PREFACE

Of the five texts comprised in this volume, the four long classical papyri (nos. 841-4) formed part of a large find of literary fragments from about twenty MSS. manuscripts, which was made on Jan. 13, 1906, in circumstances described in the Times of May 24, 1906, and the Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905-6, p. 10. Of the other literary papyri which were discovered at the same time, the portions of the Hypsipyle of Euripides and of a new commentary upon Thucydides Book II will be published in Part VI, which we hope to issue in the summer of 1908. The vellum fragment of a lost gospel (no. 840) was unearthed in a different mound in December, 1905.

In editing the two most important classical texts, the Pindar (841) and the new historian (842), we have enjoyed for the last time the very great privilege of collaborating with Professor F. Blass, whose tragically sudden death occurred shortly after he had completed the revision of the earlier proofs of those two texts, to the reconstruction of which he had so largely contributed. It is impossible for us adequately to acknowledge the debt which our publications of classical texts during the last eleven years owe to the generous and unstinted assistance of that illustrious scholar, whose brilliance of imagination and depth of learning were never more admirably displayed than in the congenial occupation of restoring, elucidating, and identifying literary papyri. His loss is indeed to us irreparable, and will be felt most keenly when we come to deal with the immense number of fragments from the Greek lyric poets found during the last two seasons, since in that department no less than in that of the Attic orators his pre-eminence was conspicuous.

In the reconstruction and interpretation of the new historian we also owe much to the most valuable help of Professors E. Meyer