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COLUMNAR TRANSLATION: AN ANCIENT INTERPRETIVE TOOL THAT THE ROMANS GAVE THE GREEKS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Eleanor Dickey
Eleanor Dickey*
Affiliation:
University of Reading
*
E.Dickey@reading.ac.uk
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Extract

Among the more peculiar literary papyri uncovered in the past century are numerous bilingual texts of Virgil and Cicero, with the Latin original and a Greek translation arranged in distinctive narrow columns. These materials, variously classified as texts with translations or as glossaries, were evidently used by Greek-speaking students when they first started to read Latin literature. They thus provide a unique window into the experience of the first of many groups of non-native Latin speakers to struggle with reading the classics of Latin literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 807 - 821
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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References

1 I am grateful to Roger Bagnall, Daniela Colomo, Martin West, Philomen Probert, Rolando Ferri and CQ's anonymous but extremely knowledgeable reader for their help with this project. I am also grateful to Serena Ammirati and Marco Fressura for sharing their unpublished work on the layout of bilingual texts with me (S. Ammirati and M. Fressura, ‘Towards a typology of ancient bilingual glossaries: palaeography, bibliology, and codicology’, forthcoming in T. Derda, J. Urbanik, A. Łajtar and G. Ochała, Proceedings of the XXVII International Congress of Papyrology [Warsaw]); they independently make some of the points that are made below, as well as discussing other aspects of layout (e.g. indentation, use of paragraphoi).

2 See e.g. Gaebel, R.E., ‘The Greek word-lists to Vergil and Cicero’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 52 (1970), 284–325 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scappaticcio, M.C., Papyri Vergilianae: l'apporto della papirologia alla storia della tradizione virgiliana (I–VI d.C.) (Liège, 2013)Google Scholar; Rochette, B., ‘Les traductions grecques de l'Énéide sur papyrus: une contribution à l’étude du bilinguisme gréco-romain au Bas-Empire’, Les Études Classiques 58 (1990), 333–46Google Scholar; id., Le latin dans le monde grec (Brussels, 1997)Google Scholar, esp. 302–15; Fressura, M., ‘Tipologie del glossario virgiliano’, in Marganne, M.-H. and Rochette, B. (edd.), Bilinguisme et digraphisme dans le monde gréco-romain: l'apport des papyrus latins (Liège, 2013), 71–116 Google Scholar; Axer, J., ‘Reedition of the Viennese fragments of Cicero, In Catilinam I’, in Festschrift zum 100-jährigen Bestehen der Papyrussammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer (Vienna, 1983), 468–82Google Scholar; Maehler, H., ‘Zweisprachiger Aeneis-codex’, in Bingen, J. and Nachtergael, G. (edd.), Actes du XVe congrès international de papyrologie II: Papyrus inédits (Brussels, 1979), 18–41 Google Scholar; Reichmann, V., Römische Literatur in griechischer Übersetzung (Leipzig, 1943), 28–57 Google Scholar.

3 How much narrower this is than the columns of monolingual papyri depends on the genre. Columnar papyri of Virgil take on average four to five lines to cover one hexameter (see the editions in Scappaticcio [n. 2]), and therefore the average line length is less than one-quarter of the line length in a monolingual text of Virgil. But with Cicero the difference is less great, because while the columns in bilingual papyri are the same width for any genre, columns in monolingual papyri are narrower for prose than for hexameters: according to Johnson, W.A., Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto, 2004)Google Scholar, 101 and 116, the usual width of a column of hexameter verse is 10.4–13.6 cm, whereas that for a column of prose is 4.3–7.5 cm. Nevertheless, the columns in bilingual texts of Cicero are still narrower than those in monolingual texts, for the average width of a bilingual column of Cicero ranges from 3 to 4.7 cm (according to D. Internullo, ‘Cicerone latinogreco: corpus dei papiri bilingui delle Catilinarie di Cicerone’, Papyrologica Lupiensia 20–21 [2011–12], 25–150, at 38, 80, 95 and 108, the average column width is 3 cm in P.Rain.Cent. 163, 3.5 cm in P.Ryl. 1.61, 4 cm in PSI Congr.XXI 2 and 4.7 cm in P.Vindob. L 127).

