more than a century.^61 For our purposes, this library is important above
all because it shows that a coherent collection could continue to exist for
an extended period, well beyond a single person’s lifetime, and that its
essential contents and integrity as a specialized collection might remain
intact throughout that period.
Grenfell and Hunt’s first find (table 10.2, no. 3) contains 15 manu-
scripts. At least six of these, or 40 percent, are written on theversoof
documents,^62 and such recycling of documentary rolls is usually taken as a
sign of an economy-minded collector, one who was trying to save money
by having his copies made on secondhand rather than new papyrus.
63
Strikingly different in this regard is concentration no. 4, the Breccia 1932
find. Here, of fifty-two rolls, only two, both of them books of theIliad,
64
are certainly written on theverso, so this collector was apparently less
concerned with cost. Thus various characteristics can be identified when
we treat papyri neither one at a time noren masse, but rather sorted into
the book collections from which they seem to have come. A closer look at
Grenfell and Hunt’s second find (table 10.3) will illustrate this further.
One notes immediately that this collection is heavy on poetry, espe-
cially but not exclusively lyric. There are at least five different manu-
scripts, by at least four different scribes, of parts of Alcaeus (nos. 1–5).
Whether these combined to form a single and perhaps complete edition
of Alcaeus’s works (which in antiquity were collected in ten books)
we cannot tell, because it is also possible that the collection possessed
duplicate copies of one or more of the books of his poetry.^65 There are
two works,Dithyrambsand perhaps theEncomia, of Bacchylides (nos. 6, 7),
- The collection as we know it was presumably assembled in the first instance by
the philosopher Philodemus. Cavallo 1983, 65, suggested that at least a few books on
Epicureanism were added to the collection even after Philodemus’s death in about 40B.C.
Parsons 1989, 360, expressed doubts about Cavallo’s dating of these later manuscripts,
because Cavallo’s only evidence was paleographical, but in any case the library continued to
exist, and seems to have preserved its essential focus on Epicureanism, until the destruction
of the Villa inA.D. 79.
62.P.Oxy. 984 (Pindar), 918 (Hellenica Oxyrhynchia), 985 (Euripides), 986
(a commentary on Thucydides), 1045 (treatise on literary composition), and 1044 (Plato):
thus both literature and subliterary works. - So Lama 1991, 93 (though noting that there are many variables to consider). Kru ̈ger
1990, 161, provides the statistical norms for papyri from Oxyrhynchus. Of all the papyri
recovered there, 17.9% have, like our six examples, documents on one side and literary or
subliterary works on the other. Thus Grenfell and Hunt’s first find had something more than
twice as many reused documents as Oxyrhynchus papyri in general. It should be noted that,
despite the use of old documents, the texts appear to have been professionally copied,
because stichometric (line) counts appear in the Pindar and Euripides. On the implications
of the presence of such counts, see Montevecchi 1973, 338 9.
64.PSI1185 (Iliad6) and 1188 (Iliad10). The latter has wide margins and handsome
letters, and was no doubt done by a professional scribe. - We have already noted probable duplicates in the lists of papyri, for example, among
the Platonic dialogues (table 10.1, no. 6) and the works of Epicharmus (table 10.1, no. 3). Cf.
also n. 25 above for duplicates in the Villa of the Papyri collection.
Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries 257