :
Title page
Preface
Contents
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Plate descriptions
1—3
4—5
6—11
12—13
14
15
16
17
18—20
21—22
23
24
25—27
28—29
30
31
32—33
34 (description)
34 (plate)
35—36
37—39
40
41—42
43
44
45—46
47 (description)
47 (plate)
48
49
50
51—54
55
56—57
58
59
60
61
62
63—64
65—66
67
68—69
70
71
72—73
Addenda
Chronological table of manuscripts
Palaeographical index
Greek
Loci

Citation preview

GREEK MANUSCRIPTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

GREEK MANUSCRIPTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD E. G. TURNER

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

W1

© OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

I g7 I

IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

l.c. card: 79-148945 isbn: 0-691-03541—5

PRINTED

IN GREAT BRITAIN

AT THE UNIVERSITY BY

PRESS,

OXFORD

VIVIAN RIDLER

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE This

book is designed to supply the non-specialist classical scholar with a repre¬

sentative body of material illustrating Greek manuscripts written in antiquity. The first aim has been to help him in imagination to put himself in the place of the ancient scribe, and also in that of the ancient reader; to become aware of what a literary man in the ancient world expected to find in his books, and also what he did not find. In accustoming himself to the fact that to Greeks and Romans a book was always a manuscript the reader of today will also realize that a certain formality in preparation and layout, and an intention to correct the transcription was required to make the converse proposition true, that is to turn a manuscript into, a book. Examples have been selected and arranged to show these formalities, to present varying forms of layout, and to indicate how far and by what means the intention to correct the transcription was realized. These specimens display the kind of help (often very little) that was offered at different periods to the ancient reader by way of punctuation and annotation; and the extent to which, in favoured circumstances, critical attention was given to the contents of a manuscript. It will appear that there were well-established ways laid down for a scribe to copy Homer and hexameter verses, solo and choral lyric, and dramatic pieces, each way appro¬ priate to a particular genre; similarly in prose, different norms were applied to orators, historians, and philosophers (the standard authors) and to commentaries. In an introductory essay I have tried to summarize the evidence, that derived both from the reproductions and from elsewhere. Throughout I have taken for granted, and therefore do not repeat, the material concerning the form of books set out in Greek Papyri. All the plates promised in that book are given here; and cross-references are indicated by an asterisk before the page or plate reference (thus, p. *56 means see Greek Papyri, p. 56). Because I hope classical scholars will make a great deal of use of this book, the texts have been arranged by literary genre1 instead of in the chronological order adopted by most palaeographical handbooks. But the book contains a great deal of detailed palaeographical information. Moreover, I have tried to include repre¬ sentative examples of every style of ancient Greek literary handwriting; to cover all periods from the late fourth century

b.c.

(the earliest date from which portions

of Greek books survive; see 51, 52) down to the sixth or seventh century of the ■

Suggestion at a late stage by Mr. E. Lobel of a splendid illustration of fibre structure (a suggestion for which I

am grateful) has caused a disturbance of the natural order at 72-3.

175294

PREFACE

VI

Christian era (23, 47); and to illustrate a wide variety of materials and formats (ostraca and tablets; rolls; codices, mainly of papyrus, a few of parchment). Every date has been newly considered (and argued if thought necessary). In the intro¬ ductory essay I discuss the general considerations which govern the ascription of dates to manuscripts. In the plate-descriptions I use the term ‘assigned’ to make clear that there is no objective evidence for dating a particular manu¬ script. When only one date is mentioned after this term, the reader should understand that I share in what I believe to be a consensus of opinion in favour of that date (the ascription being commonly that of the first editor). But the phrase ‘assigned E. G. T.’ means that the ascription is my own. A chronological succession of hands can be read off in the Table on p. 127. When a precise date cannot be offered, the date suggested is usually a century, indicated by a small roman figure preceding the abbreviation before Christ; iii/ii iii or ii

b.c.

b.c.

b.c.

or

a.d.

Thus ii

means third to second century

means third or second century

b.c.

b.c.

b.c.

means second century

(i.e. about 225-175

b.c.) ;

The index is restricted to palaeo-

graphical terms and points of scribal practice. In illustrating the physical properties of books I have borne in mind that the unwritten areas may be as important as the written, and have therefore tried to include as much of the margins of the originals as could be worked into the limitations imposed by the size of the present volume. In general I have tried to select for reproduction manuscripts which are not well known (a few have never been illustrated before). Some familiar and beautiful handwritings have in conse¬ quence been excluded. The examples are mainly manuscripts of Greek literature, but there is one of the Old and one of the New Testament. For purposes of com¬ parison a certain amount of writing in Greek has been included which lies on the borderline of literary copying: cases in point are the handwriting of professional scholars, texts copied in school or privately commissioned, letters about books, or documentary handwritings which occasionally illuminate the writing of literary hands. With the exception of 51 (the carbonized roll found at Derveni) all the texts reproduced were found in Egypt (of course they may not all have been written there). Where the transcriptions offered differ from those of the first editors they are based on a fresh examination of the relevant passages. In them spacing, accents, and lectional signs are intended to reproduce what stands in the original, except that in some cases proper names have been capitalized. All the reproductions (save

63) are from newly made photographs, 4 has been reduced to 2/3, 58 is very slightly reduced; the rest, within a minimal tolerance, are the size of the originals, which can be verified from the measurements given in millimetres, the width being stated first, height second. A list of abbreviations frequently used is given on p. xiii. This does not include the abbreviations for papyrus publications

PREFACE

vn

themselves, which are set out in Greek Papyri, pp. 156-71. To save misunderstanding I should like to repeat that when the letters E.E.S. (i.e. Egypt Exploration Society) are attached to the description of a text, that text is still held by the Society, of whom inquiries can be made through its office at 2-3 Doughty Mews, London, W.C. 1). The manuscript of this work was completed in the autumn of 1968, and no systematic attention to work published since that date has been possible. Up to May 1969 a few references to more recent literature could be worked into the text, and an attempt has been made to record publications since then in the Addenda. For photographs I am indebted to Professor D. Lewis and Mr. R. Brinsden of the Botany Department, University College London (2); Mr. T. C. Skeat, the Dept, of MSS. and the Trustees of the British Museum (4, 14, 21, 27, 29, 32, 34, 39,

43?

48, 52, 58, 60, 64, 65, 69, 71);

Professor Jean Bingen of the Fondation Tgypto-

logique Reine Elisabeth, Brussels, and also the Librarian of the Musees Royaux, Brussels (5, 73); Professor G. Pugliese Caratelli and the Sopprintendenza of the Naples Museum (9, 10); the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A., and Professor Jim Keenan (12); Dr. R. Hunt, Miss Barbour, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford (13, 17, 31, 62, 72); the Musee du Louvre and Professor J. Scherer of the Institut papyrologique de la Sorbonne (16, 40, 45, 53); Mr. A. K. Creswell and the University Library of Cambridge (23, 28); Professor J. Schwartz of the University of Strasbourg (30); Professor H. Loebenstein and the Papyrussammlung d. ost. Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (35); Dr. K. Clarke of the Manuscripts and Rare Book Room of the Library of Princeton University, and also Professor John Keaney (42); M. Henri Riad and the Cairo Museum, U.A.R. (44, 50, 67); Professor S. Kapsomenos, Mr. K. Tsantsanoglou, and the University of Thessaloniki (51); Professor B. Snell, Professor U. Fleischer, and the University of Hamburg (54); Mile F. Dunand and Professor Zaki Aly, President, Societe royale de Papyrologie, Cairo (56);

Professor H. C. Youtie, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A.

