Ancient Literacies

Table 10.1. (Continued)

No. Publication

Date and Prov

enance Size Brief Description^1

and 296 rolls,

it seems

indicates the number of rolls of
each author’s works present in
the collection. Philosophical
authors named: Geminus,
Diogenes of Babylonia, [?] ‘‘a
Socratic,’’ [Zeno?] of Tarsus,
[Zeno?] of Citium, Hierocles.
Medical authors named:
Glaucon, Xenophon, Chrysip
pus, Thessalus (?), Erasistratus,
Themison, Harpocration.
Summary numbers state
how many of the mss. were
opisthographs (at least 51 of
the philosophical works,
it appears) and what appear to
be the total number of rolls
in each category: 142 philo
sophical, and 296 (medical, or
perhaps the total collection).
8 Otranto 18 P.
Turner 9

Early fourth

centuryA.D.,

Hermopolis

Magna

About 15

authors or

commentaries

on authors

Five or six works, probably

commentaries, are followed by

several fragmentary names of

authors and then a number

of historical works. The com

mentaries are on Archilochus,

Callimachus, Aeschines,

Demosthenes (two different

ones), and Homer. The frag

mentary names include

Callinichus and Ru[fus?].

Then follow: Herodotus,

Xenophon, Aristotle,

Thucydides, Xenophon again,

and Callinichus.

1. There are numerous problems in reading authors and titles. For the sake of consistency, I follow
   Otranto’s readings, and in the discussion that follows I avoid drawing inferences from names or titles that
   are uncertain.


2. In the listing of what appears to be Homer’sOdyssey, Book 7 may be omitted. If so, it is possible that
   that book was not present in this collection of volumes, or misshelved, or perhaps the compiler of the list
   omitted it by mistake.


3. We cannot tell if ‘‘Selections from the Orators’’ is the title of a specific work or a heading in the list
   similar to the ‘‘dialogues’’ in line 2 of the list of Plato’s works that we looked at above.


4. In the listing of the books of theOdyssey, Books 3 and 4 are listed after Book 24. Because of a lacuna in
   the preceding line, we cannot know if these were second copies of Books 3 and 4, or if the compiler had
   omitted them at their proper place and inserted them only here, at the end. Either explanation implies an
   actual collection of books.


5. Each of the names Crito, Simon, and Cebes is modified by the adjective ‘‘Socratic.’’ It is not clear
   whether these are authors or titles.


6. Puglia 1996, 64-5, suggested that the last lines of the list, which are separated from the works of
   Xenophon by a space and which give not the names of individual works but rather the names of authors
   only (Homer, Menander, etc.), might record not rolls but codices. As Puglia noted, the ‘‘complete extant
   works’’ of an author—the meaning we have tentatively assigned to the Greek‹óÆ å•æßóŒðåôÆØÞ—might
   have been contained conventionally in a set number of codices, one or more depending upon the author.
   While there are problems with this—as Joseph Farrell has pointed out to me, the phrase‹óÆ å•æßóŒðåôÆØÞ
   is certainly not the most obvious way to specify ‘‘codex’’—it should be considered a possible explanation
   of the unusual nature of this list.