4 See for example the plates in Turner, E. and Parsons, P., Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World (London, 1987 2)Google Scholar, with discussion on pp. 8–12 of such aids as do occur; for diacritics see also e.g. Nodar, A., ‘Ancient Homeric scholarship and the medieval tradition: evidence from the diacritics in the papyri’, in Palme, B. (ed.), Akten des 23. internationalen Papyrologenkongresses (Vienna, 2007), 469–81Google Scholar; for word dividers also e.g. E. Dickey, ‘Word division in bilingual texts', in G.N. Macedo and M.C. Scappaticcio (edd.), Signes dans les textes et textes sur les signes (Liège, forthcoming).

5 Cf. the discussion by Hock, R.F. and O'Neil, E.N., The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Classroom Exercises (Leiden, 2002), 7–8 Google Scholar, of P.Bour. 1.141–70 (= M–P 3 2643, LDAB 2744), a fourth-century monolingual Greek papyrus that uses columnar format to present reading material for children first progressing from isolated words to connected sentences, and then moves to longer lines as the student advances. The layout of this papyrus seems to be unique; nevertheless, its existence demonstrates that someone found the columnar layout useful for children first learning to read.

6 The line length would have been greater in antiquity, for Goethe's verses are shorter than those of the hexameter poetry typically read by ancient language learners (Quintilian, Inst. 1.8.5 tells us that Latin speakers started their Greek reading with Homer, and the papyri tell us that Greek speakers learning Latin started with Virgil and moved on to Terence, Juvenal and Seneca: see Dickey, E., The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana [Cambridge, 2012–15], 1.7–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

7 For the origins and development of the colloquia, which are complex, see the introduction to Dickey (n. 6). Quotations from the colloquia and references to them are hereafter given according to that edition; if the letter at the end is subtracted, the same references can be used to find the passage concerned in the appendix of Goetz's edition ( Goetz, G., Hermeneumata pseudodositheana; vol. 3 of Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum [Leipzig, 1892]Google Scholar). In most medieval copies of the colloquia the Greek occupies the left-hand column and the Latin the right, but I have reversed that order here because the papyrus evidence suggests that the ancient copies normally had the Latin on the left and the Greek on the right.

8 P.Rain.Cent. 163, edited by Internullo (n. 3), 37–79 (= M–P 3 2922, LDAB 554), fol. Iv, lines 33–9; the lines quoted here come from section 17 of the speech.

9 For examples see Nougayrol, J., Laroche, E., Virolleaud, C. and Schaeffer, C.F.A., Ugaritica V (Paris, 1968), 230–49Google Scholar; for discussion see Civil, M., ‘Ancient Mesopotamian lexicography’, in Sasson, J.M. (ed. in chief), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (New York, 2000), 4.2305–14Google Scholar.

10 For papyrological abbreviations see the Checklist at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/papyrus/texts/clist.html; further information on each text listed here can be found in the databases referred to (M–P 3 = Mertens–Pack database, http://promethee.philo.ulg.ac.be/cedopal/indexsimple.asp; LDAB = Leuven Database of Ancient Books, http://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/).

11 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 5; M–P 3 2940; LDAB 4146.

12 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 4; M–P 3 2939.1; LDAB 4149.

13 Edited by Scappaticcio, M.C., ‘Appunti per una riedizione dei frammenti del palinsesto Virgiliano dell'Ambrosiana’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung 55 (2009), 96–120 Google Scholar, and Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 8; M–P 3 2943; LDAB 4156.

14 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 15; M–P 3 2948; LDAB 4154.

15 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 9; Fressura, M., ‘Revisione di POxy VIII 1099 e POxy L 3553’, Studi di Egittologia e di Papirologia 6 (2009), 43–71 Google Scholar; M–P 3 2943.1; LDAB 4160.

16 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 20; M–P 3 2951; LDAB 4161.

17 Husselman, E.M., ‘A palimpsest fragment from Egypt’, in Studi in onore di Aristide Calderini e Roberto Paribeni (Milan, 1957), 2.453–9Google Scholar; Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 33; M–P 3 2936; LDAB 4159.

18 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 6; M–P 3 2939; LDAB 4166. This papyrus also contains a glossary to portions of Book 4 (i.e. selected words only, but in the inflected forms and in the order that they appear in Virgil's text); evidently the students for whom the papyrus was designed were supposed to be able to progress from using a full translation to using such a glossary by the time they got to Book 4. Fressura (n. 2), 86 has argued that this shift at the start of Book 4 was standard in the teaching of Virgil to Greek speakers.

19 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 11; M. Fressura, ‘PVindob L 62 identificato’, ZPE 168 (2009), 83–96; M–P 3 2944.1; LDAB 6194.