(59); M. Bodmer, Mile Bongard, and the Bibliotheque Bodmer

(63);

Professor

H. W. Parke and Trinity College Dublin (66); Professor B. R. Rees and the John Rylands Library (70). All the remaining texts were splendidly photographed by Mr. E. Hitchcock of University College London. For permission to reproduce 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 33, 36, 37, 38, 41, 46, 47, 49, 55, 57, 61, 68,

l’am indebted to the Egypt Exploration Society; and, for making and presenting no. 1, to Mr. H. S. Baker of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the British Museum. My thanks are due to the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, for the opportunity, during a period of membership, to put this book together at the Institute; and above all to the late Professor E. A. Lowe, to Mrs. Dorothy

viii

PREFACE

Thompson, and to Professors Homer Thompson, Harold Cherniss, and Frank Gilliam for encouragement and the benefit of discussion. The introduction profited from being read in manuscript by Mr. C. H. Roberts; Mr. A. F. Shore helped me over the relationship between Greek and Coptic palaeography; and I owe a number of suggestions to Professor Douglas Young. Professor E. W. Handley, Mr. P. Parsons, Mr. W. E. H. Cockle, and Miss Frances Mills have assisted in various ways in checking the proofs. Mrs. Enid Bayan and Miss Margaret Packer typed large portions of the manuscript. Last of all I should like to express my gratitude to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for accepting a difficult book and the compositors and readers of the Press for triumphantly meeting the exacting demands made on them. Particular gratitude is due to Mr. B. G. Gosling, one of whose last tasks before retirement it was to supervise the reproductions. , August igyo

E. G. TURNER

CONTENTS B.M. Catalogue of Sculpture 649

Frontispiece

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

xiii

INTRODUCTION

I

PLATE DESCRIPTIONS AND PLATES

1. Construction of a sheet of papyrus

30

2.

Cell structure of stem of papyrus plant (X50)

30

3.

Fibre structure of a sheet of papyrus (a part of

4.

Wax tablet: writing exercise. B.M. Add. MS. 34186(1). ii

61

enlarged X 4) a.d.

30

(reduced to f)

5. Lyric text copied as a school exercise. Brussels, Mus. Roy. E. 5928. ii or iii 6. Title tag of Tryphon (parchment). P. Oxy. 2396. ii 7.

a.d.

32 34

a.d.

Title tag, Hypomnema about Simonidea (papyrus). P. Oxy. 2433. ii

8. Title tag, Mimes of Sophron (papyrus). B.M. Pap. 801. ii

32

34

a.d.

34

a.d.

9.

Wall-painting from Herculaneum illustrating writing materials (Helbig 1725)

34

10.

Wall-painting from Herculaneum illustrating writing materials (Helbig 1726)

34

11. Hesiod, Catalogue. P. Oxy. 2075 + . iii

Description 34 Plate 36-7

a.d.

12.

Homer, Iliad ii. University of California 2390. Middle ii

b.c.

38

13.

Homer, Iliad ii. Bodl. MS. Gr. Class, a. i(P). Middle ii

a.d.

38

14.

Homer, Iliad ii. B.M. Pap. 126. Later iii

4°

a.d.

15. Aleman, Partheneia. P. Oxy. 2387. End of i B.c. or early i 16.

Aleman, Partheneia. Musee du Louvre, E. 3320. i

17.

Sappho, MeXajv a. Bodl. MS. Gr. Class, c. 76(F)* ii

18.

End-title of Sappho, MeXd>v fi. P. Oxy. 2076. Late i/early ii

19. Plato, Phaedo. P. Oxy. 1809. Late i/early ii

42

a.d.

44

a.d.

46

a.d.

48

a.d.

48

a.d.

48

20.

Ibycus. P. Oxy. 1790. ii

21.

Pindar, Partheneia. B.M. Pap. 1533. i

22.

Pindar, Paeans xiv, xv Snell. P. Oxy. 2441. ii

23.

Pindar, Olympians. Cambr. Univ. Libr. MS. Add. 6366. v or vi

24.

Aeschylus, Dictyulci. P. Oxy. 2161. ii

25.

Aeschylus, marginal commentary on various plays. P. Oxy. 2256. 11/111

b.c.

5°

b.c.

50

a.d.

52

a.d.

54

a.d. a.d.

56

X

26.

CONTENTS Aeschylus, Septem. P. Oxy. 2334. iii/iv

56

a.d.

27. Sophocles (?), Theseus. B.M. Pap. 3036. ii

56

a.d.

28.

Sophocles (?), various plays. Cambr. Univ. Libr. MS. Add. 5895. ii

29.

Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus. B.M. Pap. 743. iv or v

30.

Euripides, Anthology of Lyric Passages from Tragedies. Strasbourg Pap. W.G. 307. Middle iii b.c.

60

31.

Euripides, Hypsipyle. Bodl. MS. Gr. Class,

b.

62

32.

Euripides, Cresphontes. B.M. Pap. 3041. iii

a.d.

33. Euripides (?), Pirithous (?). P. Oxy. 2078. ii 34.

58

a.d.

58

a.d.

i3A(P).

175-225

a.d.

64 64

a.d.

Sophocles, Ichneutae. B.M. Pap. 2068. Later ii

Description 66

a.d.

Plate 68-9 35.

Euripides, Orestes (Music). P. Vindob. G. 2315. ±200

b.c.

70

36.

Monody with musical notation. P. Oxy. 2436. Early ii

a.d.

70

37.

Aristophanes, Equites. P. Oxy. 2545. End of i

38.

Hypomnema on elegiac epigrams. P. Oxy. 2535. Late i

39.

Herodas, Mimes. B.M. Pap. Inv. 135. i/ii

40.

Menander, Sikyonios. P. Sorbonne Inv. 2272b. Later iii

41.

Menander, Karchedonios. P. Oxy. 2654. First half i

42.

Aristophanes, Equites. Princeton A. M. 9056.

b.c.

or early i

72

a.d.

72

a.d.

72

a.d.

43. Menander, Misoumenos. B.M. Pap. 3077. iv

74

b.c.

76

a.d.

76

v a.d.

78

a.d.

44.

Hypotheses to Menander. Cairo Mus. Inv. 47454. ii

80

45.

Posidippus, Epigrams. Musee du Louvre, No. 7172. c. 160

46.

Palimpsest ostracon. Saqqara 1966 G. 7. 42. 170-164

47.

Callimachus, Hymns, Aitia, Miscellanea. P. Oxy. 2258. vi or vii

a.d.

82

b.c.

82

b.c. a.d.

Description 67 Plate 84-5

48.

Receipt for payment of rent. B.M. Pap. 825.

49.

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica iii. P. Oxy. 2699. iv

50.

Anon., Encomium on Theon. Cairo Mus. Inv. 47426. Later iii

51.

Commentary on cosmogonic Orphic verses. Pap. Thessaloniki. 325-275

52.

Anon., Tragedy. B.M. Pap. 1822. Early iii

a.d.

155

86 88

a.d.

90

a.d.

92

b.c.

92

b.c.

53. Receipt for rent. P. Sorbonne Inv. 1167. 266

92

b.c.

54.

Thucydides I. 2. P. Hamb. 646. Middle iii b.c.

92

55.

Anon., (Duris?), History of Sicily. P. Oxy. 2399. Middle i

56.

Septuagint, Deuteronomy, Cairo Soc. egypt. de pap., P. Fouad Inv. 266. Middle i

57.

Acta Alexandrinorum (?). P. Oxy. 2435 recto. First half i

94

b.c.

a.d.

b.c.

96 96

CONTENTS

xi

58.

Hypomnema on Homer, Iliad ii. B.M. Pap. 2055. i

59.

Abstracts of Contracts. Ann Arbor. P. Mich. Inv.

60.

Aristotle, Ath. Pol. B.M. Pap. 131, Roll

61.

Hypomnema of Theon on Pindar, Pythians. P. Oxy. 2536. ii

62.

Plato, Gorgias 507. Bodl. MS. Gr. Class,

63.

Gospel acc. to St.John, 11: 31. Bibliotheca Bodmeriana. Pap. 2. First halfiii

64.

Cancellation of loan. B.M. Pap. 3054. c.

65.

Anon., List of Olympic Victors. B.M. Pap. 1185. iii

Late

ii.

c.

622. a.d. 42

102

69.

Honorary Decree. B.M. Pap. 1527.

a.d.

50

138-160

108 108

a.d.

iio a.d.

iio

112

a.d.

170

a.d.

a.d.

106

a.d.

Demosthenes, de Fals. Leg. 53-7. Cairo Mus. Inv. 47446. i/ii

68. Letter about books. P. Oxy. 2192. c.

104

a.d.

66. Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe, ii. 3-4. Trinity Coll. Dublin Pap. ii/iii 67.

100

i a.d.

54(F)V. Later ii

a.d.

98

b.c.

114 Description 114 Plate 116-17

70.

Letter from Hermodorus to Theophanes. John Rylands Library papyrus, c. 325

71.

Life

72.

Alcaeus. Bodl. MS. Gr. Class, b. i8(P). ii

73.

