papyri, where it is known, is a city of some size, also as one would expect.
The sizes of the various collections cannot be determined with any
precision, but the lists do indicate a wide range of sizes. Thus number 4
(from Apollinopolis Magna), which may well be complete, includes just
five books among other household items.^19 Several collections may well
have been quite small, perhaps a few dozen or a hundred volumes: thus
nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 8. Others, such as no. 7, included perhaps several
hundred rolls, and no. 3, which as we will see may be part of the booklist
of a library, might originally have numbered several thousand volumes.
The authors represented in this small group of lists are a mixture of
the most popular and the obscure. Of the eleven authors who occur most
frequently in Greek papyri from Oxyrhynchus, ten are mentioned in one
or more of our lists.
20
Some of the authors or works, such as Nigrinus in
no. 5, are attested in no other source, and many of the philosophical
and medical authors named in no. 7 are little known, hard to identify,
or both. None of the lyric poets, no novels or romances, and only three
authors certainly of Roman imperial date (Theodas and Dio of Prusa in
no. 5, and Lucian in no. 6) appear.
21
The collections tend to be homoge-
neous: nos. 1, 2, 6, and 8 are composed largely of standard, widely read
authors or commentaries on such authors. No. 3 is all comedy (but see
further below), whereas nos. 5 and 7 could be specialist collections of
philosophy and philosophy/medicine respectively. Only the extremely
brief list of no. 4 has no apparent coherence. We can explain the homo-
geneity of any given list in either of two ways. First, we may have a
specialist’s professional collection of books on a particular topic or topics,
such as philosophy or medicine,^22 or a collection of the classics (nos. 1, 2,
6, 8). Second, we may be dealing with just one section of a much larger
and more comprehensive collection, given that our lists are fragmentary
parts of larger wholes. This may well be the case with our no. 3, the list of
comic writers, to which we can now turn.
- For similar small collections elsewhere, cf. House B17 at Karanis (four or five texts,
van Minnen 1998, 132 3), or the highly miscellaneous collection in Coptic and Greek, on
wood and papyrus from three houses at Roman era Kellis. In one case, some twenty one
texts were found scattered through nine rooms of a house: Gardner 1996. - Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, Plato, Euripides, Menander, Demosthenes, Thucydi
des, Herodotus, and Pindar. Of the top eleven, only Aeschylus is not mentioned in any list.
For the frequency figures (valid for Oxyrhynchus, not necessarily all of Egypt), see Kru ̈ger
1990, 214 15. - Several other authors or works, however, are either possibly or probably of imperial
date: Priscus and the encomium of Rufus in no. 4, Nigrinus in no. 5, Hierocles and
Harpocration in no. 7, and Callinichus in no. 8. Aelianus (if that is the correct reading) in no.
2 sounds like a Roman name, but this list is early (mid first centuryA.D.), so Aelianus must
have lived very early in the Empire (or before). - For a specialist scholarly collection in philosophy, cf. the papyri from the Villa of the
Papyri at Herculaneum. A professional collection of astronomical texts from Oxyrhynchus
has recently been identified: Jones 1999.
240 Institutions and Communities