20 Edited by Internullo (n. 3), no. I; M–P 3 2922; LDAB 554.

21 Edited by Internullo (n. 3), no. IV; M–P 3 2921.01; LDAB 556.

22 Edited by Internullo (n. 3), no. II; M–P3 2923; LDAB 4135.

23 Edited by Internullo (n. 3), no. III; M–P3 2923.1; LDAB 559.

24 Edited as continuous text by Kramer, J., Glossaria bilinguia altera (Munich, 2001)Google Scholar, no. 9; new edition in which the material is argued to be less coherent in Dickey (n. 6) vol. 2 section 4.2; M–P 3 3004.02; LDAB 8897.

25 Edited by Dickey, E. and Ferri, R., ‘A new edition of the Colloquium Harleianum fragment in P.Prag. 2.118’, ZPE 180 (2012), 127–32Google Scholar; M–P 3 3004.22; LDAB 6007.

26 CPF 1.2.2 21 116 T & 119 T; M–P 3 1251.02; LDAB 2528.

27 Edited by Kramer (n. 24), no. 10; M–P 3 52; LDAB 138.

28 Edited by Kramer, J., Glossaria bilinguia in papyris et membranis reperta (Bonn, 1983)Google Scholar, no. 16; M–P 3 2117; LDAB 5498.

29 Lowe, E.A., Codices Latini Antiquiores (Oxford, 1934–71)Google Scholar = LDAB 2881.

30 Four other papyri probably belong in this section but are too fragmentary for their format to be ascertained with certainty: P.Oxy. XXXIII.2660 (= Kramer [n. 28], no. 6; M–P 3 2134.1; LDAB 4497; first or second century a.d.), P.Oxy. XLVI.3315 (= Kramer [n. 28], no. 8; M–P 3 3004.2; LDAB 4498; first or second century a.d.), P.Sorb. I.8 (= Kramer [n. 28], no. 3; M–P 3 3008; LDAB 5439; third century a.d.), and P.Vindob. inv. L 150 (= Kramer [n. 24], no. 5; M–P 3 2134.6; LDAB 6053; fifth century a.d.).

31 Edited by Kramer (n. 24), no. 7; M–P 3 2134.7; LDAB 4812.

32 Edited by Kramer (n. 28), no. 9; M–P 3 3004; LDAB 4741.

33 M–P 3 2685.1; LDAB 5062.

34 Edited by Kramer (n. 28), no. 7; M–P 3 2134.2; LDAB 5382.

35 Edited by Kramer (n. 28), no. 5; M–P 3 2134.3; LDAB 4675.

36 M–P 3 3004.21; LDAB 5755.

37 M–P 3 2134.61; LDAB 9218.

38 M–P 3 2134.71; LDAB 9217.

39 M–P 3 3007; LDAB 5631.

40 Edited by Kramer (n. 28), no. 11; M–P 3 2013.1; LDAB 7680.

41 Edited by Kramer (n. 28), no. 13; M–P 3 3005; LDAB 5678.

42 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 13; M–P 3 2946; LDAB 4155.

43 Edited by Scappaticcio (n. 2), no. 19; Fressura (n. 15); M–P 3 2950; LDAB 4162.

44 Edited by Kramer (n. 28), no. 4; M–P 3 2134.4; LDAB 6279.

45 M–P 3 2917; LDAB 134.

46 Edited by Kramer, J., Vulgärlateinische Alltagsdokumente auf Papyri, Ostraka, Täfelchen und Inschriften (Berlin, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, no. 10; M–P 3 172; LDAB 434.

47 Edited by Kramer (n. 28), no. 1; M–P 3 2134.5; LDAB 6764.

48 Edited by Dickey, E. and Ferri, R., ‘A new edition of the Latin–Greek glossary on P.Sorb. inv. 2069 (verso)’, ZPE 175 (2010), 177–87Google Scholar; M–P 3 3006; LDAB 5438.

49 See Dickey, E., ‘The creation of Latin teaching materials in antiquity: a re-interpretation of P.Sorb. inv. 2069’, ZPE 175 (2010), 188–208 Google Scholar.

50 Edited by Wouters, A., The Chester Beatty Codex AC 1499: A Graeco-Latin Lexicon on the Pauline Epistles and a Greek Grammar (Leuven 1988), 115–47Google Scholar for the glossary; M–P 3 2161.1; LDAB 3030.

51 Edited by Dickey, E., ‘How Coptic speakers learned Latin? A reconsideration of P.Berol. inv. 10582’, ZPE 193 (2015), 65–77 Google Scholar.

