CHAPTER X
GREEK PAPYRI
The Greeks succeeded to the sovereignty of the sea after they had driven the Phœnicians from the Ægean. They were skilful shipbuilders and navigators, and their maritime enterprise, in which, as has been shown, they preceded the Phœnicians, took a new lease of life from the eighth century b.c. Their factories and colonies were planted from east to west, from Odessa to Marseilles, where, as their farthermost point, we find them settled 600 b.c. The assistance given by Ionians and Carians to Psammetichus, the first king of the twenty-sixth dynasty (666 b.c.) in his war with the Assyrians was rewarded by the assignment of permanent settlements in Egypt, and in the reign of his son, Necho II., the cities of Sais and Naucratis (about both of which Herodotus has much to say, ii. 97, 135, 169, 178, &c.) was full of Greek colonists, to whose commercial and intellectual activity the then prosperous state of Egypt was mainly due. The footing which they obtained there was secured when, three hundred years later, Alexander the Great marked his conquest in the founding of the city which bears his name. It is well to keep these facts in mind, because in our assessment of the debt of the civilised world to Greece we are apt to forget that it was not wholly intellectual, but also social and industrial. And these facts have bearing on our immediate subject in explaining the spread of the Greek alphabet, or, more precisely, the Western or Chalcidian form of it, whence the Latin, and through it the alphabets of Europe and America, are derived. Although the name was limited to the districts in the south of Italy, in the larger sense of the term Græcia Major corresponds to Greater Britain. As with the area of our home islands compared with that of our colonies, so was it with Hellas and her expansion along the sea whose waters laved the coasts of the civilised world. And the spread of the English language and the English alphabet over half the civilised globe may be compared with "the diffusion of Hellenic culture and Hellenic scripts throughout the Mediterranean region, originating in the pre-Christian centuries various derived alphabets—Iberian, Gaulish, Etruscan, Latin, and Runic, followed at a later time by the Mæso-Gothic, Albanian, &c." (Taylor, ii. 125.)
Palæography, or the decipherment of documents, and Epigraphy, or the decipherment of inscriptions, have been indispensable keys to the history of the alphabet. But the materials with which each has to deal would demand a volume, and, moreover, reference to them here has warrant only in their immediate bearings on the development and diffusion of alphabets. But, as with the Papyrus Prisse and the Book of the Dead, there is a deep interest attaching to some of the venerable records. They are, in the modern phrase, and in the best sense of it, "human documents." Such are the Greek papyri, the oldest-known specimens of which are found in Egypt, and have a range of a thousand years, i.e. from the third century b.c. to the seventh century a.d., so that, as Mr. Kenyon remarks in his monograph on the subject, "we may fairly say that we know how men wrote in the days of Aristotle and Menander, but we have not yet got back to Pindar and Æschylus, much less to Homer or (if a less contentious name be preferred) Hesiod." The use of papyrus as a writing material stretches back in Egypt to a remote antiquity; but we cannot be certain that it was used by the Greeks before the early part of the fifth century b.c., while "with the Arab conquest of Egypt (640 a.d.) the practice of Greek writing on papyrus received its death-blow." By far the larger number of documents thus far discovered are non-literary, dealing with official and commercial matters, as tax-collectors' receipts (although many of these are scratched on potsherds, or ostraca, literally "oyster shells," whence ostracize, the inscribing of the name of a person obnoxious to the state on a shell), acknowledgments of repayment of dowry after divorce, wills, reports of public physicians on autopsy, house-keeping bills, surety deeds, registration of title to inheritance, wedding and dinner invitations, of which last here is an example eighteen hundred years old: "Chæron requests your company at dinner at the table of Lord Serapis in the Serapæum to-morrow, the 15th, at 9 o'clock" (i.e. about 3 p.m.). Then there are domestic letters, one, touching human hearts across the centuries, from a father to his son: "Tell me anything I can do for you. Good-bye, my boy;" and another crudely written, and with faulty spelling and grammar, from a boy to his father. "Theon to his father Theon, greeting: It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to Alexandria. I won't write a letter or speak to you, or say good-bye to you, and if you go to Alexandria I won't take your hand, nor ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you won't take me.... Send me a lyre, I implore you; if you don't, I won't eat, I won't drink. There, now!"
The first discovery of Greek papyri was made at Herculaneum in 1752. They consist of above eighteen hundred charred rolls, which were enclosed in a wooden cabinet, and doubtless formed a portion of the library of one Lucius Piso Cæsonius, in the ruins of whose villa they were found. The condition of the papyri made the unrolling and decipherment of them a very tedious operation, and the work is not even yet completed. "They are written in small uncial letters, and possess little beyond palæographic value, comprising worthless treatises on physics, music, rhetoric, and kindred subjects by Philodemus and other third-rate philosophers of the Epicurean school." A quarter of a century later some rolls of papyrus were found in Egypt, probably in the Fayum. Of these only one, containing a list of peasants employed in the corvée, survived destruction by the natives, and it was not till 1820 that the discovery of a number of rolls on the site of the Serapeum at Memphis supplied the key to knowledge of Greek writing of the second century b.c. Since then, at varying intervals, the finds have increased in number and importance. The earliest known examples, dating from the third century b.c., were discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1889 in a number of mummy cases at Gurob. Most of these papyri were non-literary—wills, petitions, and such-like documents—but two valuable relics came to light in fragments of Plato's Phædo and the lost Antiope of Euripides. Then followed the discovery of another lost work, Aristotle's Αθηναίων Πολιτεία; of the Mimes of Herodas—an almost unknown writer of the Alexandrian age—part of another oration of Hyperides; a long medical treatise, and fragments of Homer, Demosthenes, and Isocrates. The Mimes, two thousand years old, are as young as yesterday. "Though," Mr. Whibley remarks in a charming paper upon these recovered treasures, "they have survived the searching test of time, they have been unseen of mortal eyes for countless centuries. The emotions which Herodas delineates are not Greek, but human, and no preliminary cramming in archæology is necessary for their appreciation. As the world was never young, so it will never grow old. The archæologist devotes years of research to compiling a picture of Greek life, and the result is Charicles—a cold and unrelieved mass of 'local colour.' There is no proportion, no atmosphere, no background; all is false save the details, and they merely overload the canvas. Herodas presents not a picture, but an impression, and one mime reveals more of life as it was lived two thousand years ago, than the complete works of Becker, Ebers, and the archæologists." (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1891, p. 748.) Here is one scene by which Mr. Whibley justifies his appreciation. The dramatis personæ are Metriche, a grass-widow; Threissa, her maid; and Gyllis, an old lady.
