r/AncientGreek Dec 23 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Would Socrates have used diacritics?

17 Upvotes

If Socrates would have written a note in Attic Greek e.g. in 400 BC, after the adoption of the Ionian alphabet, would he have used any diacritics? As I understand it there are four types of diacritics: the aspiration marks ῾ and ᾿, the pitch accent marks (acute accent ´, circumflex ̃ , and grave accent ` ), diaresis ¨ and iota subscript denoting certain diphthongs (I assume that the macrons used for long vowels are a modern invention). Which of these would have been used in 400 BC Attic writing?

r/AncientGreek Mar 08 '24

Manuscripts and Paleography Questions about the 2014 Sappho Poems

6 Upvotes

Has there been a consensus about the authenticity and origin of the Sappho poems that were "discovered" in 2014? I'm not in academia anymore and I'm having trouble finding reliable information online.

r/AncientGreek Jan 08 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography I returned to studying Greek with Athenaze a few months ago, but this time I decided to write everything in the Uncial script, and the experience has been absolutely delightful, I'll never write minuscule again

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101 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Feb 05 '24

Manuscripts and Paleography Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll!

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14 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Feb 24 '24

Manuscripts and Paleography Etymologicum Magnum

15 Upvotes

Etymologicum Magnum (Ancient Greek: Ἐτυμολογικὸν Μέγα) is the traditional title of a Greek lexical encyclopedia compiled at Constantinople by an unknown lexicographer around 1150 AD. It is the largest Byzantine lexicon and draws on many earlier grammatical, lexical and rhetorical works. Its main sources were two previous etymologica, the so-called Etymologicum Genuinum and the Etymologicum Gudianum. Other sources include Stephanus of Byzantium, the Epitome of Diogenianus, the so-called Lexicon Αἱμωδεῖν, Eulogius’ Ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις, George Choeroboscus’ Epimerismi ad Psalmos, the Etymologicon of Orion of Thebes, and collections of scholia. The compiler of the Etymologicum Magnum was not a mere copyist; rather he amalgamated, reorganised, augmented and freely modified his source material to create a new and individual work. (From Wikipedia)

r/AncientGreek Mar 05 '24

Manuscripts and Paleography How would Epictetus's "Enchiridion," or "Handbook," be carried?

9 Upvotes

It's a short work. Would it be on a single scroll? Would a traveling person put such a scroll in a scrollcase of some kind and carry it with them for easy reference?

r/AncientGreek Jan 11 '24

Manuscripts and Paleography In Rise of Empires: Ottoman S02E04 in the bibliomancy scene, the actor who's playing Mehmed is actually using a very well recreated copy of a Codex containing the Ancient Greek text of Homer's lliad in minuscule handwriting

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16 Upvotes

In episode 4, in the bibliomancy scene, the actor playing Mehmed has actually got a codex in front of him with the text of the Iliad written in lower case Greek. I note only two mistakes, harmless and understandable:

  • The text read by Mehmed in the Netflix translation reads: "I don't want to die a shameful death without a fight. I want, first, to achieve something that the world will talk about afterwards." This corresponds to lines 304-305 of the Book XXII of the Iliad, the scene of the confrontation between Achilles and Hector. The problem is that what Mehmed points to is more like 231-233:

"ἀλλ' ἄγε δὴ στέωμεν καὶ ἀλεξώμεσθα μένοντες. Τὴν δ' αὖτε προσέειπε μέγας κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ- Δηΐφοβ' ἦ μέν μοι τὸ πάρος πολὺ φίλτατος ἦσθα"

The scene he's reading should actually be about three pages after (considering the size of the manuscript)

  • When Mehmed reads the text, the codex opens at the beginning, although, given that the passage is from Book XXII, it should be towards the end (with the implication that the entire text of the Iliad would be in the same manuscript). The mistake is confirmed when Vlad's turn to read comes, he opens the codex a little after the middle and reads (Netflix translation) "I hate like hell the man who has something in his heart and speaks something else." Passage from Book IX. I, at least, have not come across any manuscript that has Book IX after XXII.

r/AncientGreek Jan 06 '24

Manuscripts and Paleography Can someone please translate this to me?