52 For further information on this papyrus and its layout see Dickey (n. 51).

53 As this is a large group I give only the LDAB numbers, in chronological order from third/second century b.c. to sixth century a.d.: LDAB 2344, 7028, 1330, 1460, 9945, 1566, 1634, 1640, 1659, 1712, 1729, 1854, 4558, 4560, 4806, 1674, 1817, 1830, 1841, 5091, 1948, 1969, 1987, 2016, 2022, 2023, 109068, 2060, 2063, 1689, 2118, 10228, 2208, 6322. A number of these are laid out in columns in modern editions, but I have verified the original format from photographs.

54 Henrichs, A., ‘Scholia minora zu Homer III’, ZPE 8 (1971), 1–12 Google Scholar, no. 9 (= M–P 3 1209.5, LDAB 1456, first or second century a.d.); Henrichs, A., ‘Scholia minora zu Homer II’, ZPE 7 (1971), 229–60Google Scholar, no. 4 (M–P 3 1166, LDAB 1516, second century a.d.); P.Oslo II.12 (M–P 3 1160, LDAB 1669, second century a.d.).

55 Gallazzi, C., ‘Glossario a Homerus, Odyssea I 46–53’, ZPE 45 (1982), 41–6Google Scholar (= M–P 3 1207.1, LDAB 1390, first century a.d.) and PapCongr. XX p. 285 no. 3 (M–P 3 1163.01, LDAB 2252, seventh century a.d.). The format of the second of these is not quite certain; it looks columnar to me from the photograph, but only three lines are well preserved, and traces of a fourth have led the editor to believe that it did not line up with the other three, making the glossary non-columnar.

56 The basis of this statement is a search (on 31 January 2013) of the Leuven database for papyri containing both Greek and Coptic or Demotic, followed by inspection of editions of all the resulting papyri dating to the sixth century a.d. or earlier, at least in so far as those editions could be located in the Sackler and Bodleian Libraries in Oxford. Most papyri consulted proved not to be bilingual as defined for the purposes of this article; for those that were indeed bilingual I then consulted photographs to verify the original layout, unless this was specified in the literature, since the layouts of editions do not always match those of the originals (editors have a tendency to separate Coptic-style glossaries into columns to make them easier to read). See also the detailed discussion of layout of Greek–Coptic bilingual papyri of the Old Testament by Nagel, who does not mention the columnar format ( Nagel, P., ‘Griechisch–koptische Bilinguen des Alten Testaments’, in id. [ed.], Graeco–Coptica: Griechen und Kopten im byzantinischen Ägypten [Halle, 1984], 231–57Google Scholar).

57 Quecke, H., ‘Eine griechisch–ägyptische Wörterliste vermutlich des 3. Jh. v. Chr. (P. Heid. Inv.-Nr. G 414)’, ZPE 116 (1997), 67–80 Google Scholar (= M–P 3 2131.02, LDAB 6962, third century b.c.).

58 e.g. P.Rain.UnterrichtKopt. 257a (LDAB 3141, third or fourth century a.d.); P.Rain.Cent. 12 (= M–P 3 2133.2, LDAB 6614, seventh century a.d.); P.Rain.UnterrichtKopt. 280 (= M–P 3 2698, LDAB 6668, seventh or eighth century a.d.); P.Rain.UnterrichtKopt 264 (= LDAB 10974, undated); SB Kopt III.1656 (= M–P 3 2132, LDAB 5647, fourth century a.d.; the format of this glossary is not quite like that of the others, but it is certainly not columnar).

59 Greek–Coptic bilingual texts continued to be produced throughout the medieval period, and in fact the majority of those listed on the LDAB are medieval. Because medieval developments are not relevant to the question of origin investigated here, I have only looked at continuous Coptic texts datable to the sixth century a.d. or earlier.