Hypomnema on Aristophanes, Acharnians. Brussels, Mus. Roy. Inv. E 5972. iii

of

Alcibiades. B.M. Pap. 1523.

a.d.

118 120

v a.d. a.d.

122

a.d.

122

ADDENDA

125

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF MANUSCRIPTS

127

PALAEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

I2g

8142846

B

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The abbreviations for papyrus publications are to be found in E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri, pp. 15671, and are not in general repeated here (a very few exceptions have been admitted). A page reference preceded by an asterisk is to Greek Papyri. E.E.S. (an abbreviation which figures frequently at that point in the description of a papyrus manuscript where the library or collection number normally stands) means that the text in question is still held by the Egypt Exploration Society, 2-3 Doughty Mews, London W.C. 1. Texts that cannot be assigned to a precise date are abbreviated to a century before or after Christ by a small roman figure preceding b.c. or a.d. Thus iii b.c. — 3rd century b.c. ; iii/ii b.c. means 3rd to 2nd century b.c. (i.e. about 200 b.c., say 225-175 b.c.) ; iii or ii b.c. means 3rd or 2nd century b.c. AJPhil

American Journal of Philology, Baltimore etc., 1880-

AP

Anthologia Palatina

BCH

Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique, Paris, x877—

BGU

Berliner griechische Urkunden, Berlin, 1895-

BICS

Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Univ. of London, 1954-

BKT

Berliner Klassikertexte, Berlin, 1904-

BSA

Annual of the British School at Athens, 1895-

Cavallo

G. Cavallo, Ricerche sulla maiuscola biblica, Florence, 1967

Cd’£

Chronique d’flgypte, Brussels, 1925-

ChLA

A. Bruckner and R. Marichal, Chartae latinae antiquiores, Basle, 4 vols. by 1967

GIL

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin, 1862-

CLA

E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, Oxford, 11 vols. plus supplement by 1971

CQ.

Classical Quarterly, 1907-

E.E.S.

Egypt Exploration Society

Et. Pap.

Etudes de Papyrologie, Cairo, 1932-

GGA

Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen

GGN

Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen

IG

Inscriptiones Graecae

JEA

Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1914-

JHS

Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1880-

3JP

Journal of Juristic Papyrology, Warsaw, 1946-

JTS

Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford, 1900-

LP

E. Lobel and D. L. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, Oxford, 1955

New Pal. Soc.

E. M. Thompson, G. F. Warner, F. G. Kenyon, and J. P. Gilson, The New Palaeographical Society, Series i and ii, London, 1903-30

Pack2

R. Pack, The Greek and Latin Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt, 2nd edn., Ann Arbor, 1965

Page, Gr. Lit. Pap.

D. L. Page, Greek Literary Papyri, London and Cambridge, Mass., 1942

Page, Poetae Melici Graeci

D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, Oxford, 1962

XIV

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

PSI

Papiri greci e latini, Florence, 1912-

Rech. de Pap.

Recherches de Papyrologie, Paris, 1961—

REG

Revue des etudes grecques, Paris, 1888-

SB

Sammelbuch griechischen Urkunden aus Agypten, Strasbourg etc., 1913-

Schubart, Gr. Pal.

W. Schubart, Griechische Palaographie, Munich, 1925

R. Seider, Pal. d. gr. Pap.

R. Seider, Palaographie der griechischen Papyri, vol. i, Stuttgart, 1968

Tod, Gr. Hist. Inscr. ii

M. N. Tod, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, vol. ii, Oxford, 1948

Wilcken, Chr.

L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken, Grundziige und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, Leipzig and Berlin, 1912

Wilcken, UPZ

U. Wilcken, Urkunden der Ptolemaerzeit, Berlin and Leipzig, vol. i, 1922-7, vol. ii, 1957

ZPE

feitschrift filr Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bonn, 1967-

INTRODUCTION ‘To a scribe for best writing, ioo lines, 25 denarii; For second quality writing, 100 lines, 20 denarii; To a notary for writing a petition or legal document, 100 lines, 10 denarii’ Edictum Diocletiani de pretiis rerum venalium, col. vii 39-41

‘For 10,000 lines 28 drachmas . . . for 6,300 lines 13 drachmas (i.e. 20 drachmas per io,ooo)’ B.M. Papyrus 2110, ed. H. I. Bell in Aegyptus 2 (1921), pp. 281 ff. (Oxyrhynchus, ii a.d.)

It may provide a source of amusement for the reader working his way through this collection to select for himself the kinds of handwriting paid for at the various rates mentioned in these quotations. I shall offer some suggestions—but not till the very end of this introductory essay. Had closer definitions and specimens been given palaeographers might have been able to agree on an unambiguous terminology and an unambiguous system of classification. Let us start from the assumption that these handwritings of which we know the cost are ‘book hands’. This term is in constant use in present-day papyrological literature, which accepts it as an axiom1 that a ‘book hand’ can be instantly recog¬ nized. Ask what criterion allows this immediate classification of a hand other than the fact that it is being employed to write a book, a literary work not a document, and a definition is offered by negative characteristics : basically a ‘book hand’ does not use ligatures, each letter stands independent and for itself. In short, it does not use ‘cursive’ forms. The term ‘cursive’ derives from the concept of a scribe writing in a ‘running’ movement and lifting his pen as infrequently as he can. Normally he is thought of as applying this running movement to a group of several letters which he will write in a single sequence. This is the reason why ‘cursive’ is used as if it were coextensive with the handwriting of documents (such documents as 59), and in principle will not be found in ‘book hands’. Yet the equivalence is patently untrue. There are literary texts which are written ‘cursively’ on this definition (16, 60; cf. 43, 44, 47);

there are documents in which the letters are generally formed separately

and not linked together (48, 64). Help may come from carrying the analysis deeper. Let us call handwriting in which each letter ‘stands independent and for itself’ writing in capitals (not ‘uncials’, a word which has a precise meaning in Latin writing, but only a derived and imprecise 1 This view has recently been lucidly set out by H. Hunger, Geschichte d. Textuberlieferung i (1961), p. 77.

INTRODUCTION

2

one in Greek). I choose the term in the first place to suggest a comparison with the monumental lettering of well-cut inscriptions on marble or stone, in which not only each letter, but the separate strokes composing each letter are independently cut. A scribe who takes up a pen to copy such lettering may do one of two things: he may form the constituent strokes of each letter in a separate movement of the pen; or he may economize effort by joining these movements in a single looped sequence. An example will make the distinction clear. I select the letters a and e, the three movements in which may be made separately, or in two sequences, or in a single sequence; and then I reproduce the way in which 6 letters are written in io different manuscripts in this collection:

w

A"2

i + ;

¥

3

—2 +

t

HCr ii

*3

3

1

—*- 3

22

26

47

X

K

X

24

V

51 KX

56

63

67

A

K

A

e

9

e-

e

e e

e

©

er

o-

0

-0-

M

xc n

M

Y

T

V

r

t

LO

cv

etc

M XL

JJt

JO.

T T

r

V

U) u>

60

a)

to uu

e 0

Yr

0

e n

When a scribe joins the three constitutive movements of one letter in a single sequence he may be said to be writing a capital ‘cursively’. Inspection of the plates will show that it happens very often. In a world without the printing press, where all books must be hand-written, it is natural for scribes to round out the angular

INTRODUCTION

3

forms made easy for the stone-cutter by his chisels, and to combine the several movements of each letter in a single sequence. To these opposed ways of forming capitals we may apply the terms ‘fast writing’ and ‘slow writing’, which are used by the Greeks themselves. The class of ‘slow writers’, ol fipaSeouc ypajovrec, appears not infrequently in papyrus contracts. The painful and laboured capitals in which they write their endorsements have a counter¬ part in some ‘school’ (p. *89) or personal hands shown here (4, 5, 45). But it is not unskilled writers of whom I am thinking, but skilled: those whose existence is implied by Plato, when he lays down that for children learning to write a period of three years of Study should suffice : irpoc rayoc Se r) KaXXoc aTTr/KpL^cbcdal TLCLV oic pLT) (f)VCLC errecTrevcev

. . . yaIpeiv iav, ‘we will not insist on a severe standard of speed or beauty

in those not naturally inclined thereto’ (Laws 810). It would probably be wrong to take speed and beauty in this passage as polar opposites. But it is clear that a value is placed on speed, and I should be inclined to think that Plato had in mind a scribe who attained speed by writing some of his capitals ‘cursively’. We may note that in the earliest Greek handwritings, such as the Timotheos papyrus or the Thessaloniki papyrus found at Derveni (51), the movements even of such apparently intractable letters as the epigraphic E and Q are usually made in a single sequence by the scribe. To attain beauty no doubt some sacrifice of speed is inevitable, and the scribe will write more slowly.

