DOI Artikel:
Kenyon, Frederic George: Progress of Egyptology: graeco-roman Egypt, 1902-1903
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12052#0052
G-RAECO-BOMAN EGYPT.
39
the feelings of Asiatic Greeks at the beginning of the fourth century, and
little literary value except as a curiosity. The style of Timotheus is a
violation of all the traditions of classical repose, dignity, and self-restraint.
It is full of forced metaphors, of phrases so unnatural that Wilamowitz
has rightly judged it impossible to translate them into a modern language,
and has therefore substituted, as a much-needed aid to the student
approaching the poem for the first time, a paraphrase in Greek prose after
the manner of an ancient scholiast. It is fair to remember that we have
to do with a libretto, of which the music is lost; but much of the best lyric
poetry of Greece was written for music, and the want of taste shown by
Timotheus in his verse augurs ill for the character of his music.
Whatever may be thought, however, of the merits of Timotheus, there
can be no two opinions as to those of his first editor. The difficulties of
decipherment were not great, and in dealing with them Prof, von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff had the skilled assistance of Dr. Schubart; but
the difficulties of arrangement (the MS. being written, like other early
MSS., without division of verses), of restoration, of interpretation, of
commentary were very considerable, and these could not have been dealt
with better than they have been in the present case. There is probably
no scholar in Europe better fitted for the precise task which has fallen
into his hands ; and this fact (together with the difficulty of the subject
matter) perhaps explains why so little criticism has yet been published
with regard to the new discovery.
No other literary text of much importance has been published within
the year. The Tebtunis volume, to be mentioned below, contains only
small fragments of two copies of an anthology of prose and verse, and of a
collection of epigrams, and a copy of Homer, II. ii. 95-115, 121-157, 172-
187, 197-210, of the second century B.C., containing several Aristarchean
symbols, of which it is the earliest example. An earlier publication (for
a reference to which I am indebted to Cronert's bibliography in the
Archiv) is one by W. Kroll, consisting of the beginnings of the first
fifteen lines of a cosmogonical epic, from a fourth century papyrus at
Berlin.2 Two small prose fragments, one from the British Museum
(Pap. 184) and the other from the Bodleian (MS. gr. class, f. 1 (P)), are
printed from the transcripts of others by Cronert in his bibliography;s
but they are not of much importance. Dr. E. J. Goodspeed, of Chicago
University, has published a second century text of Homer, Od. xv. 216-
231, 239-253, with Aristarchean symbols, and a very small medical
fragment of similar date.* And Dr. Wessely has produced, from the stores
of the Bainer collection, about seven lines of a historical work describing
39
the feelings of Asiatic Greeks at the beginning of the fourth century, and
little literary value except as a curiosity. The style of Timotheus is a
violation of all the traditions of classical repose, dignity, and self-restraint.
It is full of forced metaphors, of phrases so unnatural that Wilamowitz
has rightly judged it impossible to translate them into a modern language,
and has therefore substituted, as a much-needed aid to the student
approaching the poem for the first time, a paraphrase in Greek prose after
the manner of an ancient scholiast. It is fair to remember that we have
to do with a libretto, of which the music is lost; but much of the best lyric
poetry of Greece was written for music, and the want of taste shown by
Timotheus in his verse augurs ill for the character of his music.
Whatever may be thought, however, of the merits of Timotheus, there
can be no two opinions as to those of his first editor. The difficulties of
decipherment were not great, and in dealing with them Prof, von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff had the skilled assistance of Dr. Schubart; but
the difficulties of arrangement (the MS. being written, like other early
MSS., without division of verses), of restoration, of interpretation, of
commentary were very considerable, and these could not have been dealt
with better than they have been in the present case. There is probably
no scholar in Europe better fitted for the precise task which has fallen
into his hands ; and this fact (together with the difficulty of the subject
matter) perhaps explains why so little criticism has yet been published
with regard to the new discovery.
No other literary text of much importance has been published within
the year. The Tebtunis volume, to be mentioned below, contains only
small fragments of two copies of an anthology of prose and verse, and of a
collection of epigrams, and a copy of Homer, II. ii. 95-115, 121-157, 172-
187, 197-210, of the second century B.C., containing several Aristarchean
symbols, of which it is the earliest example. An earlier publication (for
a reference to which I am indebted to Cronert's bibliography in the
Archiv) is one by W. Kroll, consisting of the beginnings of the first
fifteen lines of a cosmogonical epic, from a fourth century papyrus at
Berlin.2 Two small prose fragments, one from the British Museum
(Pap. 184) and the other from the Bodleian (MS. gr. class, f. 1 (P)), are
printed from the transcripts of others by Cronert in his bibliography;s
but they are not of much importance. Dr. E. J. Goodspeed, of Chicago
University, has published a second century text of Homer, Od. xv. 216-
231, 239-253, with Aristarchean symbols, and a very small medical
fragment of similar date.* And Dr. Wessely has produced, from the stores
of the Bainer collection, about seven lines of a historical work describing