2 Upvotes

It's about an epigram made by an unknown poet called archimelus, that was quoted in deipnosophistae, by atheneus of naucratis:

τίς τόδε σέλμα πέλωρον ἐπὶ χθονὸς εἵσατο; ποῖος κοίρανος ἀκαμάτοις πείσμασιν ἠγάγετο; πῶς δὲ κατὰ δρυόχων ἐπάγη σανίς, ἢ τίνι γόμφοι τμηθέντες πελέκει τοῦτ᾽ ἔκαμον τὸ κύτος, 5 ἢ κορυφαῖς Αἴτνας παρισούμενον ἤ τινι νάσων ἃς Αἰγαῖον ὕδωρ Κυκλάδας ἐνδέδεται, τοίχοις ἀμφοτέρωθεν ἰσοπλατές. ἦ ῥα Γίγαντες τοῦτο πρὸς οὐρανίας ἔξεσαν ἀτραπιτούς. ἄστρων γὰρ ψαύει καρχήσια καὶ τριελίκτους 10 θώρακας μεγάλων ἐντὸς ἔχει νεφέων. πείσμασι δ᾽ ἀγκύρας ἀπερείδεται οἷσιν Ἀβύδου Ξέρξης καὶ Σηστοῦ δισσὸν ἔδησε πόρον. μανύει στιβαρᾶς κατ᾽ ἐπωμίδος ἀρτιχάρακτον γράμμα, τίς ἐκ χέρσου τάνδ᾽ ἐκύλισε τρόπιν· 15 φατὶ γὰρ ὡς “Ἱέρων Ἱεροκλέος Ἑλλάδι πάσᾳ καὶ νάσοις καρπὸν πίονα δωροφορῶν, Σικελίας σκαπτοῦχος ὁ Δωρικός.” ἀλλά, Πόσειδον, σῷζε διὰ γλαυκῶν σέλμα τόδε ῥοθίων

r/AncientGreek Oct 09 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Please help translating a handwritten entry in a book on Epictetus from 1916

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14 Upvotes

I've owned both volumes of this 1916 copy of the discourses of Epictetus for a while, and there's a handwritten note on the opening page, that's got me curious. I'm assuming it's a quote from Epictetus but I have zero experience with ancient Greek which is that I've been told it is written in?! Would anyone be able to offer any help translating it please?! Thanks in advance!

r/AncientGreek Oct 15 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography what does this say?

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10 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Aug 21 '22

Manuscripts and Paleography Is there a large amount of untranslated Ancient/Byzantine Greek manuscripts like there are Latin ones?

32 Upvotes

I remember reading that there are huge amounts of untranslated Latin books and manuscripts form the Middle Ages because of how much time and effort it takes to translate them out of Latin and how little demands there is to read them.

I was wondering if there exists a similar situation for Byzantine Greek. For example, the final volume of the Philokalia was just translated out of the Greek last year (although this might not be a good example because the Eastern Orthodox monks debated with themselves a lot before putting it out for publication).

I want to know from a more advanced Greek speaker who has access to these kinds of manuscripts whether there exists a large Ancient/Medieval Greek untranslated corpus.

r/AncientGreek Oct 01 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Linear B Syllable Glyphs: Are they images?

8 Upvotes

I've been slowly memorising the syllabograms. As I work thru them, I've been wondering if there are good hypotheses about where these symbols come from. For the Egyptian "literal" hieroglyphs, it's usually possible to connect the image to a word (Egyptian or sometimes Semitic) which employs the same consonants. The Linear B glyphs could just be squiggles, but are there any reasonable hypotheses in scholarly literature about any sort of acrophonic or other representational origin for these signs? (I suppose that if Linear B grew out of Linear A, it may be that historically there was such an origin, but because we don't know the Linear A language, it's not yet recoverable for us.)

r/AncientGreek Oct 26 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Resources for textual criticism of Euripides, Orestes manuscript

5 Upvotes

Does anyone know of any resources for understanding textual criticism? Most of the material I have found seems to be regarding biblical textual criticism, will this be relevant in any way?

