Book Description

P.CtYBR inv. 4000, owned by Yale University's Beinecke Library, is a fragmentary papyrus codex that comprises parts of six bifolia (24 pages) and contains Greek elegiac epigrams. Of the approximately 60 epigrams that are partially extant, two were previously known from the Greek Anthology, but the others survive nowhere else and appear here for the first time in a modern edition. In spite of the fact that there is no explicit declaration of authorship in the remaining portions of the codex, all signs point to a single author that can be identified with confidence as Palladas of Alexandria, who is known from approximately 150 epigrams preserved in the Greek Anthology. Because both the manuscript itself and the poetry that it contains are demonstrably from the early fourth century A.D., it is now virtually certain that this poet was active, not around the turn of the fifth century, as has often been assumed in modern scholarship, but almost a hundred years earlier. Palladas has a distinctive poetic voice - highly personal and topical, with a tendency towards bitterly pessimistic observation on the world around him. Despite the lacunose state of the codex, these traits are clearly on display in the new poems. Among other points of interest, there is a satire of the victory titles claimed by the emperors Diocletian and Galerius, a lament on the destruction of Alexandria, a curious mention of the sufferings of the Egyptian goddess Triphis, and lampoons of men from Hermopolis. This editio princeps contains a substantial introduction (codicological reconstruction, paleography, orthography, contents, metrics, authorship and date, and historical notes), diplomatic transcription and edited Greek text on facing pages, commentary, indexes, and photographic plates. It will be of particular interest to papyrologists, specialists in Greek epigram, and scholars of late antique history and literature.