But the reader will observe for himself that

Greek scribes were clever at making a compromise between these two ideals, and that several of the informal hands illustrated here have a considerable beauty. This quality is not reserved for those ‘calligraphic’ hands (such as 11, 13, 26, 71) in which the scribe has achieved an absolute regularity and formality by separately forming the constitutive movements of each letter in the same way that an engineer¬ ing draughtsman might draw them. A second reason why on p. 1 above I chose the term ‘capital’ is that letters written in Greek formal hands are majuscule, that is, of a fair size. Moreover, with the exception usually of and ip, they seem to have been placed between an upper and a lower line notionally present to the scribe as he wrote, and these ‘notional parallels’ determined the height and size of the letters. This ‘bilinear’ quality has often been commented on in connection with such calligraphic examples as 26.

13

and

It is a feature of both formal and informal literary writing which deserves

further attention. Examples survive of writing exercises in which two parallel lines have been ruled : in 4 both the model verse to be copied and the place for the pupil’s attempt to copy it have been provided with such pairs of parallels. Protagoras in Plato’s dialogue {Protag. 326 d) used these two parallels as a familiar analogy to illustrate the normative functions of laws in a community. In some Athenian (and other) inscriptions on marble very fine parallels, not intended to be seen, have been cut as guide-lines for the stonemason; sometimes they are cut boldly and turned into a decorative feature.1 Almost all the formal handwritings in this book offer the x e.g. A. E. Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Acropolis, pp. 438-9. There is a recent example of the use of

4

INTRODUCTION

illusion that these two parallels were still notionally present to the scribe as he wrote. In some (which I have described as ‘strictly bilinear’) both tops and feet of each letter, except those few deliberately chosen to project above and below, touch these notional lines. The presence of an upper line may even be adumbrated by emphasis on the high horizontals and the upper curves of letters (as in 37, 55, 56), the presence of a lower line by the placing of the base of S and the addition of terminal horizontals to the feet of vertical strokes. Indeed in some examples the forms of letters are deliberately adapted by curve and inclination to lie inside the parallels (e.g. in 37 by depressing the upper right arm of k, in 36 by giving a curved form to p and v; t and p may at times be unreasonably curtailed in order to lie inside them, 22). It may be guessed that the raison d'etre of Schubart’s so-called ‘decorated’ style (£ierstil, p. 25, below) is that scribes delighted to define their two parallels by emphasizing the serifs on the feet of vertical strokes and by making little return-strokes or rounded blobs as finials on the tips of their verticals. Even in less formal hands, such as 18, 19, a bilinear frame may still be felt as defining the limits of the writing. In such hands many letters may not touch or outline the notional parallels; some letters may be tiny and placed in mid line, or made to depend from the upper line; or the awkward and irregular stance of the letters may disguise the bilinearity. I have described such hands as ‘roughly bilinear’. The utility of this description may be tested by contrasting hands so described with e.g. 16 or 33. Bilinearity can in fact be observed in the very earliest examples of Greek literary hands (51,52) and it is still present among the very latest (42,47) written in the ancient world. Choice of the letters which are not to conform to the notional parallels (c cpfipcpcopevoc xac

rev rrov redixarac avrov

€17

Xeyovciv avTui xtX. : no stops and different readings in p 45; some stops but different readings after xXaiovrac, Sinaiticus.

INTRODUCTION

12

kept separate. The first is whether the punctuation in any of these cases can go back to the author through a continuous system of notation. The sketchiness of early systems of notation may incline us to answer with a definite ‘no’. But the materials furnished by palaeography are inadequate for an answer to this question. It is one which must be treated inside the wider framework of the history of Greek scholar¬ ship, and this is not the right place to attempt it.1 The second question is whether variants in punctuation such as have been noted are due simply to the caprice of copyists (whether original scribe or corrector of a manuscript) or may reflect settled divergencies of tradition. If the former is the case, the value to us of a particular punctuation in our papyrus manuscripts is that it was thought acceptable by men in antiquity whose acumen we can judge by other things we find in the manuscripts they copied or possessed ; if the latter is the true view, the punctuation may have the authority of Alexandrian scholarship, and may therefore be based on a living tradition of interpretation, since we know that in their commentaries the Alexandrians took a passionate interest in matters of punc¬ tuation. The question as I have framed it cannot be given a general answer. It must be asked separately of every manuscript. Occasionally elements will be discoverable on which an answer can be based. But the nearest we can come to a general pro¬ position is to assert that during the Roman period in Egypt (especially in ii

a.d.)

the view seems to have taken root that if punctuation was present in the exemplar it was the first scribe’s duty to copy it (19, 62, both manuscripts of Plato; 67, Demos¬ thenes; cf. 15, Aleman, very much earlier). The same question concerning authority may be posed in regard to the lectional signs employed by scribes. One of these is the trema or diairesis: the pair of dots (sometimes a single dot) placed over a vowel (usually t or v, not often a, e, o, to). A distinction should be made between its ‘organic’ use to separate those vowels in a cluster that do not belong together (e.g. between words avrovvfxac, inside a word Kavcrptov 14)

and its ‘inorganic’ use (very often simply to mark an initial vowel,

avToviipiac, Cva, or to emphasize a final vowel, ovtoc'C 37). The earliest example of

organic trema I have noted is of ii

b.c.

(20;

cf. 15, 58) .2 For the Roman period

Mr. Lobel has observed that it is the general rule that the trema counts as part of the text and is written by the original hand. If the proper use of the trema is to separate vowels, that of the apostrophe and 1 See Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship. A similar

R. P. Winnington-Ingram points out to me that vapa-

problem about the continuity of tradition is set by the

crifialveiv is the technical term in musical authors for ‘to

marks of speaking characters in dramatic texts. J. C. B.

mark with musical notation’, and this notation (as appears

Lowe, ‘The Manuscript Evidence for changes of speaker in

in 35) 36) was placed immediately above the relevant syllable.

Aristophanes’, BIOS 9 (1962), pp. 27-39 ‘s sceptical about the possibility that they go back to the author. It should be noted that Aristotle’s words

k&kcf

2 They may also be later additions but do not seem to be 8’ 17817

so. H. I. Bell and T. C. Skeat, Fragments of an Unknown

■napacq^a -noiovvTai, Soph. El. i77b3-6, when speaking of

Gospel, pp. 4-5, point out that in dated documents the

the distinction between opoc and opoc (cj. Uhlig.; opoc,

trema is not common till ii a.d., their earliest example

codd. Either breathing or accent later ranked as rrpocwhla,

being P. Fay. no, 2, 6, 9, etc. of a.d. 94. Bell later noted

but at this time the pitch, i.e. intonation, seems a more

earlier instances

likely

P. Mich, iii 194, 3 (a.d. 61). To these may be added

interpretation)

show

that

written

words

were

accompanied by signs in the fourth century. Professor

in

P.

Merton

12,

Ilop.TTr]tu)i, P. Fouad 75, 1 (a.d. 64).

11

(a.d.