60 e.g. Schmidt, C. and Schubart, W., Acta Pauli nach dem Papyrus der Hamburger Staats- und Universitäts-Bibliothek (Hamburg, 1936)Google Scholar (= LDAB 3138, third or fourth century a.d., parts of the Bible with Coptic translation); Amundsen, L., ‘Christian papyri from the Oslo collection’, Symbolae Osloenses 24 (1945), 121–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 121–40 (= LDAB 2993, fourth century a.d., parts of the Bible with Coptic translation); Rösch, F., Bruchstücke des ersten Clemensbriefes, nach dem achmimischen Papyrus der Strassburger Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek (Strasbourg, 1910), 119–22Google Scholar = LDAB 2806, fifth century a.d., parts of the Bible with Coptic translation); P.Köln IV.169 (= LDAB 3238, fifth century a.d., parts of the Bible with Coptic translation); Codex Scheide (ed. Schenke, H.-M., Das Matthäus-Evangelium im mittelägyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen [Berlin, 1981]Google Scholar = LDAB 107734, fifth century a.d., doxology with Coptic translation); Römer, C., ‘Das zweisprachige Archiv aus der Sammlung Flinders Petrie’, ZPE 164 (2008), 53–62 Google Scholar, at 61–2, no. 26 (= LDAB 10092, fifth or sixth century a.d., early Christian text with Coptic translation); P.Rain.UnterrichtKopt 269 II (= LDAB 2719, fifth or sixth century a.d., Menandri Sententiae with Coptic translation); P.Rain.UnterrichtKopt 269 I (= M–P 3 1583, LDAB 2452, fifth to seventh century a.d., Menandri Sententiae with Coptic translation); P.Rain.UnterrichtKopt 268 (= M–P 3 1583.2, LDAB 2723, sixth or seventh century a.d., one of the Menandri Sententiae with Coptic translation); Biblia Coptica I.III Sa 72 (= LDAB 3195, sixth or seventh century a.d., parts of the Bible with Coptic translation); Biblia Coptica IV.III Sa 700 (= LDAB 2897, parts of the Bible with Coptic translation).

61 e.g. Brashear, W.M. and Satzinger, H., ‘Ein akrostichischer griechischer Hymnus mit koptischer Übersetzung (Wagner-Museum K 1003)’, Journal of Coptic Studies 1 (1990), 37–58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (= LDAB 5584, third or fourth century a.d., Greek hymn with Coptic translation); Brashear, W.M. and Quecke, H., ‘Ein Holzbrett mit zweisprachigen Hymnen auf Christus und Maria’, Enchoria 17 (1990), 1–19 Google Scholar (= LDAB 5943, fifth century a.d., Greek hymn with Coptic translation).

62 e.g. Pintaudi, R., Antinoupolis (Florence, 2008), 146–7Google Scholar, no. 6 (= LDAB 113257, fifth century a.d., Biblical); Till, W.C. and Sanz, P., Eine griechisch–koptische Odenhandschrift (Rome, 1939)Google Scholar (= LDAB 3483, sixth century a.d., Biblical); Treu, K., ‘Griechisch–koptische Bilinguen des Neuen Testaments’, Koptologische Studien in der DDR (Halle, 1965), 95–123 Google Scholar, at 111–13 (= LDAB 2898, sixth century a.d., Biblical).

63 e.g. Elanskaya, A.I., The Literary Coptic Manuscripts in the A.S. Pushkin State Fine Arts Museum in Moscow (Leiden, 1994), 458–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar (= LDAB 2866, fourth or fifth century a.d., Biblical) and Wessely, K., ‘Ein faijumisch–griechisches Evangelienfragment’, Vienna Oriental Journal 26 (1912), 270–4Google Scholar (= LDAB 2965, sixth century a.d., Biblical). Probably also to be put in this category are two papyri of which only one column survives and whose layout cannot therefore be completely verified: MPER NS 9 pp. 49–51 no. 3 (= LDAB 2964, sixth century a.d., Biblical) and Treu (n. 62), 100–4 (= LDAB 2815, sixth century a.d., Biblical).

64 Already in the Republic it was normal for educated Latin speakers to have studied Greek. Exactly when significant numbers of Greek speakers began learning Latin probably varied from province to province, as some Greek-speaking areas came under Roman domination centuries before others. But in Egypt significant Latin learning seems to have begun in the second century a.d., to judge from the dates of preserved Latin–Greek glossaries (see examples 19 and following in the list above) and from the dates at which Latin loanwords start to be used in Greek papyri (see Dickey, E., ‘Latin influence on the Greek of documentary papyri: an analysis of its chronological distribution’, ZPE 145 [2003], 249–57Google Scholar, at 252). For further information on the learning of Latin by Greek speakers see Rochette (n. 2 [1997]).

65 See Dickey (n. 49) and Dickey (n. 6), 1.39–52.

66 See Bonner, S.F., Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (London, 1977), 165Google Scholar, and note the concentration on Eastern evidence in Cribiore, R., Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco–Roman Egypt (Atlanta, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cribiore, R., Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Morgan, T., Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar.