Minutes of Proceedings. 205 



a considerable portion of the Antiope of Euripides — a play of which 

 we had previously only some lines preserved through ancient quo- 

 tations. There were long passages from the Phado and the Laches 

 of Plato. There was also an imperfect fragment which was recognised 

 as coming from the Xlth Book of the Iliad, differing in several 

 particulars from the received text : a few verses, probably from Hesiod, 

 and some very brief extracts from Epicharmus and Euripides, bearing 

 the names of those writers. There were, besides, one or two par- 

 tially defaced dramatic and elegiac pieces, a prose discourse on good 

 fellowship, and other scraps — one apparently describing the funeral 

 customs of different nations — all these by unknown authors. 



It is, perhaps, natural to estimate at first too highly ancient 

 fragments thus saved from the wreck of so much of the literature 

 of the Greeks. But it must be the impulse of anyone possessed with 

 the true spirit of a scholar, when such relics come into his hands, 

 without too nicely considering their value, to try to ascertain their 

 meaning and trace their origin. This Dr. Mahaffy has done with 

 conscientious diligence, and has effected much towards their correct 

 ■editing and their elucidation, though, from the mutilated state of 

 many of the fragments, not all that he desired. 



These classical remains do not, in my opinion, with one exception 

 — that, namely, of the Antiope — contribute anything important to our 

 knowledge of the ancient texts. We were aware that there were 

 discrepancies in the early copies of Homer, as is shown, for example, 

 by Aristotle's quotation in his Politics of the words Trap yap ifxol 

 6a.vaTo<s, which are not in our MSS. But I think there are internal 

 indications that the passage from Homer in the papyri, which must 

 have been a favourite one with physicians, is either incorrectly quoted 

 from memory, or more probably is a transcription, in which the copyist 

 has interpolated verses of his own. I certainly cannot regard it as 

 affording evidence of a distinct textual tradition.^ As to the passages 

 •of Plato, they are consolatory as showing us how little the text of the 



' Observe eXoiev and eXoLvro at the ends of consecutive lines, which would be 

 impossible, and vorjffeu in the line after 504, where it is plainly out of place. The 

 corresponding line of the second column would also have ended with fvor)(rev, 

 and, therefore, if a copyist had the two columns before him, parahlepsy would 

 explain the error. If some scholar would reconstruct the passage according to the 

 indications of the papyrus, we should see whether it could be made to wear a 

 genuinely Homeric aspect in its new form. 