58)

and

INTRODUCTION

13

diastole is to separate syllables and words.1 Both signs have the shape of a modern comma. When the sign is put high, like a modern apostrophe, we are using the name recorded in the ancient Supplements to the Grammar of Dionysius Thrax; when it is on the line, the sign is called diastole (by some hypodiastole). The apostrophe is used to mark cases of elision between words (e.g. 16; cf. p. 9). Inside a word it is also used to separate syllables, sometimes in compound words (e.g. 32),2 often between two consonants, especially double mutes or double liquids (63) .3 * Sometimes the apostrophe will usurp the function of the diastole and act as a separator between words (31). From the third century after Christ onwards the apostrophe is often put after foreign words and names (especially Hebrew, 63); and a very few Greek words are so treated, among them the negatives ovk\ oay’ (27, 29, 32, 63).4 Accents, too, will be found from time to time—acute and grave written in a downwards direction, the circumflex often made in two movements, and when set over a diphthong placed above the first vowel, or between the first and second. I have not found examples before ii

(20, 15, 21).5 In disputed passages the

b.c.

accents, like the punctuation, may have derived from a commentary. Occasionally they will be wrong (as e.g. in 32). When they are particularly frequent and grossly written, as often happens in texts of Homer, one suspects that a book-roll nearing the end of its useful life has been made part of an accentuation exercise in school.6 Accents are rarely written in prose literature, still more rarely in private letters (but see 70). But they are likely to be used fairly frequently in texts of lyric verse, especially in verse in difficult dialects (15, 16 in Doric; 17, 18, 72 on the Aeolic retracting system). In such cases their presence may help the reader to divide the words correctly. The use of the grave accent in, for instance, opetyaA/cwi. (20) will prevent wrong division of a compound word. The same result may be achieved by writing a hyphen, that is a curved symbol, usually placed below the line (13, 14, 27, 36, 50), sometimes above it (P. Oxy. 1091 fr. 1,5), which links together the parts of the compound.7 d-nocTpo^oc), diastole: Dionysii Thracis

a.d. 101, Ay’xopip.ptcat opel\cop.ev Tiva \e£iv, olov ecnv,

W. Cronert, op. cit., p. 9 and n. 3. Grammarians invented

1 Apostrophe

(77

agtoc (i.e. not ten, Na^oc). Examples can be seen in

explanations that it was elided from ovki or ovyl, Supple-

17(b); Bacchylides, P. Lond. at xvii 102 ; Alcaeus, P. Oxy. x 1324 (LP D12, 6); Cercidas, P. Oxy. viii 1082; Lyco-

mentum I in Dionys. Thrac. p. 113 Uhlig. 5 C. H. Roberts calls attention to what is prima facie

phron, P. Oxy. xvii 2094; Corinna and Boeotian verse,

a circumflex accent in P. Baden vi, i ravpim, a text of early

P. Oxy. xxiii 2370, 2371. A high dot may also be used.

iii b.c. But closer inspection shows that it is not an accent,

2 E. Lobel, P. Oxy. xxvi, p. 90 on 2445 fr. 1 col. ii 17

but an offset of writing, of which there are many other

ai/r’a^ot/Sav compares I787fr. 1+2, 11 ^tA’aotSov (Sappho)

traces (e.g. a reversed

and 1789 fr. 6, 5 Avt’ avhpoc (Alcaeus; L-P A7 is thereby

line). 6 As in the ‘Bankes Homer’, B.M. Pap. 114 (*Plate IV),

corrected). As in the marking of the interaspirate

(49),

the

scribe wants to mark the structure of the word. 3 In the first decade of iii a.d. this practice suddenly

k,

part of ay/c?, earlier in the same

or in P. Oxy. xxiii 2355 (Hesiod, i/ii a.d.), in which there is an abundance of lectional signs and accents.

Much

7 On the hyphen, cf. V. Gardthausen, Gr. Pal. ii, p. 400,

material has been collected by W. Cronert, Memoria graeca

who quotes Supplementum I in Dionys. Thrac., pp. 113-14

Herculanensis, p. 18, who records an isolated example in

Uhlig. Cf. P. Amh. ii 21, 6. Sublinear hyphen is especially

becomes extremely common

8142846

and

then

persists.

C

INTRODUCTION

14

Breathings, like accents, are written infrequently and capriciously, and the smooth breathing is much less often marked than the rough breathing. They may take the form h H (which I have called form i in the transcriptions) or L (form 2) or U (form 3) ; forms 2 and 3 are probably quickly-written forms of 1, and form 2 if made quickly can easily pass over into form 3. Forms 1 and 2 seem to be the earlier, form 3 the later. But a rough breathing of form 3 may be used alongside a smooth breathing of form 1 (13, 49); and in 14 all three forms of rough breathing occur, but the smooth breathings are only of form 1. The earliest manuscripts noted by me in which breathings are given are of ii and i

b.c.

(20, 21; P.

Oxy. 2369). It is worth

calling attention to the fact that erases are usually unmarked (so in 39, 42). But rovTTLcrjixov occurs in 34, and eyd>vK in another part, not illustrated, of the same manuscript. Marking of prodelision is so rare that it has been doubted whether it is found at all;1 but -npocdeh^ycD in 27 seems undeniable. In a verse text (and very occasionally indeed in a prose text, cf. 58) a scribe may mark the quantity of a long or short syllable (see index). Such marks appear at times to be false (e.g. 15 SiabreT^c, 17 aic’), or are used on a system not yet explained. In the early period no doubt it was normal for verse texts to be written in con¬ tinuous lines that took no account of the metrical unit, as in 30. These verses have a complex metrical pattern. But even hexameters might be so treated. In a copy of iii

b.c.

the hexameter verses are written as continuous prose, verse endings being

marked by dicola (P. Heidelb. 176). This practice survived in occasional instances as late as i

a.d.

(P. Haun. 4); and in iii

a.d.

a passage in iambics is written as

continuous prose (P. Oxy. vi 864). But from the middle of iii

b.c.

(perhaps even

earlier) one may expect the verse unit to coincide with the written line (patterns of colometry in 21, 31, 34). Change from one metrical pattern to another can be shown by indentation (eisthesis) or reverse indentation (ekthesis), as has already been remarked (p. 9 ). In lyric verses the paragraphus is often employed to indicate that the verses between it and the preceding paragraphus (or similar sign) form a metrical group (15, 17).2 A coronis3 (essentially a paragraphus with an elaborate structure of decorative curly lines above and below) may then organize these sub¬ groups into larger aggregates, a strophe (as in 15), a completed triad (21), or a complete poem (17). In Pindar and Bacchylides an asteriscus is a common sign for the end of a poem (22, used together with a coronis; P. Lond. Bacchylides, used together with a diple obelismene, >—). This latter sign,4 sometimes called a frequent in P. Lond. Bacchylides. The example in P. Oxy.

Meleager’s

1091 is the only one known to me of hyphen above the line.

Hellenistic Epigrams, cxxix, clearly the last epigram in

1 As by E. Lobel, P. Oxy. xxi, p. 122 on 1231, fr. 2, 21. He lists examples of syneephonesis of a long followed by

allusive

epigram

AP

xii

257,

Gow-Page,

Meleager’s stephanos; G. Tanzi-Mira, Aegyptus 1

(1920),

pp. 224-7; P. Lit. Lond. 11 (and A. Wifstrand, Hermes 68

a short syllable in commenting on P. Oxy. xxiv 2387 fr. 3,

(‘933); P- 468) ; Martial 10. 1 ; Gwendolen M. Stephen,

ii 8 (15). 2 The basic ancient authority is Hephaestion’s nepl

Scriptorium 13 (1959), pp. 3 ff.; H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat, Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus, pp. 27 ff.

CrpL€i(av (Consbruch, pp. 73-6). Cf. p. * 184, n. 29. There is

and Plates I-XLIII.

an example of the Icco vevcvKvta birrXfj (to mark an expected responsion) in P. Teb. iii 692 col. iii 3, a ii b.c. copy of Sophocles’ Inachus. 3 On the coronis to mark the end of a book, see

4 Diple obelismene, ‘Anecdotum Parisinum’ quoted by V. Gardthausen, Gr. Pal. ii, p. 412, where the form / is quoted for it. This shape is easily transformable into some

