collector, then, possessed a small library of a hundred volumes or so, which
he organized in three groups: poets (standard: Homer, Hesiod, Callima-
chus), then probably reference works on rhetoric, and, finally, a small
collection of speeches.
No. 5 (philosophical works and one medical writer) is a list of un-
known length, the papyrus being broken on all sides. Two columns
survive, the left one nearly complete, the right one nearly all lost. The
compiler generally provides quite full information: author, title, and in
two cases (lines 8 and 21) a book number. That, plus the fact that the list
is written on therecto, and not, as is usual with our lists, on theversoof a
document, indicate that this list was prepared with some care. It certainly
implies an awareness of genre: either it was a specialist collection of
philosophy, or it represents the philosophy section of a larger collection
organized by genre. It is, then, surprising to find clear signs of disorgan-
ization. Four authors appear more than once and at random spots in the
list: Theophrastus appears once in each column, Chrysippus once in
column 1 and twice in column 2, Diogenes once in each column, and
Aristotle appears four times. Even similar works are not grouped to-
gether, for Aristotle’sConstitution of the Atheniansappears in column 1,
and hisConstitution of the Neapolitansin column 2. We are left with
several impressions. The book collection itself does not seem to have
been arranged alphabetically, because any such arrangement would pre-
sumably be reflected in the inventory. Nor were the rolls sorted before the
compiler went through them to record authors and titles. We might then
infer a smallish collection, stored in no particular order. Given the task of
making an inventory of this collection, one or two persons (we might
reasonably suppose) worked through the rolls, picking up one at a time
and recording it, then moving on.^37 It is possible, of course, that this list
served only as a first draft, a kind of counting up, and that a better
organized list was subsequently prepared from it, but we cannot know if
that was the case.^38
- Such a scenario (obviously conjectural) might help to explain the problematicåíïØŒØÆ
in line 3, which has been taken by several editors asKí ïNŒßfiÆ, ‘‘in the house.’’ Those editors
have suggested that the book collection was kept in more than one place, and that the items
following this phrase were stored ‘‘in the house.’’ That would be consistent with the scenario
suggested here for the creation of the inventory. On the phrase, see further Otranto 2000,
82 3, citing earlier bibliography and alternative explanations. - This suggestion emerged in discussion of these papyri at the University of
Pennsylvania. My thanks to Joseph Farrell and Ann Kuttner for pointing out the possibility of
draft lists: any given list that survives might have been a first draft, a final draft, or some
intermediate stage. A first draft, compiled directly from the book collection (as appears to
have been the case with our no. 5 and most of the others), might represent more or less
faithfully the degree of organization of the collection. A revised and more carefully organized
later draft might present us instead with an ideally organized collection, more systematically
arranged than the actual volumes on the shelves were. Such might be our no. 3, which we
will consider further below. Even final lists intended for consultation, however, might well
Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries 245