28 NEW GREEK TEXTS FROM OXYRHYNCHUS New Greek Texts from Oxyrhynchus In June 2009, the British Academy hosted a Patterns of scholarship seeks to adapt. An extensive codex of Acts workshop to discuss some of the exciting new (forthcoming) will raise questions about The Oxyrhynchus papyri span about 700 texts pieced together by the Oxyrhynchus Papyri textual flexibility in the early transmission of years; they track the literary tastes and the project – followed in the evening by a public scripture. At the same time, we publish more bureaucratic regimes of a Roman and presentation. Professor Peter Parsons FBA amulets, hymns and prayers, which Byzantine province. The work on the papyri describes how these fragmentary documents give materialise the grass-roots faith of early similarly tracks, over more than a century, the a unique insight into Greco-Roman civilisation. Christians. Archilochus and Simonides were changing tastes and focuses of scholarship. At great names among Greek poets, whose the beginning, Christian texts took a leading greatness had not saved them from Between 1897 and 1907 excavators from the role: the late Victorians relied on archaeology extinction: papyri from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt Exploration Society dug around the to reinforce the superstructure of faith while recently published, restore elegies by them village of el-Behnesa, some 100 miles south of geology was mining its foundations. Later, which rewrite the history of the genre. At the Cairo (Figure 1). They found the accumulated Greek literary texts took pride of place: as same time, we have material to meet the waste paper of an entire city, anciently called the co-ordinating scholarship of Altertums- current interest in the Greek literary culture Oxyrhynchus: 50,000 fragments of papyrus, wissenschaft revealed the empty shelves, the of the Roman period: novels, declamations, books and papers alike, written and read by classics of the Classical world that had experiments in hexameter poetry. Published the Greek-speaking colonials who ruled Egypt perished in the Middle Ages, papyrology documents illustrate the beginnings of the for the millennium between Alexander the began to recover, in fragments, parts of the census, the shifts in the gold/silver ratio, the Great and the Arab Conquest. The sorting, lost inheritance – songs of Sappho, comedies administration of the imperial post, in the decipherment and publication of these papyri of Menander, elegies by Callimachus. high days of Empire. At the same time we can (now housed in the Sackler Library in Oxford) Alongside these, a growing archive of respond to the modern preoccupation with began in 1898; the work was adopted as a documentary texts (90% of the total) offered Late Antiquity, where the Egyptian Major Research Project by the British Roman historians, or at least the less experience presents a vivid picture of the Academy in 1966, and reached volume blinkered of them, the opportunity to study Byzantine province and its development LXXIV in 2009. in detail the economics and social structure of a Roman province. under the Caliphate. The Oxyrhynchus Project still serves these Scholarship progresses, and so do its Figure 1. Excavating at Oxyrhynchus, c. 1900. technical resources. The last thirty years have Photo: Egypt Exploration Society. audiences; and as scholarly focuses shift, it provided us with now indispensable tools: in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae we can search the whole of Greek literature up to 800 AD; in the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri we can search all but the most recently published documents. More and more collections of papyri have posted digital images of their published holdings. Two local enterprises, designed and directed by Dirk Obbink, compound these advances. One refines the technique of multispectral imaging, by which papyri can be scanned at different wave-lengths and the most legible image produced by superimposing the best results. 1 Another develops the computer- isation of the card catalogue: this makes a database, which can be searched (by script, date, genre) in such a way as to bring together scattered fragments of the same text. The British Academy workshop discussed a selection of texts from different genres, prepared by different contributors (Professor Bowman, Dr Colomo, Dr Gonis, Professor British Academy Review, issue 14 (November 2009). © The British Academy NEW GREEK TEXTS FROM OXYRHYNCHUS 29 Handley, Dr Obbink, Professor Rathbone). 