Homer, Iliad XIII 512 - 27 and 545 - 60

Abstract

The thirteenth book of the Iliad — the battle before the ships — is fairly well represented among surviving Homer fragments, and Pack takes notice of four other papyrus texts containing some or all of the same lines: Pack² 870 (P.Morgan, collated in Sitzb.Berl.Akad. 1912, pp. 1198–1219), a codex of the fourth century; 899 (P.Lond.Lit. 22), a roll of the first century; 904 (PSI XIII 1298), a codex of the fifth or sixth century; and 912 (W. Schubart, Einführung in die Papyruskunde, Berlin 1918, p. 507 and plate I), a roll of the first century. H.J. Mette’s notices (Lustrum 19, 1976, 5–64) yield one further papyrus text of some of the same lines: P.Berl.inv. 21151, a fragment from a codex of the fifth century, published by H. Maehler, Mitteil. aus der âgypt. Samml. Berlin 8 (1975) 381. This portion of the thirteenth book is quite free of textual problems, and the papyrus texts seldom support one another in their few insignificant deviations from the medieval tradition. A collation of the text of this Washington University fragment against these other papyrus texts and against the standard editions uncovers no discrepancy between the text tradition of the papyri and that of the manuscripts.