INTRODUCTION

15

‘forked paragraphias’, has the effect of marking a section of verse '(34, 41) or prose (65),

a ‘paragraph’1 in the modern sense. Its effect is perhaps less decisive than that

of the asteriscus2 or the coronis, the ‘guardian of the letters’, which guarantees the reader against omissions by indicating that the work has reached its proper con¬ clusion (end of a book in prose or verse; end of an act or a whole play in texts of drama, e.g. 43). We should note that in the spoken trimeter or tetrameter passages of tragedy and comedy the function of a paragraphus is different from that in lyric passages: it is intended to indicate a change of speaker. If such a change occurs in mid verse, in addition to the marginal paragraphus, there may be a space or a dicolon at the actual point of change-over (40, 41, 42, 43; cf. p. 10). In tragedy such a change may be shown by writing the broken verse on a new line (31, 34). The speakers of tragic and comic verses are marked in desultory fashion by writing in the margin their name in shortened form or as a monogram (the Roman siglum for the chorus is Xj the Byzantine xo|>, x,$,oroX») .3 The earliest example of such an attribution seems to be ofi B.c.-i

a.d.,

in Sophocles’ Inachus, P. Oxy. xxiii 2369 (cf. 27, 28, 31, 34,

43). Even when names are given it often seems as if the scribe was satisfied to name the characters on their first entrance. P. Ant. i 15 lists them at the opening of a scene, as they are listed in some manuscripts of Terence. In 32 the alphabetical symbols A~ and T_ are used instead of names of speakers. The terms XOPOY and XOPOY MEAOC (43, 52 ; they are written in mid line) stand for a lyric interlude performed by a chorus, of which the words are not transmitted. Stage directions are rare, but there are examples in 24 {ttottttvcploc) and 34 (poijSSoc). They also are written in mid line (I know of no certain example written in the margin), even though the preposi¬ tion from which the technical term TrapeTnypacfrrj is compounded would lead us to expect them in the margin. Directions for exit and entrance of actors are to be found as marginal additions in P. Oxy. ii 211 (Menander, Perikeiromene). The

of the later shapes for a ‘paragraph’ sign (see next note) •

7" were employed by scribe A of the Codex Sinaiticus as

The sign has not been well treated by modern editors, who

paragraph signs (H. J. M. Milne, T. G. Skeat, Scribes and

do not always distinguish it from a linear paragraphus

Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus, pp. 37 ff., and fig. 10).

sign. G. M. Stephen, op. cit. (p. 14 n. 3) calls it a ‘forked paragraphus’. Other papyri in which it effectively marks off sections are P. Oxy. iii 409+xxxiii 2655

In A. S. Hunt’s ‘A Tachygraphical Curiosity’, Mel. Champollion, pp. 713 ff., four dots are used :: as a divider.

(extracts

2 For the asteriscus at the beginning of a book cf. P. Ant.

from Menander); P. Oxy. xviii 2162 fr. 2 (a) ii 6. It may

i 15 (JHS 84 (1964), pp. 21 ff.), beginning of a comedy; at

also accompany indentation in marking a change in drama

the end, PRUM i 19 ; in the middle of a page, marking the

from trimeters to lyrics

no example shown; P. Oxy.

end of one book of the Iliad and beginning of another, in

xxxiii 2369 ii 22). In P. Lond. Bacchylides it may mark the

the Pierpont Morgan Iliad, where 2 asterisci flank the book-

(34,

end of a triadic structure, cf. B. Snell, Bacchylidis Carmina,

title in a decorated box (plate in W. Schubart, Das Buch2,

Introd. p. *11. 1 From the diple obelismene various signs were derived

p. 132). There are several similar examples in as yet un¬

which mark the end of a section more clearly than the

published texts in Barcelona of iv a.d. 3 The monogram for the chorus : X

passim, e.g. 28 ;

linear paragraphus. E.g. in P. Oxy. xxvii 2465 (Satyrus, ii

Xop P. Oxy. xi, 1369 at 689.x

a.d.) a sign

BKT v 2, 231 at 242, 257, 929; & BKT v 2 P 5005, p. 89

placed on the line inside the column, in fr. 12

ii 5 coupled with indentation, marks the opening of a new paragraph. In P. Oxy. xxxi 2537 the sign

marks the end

of each short epitome of Lysias’ speeches. Many forms like

P- Oxy. 1370 at 1249,

at 272 ;°Xr P. Ant. iii 211(b) 6, P. Parsons, C.R. 20 (1970), p. 87. In Eurip. Hypsipyle

(31),

fr. 12, 1. 4 (not illustrated)

a character name has found its way from the line into the margin.

INTRODUCTION

i6

Oxyrhynchus mime (P. Oxy. iii 4*3 recto) also has a series of stage directions written in the text.1 The margin, moreover, is regularly the place in which titles of single poems in a larger collection are put (22, 50, cf. P. Lond. Bacchylides). But such titles may also be found in mid line (23; cf. P. Oxy. xxvi 2442 fr. 7). Book-rolls containing a single work often had their titles2 written on glued-on tags which projected from the back of the roll

(6, 7, 8, 10;

cf. p. *7). These tags

may have been placed in position by the owner rather than the book-seller (the lettering on the reused tag of P. Oxy. 1091 is of a later date than the hand of the manuscript). Inside the roll a title was regularly placed at the end of the work (17, 18, 61).

This title usually takes the simplest possible form : author’s name in the

genitive case, work, book number. Only one example is known to me of an endtitle carrying a note about the origin of a text (p. *51). The habit of putting a title at the end is carried over into the codex form

(14).

It is sometimes stated that titles

were not placed at the beginning of a book until a late date. It would be in con¬ formity with this view that the title on the first page of 63, eucty’yUW Kara Icoavvrjv, seems to be a later addition, and the initial title of 49 is of iv

a.d.

The view itself is

based on such considerations as the absence of initial titles and the presence of splendid end-titles in such great manuscripts as the Codex Sinaiticus of the Bible; the Greek practice of citing works by their first line in addition to a title; the fact that no initial title is given in

39

(a roll complete at its beginning); and that in the

London Hyperides roll, C. H. Roberts, Greek Literary Hands No. 13b, only the endtitles are original.3 Dogmatism, however, on this matter is out of place. Few first columns of rolls survive intact: but there are four examples of an initial title to a roll (Hierocles, ii Odyssey 11-12, iii

a.d.,

a.d.,

BKT iv; Homer, Odyssey i, iii

P. Oxy. iii 568;

49,

iv

a.d.,

a.d.,

P. Harr. 123; Homer,

Ap. Rhod. Arg. iii). Titles also

might have been written on the back, that is the outside4 of the roll, opposite the beginning of the text on the inside. The lettering on Sappho’s book on an Athenian vase (*P1. II) spreads onto the outside of the roll, and suggests that the artist meant his customers to infer that there was a title there. Four5 rolls survive in which a title has been written on the back opposite the beginning of the interior text. Eudoxus, mid ii Sosylus, ii/i

b.c.,

b.c.,

P. Paris 1 (the title being given in an iambic acrostic) ;

U. Wilcken, Hermes 41 (1906), pp. 103 ff., and 42 (1907), p. 511 ;

1 Stage directions : it has been suggested that they occur

hand. See Addenda.

in W. Schubart, Gr. Lit. Papyri, 23 v, 4. But see H. Lloyd-

4 The terms omcco, e£aj are used when a scribe writing

Jones, J. W. B. Barns, JHS 84 (1964), p. 34. See Addenda.

on the inside of a roll wishes to refer to writing on the back.

2 Recent discussion on book-titles in W. Schubart, Das

E.g. comments on Stesichorus, P. Oxy. xxxii 2617 fr. 7, 2;

Buch2, pp. 98 ff.; H. J. M. Milne, T. C. Skeat, Scribes and

22, 2 c£o>(

Correctors, pp. 27 ff. ; H. Zilliakus, ‘Boktiteln i antik littera-

Heiberg (and cf. G. Zuntz, Byzantion 14 (1939), p. 557).

); Eutokius, Comm, on Apollonius, p. 176, 17

tur’, Eranos 36 (1938), pp. 1-41 ; E. Nachmanson, ‘Der

Conversely when a scribe adds on the back notes which

gr. Buchtitel’, Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift xlvii 19 (1941) ;

refer to the text inside he will write Icco, P. Oxy. xxxiv

E. J. Bickerman, ‘The Colophon of the Greek Book of

2694, verso 16, 18. When a documentary scribe wishes to

Esther’, Journal Bibl. Literature 63 (1944), pp. 339 ff.; R. P.

continue on the back he writes TairlXoiira o-nlcun, P. Teb. i

Oliver, ‘The first Medicean MS. of Tacitus and the titula-

58 (iii b.c.) (= Please Turn Over). Cf. P. Revenue Laws

ture of ancient books’, TAP A 82 (1951), pp. 232-61, an

coll. 41 and 43, egcu opa, referring to notes written on the

excellent study.

back of the roll.

3 Pro Euxenippo has an added initial title in a cursive

5 See Addenda.

INTRODUCTION Epitome of Theopompus’ Philippika, ii P. Oxy. xxiii 2358.

