Papyrus fragment from Demosthenes' De Corona

Greek Learning Greek
1

Here’s a link to a papyrus fragment from the De Corona from the first century BCE. You may have to use the enlarging tool to bring it up to full size; once you do it’s more or less legible:

http://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/papyri/images/Demosthenes.jpg

Demosthenes, De corona, 167-169. AM 9051 (=P. Oxy. XI 1377), I c. BC

It’s from this Princeton website; you can find the citation by clicking on the link and then clicking on “Digital Images of Selected Princeton Papyri.” Digital images of other papyri are available on the site, too.

http://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/papyri/

The text of the papyrus begins in the middle of the spurious “Reply” of Philip to the Thebans at 167. This is one of the spurious documents added to the text in places where Demosthenes calls for the clerk to read a document. These documents appear in some but not all of the manuscripts, presumably reflecting two manuscript traditions that diverged in antiquity. The well-established consensus is that they are not genuine, but were added at some later date.

Here is the legible portion from the online version at the Perseus website (you can find a translation there, too):

167 . . . ἑτέρων ἐπακολουθεῖν γνώμαις, ἥσθην καὶ μᾶλλον ὑμᾶς ἐπαινῶ κατὰ πολλά, μάλιστα δ᾽ ἐπὶ τῷ βουλεύσασθαι περὶ τούτων ἀσφαλέστερον καὶ τὰ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἔχειν ἐν εὐνοίᾳ: ὅπερ οὐ μικρὰν ὑμῖν οἴσειν ἐλπίζω ῥοπήν, ἐάν περ ἐπὶ ταύτης μένητε τῆς προθέσεως. ἔρρωσθε.

168 οὕτω διαθεὶς ὁ Φίλιππος τὰς πόλεις πρὸς ἀλλήλας διὰ τούτων καὶ τούτοις ἐπαρθεὶς τοῖς ψηφίσμασιν καὶ ταῖς ἀποκρίσεσιν, ἧκεν ἔχων τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὴν Ἐλάτειαν κατέλαβεν, ὡς οὐδ᾽ ἂν εἴ τι γένοιτ᾽ ἔτι συμπνευσάντων ἂν ἡμῶν καὶ τῶν Θηβαίων.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0071%3Aspeech%3D18%3Asection%3D167

168, the genuine Demosthenic text, begins at line 12 with the word ουτωc (οὕτω in modern editions). The word ἔρρωσθε which appears in modern texts based on the manuscript tradition at the end of the spurious response of Philip does not seem to appear in the papyrus.

One item of interest (to me at least) is the spelling υμειν for ὑμῖν at the beginning of line 9. Does that suggest that the merger of ει with ι was already underway?

2

I forget the details, or the evidence he brings forth, but Randall Buth argues the merger already started earlier than this, I think as early as 400 B.C.

3

Bluth may just be quoting Allen’s Vox Graeca, page 66,67. Allen writes:

The development of ει to > is revealed by occasional confusion between ει and ι from the late 4 c. B.C., becoming common in the 3 c.

4

With long ι it’s extremely common, and earlier than other phonological collapses. ει and short ι interchange comes a little later and is less frequent but still common. Data for Roman period on are given by Gignac.

5

One thing that caught my attention was space between words. In some cases there’s clearly a space between two words, while most of the time there isn’t any. On the other hand, a word can be cut at the end of a line, but apparently only between syllables.

I thought early Greek writing didn’t use spaces between words.

6

I wonder whether the spaces between words occur where the person making the copy looked back to the original from which he or she was copying, reading and then copying a few words at a time.

7

In some manuscripts (not that many) short spaces serve as a form of punctuation, between clauses or phrases (not between individual words). I’ve wondered whether such kwlon-marking might be a guide to delivery, upokrisis.

8

Here, as far as I can see, the spaces don’t correspond to anything like our punctuation. But on the other hand, modern punctuation (as far as Finnish goes at least) doesn’t correspond so much to the actual phonetic delivery, but rather analyses the sentences according to the meaning.

There are dashes at the end of lines 4 and 6, any idea what those might mean?

9

Sorry, I hadn’t actually looked at the image. The dash at the end of 6 is just a space-filler: the copyist (he, not she!) was concerned to justify the right margin. (There are rules for syllabication.) Similarly at the end of 4, though that looks to be a more conventional form of filler sign, a sort of diple shape—and rather gratuitous.

It’s unusual to find such frequent gaps. There seem to be more of them in the letter than in the speech itself? Some of them are clearly functional, e.g. after κατα πολλα, at major break, plus middle stop; and before οπερ (where I’d expect a stop too but don’t see one); and before εαν. At the other end of the scale, the gap between επι τωι and βουλευεσθαι is quite unexpected; and after ετερων in 1 (was επακολουθειν γνωμαις considered a colon in itself?). Gap before κατα|πολλα may be for the sake of justification, but it’s matched by gap before εν ευνοιαι below, splitting off the prepositional phrases.

So: no clear or consistent pattern emerges. That’s par for the course. Impossible to go further without more of this papyrus or comprehensive analysis of spaces in papyri. I’ve had occasion to note that quite a few prose papyri (several Thucydides, some Platos, some medical treatises, and others) systematically use gaps in lieu of stops (as well as in conjunction with them), but I don’t know of any in-depth investigation. More normal practice is full-on scriptio continua.
(The Gallus papyrus, with points as in inscriptions, is an aberration I believe.)

Incidentally, note και μαλιστα δε, where the MSS omit και. –- and then βουλευεσθαι instead of MSS aorist (a common tense variation, showing that the difference doesn’t always amount to much). I’ve argued that at least four ancient codexes lie behind the medieval tradition of Demosthenes, but it looks as if these earlier readings (1st cent. BCE, to judge from the handwriting) had dropped out by then, leaving a more standardized text.

10

Thanks, that was very informative.