OPES – Oslo Papyri Electronic System

Background and Physical Properties

Material:

Papyrus

Connections:

–

Size:

3 x 3 cm

Lines:

7

Publication side:

Recto (Verso: blank)

Palaeographic description:

Bookhand, small and neat. Upright letters of uneven module (notice in particular the small omicron). Written along the fibres. Rather thin pen. Black ink. Assigned by Eitrem and Amundsen in the ed. pr. to the 1st/2nd century CE. On account of the general appearance of the lettering, and in particular, of the small dimension of the omicron, the narrow epsilon with a rounded back, and the characteristic appearance of pi with a strongly curved right vertical stroke, the fragment was later pushed back to the 3rd century BCE by Jean Laenerts (comparing P. Hib. I 1 = P. Lit. Lond. 56 = Roberts, Greek Literary Hands 350 B.C. – A.D. 400, pl. 2b, and P. Hamb. 163 = Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, p. 92 and pl. 54). LDAB/TM narrows it further down to the second half of the 3rd century BCE, perhaps with good reason (cf. Cavallo and Maehler, Hellenistic Bookhands, pp. 10-11).

State of preservation:

Dark brown papyrus. The fragment preserves a small part of seven lines of text, broken off on all four sides, and preserving no margins. The letters are mostly intact, apart from a faded supralinear tau above line 7. A horizontal break goes through the fragment c. 0.7 cm from the top edge. It was reinforced with tape on the back in modern times. No apparent kollesis.

Content

Date:

3rd century BCE

Origin:

Unknown, Egypt

Language:

Greek

Genre:

Literary

Author:

Menander

Title / Type of text:

Dyskolos 766-772 / New Comedy

Content:

The fragment contains about 55 letters divided over 7 lines (1 to 11 letters per line) from the fourth act of Menander’s comic play Dyskolos (‘The Peevish Fellow’) 776-772. Samson Eitrem and Leiv Amundsen described it briefly as a literary fragment in the ed. pr. (the inventory card of the Oslo papyrus collection acknowledges “perh. from a dialogue”), and Jean Lenaerts identified it as an excerpt from Dyskolos in his 1977 edition. The scribe has added tau and iota by the left edge in the interlinear of lines 771 and 772, possibly a correction to an inadvertent omission in l. 772 (see the commentary in Jean Lenaerts’ edition). The text confirms two emendations by Victor Martin in ll. 768 and 772 of the ed. pr. of P. Bodmer 4 (= ll. 3 and 7 of the Oslo papyrus), and provides significant readings in ll. 767 and 769 (= ll. 2 and 4 of the Oslo papyrus; see Lenaerts’ edition and the discussions provided in the bibliography).

Subjects:

Literature Drama Comedy Menander Dyskolos

Named people:

–

Named places:

–

English translation:

–

Provenance:

Unknown

Acquisition:

Purchased by Samson Eitrem in Egypt.

Acquisition year:

1920

Editions

• Eitrem, S. and Amundsen, L., P.Oslo III, 1936, p. 259 (no. 168)
• Lenaerts, J., Pap.Brux. 13, 1977, pp. 23-25 (no. 7), picture: Pl. 1

Further Literature

Catalogues

TM 61588 / LDAB 2737 / M-P3 1300.2

Discussions

• Handley, E. W. (1979). “Recent Papyrus Finds: Menander” (see pp. 83-84). Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 26, pp. 81-87.
• Meillier, Cl. (1979). [Review of Papyrus littéraires grecs. Papyrologica Bruxellensia 13, by J. Lenaerts]. Revue des Études Grecques, 92(436/437), pp. 248-249.
• Arnott, W. G. (Ed. & Trans.) (1979). Aspis. Georgos. Dis Exapaton. Dyskolos. Encheiridion. Epitrepontes (see pp. 177 and 310). Loeb Classical Library 132. Cambridge, MA.
• Luppe, W. (1980). “Literarische Texte” (see p. 236). Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete, 27, pp. 233-250.
• Blanchard, A. (1981). “Progrès récents dans l’édition de Ménandre” (p. 500). Revue des Études Grecques, 94(447/449), pp. 496-501.
• Brown, P. G. McC. (1983). “Menander” (p. 181). [Review of Menander, Vol. I: Aspis to Epitrepontes by W. G. Arnott]. The Classical Review, 33(2), pp. 180-184.
• Nervegna, S. (2013). Menander in Antiquity. The Contexts of Reception (see p. 272). Cambridge.
• Belardinelli, A.M. (2019). “Iconografia e papiri in Euripide e Menandro.” Seminari romani di cultura greca, 8, pp. 331-354.