NEW CLASSICAL TEXTS

2824. TYRTAEUS, Eunomia Good Order

A short strip of coarse papyrus from a roll containing the middle portions of 16 elegiac verses identified as Tyrtaeus since fragment 2 is included in them. The hand is a medium-sized rounded capital, bilinear except for ρ and φ. ε (with high cross-bar), o (in 3 strokes), and c are well rounded; α and δ have a left-curving finial at their apex; ρ and τ have left-curving serifs; the second stroke of π and υ have right-curving serifs. The hand should be assigned to the end of the first or early second century. Among dated hands it may be compared with P. Ryl. iii 484 (which is more informal) and letters in the Gemellus archive, e.g. P. Fay. 110; similar undated hands are 2428, 2506, P. Ryl. i 54. Two accents, a long mark of quantity, and internal marks of aspiration (7, perhaps 5) were added by the same hand. The top of the column is not preserved, but the foot finishes with the first (hexameter) line of a couplet, as does fragment A ii of the Berlin papyrus of Tyrtaeus—the following column must therefore have begun with the pentameter. In so far as one may judge from extrapolation of the beginnings of 12–15, the pentameters began on the same alignment as the hexameters. Another hand using brown ink has written over the Tyrtaeus above lines 4, 8, 9 (where the Tyrtaeus is obscured) and continued for 3 lines below. It seems to be the same hand as wrote parts of 5 lines on the back, which can be identified as from an account.

This is not the first papyrus fragment of Tyrtaeus to be found. That distinction belongs to P. Berlin 11675, of the 3rd century B.C. (See von Wilamowitz, S.B. Berlin 1918, pp. 728 ff.; L. Koenen, Rh. Mus. Rheinisches Museum xcvi (1953), pp. 187–9; M. L. West, ZPE i (1967), pp. 173–82.) It is, however, the first papyrus to show that a text of this poet, not merely quotations in anthologies, survived into the Roman period, and to suggest that an Alexandrian edition of his work may have existed. The papyrus contains one interesting variant (which may well be right) from the text given by Strabo (13 n.).

I have had the benefit of transcripts of this text made by both Mr. Lobel and Dr. Rea. But I must take responsibility for the readings presented here.