2 writes to Alexander, a priest Politics and governance and bureaucracy, of Demeter: neat professional literary composition and philosophical study script, impeccable spelling, all had their place. style literate and in places pompous (Figure 2). By Regulations and edicts contrast the content comes Egypt had been a Greek kingdom, before it down to earth. Under Roman fell to Rome in 30 BC. One document rule, priestly offices were sold contains regulations issued (probably) by by auction, and the price king Ptolemy XII, father of Cleopatra, about paid to the state: Alexander, inheritance tax: if you die intestate, two- it seems, had bought a thirds of your estate will go to the Privy Purse. priesthood, but his payment The script suggests the early Roman period. is in arrears. That is im- So the rulings of the old kings remained in portant, since a priesthood force under the new emperors; and in fact may entitle you to exemption contributed by accumulation to the from certain ‘liturgies’, that comprehensive Tax Code, of which a copy is, unpaid bureaucratic jobs survives in Berlin. We cannot be sure whether imposed by the state. But Ptolemy’s code represents a concession or a even if the priesthood is supertax. But the date (63 BC) places it in secure, the holder will still political context. This is a time when the king need to argue the case for needs all the support he can get; but also all exemption, and here too the revenue he can raise, since (as we know Thonios has been active in from Cicero) he needs to pay gigantic bribes tracking down relevant to the noble Romans whose support alone case-law. Precedent plays a keeps him in power. large part in Greco-Egyptian courts, and this letter even Under Roman rule, the emperor appoints a tells us the technical name viceroy, the Prefect, whose major for the procedure, the pronouncements take the form of edicts. argument ‘by similitude’. Another document presented contains an edict of the prefect Vestinus (AD 59–62), with Another letter refers to the its formal prescript, ‘Lucius Julius Vestinus perennial problem of the speaks’. A certain Sarapion, it seems, had defaulting debtor. The legal been head of the weavers’ collective at procedure was simple if Oxrhynchus; and he has been publicly burdensome. The creditor denounced for collecting unauthorised applied, with a summary of contributions. The prefect condemns him the contract, to the Chief and his rebellious colleagues and accom- Justice; the Chief Justice plices, perhaps to a fine. ‘And if they disobey added an instruction to the in any way, I shall employ the appropriate local governor; the creditor punishment against them.’ We may wonder sent the document thus why it takes an edict to deal with an episode endorsed to that governor; of local malpractice. But weaving was a major and the governor instructed industry, and linen one of Egypt’s major one of his assistants to serve exports; and extorting money is the the whole notice on the prerogative of government. The prefect debtor. However, the debtor cannot afford to let a corrupt and con- may create a diversion by Figure 2. Avoiding government service: letter from Thonios, 3rd century AD. Image: Egypt Exploration Society/University of Oxford Imaging tumacious union-boss get away with it. claiming that the contract is forged: this initiates a Papyri Project. Legal bureaucracy criminal charge against the creditor, and the creditor may then be scared letter, the creditors believe that they have a The prefect speaks, and the citizens obey. or impatient enough to give up or to reduce contract in Cephalon the debtor’s own hand. Lower down the heap, private letters give a the sum owing. Prefects, and even Emperors, They can therefore call his bluff. Once notice view of the resourceful struggling with the legislated against this manoeuvre, frequently has been served, the debtor must pay up or bureaucratic. In one such letter Thonios enough to show how it persisted. In our commit to the charge of forgery: so the 30 NEW GREEK TEXTS FROM OXYRHYNCHUS Figure 3. Killing children on stage: rhetorical declamation, 3rd century AD. Image: Egypt Exploration Society/University of Oxford Imaging Papyri Project. sources, which allege that the first audience resented the portrayal of Phaedra as a shameless seductress. The second is entirely new, and the author seeks to validate it by quoting two unknown verses which (he says) the poet deleted from his second version – verses which (he thinks) imply a murder on stage. Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet is one of those tragic rules that descend through Horace to Boileau: so the claim is sensational – and no doubt incredible. The author is a stylist, not a scholar, and his insouciance may serve as a warning. How many of the literary ‘facts’ we inherit from antiquity derive from such swampy couplings of malignant gossip, bibliographic muddle and rhetorical manipulation? Shakespearian scholars may recognise the genre. In the literate culture, intellectuals need a philosophical allegiance. Oxyrhynchites, to judge from their salvage, read Plato in bulk, Stoics and Epicureans more rarely, Aristotle hardly at all. One of our new texts comes from a work well-known but long-lost, the collected Letters of Epicurus. In a first fragment (Figure 4), Epicurus writes about his plan to travel from Athens to his native Samos, ‘from island to island’ (that is, avoiding the dangers of the open sea; Epicurus had already experienced one near- fatal shipwreck), there to meet any friends who have leisure for the journey.