Metriche. Threissa, there is a knock at the door; go and see if it is a visitor from the country.
Threissa. Please push the door. Who are you that are afraid to come in?
Gyllis. All right, you see, I am coming in.
Threissa. What name shall I say?
Gyllis. Gyllis, the mother of Philainis. Go indoors, and announce me to Metriche.
Threissa. A caller, ma'am.
Metriche. What, Gyllis, dear old Gyllis! Turn the chair round a little, girl. What fate induced you to come and see me, Gyllis? An angel's visit, indeed! Why, I believe it's five months since any one dreamt of your knocking at my door.
Gyllis. I live such a long way off, and the mud in the lane is up to your knees. I am ever anxious to come, for old age is heavy upon me, and the shadow of death is at my side.
Metriche. Cheer up! don't malign Father Time; old age is wont to lay his hand on others too.
Gyllis. Joke away; though young women can find something better to do than that. But, my dear girl, what a long time you've been a widow. It's ten months since Mandris was despatched to Egypt, and he hasn't sent you a single line; doubtless he has forgotten you, and is drinking at a new spring; for in Egypt you may find all things that are or ever were—wealth, athletics, power, fine weather, glory, goddesses, philosophers, gold, handsome youths, the shrine of the god and goddess, the most excellent king, the finest museum in the world, wine, all the good things you can desire, and women, by Persephone, countless as the stones and beautiful as the goddesses that appealed to Paris.
Metriche protests, and Gyllis, suggesting that Mandris is dead, reveals the purpose of her visit.
Now listen to the news I have brought you after this long time. You know Gyllus, the son of Matachene, who was such a famous athlete at school, got a couple of blues at his university, and is now amateur champion bruiser? Then he is so rich, and he leads the quietest life; see, here is his signet-ring. Well, he saw you the other day in the street, and was smitten to the heart. And, my dear girl, he never leaves my house day or night, but bemoans his fate, and calls upon your name; he is positively dying of love.
Metriche becomes righteously indignant when Gyllis suggests that she return this love.
By the fates, Gyllis, your white hairs blunt your reason. There is no cause yet to deplore the fate of Mandris. By Demeter, I shouldn't like to have heard this from another woman's lips. And you, my dear, never come to my house with such proposals again. For none may make mock of Mandris.... But, if what the world says be true, I needn't speak to Gyllis like this. Threissa, let us have some refreshments; bring the decanter and some water, and give the lady something to drink. Now, Gyllis, drink, and show that you aren't angry.
And so with delightful interchange of civilities the quarrel is brought to an end.
Passing by other discoveries, some of these including fragments of a play by Menander, of whose hundred comedies none are perfect, we come to the thousands of Greek papyri found in 1896-97 by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt on the site of the ancient Oxyrhynchus, the capital of a nome of Middle Egypt. The full list of these relics has not yet been published, and it will take some years to decipher them all; but among the literary portion are fragments of works known and unknown. Among the latter is a papyrus of the second century, containing a collection of Logia, or Sayings, of Jesus Christ, some of which are familiar, whilst others are wholly new. The following translation of these, made by the Rev. A. C. Headlam, is based on the text as provisionally settled by Professors Lock and Sanday.
1. (Jesus saith, Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye), and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote in thy brother's eye.
2. Jesus saith, Except ye fast to the world, ye shall not find the kingdom of God; and unless ye keep the true Sabbath, ye shall not see the Father.
3, 4. Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in my flesh I was seen of them, and I found all men drunken, not one found I thirsty among them; and my soul is weary for the sons of men, for they are blind in their heart, and see (not, poor and know not) their poverty.
5. Jesus saith, Wherever there be (two, they are not without) God, and if anywhere there be one, I am with him; raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I.
6. Jesus saith, A prophet is not received in his own country, nor doth a physician heal his neighbours.
7. Jesus saith, A city built on the summit of a lofty mountain, and firmly established, cannot fall nor be hidden.
8. Jesus saith, Thou hearest with (one ear), but the other hast thou closed.
Discoveries of this sort bring with them temptation to dwell on their significance, but that must be resisted. There is also temptation to refer to other materials bearing on the history of the Greek alphabet—notably to the inscriptions on the stupendous statue at Abu Simbel, near the second cataract of the Nile—the mere abstract of which would fill this little volume. But the excerpts—varied enough—already given will suffice to indicate what wealth of literature for our knowledge of the past these venerable relics yield, and how poor beyond redemption would the world be if shorn of those records of human thought and feeling, of those grave and gay pictures of life, so closely resembling our own, whereby, too, we learn how superficial have been the changes in human nature throughout the ages of man's tenancy of the earth.