Ancient Literacies

datable to the first century and so at least two hundred years old.
47
In no. 7

(Grenfell and Hunt’s second find), which was discarded aboutA.D. 400,
48

there are several manuscripts of the first centuryA.D., and one that may

date from the second centuryB.C. and so have been more than five

hundred years old when it was discarded.
49
And, of course, the collection

in the Villa of the Papyri still possessed, when it was destroyed by
Vesuvius inA.D. 79, a number of manuscripts of the second centuryB.C.

and earlier, and so two hundred or more years old.^50 Thus papyrus

manuscripts could quite clearly remain in use for two centuries or more,

and often did. On the other hand, a considerable majority of volumes in

our concentrations were not that old when they were discarded or (in the

case of the Villa of the Papyri) destroyed. Many of the texts in concen-

Table 10.2. (Continued)

No. Name or Publication

Dates of Mss. and

Provenance Size Brief Description

10 Archive and codex
collection of
Dioscorus of
Aphrodito^2

SixthA.D., Aphro

dito

About 7 codices,

found in a jar

Menander, Eupolis,

Iliad(Bk. 2 at least),

biography of Isocrates,

Greek Coptic glossary,

Dioscorus’s own

compositions, archival

materials.

Note: The concentrations are arranged roughly in chronological order. I list here only those collections
that include at least some Greek or Latin non-Christian texts. Thus I exclude, for example, the collection
of 21 Manichean and other religious texts (some in Coptic) from House 3 in Roman Kellis, even though
they are fourth century and a coherent collection. I will use such collections for comparative purposes
only. I also do not include the collection of books owned, in all likelihood, by Aurelia Ptolemais late in the
third century, as reconstructed by Bagnall 1992, because they were not recovered together archaeologic-
ally. What we know so far as belonging to Aurelia was one or two copies of theIliad, a history of Sicyon,
and Julius Africanus’sCestoi. She may have owned many more.

1. Johnson 1914, 176, summarized the contents, but except for the Theocritus (MP^3 1487), Euripides
   (MP^3 415), and botanical work (P.Ant. 123 or following), the specific papyri Johnson found cannot now
   be identified.


2. These materials were found together in a jar, but as far as I can tell they have never been completely
   described or published. The list of the works Dioscorus owned given here derives from Clarysse 1983,
   56–7. Calderini 1921, 150, mentions also Aristophanes and metrological tables.

47.PSI1213 (Eupolis), 1214 (Sophron,Mimes), and 1305 (Novel of Ninus).

48. The manuscripts in Grenfell and Hunt’s second find were intermingled with many
    fourth and fifth century documents, so they must have been thrown out in the fourth or
    fifth century. See further Houston 2007.


49. See below, table 10.3, nos. 1, 7, 8, 10, and 28, all of the first centuryA.D. The oldest
    would be the text of Ibycus, no. 16.


50. Cavallo identified seven manuscripts in the Villa (his Group A) as similar to Egyptian
    texts of the third centuryB.C.: Cavallo 1983, 28 9 and 50. He assigned the sixteen
    manuscripts in his Groups B and C to the second century: Cavallo 1983, 29 30, 50, and
    56 7. And five manuscripts not assigned to any group are, Cavallo thought, similar to
    Egyptian texts of the third centuryB.C.: Cavallo 1983, 57, with notes 442 and 443.

250 Institutions and Communities