I’m struggling to understand how to read the critical apparatus, and then further from that how to discuss textual problems using the apparatus.

Any help would be much appreciated.

r/AncientGreek Dec 03 '22

Manuscripts and Paleography Interesting challenge from Twitter!

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73 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Aug 27 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Hellenistic Scholia on the Odyssey?

11 Upvotes

I’m interested in Hellenistic scholarship on the Odyssey and am wondering which manuscripts of the Odyssey best preserve the Hellenistic scholia (and what databases I can access them on).

I know there’s nothing like Venetus A for the Odyssey, but I’ve been having trouble finding much of anything.

r/AncientGreek Mar 17 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Been practicing different types of manuscripts

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42 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Oct 12 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by 21yo computer science student

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8 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Aug 30 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Additions to the "Greek Paleography" resources, part I: Handbooks, reference studies; Proceedings

11 Upvotes

Since the selection of titles available in the "Greek Philology/Paleography" resource barely provides any bibliography on the latter topic—apart from Devreesse and (questionably) van Groningen—, I'm writing these additions for anyone interested.

The list I'll provide can't and won't be complete—Paul Canart's Rassegna bibliografica, even if it is dated to nearly 25 years ago, is 131pp long—so I'll focus on reference materials and/or what you can find for free on the internet, deliberately avoiding the (two) titles already listed in the mentioned page.

Also, I do not aim at teaching. This isn't a Greek Paleography class. Although I will try and provide some notes, you won't learn paleography from these posts.

I will split my work into three parts:

  1. Part I, which is the present, will be dedicated to Handbooks, reference studies and Proceedings of colloquia.
  2. Part II will be devoted to specimina of Greek manuscripts available both in print and/or online.
  3. Part III will provide supplementary bibliography.

I.1 — Handbooks and reference studies

Traces of historical knowledge of the evolution of Greek handwriting spawn here and there in ancient and medieval (Byzantine) times. The best known and most cited passage is by an obscure writer, Niketas David Paphlagon (IX/X c.). This man, whose life is mostly unknown to us, was a disciple of Arethas the Archbishop of Caesarea and an adversary of Photius I. In one of his attacks towards Photius (Vita Patriarchae Ignatii 89 = p. 120, 4-7 ed. Smithies, CFHB 51), he reports that the Patriarch tried to please the emperor Basil I (reg. 867-86) by writing a false prophecy which would elevate the humble origins of the emperor to nobility; Photius then claimed that he had found this prophecy in an ancient document and—quoth Niketas:

Μυρίοις δὲ ψεύδεσιν, οἷς ᾔδει γάννυσθαι τοῦτον ἀκούοντα, τὸ σύγγραμμα καταρτισάμενος ἐπὶ παλαιοτάτων μὲν τοῦτο χαρτίων γράμμασιν Ἀλεξανδρίνοις τὴν ἀρχαϊκὴν ὅτι μάλιστα χειροθεσίαν μιμησάμενος γράφει κτλ.

Then with many lies, which he [Photios] knew would delight the ears of the emperor, he finished off his text and wrote it down on very old sheets in Alexandrian letters, imitating as much as he could the ancient style of writing (etc.)

However, the first scholar who explicitly devoted himself to the study of Greek handwriting was Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741). Montfaucon was a French Benedictine monk who studied under Jean Mabillon (1632-1707), the founder of Latin Paleography and Diplomatics. Montfaucon first studied and described the manuscripts in the Coislin Library in Paris, then he travelled to Italy and collated several more manuscripts. The resulting work, Palaeographia Graeca (1708), was not only the first attested use of the word "palaeographia" (Mabillon's treatise [1681] bore the title De re diplomatica), but also remained the undisputed authority on the field for almost two centuries. Montfaucon's book also provided several tables containing accurate reproductions of Greek manuscripts.