17

P. Ryl. i 19; A\kcuo[v MeXouvt [, ii

a.d.,

a.d.,

Scholarly attention bestowed on the texts is revealed by the presence in their margins of such critical signs as the Greek letter y the diple

(16, 21, 22, 55)

(16, 19, 22, 24, 27, 34, 41)

and

discussed in pp. *93-4, *115 ff.1 The use of the obelus and

antisigma in epic and Homeric texts is displayed in

11,

12,

As with the

13, 14.

signs used for punctuation, it seems that the critical signs did not always have the same meaning or the meaning assigned to them by our authorities. And other signs are employed, the meaning of which is not always easily explicable: for instance, */. or -y, which sometimes is used as a caret to indicate an omission to be made good (so in

63

frequently, though no example is shown on the plate), some¬

times acts as a reference mark for a marginal note (as in

20),

and sometimes may

have a quite separate signification.2 Passages quoted3 are at times indicated by single or double wedge-shaped signs (which may be in the margin or the text). A passage of special value may be denoted by the symbol ^ (ypycrov or xPVciycov,

27,

58) .4 Until a late date annotations are as a rule confined to statements about the text, and they are usually short and written with many abbreviations ; there are annotations of greater length in

17-19, 27, 31, 41)

abbreviation o = 15, 27,

34>

65.

ovtcoc,

16

and

(13, 20.

15,

The

sic, ‘this is what stood in the exemplar’,5 * * is utilized in

The reader will observe for himself that abbreviations are not used in

writing the text of a well-written literary work. The only exception to this rule is that from mid ii

a.d.

onwards a final v occurring at the end of a line may be

represented by a horizontal dash written over the letter (e.g.

63).

In addition, if the

text is of Christian origin, a certain number of common terms and sacred names, the so-called nomina sacra, will offer true contractions

(56, 63).

A developed system

of abbreviation by suspension of a large part of the word, or by using a symbol, is tolerated only in texts intended as working copies mnemata

(58, 61, 73)

(60, 65),

especially in hypo-

or in extensive marginal annotation such as appears in

47.

The normal practice in writing books is in strong contrast to the practice in writing official documents:

48

and

59

reveal an extensive use of abbreviation by suspension

and an ambiguous use of common symbols. 1 The

passages

in

ancient

grammarians

(Anecdotum

Romanum, Anecdotum Parisinum, Anecdotum Cavense) which

stroke is horizontal and could be described as obelus periestigmenos, or the later lemniscus.

discuss the names and meaning of critical signs are set out

3 Quotation signs are usually placed in the left-hand

in V. Gardthausen, Gr. Pal. ii, pp. 411-14. On their

margin, in form f P. Paris 2 (160 b.c.) ; diple or rounded

invention and use in Alexandrian Homeric scholarship see

comma, sometimes used doubled or tripled, e.g. P. Oxy.

now R. Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship, p. 115 and

iii 405 (single wedges); P. Oxy. xvii 2102 ii 21 ff. (‘double

pp. 178 ff. Diog. Laert. iii 66 discusses the critical signs

commas’). In P. Oxy. xv 1803 (glossary), BKT ii (Theae-

used to mark texts of Plato, and part of this text has been

tetus Commentary), P. Wurzburg 1, lemmata are intro¬

identified in a papyrus in Florence (p. *184 n. 29).

duced by ) or » or >». * Cf. the remarks of Grenfell and Hunt on P. Oxy. xiii

2 The mark "/• to indicate an omission: Codex SinaitiCorrectors, e.g. figs. 13, 14). Placed in mid verse (as reference

1611, 56. 5 See p. *182 n. 55. Galen xvii A, p. 613 Kuhn. The

mark ?) P. Oxy. xxvi 2442 fr. 6, 2 ; P. Oxy. xxxiv 2698, 140.

sign is used in documents also, P. Oxy. iii 478, 28, con¬

The meaning is uncertain in P. Oxy. i 16-f-iv 696 passim

firming an official’s query in a declaration of personal

(Thucydides); xv 1797 ii 56; P. Flor. ii 112 (in all of

status.

cus, passim (H. J. M. Milne, T. C. Skeat, Scribes and

which it is placed in the margin). In P. Oxy. xxi 2306, the

INTRODUCTION

i8

It may be suspected that there is an analogous difference of practice in regard to the writing of numerals. I know of only one Greek book manuscript (an unpublished papyrus of Strabo) in which figures are not written out in full, but given in numeri¬ cal notation; and I have never observed in a well-written Greek papyrus manu¬ script of classical literature (Christian texts being quite different in this respect) the kind of abbreviation postulated by the emenders of such terms as Se/caSapytar, Dem. vi 22, into rerpapx^av (if abbreviated this could in Harpocration’s time have been written dapytav, in iv b.c. it might have been written 8'apxiav). But the use of numerical notation and of abbreviations of this kind (e.g. x — 8eKa8apxr}c itself) is common in documentary papyri and is found in copies of the sacred scriptures. Only if a literary manuscript were treated as a careless private copy or were copied by a Christian scribe would one expect to find abbreviations of this kind. In documents e.g. fi'creyoc

=

SUreyoc,

y k™ — TpiKtoptia, f'dvpoc = e^aOvpoc, {,'vopua = i-nra-

=

o/crdSpayp-oc do not surprise.1 One of the questions the palaeographer should ask about any literary manuscript

vop-ca, rj'hpaxP'Oc

is whether it has been adequately compared against its antigraph (the exemplar from which it was copied), a task which, in a publishing house, was the duty of the diorthotes, corrector ;2 or whether it has been collated with a second exemplar (a pro¬ cedure often carried out by private individuals to secure a reliable text, cf. p. *93). The corrector’s work will be revealed by different handwriting, different ink (often not easy to detect in a photographic reproduction), and the ‘secondary’ placing of his work in relation to the principal handwriting. A sponge may be used to delete a whole word or line (or more), e.g. a passage in round brackets

50, 63.

Deletions may be indicated by enclosing

(15, 25, 63;

the technical term is 7repiypdet.v) \ by

cancelling a letter or letters by means of a stroke drawn horizontally or obliquely through them (Siaypdeiv, e.g.

24,

cancelled 77817) ; by placing a dot (‘expunging dot’,

as in 63) or a line above, or above and below, or to either side tion of these methods enclosed between dots

(16, 67, 72). (16, 29;

(34)

; or by a combina¬

The correct text may be written above, often

the scribe is said eVicn'^eiv3). Two words may be

transposed by writing the figures fta over them (e.g. P. Oxy. i 16 col. i 26 and else¬ where). It is the corrector’s job also to detect omissions. Should he discover one (a whole verse, for instance, in

12, 34, 41)

he will place at the point of omission an

ancora mark (eor 7>), and add the word ‘above’ or ‘below’ to refer to the point where he has added the omitted passage. A corrector may, of course, simply miss an error (metrical errors were missed in

13, 31).

If he is uncertain he may put a query

mark (Z or £17 — G/ret) as in 34- If he scrupulously enters the source of a particular reading (e.g. 15, 27, 34) we may suspect him of being a professional scholar. The pages of codices are usually numbered at the top centre or outside corner 1 See H, C. Youtie, TAPA 76 (i945)> P- 153 i V. Bartoletti, Dai papiri della societa ital.: omaggio al xi Con-

resolved as Si(op#a>T''' «ir ^

7

'• \o. ^

y & -

vSfc.''*'•'•

“*■;:

8

10

/

«• '

v'jsj &H A H to

'/ /

#

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‘i

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f

v

1 U

A* Ml jD f^/Ai




l

fv*.

A) ft A;r\j V* ' tf

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7

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v, •

■ v•

,

i..

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. •

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.

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U: C f I N/' ;u JNAC£4 H. 3 t r PXa/v,, ' r AAA;v > / A | n IA A < Vi V7 *. \v> v ‘

sr?f5vutc:(l,dn:/ >tppi>. :A Z Uio r

k* y^ t ’

r
.a:k a "■ A'-.Ap.U6N ?N N H6cC1 K2*> f CO N 1C 1ITO NT(> 1 ro?O'

'

I

rXlTOJ. IHN ICAOArA U6UNON lTTo'i UCWIAA, T rrci-AH-i-' Anl APTTAP/ p \ i HJU 61 N 1 QAA v CH \ cKoic;n, rePTroNTokAJ MrAMemc -Y k . \ A-

'o c -1 c 1 Ni o! rcTroi AerrAPAPJAAc i n d! r i >, {.fc\crpx*

-

14. HOMER, Iliad ii (‘The Harris Homer’). B.M. Pap. 126. Later iii

a.d.

