and interpretation run the risk of reinforcing one another in an editorial feedback loop: this is how I understand the poem leads to this is what I think is missing, which can become this is what the poet must have written before concluding my intuition/analysis of the poem works! No matter how ingenious the scholar and how sensible the suggestion appears, it must still be remembered that the reasoning can be circular and that we are puzzling over something that is not there. Users of papyrological texts must therefore be sensitive to the extent of an editor’s interventions and (un)willingness to presume the poet’s thinking, lest they construct a larger interpretation upon conjectured or uncertain text. But that caveat notwithstanding, reasoned arguments for and against various supplements, as well as informed interpretations of individual fragments, are at the heart of scholarship on lyric: the goal, as always, is to maximize our understanding of poem, poet, corpus, and context. And the fragmentary nature of most texts means that some amount of speculation is unavoidable.
Where a publisher grants the space, alternative versions can be printed in tandem, illustrating the preserved text and acknowledging the possibility of diverging reconstructions: compare the two versions (Sider’s and West’s, respectively) of a passage from P.Oxy. 22.2327 + 59.3965 (the “new” Simonides elegy on Plataea). Although Sider endorses many of West’s supplements, his text makes a point of keeping restoration to a minimum (see, e.g., lines 24–26) (Figures 7.8 and 7.9).
Figure 7.8 Excerpt from the “new” Simonides elegy on Plataea (= P.Oxy. 22.2327 + 59.3965), as conservatively restored by David Sider. (The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire, edited by Deborah Boedeker and David Sider, 2001, 145w from p. 18. By permission of Oxford University Press, USA.)
Figure 7.9 Excerpt from the “new” Simonides elegy on Plataea (= P.Oxy. 22.2327 + 59.3965), as more comprehensively restored by Martin West. (The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire, edited by Deborah Boedeker and David Sider, 2001, 205w from p. 28. By permission of Oxford University Press, USA.)
In P.Köln 11.429 (the so-called “Tithonus” or “Old Age” song of Sappho), similarly, the opening doublet has been variously restored (in bold):
[φέρω τάδε Μοίϲαν ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδεϲ, [λάβοιϲα πάλιν τὰ]ν̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύνναν· [I bear these] lovely gifts of the fragrant-bosomed Muses, girls, [having taken up again the] clear melodious lyre.
Gronewald and Daniel (2004a: 7, printed exempli gratia)
[ὔμμεϲ πεδὰ Μοίϲαν ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδεϲ, [ϲπουδάϲδετε καὶ τὰ]ν̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύνναν· [You for] the fragrant-bosomed Muses’ lovely gifts [be zealous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre.
West (2005: 5); cf. Janko (2017b)
[ὔμμιν φίλα Μοίϲαν ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδεϲ, [πρέπει δὲ λάβην τὰ]ν̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύνναν· [The] lovely gifts of the fragrant-bosomed Muses [are dear to you], girls, [and it is appropriate to take up the] clear melodious lyre.
Di Benedetto (2005: 18)
[νῦν (τ’) ἄδεα Μοίϲαν ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδεϲ, [φίλημμί τε φώνα]ν̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύνναν· “[Now] the fragrant-bosomed Muses’ lovely gifts [are sweet], girls [and I love] the song-loving [voice] of resounding lyres.”
Yatromanolakis (2008: 243), cf. Lidov (2009: 93–94).
While the supplement Μοίσαν is generally accepted, other crucial information (i.e., the verb!) is lacunose (Figure 7.10). The extant text only includes beautiful gifts, a tortoise-shell lyre, several adjectives, and what most scholars agree is a vocative addressing a chorus of young girls. Inasmuch as each reconstruction reflects a particular interpretation, the problem is, at a certain level, intractable: whether the doublet originally contained an exhortation (as West would have it), or a values-statement by the poem’s first-person persona (as elsewhere in Sappho—so Gronewald/Daniel and Yatromanolakis) depends upon individual scholars’ perceptions and projections of Sappho and her work. For a poet whose corpus was said in antiquity to have totaled nine books (AP 7.17; see further Prauscello 2021), even reasonable inferences are based on only the small sample that survives. Such hazards are inherent to papyrological work and the study of lyric. The most recent edition by Neri-Cinti (2017) conservatively declines to supplement the Greek text.
Figure 7.10 P.Köln inv. 21351 fr.a. The last four lines preserve the beginning of the “Tithonus Song” or “Old Age Song” (fr. 58). (© Institut für Altertumskunde an der Universität zu Köln. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
[× ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ‒ ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδ⌊εϲ⌋,
[× ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ‒] ̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν ⌊χελύνναν⌋ ·
(For an up-to-date critical apparatus of this poem see Benelli 2017: 2.268, and for discussion of the interpretive possibilities 2.278–81).
Marginal Notes, Sigla, and Corrections
In addition to the text itself, lyric papyri occasionally contain additional material of practical and exegetical value: critical symbols such as the paragraphus or the diplē; punctuation; diacritical signs (i.e., breathings, accents); marginalia (including corrections or annotations); and metrical, stichometrical, or colometrical marks (Figure 7.11). Some are the work of the original scribe, while others were added later by one or more users. Accents assist in reading, scansion, as well as the analysis of dialect (as in P.Fouad inv. 239, above; see further, Dialect and Meter, below). Critical symbols, by contrast, tend to mark a division of one sort or another: in lyric papyri one finds especially the asterisk (※), paragraphus ( ⸏ ) coronis (⸎, essentially a paragraphus with decorative curlicue), and diplē obelismenē (˒–, or “forked paragraphus”) (Figure 7.12). The coronis and asterisk most commonly mark the end of a poem, but can do so in conjunction both with one another and with other symbols, which are predominately used for metrical divisions (i.e., distinguishing stanzas or triads). Other sigla can indicate textual variants, omissions, or marginal notes, though their purpose is sometimes opaque.