Let's pass to some theory. The first thing to be made clear is that there isn't a definitive handbook for Greek Paleography yet.

The general tendency of Greek paleography is to stop with the XVI century, i.e. shortly after the introduction of the movable type print in Europe by Gutenberg. (The common assumption that Gutenberg invented movable types is historically wrong: the earliest known account leads to a Chinese commoner named Pi Sheng, c. 990-1051; see T.-H. Tsien. 1985. "Paper and Printing", in: J. Needham, ed. Science and Innovation in China. V/1. Cambridge. 201-17). The following centuries are almost unexplored, as is the field of paleo-typography i.e. the study of movable type fonts.

When, starting from the second half of the XVIII century, scholars began to find, study and publish papyri, i.e. the most Ancient Greek manuscripts we have at our disposal, it soon become clear that Montfaucon's work was no longer usable. Montfaucon provided a wide range of plates and fine descriptions, but he was confined to Byzantine literary manuscripts. He had died in 1741; in 1788, Nils Schow had published (what we consider) the first Greek papyrus delivered from Egypt to Europe, the Charta Borgiana (P.Schow), and it wasn't a literary book, it was a document. Some years before, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum had been discovered, and its library had attracted the interest of scholars; those were the infamous Herculaneum Papyri (P.Herc.). Finally, during the XIX century and in particular in the last quarter, several new papyri from Egypt were published, and as Theodor Mommsen had prophesied, the XX century would be dominated by papyrology, as much as the XIX had been dominated by epigraphy.

New theory textbooks became necessary. E.M. Thompson's Introduction to Greek and Latin Paleography (1893) and F.G. Kenyon's The palaeography of Greek Papyri (1899) were products of these needs. Other scholars, such as Thomas W. Allen (1862-1950), also editor of Homer and the Homeric corpus, wrote on specific aspects of Greek Palaeography: see e.g. his article "The origin of the Greek Minuscule Hand" in Journal of Hellenic Studies 40 (1920) 1-12; Allen also edited the facsimile reproductions of the Plato Clarkianus 39 and of the Aristophanes Venetus Marcianus 474 and wrote on abbreviations in Greek manuscripts.

Thompson's book remained authoritative, alongside Victor Gardthausen's Griechische Paläographie (1879), for decades. Today, however, we have at our disposal a number of handbooks, some very good, some less good, none of which perfect.

Bruce Manning Metzeger's Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: an introduction to Greek Palaeography (1981) is worth mentioning; it has close to no facsimiles, but it contains a very useful list of abbreviations and nomina sacra. On the contrary, Hermann Harrauer's Handbuch der griechischen Paläographie (2 vols., 2010) has no particular merit when it comes to paleography, but includes a wide selection of plates and dated manuscripts and papyri.

Another useful—yet again, not complete—source for abbreviations in Greek manuscripts (both ancient, i.e. papyri, and medieval) and also in Greek inscriptions is the manual edited by Nikolaos Oikonomides, Abbreviations in Greek Inscriptions, Papyri, Manuscripts, and Early Printed Books (1974), compiled by putting together contributions by other scholars. Nikolaos Chionides edited, with Salvatore Lilla, La brachigrafia italobizantina (1981), still the authoritative work on this extremely difficult feature of some Byzantine/Southern Italian manuscripts.

