Homeric papyrus (Iliad 24.681-5, 723-8)

Description

It is attractive to imagine that this leaf contained incipits of verses and was a student exercise. Texts consists of half-lines of Homer have survived on two ostraca and one papyrus (see R. Cribiore, writing, nos. 193, 201 and 291; but the first two contain only scattered verses). However, neither the hand nr the length of the surviving text, would support such an assumption in this case, since student exercise (at least at the elementary level) tended to be shorter (on ostraca) and were written in much more cursive and crude hands. Furthermore, Iliad 24 is among the least represented books in the Papyrological evidence and may have not been part of the teaching canon in elementary education. If it is an exercise, it maybe the product of a more advanced student who perhaps read Iliad to its end; see eandem, Gymnastics of the mind. Greek Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton 2001) 140 and 194-5, and eand., �ǣA Homeric writing Exercise and reading Homer in School, Tyche 9 (1994) 1-8.;However, the condition of the text may be the result of a scribal action. We can think of two possible scenarios. In the first, the scribe, having reached almost the end of Book 24 and of the codex (one more leaf would have been sufficient to contain the remaining verses), decided to cheat because this could not be noticed easily at the end of the manuscript. In the second scenario, the scribe relied on a codex (not a roll) in which the right half of the last page was not preserved in good condition and copied as much as he could see or imagine seeing (we owe this suggestion to our colleague I. Vassis). Commonly, codices are damaged either in the beginning or in the end at fore edge as a result of handling over time, see E.G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia, PA 1977) 42 n. 7.;The small amount of text which survives presents the reading I]ppodamoio in verse 724, while part of the tradition reads androfonoio. The former reading is also found in papyri 13, 14 and 262 of West's edition. For the preference of androfonoio by the editors, see M.L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (Mȭnchen 2001) 281 at v. 724