F. G. Kenyon, Classical Texts, pp. 81 ff.; Pack2, 634. Ma’abdeh near Assiut. iii

a.d.,

2nd half

(assigned). Papyrus codex, formed of 9 sheets (each 260X295 mm.) laid above each other, vertical fibres uppermost, and then folded to form a single quire of 18 leaves, 36 pages. The shape of the codex is similar to that of the Bodmer Menander. The Homer was copied only on the right-hand pages. Our plate shows sheet 8 laid flat. The central fold can be seen to the left of the column of writing; at the top, centre, and foot are groups of 6 holes to take the binding thread. To the left of the fold the papyrus is blank (the Homer written on the other side shows through). The title suggests that it was intended to copy the first six books of the Iliad. The sur¬ viving leaves contain ii 101-493, iii, iv 1-40. On three of the empty pages the grammarian Tryphon (Pack2, 1539) has been copied, on another are 21 lines of accounts, both in different hands. Our sheet begins at ii 458 and ends at 493 (beginning of the Catalogue of Ships). The scribe copied no more ofii, but put a final coronis and end-title reAoc eyet / IXiaSoc a^ySe£ v?a / A? (=491, stichometric total of verses in ii; 36, stichometric total of verses in this column. Every col. is totalled thus). Medium-sized, angular, mixed style hand, slanting to the right, regular but somewhat coarse. Narrow e, 9, o, c; a is triangular, p, (M) is big and in 4 movements, /3 is tall and of cur¬ sive form, g (X) is of book-hand type, co tends to lose its central vertical. Roughly bilinear, but v, , p send a tail well below the line,

may protrude above or below. Many lectional signs are

by the original scribe: some accents (acute and circumflex, latter on first member), apostrophes, middle and high stops, short and long quantity marks, smooth (form 1) and rough (forms 1-3) breathings, sublinear hyphen, trema on initial t and v and occasionally medial, Kavcrpiov. No critical signs, but 2 slanting strokes plus paragraphus (e.g. // at 469) mark a new section. 1 adscript not written. There are itacistic errors, e.g. At/xo»vi, SooXiyoSipcvv. Corrections (some

certainly by a second hand, especially cursive additions above line) can be seen at e.g. 467 evcrav (v deleted by 2 oblique strokes), 474 r added above line, 480 v corrected in rjvre, go

added above eyoc to make e^oyoc, 481 tc added above line, etc. Plate shows ii 458-93. Transcript of 458-63 : aLyXrjTrapi^avoojcaSuudepocovpavovLKGV TOJvCojcopvtdojVTreTerjvdjveOveaTToXXa X'pvoJvrjyepdvoJinrjKVKvajvSovXtxoXlpcov dcLOJ€vXLjjLd)VLKaiicTpLovapL(f)Lpeedpa

ev9aKCuev9a7roTU)VTCuayaXXopLevcuTTTepvyec[cL KXayyrjb6v7TpoKa9iC,ovT(ov- cpapayetSeTeAipa>|y

40

£ZCf+**jr/-/£ •*/m&a 4y* -' TT^rewA/A/v/Ta

HWTf‘£oyCltXSTfZHJt A/*

A/*!

Pt/rtff-^/yys/AV^A^y* ♦ Y^$fS3U>4

r

%fc£S&{& Gy^lmri ^

■»¥!•

■

fcA

14

.-

4J » '

4

4

irv

,

A

15. ALCMAN, Partheneia. E.E.S. End ofi b.c. or early i a.d. E. Lobel, P. Oxy. xxiv 2387 frr. 1 and 3; Pack2, 79; Page,

with two exemplars cf. p. *93; 7repiypa^7 (= bracketing for

Poetae Melici Graeci 3. Oxyrhynchus, end of i b.c. or early i

deletion) is illustrated in 25. For the use of marginal oblique

a.d.

(assigned), papyrus roll. Height 190+ mm. Stylized,

medium-sized, upright capital (cf. 21, 37). e, c tend to lean backward. The letters are taller than they are broad (esp. a, p, S, u; high cross-bar in e, 17, epoicaic, KavdyaTToSa), marks of long and short quantity, rough (forms 1, 2) and smooth (form 1) breathings, tremata (re'iavdepcc, apostrophes, and occasional high stops (51

evenkoc-).

76),

Iota adscript is usually written. Digamma

is only once certainly written (i 6 Te/rdra/cra, not shown).1 The paragraphus and the diple (77-8) are used capriciously to mark metrical divisions. Corrections by adding letters above the line (45 'eVev> 64 ovrl) or by cancel stroke and cancelling dot (56 SiafeaSav). There are liberal exegetic notes, sometimes even between the lines, but normally in the spaces between columns or at the foot (read at foot ApicTo((f>avr]c), not aporpo(v), before opOiai cfjapoc). These annotations, placed to right of the text, usually depend from critical signs (X or ) in the left margin. They sometimes (e.g. at foot) begin

on

(‘the sign is placed because’, cf. pp. *114-15). Scholars quoted

by name include Aristophanes, Pamphilus, and probably Aristarchus. Plate shows the whole of col. ii, together with annotations. Portions of other papyri have been glued to the foot of the roll. Transcript of col. ii 56-68 (without scholia except at foot) : Sia ayrjCLXopapevavTOi aSe8evTepa7Te8d.yl8djLToei.8oc

X_L7TTroceLj3rjvojLKoXadc2Loc8papeLTaL 60

TaLTTeXeLaSecyapdpLv

X

op9piaL(f)dpoc(f>ep6LcaLc

S

vvKTaSiapfdpociavaTecepLov acTpovaveLoojievaLuayovTru ovTtyapTLTTopcfjvpdc

65

TOccocKopocajcA apvvai OVTeTTOLKiXocSpaKOJV TTauypvcLocouSep.LTpd XoSidveavlSow apLCTO

op0LaL(f)af)Oc ccocLc/jaurjc aporpov otl

TVV[. . Ai^K^o-YpaxopavncpiCTepaiciKa^ovcL 1 Digamma may be clearly seen in e.g. Corinna, P. Oxy. 2370 fr. 4, 3, fft'Sov; ‘Boeotian verse’, P. Oxy. 2374 fr. 9, 3, ]Aa pepya (both xxiii pi. ix); Alcaeus, P. Oxy. 2295 fr. 8, 2 (xxi pi. iv).

44

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f\-r\ •

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M *\ ! ,:y , *?. *■ < *-v*

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j'CfXG

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jAc^T** n AJCf-i o o/A r^j >-j >a

k.

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16

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.

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,-T; ^

■ •.'¥ : .v -» T

SeKr]v,6T 4

TaiTLceparai ]yXv8evp,apeccvv€TovTror]caL

]avnr[ vt'ayapTroXvTrepcKedoLca kclA*oc['

8

tov\

«raAA[ /cd>v8[

7Ta[ 12

_ ]pa>TTajveXeva[ ]

]vav8pa

ctov

]ce^ac’rpotai/77-Aeot[ ]rSocoi;Se(^i,Aa>VTo[ I776OV lep.vdcd’aXXaTTapdyay’avrav

]ca^ ]apL7TTovyap[

] _ _ _ KOV(f)(JOCT[ ]fxevvvavaKTopi[

16

]or] _ [ _ ]v \ypva

hLPaL

]7raf>eotcac]cT€^oXXoLp,avepdTovT€^apia Kdjidpvyi^aXajm povLhrjVTr pocioTTio rjTaXvdajvappLaTaKavoTrXoLCL

20

]ayerra[[e]]c ] /LevovdvvaTovyevecdaL ] vavdp(joir[

JeSey^p'S’apac^ai

(A new poem may begin at 21) (b) fr. 56 offers the end of the book, marked by a large coronis. The title is placed below, and the stichometric total of verses contained in it is written in Attic notation XHHHAA (1320). Transcript of vv. 6-9 : aAAeyepdeic, rjW[ creiyecoicufiaAi [ r/TTepoccovaXiyvcf) [ vttvov[

JSaifter

46

f*. ;"'S'd skL fa-r - i*| ff C ‘ ‘'f *Ar

J ° “J j4 ^s. *^ar°w ^T*.

^ruK^ri. O•

:

.^cca>. £frv