to exist as a coherent and identifiable collection? We cannot answer these
questions with any certainty, for there are too many variables and possible
scenarios, but we can observe what we have and draw at least some useful
inferences. Let us start with what we know.
First, seventeen, or just under half, of the manuscripts were written
in the middle or second half of the second centuryA.D.^75 Several of
these second-century manuscripts relate to what seems to have been the
owner or owners’ particular interest: two of the Alcaeus manuscripts were
heavily annotated (nos. 4, 5), as were several rolls of Pindar (nos. 18, 19),
the Plato (no. 21), and two of the plays of Sophocles (nos. 25, 26). Second,
from that period of about seventy years, we have manuscripts copied by at
least six different scribes: A5, A11, A20, A32, B1, and one or more uniden-
tified scribes who copied manuscripts nos. 3, 6, 22, and others. It seems
reasonable to infer from these two observations that one or two (or more)
owners commissioned copies, or bought ready-made copies, from a range of
scribes over the course of this period.
Third, we can note that eight of the thirty-five manuscripts (nos. 9, 12,
15, 20, 23, 33, 34, and 35) date from aboutA.D. 200 or the early part of
the third century. These include texts that form part of the central
interest of the concentration: Callimachus (no. 9), Hesiod (no. 15), the
extensive edition of Pindar (no. 20, at least three rolls), and Sappho (no.
23). From this I would infer that the collection was maintained, and in
some cases augmented, well into the third century. Its life as a recogniz-
able collection, then, may well have lasted for about three generations,
and possibly a good deal longer.
Beyond this it is difficult to go. Assuming a mid-second-century collector
interested above all in poetry, we could posit that he inherited or purchased
the earlier materialsen bloc, thus acquiring the core of his collection; or that
he bought them individually on the used-book market;^76 or some combin-
ation of such procedures. The history of our collection, then, would look
something like this: toward the middle of the second century, our collector
began to assemble a collection strong in poetry.
77
He may have inherited a
preexisting collection, or perhaps he bought a number of rolls (hence the
volumes copied in the first century and earlier); he certainly purchased or
commissioned a number of new rolls (thus the large number of texts copied
in the middle and second half of the second century). The collection so
formed reflected its originator’s interest in poetry and maintained its shape
over time, being added to even when it passed to other owners. At some
point toward the middle of the third century, the collection seems to have
stopped growing and fallen out of use, and within two or three generations
- Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, and 32.
- Starr 1990 argued that there was no significant used book trade in the Roman
Empire, but see Peter White, ch. 11, in this volume. - For the sake of simplicity, I will state the history as if there were a single owner, but
of course there may have been more than one, both at any one time and over the course of
the years.
260 Institutions and Communities