The Value of Papyri for the Textual Criticism of Extant Greek Authors

Abstract

An excellent survey of the evidence of Greek papyri for purposes of textual criticism together with some cautious generalizations was given by Sir Frederic Kenyon in the Transactions of the British Academy, 1904. The following paper gives a sketch of the present position of the question in the light of both his article and the new evidence which has accrued in the last 14 years.In literary papyri from Egypt the proportion of extant to new texts is very small in the Ptolemaic period (B.C. 323–30), when apart from Homer, Euripides, Plato, and Demosthenes that all too scanty portion of Greek literature which has survived did not yet stand out very conspicuously from the rest in popularity. In the Roman period (B.C. 30–A.D. 284) the proportion of new to extant works represented in literary papyri is more in the direction of equality, while in the Byzantine period (A.D. 284–640) after the general adoption of Christianity there was a rapid decline of interest in classical studies, and by the 6th century not very many lost classical works seem to have been commonly studied in Upper Egypt, from which the papyri come. In 1904 Sir Frederic Kenyon was dealing with 189 papyri of extant works, of which 109 belonged to Homer, 80 to other authors. Now, however, nearly 300 more have to be added, of which about 120 represent authors other than Homer, so that the material for examination is more than double.