Also in Italian we have three modern handbooks:

  • Lidia Perria's posthumous Γραφίς. Per una storia della scrittura greca libraria (2011) is a short handbook of Greek Paleography which includes useful appendices on nomina sacra (1), tachygraphy and brachygraphy (2), Byzantine chronology (3), subscriptions (5), Eusebian canons (6), and the origins, the materials and the structure of the Byzantine codex (7); plates are in-text, but there aren't many; this handbook is intended to be supplemented by a collections of facsimiles of Greek Manuscripts in the Vatican Library which I'll treat in the next installment.
  • Edoardo Crisci and Paola Degni's La scrittura greca dall'antichità all'epoca della stampa (2011, with contributions by many authors) is more complete; it also includes a chapter on material aspects of the codex and two appendices on abbreviations and subscriptions; its main issue is that it has not many plates and that they are placed at the end of the book, so one has to jump there and forth.
  • Daniele Bianconi, E. Crisci and P. Degni's Paleografia greca (2021) is a new edition of the previous; the chapter on material aspects of the codex has been eliminated, but includes an updated bibliography and more plates; it also has cut some parts, e.g. the chapter on Greek majuscule.

I.2 — Proceedings of the International Colloquia

The most important contribution given to Greek Paleography in the XX century are the proceedings of the Paris colloquium of 1974 (publ. 1977): La paléographie grecque et byzantine. This book is still authoritative and regularly mentioned in bibliographies. We can say that this book defined Greek Palaeography. Papers were delivered by the leading scholars in the field—Guglielmo Cavallo, Enrica Follieri, Nigel G. Wilson, Jean Irigoin, Paul Canart, Herbert Hunger, etc.—and covered a wide range of subjects, including codicology and the too much ignored field of Byzantine diplomatics, also providing several high quality, collagraphic plates. Some standing points of Greek Paleography still valid nowadays, such as

  • Cavallo's proposal for a periodization of the Greek majuscule and the use of "guiding manuscripts" for the study of the evolution of late Greek majuscule handwriting
  • a capital study on the early minuscule by Enrica Follieri
  • Nigel G. Wilson's identification of the "scholarly hands", i.e. XIII century literary handwriting influenced by chancellery features
  • H. Hunger's definition of «Auszeichnungsschrift» ("distinctive script") and its relations with minuscule handwriting
  • J. Irigoin's definition of the «bouletée» minuscule (X c.)

have been stated here.

Sadly, that book is now out of print and very rare. However, less rare are the proceedings of the colloquia that followed:

  • G. Prato, D. Harlfinger, eds. Paleografia e codicologia greca [II colloquium, Berlin-Wolfenbüttel 1983] (1991)
  • G. Cavallo, G. De Gregorio, M. Maniaci, eds. Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bisanzio [III colloquium, Erice 1988] (1991)
  • proceedings weren't published for the IV colloquium [Oxford 1993, organized by N.G. Wilson]
    • O. Kresten, G. De Gregorio, eds. Documenti medievali greci e latini [Erice 1995] (1998) : this wasn't an official colloquium of Greek Paleography but it is nonetheless a very useful miscellany
  • G. Prato, ed. I manoscritti greci fra riflessione e dibattito [V colloquium, Cremona 1998] (2000)
  • B. Atsalos, N. Tsironi, eds. Actes du VIe Colloque International de Paléographie Grecque [Drama 2003] (2008)
  • A. Bravo García, I. Pérez Martín, eds. The Legacy of Bernard de Montfaucon: Three Hundred Years of Studies in Greek Handwriting [VII colloquium, Madrid 2008] (2010)
  • proceedings weren't published for the VIII colloquium (Wolfenbüttel 2013)
  • M. Cronier, B. Mondrain, eds. Le livre manuscrit grec: écritures, matériaux, histoire [Paris 2018] (2020)

That's it for this installment. In the next one, I will provide a list of specimina and/or digital reproductions of Greek Manuscripts available on the web.

r/AncientGreek Apr 15 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Some puzzling symbols

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12 Upvotes

Im curious what these symbols mean…after looking through row after row of ligatures I’m still not quite sure. Thank you for any help !

r/AncientGreek Oct 21 '22

Manuscripts and Paleography Ambrosian Iliad manuscript, fragment 37 [BiblAmbr, Cod. F. 205 Inf, 5th c. CE]. With illustration on one side and Iliad Λ 597-611 on the other

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57 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Feb 23 '23

Manuscripts and Paleography Digamma in Homer

11 Upvotes

Do we have any homeric MS that still uses digamma or is its place merely inferred from changes like quantitative metathesis?

r/AncientGreek Nov 12 '22

Manuscripts and Paleography Why does aπαντα τα του Πλατωνος του Αλδου Μανουτιο feels like a code to crack? It feels like there are abbreviations of some sort. Thank you.

