PREFACE

collection of papyri, and especially one coming from a new site and abounding in novelties of all kinds. The rapidity of its publication will, we hope, be regarded as some excuse for the shortcomings of this volume.

The texts now published fall into two classes, the literary and the non-literary. The examples of the former are probably a good specimen of what may be expected in future volumes. It is not very likely that we shall find another poem of Sappho, still less that we shall come across another page of the ‘Logia’ A collection of sayings attributed to Jesus.. The chances against any individual discovery of great value are always considerable. But we have no reason for thinking that the surprises to come will be much less exciting than those which have gone before.

In editing the new fragments of Greek classical literature, at once the most interesting and the most difficult part of this volume, we have had the assistance of Professor F. Blass, who visited Oxford last July, and with whom we have since been in frequent correspondence. We tender him here our warmest thanks for his generosity in placing at our disposal his rare combination of profound scholarship, palaeographical related to the study of ancient writing skill, and brilliancy of imagination.

Of the non-literary papyri, which range over the first seven centuries A. D. Anno Domini / of the Christian Era and are of a very miscellaneous character, those of the sixth and seventh centuries have been kept distinct from those belonging to the centuries preceding. Within these groups chronological order has not been observed, but documents have been roughly arranged according to subject. In future volumes we hope to proceed on a more definitely chronological system.

To the hundred and fifty-eight texts here given we have added