DCLP

Introduction

Two Hippocratic aphorisms (Cairo, Egyptian Museum CG 10244). Papyrus fragment (4,5x8,5cm) from Bacchias (= Kôm Umm el' Atl) in the Fayum. It is found on the verso of a hardly readable documentary text with parts of 11 lines written in a fine cursive and contains the beginnings of the first twelve lines of one column (about a third of the original column length). Furthermore, it's not clear, if the piece once belonged to a roll which comprised all Hippocratic aphorisms, if it was an occasional text for academic use or if it may have belonged to a collection of miscellanea. The remains of the left margin amount to circa 0,8 cm, while the upper margin is partly preserved and amounts to approximately 2cm, but there is no indication of the title or the author as could be expected at the beginning of a work. In the text iota mutum is not indicated and in l. 7 Manetti supposes a space might be located at the end of the lacuna to indicate the beginning of the second aphorism, because the line supplied with the text from the MSS is very short. The Greek exhibits mostly a ionic dialect (e.g. l. 10 γεινο- ; l. 12 ξυμφέρει), but there is also an Atticism to be found (l. 9 τοῖς). As regards content, the papyrus preserves some parts of the first and the beginning of the second Hippocratic aphorism. Both belong to the first book of aphorisms and Manetti notes that they were possibly cited outside a medical context, since the beginning of a work is usually best known. The piece is written by an inaccurate hand with heavy lettering in an informal, right-slanting majuscule. It migt be compared to P. Ryl. 1 53 and P. Bodmer 4 according to Seider, Pal. gr. Pap., II, 50 & 51. Therefore, the papyrus can be dated to the third century AD.

(This papyrus has been digitally edited by Marcel Moser as part of the Project "DIGMEDTEXT - Online Humanities Scholarship: A Digital Medical Library based on Ancient Texts" (ERC-AdG-2013, Grant Agreement no. 339828) funded by the European Research Council at the University of Parma (Principal Investigator: Prof. Isabella Andorlini). The digital edition is mostly based on the previous editions (Grenfell-Hunt, P. Fay. 204 descr. (1900); Calderini, Studia della scuola papirologica 1 (1915), pp. 3-4; Capasso, Rudiae 9 (1997), pp. 90-94; Manetti, CPF 1.2.1 18 2 (2008), pp. 82-84))))

Apparatus

Notes

• 6.

  Only MS V shares the plural form τοὺς νοσέοντας with the papyrus, while the rest of the tradition conveys τὸν νοσέοντα.

• 9.

  The rest of the tradition exhibits the ionic form τοῖσι. Because of the length of the following lacuna, it seems also very unlikely that the succeeding forms were inonic in the papyrus.