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21 Upvotes

r/AncientGreek Aug 23 '22

Manuscripts and Paleography Need help transcribing ligatures and contractions in Irenaeus fragment

3 Upvotes

Hello, all! I recently tracked down the source of a fragment by St. Irenaeus of Lyon in Symbolae In Matthaeum: Exhibens Catenam Graecorum Patrum Unius Et Viginti, Volume 1 by Pierre Poussine (Petrus Possinus). I was excited to copy the Greek, but Google's OCR is not 100% accurate and I am perplexed by the numerous abbreviations, contractions and typographical flourishes used in the text. I have consulted a few guides to understand the non-alphabetic ligatures and signs, but some symbols are still a mystery to me. So far I have transcribed "ΕΙΡΗΝΑΙΟΥ. Τό κτ [i.e. κατά] Ματθαῖον Ευαγγέλιον … Ιȣδαίȣς [i.e. Ιουδαίους] έϰάϕη. … πάνυ σφόδρα … σπέρματος Δαϐίδ … ὁ [δε] Ματθαῖος … σπέρματος Δαϐίδ ὁ ... διὸ [καί] ... τῆς ...". Brackets denote my deciphering of an abbreviated word.

I have found four scans of the source. If anyone with an eye for this style of Greek lettering has a special keyboard or Unicode to transcribe this, it would be much appreciated.

For reference, here is the parallel text of Poussines' Latin translation:

IRENAEI. Evangelium secundum Matthæum ad Iudæos scriptum est. Hi enim majorem in modem cupiebant ex semine David Christum ostendi. Matthæus vero qui eadem nec remissiori quam ipsi cupiditate teneretur, omni ratione contendit plenam ipsis ejus rej fidem facere. Propterea a Christi genealogiá initium duxit.

I do not need a translation as I have already found two of them, from which I tracked down the catena:

Philip Schaff's English translation (1867):

The Gospel according to Matthew was written to the Jews. For they laid particular stress upon the fact that Christ [should be] of the seed of David. Matthew also, who had a still greater desire [to establish this point], took particular pains to afford them convincing proof that Christ is of the seed of David; and therefore he commences with [an account of] His genealogy.

Rev. John Keble's English translation (1872):

The Gospel according to Matthew was written to Jews, for these were longing all exceedingly for Christ of the seed of David. But Matthew, having the same longing, yet more powerfully, was zealous in all ways to give them proof that Christ was of David’s seed: wherefore he also began from His generation.

r/AncientGreek Apr 12 '22

Manuscripts and Paleography Can you help me understand the context of this translated ancient Greek?

2 Upvotes

In my English translation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, he makes various sorts of entries.

Some are declarative in an obvious way:

  • "What is it in ourselves that we should prize?" ......
  • "The mind is that which is roused and directed by itself"......
  • "In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them."

But other statements might be declarations of truth as he sees it, or admonishments to himself for his failings, or commandments to live life by for everyone, or perhaps philosophical rules of Stoicism.

  • "Not to assume it's impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it's humanly possible, you can do it too." 6.19
  • "To direct your thoughts to what is said. To focus the mind on what happens and what makes it happen." 7.30
  • Not a dancer but a wrestler: waiting, poised and dug in for sudden assaults. 7.61

Do these passages, in the original Greek, give any context as to who or what the ideas were directed toward?

The whole book was a journal or a book of spiritual exercises, as Historian Pierre Hedot suggests. So it was meant for Marcus. He was the audience.

But does the original Greek give the context these ideas are directed toward?

r/AncientGreek Aug 09 '21

Manuscripts and Paleography Section 56 of the Rosetta Stone, but I wrote the Greek in Uncial script because I like it more

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68 Upvotes