The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part 68

steeply below the line. The rounded letters are circular, becoming closely written and vertically compressed toward ends of lines in order to leave an even right-hand margin: some line-ends show more oval forms and tiny omicrons. α at beginning of words is frequently enlarged, with a well-developed loop connecting the left down-strokes and the cross-strokes. The right-hand oblique of δ and λ projects above the apex. Mid-stroke of ε extends beyond the opening; sometimes it makes contact with the inside of the bowl and sometimes stands clear of the left-hand arc. θ: the mid-stroke never significantly exceeds the sides. η has a high cross-bar, while the right side of π is markedly curved. There is a variety of delicately placed decorative curls, hooks, blobs, half-serifs and a few full serifs. No clear shading.

There are no lectional signs, but some small spaces are found between words: cf. i 3 before "and," i 12 before "the," i 14 before and after "sailed well" and ii 12 before "ap[." Col. i 3, 4 and 14 have small line-fillers and above the heading in i 19 are some decorative strokes. A correction has been made supralinearly in i 1 and a cancellation in ii 8 is marked by dots above the letters. It is not possible to distinguish the hand of the corrections from that of the text. Iota adscript occurs in i 4, but is not used in i 3 and 16, and there are some itacistic writings spellings reflecting the phonetic shift of iota, eta, and epsilon to 'ee' (ει instead of ι). Elision is employed without indication in i 1, ii 8 and 13. In the first two cases, it has caused a problem in copying.

The columns had at least 21 lines (inferred from the fact that there must have been several lines of the following hypothesis in col. i before ii 1). The lines in col. i extended to at least 42 letters and probably contained more. Those of col. ii contained approximately 55–70 letters if the text here closely replicated that of P. Mich. 6222A, and if that text has been correctly restored by its editor at approximately 32 letters per line (see on col. ii). The surviving upper margin of 4 cm shows the column number 38 above the first column. We can deduce from this that the part of the roll preceding this column must have been around 7.5 meters, assuming a column width of approximately 20 cm (18 cm as reconstructed + 2 cm intercolumnar space × 37).

The text does not exhibit the type of headings usually found in the Euripidean hypotheses (see on i 19), while P. Mich. inv. 6222A preserves no headings. It could be one of three types: (i) Euripidean hypotheses; (ii) mixed hypotheses; (iii) mythographical prose stories.

(i) Euripidean hypotheses. The two stories strongly resemble the Euripidean hypotheses in style and wording and they are more extensive than those on the same characters in the other mythographical accounts. Second, we know that Euripides wrote plays on Theseus (cf. below) and Hippolytus. The title at i 19 (apparently a heading introducing a story that continues in col. ii, rather than an end-title of the text in col. i) could be restored as "Hippolytus First of Euripides" (see note). If correct, this would imply that the preceding story summarized a play by some other dramatist, making it unlikely that both hypotheses concerned Euripidean plays. This might point to:

(ii) mixed hypotheses. The first story could be a hypothesis of Sophocles’ Theseus (cf. below) followed by a hypothesis of Euripides’ Hippolytus. An argument against this option is the fact that we do not have other examples of such mixed collections, while there are many papyri with Euripidean hypotheses, e.g. XXVII 2455, 2457, LII 3650–3652, LX