The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part VI

PREFACE

Of the papyri included in this volume, the two long classical texts containing the Hypsipyle of Euripides (852) and the new commentary on Thucydides II (853) formed part of the large find of literary MSS. which was made on Jan. 13, 1906, in the circumstances described in the Times of May 14, 1906, and the Archæological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund for 1905–6, pp. 8–10. The other papyri were chiefly discovered during the same season, but some were found in 1897, 1903–4, or 1904–5; the non-literary documents, which largely belong to the first three centuries, come with a few exceptions from the find of 1906.

In editing the new classical fragments we have for the first time been without the support of our colleague, Professor B. P. Grenfell, to whose previous collaborations we have owed so much; but for our use we have been fortunate in obtaining the generous aid of several scholars. Prof. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and the late Professor Blass, who have respectively undertaken the restoration of those parts of the Hypsipyle and the Thucydides commentary where the text was most lacunose, have also revised our copies in proof, and contributed numerous suggestions. To these scholars in particular, and to our other individual supporters for assistance acknowledged in connexion with several papyri, we here tender our sincerest thanks. Finally, we would express our obligations to the Controller and Proof-reader of the University Press, whose care in this book as in its predecessors has earned far more thanks than our space.

The next volume of the Graeco-Roman branch will form Vol. VII of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, to be issued in the course of 1909. We expect to include in it a detailed description of the site of our excavations with a plan, and an account of some general information which the papyri have so far yielded on banking, the Oxyrhynchite nome, and Oxyrhynchus.

BERNARD P. GRENFELL.
ARTHUR S. HUNT.

Queen’s College, Oxford,
September, 1908.

The text in this preface varies slightly from the previous page, possibly representing a corrected or alternative draft.