Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Volume 53 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt: ... manuscripts, I refer to Orib. A as Orib. Paris, and to Orib. C as Orib. Cantab. We may now consider the text of the papyrus, which will be sometimes cited as PMich. It was not a fortunate chance which presented us with this part of Dioscurides' work rather than another. For one thing, all of our text is concerned with a single item of the pharmacopoeia, namely, the preparation and medicinal properties of fats. Hence, since the subject does not change within the limits of the papyrus, it is not possible, strictly speaking, to determine whether the material of the roll was alphabetically arranged or not. Its date, however, is earlier than Wellmann placed the making of the alphabetic recension, and the differences which appear between the papyrus and Oribasius' excerpts argue against a close relation between them. Again, because the materials discussed in the papyrus are of animal origin, they do not appear in the Vienna manuscripts C and N, which are herbals. Consequently, among the sources quoted by Wellmann, only the excerpts of Oribasius enable us to compare our text with the alphabetic recension, and unfortunately they cover only a small part (Col. 2, 1-17, Col. 3, 54-68). Once more, the best manuscript of the first recension, P, and its copy, V, do not contain this part of Dioscurides; P does not begin until some six chapters farther on. Thus the field of comparison is limited to FHA (i.e. the Q group) Di, E, Dl, and Oribasius. As is to be expected in a papyrus of this period, the text has many readings peculiar to itself. I have counted fiftysix cases, of which two are not beyond doubt. In one (Col. 2, 83) the not very safe witness of the Latin version may indicate an original agreeing with the papyrus; in the other (Col. 3, 8) it is not certain that t...